The Templar Salvation

Chapter 20

Mansour Zahed scanned the view from the van’s windshield with heightened concentration.

He was somewhat familiar with Istanbul, a city he’d visited on a number of occasions in the course of various assignments. But he didn’t know its road configuration that well, and he certainly didn’t know the narrow streets of the Phanar district well enough to know where he was going. He didn’t really care where he ended up. He’d gotten what he wanted from the library of the Patriarchate. All he needed to do now was put a reasonable buffer zone between him and the Orthodox compound while making sure he hadn’t been followed, then dump the van and grab a cab to join up with Steyl and their captive archaeologist.

He reached an intersection and turned right, heading toward the waterfront and the dual highway that snaked up and down the south bank of the Golden Horn. If he could make it onto it, he was home free. It was a major artery that he could comfortably ride to distance himself from Reilly and his posse. It had to be close to the water, he thought, the tension across his body starting to dissipate. No more than a handful of streets away.

The squeal of a car sliding around a corner brutally guillotined his reprieve.

He glanced in his mirror. A dark hatchback had skidded into view and was eating up the road behind him.

A glimpse of the driver was enough to tell him it was Reilly.

Madar jendeh, he swore under his breath as he mashed the gas pedal and tightened his grip on the wheel.

He reached a busy intersection, and punched the brake pedal before hitting the horn and barging through. He scrutinized his rearview mirror for a couple of tense heartbeats before he heard the long dopplery howl of a car horn and spotted the hatchback emerge from the chaos of the intersection and scurry after him like an angry terrier.

He stormed through a couple of more intersections, cutting past infuriated drivers and using the van’s bulk to bully them out of his way as if he were in a demolition derby, and managed to put a few cars between him and Reilly. He dove into another street just ahead of a big truck and motored away, keeping an eye on his side mirror to see how many car lengths he’d gained by the maneuver—and then disaster struck. He’d reached the on-ramp to the coastal road, a dual parkway that consisted of two separate two-lane roads, one heading north and the other south, that ran alongside each other in places and were far apart in others.

The problem was, the access road he was on was blocked by traffic.

He slammed on his brakes and scanned ahead. The road that the ramp was leading to, the one heading north, was totally swamped. Frustratingly, the one heading south was clear, but he couldn’t get on it, not with cars and trucks now backed up behind him and two-foot aluminum barriers on either side.

He was boxed in.

Worse, he glanced in his mirror and, about seven car lengths back, spotted a burgundy-colored car door swinging open and Reilly bursting out.

He grimaced, impressed and angered in equal measure by the agent’s relentlessness, and lunged out of the van.

He sprinted down the access road, clambered over one of the barriers, and cut across a parched grassland to reach the main road. He glanced back and saw Reilly rushing after him, and thought about pulling out his gun and taking a shot, then decided against it. Instead, he kept moving, snaking through the stalled cars, hurdling over another barrier, and tearing across another bit of grassland, then over a farther barrier to reach the south parkway that was flowing with cars.

He looked back. Reilly was closing in. He turned and sized up the oncoming cars. He spotted a white sedan with a single occupant coming toward him, and stepped into the middle of the road, his hands held out high and wide, waving them as if calling out for help. He calculated that the priest’s cassock he was wearing would help—which it did, as the car slowed right down and pulled in close to the barrier. A couple of cars behind it slid to a halt, tires and horns shrieking. Zahed ignored them. He just approached the driver with a sheepish, friendly look on his face. The driver, a slight, balding man, started to open his window. It had barely slid down a few inches when Zahed’s hand darted in and wrenched the door open, then he reached in and released the hapless driver’s seat belt, grabbed him, and yanked him out of his car in one ferocious move. He flung him onto the asphalt as if he were unloading a duffel bag, sending him tumbling across the lane divider and causing an oncoming truck to swerve away to avoid flattening him. Zahed didn’t notice. He was already behind the wheel of the human skittle’s Ford Mondeo and streaking away down the open road.

REILLY LEAPT OVER THE LAST BARRIER and reached the commotion on the main road with the tailgate of Zahed’s stolen car barely still in view. Gasping for breath, he saw the stunned bald man talking animatedly with the drivers of a couple of cars that had stopped. They were blocking one of the lanes and causing a ripple effect of irate shouts and horns behind them.

Can’t let him get away. Not again.

He rushed up to the men, pointing at the lead car with manic urgency. “Is this your car?” he asked one of the men. “Is this yours?”

The bald man and one of the others eyed him suspiciously and took a step back, shaking their heads to indicate that it wasn’t, but the third, a strong-boned man with a thick neck and craggy, leathery skin, stood his ground and started spitting out a tirade of angry words in Turkish while waving his hands defiantly.

I don’t have time for this.

Reilly shrugged, reached behind his back, and pulled out his handgun. He held it up, his other arm also raised, the gun and his palm facing the man appeasingly.

“Calm down, will you?” Reilly ordered them. “You want this guy to get away? Is that what you want?”

The bald man looked like he was about to say something, but the hot-headed bruiser wasn’t impressed. He resumed his tirade, clearly berating Reilly and back-slapping the air to show he wasn’t impressed by the artillery.

Screw this, Reilly frowned as he brought the gun down and fired three shots at the ground by the man’s feet. The man leapt back like he’d just stepped on a snake. “Your keys,” Reilly shouted, pointing at the car again and shoving the heated muzzle into Mongo’s face. “Give me your goddamn car keys, you understand me?”

The big guy’s face crinkled with confusion, then he held out his hand with the car keys in it. Reilly snatched them from him and spat out a grudging “Thank you” as he darted over to the car, a station wagon of nondescript provenance. He slid behind the wheel, avoided gagging from the stench of a mound of stale cigarette butts that clogged an ashtray in the dashboard, and tore off in pursuit of his target.

The first mile or so flew by with barely any other cars to overtake as a result of the choke point Reilly had left behind. He spotted a white dot in the far distance, and the sight energized him further, though there wasn’t much more he could wrangle out of the car’s engine. He was blowing past an old, overloaded bus when a ring from the inside of his jacket startled him. While he kept one hand gripped on the wheel, his other dove into his pocket and fished the BlackBerry out.

Nick Aparo’s ebullient voice boomed down his ear canal, as clear as if he were calling from another car beside him and not from Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan. “Hey, what’s going on? Your European vacation getting any better yet, Clark?”

Some vague connection to an old Chevy Chase movie flashed across Reilly’s frazzled mind, but he was too focused on reeling in the white tailgate for it to register.

“I can’t talk now,” he said, breathless, his eyes locked dead ahead.

“You’ll want to hear this, Clarkie,” Aparo insisted, still oblivious to what his partner was going through. “It’s about your mystery man. We got a hit.”