Assassin

38

There was no one following him down the pedestrian precinct of Karl Johans Gate itself, Carver was sure of it. But his route was crossed at intervals by roads that were open to traffic. Up ahead of him, he saw two black Mercedes saloons drive slowly across the next junction and then stop, pulling up by the side of the road nearest to him, directly blocking his path. The cars' doors opened and half a dozen men got out. They lined up in front of the cars, each a couple of paces apart, forming a picket line across Karl Johans Gate, waiting for him to reach them. And all of them were armed.

The slope had flattened out briefly, but then plunged down again, much steeper than before. Carver was picking up speed, rocketing downhill. He'd be on them in seconds. He looked back over his shoulder. A third Merc had stopped by the junction he had just crossed, preventing him from retreating back the way he had come. On either side of him, the shops and bars lined the street in an unbroken wall of neon and glass. He was as trapped as a rat in a blocked drainpipe.

The distance between him and the waiting men had halved. They stood there, waiting for him, a line of broad shoulders, thick necks and impassive, patient faces. He had two or three seconds at most before he'd be on them. And then, like a crafty, resourceful rat, Carver spotted his way out.

The building on the left-hand corner of the junction was being renovated. There was scaffolding all the way up the walls and a skip outside on the pavement. The workmen had used a plank to run their barrows of rubble and waste up to the skip. And to make the job of pushing the barrow easier, they'd put the plank on the uphill side of the skip.

Carver swooped left, straightened up again, picked up the cadence of his pedalling to take his speed even higher, lined up his front wheel with the plank and prayed.

He hit the plank like a tightrope walker sprinting over Niagara Falls, kept pedalling like a maniac to maintain his momentum, and then gave a quick pull on the handlebars as he hurtled into the air.

He cleared the skip. He saw the nearest man in the line throw himself out of the way. For an instant he thought he was going to smack into the side of one of the Mercs, but instead he landed on the bonnet, wobbled for a moment with the impact, and then ricocheted off it on to the tarmac. Carver swerved between two oncoming cars, jerked the handlebars again to get him over the kerb on the far side of the road, and then kept moving downhill on the next stretch of Karl Johans Gate.

Behind him he heard shouts, slamming car doors, revving engines, a squeal of tyres and furious blaring of car horns. One look back confirmed what his ears had already told him. The Mercs had pulled across the road and on to the pedestrian paving. And now they were coming downhill, right after him, scattering the men and women in their path, in machines whose straight-line speed would run him down in a matter of moments.

They hadn't shot at him, though, and it told Carver that they wanted him alive. They wouldn't use their weapons unless they had exhausted all other means of stopping him. But they still had a lot more means up their sleeves.

The leading Mercedes was roaring up behind him, its front bumper almost touching his rear wheel. Carver swung right, picking his way between the people fleeing from the onrushing cars, trying to get some minuscule, temporary advantage from his bike's manoeuvrability.

He was running down the side of Karl Johans Gate now, sticking close to the buildings. Several of the bars and stores had put signs out on the paving. There were metal litter-bins placed at regular intervals. Their frames were firmly embedded in concrete plinths, as were official signs that marked this as a pedestrian zone. They were as immovable as bollards, so Carver ran between them and the buildings, gaining some small degree of protection as the two Mercedes roared along beside him like tigers in a zoo, eyeing up a tasty child kept from them only by the bars of their cage.

Then just up ahead of him he saw a couple sheltering in a shadowy recess he took at first glance for a doorway. A second look told him it was a narrow alleyway between two shops, almost close enough to touch on either side.

'Move!' he yelled.

The guy glanced back over his shoulder, saw Carver and leaped out of his way, pulling his girlfriend with him.

Carver turned into the alley, not even trying to get round the full ninety degrees, but half turning the front wheel and letting it bounce off the far wall and ricochet him into the opening. The alley was far darker than the street, lit only by a single bulb above the back entrance to a clothing store. There were cardboard boxes piled outside it, next to an overflowing wheelie bin. Carver stopped for a second as he went past, leaning over to yank the bin out into the middle of the alley. He kicked out at the boxes, sending them flying, creating as much of a barrier as he could around the bin, then picked up the pace again.

The alley ran slightly downhill and then suddenly fell away down a flight of a dozen steps. Carver stood up on the pedals, letting his bent legs act as shock absorbers as he clattered down, hit the bottom and hurtled out of a narrow opening into an enclosed courtyard, surrounded on all sides by an apparently unbroken square of looming buildings. But there were three cars parked in the yard, so there had to be a way out. He saw it: an arch, in the far corner, diagonally across the yard.

Now there were shouts and running footsteps coming from the alleyway behind Carver. He pumped on the pedals and disappeared under the arch. It opened on to the cross street. The traffic flowed one way from Carver's right to his left, going uphill, back towards the junction with Karl Johans Gate and the two Mercedes. The obvious move for a man on a bike was to turn right, against the traffic, making it much harder for any car to follow him.

So Carver turned left.

There was a tram clattering down the middle of the road, moving as fast as the cars around it. It was modern, smooth and squared-off, painted in two-tone blue, and split into three coaches with concertina links. Carver raced round the back of the tram, then turned uphill, following its path, squeezing his bike into the narrow gap between the tram and the pavement. His plan was simple. He wanted to get up alongside the tram, grab hold of the folding fabric between two of the coaches and then hang on for the ride.

He just hadn't counted on the tram going faster than he was. It was pulling away, leaving him exposed. With every second he was getting closer to the two Mercedes. He had to keep the tram between them and him. He forced his burning thighs to push harder and faster down on to the pedals. His chest was heaving with exertion, his skin burning hot and liquid with sweat.

He was back alongside the last coach now. Just next to him he could see a couple of Oriental girls giggling as they watched his desperate attempts to keep up. They smiled and waved. One raised a camera and took a shot through the window, briefly dazzling him with her flash.

Then he was past them and the joint between the coaches was almost within his grasp. Carver took his hands off the handles, leaned towards the tram, felt the bike start to swerve beneath him, losing its grip on the road surface, then grabbed at the thick, rubbery material and clung on for dear life.

He stayed there as the tram continued across the junction with Karl Johans Gate, past the two Mercedes – Carver snatched a quick glimpse through the window and saw them parked on the paving of Karl Johans Gate, a man standing by one of them, talking into a mobile phone – and on across the top of a square, in the middle of which stood a church surrounded by trees. Now the tram started to slow down. Up ahead, Carver could see a line of people standing by a shelter, just before the next junction. They got up from their seats, picked up their bags and came closer to the edge of the pavement as the tram slowed down for the stop. Carver slowed too, letting go of the tram and pulling over to the side of the road. Then he got off the bike, propped it up behind the shelter as inconspicuously as possible and joined the other passengers as they clambered aboard.

The tram moved off, turning right at the junction before heading downhill again, parallel to Karl Johans Gate, going the same direction Carver had been taking before he'd ducked into the alley. Ahead of him he could see an open, modern plaza and on the far side of that a neon sign over a glass-fronted entrance that said 'Oslo Sentralstasjon'. The word looked strange, but when he said it in his mind it made perfect sense: Central Station.

When the tram stopped again, Carver got off and raced across the paved square, under the awning and into the station. Ahead of him rose an escalator. Above it hung a dark blue sign, printed with Norwegian words in white and English in yellow. Carver read 'Station hall' as he dashed on to the escalator. He stood still on the moving steps, happy to let them do the work as he checked to see if his pursuers had caught up with him.

He couldn't spot any sign of them. He'd made it.

For now, at any rate.