Gregg Loomis - The Sinai Secret

His feet seemed to take forever to slide out from under him as he sat on the floor.

Lang was beside him before the wet breathing sound stopped. He kicked the gun out of reach before a hasty search of his. clothes revealed just what Lang had expected: nothing. No ID, no wallet, a total absence of anything by which he might be identified.

The trademark of a professional assassin.

The room stank of cordite and was hazy with burned gunpowder.

Louis crawled out from under his counter and wobbled on shaky knees. He looked at the dead man and quickly averted his eyes. Lang was certain the Belgian was going to throw up. Instead he stared at Lang with equal shock and horror, as if he were observing his boss sprouting a second head.

He muttered something in French, then, "Monsieur Reilly, I…"

Then he lost it, the old Technicolor yawn.

A man stuck his head in the door and asked something in French.

Lang followed his bewildered gaze around the devastated laboratory, then to the still-heaving Louis. "Sorry. I can't ever remember whether you can add acid to water. Or is it water to acid?"

The man left the door open. Lang could hear him shouting as he ran down the hall.

By this time Louis had recovered somewhat, although he still looked like he wouldn't be sitting down to a bowl of moules anytime soon.

"Louis," Lang said evenly, "listen closely. I'm going after the other guy. In a few minutes the police will be here."

He nodded. At least he understood something.

Lang continued. "You are to tell them he took me with him."

He seemed to comprehend so far.

"Those men came in here and we jumped them, comprendez-vous pas?"

He didn't.

"It is very important that we say the same thing. We thought we were going to be shot and killed, so we attacked first. In the scuffle one of them got shot. The other made me go with him, used me as a shield."

He might as well have been trying to explain algebra to Grumps.

He tried to keep the urgency out of his voice, although he could hear the pulsating sirens of approaching police cars.

"We had to get the guns, Louis, or we would be dead instead of this guy. You were very brave, Louis, attacking a man with a gun. The other man, the one who got away, used his gun to make me go with him."

At last, comprehension.

At first the trail of blood drops was unmistakable.

On the street they were becoming farther apart, and the sunlight was fading. After two blocks the telltale splatter disappeared. The guy must have stopped to apply some sort of tourniquet-which meant he couldn't be far away on a gimpy leg.

Lang continued down the street, rewarded by the sight of a man with an obvious limp dodging in and out of the early evening stream of pedestrians.

Keeping back, Lang followed.

Lang was thankful that Amsterdam was less than automobile-friendly. He dodged several bicycles, a tram, and one or two cars. He cleared the street just in time to see his quarry cross a canal bridge.

On the other side the trees lining the waterway spread their limbs under streetlights, making moving specters on the mottled walkways. Street signs-Dude Spiegel, Wolvenstraat-meant nothing to Lang as he followed across another canal, the fleeing figure ahead of him making no effort to conceal his direction of retreat. He obviously thought Lang would have remained behind to interrogate his partner.

Even so, there was no point in being reckless. Lang ducked into a coffeehouse with a view of the length of the street. His first breath filled his nose with the musty smell of marijuana, maybe enough to leave him stoned if he kept breathing the air. There was a time in his college days when a free high would have been appealing, but not this evening.

Lang had chosen the ideal time to hide from sight. The man ahead looked over his shoulder and slowed slightly. Lang waited for him to disappear around the next corner before sprinting past the same intersection and to the next. Flattening himself against the cold brick of a canal house, Lang peered out. As anticipated, Leather Jacket had now slowed to a painful limp, more interested in what might be behind him than in front. As he passed, Lang drew back from the streetlights' warm glow.

Halfway down the walk beside the canal, the mart gave a final look over his shoulder and climbed down to one of the narrow boats tied bow and stern along the waterway. A moment later, lights appeared at a porthole.

Now what?

If there were some way to Capture Leather Jacket, there was little reason to think he would yield any more information than his confederate. Professional hit men weren't known to be loquacious.

Lang noted the name painted across the stern of the boat, Manna, and a registration number, and decided to wait.

An hour later no one had come or gone from the boat, but police sirens seemed to be crisscrossing the city. How long before someone became suspicious of his loitering and called the cops? If he wasn't going to get any information from Leather Jacket about contacts, he might as well make certain the man didn't get another chance to kill him.

Lang waited another full five minutes before leaving the concealment of the shadows. With his hand behind his back on the butt of the SIG Sauer, he approached the boat. Since there had been no lights on before the man's arrival, it was a near certainty that the boat had only the single occupant. But how to get aboard? The craft's narrow beam ensured that even the lightest step onto the deck would produce telltale rocking. And even if he could surprise the man on board, sounds of a fight or gunshots in this peaceful neighborhood would surely draw police, who, sooner or later, would figure out that the dead man back at the university had not been shot with his own weapon.

Lang would have to think of something other than forcing his way aboard.

He watched two boats pass, neither wake sufficient to cause as much motion as climbing aboard would. He watched the sluggish current until it gave him an idea.

There was no power line from the craft to shore, no pigtail connection that would have acted like a third mooring line. The boat's electricity, then, was provided by a generator-powered battery. The lights would stay on whether or not the vessel was tied up.

Silently he crept to the stern of the boat, untying the line that moored it to the bollard at the edge of the canal's embankment and letting the rope slide into the listless water. As yet another craft passed, he did the same for the bowline, this time holding on with one hand and keeping the other on the gun butt.

Slowly, ever so gently, the sluggish current moved the boat from the space it had occupied along the embankment and pushed it along at a pace Lang's slow walk could easily match. The first bridge presented a problem: Lang couldn't both hold the line and let the craft continue. He let go, following the narrow ship along the canal.

After what seemed a mile or so, Lang saw rows of bright lights ahead and perpendicular to his path. That, he guessed from what Louis had said and the brief reading he had done on the train, would be the Amstel, the river that crossed all canals and was the route of much of the city's commercial and industrial transportation.

The man inside was blissfully unaware he had gone from a tranquil residential canal to one of the busiest waterways in Europe, a highway of commerce that operated twenty-four hours a day.

Running ahead, Lang found a spot not occupied by another craft and leaned over, catching the trailing bowline. Gently he slowed the craft until it was stopped at the intersection of canal and river. From his right Lang could see a string of barges pushed by a smaller vessel, something resembling a tugboat. Patiently Lang waited until the relative positions seemed about right.