"Calling for backup."
"They'll never get here in time," he says. "The streets are going to be gridlocked."
"Then how is Richter going to get away?"
McGrave looks up. So does she, just in time to see Richter atop the bunker, wearing a backpack. He leaps onto a line dangling from a construction crane and swings to the next rooftop.
Spider-Man, eat your heart out.
"Not again," McGrave says, and looks at the Smart Fortwo parked beside him.
The Smart Fortwo is the midget offspring of a drunken, corporate one-night stand between Swatch, maker of rubber watches, and Mercedes-Benz, maker of fine automobiles. Swatch ran off in the morning and left Mercedes to raise the Fortwo, which measures a mere eight feet long and five feet wide, about the same as a typical golf cart. The Fortwo is propelled by a three-cylinder, seventy-one-horsepower, rear-mounted engine that is about as powerful as a decent outboard motor or the combined force of twenty-three elderly women in their motorized chairs.
McGrave takes a step back, lifts his right leg, and sticks his foot through the driver's-side window of the car, smashing out the glass. He opens the door, sweeps away the glass from the seat with his jacket, and squeezes inside.
####
Maria takes out her gun and shoots at Richter, who eludes her, fleeing across the rooftops using his amazing parkour skills.
McGrave yanks some wires from under the dash, starts the car, and pulls out of the parking space, nearly hitting Maria.
"What are you doing?" she says.
"Giving chase," he says. "Are you coming or not?"
She points to Erich. "Stay here."
Maria hops in the car and McGrave speeds off.
McGrave races their car down the empty street, peering up at the buildings as he steers to follow Richter's progress jumping from rooftop to rooftop.
"I'll watch," Maria says. "You drive."
McGrave heads onto a busy boulevard, which is full of water and clogged with cars, so he drives up onto the sidewalk, forcing people to leap out of his way and slip on the slick concrete.
"Where is he?"
"Keep going straight," she says. "Where did you learn how to steal a car?"
"My university," he says. "Didn't they teach you how in yours?"
"Left!" she says.
McGrave makes a sharp turn at the next street, but this one isn't just gridlocked with cars. The sidewalks are also gone, removed to make room for the blue pipes, which are now spewing water.
There's nowhere for him to drive.
He looks up at the rooftops. He is losing sight of Richter in the distance.
"We're not going to catch him like this," McGrave says. "He's going somewhere. But where? If you couldn't use the streets, how would you escape?"
Maria thinks a moment. "The Spree-Kanal. That's where he's heading. It feeds into the river. If he's got a boat, he can disappear in minutes."
"Which way is it?"
"West," she says.
McGrave turns the wheel to his right and floors it, driving through the glass doors of an office building.
"I didn't mean that literally," Maria says.
"We don't have a lot of choices," he says.
McGrave drives the tiny car across the lobby, past the elevators, and through the glass doors on the other side.
The car bursts onto the next block, but the street is also clogged with traffic, so he makes a hard left onto the sidewalk, driving until he spots a narrow opening between cars.
He makes a right turn, squeezing between two cars and shearing off his mirrors, and charges into a courtyard on the opposite side of the street.
The courtyard is full of outdoor cafйs, shops, and artists selling their wares at tiny kiosks. People sit at tables and stroll along the narrow, twisting passageways that give the place an Old World charm.
Or at least they did.
Now they are scrambling out of McGrave's path as he honks his horn and mows through tables, merchandise, and artwork on his path through the passageways.
They blast out of the courtyard and onto a small plaza ringed with buildings.
It's a dead end.
He comes to a screeching stop.
They are facing a modern office building. It's two stories tall, all glass. Two escalators, with a staircase between them, connect the lobby to the second floor.
"We have to turn around," Maria says.
"The hell I will."
McGrave heads right for the lobby.
####
McGrave smashes through the glass and drives up onto the escalators, the car straddling the staircase in between, the tires using the wide handrails as a ramp to the second floor.
He stops the car on the landing, not quite sure where to go next.
Workers are coming out of their offices and cubicles to gape at this unbelievable sight.