Assassin's Game

FOUR

Christine slammed the key with the palm of her hand. It sank awkwardly and jammed in the lock.

“God, no! No, no, no!”

She looked over her shoulder. No one yet. Christine kept trying, but the key wouldn’t turn. Frantically, she checked the gearshift. Already in park. Her foot was on the brake. What else? The steering lock. So many damned safety mechanisms. She twisted the wheel and turned the key simultaneously. Still jammed.

A clatter from behind.

She turned and saw the big man, his eyes sweeping the alley, gun drawn. She slid down in the seat, and that was when she recognized the problem — the emblem on the steering wheel. Ford. Christine smacked the seat, remembering what Bloch had said. In the alley, turn left. She had fallen, looked up, and seen a blue car. But she’d gone the wrong way. Peering between the headrests, she saw the man walking guardedly in the other direction. Eyes moving, gun level. A hundred feet beyond was a second blue car, a Saab whose key was wedged in the ignition in front of her. Christine reached up and tried to pull the key, but it was hopelessly stuck. There was no time to deal with it. The man would soon reverse and come her way, or possibly his partner would take this side of the alley. She had to move.

Christine slid to the passenger side of the Ford, which was better shielded from where the man stood. She checked again and saw her pursuer at the far end of the alley peering into the Saab. In front of her, the side street was only twenty feet away. It seemed like a mile, but if she could turn that corner without being seen, she’d be in the clear.

She pulled the door handle like it was made of glass. The mechanism gave, barely audible, and she eased the door open. Crawling out, she stayed low, leaving the door ajar as a visual screen. She was two steps from the corner when she heard a shout.

“Stop!”

Christine sprinted toward the waterfront, dodging bicycles and skirting bystanders who were gawking at the wrecked café behind her. The café where Anton Bloch was lying in a pool of blood. She looked back and saw the big man giving chase, negotiating cars as he crossed the street. One nearly hit him, horn blaring, and Dr. Christine Palmer, avowed healer, wished it had done so. She was moving fast now, not the sloppy gait of a frightened woman, but the driving stride of the hurdler she’d been in high school. Even so, the man was gaining. She didn’t see his partner, the driver. Had Bloch shot him? Christine decided it made no difference. One man with a gun was enough.

Her feet pounded the path along the water’s edge. On her left was a busy street, the far side lined with hotels and shops. On her right was the harbor, tour boats tied along a short pier, a passenger ferry unloading. Her lungs were heaving. Christine was in good shape — she jogged fifteen miles a week. But running for your life was different.

She heard the alternating wail of a siren in the distance. The police had to be speeding toward the café—but that was the one direction she couldn’t go. Nearing a congested crosswalk, Christine spun to avoid a collision with a woman on a bicycle. She’d just gotten back in stride when she saw something that brought her skidding to a stop. A hundred feet ahead — a car with its hood raised. A silver Audi. The second Mossad man was leaning into the engine compartment, but he was looking directly at her.

For the first time Christine felt a moment of panic. These were professionals like David. The car was perfectly positioned, and since it was illegally parked on the shoulder, the driver had raised the hood to feign a mechanical issue. It would work for a minute, maybe two, and that was all they needed. Probably right out of the Mossad field agent handbook. The big man was fifty feet away, skirting the street. He’d slowed to a quick walk and was panting with the grace of a bull.

Her head kept wheeling, left and right. No way out. They had the angles covered perfectly. All too late, Christine realized her mistake — by going to the waterfront she had boxed herself in, made their geometric problem that much easier. She could scream, call for help, but the police were busy elsewhere — shots fired, bodies in the street. And anyway, these two Mossad operatives would handle a hysterical woman as smoothly as they’d positioned their car on the curb with a raised hood.

They closed in, but didn’t show their weapons. There was no need. The three of them knew, and that was all that mattered. Christine turned toward the harbor. The water looked cold and uninviting. Then, amid the street noise and bustle of the city, she distinguished a singular sound. A low rumble. She looked down the short pier where tour boats were moored and saw a different kind of boat pushing clear of the dock. Thirty feet long, it was blunt and businesslike, perhaps a harbor master’s utility vessel. The deck was crowded with cables and winches and fifty-five-gallon drums. She saw a crewman on deck stowing a line. There had to be another in the wheelhouse. Black smoke coughed from the stern.

Christine broke into a sprint. She hit the wooden dock in stride and watched the boat accelerate, a cloud of diesel exhaust billowing in its wake. The deckhand disappeared into the cabin. Christine was twenty feet from the end of the dock. She kept running and didn’t look back — she knew the men were coming. The aft gunnel of the harbor boat was five feet from the dock and moving away. The engines rumbled higher as the skipper added power. Eight feet now? Ten? What did it matter?

At full sprint, Christine focused completely on two things: the last plank on the dock, and the thick, greasy rail of the boat. She never hesitated, hitting the last board like a long jumper taking flight. She soared over the void with arms outstretched and slammed into the side of the boat. On impact she bounced away, and Christine clawed out for a handhold. Her right hand found something and she clamped down for all she was worth, fingers and nails biting into a coarse mesh. She was hanging over the side, hips and legs dragging through the icy harbor, upper body wrapped to the steel hull. Her hand began to slip, and she groped with the other until she felt a second handful of thick hemp. A docking line. Christine reasserted her grip, then pulled and kicked and twisted until she got a leg up. Finally, she pulled herself up over the rail and collapsed to a wet steel deck.

Her ribs stung with pain. Doubled over, she stumbled amidships along the port side. There was no sign of the crew. The boat kept gaining speed, muscling through the water and building a stiff breeze over the deck. Christine collapsed, her back against the wheelhouse, and tried to catch her breath. Only then did she venture a look back. The two men were on the dock, talking and gesturing. One pulled out a phone. She closed her eyes and pushed back against the cabin, drawing her knees into her aching chest. Christine reached into her back pocket and pulled out her phone. It was soaking wet and the screen was cracked.

“No!”

Ignoring what Bloch had told her, she turned it on. Nothing happened — the shattered screen didn’t even flicker.

Her spirits crumbled. “Oh, David,” she murmured breathlessly. “Now what do I do?”

The two men on the pier were still watching, but getting smaller as the boat pulled away. Looking ahead, over the bowsprit of the boat and across the waterway, Christine saw a maze of city streets and seawalls. Beyond that, in the distance, the urban canals gave way to a more natural flow. Evergreen islands and winding channels. And just like that, the answer came.

Exactly as David had said it would.