Locked On

right. A quick glance in a traffic mirror on a blind street corner showed him that one of his followers had dropped out of the hunt, but the other had closed even more. This man was not fifteen yards behind him now. Picking his way through the pedestrians, John began to worry. There were two men who could right now be moving into position ahead of him, ready to try to snag him at the very next corner. He liked his chances in any one-on-one encounter, but the proximity of civilians and cops could easily allow any situation to grow unmanageable.

Clark picked up his pace, found himself passing a beer museum and a covered courtyard full of singing Germans, and he turned again to the right, moving now along the bank of the river. He thought about stopping, turning, and confronting the man who had closed to within thirty feet, there was no way this guy was going to take Clark in on his own, but any altercation in front of a crowd would just about ensure that someone would notice him, recognize him, and call for the police. The man behind him was threatening suddenly with his overt proximity, his unknown intentions, and his power to draw unwanted attention to the American fugitive.

John turned right again at Fischmarkt, away from the crowds and into a dimly lit alley.

There was a quick left in front of it. Also dark and quiet. The sign said “Auf dem Rothenberg” and John picked up the pace as he made the turn.

The second man, the one who had dropped off surveillance, stood in front of him in the dark. A pistol was low in his right hand. “Monsieur Clark, please come quietly so that you do not get hurt.”

John stopped, twenty feet from the man with the gun. He heard the man behind him stop in the alley, as well.

The American nodded, took one step forward, then spun on his shoes and ran through the back door of a pizza parlor, leaving his pursuers in the alleyway.

John was not fast. Speed, he knew, was a young man’s game. But he leveraged his years in the field with each and eve

In the street in front of the pizza shop he did not turn either left or right. Instead he crossed the street in a sprint and ran into the open door of a post — World War Two apartment building. He was not sure if the chasers had seen him enter, but he ran up the stairs in the entryway, taking the steps three at a time, wheezing and grunting with the effort.

The building was four stories tall, and it was connected to other buildings on either side. Clark thought about going all the way to the roof and trying to put space between himself and those chasing him by moving along the tops of the other buildings, just like he and his mates had done in Paris. But when he got to the third floor, he heard noise above, a large group in the stairwell on the fourth floor, heading his way. They sounded like they may have been just a group of young people on their way to a night on the town or a party; by their high voices and laughter they did not sound like a snatch team from the FBI. But Clark was alone now, and he did not want to rush into a group of people who could ID him or tell the men on his tail which way he was heading.

Clark left the stairwell, ran up a hallway, and saw a window at the far end. Outside, under dim electric lights, he could see a fire escape. He charged to the window, half exhausted and nearly out of breath, and pulled it open.

In seconds he was back out in the rain. The fire escape rattled and creaked with his movements, but it seemed like it would hold for his descent of the flights to the alleyway. He had just turned away from the window, grabbed the railing to head to the first set of rickety stairs down, when a man appeared coming up. Clark hadn’t heard him climbing with all the noise Clark himself had made coming out of the window onto the fire escape.

“No!” John exclaimed as the man, the same man he had seen watching him in the train station at the ticket kiosk, drew a silver automatic pistol and tried to level it at his prey. But the men were too close to each other on the steep and wet iron steps, and Clark kicked the gun out of the lower man’s hand. The weapon flew over the side of the fire escape and the man slipped back, down two steps to the landing just a few feet below Clark.

The two men stared at each other silently for a second. John had his gun on his hip, but he did not go for it. He was not going to shoot an FBI agent or a French detective or a CIA officer or a German cop. Whoever this man was, Clark had no plans to kill him.

But when the man reached inside his raincoat, Clark launched down toward him. He had to close the distance before another weapon came out.

Luc Patin spooked when Clark knocked his weapon away. He reached for a knife he kept in a scabbard on a neck chain under his shirt. He tore the blade free and slashed through the air at the American.

John saw the motion, brought his arm up and knocked away the blow, but took a slashing cut to the back of his hand. He cried out in pain, then he fired out his right hand, palm up and out, and he connected under the chin of the French private detective.

Luc Patin’s head snapped back with the punch to the jaw, and he reelee cd backward and then slipped, his hips hitting the low railing behind him hard, and he tumbled backward off the fire escape. His feet flew into the air as he fell. Clark leapt forward to catch his attacker by his coat, but the rain shower and the slick blood on his left hand caused him to lose hold as soon as he grabbed it, and the Frenchman fell three stories down to the cobblestones.

His head hit with a sound like a baseball bat striking a melon.

Fuck, thought Clark, he had not meant to kill him, but he would have to worry about that later. Now he stumbled off the fire escape at the second floor by forcing open a thick wooden door to a kitchen apartment. He found a roll of paper towels, wrapped his hand in them as he stepped back into the hallway, and then raced downstairs and back out onto the street.

Three minutes later, he walked past the entrance to a subway, and then he hurried back to it. As he headed down the stairs he chanced a glance behind. He saw two pursuers, men in raincoats running together through the rain across an intersection twenty-five meters behind. A Peugeot swerved and honked in their wake. It did not appear to Clark that the men had spotted him, but it did appear that they’d gotten word that their colleague was dead.

John bought a ticket and rushed to the platform of the next train. He held his breath to keep from hyperventilating. Play cool, stay calm. He stood near the edge by the track, waiting with a dozen others for the next train.

John could not believe his luck. Somehow he had managed to make it down the steps without being seen by his pursuers, and as he struggled to fill his aching lungs with oxygen, he checked again to make sure he had not been followed. No. He could get on a train to anywhere and then make his way to safety.

Well, relative safety.

He felt the cool breeze from the tunnel on his left indicating the impending arrival of the train. He stepped to the edge of the platform so he could be the first one through the doors. A final check to the stairs on his left. Clear. He absentmindedly looked over his right shoulder as the train came out of the tunnel on his left.

They were there. Two men. New guys, but definitely from the same crew. They approached him with hard faces.

He knew he had made it easy for them. On the edge of the track, they needed only a little shove and he would be gone. If they weren’t planning on killing him before, he had little doubt that the death of their colleague would change their mission, no matter their original orders.