The elevator stopped on the second floor. Bryson looked out, surveying as much as he could of the area, which also looked clear. He pushed the door open, and they got out. Turning to the right, he saw an old green-painted door, with a scuffed crashbar mounted at hip-height. He approached it and pushed it open easily. Now they were in an ornate, marble-tiled hallway lined with mahogany doors labeled with gilt numerals. This was not a public, ceremonial area, nor was it grand enough for Parliament members, and there were no names or titles on the doors. Apparently these were offices belonging to committee staff—office clerks, executive officers, audit officers, secretaries, and other support staff. It was long and dimly lit; several people, presumably civil servants, walked unhurriedly into and out of offices. None of them seemed to glance at Bryson or Elena, nor did anything about their body language suggest that they were watchers or undercover operatives. Instinct, again: Bryson had nothing else to go on.

  He stopped for a moment, trying to orient himself. The eastern end of the building was to the right; that was therefore the direction in which they should head. A well-dressed woman strode down the hall toward them, her heels clicking against the marble and echoing in the long hallway. Instinctively he looked at her, sizing her up; she approached them and passed with a curious stare. He suddenly remembered that, though he was still nominally attired as a respectable clerk, he had to be a frightful sight: one eye was bloodied, perhaps blackened, and his clothes were torn and disheveled from doing battle with the decoy cleaning lady. Elena’s clothes were disheveled as well. Both of them looked decidedly out of place, their physical appearance drawing attention, which was exactly what he did not want. There was no time to look for a restroom in which to clean themselves up; now they would have to rely on a combination of speed and good luck. But luck was something he never liked to count on; luck inevitably ran out just when you took it for granted.

  He continued down the hall, his head down as if deep in thought, walking quickly, holding Elena’s hand, pulling her along. Here and there an office door was open and clusters of people stood talking quietly. If they glanced at the two of them, at least they might not see his bloodied face.

  But something was not right here; he was overcome by anxiety. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck become prickly. The noises were wrong. The normal pattern of ringing telephones was absent; instead, the phones seemed to be ringing in sequence, at different offices and on different sides of the hallway. He could not rationally articulate why this bothered him, and he knew it was possible that he was beginning to imagine things. Too, he noticed that people engaged in conversation seemed to fall silent as he passed. Was he being paranoid?

  He’d spent fifteen years in the field, and he had learned above all that one’s instinct was the most valuable weapon one had. He did not ignore feelings that others might dismiss as delusional or paranoid.

  They were being watched.

  But if they were really being watched, why was nothing happening?

  Pulling Elena’s hand, he quickened his stride. He no longer cared whether his actions stood out or attracted attention; the situation was beyond that now.

  About seventy-five yards ahead of them was a small leaded stained-glass window of the sort usually seen in a medieval cathedral. He knew that the windows here overlooked the Thames. “Straight ahead and to the left,” he said to Elena under his breath.

  She squeezed his hand in silent response. In a few seconds the corridor ended, and they turned left. Elena whispered, “Look—a committee room—it’s probably empty. Do you think we should duck into there?”

  “Excellent idea.” He did not want to turn around to see whether they were being followed, but he heard no footsteps close behind. On their right was a massive, arched, oak double-door labeled, on a frosted-glass pane, COMMITTEE TWELVE. If they were able to enter it quickly, they might be able to lose any followers, or at the very least confuse them for a while. The doorknob turned freely; the door was unlocked, but the lights—two massive crystal chandeliers—were switched off and the immense room was vacant. It was an amphitheater, with several raised seating areas of leather-backed, brass-studded wooden chairs above a depressed center floor, which was of highly decorated, brightly colored encaustic tile. At the center of the room was a long wooden conference table, topped with green leather, and behind it two long, tall wooden pews—the benches for the committee members. Light came in through two large, tall leaded windows on the opposite side of the room facing the doors, a long rectangular shade running down the middle of each to block the direct sunlight that reflected off the Thames. Even in repose the room was at once solemn and grand. The vaulted ceiling was at least thirty feet high; the walls were wainscoted in dark wood more than halfway up, and above the wainscoting was elaborate burgundy wallpaper of a Gothic pattern. Several large, dreary nineteenth-century oil paintings hung on each wall: battle scenes, portraits of early kings commanding troops at sea, swords poised, Westminster Abbey crowded with nineteenth-century subjects mourning a casket draped with the Union Jack. The only touches of modernity were jarring: several microphones that dangled on long wires from the ceiling, and a television monitor mounted on one wall and labeled HOUSE OF COMMONS ANNUNCIATOR.

  “Nicholas, we’re not going to be able to hide in here,” Elena said quietly. “At least not for long. Are you thinking of—the windows?”

  He nodded, setting down his briefcase. “We’re three flights above ground level.”

  “Such a drop!”

  “It’s not without risks,” he agreed. “But it could be worse.”

  “Nick, I’ll do it if you insist, if you really think we have no choice. But if there’s any way —”

  There was a noise in the hallway immediately outside. The doors flung open, and Bryson dropped to the ground, pulling her down after him. Two men entered, dark silhouettes, then two more. Bryson saw at once that they were policemen, wearing the blue uniforms of the Metropolitan Police!

  And Bryson knew he and Elena had been spotted. “Freeze!” one of the policemen shouted. “Police!”

  The men, unusual for British police, were carrying sidearms, aimed at them.

  “Hold it right there!” another man shouted.

  Elena screamed.

  Bryson whipped out his Browning but did not draw. He calculated: four policemen, four handguns. It was far from impossible to take them on, using the wooden chairs as shields, as obstacles.

  But were they in fact policemen? He could not be certain. They looked resolute, their expressions fierce. But they did not fire. Prometheus killers would probably not have hesitated. Would they?

  “That’s the buggers!” one of the policemen shouted. “The assassins!”

  “Drop the weapon,” called the one who appeared to be in charge. “Drop it at once. You got nowhere to go now.” Bryson turned around, saw that they were indeed trapped; they were fish in a barrel. The four police constables continued to advance into the room, closer and closer, spreading out so that they had Bryson and Elena surrounded.

  “Drop it!” the same one repeated, now shouting. “Drop it, you scum. Get to your feet, hands in the air. Move it!”

  Elena looked at Bryson, desperate, unsure what to do. Bryson considered his option. To surrender was to give themselves up to a questionable authority, to police who might in fact not be police, might be Prometheus killers in disguise.

  And if they were legitimate members of the Metropolitan Police? If so, he could not kill them. Yet if they were true police constables, they believed they were on the verge of apprehending a couple of assassins, a man and a woman who had just killed the foreign secretary. They would be taken into custody and questioned for hours—hours they could not spare. With no certainty that they would be released.

  No, they could not surrender to them! Yet to do anything else was madness, was suicide!

  He inhaled deeply, closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again, he got to his feet. “All right,” he said. “All right. You’ve got us.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  One of the men seemed clearly to be in charge: a tall, fit man whose name tag said SULLIVAN.

  “All right, drop the gun and put your hands in the air, and you won’t get hurt,” Sullivan said steadily. “There’s four of us and only two of you, but I guess you’ve already figured that out.”

  Bryson held his pistol up, though not directly pointed at anyone. Were they really who they said they were? That was his greatest concern right now.

  “Agreed,” Bryson answered with forced calm. “But I first want to see some identification.”

  “Shutcher gob!” bellowed one of the policemen. “Here’s my identification right here, you sod.” He indicated his pistol. “Try me.”

  But Sullivan replied, “Fine. As soon as you’re cuffed you’ll have all the time in the world to study our warrant cards.”

  “No,” Bryson said. He raised the Browning ever so slightly, still pointed at no one in particular. “I’ll be happy to cooperate once I’m confident you are who you say you are. But there are teams of mercenaries and assassins roaming the halls of Parliament, operating in violation of about a dozen British laws. Once I’m satisfied you’re not one of them, I’ll drop the gun.”

  “Take the arsehole down,” growled one of the men.

  “We fire when I give the order, Constable,” Sullivan said. Then, addressing Bryson: “I’ll show you my warrant card, but be warned—you’ve killed the foreign secretary, you bastard, so you’re probably fool enough to try for one of us blokes. If you’re lucky enough to squeeze off a shot, it’ll be the last thing you ever do, so don’t fuck with us, you hear me?”

  “Understood. Take it out with your left hand, slowly, and display it for me, palm open. Got it?”

  “Got it,” Sullivan said, following Bryson’s instructions. The leather folding wallet lay open in his left hand.

  “Good. Now slide it across the floor to me—toss it slowly, gently. No quick moves—don’t startle me or I’m likely to fire in self-defense.”

  Sullivan flicked his left wrist, sending the wallet across the floor. It stopped right at Bryson’s feet. As Bryson leaned to pick it up, he became aware of one of the men—the one who was obviously itching to fire— advancing on him from the left side. Bryson whirled around, gun pointed directly at the constable’s face. “Don’t move, you idiot. I meant what I said. If you believe I really murdered the foreign secretary in cold blood, then you surely don’t think I’d hesitate to blow you away, do you?” The trigger-happy man froze, backed up a few steps, but kept his gun still leveled at Bryson.

  “That’s it,” said Bryson. He sank slowly to his knees to retrieve the wallet, all the while keeping the gun level, shifting it back and forth from man to man. He quickly snatched the leather wallet from the floor, opened it, and glanced at the silver badge on the right flap in the form of the Metropolitan Police crest. Inside the plastic sleeve on the left side was a white laminated card with Sergeant Robert Sullivan’s photograph, in uniform, along with his warrant number, rank, serial number, and signature. It certainly looked legitimate, though it was easily within the Prometheus team’s capabilities to obtain genuine or cleverly forged police identification. The name, Sullivan, matched the leader’s name tag, and the collar number on the epaulet of his navy blue sweater matched the number on the warrant card. Sullivan was identified as a member of the Special Operations Unit, meaning that he, and presumably the others, were allowed to carry weapons. It was possible, of course, that they had simply been thorough about these details. In truth, very little could be determined conclusively from the badge, in fact, except for the fact that there was one and, upon quick examination, it checked out. An undercover team of assassins assembled on such short notice was not likely to have every detail of their disguises straight, yet so far he had not spotted a gaffe.

  His instincts told him the policemen were legitimate. He based this assessment on a whole range of minor details, behavioral cues, attitudes, and, most important, the fact that they had held their fire. They could easily have killed him, but they had not done so. In the end it was that simple fact that led Bryson to drop his gun and raise his hands in the air, and Elena did the same.

  “All right, nice and easy now, move toward that wall, the both of you, and put your hands flat against it,” said Sullivan.

  They walked slowly to the closest wall and placed their hands against it. Bryson kept alert for any departure from expected behavior patterns. Weapons were now lowered; that was good. Two members of the team approached, quickly locked handcuffs on their wrists, then patted both of them down for concealed weapons. Another scooped up Bryson’s gun.

  “My name is Police Sergeant Sullivan. You’re both under arrest in connection with the murder of Foreign Secretary Rupert Vere and Undersecretary Simon Dawson.” Sullivan flipped a switch on his two-way pocket radio and detailed his location, calling for backup.

  “I understand the necessity for going through established procedures,” said Bryson, “but a careful ballistic examination will reveal that it was Dawson who murdered the foreign secretary.”

  “Murdered by his own deputy? Bloody likely.”

  “Dawson was a control, an agent of an international syndicate with a significant interest in passing the surveillance treaty. He was far too careful, I’m sure, to leave any evidence in plain sight linking him to this group, but there will be evidence—altered phone logs, visitors admitted to the Parliament building to see him yet not recorded in his own records —”

  Suddenly the great arched doors banged open again, and two large, heavily muscled, uniformed men carrying automatic submachine guns came rushing into the room. “Ministry of Defense, Special Forces!” called the taller of the two men in a husky baritone.

  Officer Sullivan turned in surprise. “We weren’t notified of your participation, sir.”

  “Nor we of yours. We’ll take over from here,” the tall man said. He had steel-gray brush-cut hair and cold blue eyes.

  “That won’t be necessary,” Sullivan said. His tone was calm, but there was no mistaking his resolve. “We’ve got everything under control.”

  Bryson turned with alarm, his hands cuffed. The machine guns were Czech, nothing that would have been issued by the British Ministry of Defense. “No!” he shouted. “Mother of Christ, they’re not who they say!”

  Baffled, Sullivan looked from Bryson to the crew-cut man. “You’re Ministry of Defense, you say?”

  “Right,” the man replied brusquely. “We’ve got the situation under control.”

  “Get down!” Bryson screamed. “They’re killers!”

  Elena dove to the floor, screaming, and Bryson dove next to her, a row of wooden chairs the only barrier between them and the intruders.

  But it was too late. Even before he finished speaking, the hall echoed with the deafening thunder of automatic fire as the gray-haired killer and his cohort sprayed bullets into the four police constables, riddled their bodies with bullets. Stray rounds pinged against the stone floor and chewed into the mahogany wainscoting. Caught off guard, their sidearms holstered, the genuine policemen were easy targets. A few of them reached, seconds too late, for their weapons. They staggered, their bodies twisting from side to side, almost dancing in a pathetic but vain attempt to dodge the bullets before they crumpled to the floor.

  Elena shrieked, “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!”

  Horrified and sickened, Bryson watched, powerless to do anything.

  The air was acrid with cordite, with the coppery smell of blood. The brush-cut Promethean killer consulted his wristwatch.

  Bryson understood what had just happened and why. The Prometheus Group would never countenance the risk of letting the two of them be taken into official custody: the dangers posed by what they might divulge could not be gauged with precision. Rather, the Promethean hirelings would themselves want to interrogate them, and only then kill them. That was the only possible explanation for why they were still alive.

  Now the tall killer spoke in a deep voice. His accent, which on first hearing had sounded British, now seemed to be Dutch, Bryson decided. “We’re going to have a few hours of fun together,” the Prometheus killer said. “Chemical interrogation has become quite advanced in recent years, as you’ll see.”

  On the floor, Bryson struggled, quietly and discreetly, with the handcuffs, but without a key, or something he could use as a key, it was no use. He looked around; the policemen who lay dead, their bodies riddled with bullets, were no closer than six to eight feet away. He would not be able to take a handcuff key off one of their bodies without being seen doing so; he would never get away with it. But to stay here meant to face chemicals, probably administered inexpertly and in such quantities that they would sustain serious and irreversible damage.

  No, he corrected himself. After the chemicals will be death.

  Robby Sullivan had felt the impact across his midriff like the kick of a horse, and the next thing he knew he was slumped to the floor. His shirtfront was soaked with blood; he couldn’t get his breath. A bullet must have punctured a lung, because he felt as if he were slowly drowning. His breathing was shallow, labored. And all the while, his. mind fought for some semblance of comprehension. What was going on? The couple who had surrendered appeared to be unharmed, even while his loyal and devoted men, good men all of them with girlfriends or wives and families, had been brutally mowed down. They had all been trained to expect such a possibility, but in reality their jobs in the Westminster Division could not have been more peaceful. What had happened to his men was ghastly, unthinkable! And me too, he thought ruefully. I’m not long for this world either. But he didn’t understand: had the armed men come to rescue the assassins? Then why had the handcuffed man tried to warn him? He stared at the ceiling, his gaze moving in and out of focus, steadily weakening, wondering how much longer he would remain conscious.

  He had been unable to get his gun out in time, but who on God’s green earth would have expected soldiers from the Ministry of Defense to suddenly turn on them with machine guns? They weren’t, of course, from the Ministry. The uniforms—their uniforms weren’t Ministry of Defense … something was definitely off. The handcuffed man was right, which might well mean that the protestations of innocence were justified. Things were happening beyond his ability to understand, but this much seemed clear: the handcuffed man had surrendered peacefully, his protests plausible; and the intruders with machine guns were unquestionably cold-blooded killers. Robby Sullivan felt reasonably certain that he was dying, that he was just minutes from death, and he prayed to the Lord Jesus Christ that He would allow him just one more chance to set things right. Slowly, through a haze, he felt around for his gun.