Read Blown for Free Online Page B

had lost too much blood in the past week, and his memory of some days was hazy at best. He knew he’d pawned his watch somewhere between Budapest and Berlin—it was gone from his wrist, and he doubted it’d been stolen. Krucevic had always kept them short of cash, and he had no credit card in a name he could use. He’d pawned the watch, then, probably in some shop near the Budapest West train station, the day he’d walked away from Caroline toward a certain death.
    He’d been trying to save Sophie Payne but he’d gone across Europe in the wrong direction. By the time he’d realized Mlan Krucevic was not in Berlin, the vice president and Krucevic were both dead, along with every terrorist operative he’d known for the past two years. He alone had survived. The whole world would be hunting him down.
    What time was it, when he stood at last in the shadows of the loading dock in Berlin? One A.M. ? Two? He’d been cautious and alert. Moved as silently as a cat up the exterior staircase to the security door, through the darkened complex, past reception to the sealed lab. And then the silent rush of air as the knife blade plunged toward him through the darkness, fueled by hatred. He’d sensed the stroke at the last second and dove sideways—but the sharp steel bit into his neck, a savage arc from the base of his ear to his collarbone. With the instinct of the Green Beret he’d once been—the man trained to kill in darkness or light—he’d ignored the knife and reached for the wrists, dashing them brutally against the laboratory’s doors. There was a cry of pain—the clenched fingers released—the weapon clattered to the floor.
    He thought maybe he’d lifted the woman—for his attacker was a woman, he was certain of that—high in the air and flung her like a dressmaker’s dummy into the opposite wall. He wasn’t sure. He only knew that when he finally flipped on a light and stared down at the body at his feet, her neck was broken.
    Her name was Greta Oppenheimer. One of 30 April’s loyal slaves. She’d used a laboratory scalpel to stab him; it lay, blade broken, near her lifeless fingers.
    Why had she crouched in the office that night? Had she known he was coming?
    A spatter of blood fell on Greta’s chest. Eric looked down, then, and saw the stream of it trickling from his neck.
     
    “Are you all right?”
    “Yeah. Out in a minute.”
    He rinsed his head under the bathtub spigot, careful to keep the flow of stained water from striking his wound. He hardly knew how he’d made it to Mahmoud Sharif’s apartment. The Palestinian lived with his German wife in Berlin’s working-class district of Prenzlauerberg. He’d pounded on Sharif’s door in the middle of the night, scaring the two boys out of their wits. Dagmar had been certain it was the German police, come to haul Mahmoud away on yet another terrorism charge. The Palestinian had crept toward the door with a semiautomatic in his hands. He’d thrown back the lock only when he saw blood seeping across his floor.
    Sharif had sealed Eric’s gaping neck wound with plastic cement. Ugly, but efficient; a German hospital was out of the question. He’d bear the scar for the rest of his days.
    He toweled his hair with both hands and studied his reflection in the mirror. His blond hair had disappeared, and with it, his blue eyes; he’d inserted brown lenses. It wasn’t a perfect transformation—he was still the same age and size—but it might get him out of Europe.
    He settled a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles on his nose and stepped into the hall.
    Mahmoud surveyed him critically. “I was followed tonight,” the Palestinian said.
    “Who?”
    “BKA.”
    The Bundeskriminalamt—the German equivalent of the FBI. They might be surveilling Mahmoud out of habit—he’d once built bombs for Hizballah—or they might be looking for Eric. “Did you lose them?”
    Mahmoud shook his head. “I was only coming home. A normal end to a normal day. Why should I