It only took Morgan a moment to realise Lahav was leading them
towards
the sirens. He opened his mouth to protest, then closed it again. The Mossad agent had managed to elude both the police and the Hermetic Division for several days. He probably knew what he was doing.
As the sound of sirens grew louder along with the rumble of traffic, Lahav dropped to his stomach. Morgan did the same, though there were brambles beneath the grass which snagged his boxers and scratched at the exposed skin of his belly. The smell of earth rose up, rich and comforting.
When they reached the road, he appreciated the other man's caution. Police cars were parked only twenty feet away, sirens off now but lights still flashing as the cops milled around them. He wondered what they thought they were investigating. Had they been called after Morgan's attack on Lahav, or Lahav's attack on him? Or did they know the real truth now, that they were on the trail of a double murderer? If Lahav was right and the Hermetic Division had been called, they probably knew everything.
Morgan put his mouth was against Lahav's ear and mouthed, "Back?"
The Israeli shook his head, never taking his eyes from the road. "They will have people on all the exits from the river. There's no clear path."
After a few seconds, the random jumble of cops shook itself out into some kind of organisation. They peeled off in pairs, some heading down the road, others across the grass towards the river. It seemed for a moment they might all leave, but three remained idling by the cars as one of them sparked up a cigarette. At the bend of the road, Morgan could see another congregation of uniformed figures.
"Shit!" he said.
Lahav clamped a hand on his arm to silence him, then nodded in the opposite direction. There was a pedestrian approaching, a young man around his own age. The newcomer was staring at the cops with the casual curiosity of someone who had absolutely nothing to hide.
The cops themselves hadn't noticed him yet. They were huddled together laughing, maybe sharing a joke at the expense of the colleagues who'd walked away. They were distracted, and Morgan didn't think they'd have a better chance to make their move. He raised himself to a half-crouch, ready to spring across the road, but Lahav moved first. The Israeli sprang out to the pavement with startling suddenness. Morgan stood to follow, then stumbled back as he realised Lahav's intention. He had one arm round the waist of the passing tourist, the other hand clamped across his mouth. Another second and he was back in the bushes beside Morgan, the tourist trapped beneath his body.
Morgan lowered himself back to his knees. He kept his eyes on the cops, half-seen through the screening bushes, but they hadn't moved. They hadn't seen anything.
When he looked back at Lahav, the other man had his knife to the tourist's throat. It was glowing the orange of a summer sunset.
Morgan grabbed his wrist and the tourist's eyes flicked to him, then back to Lahav. They were wide and terrified. Morgan tried to smile at him, the expression falling off his face as he looked back at Lahav. "No," he said. "No collateral damage."
"I only kill those who have transgressed," Lahav said. His expression was so bland Morgan found it impossible to tell if he was lying. He loosened his fingers all the same, then almost cried out as Lahav's arm lashed out the instant it was free. But it was the pommel of the knife which struck the tourist, and the man's eyes rolled up into his head as he slumped into unconsciousness.
"Get dressed," Lahav said. "He's your size, I think."
Morgan wanted to argue, but the Mossad agent was right. He was far too conspicuous wearing only his boxers and the day was drawing to a close, chilling his damp skin unpleasantly. He sighed, taking the time to check that the tourist was still breathing, his skull intact. Then he began unbuttoning the man's jeans, tugging them down his legs before pulling off his hoodie and brown T-shirt.
The fit wasn't perfect on Morgan. The jeans were too loose at the waist and tight around his muscular thighs, and the T-shirt pulled around his shoulders. But no one who wasn't looking for it would notice. He could walk down the street without attracting curious glances.
First they had to get to the street, though. And the cops were still there, gazes once again scanning the road right and left.
"Not here," Lahav said. "Pull back, then left - we need to be near the colleges."
"I thought you said they were watching everywhere?"
"They are." Lahav moved before Morgan could ask anything else, crawling on hands and knees through the undergrowth. Morgan sighed and followed, annoyed that he made far more noise at it than the Israeli.
They broke from the trees into an open, over-grown meadow. The deep green of the grass was dusted with the white of cowslips, their long stems bobbing a little in the breeze. It was very beautiful, but the Mossad agent hardly seemed to notice, only grunting in irritation as he dropped to his stomach to slither through the more open terrain. It was slow going, but ten minutes took them to another road as Lahav had predicted. And there were policemen at each end of it, he'd been right about that too.
But the pavements were more crowded, the rush of tourists making the cops' job that much harder. Morgan saw one of them, a young man with sandy hair, frowning as he scanned the passers-by. And then he saw what Lahav must have been waiting for and couldn't help smiling. The other man was cold as iron, but he knew his job.
The tour group was at least 30 strong, Italian by the look of their olive skin and dark hair. Lahav would fit right in, though Morgan would need to keep to the centre of the group if he wasn't to stand out. But the police were barely paying them any attention as they followed the red umbrella of their tour leader.
A couple of the tourists gave Morgan puzzled glances as he pushed his way through them, but their protests were drowned in the general hubbub and when he raised his head to watch the tour guide give her speech they quickly did the same.
The group was drifting left, towards the centre of town. Morgan could see a cop on each side of the pavement, eyes scanning the crowd. His attention wanted to stay on the cops, to watch them watching for him. He made himself focus on the tour guide instead, as the woman's musical Italian washed over him. And he concentrated on steadying his breathing as they approached the policemen flanking the road.
Just for an instant, Morgan felt eyes on him and knew he'd been spotted. Then the eyes passed and he realised, with a physical rush of relief, that he'd been seen but not perceived. He felt Lahav stiffen then relax beside him, and guessed the other man had felt the same careless regard.
"We should check Coby's bedsit," Morgan said. "I know where it is."
"A waste of time. The American won't return there."
Morgan smiled. "Exactly. Which means he'll have left it without having a chance to clear it out. If we want to find out what he's up to, that place is our best hope."
Lahav nodded, but he didn't look pleased. Morgan's smile widened as he led the way towards Coby's building. He knew his job too.
Lahav stopped outside Coby's door, rearing back as if struck - and Morgan saw the red cross still smeared on the wood. 'Protection' Coby had called it, and now he knew what it was meant to protect the American from. He felt a shock of both fear and hope.
"If I open the door, can you get past it?" he asked the Israeli.
The other man nodded and Morgan turned the knob. Locked. He kicked out fast and hard against the weakest point and the wood gave with barely a groan of protest. The noise might have alerted the other residents in the house, but Morgan doubted they'd act on it. He'd lived in this kind of place himself and he knew how very little neighbours knew or cared about each other.
Lahav brushed past him to enter first, but Morgan was interested to see that the other man was very careful not to touch the door, as if even the faintest contact could hurt him. He knew there might come a time when he too needed some protection from the Mossad agent.
Coby's room was as cramped and messy as Morgan remembered it. But nothing looked like it had been packed and he thought his guess had been right: the student hadn't wanted to risk returning when he'd fled the river.
"What should we be looking for?" Morgan asked.
Lahav raised an eyebrow. "This was your idea, my friend. What do
you
think we should expect to find?"
It was a good question. Morgan hadn't trusted Coby, but he'd underestimated him. He'd assumed the other man was working on his own, and that his need for Morgan would bind them together, at least temporarily. But what if he had other allies?
"Is he working for the other side?" he asked Lahav. "For Belle and her people?"
Lahav scanned the room. "Let's try to find out."
There was a surprising amount of junk in such a small space. There were stacks of papers, but they all seemed to relate to Coby's PhD, likewise the stacks of books in, on and around the bookshelves. When he finally found something, it was in Coby's sock draw, buried between twelve identical pairs of socks. He heard them clink as he slid the draw open, an almost musical metallic sound. Brass fragments shone through the black material.
They were shell casings of at least three different kinds, some from a small-calibre handgun, others clearly the product of a large semi-automatic. Morgan pulled them out and lay them on top of the chest of drawers, herding them with his hands when they would have rolled off. He counted twenty-seven in total. Coby had hidden them and they must have been important - he could feel that they were - but he didn't understand why.
"Trophies of his kills," Lahav said. "Did you know he was a murderer when you agreed to help him?"
Morgan forced himself to look the other man in the eye as he nodded. "I knew he'd killed, when he was younger. I thought... I guess I just assumed he regretted it."
"As you regret the things you've done," Lahav said. To Morgan's surprise there was no judgement in his eyes. "Coby has no regret, Morgan. If he could feel remorse, then there would be hope for him when the end comes. But he can't feel it. He is a sociopath, without conscience - the only thing he can feel about his crimes is pleasure. That is why he must seek immortality. Because if he won't repent, he must go to hell."
Morgan wiped his hands against his stolen jeans, though he knew there'd been no blood on the shell casings. They weren't what had killed Coby's victims, only a memento of the murders. "Who did he kill?" he asked, a question he knew he should have asked Coby.
"Two teachers and a lot of other children at his school in Iowa," Lahav said. "He murdered them when he was 17."
Morgan returned the casings to the drawer and slammed it shut. "Hang on - I remember that one. The boy in the George Bush mask. But he shot himself after he shot all the others, didn't he?"
"The police, they found a body on the scene wearing the mask and carrying the murder weapons. They had the school locked down and no one had crossed their perimeter, so they said he must be the killer. But the people in the town who knew that boy, and knew Coby Bryson, to them it wasn't so clear. Coby was outside the building, he could not have done it - and yet... And so he finished his time at high school surrounded by people who suspected what he'd done and hated him for it. I've seen his photo in the yearbook. He's smiling. This is the man you've helped nearer to the secret of immortality."
Morgan felt himself flush, but he stood his ground. "And you want me to help you instead. But you killed Granger and Julie in cold blood too. Do
you
regret it?"
Lahav grimaced. "I took no
pleasure
in it. But it was necessary. They were dangerous. I removed the danger. This is my job."
Morgan found himself getting angry all over again. "Julie wasn't dangerous. I didn't see any evidence she was involved in Granger and Coby's research. And even if she was, what's so wrong with that? So she wanted to find the secret of immortality. So fucking what? Wouldn't we all want that?"
"It's forbidden," Lahav said. "The Almighty has forbidden it."
He seemed to think that was the end of the argument. And maybe it was. What did Morgan know?
"There's nothing else here," Lahav said. "We won't find where he's gone, because he didn't decide where that was until you told him Dee's secret."
Morgan gritted his teeth, but he knew the other man was right. He had one puzzle piece and Lahav had a lot of the others. They needed each other. But after Morgan had handed over his intel, Lahav wouldn't need him anymore. And he trusted the Mossad agent no more than he'd trusted Coby, despite what might be living inside him - or maybe because of it.
"What do you want from me?" Lahav asked, reading Morgan's doubts in his face. "I will swear an oath to work with you, if you want. And if you don't trust my word, think of this. While you're with me, you're not with the Hermetic Division, telling them what you know. It's to my benefit to have you stay with me."
"Or you could just kill me as soon as I've told you."
Lahav fingered the bloody lump on his forehead and smiled wryly. "You're not so easy to kill. And you have... value. You can help me to catch Coby. An alliance, Morgan. I swear by Hashem that I'll work with you, until Coby is stopped."
Morgan hesitated, and in that moment of hesitation, the door opened.
Kate looked alarmed when she saw Lahav and Morgan standing side by side. Afraid for him, Morgan realised. Her expression slid into something harsher when she realised he and Lahav were only talking. He opened his mouth to tell Kate this wasn't what it looked like, then realised how much like a man caught having an affair that would sound.
She shut the door gently behind her. "For god's sake, Morgan. He killed two people."
"Yeah, and I killed a lot more, and you still took me on."
"That was your job," she said.
He raised an eyebrow and she sighed, understanding his point if not quite conceding it.
"Morgan is working with me now," Lahav said.
Kate's head snapped round, almost as if she'd forgotten he was there. Morgan understood that this was just between him and her.