Page 52 of King’s Ransom

I hung up and jammed my phone in my pocket as I raced through the rows of shadowy concrete pillars, heading for the building’s north face.

The dark rows of pillars flashed past me.

As I whipped past one row, however, I glimpsed movement off to my right.

In a fleeting instant, I saw—or thought I saw—a figure, a man, who ducked back behind the pillar as I rushed by, clearly caught by surprise at my presence on the blow-through level.

I didn’t see his face, but in that split second I saw his clothes.

He wore white coveralls.

The superintendent had been wearing white coveralls . . .

And he’d gone missing a short while ago . . .

As I reached the northern edge of the floor, I turned to peer once again at the concrete pillar he’d been hidden behind.

But I saw no-one.

I didn’t have time for that now.

I was now standing in one of the open square ‘windows’ on the north side of the tower, 98 storeys above the world.

The nose of the dangling helicopter was close, only eight feet above me.

Then I did what I couldn’t tell Audrey I was going to do.

I broad-jumped out of the window, out over the 1,400-foot drop, up toward the chopper—

SAM ON THE CHOPPER

—and my outstretched hands caught its left-hand landing strut, my feet swinging up wildly with the momentum of my leap.

Now I was hanging from the forward-tilted helicopter, high above the world.

For the moment, I was out of view of the others on the roof and the helipad.

I wouldn’t be for long.

I threw one leg over the landing strut above me and climbed like a monkey onto it.

Then I opened the left-side co-pilot’s door and slipped inside.

I slid into the co-pilot’s seat.

The dead pilot was slumped in his chair, a bloody bullet hole in his head.

If I looked straight ahead through the canopy, all I could see was the northern side of the golden tower stretching away from me like a dead-straight vertical road that converged at the street 98 floors below.

I tried not to look at that.

Behind me in the rear cabin of the chopper, tied up and held in her seat by her seatbelt, was Yasmina King, wide-eyed and terrified.

‘Hello again, ma’am,’ I said.

‘You . . .?’ she said, amazed that someone was in there with her. She also seemed dazed, as if she’d been drugged. ‘What are you . . . doing here?’

‘Trying to stop you getting killed.’ I clambered over into the rear cabin and checked her bonds.