“Seems reasonable. Who are these friends of hers?”
“She said she’d give you a name and you should go see him—without the cops. He’ll explain everything.”
“I don’t see how I can shake the FBI. They’re keeping a close watch on both of us.” Jay didn’t like the sound of things. How could he trust some stray child-minder the FBI had arranged for them? He would be putting Cara and Sandra at risk. What if it was all some kind of trap? Although, if it was, he had no clue as to why they’d do anything so bizarre.
“I knew you’d fuss,” Cara said, giving Jay a stab of hurt. She stopped and he wondered what kind of a scene she was about to make but she just nodded towards a doorway and said, “This place looks OK.”
They went into a small Italian restaurant. It was nearly full. Half the men in the place had either dog collars or silver crucifix lapel pins, or both. Several people noticed the FBI minder who came in with them and then proceeded to study them with interest. The minder took a seat by the door while a waiter showed them to a table. Although he was sitting within a couple of meters of several FBI agents, Jay realized the general hubbub was enough to mask their conversation from all but the most determined listeners.
“It’s not possible,” Jay said, smiling and pretending to talk about the menu. The menu was printed on paper and bound into a stiff, padded folder. If he hadn’t seen such things in old vids, he wouldn’t have had a clue how to order.
“Of course it is. We go tonight.”
“Tonight?” Yet, even as he said it, he realized it was the best option. There was an agent in the foyer but there were none on Jay’s floor, and earlier he’d noticed the door to the service stairs, no doubt as Cara had done. “What about the surveillance? In the room. In the corridors. Probably on the service stairs too?”
But the biggest problem wasn’t circumventing the security. The biggest problem was Cara. He wanted to meet Mueller’s contact. He had to. Yet he couldn’t unnecessarily expose a young girl to dangers like that. He had no idea what Mueller’s friends might be like. Worse than that, he had no idea what the FBI might do if they caught the two of them sneaking around meeting unsavory characters. A waiter came and Jay ordered, picking dishes at random. At the very least, they’d deport them—and that meant he’d be off the case and would have no chance of finding Sandra.
“It’s a bad idea,” he told Cara. “Don’t even think about it.”
Cara pursed her lips and glared at him. “OK. Tell me what leads you’ve got that are better than this?”
And, right there, was another problem. The FBI was getting nowhere. He was getting nowhere. And the clock was ticking. “For all we know this is an FBI trap to …” To what? Provoke an incident and get Jay off the case? Having gone to the trouble of making him come all the way to Washington, it hardly seemed likely they’d want to send him home now. Besides, if they wanted rid of him, they only had to say the word and he’d be gone. “All right, it’s not an FBI trap, but it’s still too dangerous.”
“For me, you mean, don’t you? You’re thinking you’ll go off on your own and find these people and leave me to my sightseeing.”
It was certainly a good idea, Jay thought. He could give Simmons the slip somehow and go off on his own, meet the contact, and be back at the J. Edgar Hoover Building claiming he had been lost before he was missed too much.
The meal arrived and they sat back while it was served, then began to eat in silence.
“Well you can’t leave me out. I’m the one who got this lead, remember? Without me, you’d be nowhere.”
“What part of ‘too dangerous’ didn’t you understand? I’m trained for this stuff. I’ve had more secret rendezvous with shady characters than you’ve had secret trysts with pimply boyfriends.” He felt mean as soon as he said it.
She continued to scowl at him. “They’re not pimply. Well, one of them was. Anyway, who says ‘trysts’ any more?”
She grinned and so did Jay. Silently, they agreed between them that dads were supposed to be a bit old-fashioned and daughters were supposed to think it was quaint and endearing. But the moment of bonding was soon over.
“You’re not leaving me behind,” she said, but even that piece of defiance was an admission that Jay had the power to do so if he chose.
“It’s really for the best. You have to trust me, Cara. It’s why your mother sent you to me, wasn’t it? Because I know how to do these things and you don’t? And shouldn’t? What do you think she’d say about it?”
Cara looked down at her plate and pushed a couple of meatballs around for a while.
Sensing victory, Jay pressed his advantage. “She wants you safe. She’d be worried sick if she even knew you were over here.” He reached out and laid a hand over hers, briefly stunned by the awareness that it was the first time he had ever touched his daughter. “I want to keep you safe too. I’ve only just found out you exist. You can’t expect me to risk losing you now, can you?”
She looked up at him. “That’s emotional blackmail.”
“Maybe, but it’s true.” And it was. Among all the confusion about having Cara suddenly turn up, he was certain he wanted the time to get to know her and work out what it all meant to him. He took his hand off hers and said, “Eat your meatballs. They’ll get cold.”
Her mouth twisted up on one side into a wry grin, so reminiscent of her mother. “I’m a vegetarian,” she said.
He looked down at the mozzarella and tomato salad he had barely touched. “I’m not,” he said, and they both laughed.
-oOo-
The next morning, Simmons took Jay to the FBI offices as usual. Jay put in an hour’s work before deciding the day would be as much of a waste of time as the previous one had been. Feeling his heartbeat quickening, he came to the conclusion that Mueller’s contact was the only way forward. He said he wanted some air and left the building with Simmons in tow. They crossed Pennsylvania Avenue and went south towards the National Mall. Strolling into it, they headed west, away from the Capitol and towards the Lincoln Memorial, just like a pair of tourists. By the time they’d been walking for fifteen minutes, Simmons was beginning to look anxious.
“You can go back if you like,” Jay told him, trying to sound casual. “I’m enjoying this. And, let’s face it, I’m not being much help in there. I think I’ll take in the sights. I always wanted to see the monuments and the White House. I think I’ll make a morning of it.”
“We should probably get back to work,” said Simmons.
“Surely this is your work, isn’t it? Keeping me happy? Keeping an eye on me?”
The FBI agent looked uncomfortable. “I’m just here to smooth the way, Chief Inspector. To make sure your time here is spent as efficiently as possible.”
“Well, look at it this way. If I have to watch one more poor bastard being beaten with a rubber hose, I’ll be on the next flight back to Brussels.”
Simmons’ brows came down in a scowl. “Those ‘poor bastards’ are known terrorist sympathizers.”
“My arse! And, if they are, I’m beginning to think that if you throw a rock anywhere in this city, you’d hit two terrorist sympathizers every time.”
Simmons was getting worked up now. “With all due respect, you don’t know the situation here and you’re in no position to judge.”
Jay veered towards a knot of people and increased his pace.
“I know a bunch of scared people when I see them,” Jay said. “And I know when I see a bunch of thugs picking on women and minorities when they’re supposed to be protecting them. And I’ll tell you this, I know when I need to get away from what’s going on back there to get the stench of oppression out of my nostrils.”
“You don’t know anything about what’s going on here. There have been bombings, assassinations. These people are not the simple innocents you think they are. Hey!”
Jay ducked into the crowd and ran at a tangent to his previous route, keeping low and heading for the nearest shop doorway. He could h
ear Simmons behind him shouting, “What are you doing? Come back here.” Then, “FBI. Out of my way!” Then there came screams from the crowd that told Jay Simmons had drawn his gun.
He reached a door—a gift shop of some kind—and slipped inside. There was a counter with a bald man behind it. A handful of customers dotted the shop. Without glancing back, Jay strode up to the shopkeeper and in a low voice said, “I’m Special Agent Simmons, FBI.” He saw the man’s eyes widen and flick to Jay’s lapel, looking for the crucifix. “I’m undercover. Is there a back way out?” Without speaking the man pointed and Jay hurried past, through a door, along a corridor, through another door and into an alley.
He queried his commplant. He may have no network services, but he still had the street maps of Washington he had uploaded before the trip, and he still had the global positioning signal from the Galileo 2 satellites. He grabbed the scrap of paper Mueller had slipped him last night and read the address. The route from the alley to his destination lit up on the map. It wasn’t too far. He switched to augmented reality and large green arrows appeared as if they were drawn on the pavement. They lead him out of the alley and around the corner. He pushed the slip of paper in his mouth and chewed it as he ran.
Making the best speed he could without drawing attention to himself or using the main roads, it took him most of an hour to reach the address. It was along a side street in one of the smarter neighborhoods. He didn’t go straight to the door, but walked past the end of the street and checked out the house first. Then he walked up the opposite side of the street, past the house a couple of times. He could see no-one watching, no-one waiting in ambush. The house had a wrought iron fence behind which a short flight of steps ran up to an impressively large front door. Finally, he crossed over to the house and put his hand on the metal gate.
A sound behind him made him turn. Three men emerged from a van parked nearby and were on him before he could decide what to do. He let them take him without a fight and they pushed him into the van, climbed in behind him, and closed the doors.
“You took your time. I thought you weren’t coming.”
He blinked in amazement at his daughter, sitting at the back of the van, regarding him reproachfully. Her hands and feet were tied but she seemed unharmed and quite comfortable.
“Are you all right?”
She lifted her bound wrists and pulled a wry face.
His captors bundled him into a seat and the van set off with a smooth, gentle acceleration that meant it was a robot vehicle. They tied Jay’s legs and hands too.
“Would someone tell me who you are and why you’ve kidnapped me and my daughter?”
“Don’t worry, cop. No-one’s gonna hurt no-one.”
Jay did not feel much consoled. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll see when we get there. Now shut up or I’ll gag you.”
Jay reluctantly closed his mouth. He looked across at Cara and shook his head in exasperation.
“Sorry,” she said, and his only consolation was that she looked genuinely ashamed of herself.
Chapter 15: Breakfast
“Are you going to kill him?”
Polanski stood with the teknik behind him, the one who used to call himself Jean Luc. His sidekick, Peter, and two burly tough guys stood nearby.
Sandra craned her neck to peer round Polanski. The injured man had a plaster on his nose and stood slightly twisted from the pain in his ribs. He looked scared and clearly didn’t want to be there. She looked back at Polanski.
“Nah, that’s enough for now. I like it that he’s suffering.”
“Good. He’s going to help you put this rig together. I’ve got guys to do the grunt work. As many as you need. Can you do it by tomorrow?”
Sandra laughed. “Give me a week. Maybe two.”
Polanski wasn’t amused. “A day. Maybe two.”
“Or else what?”
“Or else Peter and I go back to Europe and grab another teknik. I hope you’re not thinking of putting us to all that trouble.”
Sandra didn’t want to bring on a full-scale confrontation, just enough to make it look like she needed to be pushed into cooperating. “Two days is impossible.”
He smiled. “I said one day.”
“One day is twice as impossible.”
“Matthew?” It was clearly the name the teknik was now going by. Perhaps it was his real name. Sandra had finally twigged that everybody here had biblical names.
Matthew addressed her warily. “It’s not like we’re starting from scratch. This rig was running in Houston just a few weeks ago. It got a bit messed up but we’ve repaired everything. It just needs to be put back together.” From the way he kept shifting his eyes towards Polanski, she could see Matthew was nervous as hell about the rebel leader believing him. Perhaps the failures of past lobs had left the teknik’s credentials a little tarnished.
She walked a few paces away from them, as if she were grappling with her conscience. “All right,” she announced after a suitable interval. “Two days. You,” she nodded towards Matthew. “Get your crew in here and start assembling it. Right now. And you,” she switched her focus to Polanski. “You can tell me all about your stupid plan.”
Nobody moved until Polanski gave them the nod. Then the place erupted into frantic activity, with the teknik shouting out instructions and more guys coming in from outside to provide the muscle.
Polanski took her by the arm and Peter moved into place behind her. “You know Peter has a gun aimed at your back, right? So why don’t we go for a walk? We’ll get breakfast and I’ll fill you in on what you need to know.”
“I thought I was confined to this place until the lob was over.”
He gave a shrug. “That was before you started cooperating. Put your headscarf on.”
He led her out into the maze of corridors, through people’s living spaces, and out into a part of the shanty she hadn’t seen when they brought her in. She winced as a gust of sewage-laden air hit her. He must have noticed because he said, “No-one here chooses to live like this. Try and remember that. A lot of people who should know better talk about ‘shanty rats’ and ‘slum dogs’ but they’re only one wrong word, one corrupt official, one SOB with a chip on his shoulder away from ending up here themselves—or places like it.”
“They might not choose it, but you do, don’t you? Some kind of statement?”
He laughed. “Sure. If you like. The thing is, I live on the charity of these people. They help me out because they believe that one day, I’ll set them free. I want people to remember that I didn’t take their faith and squander it on living in a big house or riding around in a smart car. I want them to know I was with them in every way possible, to the very end.”
They came to a café, a bunch of trestle tables and benches with a sagging tarpaulin stretched above. A couple of women were ladling a kind of thick broth out of tureens into some chipped bowls on another trestle table. The kitchen behind them was basically a handful of brick barbecues with large pans steaming on top. It was a setup that made most soup kitchens Sandra had seen look like five star catering.
“It’s not your university canteen,” said Polanski, “but the food’s good and it’s cheap.”
As soon as he appeared, people greeted him. One of the women serving food shouted that she’d send breakfast over right away. A minute later a couple of women from the back appeared carrying bowls filled to the brim and hunks of bread to his table. It was all on the house and he thanked them profusely, even though they must have fed him a hundred times before.
Sandra was surprised to find the food smelled good and she dipped a spoon in to try it.
“You don’t say grace?” Polanski asked.
She looked up at him. His own food was untouched and he had his hands clasped in front of him.
“You do?” She realized she had not sat down to a meal with this man in all the days they’d been traveling together. “You believe all that crap, even after you’ve seen what it
’s done here?”
She felt Peter stir behind her but a quick shake of the head from Polanski made the lad subside again.
“Nothing that’s happening here is because of God, Sandra. It’s men that are doing this. Narrow-minded bigoted men. Greedy, selfish men. Hard, cruel men who love power more than they love their neighbors. I’m more than happy to thank God for this food, for my health, for the hope in my heart, because He’s doing all that for me despite everything that men are doing to my country.”
“Shit. I thought you were crazy, but I didn’t think you were that kind of crazy.”
Peter started to say something but Polanski shut him up again. “What kind of crazy do you think I am, Sandra?”
“The same kind as those SOB creeps and the other good Christian folk who think it’s right to turn women into domestic slaves. I almost believed all your pompous crap about freedom for a while there, but the reality is you just want to change one brand of vicious, god-worshiping bully for another.”
Polanski sighed but he didn’t look annoyed. “You know, the United States was run by decent, religious people for over two hundred and fifty years before the Lord’s True Path Party came to power. In all that time, we were a liberal democracy, a pluralist society, where freedom of religion was pretty much taken for granted. Religion isn’t the problem here any more than atheism was the problem with the Soviet Union. People are the problem. Events arose at the start of the Adjustment that scared people into voting for the one group that stood up and told us it knew exactly what to do to save us all. You know, if I’d been old enough at the time, maybe I’d have voted True Path myself, given the situation. People voted for Adolf Hitler, you know. And it wasn’t because they wanted to burn Jews and conquer Europe. It’s because they were in a bad situation that looked like it was getting worse all the time and a man came along who looked like he might be able to make it all better. Once they gave him the power, of course, it was too late. Look at Lenin and Stalin. Look at Mao Tse-tung.”
True Path: Timesplash 2 Page 14