Downfall Read Online Free PDF Page B

grabbed her…”
    “I’m going to vomit,” Glenn said, like he was reading a bullet point off a presentation, and Holly wheeled to the side of the road and he was sick on the curb, the few pedestrians walking by averting their eyes.
    While he puked she pulled out the prepaid phone and called the one number programmed into it.
    The voice came on—“I am expecting nothing but good news”—and she thought as always how Belias could sound both like silk and steel.
    “It went badly.”
    She heard a click of disapproval in his throat and terror seized her chest. “Badly like you were caught? Because you better not be calling me.”
    “No. Glenn’s hurt. Blow to the head. She got away.”
    “And where exactly have you two geniuses taken yourselves?”
    “He needs a doctor. I’m taking him to UCSF…”
    “No.” Then a long pause that stretched her nerves taut. “Bring him to me. I have a safe house in the Mission District, off Valencia.” He gave her directions.
    She glanced at Glenn. His skin was pale, the blood bright against it. “He needs a doctor,” she repeated.
    “Roger is here and he can tend to him.” Roger. This was getting worse. If she had a broken leg, she wouldn’t want Roger for her impromptu medic. He’d give her aspirin and tell her to do fifty push-ups, to take her mind off the pain.
    “Why is Roger in town?”
    “Get here.” Belias hung up.
    Holly threw the phone out onto the sidewalk—now useless to her—and pulled away from the curb, and at the next light she looked at Glenn. His eyes were half-open.
    “Who’s the president?” Holly asked.
    Glenn answered correctly.
    “What year is it?”
    Glenn mumbled the answer, but he had to pause and think about it, and that scared her.
    “When is my birthday?”
    “The day I met you,” he said. “You asked if I was your present.”
    She swallowed past the steel in her throat. “That was a long time ago, stupid.”
    “It was?” He blinked at her, the blood running in his face. “Holly? Are we still married?”
    “No.”
    “We’re not?” he said. “Baby, it hurts.”
    Baby? How long had it been since he called her that? She told herself she had no time for sentiment; Belias might kill them both for this mistake. “It was a long time ago,” she said, and she veered the Audi through the light. “Listen to me. Our lives depend on this. You cannot tell him about the Russian. You can’t.”
    “Whatever you say.” His words slurred.
    She said, “I’m serious, Glenn. You let me do the talking.”
    “It’s fine.” He tried to give her a reassuring smile. “I’ll handle him. So who am I married to now?”

    The apartment was on a quiet side street, not far from the intersection of Valencia and 16th Street. Most of the entrances were gated—not for grandeur, but for security—and several featured decorative barbed wire or spikes in the spaces above the gates. Holly pulled the Audi in front of a DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT PARKING HERE sign that correlated to the house number Belias had given her. Faded graffiti looped beneath the sign. The street itself was dark, a few windows lit, the bright glow one street over coming from the funky shops and restaurants of the Mission District. She could smell food cooking, a heady mix of Korean and Indian, and under it the sharp tang of brewing coffee. She heard the laughter of young people. She felt her heart twist as she hurried around the side of the car and opened the door to pull Glenn out.
    Belias emerged from the doorway and hurried down the steps to help her. He was dressed, as always, in his jet-black suit: black pants, jacket, shirt. She thought crazily that Glenn’s blood wouldn’t show on the dark fabric.
    An older man, in his fifties, came down the wooden stairs. He was shaved bald, thickly muscled. He had long been a soldier and he looked like it. Roger. Normally he greeted her with that cruel flexing of his thin-lipped mouth he thought was a smile. Roger carefully eased his