Nate groaned and opened his eyes. His head was foggy, his eyes felt cloudy, like he couldn't focus and there was a dull thudding happening inside his skull. He groaned again, closed his eyes and felt a desperate desire to pass out again.
The thudding continued, it seemed louder now, and Nate opened his eyes. He saw a stained and cracked wall. No not a wall, a roof. The paint chipping away to reveal a pale-yellow undercoat.
Suddenly it all came back to him, the escape from Khanoğlu's men through Budapest, ending up in the Danube, returning to the hotel and the fight with Sully who...
"Took the letters. Crap" he groaned.
The thudding returned and he realised it wasn't his head that was thudding, but the door. A voice yelled out in Hungarian. Nate slowly got up, his body stiff and sore, and walked to the door and peeked through the peephole.
"Oh shit" he said. Standing in the door was the middle-aged, paunchy manager who looked both put out and terrified because behind him were four men in black with burgundy armbands and bullet-proof vests. The word 'Rendőrség' written across the chest. They each wore visored helmets and two had Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns and the other two Heckler & Koch UPS pistols.
Nate moved away from the door, for whatever reason they hadn't barged in, but he had no doubt that wouldn't last long. They must have received a tip that he was a person of interest in the events at Matthias Church and he cursed Khanoğlu. Or was it Sully who tipped them off?
No, despite all that happened he couldn't imagine Sully doing such a thing. It had to be Khanoğlu, he knew everything about them so far. Whatever resources he had they extended far enough that he was able to have them followed from Poland to Hungary and he likely knew where they were staying.
He cursed himself an idiot as he quickly pulled on a pair of jeans, a button up top, socks and sneakers, his muscles stiff and sore and his ribs screaming in protest. He snatched up his backpack, inside he still had some of the items he'd picked up along the way - the solidus and the unknown coin and the letter from King George to Cook among the tools he took to the Red Hedgehog House. Sully had everything else.
His other stuff he would have to leave behind, thankfully he only brought the bare minimum of clothing, nothing identifiable and he could buy another toothbrush easy enough.
The knocking on the door was louder, the police were going to break in any moment now, and it was likely they had the place surrounded.
The front door was not an option, so Nate slung his backpack over his shoulders and made his way over to the only window in the room. He unlatched it and pushed it up, greeted with a gust of freezing cold air he poked his head out and examined the surrounding area. It was dusk, the orange-yellow light of the sun teasing a new day in the cloudless sky, but it provided just enough light for Nate to see into the narrow alley below and another handful of Hungarian police officers waited with weapons drawn.
"Crap" he muttered. No way down that way. He looked up and while there wasn't a fire escape, he could climb to the roof and assess from there. Sliding the window up all the way, he shimmied his body through the gap and hung on the outside by the windowsill.
His room was on the second floor of a three-storey plain brick building. Bolted to the wall were numerous square air-conditioning units and downpipes, one of which ran vertically just out of reach. Below him the police moved closer to the corner and as soon as one of the radios squawked, Nate planted his feet and leaped sideways grabbing onto the downpipe. His foot scraped against the brick and he held his breath. He glanced down but the officers were still focusing their gaze forward.
Letting out a quiet sigh of relief, Nate began to climb up the pipe, his shoes almost curled around it and he was sure he looked like a giant monkey climbing a tree.
The downpipe took a right angle and Nate shimmied across it, feet on the brick wall until it took another sharp angle upwards. He was only a couple of meters from the roof now. He grabbed at the vertical downpipe and as he did, the pipe snapped from its connector to the roof and bent away from the wall.
To Nate, the noise sounded like a shotgun blast in a monastery and he hung, one handed from the vertical pipe, looking down and expecting bullets and an alarm raised but they still remained focused and waiting at the corner.
"Shit. Shit" he whispered. By now the police would have entered his room, there wasn't much to search. The main room with the bed and TV and the bathroom. All they would find were his clothes and...
The open window!
He had to get a move on, they would assume he left via the window and then it was only a matter of time before they found him.
Across from the pipe was an air-conditioning unit, Nate leapt across and grabbed on to it and pulled himself on top of it. The unit, while reinforced with right angle brackets bolted into the brick, groaned and squealed under the added weight. It wouldn't hold him for long.
Below he heard shouts and the police finally realised someone was climbing above them. Bullets didn't come, not yet. They shouted at him in Hungarian, he assumed it meant 'stop' but stopping now would only serve to get him killed. Above him the ledge of the building was only two metres above him, and he jumped. As he did, the extra force caused the air-conditioning unit to let out one final squeal of protest before it broke free of the wall and fell to the alley below with a crash.
There was a shout of alarm and confusion as Nate gripped the ledge and began to pull himself up and over. Just as he swung a leg up and over the policemen fired but they missed, the bullets chipping brick, as he rolled to the roof and was safe.
For the moment.
But he knew they would already be on the radio to the officers in his room and they would be on the roof in a minute, two tops. He got up, injured shoulder protesting, and ran past the door leading to the stairwell into the building, to the far side of the roof where he leapt across the gap spanning a small alley to another roof. He was running east and the sun was just peeking over the horizon and it was enough to ensure his pursuers had to squint and shield their eyes, making him tougher to locate. He crossed another three buildings before he came to a building at least six storeys high. Nate skidded to a stop, behind him he could hear the police calling out, they hadn't seen him in the sun glare, but that was only a matter of time.
He rushed to either side of the building but found it impossible to descend, one side was the street and the other a back alley used for parking and deliveries. There was nothing safe to jump onto or to cushion his landing from three-storeys up.
Going back was not an option so he hurried to the far end and saw, as the day lightened, his way out. The building was old, roughly built, with no fire escape but it did have a ladder bolted to the side for access to the roof. He backed up, the jump was going to be a long one, the width of the alley large enough for a sedan to fit through comfortably. Just as he started running, bullets peppered the ground near his feet. He stopped and turned, seven policemen, all carrying MP5 machine guns, approached from the next building. He had run out of time, they would be circling the building block by now, he put his hands up and waited. The policemen reached the edge of the building, all yelling at him in Hungarian, and three of them slung their weapons on their back and prepared to jump over, the other four kept their weapons trained on him. Just as the men were about to jump, Nate turned and ran. There were cries for him to stop but he kept running and leapt from the edge, bullets flying all around him like flies. He spanned the gap, heading directly for the ladder and he crashed into it, the air exploding from his lungs, and a sharp pain ran up his shoulder, but he managed to hook his arm around a rung and hold on.
With no time to waste, he began climbing down the ladder, leaping off the last few rungs and ran off, disappearing down the alleyway.
Budapest Ferenc Liszt International Airport was crowded and that suited Nate. After escaping down the alley and evading the police, he managed to flag a taxi to the airport and was now sitting in a small cafe considering his options. He had only the clothes on his back and his backpack, he'd already dumped the tools he couldn't take on a plane. He considered flying home, back to the United States. He could try to hide out but as soon as the Hungarian authorities got a photo of him and all his information, and he knew they would courtesy of Miraç Khanoğlu, he would be found soon enough. Plus, they probably still had him as a person of interest for the Bishop Museum theft. Another option was to fly somewhere else, Cape Town, Zanzibar, Phuket. They all sounded perfect right about now, but he knew he would get bored, get the itch to get into mischief once again and still be on the authorities' radar.
No, he knew his only option was to go after Sully and somehow get evidence on Khanoğlu's involvement in the events in Poland and Hungary and clear their names. Maybe punch Sully in the nose, that might break him out of whatever the hell had gotten into him. He knew where he had gone, Sarai Batu and that meant he needed to get to Russia. But first he had to make a phone call.