Search: A Novel of Forbidden History (30 page)

“They don’t want anyone to find the temples. Not even us.”

She didn’t want to believe it. Couldn’t believe it. “But why—”

“They . . . know I’m . . . in the country, Jessie . . . they . . . they know . . . we spoke . . .”

Jess’s fingers tightened on her phone. His words were coming now in ragged gasps. He was running.

“End the call.” It was Nils.

Jess turned to face him and a Glock, a stubby silencer attached to its barrel.

“End the call.”

“Willem, I—” Jess heard a sharp noise, a groan, then silence. She looked at her phone’s display:
CALL FAILED
.

She was truly on her own now. She addressed Nils with her full authority. “I am Defender of the Line MacClary. Put down your weapon.”

“I have orders to take you back to Zurich.” Nils raised his Glock to sight between her eyes. “Preferably alive. Defender.”

“If you don’t put the gun down now, they’ll come in shooting,” David said.

Jess’s bodyguard didn’t change his stance. “Who?”

“The air force. There’s another transponder in my sneaker. It’s been transmitting audio.”

Nils swung his gun around to aim at David. He snapped his fingers.

“Give me the shoe.”

“Sure thing.” David pulled off his shoe and tossed it.

And in the same instant Nils reached out to catch it—

—Jess’s knife found his neck. Nils roared as he spun, gun firing with a silenced puff and the sound of breaking glass. Shards exploded from a shattered window.

Jess was already on the ground and rolling. Safe from his second shot as well.

Nils swatted at his neck, his fingers seeking the silver blade she’d thrown. She’d missed the carotid artery, but blood spurted from a gaping gash. His head twitched to one side, as if she’d compromised deep tendons.

He yanked the knife out with a triumphant cry, only to be struck a moment later by David smashing into him.

Both men fell to the wooden floorboards. Nils struggled to train his gun on David.

Then Jess’s boot struck Nils’s temple with all the force and precision Emil had taught, and the result was instantaneous.

The Glock flew from Nils’s hand as his arms flung wildly outward and his head lolled back and hit the floor. His neck tightened grotesquely, bending toward its uninjured side. A pool of blood spread beneath his cheek as froth escaped his mouth. He coughed. Gurgled. Tongue protruding. Then he fell silent, stilled.

Jess picked up her knife from beside the body, used Nils’s Windbreaker to wipe it clean, and slipped it back within her Tuareg cross.

“Was that the truth?” she asked quietly as she retrieved the Glock. “About your sneaker?”

David had retrieved his sneaker and the hard drive. Still breathing heavily, he stood over Nils. “No. Just wanted to make him put down the gun.” His gaze shifted to her cross. “Defender of the Line MacClary?”

“According to the rules my family plays by, because you heard that, I should kill you, too.”

She didn’t bother adding that she hadn’t meant to kill her bodyguard. Or that everything she believed, everyone she’d trusted, all of it was threatened—somehow because of him.

Not even Willem could help her now.
What were Su-Lin and Andrew
doing? What if Florian . . .
Jess stood, transfixed, as terrible thoughts of lies and betrayal swept her mind.

“You still want to find those temples?” David held out the drive to her. His voice was steady, unafraid.

Jess took a deep breath, committing to the mission of her life. For Florian and Willem. For the Family.

“We have to go,” she said.

“Where?”

Jess held up the hard drive. “Let’s find out.”

Jack Lyle, impatient, pretended to study a rack of hand-tooled leather belts. His real focus was the main entrance to Quincy Market’s Faneuil Hall.

He’d stationed four uniformed Boston police officers at the other entrances. Plainclothes detectives were on their way, but until they arrived he couldn’t take the search for Weir inside.

Then his phone buzzed in his jacket pocket, and even those plans changed.

“You ready for this?”
Roz asked. She was on the street behind the hall with two more police officers and the man who’d mistakenly believed that wearing Weir’s jacket and cap, and carrying his knapsack, would be enough to throw the AFOSI off track.

After parking on Congress Street, on the far side of the hall, Lyle and Roz had followed Weir and witnessed the clothing transfer taking place, just before a second man with long blond hair pushed Weir into the hall, apparently at gunpoint.

“Make it fast,” Lyle said.

“The locals ran the decoy’s ID. His name’s Simon Moretti.”

“And?”

“Cross Executive Protection Services, Zurich.”

Lyle saw the connection at once. “Same as Weir’s ‘friend’ at the warehouse.”

“Bingo.”

“Is he talking?”

“Only to say he’s not doing anything illegal. Wants us to arrest him or let him go.”

“Is he armed?”

“Glock. Extra clips. Licensed. The knife’s questionable.”

“Cell phone?”

“Yes, but we can’t touch it unless we arrest him. And can I say again I don’t know anyone except you who
doesn’t
carry a phone twenty-four seven?”

“The knapsack had the iPod and recorder, right?”

“That’s affirm.”

“Then charge him with illegal possession of government property and
interfering in a federal investigation. Then do that thing you do to his phone.”

“Hack it?”

“That’s it.”

“Something else not so good to report . . .”

“Don’t make me beg.”

“We found the hard-drive cable in the knapsack. Moretti’s not talking, but I’m thinking Blondie lifted the hard drive first.”

“Can you turn on the RFID tag?”

“I just tried. Either it’s not within a mile of here, or our boy-genius changed its operating frequencies.”

“Wasn’t it supposed to send an alarm if Weir tampered with it?”

“I’m guessing he’s better than we thought.”

“Well, change the frequencies back.”

“Easier to try to find the new ones he switched to. You think Weir could be Ironwood’s middleman for selling SARGE?”

“Why use the hard drive we gave him?”

“Overconfidence—maybe he thought we wouldn’t notice?”

“Or he’s gone into business for himself.”

“Time to bring Weir in?”

“When the detectives get here,” Lyle said. Using the kid as a way into Ironwood’s organization had been a promising option, but it hadn’t worked. They’d need a new strategy for taking down the billionaire.

“They’re pulling up now.”

“Good. Put me through to whoever’s in charge and—” Lyle broke off. He’d just heard a sound, two sounds: breaking glass and a ricochet. No gunshot. Except . . .

Knots of startled shoppers were pointing to the north side of Faneuil Hall. To what, specifically, Lyle couldn’t see—but a uniformed cop could. He was heading in that direction, fast.

“Roz, cover the doors now! Shots fired!”

Lyle broke into an awkward loping run. His right knee felt unreliable.

Then two figures burst out of the hall. A slim red-haired woman in a tan jacket, and—

Lyle hobbled forward, knee forgotten, shouting, “David Weir!”

The two figures increased their speed, pushing past innocent civilians.

Lyle swore, reached into his jacket for his ID, took his eyes off the fugitives for an instant to find another cop. When he looked up, the two fugitives had stopped. They faced him from across the street.

The red-haired woman had a gun. Weir was beside her.

“Get down! Get down!” she shouted.

Lyle raised his hands in the air and limped forward slowly. There was no way she and Weir could get away.

“Put your weapon down!” he shouted back. “You’re sur—”

She fired!

Lyle tensed, furious with himself for misjudging the situation so badly.

But . . .

Three more rounds.

She missed?
Lyle thought. Then he realized he heard screaming, whirled around to see—

Shoppers scattering from a body. A gun fallen from an outstretched hand. Lyle registered the black Windbreaker and in that moment realized he’d not been her target. She’d tried to protect him, not shoot him.

Lyle lowered his hands and saw a second gunman strong-arming an elderly shopper, using her as a shield as he fired back at the red-haired woman.

The screams diminished into whimpers and frightened cries. Most of the onlookers had fled or were lying on the concrete, heads down, terrified. Uniformed police were running into the square, guns drawn.

“Release the hostage! Drop the weapon!”

Three cops circled the shooter with the human shield. The gunman hesitated as if calculating the odds, dropped his Glock, pushed his shocked captive away. Three seconds later, he was tackled.

Two more cops zeroed in on Lyle. “Not me!” he protested, flashing his badge. “Her!” He turned to point, but the woman and Weir were gone.

Then Roz sprinted into the square, gun drawn. Lyle waved her toward a long market building past some trees. “That way! That way!”

He put on a burst of speed to catch her, every second step a shock of pain.

“Who’s the redhead?” Roz panted.

“Weir’s going to tell us,” Lyle promised and meant it.

Side by side they rushed into South Market Hall.

Halfway through the five-hundred-foot-long South Hall, Jess swerved down another aisle of market stalls, and David matched her move for move, the hard drive welded to his hand.

Over the thrum of huge industrial-sized fans that echoed off the low wooden ceilings, he’d heard an offsetting lag in the pursuing footsteps. Jack Lyle. The AFOSI agent had favored one leg when he’d entered the interrogation room in Atlantic City. He wasn’t alone. There was a second pattern—lighter, female.

“This way!” Jess veered toward a side exit, and David followed.

They exited the building onto a narrow street, one-way toward the harbor. No sign of pursuit outside. No police cars. But—

“Sirens.” David judged the shrill, undulating waves from the northwest. “Four police cars . . . five . . .”

Jess swiftly assessed the area. She pointed to the two tall buildings across the street. Between them, a dark opening, no wider than an alley. “Over there.”

She darted across the road, David at her side, both narrowly missing the moving cars. More sirens. More police. “Three more . . . from the south. One ambulance from the north.”

“How do you know that?” Jess led them into safe cover between the buildings. “Tell the difference, I mean. Let alone count them?”

David wasn’t sure himself; it was just something he’d always been able to do. “They’re using different systems. It sounds like the cops have Federal Signal PA300s. The ambulance’s got a SignalMaster pattern from a Smart Siren 2000. I can count them from the phase offsets . . . in the echoes.”

Jessica gave him a puzzled look for just a moment; then they were out in the bright sunshine again, on another, busier street, one-way in the opposite direction.

David looked up, alert for cameras.

They were on every corner.

He gestured to them. “That’s how they’ll track us now.”

“Let them.” Jess glanced to her left, then zigzagged through four lanes of clogged traffic, clearly trusting that he’d follow her. He did.

The hard reflective surfaces of the soaring modern towers caused David to lose precise count of the converging sirens. Still, he estimated they had under a minute before at least one vehicle would sight them.

Just past an office tower up ahead, he glimpsed another redbrick building patterned with multipaned, white-framed windows like Faneuil Hall. It was a smaller structure, but to his untrained eye it seemed roughly the same vintage. The street in front of it was wide, with a ring of old cobblestones set into a redbrick concourse.

The wail of sirens came from every direction now, and David had to concentrate even harder to sift relevant data out of the noise that enveloped them.

Jess was almost five feet ahead of him, running.

“Where’re we going?” David called out to her.

“Subway!” She waved past the old redbrick building to an MTBA subway entrance.
STATE STATION
, the sign read.

“No, Jess! Too many cameras!” But she was already on the sidewalk, steps from the subway entrance.

A siren punched through the din, and David turned to see a police car, rooftop lights flashing, squeal to a stop on the one-way street behind them. A sedan and two SUVs prevented it from turning onto the street he and Jess were crossing now.

An amplified voice—from a 100-watt PA300 siren with a noise-canceling microphone—blared over the whooping wail.
“Clear the lane! Clear the lane!”

A black Suburban with tinted windows screeched to a stop directly across the street from them, riding halfway up the sidewalk. Two tall men jumped out. Dark jackets. Muscled. Elite bodyguards. Like Nils.