Abuse of Power - Michael Savage [36]
An instant later the man was gone, swallowed by the crowd, and Haddad wondered if his imagination were getting the better of him. He’d barely seen a face, and what he had seen could be anyone. Anyone at all.
But he didn’t think so.
His instincts may have failed him somewhat in Bulgaria, but he had the same feeling now that he had then: that he was once again being watched.
And he knew who the watcher was.
He didn’t take a second look, however, instead keeping his eyes on the tunnel, waiting for his train to arrive. If the Turk remained in that same general area he’d be entering just three cars down.
Haddad wasn’t foolish enough to make the same mistake twice. He assumed the Turk wasn’t working alone. The Gypsy whore had been replaced by someone new. Someone who would also be on this platform, a rooks-on-king move modeled after the game of chess: one rook could be blocked, lost, or avoided by the king but not without remaining vulnerable to the other.
The woman standing next to him, perhaps? The old man stooped over the water fountain? The curly-headed college student with an e-book reader?
It could be any of them. Or none. The only way to find out was to leave this place and see who followed.
But he didn’t leave immediately. Instead he waited several minutes until his train finally glided up to the platform, its brakes hissing. The doors opened and the crowd began pushing through them, anxious to find seats.
Haddad moved along with the other passengers, then hung back suddenly and turned, heading for the stairs.
He didn’t wait to see if he was followed.
* * *
When he reached the street, Haddad immediately ducked into a nearby pub—the Old Town Brewery—and stood near the front window, watching the underground steps less than two hundred yards away.
A moment later a man emerged from the stairwell and bounded to the top of the steps, out of breath, his head swiveling, his eyes frantically searching the crowded sidewalk. There was no question about it now.
It was the Turk.
As the man’s gaze shifted to the pub, Haddad stepped back from the window to avoid being seen. The place was dimly lit and the shadows hid him well.
But the Turk must have had instincts, too. He knew that Haddad couldn’t have disappeared that fast unless he’d taken refuge in one of the nearby stores. And the darkness of the Old Town Brewery was the most likely candidate. Fixing his gaze on the front doorway, the Turk headed straight for it.
That was Haddad’s cue to move.
The pub was sparsely populated with ruddy-faced businessmen and their whorish companions. Haddad weaved his way through them to the back, counting the seconds it took, then ducked through a doorway marked TOILETS and found himself in a dim hallway lined with old black-and-white photographs of London.
The men’s room door was less than two meters away.
Haddad knew that the Turk would check back here. It made sense. He immediately flattened against the wall and waited, mentally calculating the time it would take his pursuer to step inside and cross to the back. It had taken Haddad about twenty seconds, and the Turk was moving as quickly, with purpose.
In less than fifteen seconds the Turk stepped into the hallway, apparently expecting his quarry to be in one of the rooms, behind a locked door, perhaps trying to get out through a window.
He wasn’t. Haddad was facing the hallway door.
As the door swung outward Haddad lunged, grabbing the Turk by the collar. Spinning the smaller man around, he shoved him to the left so that he crashed through the men’s room doorway. The Turk’s eyes went wide in the grimy white light as he stumbled back and slammed against a stall door. Haddad pinned him there with a forearm pressed hard across his exposed throat.
“Who are you?” Haddad demanded in Turkish. “Why are you following me?”
The Turk made a sound in his throat but nothing came