“Hold onto one another!” Margo shouted at Shahdi Feroz. “Grab Dominica’s arm—and I don’t care what she says when you do it! Where’s Doug?”
“Over there!” The wide-eyed scholar pointed.
Margo found the Time Tours guide trying to keep Guy Pendergast and Conroy Melvyn from being separated. Margo snagged the police inspector’s coat sleeve, getting his shocked attention. “Hold onto Guy! Grab Doug Tanglewood’s arm! We can’t get separated in this mob! Follow me back!” She was already fighting her way back to the women and searching for Dr. Kostenka, who remained missing in the explosive crowd. She’d just reached Shahdi Feroz when new shouts erupted not four feet distant.
“Dirty little foreigner! It’s one o’ your kind done ‘er! That’s wot they’re sayin’, a dirty little Jew wiv a leather apron!”
Margo thrust Shahdi Feroz at the Time Tours guide. “Get them out of here, Tanglewood! I’ve got a bad feeling that’s Dr. Kostenka!”
She then shoved her way through the angry mob and found her final charge, just as she’d feared she would. Pavel Kostenka clutched at a bleeding lip and streaming nose, scholarly eyes wide and shocked. Angry men were shouting obscenities at him, most of them in Cockney the scholar clearly couldn’t even comprehend.
Oh, God, here we go. . . . “Wot’s this, then?” Margo shouted, facing down a thickset, ugly lout with blood on his knuckles. “You givin’ me old man wot for, eh? I’ll give you me Germans, I will, you touch ‘im again!” She lifted her own fist, threatening him as brazenly as she dared.