'To mislead them?'
'You've.got it.
,'sooner or later they'll smell a trick.
'Yes, they will. Eventually. But for a few weeksg maybe even for a few
months, they'll be after Harzis There wouldn't be any chance whatsoever
that they follow a good lead, one that might bring them to us.'
'A classic red herring.
'ecisely.'
'It'll give us time.
'Yes.'
'To do everything we want.
'Nearly everything.' The plan was ruined.
The clairvoyant was too damned hard to kill.
the lift slid apart.
Bollinger tripped coming out of the elevator. The pistol flew out of his
hand, clattered against the wall.
He got to his knees and wiped the sweat out of his eyes.
He said, 'Billy?'
But he was alone.
Coughing, sniffling, he crawled to the pistol, clutched it in his right
hand and stood up.
He went into the dark hall, to the door of an office that would have a
view of Lexington.
Because he was worried about running out of ammunition, he used only one
shot on the door. He aimed carefully. The boom! echoed and reechoed
in the corridor. The lock was damaged, but it wouldn't release
altogether. The door rattled in its frame. Rather than use another
bullet, he put his shoulder to the panel, vressed until it gave inward.
By the time he reached the Lexington Avenue windows, Harris and the
woman had passed him. They were two floors below.
He returned to the elevator. He was going to have to go outside and
confront them when they reached the street. He pushed the button for
the ground floor.
Braced against the eighth-floor windows, they agreed to cover the final
hundred and twenty feet in two equal rappels, using the fourth-floor
window posts as their last anchor points.
At the fourth level, Graham smashed in both rectangular panes. He
snapped a carabiner to the post, hooked, his safety tether to the
carabiner, and jerked involuntarily as a bullet slapped the stone a foot
to the right of his head.
He knew at once what had happened. He t-slightly and looked down.
Bollinger, in shirt sleeves and looking harried, stood on the
snow-shrouded sidewalk, sixty feet below.
Motioning to Connie, Graham shouted, 'Go in! Get inside! Through the
window!'
Bollinger fired again.
A burst ollight, pain, blood.- a bullet in the back....
Is this where it happens? he wondered.
Desperately, Graham used his gloved fist to punch out the shards of
glass that remained in the window frame. He grabbed the center post and
