LONDON
The Comfort Inn at O’Hare was a dump. The room sported a queen bed with a fuchsia-and-lavender floral bedspread and a pair of greenish-brown armchairs in front of cream blackout curtains. Stephanie had ordered up a cot for Sophie but it had never come. The kids were watching TV while Stephanie scanned the internet for information on phosphorus.
P33 was the name of the isotope Simon had found. It was also the name of a state road called Jaunpiebalga in Latvia. That seemed like a stretch. There was no free-occurring phosphorus anywhere, too reactive. It was used in explosives. Could she be on the completely wrong track? She glanced at her children laughing on the bed at something in the show they were watching. They hadn’t questioned anything when she’d told them they were leaving for spring break early. They had dutifully given their fake names to the TSA guy at the airport. She’d only told them she didn’t want to be bothered and they’d nodded solemnly and done what she asked. It was a game. Spy versus spy.
Phosphorus was discovered by Hennig Brand in Hamburg, Germany. That was promising.
* * *
She wrote Hamburg on the Comfort Inn pad. Commercial phosphorus is derived from apatite. The homonym would have appealed to Jordan. She scribbled it down. Apatite is mined in China, Russia, Morocco, Florida, Idaho, Tennessee and Utah. An area in Central Florida called Bone Valley is the largest producer. She added Bone Valley to her list and sat back with a sigh.
“Momma, look!” Haden cried suddenly. “Uncle Alex is on TV.” Stephanie froze.
Alex’s mug shot was in a box in the upper left corner of the screen. The reporter was standing outside his father’s house in Concord. The front door was blocked off with yellow police tape and uniformed officers were swarming like ants in the background. He’d killed them both. Massive manhunt. Police were confident they’d make the arrest within hours.
* * *
The pain in Jordan’s belly was unrelenting. It eclipsed for the moment the dozens of other pains that clamored for his attention. He felt weak and his belly was distended. It occurred to him he could be simply starving. He didn’t recognize his own reflection in shop windows. His face was gaunt and his hair and beard were wild and matted. People on the street gave him a wide berth and avoided making eye contact.
He found a treasure trove in the trash behind an off-license in Bromley. A cardboard box full of wrapped Cornish pasties. Their sell-by date had come and gone, but when he opened one it smelled okay. He wolfed it down, filling his pockets with several more. The dense meat pie felt heavy in his stomach but the needle-sharp pain retreated. He felt new energy as he studied the posted bus map. He was close.
Karmic payback, he thought. A lifetime ago when he and Alex had just opened the lab on Dunster Street, they used to toss the leftover donuts from their Friday morning meetings in the trash behind the building. Alex would always argue for a reduced order but Jordan would insist on the full double dozen, saying, “The bums gotta eat, too.”
He crossed the Thames at Tower Bridge. Tourists scattered as he passed the Tower of London and a Fabergé football of an office building called the Gherkin. The sun set as he turned from Great Eastern onto Curtain Road. A few blocks up he passed the Hoxton Pony and crossed Old Street. He was there.
There was a single security camera over the outer door. Jordan sat on the steps of the building across and down the street. The sun set at 7:44 p.m. In three hours no one went in or out. Foot traffic on the street was light. A lone woman with a small boxer wove delicately up the block. The dog came over to sniff at Jordan but his owner, a proper, fashionably dressed matron, tugged him back with a sharp jerk on the leash and crossed the street.
Jordan shook his head. He’d come this far and had no plan for the last twenty feet. He could hardly stroll across the street and ring the buzzer. Jordan watched couples return home, flushed from a night on the town, voices a little too loud and confident. And later still, single people returned, most with a hunch of disappointment in their unsteady carriage. The streetlights cast long shadows and he hugged himself against the chill. He opened another meat pie but this one smelled decidedly off.
By three it sounded like the city had finally downed its last blowsy nightcap and stumbled off to bed. Except for the low drone of distant motorway traffic, the urban version of cosmic background radiation, it was utterly still. He heard a lone car approach from blocks away. There was something not quite right in the rhythm of the engine, as if there was a murmur, a hiccup in the simple two-stroke syncopation. The green Vauxhall parked in an open spot just before the Exit Strategy building. Two women got out; each had a large green bucket with rags and cleaning supplies. West Indian, maybe. They were in the middle of a conversation; one was laughing brightly in a tone that suggested her merriment was at another’s expense. Across the street Jordan stiffly pulled himself to his feet. Cleaning ladies. Could be going into any of the buildings, but maybe... He moved to the curb.
They bypassed the lower gate and walked up the steps of the main entrance to number thirty-four.
Jordan affected the lurching roll of a drunk and swayed down the middle of the street. In his peripheral vision he saw the cleaning ladies enter the code on the keypad at the door and heard the buzz as the lock opened. Laughter rang in the night air and breath wreathed their heads as they pushed the door open wide and walked in. Jordan had managed to weave as close as he dared and now he ran and took the stairs in two, lunging for the closing door. He got two fingers in before it could shut. Cold steel pressed against his knuckles. He held his breath and counted to ten. He was lying across the top step with his fingers in the bottom of the door. He was probably visible in the security camera but what were the odds anyone was looking at this hour. He heard the cleaning ladies’ voices from several rooms away. He slid noiselessly in, allowing the door to click shut behind him.