ceiling. She realized she wasn’t wearing a seat belt.
Closing in again.
Two-two-three-XK…
He swerved left, and it took her a split second to understand that he was taking a hairpin curve in the road.
She spun the wheel, too late.
The road switched hard to the left, and then there was no road, only a tangle of brambly weeds that scraped the hood and windshield, clawing at her through the open windows as she stood with both feet on the brake pedal.
The car shuddered to a stop a hundred feet off the road, on a gentle downward slope that became a precipice not more than fifty yards farther ahead.
There was no hurry now. Mobius was gone in the night. She took her time easing the sedan into reverse, backing and filling until she found the tracks made by her own tires and was able to slowly climb the hill and regain the road. Layers of foliage brushed the car, clinging briefly and pulling free, leaving twigs and briers and leaves behind. Her hair was full of the stuff.
Once on the road, she made a U-turn. The sedan was making a variety of unsettling noises, several warning lights were glowing on the dash, and the left front tire seemed to be going flat. Even so, she made it back to Dodge’s house.
A brief stagger brought her to his front door, still open as she’d left it.
She entered, turned on the lights, found a phone. She had Andrus’s number on speed-dial on her fried cell phone, but she couldn’t remember it offhand, so she called the field office’s switchboard. Larkin answered.
'It’s McCallum,' she said. 'I just had a run-in with Mobius.'
'You’re kidding me.'
She ignored this. 'And I got his plate number.'
'Tess, if this is some kind of gag-'
'It’s no joke, Peter. I’m goddamn serious. I need you to run a trace on Mobius’s license plate. Right now.'
She recited the plate number, which she’d memorized just before losing the coupe on the switchback curve.
'I’m putting it through,' Larkin said. 'Christ, what the hell happened?'
'He killed a cop. Tried to kill me. I didn’t get a look at him, but I know what he’s driving. Blue Camaro or Firebird, late model. Of course, the plate could’ve been taken off another vehicle-'
'It wasn’t.'
'Results came back?'
'They sure did, and the plate goes with a late-model Firebird belonging to…God damn it.'
'What?'
'Looks like we all screwed up.'
'What does that mean?'
'We had him in our hands, and we let him walk. Let him walk right out.'
She sank down slowly on her knees, still holding the telephone handset. 'Who is it?' she whispered. But she already knew-even though it couldn’t be.
She’d looked into his eyes, right into his eyes, and there had been nothing.
Nothing at all.
He couldn’t have fooled her so completely. Couldn’t have.
But he had.
'It’s Hayde,' Larkin was saying. 'Our friend from the interrogation last night-Mr. William Hayde.'
PART THREE
36
Mobius, underground.
He felt curiously at home here, in the subterranean deeps, one hundred feet below the city pavement. He liked the sense of entombment, of burial. He had died once, sinking into the bloody water, a shout of bubbles pouring from his mouth, and he had never really returned to life. It was appropriate that in his simulacrum of living he should find himself interred.
He waited, doing his best to attract no attention. Surveillance cameras were mounted around the station, and later the tapes were sure to be scrutinized, even digitally enhanced. The platform was brightly lit by banks of overhead lights, and he had to assume that the video would be of good quality.
To conceal his features, he was wearing a baseball cap and an oversize bomber jacket with the flaps turned up. On tape he would be a meaningless, unidentifiable smudge.
He glanced around at the other people gathered on the subway platform of the Hollywood/Highland station, waiting for the next northbound Metro Red Line train. Ridership was high on a Saturday night, and on the return trip-the run south into Hollywood from Universal City-there would be even more people, families returning from movies, couples finishing their dates.
There would be many people to kill on the southbound train.
'We’re putting out an alert,' Larkin said. 'Trouble is, he could be anywhere.'
'Maybe not.' Tess was thinking hard. 'Michaelson told you to check Hayde’s background. Did you?'
'Sure. He told us the truth. Used to live in Colorado Springs. Moved here to-'
'Work on the Metro.'
'Shit.'
'It’s an ideal environment for a chemical attack. Sealed off from the outside, lots of people, public access…'
'I’ll tell LAPD to focus on the Metro stations. Call you back.'
Larkin ended the call, and Tess stood there with the phone in her hand, still thinking.
She was right about this. She was certain of it. Not only was the Metro a logical target, but it was something Hayde was familiar with, something that had a personal association for him.
And for Mobius, she knew, it was always personal.
At 10:15 the train pulled into the station, six heavy-rail cars bearing the logo of a red M. Each car was seventy-five feet long and had a maximum capacity of 169 riders. One thousand passengers, more or less. It was crowded now, and on the return leg it would be full.
Mobius boarded with the others, choosing the central car, grabbing one of the few empty seats. He sat there with a paper bag on his lap, looking like any ordinary man.
The train started moving, and the dim walls of the Red Line tunnel blurred past. Other parts of the subway system had been drilled through loose sediment, but the segment from Hollywood to the San Fernando Valley penetrated solid rock.
In the seventeen-mile network of subway tunnels, the Hollywood/Highland station was the westernmost point on the south side of the Hollywood Hills. From that station, the Metro Red Line proceeded northwest through the mountains toward its next stop, Universal City, a trip of a little more than two miles that would be covered in about four minutes.
The train accelerated, hitting its top speed of seventy miles per hour. Mobius and his fellow passengers were deep under the mountains now. At certain points in the trip the train would be nine hundred feet below the surface.
Nine hundred feet was not quite deep enough for Hell, but for the riders on the southbound train, it would be close enough.
Casually he reached into the brown paper bag and removed the device.
It would attract no attention even if someone looked his way. He had wrapped it in aluminum foil to resemble
