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“The guy in the red jacket!” Mattie shouted at Burkhart.
He heard them. The old man began bulling his way through the melee, showing tremendous strength and agility.
But Burkhart was like a rhino on steroids. He brushed people aside as if they were scarecrows, with Mattie trailing in his wake.
The killer disappeared out into a crowded passage. Ten seconds later, Burkhart and Mattie exited the same doors and scanned the crowd, which was beginning to pick up on the frenzy inside the hall as more and more people ran from it talking about the shooting.
The old man was gone.
Or was he?
Mattie spotted a red jacket on the floor.
“He’s changed jackets,” she shouted at Burkhart.
Suddenly, toward the west entrance to the convention hall, they heard a gunshot and screaming.
CHAPTER 74
A SECURITY GUARD had confronted the assassin at point-blank range and been shot in the chest, his gun discharging as he fell.
Beyond the guard, outside the entrance, and running toward Brüsseler Strasse, a man in a blue windbreaker and black cap dodged through the crowd. Burkhart took off in a full sprint with Mattie gasping to keep up behind him.
By the time Mattie and Burkhart reached the entrance, the killer had dragged a man from a Maserati, pistol-whipped him, and climbed in. The sports car squealed away as they ran out onto the sidewalk. Rain was starting to fall again.
As he ran, Burkhart flashed his badge at a man standing shocked beside a red BMW coupe. “Call Frankfurt Kripo,” he shouted at the man, snatching the keys from his hand.
“Hey!” the man shouted. “That’s not mine! You can’t—”
“Report this vehicle taken by Private Berlin and the Maserati stolen by an assassin,” Burkhart commanded as he jumped in the driver’s seat. “He killed two.”
Mattie was in the BMW’s passenger seat, strapping herself in. “He’s got a head start.”
“And he’s got more horsepower,” Burkhart said, slamming the sports car in gear and popping the clutch. “But he can’t drive like I can.”
They went screeching after the Maserati, which had downshifted and drifted through a hard U-turn, heading due east toward Osloer Strasse. The killer went right past them. He looked out the window directly at them.
Bald. Dark glasses. A moustache. Hard to tell his age.
The killer had already taken a right on Osloer Strasse by the time they’d made the U-turn. They sped after him through a series of right-hand turns that led them around the perimeter of the fairgrounds and through a red light out onto Route 44, heading west. The Maserati was four hundred yards ahead of them when it took the ramp onto Autobahn 648.
Due to Burkhart’s remarkable driving skills, the killer could not widen the gap between them all the way to the interchange with the Autobahn 5. The Maserati headed north.
“Call Kripo,” Burkhart told Mattie. “Tell them to put a chopper in the air and give them his position.”
But right then the skies opened up—a deluge came in sheets and a gale overwhelmed the windshield wipers. Burkhart did not slow. Instead, he seemed to drive by braille on the three-lane high-speed route, weaving in and out of cars as if the skies were clear.
It scared the hell out of Mattie, who could not bring herself to take her eyes off the blurry road.
“Call them!” Burkhart snapped.
Mattie shouted, “Slow down and I will!”
“I slow down, we lose him!” Burkhart yelled back.
“We can’t even see where he is!”
“I can see the brake lights where he’s cutting people off!”
