Call After Midnight (15 page)

One of the agents was silhouetted against the tinted
window. As they walked past, she glanced through the windshield; there was absolutely no movement inside the car. Nick noticed it, too. He paused and tapped on the window. The agent didn't move, didn't speak. Was he sleeping? It was hard to tell through the dark glass.

“Nick?” she whispered. “Is something wrong with him?”

“Keep moving,” he said softly, nudging her toward the M.G. “I want you to get inside the car.” Calmly he unlocked her door. “Get inside and stay there.”

“Nick—”

He was cautiously approaching the Ford. Burning curiosity drew her to follow him; she stood right behind him on the sidewalk as slowly, carefully, he took hold of the passenger door. The agent still hadn't moved. Nick hesitated only a second, then jerked the door open.

The agent's shoulder slumped sideways. A face slid past the window, a face with wide, staring eyes. An arm flopped out of the car and dangled into the street. Nick reeled away in horror as bright red droplets spattered the sidewalk.

S
ARAH SCREAMED
. I
N THE NEXT INSTANT
, gunfire spat out the windows of the Ford, sending both Nick and Sarah diving for cover. Nick's body landed squarely on hers as they hit the concrete. She couldn't move. She couldn't even speak; all the breath had been slammed out of her by the impact.

Nick rolled aside and shoved her forward. “The car— get in!” he barked.

His harsh command jarred her into action. Like a terrified animal, she scrambled into the M.G. Gunfire shattered store windows, and all around them, people were screaming. Nick dove in behind Sarah, crawling over her and landing in a heap under the steering wheel. His keys were already out as he slid onto the seat.

The engine roared to life. Sarah struggled to close her door, but Nick yelled, “Get down! Get the hell down!” She sank to the floor.

Blindly he sent the car in reverse. It thudded into the Ford. Nick shifted to first, jammed the wheel to the right, and floored the gas pedal. They jerked forward. Sarah was thrown back helplessly against the seat. The car swerved wildly into the street. They were hurtling aimlessly, toward an inevitable collision. She braced herself.

But the crash never came. There was only the rumble of the engine and Nick's coarse oath as he shifted into third gear.

“Close your door!” he ordered.

She looked over at him. He had both hands on the steering wheel and his eyes on the road. They were safe. Nick was in control. Outside, the narrow streets of Margate hurtled by.

She tugged the door shut. “Why are they trying to kill us?”

“Good question!” A lorry appeared from nowhere. Nick swerved aside. From behind came the screech of tires and the other driver's angry shout.

“That agent—”

“His throat was slit.”

“Oh, God….”

A sign marked Westgate loomed ahead. Nick shifted into fourth. They had left Margate behind them. Empty fields now whipped past the windows.

“But who, Nick? Who's trying to kill us?”

Nick shot a glance in the rearview mirror. “Let's hope we're not about to find out.”

She snapped her head around in horror. A blue Peugeot was closing in fast. She caught only a glimpse of the driver, a flash of reflective sunglasses.

“Hold on,” said Nick. “We're going for a ride….” He floored the pedal, and the M.G. cut recklessly through traffic. The Peugeot shot off after them. It was a larger, clumsier car; it pulled into the wrong lane and almost clipped a van. The error cost it a split second of speed; the Peugeot fell behind. But traffic was getting thin. On the open stretch, there'd be no contest. The Peugeot was too fast.

“I can't lose him, Sarah!”

She heard the desperation in his voice. They were doomed, and there was nothing he could do about it.
It's all my fault,
she thought,
all my fault that Nick's going to die.

“Put on your seat belt,” he instructed. “We've run out of options.”

Out of options. A nice way of saying they'd reached the end. She watched as the Peugeot hurtled relentlessly toward them. Through the windshield she saw the driver, a glare of sunlight on his silvered glasses. There was something monstrous, something inhuman, about a man whose eyes you couldn't see.

She buckled the seat belt and glanced at Nick. His profile was hard and cool, his gaze fixed ahead on the road. He was too busy to look terrified. Only his hands betrayed him. His knuckles were white.

The road forked. To the left a sign pointed to Canterbury. Nick veered left, throwing her hard against the seat belt. The Peugeot almost missed the turnoff. It skidded onto the shoulder, then zoomed after them onto the Canterbury highway.

Nick's voice, low and steady, penetrated the cloud of fear that had formed in her brain. “The bullets'll be flying any second. Get your head down. I'll keep us on the road as long as I can. If we crack up, get out and run like hell. The gas tank could blow.”

“I won't leave you!”

“Yes, you will.”

“No, Nick!”

“Dammit!”
he shouted.
“Just do what I say!”

The Peugeot was right behind them, so close Sarah could see the driver's teeth, bared in a smile. “Why aren't they shooting?” she cried. “They're close enough to hit us!”

The Peugeot nudged their back bumper. Sarah clung to the door as Nick jammed the wheel right, then left. The Peugeot skidded and fell behind a few yards.

“That's why,” Nick answered. “They want to run us off the road.”

Again there was a thump, this time against the left bumper. Nick swerved again. The Peugeot roared up beside
them. The cars were neck and neck. Paralyzed by terror, Sarah found herself staring through the window at the face of a killer. His blond hair—so pale it was almost white—fell jaggedly above the mirrored sunglasses. His cheeks were sunken, his skin was dull as wax. He was grinning at her.

Only vaguely did her mind register the obstacle ahead. She was hypnotized by the man's face, by the death's-head grin. Then she heard Nick's sharp intake of breath. Her eyes snapped ahead to the curve, to the car stalled in the road.

Nick spun the wheel right, flinging them into a lane of oncoming traffic. Tires shrieked. They pitched wildly out of control as cars swerved to avoid them. Green fields spun past Sarah's eyes, and then she focused on Nick's hands as he fought the steering wheel. She scarcely registered the metallic thud, the shattering of glass, somewhere behind them.

Then the world came abruptly to a halt. They found themselves staring wide-eyed at a field of astonished cows. Sarah's heart began to beat again. Only then did she remember to take another breath. In that same instant, Nick hit the gas pedal and turned the M.G. back onto the highway.

“That'll slow 'em down,” he said. His understatement struck her as somehow hilarious.

She looked back. The Peugeot was lying on its side in the field. Standing in the mud beside it was the blond driver, the man with the death's-head grin. Even from that distance, she could see the fury in his face. Then he and the Peugeot shrank into the distance and vanished.

“You okay?” asked Nick.

“Yes. Yes…” She tried to swallow but her mouth felt drier than sand.

Nick grunted. “One thing's obvious. You sure as hell can't go off alone.”

Alone? The very thought terrified her. No, she didn't want to be alone. Never again! But how much could she count on Nick? He was no soldier; he was a diplomat, a man behind a desk. Right now he was operating on pure instinct, not training. Yet he was all that stood between her and a killer.

The road forked again. Canterbury and London lay to the west. Nick turned east, onto the road marked Dover.

“What are you doing?” asked Sarah, turning in dismay as they bypassed the London exit.

“We're not going to London,” he said.

“But we need help—”

“We
had
help. Didn't do us a lot of good, did it? So much for protective surveillance.”

“London will be safer!”

He shook his head. “No, it won't. They'll be waiting for us there. This whole fiasco proves we can't count on our own people. Maybe they're just incompetent. Maybe it's something worse….”

Something worse? Did he mean betrayal? She thought the nightmare was over, that they'd simply knock on the embassy door in London and be swept into the protective arms of the CIA. She'd never considered the possibility that the very people she trusted would want her dead. It didn't make sense!

“The CIA wouldn't kill its own man!” she pointed out. “Maybe not the Company itself. But someone inside. Someone with other connections.”

“What if you're wrong?”

“Dammit, think about it! The agent didn't just sit back while someone cut his throat! He was taken by surprise. By
someone he knew, someone he trusted. There's got to be an insider involved. Someone who wants us out of the way.”

“But I don't know anything!”

“Maybe you do. Maybe you just don't realize it.”

She shook her head frantically. “No, this is crazy.
It's crazy!
Nick, I'm just an average woman. I go to work, I go shopping, I cook dinner—I'm not a spy! I'm not like— like Eve….”

“Then it's time we started thinking like her. Both of us. I'm new to this game, too. And it looks like I'm in just as deep.”

“We could fly home—to Washington—”

“You really think it's safer there?”

No, she thought with mounting despair. He was right. Home would be no safer. They had nowhere to run.

“Then where do we go?” she asked desperately.

He glanced at his watch. “It's twelve o'clock,” he said. “We'll ditch the car and get the Hovercraft in Dover. It'll be a quick ride to Calais. We'll take the train to Brussels. And then you and I are going to vanish. For a while, at least.”

She stared numbly at the road.
A while?
she wondered.
How long is a while? Forever? Will I be like Eve, always running, always looking over my shoulder?

Just an hour ago, on the cliffs of Margate, it had been so clear what she needed to do—she had to find Geoffrey and get to the truth of her marriage. Now it was down to something more elemental, a goal so stark that nothing else mattered.

She had to stay alive.

She'd think about Geoffrey later. She'd take the time to wonder where he was and how she'd find him. She
had
to find him; he was the only one who had the answers. But now she couldn't look that far ahead.

She saw how tightly Nick gripped the steering wheel.
He was afraid, too. That was what terrified her most—the fact that even Nick O'Hara was afraid.

“I guess I have to trust you,” she said.

“It looks that way.”

“Who else can we trust, Nick?”

He looked at her. The answer he gave had an awful ring of finality. “No one.”

* * *

R
OY
P
OTTER GRABBED
the receiver on the first ring. What he heard next made him hit the recording button. Through the crackle of a trans-Channel connection came the voice of Nick O'Hara. “I've got one thing to say.”

“O'Hara?” shouted Potter. “Where the hell—”

“We're dropping out, Potter. Stay off our tails.”

“You can't go off in the cold! O'Hara, listen! You need us!”

“Like hell.”

“You think you're gonna stay alive out there without our help?”

“Yeah. I do. And you listen good, Potter. Take a close hard look at your people. Because something's rotten in the State of Denmark. And if I find out you're responsible, I'm going to see they nail your ass to the wall.”

“Wait, O'Hara—”

The line went dead. Muttering a curse, Potter hung up. Then he looked reluctantly across the desk at Jonathan Van Dam. “They're alive,” he said.

“Where are they?”

“He wouldn't say. We're tracing the call right now.”

“Are they coming in?”

“No. They're going under.”

Van Dam leaned across the desk. “I want them, Mr. Potter. I want them soon. Before someone else gets to them.”

“Sir, he's afraid. He doesn't trust us—”

“I'm not surprised, considering this latest foul-up. Find them!”

Potter grabbed the phone, silently hurling every oath he knew at Nick O'Hara. This was all his fault. “Tarasoff?” he barked. “Did you get that number?… What the hell does that mean,
somewhere
in Brussels? I already know he's in Brussels! I want the damned address!” He slammed the receiver down.

“Simple surveillance,” said Van Dam. “That was your plan, wasn't it? So what happened?”

“I had two good agents on the Fontaine woman. I don't know what went wrong. One of my men's still missing, and the other's in the morgue—”

“I can't be bothered with dead agents. I want Sarah Fontaine. What about those train stations and airports?”

“The Brussels office is already on it. I'm flying out tonight. There's been activity in their bank accounts—big withdrawals. Looks as if they plan to stay under a long time.”

“Watch those accounts. Circulate their photographs. To local police, Interpol, everyone who'll cooperate. Don't arrest her, just locate her. And we need a psychological profile on O'Hara. I want to know that man's motives.”

“O'Hara?” Potter snorted. “I can tell you all you need to know.”

“What do you think the man'll do next?”

“He's new to the game. Wouldn't know the ropes of picking up a new identity. But he speaks fluent French. He could move around Belgium without raising an eyebrow. And he's smart. We might have trouble.”

“What about the woman? Could she blend in as well?”