Last Gasp полностью

Keeping his place in line, Sturges waited with icy control for the escalator to take him over the last curve, giving him a view along the length of the terrazzo concourse to the large green lettering--international departures--sixty or so yards away. A line of people straggled between him and the barrier and Sturges had to stare hard to convince himself that Chase wasn't among them.

He stood to one side of the people spilling off the escalator, feet planted apart, eyes slitted under the soft black brim of his hat. His victim had vanished, which logic said was impossible. Chase couldn't have made it to the barrier in the few seconds he'd been out of sight, even at a sprint.

A moment later he had the answer as his restless gaze alighted on the nearby men's room. Swiftly he moved to a window ledge, laid the case flat, raised the hasps, and lifted the lid. From the pouch he took the left glove and slipped it on, then carefully fitted his hand into the right one, his fingers closing around the hypodermic. The camera he had already reloaded, which gave him a choice of two methods: hypo or dart, it was all the same to him.

The attache case in his left hand, his other hand splayed and stiff-fingered hanging free and ready by his side, Sturges crossed the terrazzo floor and pushed with his broad shoulder through the toilet door.

Chase washed his hands at the row of washbasins, shook the moisture off, and shuffled his briefcase to the hot-air dryer in the corner. He hardly felt at ease with it out of his grasp, never mind his sight. None of the other four or five men looked like a criminal, but you could never be sure. Airports bred distrust as moldy cheese did maggots.

As he held his hands beneath the jfets of air and dried them, he looked absently into the mirror in front of him, which in this room of mirrors gave him a kaleidoscope of assorted views from different angles. In one of them a young man with lank black hair to his shoulders and an Asiatic cast to his features, wearing a creased and wrinkled leather jacket, was sidling up, hand outstretched, behind somebody drying his hands at one of the machines. Fascinated, Chase watched this performance. It was only when the young man straightened up, hefting a briefcase that was the spitting image of his own, that the light clicked on in his brain. Stupidly he looked down between his feet to confirm the fact that he'd been robbed.

Chase spun around. "Stop him, he's got my briefcase!"

Heads turned, eyes glazed with surprise and alarm. But nobody moved.

By then the young Asian had reached the door, his hand clawing for the handle when the door was shouldered open by a big man in a black vinyl hat and a gray suit edged with a thin pink stripe. The two collided with considerable force. Instinctively the big man raised his gloved hand to take the brunt of the collision but was still thrown back by the impact, the door crashing against the wall, and a sharp metallic crack, as the handle smashed into the tiles, reverberated around the mirrored, tiled room.

Instantly the young Asian recovered and barged past and was gone, leaving Sturges with his back to the open door, momentarily stunned.

As Chase followed, his face contorted with an almost manic desperation, Sturges saw his chance. This is it, my friend. And as Chase tried to push through he brought up the glove with its stiffened fingers, his own fingers clutching the syringe inside, and jabbed it against the victim's upper arm in a gesture that to an onlooker must have appeared as nothing more than a defensive reaction. Exerting the full pressure of his thumb on the plunger, Sturges wondered why it wasn't moving-- stuck, or what? Inexplicably the plunger had been rammed home already. He couldn't believe it. Then he saw the tiny hole in the index finger of the glove where the needle should have been.

After the brief hindrance of the man at the door--he'd registered only a black-gloved hand and chunky gold jewelry on a hairy wrist-- Chase raced for the escalator, scattering a knot of people who got in his way.

Damn! The bastard was already halfway down. Little wonder--for using the heavy briefcase like a scythe to clear a path he was laying waste to the downward escalator, leaving women screaming, people hanging on to the moving rubber hand support, and bodies sprawled on the serrated metal treads.

For Chase it was the old nightmare of being hampered and obstructed, unable to make headway, and with it came the sick despair of knowing he was in real and actual danger of losing his notebooks and tapes, two months of expensive, irreplaceable research, all gone because of a single stupid careless moment. Once the Asian reached the lower level he wouldn't have a cat in hell's chance of catching him.