Frank Schätzing - Limit

They had him trapped.

Xin thrashed his bike onward, headed for the Reichstag, the river to his right. Tourists were thronging up the grand stairway outside, and the promenade opened out. There was government architecture all along the river here, steel and glass dotted here and there with petite little trees, elegant topiary. Sightseeing boats chugged along the Spree, took a curve further along the river and went under a filigree bridge.

And above everything, the two copters.

Xin aimed for the bridge. A group of young people scattered in front of his eyes. He revved hard, sat up on his back wheel, gunned the engine for all it was worth and shot over the edge. For a moment the motorcycle hung above the water; the river below him was a sculpture of glass, the gyrocopters hung in the sky as though nailed there. Xin felt a pleasant breeze on his skin, an intimation of what it would be like to live a completely different life, but there was no other that he could live.

He took his hands from the handlebars.

The surface splintered into kaleidoscopes, water thumped in his ears. He tried to get away from the sinking bike as fast as he could. The front wheel caught him a blow across the hip. He ignored the pain, surfaced, pumped his lungs full of air and dived again, deep enough not to be seen from the air. With powerful strokes, he made for midstream, one of the tourist boats thrumming above him. He had been trained to stay underwater for a long while, but he would have to surface sooner or later, and he had two copters to deal with. They would split up, one of them looking for him upstream, one downstream. His reflexes racing, he saw the dark bulk of the sightseeing boat moving away above him, and kicked his way up. He surfaced with his head just by the stern of the boat, which sat low enough in the water that he could grab one of the stanchions down by the windows. He slipped, grabbed hold again, clung tight and peered up into the sky, partly obscured by the boat’s deck and viewing platforms.

One of the gyrocopters was circling over the spot where he had gone under. He could hear the other one, but not see it. In the next moment it appeared, directly over the ship, and Xin slipped underwater again without letting go of the stanchion. He held his breath for as long as he could. When he risked another look, they were just passing under a bridge.

The copter was moving away.

He let the boat carry him along for a little while longer, then pushed away, swam to the bank and hauled himself up. There was a concrete embankment in front of him, with a busy road running beyond it. As far as he could see, the police were still searching on the other side of the bridge. He felt for his wig, but it was on the bottom of the Spree by now. He quickly tore off the false beard, peeled off his jacket, left everything there in the water and crept ashore, dripping wet. He had lost his gun as well, but had been able to keep hold of his phone, which was waterproof, thank God. He felt the reassuring grip of the money belt around his waist that held credit cards and the memory crystal. Xin made a point of carrying credit cards around with him, even if they were reckoned to be old-fashioned and everybody made purchases using the ID codes in their phones. He didn’t like to show up on records when he went clothes shopping though.

Not far away was an express railway, up on its viaduct. He glanced up and down the street. It curved away to a building with a glass dome and gleaming blocks clustered about it, which had to be Berlin’s main railway station. He rolled up his shirtsleeves, swept back his smooth, dark hair and walked along the street, quickly but without haste. Traffic streamed past him. He saw another gyrocopter a little way off, but since by now he hardly matched the description of the man the police were looking for, he felt fairly safe. He resisted the impulse to quicken his pace. In ten minutes he had reached the station concourse, and took cash from an ATM with one of his cards. He found a leisurewear store and bought jeans, trainers and a T-shirt. The salesgirl, studded with appliqués, looked at him in astonishment. He dressed in the clothes that he had bought and asked the salesgirl for a plastic bag. He paid cash, stuffed his wet clothes into the bag and then dropped it into a pavement rubbish bin outside, and went back to the Hotel Adlon by taxi.

As far as he remembered, the Hyatt was south of the Tiergarten park, but then he lost his bearings among all the forked paths and duck-ponds, and wandered from one idyllic glade to the next. He could hear traffic sounds some indefinable way off. The sun shone down on him, unnaturally bright. He was overcome by nausea, a stitch yanked at his ribs, there was a pain spreading down from his shoulder to his left arm. The sky, the trees, the people around were all sucked into a red tunnel. Was this what a heart attack felt like? He stumbled across to a bush, his knees weak as wax, and threw up. After that he felt better, and he made it as far as the main road. At a crossroads he recognised several of the buildings, saw a Keith Haring sculpture and realised that the Grand Hyatt was just around the corner. He could have sworn that he’d been in the park for hours, but when he looked at his watch, he saw that not even fifteen minutes had passed since he had crashed at the Brandenburg Gate. It was just before half past twelve.

He called Tu.

‘We’re upstairs in your room. Yoyo and I—’

‘Stay there. I’m coming up.’

Since Diane was in Jericho’s room they had made it their command centre, so as to be able to research further and keep trying to decrypt more messages. In the lift, his thoughts shifted gear, becoming inordinately clear, self-aware. He hadn’t often been so completely at a loss. So incapable of acting. Nyela had been as good as safe, and he had still lost her.

‘What happened?’ Tu jumped to his feet and came towards him. ‘Is everything—’

‘No.’ Jericho reached into his jacket, fished out the packages of money and threw them onto the bed. ‘Here’s your money back. That’s all the good news there is.’

Tu picked up one of the packages and shook his head.

‘That’s not good news.’

‘It’s not.’ In curt sentences, he described how events had unfolded. Striving to remain objective, he only managed to make the whole story sound more dreadful. Yoyo grew paler with every word.

‘Nyela,’ she whispered. ‘Whatever have we done?’

‘Nothing.’ He rubbed his hands over his face, tired, dispirited. ‘It would have happened one way or another all the same. All we did was keep her alive a couple of minutes longer.’

‘No dossier.’ Her face clouded over. ‘All for nothing.’

‘According to Nyela, he must have been carrying it around with him!’ Jericho walked over to the window and stared out, seeing nothing. ‘Vogelaar had sold us out to Xin, but he was trying to turn the tables one more time. At the last moment, whatever it was that moved him to do so. He wanted me to have that dossier.’

‘Curses and maledictions.’ Tu punched a fist into the palm of his other hand. ‘And Nyela’s quite sure—’

‘ Was sure, Tian. She was sure.’

‘—that he had it with him? She specifically said—’

‘She said that Kenny had got hold of the original.’

‘The memory crystal.’

‘Yes. But apparently there was a duplicate.’

‘Which Vogelaar was going to bring into the museum.’

‘Wait a moment.’ Yoyo frowned. ‘That means that he still has it on him?’

‘Irrelevant.’ Jericho pressed two fingers against his brow. Now they really were at a dead end. ‘The police will have taken it as evidence. But good, that means we have nothing more to decide. From now on, we aren’t working on our own any more. I imagine we can trust the local authorities here, so that means—’