Luka sent a photo of a printed document to Danny’s phone.

Danny nodded his thanks. “Look, me and my mates are up against it, here. We both want Becker. We could do with a hand.”

“You are wanted as terrorists,” said Luka. “I am not in business of going up against governments.” He studied Danny for a while, then sighed. “But I am not in business of letting the murder of a friend go unpunished, either.” He said something to Yuri. Yuri, still bleeding, pulled out an expensive-looking cream business card and gave it to me. There was no name, just a number. “My direct line,” said Luka.

We nodded gratefully and the Russians withdrew. Danny and I looked at each other and sighed in relief. We’d done it!

We slipped out of the men’s room and down the hallway. We walked into the lobby arm in arm…and stopped dead.

Four German police officers were standing there, talking to one of the ticket attendants. She was talking and gesticulating, pointing upstairs to where Danny had punched Yuri. One of the police officers showed her a printed picture and asked her something. We didn’t need to speak German to catch the meaning. Are you sure it was him?

The picture was of Danny.

At that second, one of the cops glanced our way. His eyes widened when he saw Danny. “Halt!” he yelled, pulling his gun.

Danny grabbed my hand. “Run!”

51. Danny

51

DANNY

I’d just started to relax after our run-in with Luka Malakov. I could feel my pulse slowing…and then suddenly, there was a gun pointed at us and the adrenaline was slamming through my system again. My brain took a while to get turned around but the rest of me knew what to do. I’d told Erin to run, grabbed her hand and we were moving while my brain was still thinking about how tempting her bare shoulders were in that dress.

When my brain finally got into gear, it started figuring out where to go. Up the stairs? We didn’t have tickets but I could muscle us past the ticket attendants. But then what? There was no way out, up there, and the police would run us down eventually. The exits were all down here, but they’d have security guards on them. We needed another option, an exit not for the public.