The Atlantis Code (17 page)

Lourds got his bearings and altered his course toward the parked rental car. He didn’t bother trying to stay with the sidewalks. College students and personnel glanced at them in concern and puzzlement. But all of them got out of their way.

“Hey,” Gary called out. “Hey, move it, guys. We got company.”

Anxiety soured Lourds’s stomach. He glanced around and spotted the three men speeding down the street on an interception course with them. Not students—not even Russian, by the looks of them. Hard men with hard eyes. He should have known that the big man would have had other compatriots lurking nearby.

Overuse of force seemed to be his trademark.

So far they didn’t have guns out—but they were far enough away and moving fast enough through the crowds of students to make a clean shot almost impossible. That situation wouldn’t last long.

They were gaining on Lourds and his crew.

Lourds cursed. He was so frenzied, he didn’t even note what language he used. He veered from the street where they’d left the rental car parked. Things definitely didn’t look good, and he doubted things could get any—

“Professor Lourds!”

—worse. He was wrong.

That demanding shout caught Lourds’s attention—and he recognized the voice. When he glanced over his shoulder, he saw Natasha Safarov swiftly gaining on him.

The woman was evidently a runner, among her other talents. Her arms and legs worked in tandem as she sprinted. She caught up to them as if the feat were child’s play. Her pistol was naked in her fist and caused immediate consternation in all who saw the weapon.

Lourdes counted himself among the concerned.

“You’re under arrest,” Natasha said as she pursued him. She took aim at him with her pistol.

He kept running. “If we stop,” Lourds protested, pointing back at the running hit men, “those men will kill us.”

Natasha darted a look at the men he indicated. Behind her, the men she’d left inside the library were just emerging through the entrance, the two who were conscious carrying the unconscious man handcuffed to one of them. They did not look happy. But it was unlikely that group of thugs could catch them.

“I have a car,” she told him. “Follow me.” Almost effortlessly, she sprinted past Lourds, Leslie, and Gary. “If you stop following me, I will shoot you.”

“What?”
Leslie’s breath came in ragged gasps. She stumbled and nearly fell. “Stop following her? With those men behind us? She’s mad.”

Lourds held on to the Leslie’s hand to help her keep her balance. “Save your breath,” he advised. “Run.” Mad or not, Natasha Safarov was their only chance.

Following their armed leader, they sprinted across the side street to a midsize sedan in the parking lot.

Natasha used her electronic keypad to unlock the doors.

“Get in.”

She skidded to a halt on the driver’s side and opened the door. Instead of sliding inside the car, she levered her arms across the hood and took aim at the three men closing on them.

The three men scattered with obviously practiced efficiency. Weapons filled their hands.

Conviction that he was about to be blasted to smithereens filled Lourds. He froze for an instant.

“Get in!” Natasha ordered. “Keep down. The mass of the car’s engine should absorb any bullets.”

Lourds fumbled with the passenger-side back door and got it opened. Panic hammered him. He forced himself to concentrate on the task at hand and not to look back at their pursuers.

“Be careful! If you shoot in their direction, you could hit a college student,” Lourds cautioned in Russian so there would be no misunderstanding. Natasha spoke English well, but that didn’t mean she would have that skill in the heat of combat. He pushed Leslie into the opened door, then sheltered her with his body.

“I know,” Natasha replied, also in Russian. “I’m not going to do that, but they don’t know it. Get in before they figure it out.”

Leslie crawled inside the vehicle. Gary threw himself in after her before Lourds could get in. The two sprawled across the seat and left Lourds no room to get in. He slammed the back door shut and opened the front passenger door. He dropped inside and shut the door behind him. He kept his head low, below the dashboard.

Back across the street, the three men had dropped to the ground. One of them aimed a pistol and fired. The bullet smashed through the passenger-side window. So much for the engine block stopping the bullets. Glass splinters spilled across Lourds’s back. He twitched and covered his head with his arms.

Natasha flung her door open and dropped into the seat. She keyed the ignition, and the motor rumbled smoothly to life.

Lourds looked over at her.

She shifted hands with the pistol. When it was once more in her right hand, she pointed it at Lourds. “Stay down.”

He was convinced she wasn’t offering advice regarding enemy fire. She shot the pistol over his head at their pursuers. More bullets from them struck the car. The impacts sounded excruciatingly loud inside the vehicle.

“Damn!” Gary howled from the backseat. “Move, woman! Are you waiting on a sign from God or something?”

Natasha hit the accelerator. The engine snarled like a cornered beast as the tires gripped the pavement and hurled them forward.

Lourds kept his hands on the dash, but he couldn’t resist looking up. Natasha pulled into the lane of oncoming traffic. For a moment he thought they were going to get hit by a cargo truck. The driver’s eyes widened on the other side of the windshield. He hit the brakes and slewed the truck around. The bumper missed striking them by inches.

“Oh, crap!” Gary screamed.

Natasha pulled hard on the steering wheel and directed them up onto the street’s shoulder. The car bucked in protest. A moment later, she cut the wheels again to put them back on the street. Rubber burned and shrieked as the tires protested, then shot them forward through the roadway.

Lourds had the distinct impression that his life was just as much at risk now as it had been back at the college with the three armed killers trapping him in the stacks. He pressed his hands hard against the dash and wished he’d taken the time to put a seat belt on.

“All right, Professor Lourds,” Natasha said calmly, “we’re going to talk now.”

“Talk about what?” he asked, his words rough as he panted from the run and the adrenaline overload.

“What you were doing at the library. What you took from there.” Natasha cut the wheels and flew around a slower-moving sedan. She barely cut back in time to keep from crossing fenders with an oncoming car. “And what you know about my sister’s death.” She floored the accelerator, and the car shot forward into the traffic.

“This might not be the best time,” Lourds spat, eyes closed and body braced against the certain crash. It didn’t come. Natasha swerved out of danger like Jeff Gordon in the final lap for the Nextel Cup Series Championship.

“We may not have a better one. Talk now.” The Russian risked taking her eyes off the road long enough to shoot him a hard look.

“Uh, guys,” Gary called from the back. “We’re being followed.”

Lourds twisted in the seat and looked back over his shoulder. Two cars threaded through the traffic after them. He reached for the seat belt and managed to snap it around himself as Natasha started taking evasive action again. The forces of the evasion slammed his chest into the seat belt. He took a deep breath in preparation for his next words.

The lady had a point.

Space to talk was starting to look like a luxury.

MOSCOW, RUSSIA
AUGUST 21, 2009

W
hat did you go to the library to get?” Natasha demanded as she steered the car through traffic. She cut her eyes to the rearview mirror. The two cars following them stood out among the other vehicles. Despite the calm demeanor she showed to her “guests,” nervous energy raked claws through her.

“What?” Lourds gazed at her as though she’d just sprouted a second head.

Natasha ignored him for a moment as she went out left wide around the car ahead of her. As soon as she was past the front of the car, she cut back to the right and took the first side street there. Tires shrilled in protest. Horns blared behind her.

“You went to the library to retrieve something.” Natasha cut her eyes to the rearview mirror. The two cars made the turn and kept after her.

“Something your sister left for me.”

“What did she leave you?” Natasha demanded.

“A micro flash drive.”

“What’s on it?”

“I don’t know.”

Natasha shot him a look.

“It’s the truth,” Lourds said. “You were there. I didn’t have time to examine it.”

“What do you think is on it?” Natasha took another side street. Moscow University was in the Sparrow Hills region. There were a number of small, narrow roads in the area. She planned to take advantage of that shortly.

“Yuliya was working on something,” Lourds said. “She wanted me to look at it.”

“The cymbal?” Natasha interrupted.

“Did she talk to you about it?”

Irritation shattered the sadness and pain that gripped Natasha. The American professor’s questions came faster than her own. Of course, she was distracted by the driving.

“A little.”

“What did she say?”

“I’m asking the questions, Professor Lourds.” Natasha swerved again. This time she headed down a narrow alley filled with garbage cans. Two trash cans went down under the car streaking headlong through the alley. “What do you know about the cymbal?”

“Not enough,” he admitted.

“Then why did she contact you? Why would she have left information for you about it?”

“I don’t know that she did. The flash drive’s contents might concern another matter entirely.” Lourds braced himself against the dash again as Natasha swung out wide from the alley’s mouth. Rubber shrilled as the tires skidded across the street.

Natasha laid on the horn, tapped the brakes, and accelerated again for a moment. When she cut the wheel to navigate the traffic and head into the next alley across the street, she saw Lourds involuntarily flinch as they closed on a small bus. For a moment Natasha didn’t think she was going to make it.

“Ohmigod,” the woman in the back gasped.

Then the car shot down the alley. More trash cans crumpled or rebounded away.

“Was Yuliya killed because of the cymbal?” Natasha asked.

“Maybe. Was the cymbal recovered last night?” Lourds countered.

Natasha checked the rearview mirror in time to see the lead car smash into the corner of the building and spin out of control. The second car zipped past and continued the chase.

“No,” Natasha answered. “The artifact wasn’t recovered. But the fire destroyed many things inside that room.” She glanced at Lourds. “So you believe these men killed my sister.”

“Watch the road.” Lourds braced himself again.

The bumper struck a stack of trash cans and sent them flying. One of the trash cans came back over the front of the car and smashed against the windshield. Several cracks ran the length of the remaining glass in a spiderweb pattern.

“If it wasn’t these men,” Lourds said in answer to her question, “then it was men associated with them. Or their employer.”

Gunshots rang out behind them. At least one bullet ricocheted from the car’s body. Another bullet cored through the back glass and punched through the last fragments of the shattered front windshield.

“I’m sorry about Yuliya,” Lourds said. “She was smart and charming. I’m going to miss her quite a lot.”

Natasha felt certain that Lourds was telling the truth. But he did know more than she did.

More gunshots echoed inside the alley.

One she’d driven out of the alley, Natasha dropped her pistol into her lap, took the wheel in both hands, and downshifted as she pulled hard to the left. The car shivered as she brought it around in a sharp 180-degree turn. She ended up facing the oncoming vehicle.

“What are you doing?” Lourds asked nervously.

“She’s lost it, dude!” Gary yelled. “She’s going to get us all—!”