But a few seconds after they emerged from the steel air duct, Bryson could hear footsteps whose proximity seemed to indicate that they were coming from within the crawlspace, and not from outside. There was a certain echoing tonality, accompanied by a wooden creak. Yes. Bryson was now sure of it. Someone was following them through the concealed passage.
He felt Elena grab his shoulder, put her mouth to his ear, and whisper, “Listen!”
He nodded: I hear.
His mind raced. He had Dawson’s Browning, with whatever ammunition was loaded in the chamber and magazine, and he had several implements in the briefcase that would be less effective in hand-to-hand combat. But the dismal fact was, there would be no hand-to-hand, close-range struggle. If they were spotted, guns would be fired, whether silenced or not.
Bryson stopped suddenly at another crack of light that seeped through the mortise work, and he peered through. He was looking into a fluorescent-lit utility room, its floors covered with old green linoleum. Looking more closely, he could make out shelving on one end stacked with what appeared to be cleaning supplies. Though the room was lit, it also appeared to be empty. He felt along the walls of the crawlspace until he found the detachable plywood panel that likely covered an egress into a closet that gave onto the utility room. With a small Phillips-head screwdriver he took from his briefcase, he unscrewed the panel and then pulled it loose. The wood squeaked and groaned as it came off. Indirect light shone through the opening; they could make out the outlines of the small closet, illuminated by a narrow slit of light that came in where the closet door met the linoleum floor.
Quietly, they squatted down and squeezed through the low, small opening. Bryson went first into the cluttered closet, and Elena followed. There was a sudden, jarring sound: Elena had knocked against a bucket, sending the wooden handle of a mop or broom clattering against the wall. They froze. Bryson held a hand in the air, signifying a command to halt. They listened, waited. Bryson’s heart thundered.
After an endless minute, Bryson was satisfied that the noise had not attracted attention, and they resumed. Slowly, carefully, he opened the closet door. The utility room was indeed empty, though the lights were on; it was likely that someone had been here only recently, a cleaning person, who would therefore be returning at any time.
They raced silently across the room to the door that had to lead to a hallway. It was open a crack. Bryson pushed it open just enough to get his head through; he looked to either side down the dim hall. He saw no one. He whispered to Elena, “Stay here until I signal that it’s safe to come out.”
Bryson passed a vending machine and an old brown bucket in which stood a wet-mop, and then a figure appeared. He stopped short, reached for the Browning, which he had jammed into his waistband.
But it was only an old lady, a slow-moving cleaning woman pushing a metal cart. Relieved, Bryson continued down the hall toward her, mentally preparing a response in case he was asked questions. He was a civil servant, as his clothing—though dust-covered—indicated. Yet he was mindful that the old woman could become a resource as well, and they could afford to bypass no resources.
“Excuse me,” Bryson said as he approached, dusting off his shoulders with a flick of his hand.
“Lost, are you?” the cleaning woman said. “Can I help you, dearie?” She had a kindly, wrinkled face, her white hair thin and wispy. She seemed old to be doing such manual labor, and she moved with such apparent physical exhaustion that she stirred Bryson’s sympathy. Yet her eyes regarded him shrewdly.
Lost? But wasn’t it a natural question: dressed as he was, Bryson appeared to be out of place in this service corridor. Had the word been circulated so quickly that one—or more—fugitives were roaming the building? He thought rapidly.
“I’m with Scotland Yard,” Bryson replied in a flawless English lower-middle-class accent. “Some security breaches in the area. Maybe you’ve heard…?”
“Aye,” the old lady said wearily. “I don’t ask questions. Be more than my job’s worf, it would.” She wheeled the cart down the hall toward them and parked it against the wall. “Lot of rumors flying around.” She mopped her careworn brow with an old faded-red kerchief as she waddled up to him. “But you mind answerin’ me just one question?”
Guardedly, Bryson said, “What’s that?”
The ancient cleaning lady gave a perplexed look as she sidled up to Bryson and continued in a low, confiding voice, “What the hell are you doing still alive?” She whipped out a large blue-steel gun from the folds of her smock, pointed it at Bryson, and squeezed the trigger. Lightning-fast, Bryson swung his Kevlar-lined briefcase upward in a sharp arc, crashing it hard into her forearm. The gun clattered to the floor, skidding across the linoleum down the hall, away from him.
With a shrill scream, the harridan crouched and then sprang forward, her face contorted, her hands extended like claws, like deadly instruments. She slammed into him, knocking him to the floor just as he was reaching for the concealed gun. The wound in his side ached. She’s a goddamned old lady! Bryson thought, then realizing—as she clawed at his eyes—that she was no old lady, she was far younger, far stronger, something more akin to a wild beast than a woman. She jabbed one thumb directly into his eye socket, the pain immense, blinding him, while she slammed her knee into his crotch, connecting at once with his genitals. Bryson roared with agony and determination, summoning his considerable strength, and slammed her to the floor. His right eye was bloodied, but he could still see through it, and what he saw made an eel of fear wriggle in his belly. She had pulled out a flashing blade, a long, thin stiletto. It gleamed wetly, as if coated with a viscous fluid. He knew at once that the blade must be coated with the alkaloid toxiferene, which made it an extremely dangerous weapon. The slightest nick or scrape would lead to immediate paralysis and a suffocating death.
Bryson could smell the blade and its acrid poison as it whisked millimeters from his face: he had jerked his head back just in time to save his life. Now the crazed woman reared up and lunged, and again Bryson’s evasive action was only just sufficient; a button from his shirt was sliced off and went flying into the air. He went at her with both hands, with all of his strength, unable to risk reaching for the gun. The stiletto flashed in a blur near Bryson’s face, but now Bryson lashed out with his left arm, like a cobra, directly toward the blade—a counterintuitive move, because it meant rising up and greeting the instrument of death, or the appendage that held it, rather than retreating from it—and as he seized the wrist of the hand holding the stiletto, the harridan was clearly taken by surprise.
But only for an instant. Bryson’s strength would normally be far superior, but he was no longer in peak physical condition, nowhere close to it. He was, he was now realizing, badly weakened by the gunshot wound in Shenzhen; he had not given himself time to recover. And she had a mastery of moves he had never seen before. As her arm struggled against Bryson’s grip, the long blade trembling, her left foot, clad in a steel-toed leather shoe, swung around, striking him again in the genitals. He groaned as he felt the pain radiating coldly through his testicles; he felt sick to his stomach. He shoved her again, slamming her back to the floor and knocking her white wig off her head, revealing close-cropped black hair and the lines of a latex face mask.
They were locked in struggle. She screamed again, her eyes wild. She was powerful and extraordinarily coordinated, and she lashed back and forth like a rabid beast. She tried to kick at him again, using her other foot, but Bryson had anticipated the move and rolled onto her, locking her legs in place, using his greater body mass, still holding her wrist, the stiletto blade still pointed at him. He had to move carefully around it, keeping all skin, all appendages clear of its lethal point. She was bucking violently, but he concentrated his strength, his energy, on angling her wrist back at her, directing the slickly gleaming stiletto toward her neck. Her arm shook with all the muscular resistance she could summon, but it was not enough: Bryson commanded more brute strength. Inch b
y inch, he pushed the tremulous blade back toward the soft exposed skin of the rabid woman’s neck. Her eyes, hooded with latex skin folds, widened in terror as the blade gently creased her skin.
The effect was immediate. Her lips spread into a contorted rictus, spittle coming from her mouth, and she suddenly went limp against the floor and began to thrash wildly, her mouth opening again and again like a fish out of water, in soundless gasps. Then, as the deadening paralysis spread through her body, all respiration ceased; only a few muscles continued to twitch spasmodically.
Bryson pulled the blade from the dead woman’s slackened grip, located the leather scabbard in the folds of her smock, and replaced the stiletto inside, then slid the scabbard into the breast pocket of his suit jacket. He gasped for breath, touched the sticky blood that covered his right eye. He heard a cry: Elena rushed forward from the utility room, placing her hands on either side of his face, her panicked eyes searching his face. “Oh, God, my darling!” she whispered. “I think your eye looks worse than it actually is. Was that a poison of some sort?”
“Toxiferene.”
“She could have killed you, so easily!”
“She was strong, and very, very good.”
“Alpha, do you think?”
“Almost certainly Prometheus. Alpha units are marines or navy SEALs. She was some sort of an exotic, probably hired from Bulgaria or the old East Germany—one of the defunct Eastern-bloc services.”
“I hated staying back there, doing nothing!”
“You would have just gotten hurt, and she might have used you against me. No, I’m glad you did.”
“Oh, Nicholas, I’m useless. I know nothing about combat, about fighting! Draga mea, we have to get out of here. They want to kill you and me both!”
Bryson nodded, gulped. “I think we should separate—”
“No!”
“Elena, by now they know there are two of us, a man and a woman. Their surveillance is too good, too complete. The foreign secretary of England has been assassinated, and all forces are going to be on alert, not just Prometheus and Alpha.”
“There must be a thousand people in this building. Surely there’s safety in numbers.”
“Crowds are better for killers than their targets, especially when the killers know what the marks look like. These are people who will not be deterred by normal considerations of prudence.”
“I can’t! I’m sorry—on my own I can’t fight, you know that! I can help you in many ways, but … please!”
Bryson nodded; she was terrified, and he couldn’t send her off on her own in such a state. “All right. But we’re going to have to take back hallways wherever we can find them, service corridors, that sort of thing. The crawlspaces and air ducts are no longer safe—they’re probably crawling with agents by now. Somehow we have to get to the east side of the building if our escape plan’s going to have any chance of succeeding.”
Standing to one side of the utility room window so that he could not be seen from outside, Bryson saw at once that it was worse than he’d imagined. He counted six men in fatigues—members of the Alpha squad. Two of them were patrolling the state officer’s courtyard; two others were checking building exits, and two were walking along the roof, surveying the area with binoculars.
He turned back to Elena. “Well, that’s just modified the plan. We’re going to have to go out to the hallway and look for a freight elevator.”
“To the ground floor?”
He shook his head. “That’s going to be crawling with police—and others. First or second floor, and then we’ll look for an alternative way out.” He walked quickly to the door and listened for a few seconds. He heard nothing; no one had come by even during his struggle with the crone. Obviously this was a little-used area. But the fact was, the Prometheus decoy had been circulating here, obviously expecting one or both of them to come by. That told him two things: that this was probably near a convergence point, where various routes came together and led to an exit from the building; and that there would be others not too far away. The sooner they were out of this section, the better.
He opened the door a crack, peered out, then looked to either side; it was clear. He signaled to Elena. They raced down the empty service corridor to the left, and when they reached a turning, Bryson stopped, looked right, spotted an elevator. He ran toward it, Elena close behind. It was an old-fashioned type of elevator with a tiny diamond-shaped glass window and a folding accordion gate inside. This was good: it meant that it was not likely to require a key to operate, since it predated such security precautions. He pressed the call button, and the cab whined slowly up, its compartment dimly illuminated. It was empty. He pulled the gate open, and they got in. He pressed the button marked 2.
For a moment he closed his eyes, visualizing the map. Obviously this would open on to a back service hall, used for cleaning and maintenance, but exactly where it led he wasn’t certain. The layout of the Parliament building was exceedingly ornate; he had managed to memorize the main routes, though not all of them.
The elevator stopped on the second floor. Bryson looked out, surveying as much as he could of the area, which also looked clear. He pushed the door open, and they got out. Turning to the right, he saw an old green-painted door, with a scuffed crash-bar mounted at hip-height. He approached it and pushed it open easily. Now they were in an ornate, marble-tiled hallway lined with mahogany doors labeled with gilt numerals. This was not a public, ceremonial area, nor was it grand enough for Parliament members, and there were no names or titles on the doors. Apparently these were offices belonging to committee staff—office clerks, executive officers, audit officers, secretaries, and other support staff. It was long and dimly lit; several people, presumably civil servants, walked unhurriedly into and out of offices. None of them seemed to glance at Bryson or Elena, nor did anything about their body language suggest that they were watchers or undercover operatives. Instinct, again: Bryson had nothing else to go on.
He stopped for a moment, trying to orient himself. The eastern end of the building was to the right; that was therefore the direction in which they should head. A well-dressed woman strode down the hall toward them, her heels clicking against the marble and echoing in the long hallway. Instinctively he looked at her, sizing her up; she approached them and passed with a curious stare. He suddenly remembered that, though he was still nominally attired as a respectable clerk, he had to be a frightful sight: one eye was bloodied, perhaps blackened, and his clothes were torn and disheveled from doing battle with the decoy cleaning lady. Elena’s clothes were disheveled as well. Both of them looked decidedly out of place, their physical appearance drawing attention, which was exactly what he did not want. There was no time to look for a restroom in which to clean themselves up; now they would have to rely on a combination of speed and good luck. But luck was something he never liked to count on; luck inevitably ran out just when you took it for granted.
He continued down the hall, his head down as if deep in thought, walking quickly, holding Elena’s hand, pulling her along. Here and there an office door was open and clusters of people stood talking quietly. If they glanced at the two of them, at least they might not see his bloodied face.
But something was not right here; he was overcome by anxiety. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck become prickly. The noises were wrong. The normal pattern of ringing telephones was absent; instead, the phones seemed to be ringing in sequence, at different offices and on different sides of the hallway. He could not rationally articulate why this bothered him, and he knew it was possible that he was beginning to imagine things. Too, he noticed that people engaged in conversation seemed to fall silent as he passed. Was he being paranoid?
He’d spent fifteen years in the field, and he had learned above all that one’s instinct was the most valuable weapon one had. He did not ignore feelings that others might dismiss as delusional or paranoid.
They were being watched.
But if they were really b
eing watched, why was nothing happening?
Pulling Elena’s hand, he quickened his stride. He no longer cared whether his actions stood out or attracted attention; the situation was beyond that now.
About seventy-five yards ahead of them was a small leaded stained-glass window of the sort usually seen in a medieval cathedral. He knew that the windows here overlooked the Thames. “Straight ahead and to the left,” he said to Elena under his breath.
She squeezed his hand in silent response. In a few seconds the corridor ended, and they turned left. Elena whispered, “Look—a committee room—it’s probably empty. Do you think we should duck into there?”
“Excellent idea.” He did not want to turn around to see whether they were being followed, but he heard no footsteps close behind. On their right was a massive, arched, oak double-door labeled, on a frosted-glass pane, COMMITTEE TWELVE. If they were able to enter it quickly, they might be able to lose any followers, or at the very least confuse them for a while. The doorknob turned freely; the door was unlocked, but the lights—two massive crystal chandeliers—were switched off and the immense room was vacant. It was an amphitheater, with several raised seating areas of leather-backed, brass-studded wooden chairs above a depressed center floor, which was of highly decorated, brightly colored encaustic tile. At the center of the room was a long wooden conference table, topped with green leather, and behind it two long, tall wooden pews—the benches for the committee members. Light came in through two large, tall leaded windows on the opposite side of the room facing the doors, a long rectangular shade running down the middle of each to block the direct sunlight that reflected off the Thames. Even in repose the room was at once solemn and grand. The vaulted ceiling was at least thirty feet high; the walls were wainscoted in dark wood more than halfway up, and above the wainscoting was elaborate burgundy wallpaper of a Gothic pattern. Several large, dreary nineteenth-century oil paintings hung on each wall: battle scenes, portraits of early kings commanding troops at sea, swords poised, Westminster Abbey crowded with nineteenth-century subjects mourning a casket draped with the Union Jack. The only touches of modernity were jarring: several microphones that dangled on long wires from the ceiling, and a television monitor mounted on one wall and labeled HOUSE OF COMMONS ANNUNCIATOR.
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