‘This way!’ shouted Sara, running down the alleyway towards the main road. Baz followed her, holding his left arm across his body, loping at a slower speed, trying to shake off the effects of the Taser.
Above them, the sounds of a helicopter could be heard, but as Baz looked up to scan the sky, all he could see were low-flying clouds.
Sara reached the intersection first. The alleyway abutted a cobbled pedestrian street a few hundred yards long. Throngs of people crowded the pavements in front of pubs and cafés.
‘C’mon,’ said Baz, through gasping breaths, as he caught up with her and then ran on to the thoroughfare.
‘Wait!’ said Sara, grabbing his arm. ‘Look.’
Baz followed her pointed finger to the end of the street, where two black Mercedes cars screeched to a halt and men in black leather jackets piled out. At the other end of the street, two more cars shuddered to sudden stops and ejected a crowd of men.
Baz and Sara had not been spotted and watched as the men formed lines, like a search party, at either end of the street. They began to walk towards each other, sieving through the crowds, their eyes searching each pedestrian’s face.
A clanging sound behind Sara made her turn. Lionel Dobbs stepped out of the rear hospital doors and began walking towards them, his eyes locked on Sara.
There was nowhere to run.
She and Baz could neither go forwards nor back. This was it. There were too many to fight this time, even with the mysterious abilities she seemed to have but couldn’t explain. They needed something else to help them. Some divine intervention or at least some distraction.
A few yards away, a mobile phone rang somewhere in the crowd. It jolted Sara back to the present.
‘Quickly, the phone,’ said Sara.
‘Who are you going to call?’ asked Baz as he pulled it out.
Sara snatched it from him and pressed a sequence of buttons.
The men were a hundred yards from them on each side now, ploughing through the walkway, leaving no face unscanned.
Sara shook the phone impatiently.
‘C’mon, c’mon.’
Finally, a beep signalled the arrival of a text.
Sara immediately dialled the number again.
‘We need to go, now,’ said Baz.
‘Not yet,’ said Sara.
Lionel couldn’t believe his luck. Sara and her companion stood at the end of the alleyway, not moving, as if waiting for him.
Maybe she was tired of running. Maybe she had given up.
Lionel looked at the pedestrians milling behind Sara. There were too many witnesses to complete his plan here. He would need to adapt.
Sara pointed to places along the pedestrian walkway.
‘Do you see them?’
Baz nodded, a look of realization spreading across his face.
Lionel was less than a hundred yards from them now. There was no escape.
Sara gave Lionel a final look and then disappeared with her companion around the corner.
‘Got you,’ said Lionel with a measure of satisfaction.
He limped methodically forward. There was no need to rush now. He had flushed them out, into the hands of the other units.
He knew what would come next. They would be apprehended and separated. Salt would enlist Lionel to interrogate the man to see whether he had gleaned anything of Operation Orpheus during his time with the girl. If so, he would need to be eliminated.
Lionel’s plan would need to wait. There wasn’t much he could do while the girl was in custody. Salt would want to keep her close to him. But Lionel knew they would need him eventually. No one knew her better than him. And when the call came, he would pick his time carefully and then take her to somewhere remote. It would be quick; he wasn’t a monster. It was nothing more than threat containment.
The exercise today had aggravated his leg, and white-hot pins and needles slowed down his pace. They didn’t need him, though. The other units would have her by now, so his presence would just be supervisory.
He finally reached the end of the alleyway and turned the corner. But nothing could have prepared him for what he saw.
The entire street was filled with people fighting, a chaotic mêlée of swinging arms and butting heads. The mob included women and children, who all clambered over one another. The lines formed by the two teams had dissolved, and agents were scattered, struggling against the street riot like swimmers battling violent tides. Covering the whole scene was a storm of confetti that blew over and around the angry, snarling crowd. Nearby, two bicycles were entangled, the riders battling it out on the cobblestones as the same confetti swirled around them.
The snowstorm hung low to the ground, but gusts of wind pushed it upwards. Lionel’s eye tracked the paper shreds as the wind caught and blew them in eddies and vortices up and towards him.
One shred separated itself from the rest and danced through the air. It flapped towards him and he snatched it mid-air.
‘Christ,’ said Lionel.
It was a twenty-pound note.
They were all twenty-pound notes.