He pulled Ohlhauser to his feet, turned him around, then pushed him towards the door.
They walked together in the station, just as they had ten minutes earlier before boarding the train at Metro Center. Court leaned in to Max’s ear and said, “Go up the escalator to the mezzanine, then head to the escalator for the opposite platform. Take the train back to your office. We’re done here.” Max nodded without looking back, and Court leaned close one more time. “How ’bout that? You aren’t dead. You’re going to have to tell your friends on CNN that I’m not the monster they’re making me out to be.” Court immediately began lagging back a few feet. His plan was to separate from Ohlhauser here in the bowels of the crowded station and get up to street level, where he knew he could quickly melt into the busy neighborhood.
The crowd thickened on the mezzanine level at the top of the escalator, and Court drifted even farther back. He slipped off his raincoat, revealing his new black suit, and then he pulled off his suit coat and walked on in his shirtsleeves. He wadded the coats up into a tight ball as he exited the turnstiles to leave the station, and he crammed them both in a garbage can at the bottom of the five-story-high escalator that led up to Connecticut Avenue.
But as soon as he got on the escalator he saw them. Two D.C. Metro cops heading down the opposite escalator. They were checking faces, clearly looking for someone.
Court looked ahead and above him now. He could just barely make out the pale blue uniforms of two more cops at the top of the escalator, four stories up.
He turned quickly and began heading back down the escalator, pushing to the right of others on the stairs in hopes of covering his retreat. As soon as he got to the bottom of the stairs he hurried back along the mezzanine, planning on getting down one of the escalators to the platform level. From here he could jump on the first ride out of here in either direction.
He went back through the turnstile and walked a few feet, but there Max Ohlhauser appeared out of the crowd in front of him, along with four D.C. Metro police officers. The faces of the policemen did not register with Court at first. He just saw Max, the uniforms, and he started to turn away, hoping the fact he’d shed his jacket and his coat might disguise him to Ohlhauser.
But that had been too much to hope for.
“There! That’s him!”
All four cops reached for their weapons, right in the middle of the crowded mezzanine of a subway station.
Court knew he could run, though his chances for escape weren’t particularly good. There were at least eight cops in the vicinity and they all seemed to be hunting for him. Running would have long odds, although he’d certainly wiggled his way out of tighter spots than this. But, Court told himself, if he tried to make a break for it now, there was a chance one of these cops would open fire, just like they had done the other night, and there was no way they wouldn’t hit innocents here in the busy metro station.
Reluctantly, Court raised his hands. Surely they wouldn’t shoot him in cold blood with his hands up, he told himself.
Quickly all four cops stepped up to him, their guns still drawn, and they turned him around and walked him to a wall. They kicked his legs apart, pushed him till his hands slapped high on the wall.
Two men began frisking Court while the other two stood there, guns still drawn and pointed close at the back of his head. Passing commuters stopped to look, but only for a moment. This was a tight station and the mezzanine was narrow here. As the crowd backed up people coming up the escalators began pushing forward, and this kept the traffic moving, more or less.
The cops did not say a word, but Max Ohlhauser would not shut up. He told the police about how he was kidnapped and about the knife and the gun, and how he used to work for the government, though neglected to mention what agency. He told the four men, over and over in half a dozen different ways, that Court was some sort of a former Special Forces commando who was now a criminal, and he’d killed a lot of people, some of them this week here in the area. Court wondered if the big middle-aged lawyer was going to hyperventilate during his retelling of the events of the past fifteen minutes.
The cops for their part seemed oddly silent and unimpressed with this information, which frustrated Ohlhauser. They just continued their frisk. Court felt several hands upon him as his face was pressed hard into the wall. He had no wallet, only a phone, a cash-loaded credit card, a paper Metro card, and a thick wad of tens and twenties. When the cops finished frisking him and determined this for themselves, one of them said, “ID?”
Court looked back over his shoulder at the man. For the first time he noticed the man’s darkish skin. He wasn’t black; not Hispanic, either. Court said, “I beg your pardon?”
“Identification?” He spoke with a noticeable accent, but Court couldn’t place it.