Frank Schätzing - Limit

He glanced backwards.

Xin’s motorcycle was thrashing on under the low-hanging branches, hunting him like a beast of prey.

Jericho accelerated. More people suddenly. A café, shady, romantic, jutting out into the tree-lined walk. Yelled curses, shaken fists, scurrying backwards. A kiosk with tall tables standing around, people playing pétanque. He was racing towards a crossroads, saw the traffic lights changing through a gap in the leaves, yellow, red, and then he was cutting under the noses of dozens of cars ready to move, and was on the next stretch of the central strip. The chorus of blaring horns died away behind him. Glance back, no sign of Xin. Jericho yelled hoarsely. Lost him! He’d shaken Xin off, at least for the moment. He’d won some time, valuable seconds, every second worth an eternity.

Suddenly he also got his bearings back.

A snack bar blocked his way, but the traffic was lighter on both sides. Jericho steered the Nissan out of the shadow of the trees, back down onto the road, and saw it on the skyline ahead of him, the Brandenburg Gate, still some way off. Not for the first time, he felt surprised at how grand it looked in photographs and how small it really was. The Prussian-era courtyards and palaces were giving way now to modern architecture, the bistros and shops were ending, there were fewer pedestrians about. Soon enough the boulevard would end at Pariser Platz, with the Academy of Arts, the French Embassy, the American, and he hoped he could turn off there. North or south, and then—

Jericho squinted.

Something was going on up ahead. To his left, the trees had ended, so that he could see the whole width of the boulevard. Horrified, he saw that he was coming to a roadblock. Whole sections of the road were barricaded off. A monstrous robot was stretching out its cantilevered arm, lowering some huge, long object down to the road surface, and he could see Xin’s motorcycle tearing towards him in his only remaining rear-view mirror.

Jericho cursed. Whatever was being built up ahead had turned it into a blind alley for him. The construction robot was swinging an enormous steel girder slant-wise across the pavement and the road, while building workers waved away whatever cars had ended up here despite the road signs. There must have been announcements for the diversion, but of course he hadn’t seen them because he’d been tearing down the central reservation, and now there was nowhere to turn aside to, the girder was sinking lower, Xin was coming closer, he was readying his gun—

Where was the control for the legs?

The first of the workers had turned round and spotted him, jumped aside. Shots slammed into the rear of the Nissan. If he braked now, Xin would blow his head off, and if he didn’t, the girder would knock it clean off, nor could he turn around, he was going too fast, much too fast, and he couldn’t find the icon on the touchscreen—

There! Not an icon at all, but a switch! A plain and simple, old-fashioned switch.

In a trice the Nissan had stretched out its wheels, becoming a low-slung, wide vehicle. The girder grew larger in front of Jericho’s eyes, much too fast, dark, threatening, less than a metre and a half off the ground, a thick grey line, an end point. In a ridiculous reflex he lifted his arm up in front of his face as the cabin of his car sank further downwards, then there was a splintering, crunching sound as the edge of the steel swept away what was left of the roof. He pressed himself down into his seat. As flat as a flounder, the car shot through beneath the girder; it was briefly night, then clear blue day again. The crossroads, a bus, an inevitable collision. As though a film had jumped frames, all of a sudden the Nissan was two metres further to the right, began to turn, skated across Pariser Platz, cyclists, pedestrians, the whole world running from him. Scrabbling to get the car back under control, he screeched towards the Brandenburg Gate. A police gyrocopter came into view above the bronze statue atop the Gate, an ultralight helicopter, half open, a loudspeaker voice booming down at him. His plan to speed through the Doric columns of the Gate and get away the other side was thwarted by a row of low bollards that blocked any such attempt. He braked. The Nissan fishtailed, slid, crashed against the bollards and came to a stop. Next to him, Nyela seemed to want to say something. She straightened up, then her body was flung forward and back again into her seat, as though she had had second thoughts.

Jericho leapt clear of the wreckage.

The gyrocopter sank towards him. He ran for his life, under the Gate and through to the other side, where the boulevard continued, becoming a main road several lanes wide. Far off he could see a tall, slim column, and the road forked here just in front of the Gate. Without even looking at the traffic lights or signs, he hurried through a zebra crossing. Brakes screamed, and there was a crash as somebody shunted the car in front. Weird. Were there really cars still on the road without proximity pilots? A superannuated convertible zipped under his nose, missing running over his feet by a hair’s breadth, and he heard furious yelling. He started back, then sprinted, reaching the other side by dashing past a lorry’s radiator grille, and ran into a cool green passageway. This was the Tiergarten, the green park at the heart of Berlin. Sand, gravel, quiet pathways. In front of him was the statue of a lion. More trees, opening out into lawns, paths branching out in all directions. He raced down one, running, running, running until he could be sure that there was nobody following him, no Xin and no gyrocopter. He only stopped when he got to a small lake, and bent down with his hands on his knees, his sides aching, a sour taste on his tongue. He fought for breath. Gasped, spat, coughed. His heart was pounding like a battering ram. As though it wanted to break out of his ribcage.

An elderly lady looked across at him briefly, then turned her attention back to her little grandson, who was doing his best not to fall off his bike.

At last he had cleared the girder, but he had lost valuable time. He saw the Nissan racing away from him ahead, and he rode around the bus, leaning into the curve, taking aim. It looked as though the detective had lost control of the car. Good. Xin squeezed off a salvo just as a gyrocopter appeared above the Gate. To his astonishment, the police seemed to be paying more attention to his motorcycle than to Jericho, who at that moment jumped out of his car and ran away. The police dropped lower, faced the copter directly towards him; he heard shouted commands. He assessed the situation, thinking lightning-fast. The gyrocopter was still perhaps a metre above the ground. It was impossible to get past, and if he shot at the copter,the police would have no qualms about opening fire in return. He yanked his bike around and roared off along the street that crossed the boulevard.

The gyrocopter gave chase straight away. As he sped over the next crossroads, something splattered onto the tarmac in front of him, swelled up and set solid. They were firing foam cannon at him! One round of that in his spokes, and his ride would come to a sudden end. The stuff set instantly and hard as rock. Xin swerved, saw how the road in front of him led up over a bridge, turned right instead and found that he was back on the riverbank, on the Spree. If he hadn’t lost his bearings, this should lead back to the Museum Island. Not a good idea to pop up there again – it must be crawling with police by now. He heard the dry clattering of the copter behind him, then above him, then ahead. The gyrocopter set down, forcing him to brake to a stop. He wheeled about, a breakneck turn, and raced off the other way, only to spot another police flyer hanging, apparently motionless, over the dome of the parliament building, the Reichstag. It raced towards him.