The Whole Truth

CHAPTER 68

THE TAXI TURNED ONTO THE ROAD and Shaw scanned the street. His gaze caught and held on Katie. Her look of terror was clear. She was running. He caught sight of one of the men behind her. But there would be more than one.

And then it happened. Shaw saw a glint of sunlight reflect off the object in the man’s hand. He jumped from the rolling cab and sprinted forward.

Katie and the man were inches away from each other. He drew back the syringe and then swung it forward, aiming for her belly.

Katie gasped as the fellow in front of her was knocked aside by a far larger man. She felt something slide across her arm. She looked down and saw the needle as it missed going into her by a bare inch. Then she watched as Shaw grabbed the man’s hand, bent it forward, and buried the needle to the hilt in the man’s chest, the plunger pushed all the way down. The man looked in horror at the thing sticking out of him, pushed Shaw away, got to his feet, and ran down the street. His lips were already starting to grow numb as the drug began its lethal journey through him. Caesar had not opted for ricin, the poison fired into Bulgarian Georgi Markov’s leg using a spring-loaded umbrella. What had entered the man’s body was a massive dose of tetrodotoxin, a substance over a thousand times more lethal than cyanide and for which there was no antidote.

He would be dead in twenty minutes.

Shaw grabbed Katie by the arm and they sprinted to Euston Station, jumped on the Tube, rode it to King’s Cross, ran back to daylight, and grabbed a cab. Shaw told the man to simply drive and then looked over at Katie.

She hadn’t said one word to him, not while running and not in the Tube. A terrible thought seemed to grip him. “The syringe, it didn’t…?”

She put a shaky hand on his arm. “No, it didn’t. Thanks to you. How did you know?”

“More luck than anything else.” He sat back against the seat.

“That was the third party back there, wasn’t it?”

He nodded. “That was the third party.”

She glanced out the window as the cab struggled along in London traffic. The afternoon was quickly turning to dusk. “Where are we going?”

He didn’t say anything.

“Shaw?”

“I heard you. I just don’t have an answer.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you about Lesnik.”

“So am I,” he said bluntly.

“I shouldn’t have written the story.”

“No, you shouldn’t.”

“We’re screwed, aren’t we?”

“Looks that way. And I told you not to leave where you were staying.”

“They were in the building. I had to run.”

“How’d you get out?”

“I-” Katie stopped. She did not want to tell him that she’d jumped from a window and managed to survive. Unlike Anna. “Through the back. Do you have some sort of plan?”

“I have a goal. To stay alive. The plan is still coming.”

“It’s clear now that Lesnik was working for this third party. They killed him and tried to kill me. For all I know they somehow got the Scribe to hire me and then dropped Lesnik in my lap. I knew it was too good to be true. Damn it!” Katie slapped the seat.

“Did Lesnik say anything that might give us a lead on who hired him?”

She shook her head. “Nothing. I checked out his background. That was legit. He seemed like a sincere guy. His father was killed by the Soviets. He probably held a grudge and these people exploited it.”

“But that gets us no closer to the truth.”

“We need to go underground to have any chance of finding out what’s really going on.” She looked at him. “Know anyone who can help with that?”

Shaw already had his phone out. “I might.”