The Last Survivor (A Wilde/Chase Short Story)

The Last Survivor

‘No!’

Nina Wilde jerked awake, the single word a fearful gasp. She looked about in near-panic before familiar surroundings took on form in the half-light seeping through the curtains. Her bedroom, safe and secure. Heart still thudding against her chest, she forced her breathing to slow.

A mumble from beside her. ‘What is it?’ asked her husband, Eddie Chase.

‘Nothing,’ she lied. ‘Go back to sleep.’

The Englishman seemed to return to his slumber, but Nina knew after six years together that he was a very light sleeper; his former career in the British military’s elite Special Air Service had trained him to snap to full alertness at the slightest prompt. She checked the bedside clock: 4.32 a.m. The light outside was spill from the street lamps eight floors below, dawn still almost two hours away.

But Nina knew she would not get back to sleep — nor did she want to. She had suffered the same nightmare for weeks, the recurring scene all the more terrifying because it had actually happened.

And just as in reality, she was powerless to stop events from playing through to their terrible end.

She remained still until Eddie’s breathing became slightly heavier. He was as deep in sleep as he would go. She slipped out from the covers and groped for her dressing gown, then crept to the door and eased it open. Comfortably navigating the darkened apartment, she only switched on a lamp once she had reached her study and closed its door behind her.

Sitting at her desk, she opened her laptop. The menu bar clock read 4.36. ‘No time like the present,’ the redhead whispered, calling up several documents. They were the notes for her book: a memoir of the archaeological adventures that had led to the discovery of Atlantis, the lost golden city of El Dorado and the ancient Viking hall of Valhalla, amongst many other wonders. She had spent the past two months researching and re-examining her past exploits; with her publisher paying an advance of over half a million dollars, the time had come to get on with actually writing about them.

So far she had two full chapters and a portion of a third. She scrolled through her notes to refresh her memory, then returned to the manuscript and started to type.

The words came easily, her focus fully upon the work — until a hand upon her shoulder made her jump. ‘Jesus, Eddie!’

‘What’re you doing up?’ Eddie asked, scratching his close-cropped, thinning dark hair. ‘You know what time it is?’

‘Yeah, it’s…’ She glanced at the clock: almost six. ‘Okay, it’s later than I thought.’ The sky outside was starting to lighten. ‘I must have really gotten into a groove.’

‘I didn’t mean it like you’ve been working too long. I meant it like, “Why in the name of arse are you working at all?” It’s the middle of the night!’

Her reply was slightly defensive. ‘I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I might as well do something constructive.’

‘You’ve hardly done anything else lately. Christ, you’ve barely left the flat for the last few days.’ A concerned look. ‘Everything all right? Is the baby okay?’

She glanced at her midriff. At three months pregnant, Nina was convinced she could make out a small bump, though so far it had proven beyond everyone else’s perception. But she knew the baby was there — not least because of the whirlwind it had already wreaked on her appetite and emotions. ‘Yeah, as far as I can tell. I’ve got another prenatal check-up today.’

‘It’s not the baby I’m worried about right now. You need to get more sleep.’

‘I’d love to, but my hormones don’t want to cooperate.’

‘You sure it’s your hormones?’

‘What else would it be?’ Her defensiveness returned, with more of a bite than she had intended.

‘Just want to make sure you’re all right,’ said Eddie, peering at the laptop. ‘So when do I get to read this? I mean, I’m in it. Aren’t I?’

‘Of course you’re in it,’ she said, firmly closing the machine’s lid. ‘But it’s not finished yet. I don’t want anyone to see it until I’m happy.’

‘Okay,’ he said, disappointed. ‘What time’s your appointment?’

‘Eleven. Will you come with me?’

‘I would, but I’ve got to meet Natalia at the airport, remember?’

‘Oh, yeah. When?’

‘Her plane’s due in at twelve.’ He rubbed his neck. ‘Well, I’m up now — I’ll put the kettle on.’

‘Decaf for me,’ she said, grudgingly. Cutting her caffeine intake had been an unwelcome medical recommendation.

He grinned, exposing the gap between his front teeth. ‘Finally! You’ve taken somebody else’s advice. For once.’ He headed for the kitchen, with a quizzical flick of his eyes at the laptop as he left.

Nina turned back to the computer. But she didn’t open it, again feeling oddly defensive without being quite sure why. It was probably just because she didn’t want anyone looking over her shoulder at a work in progress.

Wasn’t it?

Nina spent the morning working, reluctantly stopping when she realised that she needed to leave for her obstetrician’s appointment. She closed the laptop and headed for the bedroom to change. ‘You off?’ said Eddie as she passed. He was on the sofa, reading something on his phone.

‘Yeah. You’ve been quiet all morning — what have you been up to?’

His reply was somewhat pointed. ‘Same stuff I’m always up to when you shut yourself in your office.’

‘Oh, looking at porn?’

The joke disarmed him. ‘Not all the time,’ he said with a grin. ‘I was just reading about that airship — you know, the massive one that’s going up and down the East River?’

‘Yeah, it was on TV.’

He turned the phone towards her, revealing a picture of the giant craft. ‘It’s flying over Little Italy this afternoon as part of a festival.’

‘The Feast of San Gennaro? I used to go to that every year with my parents when I was a kid. They did really good food.’

‘We could take Natalia.’

‘I’m not sure she’ll want to tour Little Italy on foot right after a transatlantic flight,’ Nina pointed out. She took a closer look at his phone — or rather, its bulky rubberised case. ‘I can’t believe you paid good money for that,’ she said, teasing.

‘We’ll see how long your iPhone lasts if you drop it down the bog,’ he retorted, smirking.

‘Unlike you, I don’t spend hours reading things on it in the bathroom.’

‘Then what’s the point of having it?’ They both smiled. ‘But yeah, you’re probably right — Natalia’ll be pretty knackered after her flight. Shame, I wouldn’t have minded seeing that blimp close up.’

‘Maybe you’ll get another chance soon. Speaking of Natalia,’ she added as she continued into the bedroom, ‘shouldn’t you be setting off?’

‘No, I’ve still got a bit of time left, and I’ll find out if her flight’s on schedule before I go. Don’t want to be hanging around the airport for hours.’

‘I know. We’ve done more than enough of that over the years!’ She quickly changed her clothes, then came back into the lounge. ‘Okay, I’m going. So you’ll be gone by the time I get back?’

‘Probably. If you hang on a minute, I’ll check her flight.’

‘No, I need to go. I’ve already left it longer than I should have.’ She diverted to the sofa to kiss him. ‘See you when you get back.’

‘If they can tell if it’s a boy or a girl,’ he called after her as she went to the door, ‘I don’t want to know!’

Smiling, Nina left the apartment. She took the elevator to the ground floor and emerged on East 78th Street, hailing a cab.

Across the road from her building, a tall, burly blond man watched her taxi pull away, his eyes narrowing with malevolence. He had found his target… and would soon have his revenge.

Eddie finished reading the article about the airship, and was about to check the status of Natalia’s flight before deciding it would be much quicker to type in its details on a keyboard than laboriously thumb them in on a small touchscreen. He went into the study and opened the laptop, quickly carrying out the search.

‘Bollocks,’ he muttered on seeing the result. The flight from Hamburg had been delayed by bad weather. It was now over the Atlantic on its way to New York, but did not look likely to make up much lost time en route. ‘Good job I checked.’ There was no point leaving for JFK for at least another hour.

He was about to close the machine when a text document behind the browser caught his eye: Nina’s manuscript. A moment’s hesitation, then he clicked on it. ‘Well, it is about me…’

The Yorkshireman tried to resist the temptation to play critic — his tastes in literature generally extended little further than thrillers with covers featuring silhouetted running men and/or expensive fast-moving vehicles, sometimes on fire — but it wasn’t long before he caught himself frowning. It wasn’t so much at his wife’s prose style, which admittedly was on the dry side, as at what she was saying. Or rather, as he kept reading, what she wasn’t. It wasn’t inaccurate, but… incomplete.

‘Why’s she written it like that?’ He whispered as he continued through the document, his expression gradually darkening.

Nina returned from the obstetrician feeling buoyant. Her greatest concern about the pregnancy had been as much her own health as the baby’s; several months earlier, she had been infected by a highly toxic substance that seemed likely to kill her sooner rather than later. The toxin had apparently been neutralised during her discovery of the Spring of Immortality, a legendary source of healing water sought by none other than Alexander the Great over two thousand years earlier. It was something of a misnomer, since actual immortality was not one of its benefits, but it did slow the ageing process — and even cure certain diseases.

Proof of that had come from a deeply unpleasant source. Prior to Nina’s discovery of the spring, its only beneficiaries had been a group of escaped Nazi war criminals led by an SS commander named Erich Kroll, who had been using a small supply of its water looted from a shrine to Alexander in Greece. The Nazis, who were all in their nineties but physically appeared fifty years younger, had been plotting the rise of a new Reich from a remote enclave in the wilds of Argentina.

All were now dead, and she and those few companions who had survived the expedition had pledged to keep the spring’s location hidden to prevent further bloodshed. The water’s effect on her was no secret, however. The tumours that had begun to infect her body quickly went into remission, shrivelling to nothing. Her doctors were at a loss to explain how, and she had not been willing to share the truth. What mattered to her was that she was now apparently back to full health… and her baby appeared to be suffering no ill effects.

As she entered the apartment, she saw Eddie’s battered leather jacket hanging by the door; he hadn’t yet left for the airport. ‘I’m home!’ she called, expecting him to greet her. When there was no answer after a few seconds, she said again: ‘Hello? Eddie, you here?’

‘Yeah, in the study,’ was the reply.

He still did not appear, so she hung up her own jacket and went to find him. ‘What’s up?’ she asked as she entered the study — to find her laptop open with the manuscript on the screen.

‘I’ve been reading,’ he said.

His tone was level, but she immediately picked out a disapproving undertone that she knew from experience would soon escalate into an argument, even if she hadn’t already been about to start one. ‘Is that my book? Eddie, you know I didn’t want anyone to read it until it was finished!’

‘You didn’t want anyone to be able to say what you’d got wrong until it was already in print, you mean?’

She stiffened. ‘There’s nothing “wrong” with it. Everything I’ve written is exactly what happened — the only things I’ve left out are because of security issues.’

‘You’ve left out more than that.’ He pointed at the screen. ‘This bit here, you’re talking about how you discovered the Pyramid of Osiris.’

‘Yes, what about it?’

‘How you discovered the Pyramid of Osiris. What about Macy?’

Nina felt cold guilt. ‘What about her?’ she replied with a snap, trying to force the feeling away — only to realise too late that she had said exactly the wrong thing.

‘What about her?’ Eddie exploded, standing. ‘For fuck’s sake, Nina! You would never have found the bloody thing if it wasn’t for her — you wouldn’t even have got your job back at the IHA without Macy! She had a total case of hero-worship, you were the whole reason she got into archaeology in the first place, and she did just as much as you, maybe even more, to find the pyramid, but you hardly even mention her!’ He stabbed a finger at one particular paragraph. ‘This bit here: “With the help of American archaeology student Macy Sharif, I found the symbol within the Osireon that pointed to the site of the pyramid.” That’s it? That’s all you’ve got to say about her?’

‘It’s only the first draft!’ Nina protested. ‘And the book’s supposed to be about what I discovered, not how I discovered it.’

‘There — you’ve done it again. You said how I discovered it, not how we discovered it. You left Macy out again!’

She realised with a flash of shame that he was right, and she hadn’t even been aware of doing so. ‘I–I can put in more about her when I start editing it…’

His expression was now not so much angry as disappointed, which somehow hurt all the more. ‘I stuck up for you in Cairo when Ubayy Banna said you took credit for other people’s work, but… I don’t know, maybe he was right.’ He shook his head. ‘Why would you do that? Macy was our friend! Writing her out of your book, it’s… it’s disrespectful. She’s dead, but that doesn’t mean she never existed. I would never forget a friend. Never.’ He glanced into the living room, where photos of fallen friends and comrades proved his point.

‘I haven’t forgotten her,’ Nina insisted. ‘I…’ She was on the verge of telling him about her recurring nightmare, how much she feared sleep because she knew it would bring something she wished she could forget, but something stopped her.

Her hesitation allowed Eddie to continue his tirade. ‘If you haven’t forgotten her, then why are you trying to paint her out of the picture? And she’s not the only one — you didn’t mention people like Hugo or Jim Baillard in the chapter about Atlantis. It’s like…’ Now it was his turn to pause as a thought struck him. ‘Like you’re in denial. Is that it? You can’t cope, so you’re pretending it never happened?’ It was instantly clear from his expression as his mind caught up with his mouth that he knew he should have phrased the accusation more tactfully, but by then it was too late.

‘Oh, you think I can’t cope?’ Nina snarled. ‘I’m not some hard-assed special forces soldier, so I deal with my traumas by hiding them away as if they don’t exist? Screw you, Eddie! You of all people should know what I’ve been through, but if your idea of help is telling me I ought to just get over myself, then I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t even want to be in the same building as you!’ She whirled and stalked out of the study.

Eddie followed. ‘Nina, I’m sorry — I could have put that a bit better—’

‘No shit!’ She snatched up her jacket.

‘Where’re you going?’

‘Out!’ she yelled, opening the apartment door. ‘You were moaning about me not leaving the house for days, so you’ll get to cross one thing off your list of complaints. I’m going down to Little Italy for the festival. I’ll see you later.’

‘Nina!’

She waved a dismissive hand over her shoulder, not looking back as she exited. ‘Give Natalia my regards,’ she said, letting the door swing shut behind her with a bang.

‘Buggeration and fuckery,’ Eddie muttered. He considered catching up with his wife, but decided — drawing on experience — to give her time to cool down first. Instead, he took a cab to the airport, initially still fuming before eventually calming down. If nothing else, the argument had encouraged Nina to go out and actually do something rather than just sit at her computer working on the book. Neither the circumstances nor the timing was ideal — he wouldn’t have minded going to an Italian food festival himself — but it was a start. And now that the subject of Nina’s denial about Macy had been brought into the open, maybe she would think about it instead of trying to avoid it.

He arrived at the terminal and headed for the arrivals gate, seeing on the information board that Natalia’s flight had landed not long before. Even so, it still took more than half an hour for her to finally appear; it was her first visit to the United States, forcing her to go through the rigmarole of biometric scanning before being allowed to exit. ‘Natalia!’ he called, waving.

Natalia Pöltl gave him a wide smile. The young German had changed in appearance since their last meeting, finally returning home after eight years of self-imposed exile in Vietnam. Her hair was now cut short and styled, and returning to a Western diet had fleshed out her figure. Eddie could still see a weariness beyond her age in her face, though. The former aid worker had endured a nightmarish experience, kidnapped by forces from both Russia and the US seeking to obtain the genetic secrets locked in her DNA — those of a biological agent that was slowly killing her.

Nina had been infected by the same substance. But she had found a cure — and now Natalia could share it, ending the threat once and for all.

‘Eddie!’ she replied, hurrying to meet him. They embraced, and she kissed him on the cheek. ‘It is so good to see you again!’

‘You too. How’ve you been?’

‘As good as I can be,’ she replied, expression turning downcast. ‘More tumours have appeared. The illness is getting worse.’

‘Well, we’ve got something that’ll fix that, I hope. But what’s it been like finally going home? How’s your dad?’

‘My father, he is…’ She paused to find the right English word. ‘He was overjoyed when I came back to Hamburg. He had thought I was dead. When I first telephoned him, he was almost angry because he thought someone was playing a cruel joke on him. But,’ she smiled at the memory, ‘he soon became happy when he realised it really was me.’

‘And nobody’s been following you?’ Everyone involved directly with Natalia’s kidnapping — on both sides — was now dead, but there was a chance that others might be continuing their work.

‘Not that I have seen. I have done what you said, and watched for people. And I have not spoken about the eitr to anyone, not even my father — especially not on the telephone.’ The deadly toxin had been a formative part of Norse legend: eitr, a primordial poison from the depths of the earth.

‘Good. Better to be safe, eh?’ He looked down at her luggage; she had only one bag. ‘Is that everything?’

‘Yes.’ She smiled. ‘I lived in a village in Vietnam for eight years. I realised I do not need many possessions.’

‘Same here. I always travel light if I can. Learned that in the army — the less you have to lug about with you, the better. Here, I’ll take that.’ He picked up the bag. ‘Okay, we’ll get a taxi.’

Natalia shook her head. ‘No, no, that will be expensive. We can take the… it is called the subway in New York, yes?’

It was his turn to smile. ‘Yeah, it is — but we won’t be taking it.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it doesn’t come to JFK.’

She blinked in disbelief. ‘But this is the biggest airport. How can there not be a train to the city?’

‘Welcome to America!’ he said with a laugh. ‘Come on. Let’s find a cab.’

Mulberry Street in Little Italy was the home of New York’s annual Feast of San Gennaro. Nina had barely started along it before her mouth started watering. Both sides of the thoroughfare were lined with food stalls, selling anything that could even remotely be considered Italian, and quite a lot that couldn’t. She absorbed the delicious aromas as she ambled through the crowd. The cravings from the early stages of her pregnancy had died down as she entered the second trimester, but right now she had a definite urge to grab a plate and start eating.

A pang of regret as she saw chocolate gelato on a nearby stall; it was one of Eddie’s favourites. She wished that he was there with her, but at the same time she still felt a residual anger. She had attended Macy’s funeral, mourned her friend, wept for her; she wasn’t in denial. He was making assumptions based on her book — her unfinished book, at that. She wasn’t in denial.

Was she?

‘Get yer calzone!’ shouted a stallholder right beside her, jolting her back into the moment. ‘Hey, lady? You wanna calzone? Funnel cake?’

‘I’d love one, but… I probably shouldn’t. I’m pregnant,’ she told him with regret.

He gave her a cheeky grin. ‘Hey, I got four kids. My wife never stopped eatin’ my food the whole time. C’mon, babies need calories.’

Nina laughed. ‘Okay, you convinced me. Give me a ham and pecorino.’ He beamed and reached for one of the stuffed dough crescents.

The blond man who had followed her from the apartment and on the subway journey to Little Italy stopped twenty feet behind her, pretending to check the produce on another stall. The moment she left with her purchase, he set off again too, trailing her through the crowd.

Natalia’s face was practically pressed against the cab’s window as she gawped at the towering skyline of Manhattan. ‘Wow!’ she gasped. ‘That is so incredible!’

‘It’s a bit bigger than Ly Quang, innit?’ said Eddie, remembering her little Vietnamese hideout. They were crossing the East River on the Queensboro Bridge, giving them a spectacular view of the island. He pointed at a tall green glass tower on the far bank. ‘That’s the United Nations, where me and Nina used to work. Thought I was shot of it, but we got dragged back to the International Heritage Agency a few months ago. Although if we hadn’t been,’ he admitted, ‘we wouldn’t have found the cure for what Nina had — what you’ve got.’

She turned away from the view to regard him with a mixture of hope and worry. ‘What you found… do you really think it will work for me? It will cure the eitr?’ Natalia’s grandfather, a Soviet scientist, had conducted secret and illegal experiments with the toxin, using his own family as test subjects — and infecting them with a cancer that had been passed down through the generations.

‘I hope so. I really do,’ he replied. ‘It worked on Nina, and we know it cured stuff for the Nazis who were after the spring.’

‘But I was not poisoned by the eitr — I was born with the infection in my DNA. This water, it may not work on me.’

‘We’ve got to try,’ Eddie insisted. ‘If there’s a chance, you’ve got to take it.’

A hesitant smile. ‘You are right. Thank you.’

He smiled back. ‘No problem.’

They crossed the river into Manhattan, the cab turning north towards 78th Street. ‘Nina told me in Vietnam that she was going to write a book about all the things she has done,’ said Natalia. ‘Has she finished it?’

‘Not yet. We got a bit sidetracked with the whole bunch-of-Nazis thing, but she’s been working on it since then. It’s pretty much all she’s been doing, actually.’

She tipped her head quizzically. ‘And you are not happy about that?’

‘No, I don’t mind,’ he insisted. ‘Unless she wakes me up at four in the morning to do it!’

‘But something is bothering you.’

Eddie chuckled. ‘It’s that obvious? Yeah, a bit. We had an argument about it this morning, actually. She…’ He hesitated.

Natalia gave him an apologetic look. ‘You do not have to tell me if you do not want to.’

‘No, it’s okay,’ he said, wanting to get it off his chest. ‘It’s not that she’s spending all her time working that’s the problem — I’m used to that. It’s… the way she’s writing it.’

‘How so?’

‘There were other people involved in finding all that stuff, but she hardly mentions them. That’s what we were arguing about. I don’t think she was trying to steal the credit,’ he added, time and reflection having softened his earlier accusation. ‘It just felt like she was trying to avoid thinking about them. Which considering what happened to some of them I shouldn’t be surprised about, but still…’

She understood his meaning without having to enquire further. ‘I am sorry.’

‘Thanks,’ he said quietly. Neither of them spoke for a long moment, until the silence was interrupted by his phone. ‘That’s probably her.’

But the call was from an unknown number. ‘Hello?’ he said, expecting it to be a telemarketer.

It was not. ‘Eddie, is that you?’

He instantly recognised the young man’s voice. ‘Jared? Yeah, it’s me.’ Jared Zane was an agent of the Mossad, the feared Israeli intelligence agency, who had joined forces with Eddie and Nina to locate and destroy the enclave of escaped Nazi war criminals in Argentina. ‘How’d you get this number?’

‘The Mossad has everyone’s number.’ Jared had a genially mocking relationship with the Englishman over their age difference, there being the better part of twenty years between them — but today there was no humour in his voice, which immediately put Eddie on alert. ‘Eddie, listen, this is urgent. We didn’t get all the Nazis. There was a survivor. And he’s in New York.’

Eddie felt a sudden coldness. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. We recovered Kroll’s computer from the Enklave — it had been burned, but we were still able to get most of the data from its hard drive. There was a file from Frederick Leitz’ — a middleman through whom the Nazis had dealt with the outside world — ‘with a list of all the fake passports he’d arranged for Kroll’s people. One of them, a US passport, was used to enter JFK yesterday.’

‘And he got in? Why wasn’t he arrested when his passport came up as flagged?’

‘It hadn’t been flagged. We only recovered the files a few days ago. And,’ faint frustration entered his voice, ‘the list wasn’t sent to Interpol until today. My superiors didn’t think there was any rush — we believed all the Nazis were dead. The passport was flashed up immediately, but its holder was already in the States.’

Eddie snorted. ‘Shut the stable door, will you? The horse’s buggered off. An’ I thought Mossad were supposed to be efficient!’

‘We’re telling you now,’ Jared replied spikily. ‘Or rather, I’m telling you, as a friend. I might get into trouble for it, but I’ll take it if it keeps you and Nina safe.’

‘You think this guy’s coming after us?’

‘He knows who you are — or rather, he knows who Nina is. When Kroll was about to execute us at his rally, he told his people her name and that she worked for the United Nations. There isn’t any other connection to New York that I can think of. Eddie, you both need to be careful. I’ll send you this man’s passport photo so you’ll recognise him if he finds you.’

A horrible thought came to Eddie. ‘Shit, what if he already has?’ Fear rose in him: Nina was out in the city alone, and with no idea of the potential threat. ‘Jared, I’ll call you back!’

He hurriedly ended the call, telling the driver to turn around and head for Little Italy, fast. ‘Eddie, what is happening?’ Natalia asked in alarm.

‘Nina might be in trouble,’ he replied. He tried to call her, only to go straight through to voicemail. ‘Fuck! Her phone’s off!’

Nina continued her leisurely stroll along Mulberry Street. The crowds grew as more people came out to enjoy the sun and the food, which she decided was both an annoyance and a blessing; the latter because the longer the lines at each stall, the more it would discourage her from stuffing her face. ‘Sorry, kid,’ she said, putting a hand on her abdomen as she passed one particular stand. ‘No biscotti for you today. Although…’ She gave a longing look at the delicacies. ‘Well, you do need me to eat so you’ll grow up big and strong, don’t you?’

She reversed course, swerving around a pudgy elderly couple following her. Someone behind them complained loudly as a blond man made a sharp change of direction away from her, pushing past them. Thinking no more of it, she joined the line.

The stall was popular; it took her a few minutes to be served. While she waited, she listened to snippets of conversation from passers-by. A young boy asked his father when ‘the big flying ship’ was going to arrive, and was told that the airship’s overflight was due in ten minutes. She smiled at the child’s literalism, and at the thought that if all went well, it would not be long before she would be fielding similar enquiries of her own.

She finally bought her chocolate and hazelnut biscotti and resumed her walk. Her mood had improved no end, to the point that she had almost got over her earlier infuriation with Eddie. There was still a lingering resentment of his accusation that she was refusing to face up to Macy’s death, however. If he had any idea what she endured every night, he would know how utterly unfair that was…

In her preoccupied state, she didn’t notice that the blond man had once again taken up position behind her, using the crowd to hide himself. His eyes never left her as he followed his target down the street.

Eddie made another attempt to call Nina, only to get her voicemail yet again. ‘Turn your bloody phone on!’ he barked before hanging up. ‘How much further?’

‘Almost there,’ said the driver. ‘Two more blocks.’

Natalia peered down the street. ‘There are a lot of people,’ she said, seeing pedestrians heading along East Houston Street towards the festival’s northern end. ‘How will you find her in the crowd?’

‘Good question,’ he replied, having already worried about exactly that. He had checked the festival’s website on his phone during the cab ride, finding that the closed section of Mulberry Street was over half a mile long, and also extended into several side streets. ‘Looks like I’ll be doing a lot of shouting.’

‘I will help you,’ she offered. ‘Does she still have red hair?’

‘Yeah, of course,’ said Eddie, slightly surprised. ‘Why wouldn’t she?’

Natalia’s eyes widened. ‘Oh! I am sorry. Her hair is so bright, I thought it was fake.’ She blushed.

He managed a brief smirk. ‘I’ll tell her you said that.’

Now she looked mortified. ‘No, please do not!’

The taxi pulled up at the intersection of East Houston and Mulberry; the Englishman hurriedly paid the driver and jumped out. The young German grabbed her bag and followed him. ‘Where do we go?’

He pointed across the street, where a banner and innumerable Italian flags marked the festival’s northern entrance. ‘Down there.’ They hurried over the crosswalk, pushing into the crowd. ‘Nina!’ he yelled, drawing annoyed looks from those around him. ‘Nina, are you here?’ He searched for anyone with red hair. There were a few, but none were his wife. It struck him that not only had she been here for some time, but she might not even have entered the festival at this end of Mulberry Street; she had probably come by subway, and there were several stations nearby. ‘God, she could be bloody anywhere!’

‘I cannot see her,’ said Natalia.

‘Me neither.’ Eddie forced his way through the throng. Stallholders shouted from either side of the street as they hawked their wares. He spotted a stand selling gelato, but there was no time to indulge himself — that would have to wait until Nina was safe.

Nina was halfway down the length of the festival, in no hurry as she took in the sights and sounds — and smells — around her. The mouth-watering aromas of numerous cheeses tempted her towards one particular stall, but before she could check out the wares on offer, sounds of excitement rose, people looking up with a collective ooh of wonder. She followed their gaze — as the sun was blotted out.

The airship had arrived, and it was far more impressive in real life than on a television screen.

The craft, an Airlander, was considerably smaller than the goliaths from the days when airships dominated the skies — it was less than half the length of the ill-fated Hindenburg, the largest aircraft ever to fly — but its design meant that it still dwarfed any contemporary airliner. Rather than the traditional cigar shape of a Zeppelin, it had two conjoined gas envelopes sitting side by side, making its hull enormously wider than the fuselage of a Boeing 747, as well as being considerably longer. Despite its bulk, though, it drifted overhead as leisurely as a cloud.

Both flanks of the airship had been turned into giant screens. Nina wasn’t sure exactly how they worked — there seemed to be some kind of netting draped tightly around the hulls, which she guessed held countless coloured LEDs — but the end result was certainly impressive, bright and clear enough to be visible even against the daytime sky. Right now, they were displaying an animated flag, the tricolour of Italy waving over the homeland’s New York namesake. Whoops and cheers came from the crowd’s Italian-American contingent.

Phones and cameras were raised to take pictures of the ambling colossus. Nina at first didn’t plan to follow suit, giant advertising platforms not being her thing, but then she remembered that Eddie had been keen to see it. She took out her phone and thumbed the home button. Nothing happened; she had turned it off. Normally her phone was permanently switched on, but she had been so annoyed with Eddie that she hadn’t even wanted the distraction of the device telling her that he was making a call for her to snub. With a huff, she pushed the power button and waited for it to boot up. She moved to one side of the street to let the gawking throng move past, standing beside a covered stall. At least the airship wouldn’t have flown off before she could take a photo.

The screen lit up. ‘Finally,’ she said, about to open the camera app — only for a long list of notifications to drop down. Multiple missed calls, all from Eddie, and several texts—

That was the most recent, and the others were equally alarming. All manner of horrifying scenarios flashed through her mind. Had he been in an accident? Or had something happened to Natalia? She hurriedly brought up her contacts list to call him back—

Two things happened at once.

The first was that she heard her name being shouted. Even over the festival’s hubbub, she knew that it was Eddie.

The second was someone thrusting a hard metal object against her spine.

A gun.

‘Come with me,’ a voice hissed as her arm was grabbed. ‘If you resist, I will hurt you. Move!’

She looked around in shock, seeing a large blond man right behind her. He jabbed the gun harder against her back and pushed her roughly into the crowd, heading south.

‘Nina!’ Eddie’s voice again. She twisted to look back. Everyone was watching the airship, all eyes turned towards the sky — except her husband’s. He was about fifty feet away, gaze sweeping rapidly from side to side as he scanned the crowd…

And locking on to her.

‘Eddie!’ she cried. Worry filled his face, before being replaced in an instant by angry determination. He broke into a run, shoving through the festival-goers after her.

The blond man reacted with anger to her call. The gun shifted down her back. For a moment she thought he was going to shoot her — then the pistol’s butt cracked painfully against her spine. She gasped. ‘Do not shout again!’ he barked. ‘I will kill you if you do.’ He ducked lower and changed direction, using the tourists for cover as he forced Nina onwards.

Eddie ploughed through the crowd, ignoring the angry yells that followed him. He had lost sight of Nina, but a blond man had been right beside her, and he glimpsed someone with light hair cutting through the sea of people not far ahead. He moved faster, angling to intercept.

His target stopped, looking from side to side as if searching for an escape route. The Englishman barged up behind him, grabbing his arm and raising a fist to strike—

It wasn’t him. ‘Hey! What’re you doing?’ demanded a startled dusty-blond man — in an American accent. Nina was not with him.

‘Thought you were someone else,’ Eddie replied, pushing past and searching the crowd again. There — farther ahead. The kidnapper was moving considerably faster than those nearby. A brief flash of red hair with him. He ran in pursuit, Natalia struggling to keep up. ‘Nina!’

Nina’s captor heard Eddie’s shout and forced her between two stalls, making his way along the shopfronts behind them before hauling her around a corner on to one of the side streets intersecting Mulberry.

There were more stalls here, but the crowd was considerably thinner. The man pushed her on more quickly. Nina looked back, but couldn’t see Eddie. She heard him yell her name once more, though, and opened her mouth to respond—

‘Do not!’ the man snapped, pushing the gun against her side. A new fear, this time for the baby, and she fell silent.

He drove her forward, weaving through the oblivious visitors towards the next intersection. They passed the last stall. A box van was parked ahead. Its rear roller door was half open, crates and boxes stacked inside as its driver made a delivery to a restaurant. ‘Get in,’ the man ordered.

Nina tried to pull away. ‘I’m not—’

‘Get in!’ He shoved her against the truck and stepped back, pointing the pistol at her face. No choice. She reluctantly clambered into the back.

A chunky middle-aged man scurried out of the restaurant. ‘Hey, the hell ya doin’?’ he cried. ‘Ya can’t—’ He halted abruptly as the blond man’s gun swung towards him. ‘Jeez!’

‘The keys!’ the kidnapper demanded. ‘Where are the keys?’

The delivery man put up his hands. ‘In — in the cab.’

The other man glowered at him, then slammed the roller door shut. ‘Eddie!’ Nina screamed, before she was cut off by a whump of metal and rattling chains.

Eddie heard his name over the sound of the crowd. A glance to his right revealed a side street beyond the stalls. He shoved through the tourists and rounded the corner. Where was she? No sign of her — but something else caught his attention. ‘Hey, hey!’ cried a chubby man with thinning hair. ‘Someone call the cops!’

A large white van pulled sharply away. Eddie saw the name LAZZARI BROTHERS stencilled across the rear door. ‘He took my truck!’ cried the driver. ‘Call nine-one-one!’

‘Was there a woman with him?’ Eddie demanded as he ran to him. ‘A redhead?’

‘Yeah, yeah! He put her in the back!’

‘Shit!’ The Yorkshireman raced past him after the truck. People screamed and leapt aside as it careered into the intersection, flattening a couple of traffic barriers and making a hard, skidding turn to head south.

Eddie chased after it, but by the time he reached the next road, the truck had already gained too much of a lead. ‘Fuck!’ he roared, reversing direction.

Natalia caught up with him outside the restaurant. ‘Eddie! What happened?’

‘The bastard’s got Nina,’ he told her, to her shock, before addressing the delivery man. ‘That your truck? You know the licence plate?’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ the man replied. ‘You callin’ the cops?’

‘Yeah.’ He took out his phone and found a particular name in his contacts. The driver regarded the screen with confused concern as a cell phone number came up. ‘Ah, it’s nine-one-one you want,’ he reminded him. ‘Not whatever you’re callin’ there.’

Eddie gave him a humourless smile. ‘I’ve got a friend on the force.’

Nina was thrown to the floor when the truck took its first corner. She decided to stay on all fours for safety rather than risk being flung headlong into a wall. Even so, she still had to brace herself as the stolen vehicle made several more high-speed turns, kicking away any loose cartons of produce that slithered towards her. To her relief, the wild ride lasted only a few minutes.

The feeling was short-lived. She got up as she heard her kidnapper jump from the cab and unlock the roller door, but any thoughts of catching his gun — or head — with a kick vanished as he raised the shutter just a fraction and aimed the pistol up at her from outside. ‘Lift the door,’ he ordered.

Nina crouched and warily did as she was told. The truck was in a narrow alley. She didn’t recognise the street beyond, but from the Chinese signage on a nearby storefront, she guessed the neighbourhood was either southern Chinatown or Two Bridges.

‘Get out,’ he said.

She hopped down. An Asian woman on the other side of the road reacted with alarm as she noticed the kidnapper’s gun. He realised he had been seen and pointed down the alley. ‘Move! Go!’ When Nina didn’t respond at once, he pushed her ahead of him.

The alley was not long, Nina soon emerging on another short street. The man looked around. She could tell from his frustrated expression that he had no idea where he was. He glanced at a boarded-up building before switching his gaze to one under construction. ‘In there!’ he barked, forcing her towards it. The sidewalk was blocked by tall fencing around the site, but he shoved back a grillework barrier just far enough for them to squeeze through.

She glanced up at the building. Most of the walls of what she guessed was going to be an apartment block were in place, though there were still gaps on the uppermost floors where the steel frame was visible. Windows had been fitted up to the fifth storey, empty black holes gaping above. The front doors were not yet in place either, the entrance blocked by ply boards; they were secured by a chain and padlock, but one kick from her abductor’s boot took care of that.

‘Go inside,’ he told her, jabbing the gun for emphasis. Nina entered the bare cinderblock-and-concrete lobby, looking back at the street in the hope that someone had seen them, but there was nobody in sight.

She was alone with her kidnapper.

Eddie’s phone rang. He checked the screen as he answered: Amy. ‘Have you found ’em?’

Amy Martin, recently promoted from uniformed beat cop to detective third grade with the New York Police Department, did not have the news he was hoping for. ‘Eddie, hi. I’m sorry, we haven’t found Nina — but we found the stolen truck.’

He felt some small relief — that meant the Nazi hadn’t simply killed her and dumped her with his getaway vehicle — but it did not lessen his fears for his wife’s safety. ‘Where is it?’

She hesitated. ‘I’m… not sure I should tell you.’

‘What? Why not?’

‘Because I know you, Eddie — you’ll just hustle your ass down there and start doing what you do. Which usually results in massive property damage and bodies all over Times Square!’

‘That only happened that one time.’

She was not reassured. ‘Leave it to us. We’ll find this guy, and Nina.’

‘And how long will that take?’ he demanded. ‘This guy isn’t planning to ransom her. He’s here for revenge.’

‘Revenge for what?’

‘Remember a few months back, those news stories about Nazi war criminals hiding out in Argentina?’

Slight confusion in her voice. ‘Yeah?’

‘There were a lot more of ’em before me and Nina turned up.’

Confusion turned to disbelief. ‘Wait — you found a gang of Nazi war criminals? And now one of them wants revenge on you?’

‘Bang on,’ Eddie told her. ‘Look, Amy, I know you and the rest of the cops’ll do what you can to find her, but I’ve dealt with these bastards before. Just tell me where he dumped the truck, and I’ll take it from there.’

She let out a resigned sigh. ‘Okay, Eddie, okay — but on one condition. If you do find them, you call me, call the cops for backup. Don’t try to handle it yourself. You promise me?’

‘I promise,’ he said. ‘Where’s the truck?’

Amy hesitated again, then, with some reluctance: ‘In Two Bridges.’

He looked to the south. The unimaginatively named district was beyond Chinatown, sandwiched between the two great river crossings of the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges. ‘That’s less than a mile from here. Which road?’

She named a street; Eddie didn’t know it, but was certain his phone’s map app could locate it. ‘Okay, Amy, thanks — I owe you. And I’ll call you if I find this arsehole.’

‘You’d better. Just try not to kill anyone,’ Amy said, before disconnecting.

Eddie pocketed the phone. ‘So what are we going to do?’ Natalia asked.

‘I’m going to Two Bridges.’ He gave her a warning look. ‘You don’t have to come with me. It won’t be safe.’

She shook her head. ‘No, Eddie. I want to help. After everything that you have done for me? As you said to your friend: I owe you.’

‘Okay,’ he said, though not without misgivings. ‘If we do find ’em, though, stay out of the way. You might get hurt.’

‘So might you,’ she pointed out.

‘Better me than you — or Nina,’ he said grimly. ‘Come on. We need to find a cab.’

The blond man forced Nina upwards through the building at gunpoint. They ascended an emergency stairwell that lacked both guardrails and lights, dim daylight leaking in from the unfinished floors higher up. Once they had picked their way up to the fifth floor, he ordered her to leave the staircase and enter a hallway.

She moved cautiously down the passage. Shells of apartments greeted her, empty doorways letting in light from the windows. She realised with alarm why he had brought her to this floor rather than going higher: the double-glazing would block any sounds from reaching the street five storeys below.

He pointed into the last room. ‘Go in there,’ he said, with another jab of the gun.

‘Nice place,’ she muttered sarcastically as she entered. The room was all barren concrete and drywall, bare wires protruding through holes where electrical outlets would eventually be fitted. A narrow vertical gap the height of the room marked where the heating system was waiting to be installed, sections of metal ducting visible in the neighbouring apartment beyond the hole. A wooden crate held more of the sheet steel pieces.

Nina looked towards the window, wondering if she could alert someone outside or in one of the buildings opposite—

Her captor shoved her into a corner, hard. She almost stumbled, barely catching herself before whirling to face him. ‘Son of a bitch!’ she snarled, unleashing her anger in an attempt to cover her fear — for both herself and her unborn child. ‘Who the hell are you? What do you want with me?’

The man kept his gun locked on her. ‘You do not remember me, Dr Wilde?’ he said. His accent was distinctly Germanic, instantly giving her a horrible answer to her first question. ‘I am surprised. We have met before… at the Enklave.’

Even forewarned, the revelation still sent a chill of terror through her. ‘The… the Enklave,’ she echoed. Malignant satisfaction was clear on the man’s face at her fearful stammer. ‘You’re one of Kroll’s people.’

‘I am more than that,’ he snapped. ‘My name is Ulrich Kroll. I am a son of the Führer!’

Nina knew he was speaking the truth even before he finished the sentence. In most physical respects, he was very different from the leader of the colony of escaped war criminals; after seventy years in hiding, even with the water from the Spring of Immortality to slow his ageing, Erich Kroll had become bald and morbidly obese, while his offspring was fit, with the honed body of a soldier. But their eyes were the same: intense, hard, cold. She had been shown a photograph of the older Kroll at the time of his brief capture by the Allies after the war, and the more she looked at his son, the more she saw the resemblance.

‘Yes, now you know me,’ he said. ‘And I know you. I was there when you were sentenced to death by the Führer. And I was there when your friend was executed.’

The words were like a hammer blow to her heart. For a moment she was incapable not merely of speech, of action, but even of thought as the nightmare that had tortured her played out in her waking mind as vividly as if it was happening for real. The bloated monster Kroll raising his gun, pointing it at the helpless Jared Zane — then whirling to aim at Macy’s chest and pulling the trigger. The young woman convulsing, squeezing Nina’s hand so hard that she could feel it all over again, staring at her with shocked disbelief and pain… before collapsing to the floor.

Reality returned along with her horror and grief, the younger Kroll’s features replacing his father’s. Now she knew him, now she remembered him amongst the guards the Nazi leader had summoned. Some had dragged the surviving prisoners back to their cell, others taking Macy’s body away with no more respect or care than if they were removing garbage.

Her kidnapper had been one of the latter. Her anger returned, this time accompanied by deep loathing. ‘You took her away. You dumped her in a pit.’

‘She was an enemy of the New Reich.’

‘She was an innocent young woman!’

Kroll sneered. ‘She would not have died if you had obeyed the Führer. Her death was your fault.’

‘Fuck you!’ she roared, with such sudden fury that the Nazi was momentarily shocked. ‘I didn’t kill her — Kroll did! That fat psychopathic bag of shit pulled the trigger, not me!’ She glared at him, breathless — and only belatedly realising that she had just rejected responsibility for Macy’s death for the first time.

But there was no opportunity to celebrate the psychological breakthrough. Kroll flushed with a rage of his own and thrust the gun at her. Nina flinched, but he caught himself before squeezing the trigger and instead lunged to backhand her across the face, sending her staggering. ‘Schlampe!’ he growled. ‘You will not insult my father!’

Nina put a hand to her stinging cheek. ‘I’ve done worse than that to him!’

His eyes narrowed. ‘What do you mean? What happened to my father and the others? Where are they?’

‘You mean you don’t know?’

Something about his shift in attitude told Nina that while he wanted answers, he was also afraid to hear them. Rather than ask directly, he said instead: ‘I left the Enklave aboard the train with the other members of the New Reich—’

‘Apart from the children you left to burn to death in a locked building,’ she said with disgust. She, Eddie and Zane had gone in to rescue them, delaying their pursuit of the Nazi forces.

Kroll seemed not to care. ‘You attacked us — you, the Engländer and the Jew. Many of us were killed when the truck carrying our weapons exploded. I was thrown from the train, knocked out. When I woke, I found the bodies of my brothers around me — and the Argentine police moving in. I hid until I was able to make my escape, but I had lost contact with the leaders. I know that they reached Iran, but I do not know what happened to them there.’ He leaned closer, raising the gun threateningly. ‘You are going to tell me.’

‘You want to know what happened to them?’ Nina replied, with another surge of anger. ‘They died! They all died!’

Even if he had been expecting it, he was still shocked to have it confirmed. ‘No! No, that cannot be true. Not all of them. You are lying!’

‘I’m not lying,’ Nina insisted. ‘They found the Spring of Immortality — after I did. They went in… and not one of them came out. They’re all dead.’

Kroll stared at her, the muscles in his face and neck clenching ever tighter until he began to shake with rage. ‘No!’ he roared. He stormed away, circling the room in a rapid march before darting back to Nina and jamming the gun into her face. ‘You are lying, you are lying! Tell me what really happened!’

‘I’m telling you the truth!’ she shouted back. ‘The whole place was full of booby traps! Anyone who wasn’t killed by them was taken out by the Mossad, or my husband… or by me.’

He shook his head. ‘You could not kill them. You are a woman.’

‘Oh, top marks for observation! But I did kill them. I led them into the biggest trap of all, the one they couldn’t resist — that your father couldn’t resist. He was so greedy and desperate to get his hands on the water from the spring, he never thought for a moment that the people who built the place might not have wanted anyone to have it!’

Kroll straightened, struggling to bring his emotions under control. ‘What happened to the Führer… my father?’

‘He tried to kill me,’ said Nina, almost feeling the bloated Nazi leader’s hand clamping around her throat as he pushed her underwater. ‘I hit his head with something, trapped his leg under a sarcophagus lid… and watched him drown.’

The blond man stiffened. ‘My father is dead?’

‘Yeah.’ She became horribly aware that the gun’s muzzle was still only inches from her face…

But Kroll stepped back. ‘They are dead. They are all dead…’ A long inhalation — then he grabbed her by the throat and drove her backwards against a wall.

She cried out, but the sound choked off as he pushed the gun hard up under her chin. ‘I will kill you! I will kill you!’ The last words were a spittle-flecked screech, his face so close to hers that she could smell his breath. She felt his hand strain as he tightened his finger around the trigger—

Then he pulled away abruptly, shoving her to the dusty floor. Nina looked up at him. The Nazi was breathing heavily, trying to contain his seething emotions. She might still have a chance to talk her way out of the situation…

‘They… they know you’re still alive,’ she said. ‘My husband — he was in Little Italy, he tried to warn me about you. And the only way he could know is if the Mossad had told him.’ That was guesswork, but it seemed the most likely explanation. ‘They know you’re here, and they’ll hunt you down. If you hurt me, Eddie, my husband, he will find you. He’ll kill you,’ she added, more forcefully. ‘Trust me, I’ve seen him do it. It scares me, and I’m his wife! But you can save yourself, Ulrich.’ His gaze locked on to hers at her use of his first name. ‘Just get out of here, go. Your war’s over. Leave me here and run while you still can.’

For a moment she thought she had got through to him. But then emotion returned to his face: cold hatred. ‘The war is not over as long as one soldier remains to fight it,’ he growled. Fear rose in Nina again as he advanced, looming malevolently over her. ‘You are still alive not because of grief, or despair, Dr Wilde. I did not shoot you because… it would be too quick.’

He surveyed the room. Skeins of electrical wiring ran along the unfinished ceiling, markings on the concrete showing where light fittings were to be installed. Keeping his gun pointed at Nina, the Nazi hopped up to snag a dangling cable, yanking it down from its supporting bracket. ‘At the Enklave, the Führer sentenced you to be hanged. That sentence will now be carried out!’

Eddie regarded the photo that had just been sent to his phone. ‘That’s the bastard who took Nina.’ He had only glimpsed her kidnapper, but it was enough to identify him.

‘Ulrich Kroll is the name on the fake passport,’ Jared Zane told him. ‘Probably a son or grandson of Erich Kroll.’

‘Being a shithead runs in the family, then.’

‘Yeah. And Eddie, there’s something else. We just learned that a man named Earl Hatchens was found dead at his home in New Jersey. Hatchens is on our watch list; we got his name from Kroll’s computer, via Leitz. He’s a neo-Nazi, a sympathetic contact. Or rather, he was. He was shot, but the cops didn’t find a gun.’

‘You think Kroll killed him?’

‘Possibly. He could have gone to Hatchens for support and information.’

‘Like where to find me and Nina,’ said Eddie. ‘Then he took him out to cover his tracks. Great, so now he’s armed.’ He spotted a street sign as the cab turned at an intersection. ‘Okay, Jared, I’m here. Got to go.’

‘Be careful, old man,’ said the Israeli.

‘Bloody right I will be!’ He disconnected as the cab arrived at its destination.

The Yorkshireman knew even before he saw the abandoned delivery truck that he was in the right place: an NYPD Ford Taurus patrol car was parked at the end of the alley, red and white strobe lights blinking. ‘Let us out here,’ he told the driver.

Natalia got out as he paid the fare. ‘I do not see Nina.’

‘Didn’t expect that you would,’ Eddie replied as he started towards the alley. A couple of uniformed officers came into view, guarding the empty truck. ‘So he dumped it here — where did he go next?’

‘He could be anywhere,’ she said gloomily. ‘I knew that New York was big, but I had not realised how big!’

‘He won’t be far away. He doesn’t know the place.’ He studied the truck until one of the cops gave him a distinct move along stare, then continued down the street. ‘He got out of the truck, then opened the back door to get Nina, but someone saw him and reported it to the cops. That means he didn’t go into any of these buildings here, or he’d have been seen. He must have gone to the other end of the alley.’ Natalia followed him as he jogged to the next side passage and went down it, emerging on a parallel road. He looked back towards the first alley, then at the neighbouring structures. ‘They’re in one of these.’

‘But which?’

‘Don’t know yet. I know how to work it out, though. To find him, I need to think like a Nazi.’

Natalia made a sour face. ‘That is not a way that anyone should think.’

‘No, but a lot of people seem to be doing it lately.’ He shook his head. ‘So: he’s here for revenge, but he doesn’t know New York. Nina didn’t decide to go to Little Italy until this morning, so he can’t have checked out the area in advance. He’s improvising. And he’s kidnapped a woman in broad daylight — a woman who’ll take any chance she gets to fight back or kick up a stink. Even in the worst parts of town, that’ll attract attention.’

‘So he will not have gone far,’ the young German suggested.

‘Nope.’ Eddie turned to survey the surrounding buildings. ‘He’s got to be in one of these. Question is… which one?’

There were several possibilities. Manhattan was constantly changing, districts falling out of favour and becoming run-down before inevitably seeing an influx of new money as developers grasped the opportunity to cash in on a relatively underpriced section of the island’s real estate. The area south of Chinatown was on the cusp of one of these rises; many of the street’s buildings were in poor condition, a couple even appearing derelict, but there were also a handful in the process of being renovated, and in one case a brand-new apartment block was being constructed. As it was the weekend, building work was currently on hold, the sites protected only by far-from-impenetrable plywood board and orange plastic netting.

‘One of those empty ones,’ he decided. ‘He won’t have taken her somewhere with people in the next apartment — too much risk of someone calling the cops.’

Natalia peered at one of the condemned buildings. ‘He may have gone in there. Look, the wood covering that window is broken.’

Eddie considered the possibility, then dismissed it. ‘You’re not thinking like a Nazi. They think they’re superior, they’re the master race, the rulers of the world — he’s not going to be grovelling about in a rat-infested shit-pit. ’Scuse my French.’

She gave him a small smile. ‘That was not French.’

‘No, but I don’t picture him hiding somewhere that’s been used as a toilet by a load of homeless guys and druggies. I’ve seen where these arseholes lived. They were like…’ His eyes went to the building under construction. The steel frame was complete, along with most of the outer walls and even some windows. ‘Barracks,’ he concluded.

‘That was not French either.’

‘No, barracks, not boll— Never mind.’ He headed for the construction site, Natalia following. ‘The inside of that place won’t be that much different from the barracks him and his mates grew up in. It’s where he’s most likely to be hiding.’

‘But what if you are wrong?’

Eddie gave her a grim look. ‘I just hope to God I’m not.’ He reached the barricade, noticing that a tall grillework barrier seemed to have been pushed back. A quick check of the ground revealed recent footprints in the sand and dust spilled across the sidewalk. Some were noticeably smaller than the others: a woman’s shoes. ‘Don’t think I am, though. Look.’ He indicated the prints, then pushed through the gap.

Natalia started after him; he held up a hand. ‘No, wait out here,’ he told her. ‘If he’s inside, go and get those cops.’

‘Eddie, I can help you,’ she insisted. ‘I can talk to him — in German. If I can convince him that our country has rejected everything the Nazis stood for, he may give up without violence.’

‘Wouldn’t bet on it,’ he said. But she had a point. He was unarmed, while Nina’s kidnapper had a gun, so if there was any chance of rescuing her without anyone getting hurt, he had to take it. The coldly tactical part of his mind also pointed out that if the Nazi was listening to Natalia, he would be distracted…

‘Okay,’ he said finally, ‘come on. But stay behind me, and when we find him, keep in cover. I don’t want to risk you getting shot.’

‘Nor do I!’ she replied, with a faint smile. Eddie grinned, then headed into the building.

There was little light inside the unfinished structure, but still enough for him to find his way to a stairwell. He doubted that the kidnapper would be holding Nina on the ground floor — instinct would compel him to find safer, higher ground, and the young man was unlikely to have enough real-world experience to overcome it. Nevertheless, he still paused at the foot of the stairs to listen. There were no noises nearby.

‘All right,’ he whispered, ‘follow me up. Quiet as you can.’ Natalia nodded.

They ascended the stairs, stopping briefly to check each landing. ‘Eddie!’ Natalia hissed on the third floor.

‘Yeah, I hear it.’ Bangs and thumps were coming from somewhere above—

A voice. He couldn’t make out the words, but knew instantly that it was Nina’s.

He continued upwards, taking the steps two at a time. Natalia scurried along behind him. The noises continued; the Nazi didn’t know they were coming. At the fifth floor, Eddie pressed himself against the wall beside the exit from the stairwell and glanced around it. A hall led deeper into the building. Apartments lined it — but which one held his wife?

Faint daylight came into the hallway through the gaping doorways. All the patches of illumination were steady — except one. A shadow drifted across the hazy light from the sixth door along, at the end of the passage.

‘Wait here,’ he told Natalia. ‘I’m going in.’

‘You promised your friend that you would tell the police if you found Nina!’ she said, somewhat accusing.

‘Yeah, but I didn’t say I’d do it straight away, did I?’ He gave her a quick disarming grin, which vanished as he became all business, ready for action. ‘If we wait for the cops, he might hurt Nina — and our baby,’ he explained. ‘I’m not gonna let that happen. If I wave like this,’ he held up his left hand in a particular gesture, ‘then call out to him, try to keep his attention. Otherwise, stay back and keep quiet.’

‘What are you going to do?’ she asked.

‘I’ll work that out when I get there!’

He began to creep down the corridor. A look into the first apartment revealed that what he assumed would be the lounge of the finished residence was about twenty-five feet long, the windows in the far wall. The diffuseness of the moving shadow in the hall made him suspect that the Nazi was at the other end of the sixth room. It would take a couple of seconds to reach him — too long against an armed man.

But there was something else: a narrow gap running from floor to ceiling in the side wall, a stack of rectangular ductwork sections ready to be installed nearby. He could see what he assumed was the neighbouring apartment through the opening, which was confirmed when he reached the next door to find a mirror image of the first flat. The third apartment also had a hole in the wall…

A plan was already forming by the time he passed the fourth door. He slowed, listening to the sounds from ahead. A man was grunting with exertion, something heavy scraping over the concrete floor—

‘You don’t have to do this!’ Nina’s voice again: pleading, fearful.

Eddie felt a fear of his own. Whatever the Nazi was doing, it was about to come to a fatal conclusion. He looked into the fifth apartment. There was another narrow gap in the wall, as he’d hoped. He glanced back down the hallway, seeing Natalia peering worriedly after him, and gave her his signal before ducking into the room.

‘You don’t have to do this!’ Nina said, with growing desperation. Kroll had forced her into a corner by the windows, keeping his gun in one hand as he used the other to pull down more electrical cables from the ceiling. He had spent the last few minutes winding the various lengths around each other, forming a crude rope… the end of which he had just tied into a noose.

He shoved the crate into the middle of the room, then stepped up on to it to hook the rope over a metal pipe. She saw a chance to knock him down from his perch while he was preoccupied—

The gun locked on to her before she had even completed the first step. The Nazi’s expression made it clear that while he wanted to fulfil his more grandiose plan, he would still simply shoot her if necessary. ‘Get back,’ he growled. She retreated.

He let the noose drop from the pipe, then secured it about six feet above floor level. A chill ran through Nina. She was five and a half feet tall. The ceiling was not high enough for the fall from the crate alone to kill her; Kroll meant for her to strangle to death with her feet kicking helplessly mere inches above the floor.

Just as his father had intended in Argentina. A nightmarish flashback: hate-filled faces screaming at her as the noose was tightened around her throat…

The horrifying vision vanished as Kroll jumped down from the wooden box, replaced by one smaller in scale but no less terrifying. The makeshift hangman’s rope dangled from the ceiling, waiting for her. ‘Come here,’ he demanded.

‘Screw you,’ she said, trying to sound defiant, but her voice betrayed her fear.

‘You will walk to me, or I will shoot you in the knees and drag you. Either way, you will come.’ He lowered his aim. ‘I will count to three. One. Two—’

‘Herr Kroll? Können Sie mich hören?’

A woman’s voice, from outside the apartment. Kroll whirled, darting into one of the side rooms and taking cover in its entrance as he aimed at the hallway. ‘Who is there?’ he barked. ‘Do not come any closer, or I will kill her!’

The woman spoke again in German. Nina didn’t know what she was saying, her knowledge of the language limited, but she realised who it was: Natalia! That meant Eddie was here as well — but where? If he had let the young woman get this close, then he had to be closer…

Eddie crept to the opening in the wall, peeking warily through.

Nina was in the far corner of the room. She didn’t see him, looking towards Kroll, who replied to Natalia with a bark of ‘Nein!’ He followed up with an angry tirade, the Englishman picking out enough to get the gist of what he was saying — that the Nazis would never be defeated.

Determined to prove him wrong, he leaned out a little further, both to survey the rest of the room and to try to catch Nina’s attention without drawing Kroll’s.

A flash of horror at the sight of the noose. The Nazi was going to finish what had been started in Argentina three months earlier. But this time, Eddie didn’t have a gun or a Molotov cocktail to even the odds, only his fists and feet.

He located Kroll in a doorway, seeing that he was armed with a Heckler & Koch USP Compact automatic, then looked back at Nina. His wife was still watching Kroll as he continued his rant — waiting for an opening that she could use to escape, he realised with pride. The redhead was stubborn even in the face of death. He risked waving a hand, hoping she would catch the movement in her peripheral vision.

She turned her head — and saw him.

Surprise and relief jostled for position on her face, the latter winning out. He gestured, trying to communicate silently that he was about to slip through the gap and creep up on the Nazi. She nodded in understanding —

Kroll paused, his gaze flicking back towards Nina — and noticing that her expression had changed. He turned to find out why…

And spotted Eddie at the opening

His gun came up—

Eddie threw himself backwards to the floor as bullet holes exploded in the drywall where he had been standing. Plaster fragments spat over his face, briefly blinding him. He rolled to get clear — as another bullet ripped through the wall and blasted concrete chips out of the floor beside him.

Kroll fired another shot at the wall, hoping to hit the man who had been lurking behind it, then rushed towards Nina. ‘Get off me!’ she yelled, pushing him away—

The USP’s butt cracked against her head. She gasped, feeling as if he had just driven a spike into her skull. Before she could recover, the Nazi dragged her to the centre of the room.

He tugged the noose down over her head and yanked on the cable hooked over the pipe, pulling the loop tight around Nina’s neck. The redhead clawed at it, managing to clutch her fingers around the wires, but he kept up the pressure, forcing her knuckles against her throat. She struggled, but was unable to break loose of his hold — and before she could resist, he had lifted her on to the crate.

He hauled harder on the cabling. Nina’s eyes went wide with fear as the noose pulled upwards and tightened still further around her neck. She almost fell, desperately shifting her weight to remain upright. The crate’s upper surface seemed to shrink to a pinhead. She struggled to choke out a word: ‘Eddie!’

Eddie heard his wife’s strangled cry. He jumped up, grabbing one of the ductwork sections as he rushed to the opening.

Nina was wobbling on top of a wooden box, the hangman’s rope taut above her. Kroll turned away from his prisoner to locate her husband, raising his gun as the Yorkshireman pushed through the gap—

Eddie hurled the ducting.

The boxy metal piece hit Kroll’s outstretched arm as he pulled the trigger. The round went wide and smacked into the wall beside the window.

The Nazi lurched back, then took aim again—

Nina lashed out with one foot, almost losing her balance — but managed to catch Kroll in the ribs. He staggered, another bullet cracking past the Englishman as he charged.

Eddie hit the Nazi head-on, knocking him backwards. ‘Natalia!’ he yelled as he wrestled with the other man. ‘The cops, get the cops!’

He clamped one hand around Kroll’s wrist and shoved it away from him just as the younger man fired. The window burst apart in a cascade of glass spearheads.

Kroll tried to twist the gun towards his opponent’s head, but the Englishman slammed an elbow into his ribcage, making him convulse in pain. He took advantage of the Nazi’s momentary distraction, sweeping his hand along his arm to catch the gun and knock it from his grasp. The weapon spun through the broken window and fell to the construction site below.

The Nazi shot a dismayed glance after his pistol; then, realising he had lost his advantage, summoned up a desperate burst of strength to force his adversary back towards Nina. Eddie swerved sideways just in time to avoid a collision with his precariously dangling wife…

Only for Kroll to kick the box out from under her.

Nina dropped two feet before the cable snapped taut. Her clenching grip on the noose literally saved her neck, as her straining arms absorbed much of the force of the abrupt stop — but she couldn’t prevent the loop from pulling crushingly tight, her trapped fingers grinding into her throat.

Eddie instantly released his grip on Kroll and swung a fist at his face. The punch missed, the Nazi reflexively jerking back, but it accomplished its goal, deterring him from an immediate counter-attack. That gave the Englishman the moment he needed to grab Nina by her legs and lift her upwards. Eyes bulging, mouth gaping in a silent scream, she tore at the noose, loosening it just enough to tug it up over her chin.

Her husband lowered her. The knotted wires scraped over her face, briefly catching her nose before coming free. Eddie hunched to drop her to the floor, already turning to face Kroll — only to take a painful blow to his head as the Nazi charged at the couple.

They both fell to the bare concrete, Eddie managing to twist to let Nina land on top of him. The combination of the hard landing and her weight drove the air from his lungs. He grimaced, pushing her aside in anticipation of Kroll’s next attack—

It didn’t come.

The Nazi hesitated, the hatred in his eyes telling the Yorkshireman that he wanted nothing more than to smash his boot down on his enemy’s face, but instead he broke for the exit. ‘Natalia! He’s coming, run!’ Eddie yelled as he scrambled back upright. ‘Get out of here!’

Now it was his turn to hesitate, his head telling him to pursue the Nazi before he could catch the young woman — but his heart demanding that he help his pregnant wife first.

No contest. ‘Nina! Are you okay?’ The noose was caught in her hair; he worked it free and tossed it aside.

She drew in a whooping breath. ‘Yeah, yeah!’ she managed to croak. Red marks were already visible on her neck, from both the strands of the wire noose and her own knuckles. ‘I’m all right. Where is he, what happened?’

‘Natalia’s going to get the cops — and he’s going after her. But I need to—’

‘Go on, go,’ she said, struggling to her feet. ‘Get after him!’

‘You sure you’re okay?’

‘I’ll be right behind you. Go help her!’

Eddie gave her a last look, then turned and ran after Kroll.

Natalia hurried down the stairs, panic rising as she heard running footsteps growing louder behind her. She glanced upwards as she reached the second-floor landing, glimpsing a shadowy figure practically vaulting down the steps to the third floor. With a frightened gasp, she continued her descent, again looking up to see the man gaining on her—

The moment of fearful distraction was enough to make her misjudge her footing in the near darkness. Her sole skidded over the edge of a step, and she fell with a scream.

Her cry was harshly truncated as her head hit the wall. She tumbled to a painful stop in the corner of the stairwell. Dazed, she tried to sit up—

Hands yanked her forcefully to her feet.

‘Get up!’ Kroll snarled in German. ‘You’re coming with me. If you try to escape, I’ll kill you!’ He dragged the woozy woman down to ground level. She heard her name shouted from above.

‘Eddie!’ she managed to cry. ‘Help! He’s—’

The Nazi slapped her hard across the face. ‘Shut up! Keep moving!’ He pulled her through the lobby of the unfinished building and out into the open. He was about to head for the gap in the fencing when he spotted something lying on a mound of sand amongst shards of broken glass.

The gun.

He changed direction to scoop it up, shaking sand out of the barrel before pushing it against Natalia’s side and driving her onwards to the fence. ‘Go through!’

With no choice, she obeyed, Kroll squeezing through the opening right behind her. ‘Move, run, run!’

Eddie leapt down the last few stairs to the ground floor. Natalia’s shout had told him that Kroll had caught up with her, and as he emerged from the building, the sight of their footprints making a sudden diversion to a sand pile with a distinctively shaped impression on its top also warned him that the Nazi had recovered his gun.

He could be waiting in ambush…

The Englishman ducked and jinked sideways to take cover behind a cement mixer, eyes rapidly scanning the construction site. Nothing. Kroll’s instincts had gone to flight, not fight. He hurried to the fence.

‘Eddie, wait!’ Nina called from inside the building, breathless. He looked back, seeing her reach the lobby — then dropped again at a gunshot.

‘Get down!’ he shouted. Nina hurriedly took cover. Another shot, but he had already realised that the gunfire was not aimed at him. It was coming from somewhere down the street. He pushed through the gap. The alley where Kroll had dumped the stolen truck was not far away.

Two shots. Two cops—

‘Shit!’ He ran to the alley, slowing to check around the corner.

The Nazi was not in sight. The truck was still parked near the other end, driver’s door open. He raced towards it—

Tyres shrilled as a car set off at speed. Eddie glimpsed the police vehicle as it flashed past the alley’s entrance. No sirens — it wasn’t the cops who were driving. He ran to the street, finding one of the officers lying on the ground clutching both bloodied hands to his stomach. His partner was slumped against a wall nearby, grimacing at the pain from a wounded arm as he struggled to pull his radio from his belt.

‘Here,’ Eddie said, tugging it free for him before looking down the street. The stolen Taurus was heading south at speed, and he could see Natalia’s silhouette in the rear seat. ‘Call it in—’

‘No shit,’ gasped the cop.

‘And tell Detective Martin from the 12th Precinct that Eddie Chase is going after him!’ Before the man could reply, he hurried back to the truck.

Nina reached the vehicle at the same time. ‘Eddie! What happened?’

‘He’s got Natalia,’ he said as he climbed into the driver’s seat. ‘Shot two cops and took their car.’

She opened the passenger door and joined him. ‘Give me your phone, I’ll call nine-one-one.’

‘They’re already on it. Buckle up!’ The keys were still in the ignition. Eddie started the engine and shoved the gearstick into reverse, over-revving before letting out the clutch with a bang and sending the vehicle lurching backwards out of the alley. He spun the steering wheel, stamping on the brake pedal to send the truck into a skidding J-turn that left it pointing down the street after the escaping police car. The cop broke off from his radio call to shout for him to stop, but the Yorkshireman had already slammed the truck into first gear and set off in pursuit.

Nina had only just managed to fasten her seat belt before being thrown sideways. ‘Jesus, Eddie! You remember I’m pregnant, right?’

‘So that’s why we’re always out of ice cream!’ he replied, working through the gears to pick up speed. Ahead, the Taurus had been forced to brake hard at an intersection to avoid a car crossing its path, slewing almost sideways before Kroll could recover. He accelerated again, but the truck was already closing the gap.

Nina looked past the police car. ‘He’ll have to turn soon.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he’s running out of island!’

She pointed. Ahead of the Taurus was the elevated Franklin Delano Roosevelt Drive, which ran along the shore of the East River. A moment later, the flare of brake lights told them that Kroll had also seen the end of the road. The car rocked on its suspension as he vacillated between turning left or right before choosing the latter. It made an awkward, slithering turn around the corner to head south-west on the ground-level street running parallel to the raised freeway.

Eddie dropped down hard through the gears as he prepared to follow. ‘If he gets on the FDR, we’ll never catch him.’

‘He can’t, not from here,’ Nina replied. Her husband gave her a questioning glance. ‘He doesn’t know the city! The only place he can get directly on to the FDR is all the way down at the ferry terminal. If he tries to go around the ramps at the Brooklyn Bridge, he’s guaranteed to get stuck in traffic — even in a police car. And the odds are this is the first time he’s ever driven anywhere bigger than that little village in Argentina. He won’t have a clue what he’s doing.’

‘And we do?’ said Eddie as the truck approached the corner. ‘Hang on!’

He jammed on the brakes — and threw the vehicle around the ninety-degree turn.

Nina grabbed hold of the door handle to keep herself upright as they careered through the intersection. What cargo remained in the back was sent flying out of the still-open rear door, scattering across South Street in an explosion of produce. A couple of cars had made emergency stops as the police car skidded in front of them; one of them set off again, only to veer hurriedly into the other lane to avoid the delivery truck. Nina cringed as the car whipped past her window.

Eddie hauled on the steering wheel. The truck straightened out, lurching back upright. They were now heading south-west down South Street, the thick steel pillars supporting the FDR flicking past to their left. The stolen police car was visible ahead, and it was clear from its desperate swerves around other traffic that Nina was correct. The only vehicles available for driving lessons at the Enklave had been ex-military jeeps and lumbering trucks, and Kroll was finding that experience all but worthless for dealing with the busy roads of a megacity.

Nina cringed as their quarry barely avoided a head-on collision with a car coming the other way. ‘Oh my God! He’s going to kill someone!’

‘Hopefully just himself,’ Eddie replied, but he knew that if the chase continued, casualties would become increasingly likely. They were already approaching the Brooklyn Bridge, the knot of flyovers connecting the great span to both the FDR and Manhattan’s street grid coming up fast. ‘If he’s turning, he’ll have to do it soon—’

He didn’t. The Taurus continued straight on, its driver either unsure how to reach the freeway or unwilling to slow to make a turn. But its frantic slalom had already reduced its speed to a point where even the delivery truck was gaining. ‘If he’s not taking the bridge or the FDR,’ Eddie asked, ‘where can he get to from here?’

His wife was already checking her mental map of her home city. ‘If he turns right off this road, he’ll be heading into Downtown, and he sure as hell won’t get anywhere fast around Wall Street. If he keeps going, he’ll loop around to the Battery Park tunnel, but he won’t get far there either. The cops will be able to cut him off.’

‘We’ve got him, then!’ The gap kept closing as they raced under the bridge and continued towards Manhattan’s southern tip, whipping past the parked ice-cream trucks marking the entrance to the South Street Seaport.

‘He’s still got Natalia, though,’ Nina reminded him.

‘He can’t do anything to her as long as he’s driving. If she keeps her head down and I can force him to stop—’

He broke off with a stifled obscenity as the Taurus clipped the back quarter of another car. Kroll had misjudged the overtake, sending the police car slewing wide into the oncoming lane and knocking the recipient of the fender-bender into a spin.

Eddie braked hard to avoid the imminent collision. Nina’s seat belt caught her as she was thrown forward. He veered sharply to follow the stolen vehicle around the now-stationary car, missing it by inches. ‘Jesus!’ he gasped, straightening out. ‘That was too bloody close.’

Nina pushed herself back into her seat — to see Kroll making another hard turn, but in an unexpected direction. He swung left, throwing the Taurus over a kerb with a shower of sparks from the car’s underside. It barely missed one of the FDR’s supports as the Nazi angled across a pedestrianised zone underneath the expressway, skidding on to the East River Bikeway along the edge of the waterfront.

Eddie tried to make the turn after him, but the truck’s greater momentum carried it directly towards the steel pillar, and a structure beyond left him with no way to follow. He hurriedly spun the wheel the other way. ‘Shit,’ he muttered, swinging back on to the street. ‘If he doubles back, I’ll never be able to turn this thing around fast enough to catch up!’

Nina watched the speeding police car, glimpsing Kroll’s silhouette at the wheel as he raced along the riverside. Startled pedestrians leapt out of his way, a cyclist crashing into the railings as he tried to avoid the onrushing vehicle. ‘I don’t think he’s got enough room to turn. He’s still going straight on.’

‘Where’ll he end up?’

‘He’ll be able to get on to the FDR before it goes into the tunnel, but there’s also the ferry terminal, Pier 11 — the heliport!’ she cried as she remembered what lay ahead. ‘If he gets to a helicopter…’

She didn’t need to say any more. Eddie dropped down a gear and accelerated, blasting the horn to encourage other drivers to clear out of his path. ‘He’s not getting away,’ he said coldly.

They flashed past the Wall Street ferry terminal. Kroll was still ahead of them, running parallel on the far side of the FDR. ‘Get across there, there!’ Nina said, pointing. Coming up fast was one of the expressway’s off-ramps, cars cutting under the elevated road to emerge on South Street, but just before it was another, smaller exit, this from the Bikeway. ‘Run over the bike lanes and we can get right behind him!’

‘Yeah, if we don’t run over a bike!’ Eddie blasted the horn again as he swung the truck across the other lane towards the little intersection. A car that had just emerged from the off-ramp screeched to an emergency stop moments before a collision. More cyclists scattered as the truck bounded over the kerb and charged across the paved area beneath the expressway, emerging in daylight on the other side. He made another hard turn to bring the delivery vehicle on to the pedestrian walkway, swinging around a line of shrubs in concrete planters to follow the police car along the water’s edge.

The heliport was directly ahead. An L-shaped pier extended into the East River, over a dozen landing pads marked on it. Several were currently in use, brightly painted helicopters coming and going in an almost constant stream as they took tourists on aerial tours of the city.

‘He’s definitely heading for the heliport,’ Nina confirmed. The Bikeway ran alongside the FDR as the freeway dropped down towards the entrance to the Battery Park tunnel, only open pavement separating them at ground level, but Kroll was sticking to the riverside rather than swerving right to get on to the road.

‘We’re not gonna catch him!’ Eddie warned. The police car’s brake lights flared again, Kroll hurling his vehicle sharply through the entrance to the heliport’s parking lot.

The Nazi might have been inexperienced, but he was also apparently a fast learner, managing to control the skid as he made the turn. A metal gate beside the terminal building restricted access to the pier — but it burst open as the Taurus smashed into it and continued on towards the helipads.

Unable to make the tight turn into the parking lot, the truck instead slithered to a tyre-smoking stop at the entrance. Eddie jumped out and sprinted after the stolen car. ‘Eddie, wait!’ Nina yelled as she fumbled with her seat belt, but he was already gone. Cursing, she scrambled out after him.

A red, white and blue helicopter on a pad halfway down the pier was unloading one group of passengers as it prepared to take on another. Kroll aimed the police car straight for it. The waiting tourists and their ground-crew escort stared in confusion and disbelief as the Taurus charged at them, finally fleeing as he slewed to a stop less than ten feet from the chopper.

The Nazi leapt out, gun in hand. He yanked open the rear door, about to drag Natalia with him, but then saw Eddie clear the terminal building. He spat a German curse, firing a single wild shot that forced the Englishman to duck and swerve, then rushed to the helicopter. It was a Bell LongRanger, a stretched version of the ubiquitous Jet Ranger, with an extra row of seats in its cabin. The port-side hatch to the passenger compartment was still open. Kroll scrambled inside, pulling the door shut.

The startled pilot looked back at his unscheduled passenger. ‘Hey, what the hell’s goin’ on?’ he demanded in a nasal Bronx accent.

Kroll glanced back outside. Eddie was still running towards the helicopter, Nina rounding the terminal behind him. Another muttered obscenity, then the Nazi turned to shout at the pilot: ‘Take off! Take off now!’

‘I ain’t goin’ anywhere—’

‘Fly!’ The high seat backs made it impossible for anyone in the passenger compartment to climb forward, but there was still enough of a gap between the headrests for the Nazi to reach through and jam the muzzle of his gun against the pilot’s temple.

‘Uh, okay, we’re movin’.’ Face filled with fear, the pilot twisted the throttle to full and pulled up the collective control lever. The LongRanger squirmed with the sudden increase in power, then left the pad.

Eddie raced towards the helicopter as it took to the air, squinting into the rotor’s gritty downdraught. Twenty feet away, ten, but it was six feet up and climbing fast. A glimpse of Natalia in the back of the police car as he passed told him that she was frightened but apparently unharmed, though there was no time to check on her. ‘Eddie, stop!’ Nina cried behind him, but to no avail.

He threw himself at the aircraft, arms outstretched—

One hand caught the rear tip of the port-side landing skid as the LongRanger banked away. His shoulder crackled as it took his full weight. He grunted, swinging beneath the fuselage.

The edge of the pier whipped past below him, the surface of the East River rapidly receding as the chopper gained height. Already thinking he had made a huge mistake, Eddie kicked and twisted, trying to bring up his other arm to get a hold on the skid.

The pilot let out a yelp as the cabin rocked, hurriedly adjusting the controls to compensate. ‘What was that?’ demanded Kroll.

‘I think someone just grabbed on to us!’ was the disbelieving reply.

Kroll looked back at the heliport, seeing Nina staring helplessly after the departing aircraft — alone. ‘Der Engländer!’ he snarled, darting to the side of the cabin and looking down through the window. For a moment he saw nothing… then a figure in a black leather jacket swung into view, dangling from the end of the skid.

The Nazi stared angrily at him, then pushed open the sliding panel set into the Perspex rear window. Wind and rotor noise roared into the cabin. He ignored it, slipping his gun through the little opening and taking aim.

Eddie strained to grasp the skid with his other hand, but couldn’t quite reach. The pounding rotor downwash, reeking of hot aviation fuel, made it far more of an effort than he’d expected. Straining to the limit, he bent his other arm to lift himself a few inches higher and snatched at it again. This time his fingertips brushed the metal, but still he wasn’t able to hook his fingers over the landing gear. ‘Come on!’ he gasped, making a final, frantic effort to raise himself further…

His hand clapped down on top of the skid. Another gasp, this time of relief, and he shifted to spread his weight between both shoulders.

He faced forward, bringing up his legs and swinging to hook his ankles over the tubular spar. Pulling himself up, he looked at the cabin door—

And saw the USP pointing at him.

‘Shit!’ he gasped, jerking his feet off the skid and dropping back down to present a smaller target — as Kroll fired.

The bullet whipped past the Yorkshireman’s left arm. The Nazi pulled the trigger again as Eddie swung backwards from the skid’s tail, this round searing past just inches from his chest. The river reeled below him. He looked back up, knowing he was completely helpless…

The third shot didn’t come. Instead, Kroll glowered at him before withdrawing the gun. Eddie realised that the Nazi was down to his last round; unable to look directly down his gun’s sights, and with the blast of the rotor wash throwing off his aim, he didn’t want to waste it.

But the Englishman knew he was far from safe. Kroll retreated slightly, then opened the door. The Nazi pushed it wider with one knee and leaned out, gripping a strap on the cabin wall with his left hand. His right was still holding the gun. He looked down the sights, pointing it straight at Eddie’s head—

The helicopter made a sharp roll to port.

Eddie was sent swinging beneath the skid by the sudden movement — but Kroll was almost pitched out of the cabin, only his grip on the strap keeping him from a long fall. Expression flicking from malevolence to shocked panic in an instant, he scrabbled to brace himself.

The door swung wide, a loud crack of breaking metal coming from the hinges as it hit the limit of its travel. The noise from beside his head made Kroll flinch. He pushed himself back into the cabin, fury returning as he rounded on the pilot.

The Englishman was little better inclined towards the man, even if he had just saved his life. In trying to tip his unwelcome passenger out of the helicopter, the pilot had almost thrown the stowaway after him. Eddie flexed his fingers, managing to re-secure his hold on the skid.

Kroll stabbed his gun against the pilot’s head. ‘If you do that again, I will kill you!’ He glared through the windshield, spotting something off to the right. ‘The building, there!’ he shouted, indicating the expansive flat roof of the South Ferry terminal. ‘Land on it, hard — crush him!’

‘We’ll crash!’ the pilot protested. ‘The skids won’t take—’

‘Do it!’ The Nazi pushed the hot muzzle against his cheek.

The pilot jerked away in pain, then sent the LongRanger swooping down towards the shoreline.

Eddie tried to pull himself back up, but the force of the slipstream as the helicopter gained speed made it impossible, sending him trailing behind it like a banner. All he could do was cling on and hope Kroll didn’t force the pilot to make any wild moves that would throw him off.

That wasn’t what the Nazi had in mind, he realised as the ferry terminal rolled into view. The chopper was heading straight for it — too fast for a landing. Kroll was going to scrape him off against the roof!

People on the ground scattered and ran, thinking the LongRanger was about to crash. For a moment Eddie considered letting go and taking his chances with a splashdown in the river, but it was already too late — he would hit one of the jetties or even a moored ferry. His only option was to hang on and hope the pilot’s survival instincts kicked in.

Which they would have to do very soon—

The helicopter lanced down at the roof — then abruptly tipped backwards, engine screaming as the pilot desperately tried to flare the aircraft to slow its descent. The edge of the terminal flashed past beneath Eddie’s feet, but he was still too high to survive the fall. Thirty feet up, twenty, the LongRanger’s tail boom now behind him as it reared back still further.

Ten feet, slowing, slowing…

He let go.

The landing was hard — the helicopter was still moving at over twenty miles per hour. He let his legs crumple as he hit the flat surface and rolled to absorb as much of the impact as he could, but it didn’t prevent agony from exploding in his ankles and knees. He bowled along the roof, throwing his arms out to bring himself to a painful stop on his back.

He looked up—

And saw the tail rotor scything at him.

Eddie threw himself sideways just as the decelerating LongRanger hit the roof with a bang, the rear tips of its skids gouging ragged tears in the surface before slamming flat. The whirling saw-blade tips of the rotor shrieked over him, missing by mere inches.

‘Shit!’ he gasped, rolling on to his front to see the helicopter slither to a halt. Scrambling to his feet, he ran towards it.

The port-side door was still jammed open by its broken hinges. If he could get inside the aircraft before it took off, he might be able to take down its hijacker—

The engine shrilled to full power again, hot exhaust gases blasting him, and the helicopter rose drunkenly from the roof. Eddie ducked as the tail jerked towards him, but then the pilot compensated — overcompensated, the rear rotor pulling the aircraft around clockwise. The open door was now on the far side of the fuselage, out of reach as the LongRanger climbed.

The Yorkshireman made another leap — catching the starboard skid this time. The chopper lurched again as it took his weight. He was able to pull himself up and secure his legs with relative ease.

But Kroll would know he was there…

The blond Nazi staggered as the helicopter swayed. ‘I warned you—’

‘It’s not me!’ the pilot cried as he brought his aircraft clear of the ferry terminal. ‘It must be that guy again!’

Kroll glared at the open door, through which he could see the roof — and the absence of the Englishman, alive or dead — but was unwilling to risk leaning out again. Instead, he looked past the pilot. The helicopter was heading west, Battery Park stretching across Manhattan’s southern tip. ‘Those trees!’ he barked, pointing. ‘Fly through their tops — hit him on them!’ When there was no instant response to his order, he struck the USP’s butt against the pilot’s head, drawing blood and a pained wail. ‘Now!’

Eddie had just managed to haul himself on top of the skid when the helicopter dropped into another steep descent. ‘Oh Christ, what now?’ he gasped.

The answer came as he saw the treetops rushing at him. He closed his eyes, gripping the landing gear as tightly as he could—

Branches lashed him like bullwhips as the aircraft skimmed the trees, the rotor downwash blasting a blizzard of green in his wake. The cracks and snaps of breaking wood were audible even over the howling engines. The tip of a limb ripped through his jeans, drawing a long line of blood down the back of his thigh. Another momentarily snagged his leather jacket, almost tearing him loose before it sheared from the trunk.

The aircraft dropped even lower, heading straight for one tree standing tall above its neighbours…

And pulled up just before impact, the uppermost branches disintegrating as the skids ploughed through them. A last twig slashed at Eddie’s cheek, then he was clear.

‘Did you get him?’ Kroll barked at the pilot.

‘I–I dunno. I think so,’ was the hesitant reply.

The Nazi took a firm hold of the wall strap and braced his feet against the rear seats. ‘Do not try anything,’ he growled, before cautiously leaning out of the open door to peer at the port skid.

There was nobody there.

He allowed himself a moment of sadistic satisfaction. ‘Hab ich ihn,’ he muttered, before drawing back. ‘He is gone. Now, take me over there!’ He pointed across the great expanse of New York Bay, at the shore of New Jersey beyond Liberty Island. Crossing into a different state would slow the response time of law enforcement, giving him a greater chance of escape.

With a nervous glance at his passenger, the pilot brought the LongRanger about, picking up speed over the water.

New spikes of pain jabbing at him from numerous cuts, Eddie balanced atop the starboard skid, using the handle of the rear door to raise himself into a crouch. He deliberately didn’t turn it, wanting to see where Kroll was before making a move. He peeked through the window.

The Nazi was in the centre of the cabin, a knee on one of the rear-facing seats in the middle row. He had his gun to the pilot’s head, having worked his right arm through the gap between the headrest and a bulky support pillar. With the port-side door jammed open, if Eddie moved fast enough, he could throw him out…

If he moved fast enough. He would have to open the starboard door first, and Kroll would almost certainly catch the movement in his peripheral vision. What he needed was a distraction.

There was only one way to create one. Taking a deep breath, and keeping hold of the handle with his left hand, he dropped as low as he could and edged along the skid towards the pilot’s door.

The helicopter was now holding a steady course, but it was still far from stable. The fuselage felt as if it were swinging beneath the rotor hub like a much-abused punching bag, the pilot constantly making adjustments to compensate for the shifting air currents. The Englishman had ridden in helicopters many times before, sometimes even on the outside of them, though in those latter cases he had simply been hanging on for dear life. This time, he had to negotiate its exterior and attract the attention of one of its occupants… without being seen by the other.

He advanced inch by inch, left arm stretching out behind him — realising with dismay that there were no handholds ahead. The pilot’s door handle would only be reachable if he let go of the rear, and the slightest jolt while he was unsecured would pitch him to his death. All he could do was press his splayed palm against the aluminium bodywork and pray that he had somehow acquired gecko-like suction.

Closer. Another glance into the cabin. Kroll was still watching the view ahead. Eddie hunched down again, shuffling forward until his left arm was extended as far as it would go. He slid his right hand along the fuselage, stretching out towards the window beside the pilot…

His fingertips fell fractionally short. He could reach the rubber seal around the Plexiglas, but not the window itself. For his plan to work, the pilot needed to see him.

He shifted his grip on the rear handle, fingers caterpillar-crawling along the metal until they reached its tip. That give him another couple of precious inches. Leaning forward again, he strained towards the window—

The helicopter lurched.

Eddie gasped in fear, instinctively flattening himself against the door, hard enough to thunk against the aluminium. He froze. Had Kroll heard the noise?

If he had, then the Englishman was dead. Kroll wouldn’t even need to use his last bullet — he only needed to open the door to push him to his doom…

It remained shut. Eddie cautiously craned his neck to look into the helicopter. The Nazi was still fixated on the view through the windscreen. With the other door open, the rotor noise inside the cabin was as loud as it was out on the skid, drowning out everything else.

Almost as if responding to his thought, Kroll took a pair of headphones from a hook and pulled them over his ears to muffle the sound. Eddie lowered his head again. That would reduce the risk of the Nazi hearing him open the door, but he still needed his distraction.

He stretched out his right hand again, this time tipping his head back as far as he dared until he could see the pilot’s right arm and part of his headphones. The man was looking straight ahead, keeping the helicopter on a course towards New Jersey. Eddie pressed his fingertips against the window and tapped it.

No reaction. He tried again, harder. ‘Come on, listen,’ he growled, continuing his little tattoo on the Plexiglas before turning his hand and banging the window with his knuckles. Liberty Island was quickly approaching, over a thousand feet below. ‘You playing Napalm Death in your earphones? Look around, for fuck’s sake!’ The raps became full-on pounding, but still there was no reaction—

The pilot’s head finally turned towards him.

Eddie knew instantly from the man’s incredulous flinch that he had been seen. He pressed himself against the fuselage so that he could stretch his hand as far forward as it would go, then quickly flashed all his fingers, twice in quick succession. After a short pause, he did it again — this time holding in his little finger on the second flash. Ten, followed by nine. Another brief wait, then he held in his little and ring fingers. Eight. Hoping that he had established the timing, he waved his flattened hand from side to side to suggest rocking the aircraft when the countdown reached zero, then retreated as fast as he could.

He continued the count in his head. Seven. Six. Five. At the rear door, but he still had to get all the way behind it before opening it. Four. Three. His head passed the door handle. Another couple of steps, and he was clear. Two. Kroll was still in the same position but now with an odd look on his face, a dawning recognition that something had changed but unsure what…

Eddie realised at the same moment as the Nazi. The pilot kept glancing down and to his right. He was trying to spot the stowaway, and by looking away from the instruments, he was making it far too obvious. Had he even understood the message?

Kroll opened his mouth to speak, but some sixth sense instead prompted him to turn his head towards the window.

Their eyes met. The Nazi’s widened in surprise—

One!

Eddie yanked the door open. Kroll whipped around, but the gun caught against the headrest as he tried to pull it through the narrow gap.

The former SAS soldier lunged into the cabin — and the pilot slammed the cyclic control stick hard over to port. He had understood the countdown. Kroll reeled towards the open door as Eddie charged at him.

The pair collided with a whump. The gun came through the gap as Kroll lurched back — and reflexively pulled the trigger.

Eddie flinched away from the muzzle flash, but the weapon wasn’t pointed at him. The bullet hit the pilot. A red line sliced open across his forehead as it grazed his skull. He thrashed against his seat belt, then slumped to one side, unconscious…

His hands dropped from the controls.

The LongRanger immediately pitched downwards, curving towards Liberty Island. Eddie glanced in dismay at the freely moving joystick, but there was no way to reach it from the rear compartment.

Kroll threw himself at the Englishman with a roar. Eddie tried to brace himself, but the Nazi had sheer size on his side, slamming him back towards the starboard door. It had been forced shut by the slipstream but hadn’t latched, banging against the rear frame.

The Yorkshireman changed tack, balling a fist and driving it with punishing force into the blond man’s stomach. Kroll grimaced, breath hissing between his teeth as Eddie pounded his other fist home, but the attacks didn’t stop him. The Nazi grabbed his opponent’s throat with one hand — and swept the empty gun at his face with the other.

Eddie managed to bring up one arm to deflect the blow, but the weapon still caught him a painful crack to the forehead. ‘That hurt, you Nazi shithead!’ he growled, striking back with a vicious uppercut to Kroll’s jaw. Enamel splintered, tearing into flesh. The younger man spat blood from his lacerated gums.

But he maintained his hold on Eddie’s neck. The gun lashed down again—

Eddie caught his wrist, arresting the blow inches from his head. He sent another punch at Kroll’s chin. This time his adversary saw it coming and jerked away quickly enough to receive only a glancing blow. The Englishman tried to jab at his face, but the Nazi had a longer reach, straightening his arm and pushing down harder on his opponent’s windpipe. Eddie tried to draw in a breath, but managed only a choked rasp.

Kroll squeezed harder, grinning psychotically as the other man delivered ineffectual blows to his shoulders and upper chest. ‘You thought you had killed us all, Engländer? You thought you had destroyed the New Reich?’ The grin twisted into a leer. ‘As long as one of us remains alive, the legacy of Adolf Hitler will never die!’

Choking, Eddie twisted beneath him — and through the window saw something that made his eyes widen in shock.

Kroll caught his change of expression and realised it was not his doing. He looked around — and his own eyes bugged. ‘Scheiße!’

The LongRanger was on a collision course with the Statue of Liberty.

The Nazi leapt upright, leaving Eddie gasping, and thrust an arm through the gap by the front seat’s headrest. His fingers grasped at the cyclic joystick between the unconscious pilot’s knees, but it was just beyond his reach. The statue loomed ever closer—

Kroll grabbed instead at the collective lever between the front seats, managing to clamp his fingers around its base. He hauled it upwards, using sheer brute force to overcome the friction lock that kept it from moving of its own accord. The pitch of the rotor blades changed to provide more lift… and the helicopter started to climb.

Not quickly enough. The plinth dropped out of sight beneath the instrument panel, followed by the tablet in the statue’s left arm, but her head grew still larger in the windscreen—

Kroll drove himself deeper into the narrow gap — and yanked the collective up with all his strength.

The LongRanger lurched as the rotor blades slammed to their maximum pitch. The statue’s head plunged away beneath the cockpit, the centremost spike of its crown whooshing between the skids as the aircraft ascended.

The pilot slumped back against the headrest, then flopped to one side with a faint moan, knocking off his headphones. One of his feet pushed down on an anti-torque pedal. The helicopter turned sharply to starboard as more power went to the tail rotor, rising into a spiral above the statue.

Kroll let out a gasp of relief. He released the collective and leaned back—

Someone whistled behind him.

He turned — to take a cartilage-crushing punch to his face.

‘Ay up!’ Eddie snarled, shaking the Nazi’s blood off his knuckles before delivering another brutal blow to his crushed nose. ‘You want Hitler — I’ll just hit yer! Okay, that was bad,’ he added as he kneed the other man in the groin. ‘But if you love that one-bollocked fuckwit so much,’ he grabbed the reeling Kroll, ‘you should go and meet him in person!’

He shoved him towards the opening—

The pilot groaned again, dazedly changing position — and pushed the other pedal down.

The LongRanger’s spin abruptly reversed, the airframe creaking under the stress. Kroll staggered backwards, colliding with the Yorkshireman. As Eddie struggled to regain his balance, the Nazi whirled and slammed a savage backhander at his head. ‘English pig!’ he bellowed. ‘I will kill you!’

He drove Eddie against the starboard door — which swung open.

The Englishman toppled over the threshold—

And fell.

He threw out his arms in desperate panic as he dropped — catching the skid.

The impact made the out-of-control helicopter lurch violently on to its right side… tipping Kroll out after him.

The Nazi screamed as he followed his enemy into the wind-blasted void. He flailed, grabbing for anything within reach—

Finding Eddie’s foot.

Kroll caught it with his right hand, almost tearing the Englishman from his precarious position. Eddie yelled in pain as tendons strained. The Nazi dangled beneath him, right arm upstretched almost in a Hitler salute. The Statue of Liberty whirled below them both as the LongRanger continued its ever-tightening spiral.

Eddie brought his other foot down… and found Kroll’s fingers with his boot heel.

The bloodied Nazi looked up at him in horror as he realised he was doomed. ‘Nein!’ he screamed. ‘Don’t do it!’

All he got in return was a pitiless scowl. ‘Sieg fail!’ Eddie shouted, cracking his heel down on the blond man’s hand.

Kroll’s cry turned into a terrified wail as he lost his hold and plummeted away from the helicopter.

He fell for hundreds of feet, shrieking the whole way down — until the sound came to an abrupt end as he was impaled upon the central spike of the Statue of Liberty’s crown. The tip of the great spear jutting from his chest, he slid slowly down its nine-foot length before coming to a limp, broken-backed stop just above the gore-splattered windows of the viewing gallery inside the huge figure’s head.

Eddie regarded the corpse with grim satisfaction, then returned his attention to the considerably more pressing task of getting back inside the helicopter. The LongRanger was still tilted hard over as it spun around in its spiral ascent…

The climb stopped — then became a fall.

‘Shit!’ Eddie gasped. The chopper had banked so far that its main rotor was no longer generating enough lift to keep it in the air. In normal flight, the weight of the fuselage beneath the rotor hub would have acted as a natural pendulum, swinging it back towards a level attitude, but with the pilot’s foot still wedged on the pedal, the centrifugal force of its spin was preventing that from happening. He looked back down. The LongRanger was dropping towards the statue.

A burst of fear-fuelled adrenalin spurred him onwards. He dragged himself back on to the skid, grabbing one of the rear seat belts flapping through the open door and using it to haul himself into the cabin. The pilot was still slumped in his seat, head lolling against the window. ‘Hey! Wake up! Wake up!’

Blood was running down the black-haired man’s forehead from the bullet wound. He mumbled vaguely in response, eyes fluttering weakly but not opening. Eddie cursed, then tried to reach for the joystick, with no more success than Kroll. The skyscrapers of Manhattan whisked across his view as the aircraft continued its crazy spin.

Another hopeless grasp at the controls — then instead he brought his hand up to flick the pilot’s cheek just under his eye. ‘Come on, wake up!’ he yelled, repeatedly tapping the man’s face with his fingernail. ‘We’re crashing! Do something!’

It was an old army trick to check if an injured person was responsive, not recommended for use by civilian paramedics if they wanted to avoid a punch in return, but it worked. The pilot jerked upright, trying to pull away from the harmless but infuriating little sting. ‘Hey, hey, what the hell ya doin’?’ he complained.

‘Trying to save our lives!’ Eddie shouted back. ‘Pull up!’

The man’s eyes finally focused — and he saw the coastlines of New York and New Jersey flashing past. ‘Whoa, holy crap!’ he screeched, looking at the instrument panel to find the artificial horizon tumbling on multiple axes at once and the altimeter whizzing down towards zero. He grabbed both the control levers, jamming a foot down on a pedal to counteract the helicopter’s spin. ‘What the hell happened? Where’s that German asshole?’

‘He fell out with me! Can you get this thing under control?’

‘Yeah, sure, just give me a sec— Oh jeez!’ The LongRanger stopped spinning… and plunged down vertically towards the statue.

The pilot pulled sharply on the cyclic stick. Eddie was thrown backwards as the helicopter’s nose pitched upwards. The engine shrieked through the bulkhead behind him as it went to full power.

But they were still falling, the rotors struggling to find lift. The statue’s torch and arm rushed past, terrifyingly close—

The pilot screamed, slamming the cyclic hard over to the left — and the helicopter reeled sideways.

The rotor still hadn’t managed to overpower gravity, but it did pull the LongRanger away from the Statue of Liberty. The helicopter skimmed past the great green head, arcing downwards to slew sidelong over the tiered terraces surrounding the plinth. Tourists fled as it buzzed past just above them, finally levelling out over the lawns along the island’s southern side and clearing the water’s edge barely ten feet above the pavement.

‘That… that was too damn close,’ the pilot gasped, slowing the aircraft and bringing it to a hover. He pivoted it around to look back at Liberty Island. People on the waterfront stared at them in astonishment. ‘What’s going on? Who the hell was that guy?’

Eddie peered up at the statue, seeing a line of red running down its face from the figure spiked upon its crown. ‘Nobody who’ll be missed. And hopefully there isn’t anyone left to miss him.’ He pulled the starboard door shut. ‘Take us back to the heliport.’

The LongRanger swung about and started towards Manhattan, leaving behind the body of the last survivor of the Nazi colony.

Once over his initial shock at the near-death experience, the pilot proved to be almost hyperactively chatty. ‘So anyway, my name’s Harvey, Harvey Zampelli,’ he said as the aircraft approached the South Street heliport. ‘You need anything from me, anything at all, just say the word and it’s yours. You want free flying lessons? I’m a qualified instructor — all you gotta do is ask!’ He briefly took his left hand off the collective to draw a business card from his breast pocket and pass it back to Eddie, who by now had donned headphones to block out the rotor noise. ‘There’s my number. And hey, if you wanna recommend me to your family and friends for a helicopter tour, that’d be great too. The best views of Manhattan, and very reasonable prices!’

‘Thanks,’ Eddie replied. ‘I’ve been thinking about flying lessons, actually. This isn’t the first time I’ve been on a flight where the pilot got knocked out, or worse. Be useful to be able to land the thing myself.’

The pilot laughed, his nasal bray trailing off as he realised that his passenger wasn’t joking. ‘Anyway, the offer’s there, huh? Though don’t take me up on it for a coupla days, at least. I kinda get the feeling I’ll be answering a lot of questions from the cops and the FAA about all this!’

‘Yeah, me too.’ Eddie pocketed the card, then watched the final approach to the heliport. A couple of police cars had arrived, cops closing off the entrance to the pier, but the Englishman was more interested in the one Kroll had commandeered. Figures stood near it, the familiar red hair of one blowing in the wind. He smiled at the sight.

Harvey brought the chopper in to a slightly shaky landing, letting out a gasp of relief as he started to power down his aircraft. Eddie climbed out and jogged clear of the still-whirling rotor blades. Nina was waiting for him near the police car with Natalia. ‘Are you both okay?’ he called as he reached them.

‘I am good, yes,’ Natalia replied, though her face looked drawn from the strain of her ordeal. ‘But what about you?’

‘Still walking, and blood’s mostly on the inside where it should be, so not too bad overall,’ he told her with a crooked grin, before turning to his wife. ‘What about you?’

‘Fine,’ Nina replied, with a tired sigh. She too appeared shaken, but experience had made her better at masking it. ‘What happened to Kroll? No, don’t tell me,’ she added quickly. ‘I can already tell from your expression that you’re going to come up with some God-awful one-liner, so I’ll just assume that you threw him out of the helicopter and he died.’

‘Close enough,’ replied Eddie, who had indeed already devised half a dozen terrible puns. ‘He’s gone.’

‘Thank God.’ She embraced him. ‘I want to go home.’

‘Me too,’ he said, kissing her. ‘Think the cops’ll want a chat with us first, though. I’d better phone Amy.’

‘There’s always something, isn’t there?’

‘Yeah.’ He smiled, then looked down at her, worry crossing his face. ‘Did he… did he do anything that might have hurt the baby?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘He didn’t hit me in the stomach or anything, but I did get thrown around — and it wasn’t exactly a stress-free experience. I’ll need a check-up.’

Eddie nodded. ‘Come on,’ he said, ushering the two women towards the terminal building. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

To the relief of all concerned, tests by an obstetrician at the hospital revealed that the three-month-old foetus still seemed healthy and unaffected by the day’s travails. After the examination, it was the turn of the police to seek answers — led by Amy Martin, who was furious that two NYPD officers had been injured as a result of Eddie’s not immediately calling in Kroll’s location, until he mollified her by pointing out that Nina had been about to be hanged when he arrived. The cops eventually accepted the couple’s version of events, albeit with a degree of grudging disbelief, and let them return home, Natalia accompanying them.

‘And after all that,’ Nina announced to the young German, once they were back at the apartment, ‘here’s the reason you’re here. I’d kinda hoped we could have done this right after you arrived, but, well, Nazis…’

She opened a cupboard in the kitchen and delved into its deepest recesses, producing something that despite the dirt and tarnish on its surface was still clearly an item of both great age and value. It was a Greek amphora, a slim-necked silver vessel about eighteen inches high. She put it down on the counter in front of her guest.

Natalia regarded the battered jug with a mixture of hope and apprehension. ‘This is it? The water from the Spring of Immortality?’

‘That’s it,’ said Nina. It was in fact the only artefact that had survived the destruction wrought when she tricked the elder Kroll into setting off the trap awaiting anyone greedy enough to seek eternal life. A large dent on one side marked the spot where she had clubbed the Nazi leader’s head as he tried to drown her.

‘There isn’t much left in there,’ Eddie warned. ‘A couple of pints at most.’

‘I just hope it’s enough,’ the redhead said. She used a knife to prise open the stopper. ‘I don’t know how it works, but I’d recommend drinking it straight from the jug. Silver keeps the water’s properties active somehow.’

‘And you think it will cure me?’ asked Natalia.

‘It cured me. At least, I can’t think of any other reason why my tumours went into remission.’ Nina offered the container to the younger woman. ‘Here.’

The German stared at the vessel for a moment, then took it. A glance at Eddie, who gave her a reassuring nod, and she raised it to her lips to take an experimental mouthful. ‘Oh!’ she said, surprised. ‘It… it feels like a soda, as if it is fizzy. But there are no bubbles.’

‘Yeah, I know. It’s weird. But it’s okay.’

Natalia hesitated, then drank again, this time more deeply. She stopped after a few mouthfuls. ‘I do not want to take it all.’

‘You’re the only person in the world who’s still suffering from eitr poisoning,’ said Nina. ‘And you’ve had it your whole life. You need it more than us.’

The other woman shook her head. ‘No, you should keep what is left. Eddie told me that it may cure more than just the eitr. You might need it some day.’ She gently but pointedly pushed the silver jug back across the counter to Nina, who reluctantly accepted it and replaced the stopper.

‘It’ll still be here if you need more of it,’ Eddie assured her. ‘I suppose now we’ve just got to wait and see if you get better.’

‘That may take some time.’

‘Hopefully not too long,’ said Nina. ‘It was only a few weeks before I started seeing an effect.’

Natalia nodded, then glanced at the clock. ‘It is late. I should get to my hotel.’

‘You don’t want to stay for dinner?’

She shook her head. ‘I do not want to impose on you. And after what happened today, I think you will both want some quiet time together, no?’

‘You sure?’ Eddie asked.

‘Yes, thank you. But I will see you tomorrow, I hope?’ She gave him a little smile. ‘I am looking forward to seeing New York — as a tourist this time!’

He returned the smile with sympathy. ‘You’ve been through a lot too. Are you okay?’

‘Yes,’ she decided after a moment. ‘I will be. Thanks to you — both of you.’ With that, she said her farewells, then left.

Eddie closed the door and turned, to see Nina standing in the centre of the room with an unhappy look on her face. ‘Eddie?’ she said quietly.

‘What?’

‘I’m not okay.’

He embraced her, holding her tightly. She was trembling faintly from the day’s ordeal. ‘It’s okay, it’s okay. It’s over.’

Her voice cracked. ‘It isn’t, though.’

‘What do you mean?’

She drew back slightly to look into his eyes. ‘I didn’t tell you earlier — I almost did, but something stopped me. I’ve only just realised what.’

‘Tell me what?’

‘I’ve been having… nightmares. Well, one nightmare, singular — always the same thing. How Macy died. She was…’ A choked sob. ‘She was murdered, right in front of me, and there was nothing I could do. And I see it every night, every single night, when I go to sleep. So I hadn’t forgotten Macy. I couldn’t. It was just that… every time I wrote anything about her, or read back through what I’d written, I saw her die, all over again. So I cut, and I cut, and I cut, until… she was almost gone. It was the only way I could keep working.’

He hugged her again. ‘Why didn’t you say something?’

‘Because I thought I could work it out on my own. But I couldn’t. I was…’ A deep breath. ‘You were right. I was in denial. And it took being kidnapped by a frickin’ Nazi for me to realise it!’

‘Funny how things work out,’ said Eddie.

‘Yeah, I know. Of all the ways to get closure!’

‘You think this’ll stop the nightmares?’

A small, sad shake of her head. ‘No. I wish it could, but… no. Just talking it out like this won’t be enough. Not nearly enough. I’ll need a professional — a shrink.’ She sighed. ‘Oh God. Just what I need, telling all my problems to a total stranger.’

‘You can tell ’em to me too, whenever you need to,’ Eddie reminded her. ‘I’m not saying I’m on a par with Sigmund Freud, but I know what it feels like to lose someone.’

‘I know you do. Thanks. And I’m sorry for blowing up at you.’

‘What’re husbands for?’ They smiled at each other, then he struggled to contain a yawn of exhaustion. ‘God, I’m knackered.’

‘It’s been a long day,’ Nina agreed. A thoughtful moment, then: ‘But you know something?’

‘What?’

‘I think I might sleep just a little bit better tonight.’ She managed a genuine smile. ‘Come on,’ she said, taking his hand. ‘Let’s go to bed.’

On the street outside, a young man with dusty blond hair looked up at the apartment building, seeing Eddie draw the curtains in one of the windows. Had the Englishman noticed him, he would have felt a sense of recognition, after a moment remembering where he had seen him before: on the street at the Feast of San Gennaro, the man he had mistaken for Kroll as he chased after Nina’s abductor. But following his unexpected close encounter with one of the people he was tailing, the watcher was taking care to remain unobtrusive.

He regarded the closed drapes for a moment, then took out a phone and called a number. It took a few seconds for the international call to connect. ‘Yes?’ an American man replied. His voice was stern, controlled, yet with a hint of impatience.

‘Prophet, it’s Berman. Dr Wilde is back at her apartment. She seems unharmed. Her husband’s with her.’

‘Do you know who kidnapped her?’

‘Somebody with a grudge against her from an IHA operation, as far as I’ve been able to find out,’ the young man told him. ‘Whoever he was, he’s dead now.’

‘Good. We need her to find the angels — at least, our associate thinks she’s the best person to locate them. And considering that he’s got a grudge against her, that makes me believe he’s right.’

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Maintain surveillance for now. Once everything is ready, we’ll move in. It might take a few weeks, but Mr Irton will contact you when we’re set.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Berman, but the other man had already disconnected. The dismissal did not bother him in the slightest. He put away the phone, watching the apartment window until the light went out, then headed off into the night.