They dodged onto a small side street, bright with flowers growing in boxes and in pots set on narrow stoops; the doors were gaily painted, and children wrung the last moments of sunshine from the day. John increased his speed; they had to get off that street fast, before any kids got hurt.
They turned right, down an alley so narrow sunlight never penetrated it; they had to run single file. The street ahead of them was purple with shadows, alive with people. Lights were winking on.
Someone barreled into John as soon as he emerged from the alley and they went crashing to the ground. For a split second Niema thought it was an accident, then arms grabbed her from behind and she reacted automatically, driving her elbow back into a gut that wasn't as hard as it could have been. The guy whooshed out his breath in a violent explosion. She ducked out of his hold, whirled, and poked him in the little notch beside his eye. She didn't have the proper angle, back to front, but he went
down anyway, writhing on the ground and vomiting.
John grabbed her wrist and yanked her into a run. She looked back and saw her assailant lying unmoving on the ground. The man who had tackled John was kind of half sitting, half lying against the wall. He wasn't moving either.
"Don't look," John still towed her by the wrist, so fast her feet barely touched ground. "Just run."
Her stomach turned over. "I didn't mean-"
"He did," he said briefly.
They dodged down yet another street and found themselves in a part of town where the streets seemed to branch off each other like tangled spaghetti. Ahead of them a trio of men cut across an intersection, weapons drawn. One of the men spotted them and pointed. John pulled her down the nearest bisecting street.
"How many of them are there?" she panted.
"A lot." He sounded grim. He angled back toward where they had seen the three men, hoping to come out behind them. They ran up a narrow, picturesque street, with flower boxes in the windows and old women selling a few wares on their doorsteps, from tatted lace shawls to homemade potpourri. One woman shrieked at the gun in John's hand as he and Niema ran by. A sharp angle took them to the left, and a dead end. Niema whirled and started back, but John caught her arm and pulled her toward him.
She heard what he heard. The street behind them slowly fell silent as the old women grabbed up their wares and vanished into their houses. The sounds of traffic came from a distance, but here there was nothing.
Louis Ronsard strolled into view, a slight smile on his sculpted lips and a Glock-17 in his hand. The big pistol was leveled at Niema's head.
John immediately moved at a right angle away from her. The gun didn't waver from her head. "Stop right there," Ronsard said, and John obeyed.
"My friends," he said lightly, "you left without saying good-bye."
"Good-bye," John said, without expression. He made no move with the weapon in his hand, not with that big 9mm locked dead center on Niema's forehead.
"Drop your weapon," Ronsard said to John. His dark blue eyes were arctic. John obeyed, letting the pistol drop to the street. "You abused my hospitality. If the guard hadn't surprised you, you would have gotten away with it. I never would have known you got into my computer. You did, didn't you? Otherwise you wouldn't have been leaving my office at that time, you would still have been in there working."
John shrugged. There was no point denying it. "I got what I went after. I copied everything; I know what you know."
"To what point, my friend? Blackmail? Or did you want exclusive access to the RDX-a?"
It was Temple who answered. As Niema watched, John's face altered ever so slightly, his eyes taking on a flat quality. "Whoever has the compound will make a lot of money in a very short time. Plus ... I have some uses for it."
"You could have bought whatever amount you needed."
"And you would make the money."
"So that's what this is all about? Just money?"
"It's always about money."
'And her?" Ronsard indicated Niema. "I assume she's your partner."
"I don't have partners."
"Then she is . . . ?"
"She isn't involved in this. Let her go," John said softly.
In a heartbeat Ronsard had the gun off Niema and on John, his finger already on the trigger. "Don't play me for a fool," he said, his voice low and deadly.
Niema slipped her right hand up behind her back and gripped the pistol tucked in her waistband. Ronsard caught the motion out of the corner of his eye and started to turn, but she already had the pistol out and leveled at his head.
"Perhaps," she murmured in her best Medina imitation, "you should be asking me the questions. Drop the pistol."
"I don't think so," Ronsard said, still holding his weapon on John. "Are you willing to risk your lover's life? He wasn't willing to risk yours."
She shrugged, as if it didn't matter. "Just move over there beside him."
Both men froze. John seemed to have stopped breathing, his face going white. Ronsard stared at her in astonishment, then began laughing mirthlessly. Niema didn't dare take her eyes off Ronsard, but she was almost paralyzed herself by the risk she was taking. With John's history, a wife he had killed rather than let her betray two men, for another lover to betray him would be devastating, so devastating that not even his superhuman control could hold. His reaction was crucial, because Ronsard had to believe it.
"My apologies, Monsieur Temple," Ronsard said to John. "It appears we were both used."
"Sorry, darling." She gave John an insincere smile. "I have the disk. While you were sleeping last night, I sort of confiscated it." He knew that was a lie. Not only had she not left the bed last night except to visit the head, getting the disk didn't mean anything now that the information had already been sent to Langley.