Larry was watching him like a hawk. He saw him approach the car, speak to the driver, inexplicably walk around the rear instead of getting in from the sidewalk, and then open the door. He saw the sudden jerking movement as he leaped across the path of the bus, and knew that things were falling apart. He shouted to one of the three remaining watchers to get inside the theatre.
“She’s making a break! Get her!”
They ran inside and found their colleagues waiting in the lobby, uncertain what to do. But it seemed it was dawning on them that something was going wrong.
“She’s making a goddamn run!” one of the new arrivals shouted.
All three ran for the interior doors. They came up against the crude obstruction of the thick rubber hose jammed through the handles on the other side, and smashed their way through them, to be met by a flailing fire extinguisher that was shooting violently from side to side in the corridor and firing streams of foam.
Fifty pounds of reinforced steel spinning at high speed caught the edge of the wall, whirled away at higher speed still, and smashed into the ankle of the man in front. He collapsed howling, then fell to the floor clutching his ankle and shouting obscenities.
The other three didn’t stop, but ran on two sides down the aisles of the auditorium, two on one side, one on the other, and came up against the fire doors that flanked the screen.
“Jesus. What’s she got on the other side of this?” one shouted.
On the sidewalk, Larry shouted at the remaining two watchers, one to cross the street to the far side and hunt down Logan, the other to head in the opposite direction, up to the left of the theatre.
He himself stepped straight off the sidewalk in front of the waiting car and ran across the four lanes of the street, dodging cars, slipping once almost to his death in front of a truck that refused to brake, until he reached the far side. He would kill Logan if he found him now.
Anna caught her breath after running for three blocks. She saw a cab rank on the far side of the road, crossed the street quickly, and stepped into the darkness of the rear seat.
“The mail office on Fifty-fifth and Broadway,” she said, and the cab pulled out and headed uptown.
Her mind raced back over the years to her training at the Forest. Three or eleven, those were the Moscow Rules. When you had a dead drop, a number, you added either three or eleven to the number, and if neither of those came right, you began to count up from three towards eleven.
The box number Burt had chosen was 3079. Therefore Mikhail would place anything for her in 3090 or, in the event of that being incorrect, in 3082. He would work on Moscow Rules. He would know that’s how she would work.
If neither of those numbers were true, she would have to begin from 3083 and work upwards.
The cab reached the mail office in less than ten minutes. She gave the driver the fare and a twenty-dollar bill on top, and told him there’d be a hundred dollars if he waited for her. Before stepping out of the cab, she wrapped a scarf over her head and carried her coat rather than wearing it. Then she opened the door and, leaving the car behind her, walked into the mail office.
They would only have one watcher here, and not one of Burt’s regulars. Whoever it was would be watching 3079.
She stepped down a broad, brightly lit corridor, not looking ahead, only noting the numbers on the boxes at the sides. She began to slow when the numbers descended below 4000. Then she stopped purposefully by 3090 and rummaged in a pocket for a key. What she brought out was a small lock pick she’d made the day before in the apartment.
Fitting the bent piece of metal into the keyhole, she agitated it from side to side. It was just large enough, but not as good as it should be. She’d had to guess at the size of the locks. The box opened after nearly thirty seconds, too long, and she rummaged inside with her other hand, finding some mail, three letters. She looked at them, saw a name, the logo of the New York Electrical Company on the envelope, and pushed them back. The box was in use.
She locked the box and stepped over to 3082. Anyone watching her would probably make his move now. It might be seen as suspect to be opening two boxes.
She fitted the key again. It seemed to take an interminable length of time. She expected at any moment a shout, a hand on the shoulder, the click of a readied weapon. But the door finally opened unwillingly, and she reached inside to find a single sheet. She looked at it and knew it was from him. She wrote an X on the floor of the box and shut the door. Then she locked it again carefully.
Larry saw Logan weaving down a street that ran perpendicular to the four lanes they had crossed. He called into the radio to two of the others and gave them the location, ordering them to turn off Broadway and head west.
They would keep Logan flanked on either side, while he would stay on the target. Logan was around fifty yards ahead of him, moving fast, not looking back, only to the sides when he reached a street. He was running fast, and Larry ran after him in fury.
Then he saw Logan descend some subway steps into the subterranean depths of the Twenty-third Street station. Larry ran forward, simultaneously ordering the two watchers to pick up a cab each and wait for him for instructions. As he descended the steps two at a time, there was a call from the three watchers at the theatre.
“She’s away,” was all the man said.
“Fucking find her!” Larry shouted.
He saw Logan running now, towards the corridor that led to the downtown trains. He hurled himself after him, jumping the stile, and as he did so, he ordered the men in the two cabs somewhere above him to head downtown and wait at the exits from the Fourteenth and Eighth Street stations for further instructions.
Anna stepped back into the cab and gave the Mercer Hotel as her destination. She opened the folded paper again and read. There were four lines, each a place, a time, and a date. All were places she had never heard of, somewhere in New York—one main venue to aim for and three fallback meetings.
She memorised the information, and screwed the paper up in one hand as the cab turned into Mercer Street, where the hotel jutted out onto the sidewalk.
“Drive past it, please,” she instructed the driver. A hundred yards beyond the hotel, she told him to pull up. She gave him the fare and added a hundred-dollar bill.
Outside the cab, she watched the hotel entrance in the distance, then bent down and dropped the paper into a drain. She stood up and walked towards the hotel.
On the platform at Twenty-third Street, Larry caught sight of Logan at the far end as he stepped onto the train. He just had time himself to force a set of doors open to let him in.
If he’s getting in at the bottom of the train, he thought, then the station he’s disembarking from must have an exit at that end of the train. But it seemed unlikely that Logan would know that, unless this whole exercise had been planned long in advance—and it seemed improvised.
He began to make his way down the train. It was crowded, and he moved slowly. He’d travelled three, four cars by the time the train pulled in to the next station. He waited in the train, and when the door was clear of people getting out, he risked a look. Logan was just twenty yards away, walking down the platform. Larry withdrew.
“He’s getting out on Fourteenth Street,” he barked into the radio. “You have two minutes.”
Then he sat down with his back to the platform and almost felt Logan walking by behind him. Without glancing for more than a few seconds through the window, Larry watched the stairs at the end of the platform as the train pulled out. Logan was nowhere in the stream of people walking along or turning for the exit. Somewhere, he thought, Logan had moved back onto the train, and it must be within a few cars of where he was sitting.
He radioed again with orders to both watchers to move on to the next station, if Logan didn’t emerge.
At the Spring Street station, he saw Logan again, stepping out a second time, from two cars away, and heading with his back to Larry towards an exit. Larry stepped out. He was sure now.
“He’s coming out on Spring,” he said. “Hit him hard.”
He would stay behind Logan in case he made a run back.
