The Last Templar - Страница 14

This time, when they came out into a street, it was crowded with parked cars and he heard the screech of metal on metal as the cab ripped fenders and hubcaps from other vehicles, the impacts fleeting, but enough to slow die cab's progress.

Another right turn and this time Reilly could see signs announcing the Lincoln Tunnel. More to the point, they were closing in on the cab. From the corner of his eye, he saw that Aparo had his gun on his lap.

"Don't risk it," Reilly said. "You might get lucky and hit him."

Causing the cab to crash at that speed on this street could be a disaster.

Then the cab turned again, scattering pedestrians who were ambling over a pedestrian crossing.

Reilly saw something emerge from the driver's window of the cab. Couldn't be a gun. A man would have to be stupid to drive and shoot at the same time. Stupid or certifiable.

Sure enough, a flash and smoke blossomed.

"Hang on," Reilly said.

Swinging the wheel, he swerved the Chrysler into a lumbering fishtail, spotted a gap where a building had been torn down, and drove into it, ripping through chain-link fencing and raising a cloud of dust.

Seconds later, the Chrysler was spinning out of the vacant lot and was once again on the trail of the taxi. So far as Reilly could see, the driver's arm and gun were no longer sticking out of the window.

Aparo yelled, "Watch it!"

A woman walking a black terrier tripped, cannoning into a delivery man wheeling a stack of beer crates that tumbled into the Chrysler's path. Reilly jerked the wheel, narrowly avoiding the people, but not the crates, one of which bounced up and over the hood, smashing into the windshield, which held but was now spiderwebbed all over.

"I can't see a thing!" Reilly shouted. Aparo, using the butt of his gun, pounded the windscreen and on the third blow it busted out and flipped up, flying over the car and spinning to a rest on the roof of a parked car.

Screwing up his eyes against the buffeting wind, Reilly could see a no-entry sign where the street narrowed abruptly. Would the man risk it? If he met something, he'd be a goner. Spotting an opening on the right, maybe fifty yards short of the no-entry, Reilly guessed that's where the cab would go. He urged more power out of his car, hoping he might push the other driver into overcooking the turn. The Chrysler charged closer to the cab.

He almost succeeded. The cab screeched into the opening, its rear fishtailing wide to the left, lighting up the tires as it smashed into the brickwork on the corner of a building.

As Reilly followed into the new street, Aparo muttered, "Oh shit," as they both saw a kid on a skateboard gliding across the roadway ahead of the cab. The boy had earphones on and was totally oblivious to the approaching storm.

Instinctively, Reilly slowed, but there was no corresponding flash of braking lights from the cab, which was charging straight at the kid.

He's gonna hit him. He's gonna obliterate him.

Reilly jammed the horn, willing it to cut through the boy's private concert. The cab got closer. Then the boy nonchalantly glanced to his left, saw the cab mere feet away, and dove away in time as the cab bulldozed through, chewing up the skateboard as it streaked ahead.

As they passed the stunned boy, Reilly realized that the street ahead was relatively quiet. No moving vehicles. No pedestrians. If he was going to try something, now was the time to do it.

Before this thing turns really ugly.

He floored it again and gained on the cab. He saw smoke coming from its rear left wheel and guessed that the sideswipe of the wall had jammed the bodywork onto the tire.

Aparo noticed how close they now were. "What're you doing?"

Reilly rammed the Chrysler into the cab's rear end, the repercussion of the jolt cannoning through his neck and shoulders.

Boom. Once.

Twice.

He dropped back, floored it, and rammed him a third time.

This time, the cab went into a helpless spin before lurching over the sidewalk, catapulting onto its side, and scraping through a storefront window. As he stood on the brakes and the Chrysler screeched to a halt, Reilly looked over and saw the back of the cab, still on its side, sticking out of what he now saw was a musical instrument store.

As the Chrysler stopped, Reilly and Aparo scrambled out. Aparo already had his gun out and Reilly was reaching for his but soon realized that it wasn't needed.

The driver had flown through the front windshield and was lying facedown amid broken glass, surrounded by bent and twisted musical instruments. Pages of sheet music fluttered to a rest on his inert body.

Cautiously, Reilly poked the toe of his shoe under the driver's body and rolled him onto his back.

He was clearly unconscious, but he was breathing, his face slashed to bloody ribbons. With the movement, the man's arms spread sideways. A gun slid loosely from one hand. As Reilly nudged it away with his foot, he spotted something else.

From under the man's coat poked a jeweled gold cross.

Chapter 17

O nly a few messages awaited Tess when she walked into her office at the Manoukian Archaeological Institute on Lexington and Seventy-ninth. Predictably, half of them were from her ex-husband, Doug; the other half, almost as predictably, were from Leo Guiragossian, the head of the Manoukian Institute. Guiragossian never made any secret of the fact that he tolerated Tess only because having Oliver Chaykin's daughter at the Institute was very useful when it came to fund-raising. She disliked the balding creep, but she needed the job, and with current budget restraints sparking rumors of staff cuts, now was not the time to act the way she would like to act toward him.

She tossed all the messages into the wastebasket, ignoring the rolled eyes of Lizzie Harding, the demure and motherly secretary she shared with three other researchers. Both Leo and Doug would want the same thing from her: the gory details of Saturday night's events. Her boss's reasons for wanting to know, out of morbid curiosity, were, in a way, slightly less irksome than Doug's self-serving ones.

Tess kept her computer and telephone positioned so that, with a slight turn of her head, she could look out into the paved garden that lay behind the brownstone. The house had been lovingly restored years before her time by the Institute's founder, an Armenian shipping magnate. A massive weeping willow dominated the garden, its elegant foliage cascading down to shelter a bench as well as scores of pigeons and sparrows.

Tess turned her attention back to her desk and fished out the number Clive Edmondson had given her for Jeb Simmons. She dialed it and got his answering machine. She hung up and tried the other number she had for him. His secretary at the History Department at Brown University informed her that Simmons was away on a dig in the Negev desert for three months, but could be reached if it was important. Tess said she'd call back and hung up.

Recalling her conversation with Edmondson, Tess decided to try another tack. She checked the online Yellow Pages, clicked on the dial icon, and got through to the switchboard at Columbia University.

"Professor William Vance," she said to the reedy voice that answered.

"One moment, please," the woman said. After a momentary pause, she was told, "I'm sorry, I don't show anyone listed by that name."

She expected as much. "Can you connect me with the History Department?" A couple of clicks and buzzes and she was speaking to another woman. This one seemed to know who Tess was talking about.

"Sure, I remember Bill Vance. He left us . . . ooh, it must be five or six years ago."

Tess felt a surge of anticipation. "Do you know where I can reach him?"

"I'm afraid I don't, I believe he retired. I'm sorry."

Still, Tess was hopeful. "Could you do me a favor?" she persisted. "I really need to talk to him. I'm with the Manoukian Institute, and we met years ago on a dig. Perhaps you could ask around, see if any of his colleagues at the department know where he can be reached?"

The woman was only too happy to help. Tess gave her name and contact numbers, thanked the woman, and clicked off. She mused on it for a moment, then went back online and did a White Pages search for William Vance. She started in the New York area, but got no hits. One of the disadvantages of cell-phone proliferation, most of which weren't listed. She tried Connecticut. No hits either. She widened the search nationwide, but this time there were just too many matches. She then entered his name into her search engine and got hundreds of hits, but a quick trawl through them didn't reveal any that pointed to his current affiliation.

She sat there, thinking for a moment. In the garden, the pigeons were gone and the sparrows had doubled their presence and were squabbling among themselves. She swung her chair around, letting her eyes range over her bookshelves. An idea struck her and she redialed Columbia University, this time asking to be connected to the library. After identifying herself to the man who answered, she told him she was looking for any research papers or publications they had that were written by Vance. She spelled the name for him and pointed out that she was particularly interested in anything that dealt with the Crusades, knowing Vance probably wouldn't have written papers dealing specifically with the Templars.

"Sure, hold on a moment," the librarian told her and disappeared. After a few moments, he came back. "I just called up everything that we have by William Vance." He read out the titles of the papers and articles Vance had written that seemed to fulfill Tess's requirements.