Paul Johnston - Maps of Hell

This had worked out better than I’d expected. I waited till the mother’s thin form had moved away, then grabbed the younger woman’s shoulders and flipped her onto the table. By the time I made to jump on top of her, she had already rolled away on to the floor. Maltravers knew how to look after herself in a fight. The angled foot that I took on my chin emphasized that point.

“Fuck you, Wells. You just made a terminal mistake.”

Her right leg shot out and the foot hit me again, this time on my cheek. I reeled backward. As I tried to pull myself up, I caught a glimpse of Irma Rothmann.

She had her arms crossed, the pistol pointing toward the floor. It was obvious who she had her money on.

Dana Maltravers stepped onto the table and launched her foot at me again. This time, my reactions were sharper. I leaned to the side and grabbed her knee, then pulled hard. She managed to flatten her hand and deliver a decent chop to my neck as she flew past. I crumpled onto the sofa and then was just quick enough to take her by the hips and shove her over the back. There was no carpet there and I heard a satisfying thud as her head hit the floor. Her mother suddenly looked alarmed and raised the weapon. I scrambled over the sofa and landed on top of Dana Maltravers. She was still conscious but looked dazed. I twisted one of her arms behind her back and then hauled her to her feet, making sure her body was shielding mine.

“Dana!” Irma Rothmann screamed. “Let her go!”

I was fighting for breath. “Drop the gun!” I gasped. “Now!” I looked round my captive’s head.

The older woman was still pointing the pistol toward us.

“No, Mr. Wells,” she said, her eyes colder than a polar bear’s. “If my daughter must be hurt, so be it. The cause is more important than any single person.”

“Mutti!” Maltravers croaked.

“That’ll be your caring Nazi ideology, I suppose,” I said, keeping my head behind my captive’s. “Don’t you just love it, Dana?”

“Let her go!” Fraulein Rothmann screamed. “If I hit her, the bullet will go through to you, as well.”

“So what?” I said, with as much bravado as I could muster. “At least there’ll be one less Nazi in the world.”

I heard a crash at the far end of the room and risked a look. The older woman’s aim was wavering. I shoved her daughter toward her, keeping a tight grip on her. We all three clattered to the floor and I scrabbled for the gun that the impact had driven out of Irma Rothmann’s hand. I got hold of it just as a large pair of men’s shoes appeared in front of me.

“Here,” Clem Simmons said, extending the hand that wasn’t holding his service weapon-its muzzle was directed at Dana Maltravers.

I took the hand and was jerked to my feet. I turned to the two women who were sprawled in front of us.

Clem had taken quite a beating and his jacket was torn. He wiped blood from his damaged lips. “This is a surprise, Special Agent Maltravers,” he said. He glanced at the older woman. “Who’s this?”

“Her mother. Irma Rothmann, Larry Thomson’s twin sister.” That made me think. “Where’s your brother?” I asked her.

She didn’t respond. She was too busy cradling her daughter’s head and speaking to her in German. No doubt she was trying to reassure her that she wouldn’t really have sacrificed her for the cause. It didn’t look like Dana Maltravers was buying it.

“We’d better get out of here, Matt,” Clem said, looking over his shoulder. “I took out three of the fuckers, got them restrained, but there may be more of them around.”

I nodded. We secured the women’s wrists behind their backs with plastic ties and pushed them toward the door. “Did you call for backup?”

He shook his head. “We need to get this shit in order before I get my people involved.”

I nodded. That was the way I wanted it, but we were taking a chance.

In the hall by the exit, there was a small table covered with keys and cards.

“Which one operates the executive elevator?” I asked.

Irma Rothmann looked away, so I jammed the muzzle of Dana Maltravers’s gun into her belly.

“If you prefer, I can drop your daughter down the stairwell,” I said savagely, remembering what had been done to Joe Greenbaum.

The woman swallowed and then pointed to a yellow card. I inserted it and the elevator doors opened. We got in and moved downward rapidly. As we reached the entrance-hall level, Clem muscled Fraulein Rothmann in front of him. I did the same with Dana Maltravers. When the doors opened, we moved out cautiously. To my relief, there was nobody around.

“The alarm system suffered a catastrophic failure,” Clem said.

“Something to do with that screwdriver you had in your pocket?” I asked.

“Something to do with the rounds I had in my service weapon. Let’s hit the sidewalk.”

We did so, then walked up the street to the car. A passing man in a sharp suit peered at us, but was satisfied by a flash of Clem’s badge. Irma Rothmann started talking in a loud voice, but stopped when the detective squeezed her forearm hard. We made it to the car. I got in the back between the two women.

We headed for Vers and the twins. I could tell that Clem was tempted to floor the gas pedal, but he restrained himself. Gwen and Randy had been calm enough, but what would happen when they were confronted with the woman they called the professor, their Fuhrer’s ice-veined twin sister?

Peter Sebastian’s eyes were fixed on the TV screen in the corner of his office. One of his team had called from home to alert him. There were live pictures of Detective Chief Superintendent Karen Oaten of the London Metropolitan Police climbing out of a Bureau helicopter at Reagan airport, followed by Levon Creamer of Financial Crime. The news channel was making much of the fact that the woman was unharmed from her kidnap ordeal, as well as stressing that the FBI had not yet given any details of how it had ended.

Sebastian knew Creamer, but he’d never worked with him. The bastard should at least have let him know what was going on. Then again, it had never been established that the British policewoman’s disappearance was linked to that of the suspect Matt Wells. Sebastian would have to talk to Creamer, but he had the feeling that now was not the time. The sight of the deputy director meeting Ms. Oaten and escorting her to a waiting car reinforced that suspicion. He would have to wait till morning.

In the meantime, he’d decided to call Dana Maltravers and make his peace with her. She deserved to know about the Document Analysis Unit’s ideas, too. But, to his great surprise, she didn’t answer her cell phone, which rang until the messaging service cut in. It wasn’t the first time that had happened recently.

Peter Sebastian wished he hadn’t behaved so offensively to his assistant.

Forty-One

I tried to get the women to talk on the drive to the safe house, but Maltravers was semiconscious, or was pretending to be, while Irma Rothmann just stared at me vacantly. I gave up and spoke to Clem instead.

“Call Vers,” I said. “Check he’s okay.”

The detective nodded and opened his phone. “Yo, man, you alive?” There was a long silence, which didn’t do much for my nerves, then Clem laughed. “Keep some for us. Be there in ten.” He looked at me in the rearview mirror. “The dog! He got the twins to cook dinner. Chili.”

“My favorite,” I said, noticing that Fraulein Rothmann suddenly looked curious. “Yours, too?”

She snorted disdainfully.

Then it clicked. “Ah, it’s the twins you’re interested in. They remember you.

“By the way, what are you a professor of?”

Irma Rothmann looked reluctant to answer. “Neuroscience,” she finally said.