The taxi pulled to a halt with a jolt outside the Vanderbilt Avenue entrance to Grand Central. Jones opened her eyes again. This was a nightmare from which there was no waking up. A bleak terrifying reality the like of which Sandy Jones had never experienced before.
Meanwhile, in the bowels of a warehouse in Chelsea, only a half a mile or so away from Dom’s loft apartment, the man who always wore a black suit, white shirt and black tie, paced anxiously up and down. As usual he was wearing shades, even though he was inside a big cavernous basement which was only poorly lit.
He was, of course, the nameless interrogator at Princeton police station whom Jones had dubbed the Man in Black. Ed MacEntee’s not entirely effective tail. And while he continued to try desperately to look the part of a tough, cool super-agent, the Man in Black was extremely uneasy.
As far as he was concerned the whole operation was spiralling out of control. He’d only begun it as a way of increasing his standing in the organization. He’d wanted to draw attention to himself. Well, he’d certainly done that. He’d wanted to impress. He’d particularly wanted to impress Mr Johnson.
But the man had not thought things through properly. And now it was too late, far too late, to even attempt to put a stop to it all. He liked to project an image of himself to those around him which he could not always live up to. He was inclined to let his imagination run away with him. Yet never in his wildest imaginings had it occurred to him that a situation like this might develop.
The Man in Black was waiting for the Enforcer. The Enforcer and his Apprentice. He didn’t really want anything to do with them. They frightened the life out of him. But he had to be there. He had to know.
He heard them before he saw them, the low rumble of the engine of the Chevy pick-up truck, and the rhythmic squeal of its tyres as it swung round and round the winding ramp which snaked its way down from street level.
The truck coasted to a halt in its allotted parking space. Both the front doors opened. The Enforcer had been driving. He had sandy hair thinning at the front and a small neat moustache. He was wearing a tweed jacket over corduroy trousers bagging slightly at the knee. He looked like a schoolmaster, until you saw his eyes. There was no life in those eyes. The man in the black suit thought they were the most frightening eyes he had ever seen.
The Apprentice was very young and very cocky. He had orange hair and freckles, and he walked with a swagger. He was swaggering now, but the Man in Black could see that he was sweating and his hands, hanging loosely at his sides as if he were John Wayne, were trembling.
The Enforcer strolled casually to the front of the truck and bent down to examine its big chrome over-bumper. He leaned close until his face was just inches away, reaching into the pocket of his trousers to remove a white handkerchief with which he thoroughly wiped the protective metal bars.
Then he straightened up and, still holding the handkerchief in one hand, walked slowly towards the Man in Black. The handkerchief had turned pink, in places bright red.
It was blood, for sure. Blood thick enough to have been still clinging to the undersides of those bars, in spite of the heavy rain.
The Man in Black gulped. His throat was made of sandpaper. He felt sick. He struggled not to let it show, not to let his so carefully orchestrated act drop.
The Chelsea warehouse was the new secret headquarters of the FBI’s anti-terrorism unit, set up after 9/11. And the special agents employed there were a breed apart. They had much in common with their brothers and sisters who represented the public face of the Bureau and who worked out of the FBI’s famous New York headquarters at 26, Federal Plaza, and other openly declared addresses throughout the country. But the Chelsea Feds were there to perform tasks and pursue courses of action that took them much further along an extremely rocky road, in a country still purporting to be a benevolent democracy. They had carte blanche to do whatever was necessary to protect an America which had never quite recovered from the blind panic which followed the deadliest terror attack in human history. They had never played by the rules. They weren’t supposed to.
But word was, that under the auspices of arguably the most maverick and unpredictable president of all time, they had been given an autonomy and a level of operational freedom way beyond anything that had originally been intended.
The Enforcer and his Apprentice were considered to be two of the Chelsea Feds’ finest sons. They did what others neither would nor could do.
The Man in Black sucked his dry lips. He was totally out of his depth. And he knew it.
PART FOUR
Our consciousness rarely registers the beginning of growth within us any more than without us; there have been many circulations of the sap before we detect the smallest sign of the bud.
George Eliot
THIRTEEN
It was all Jones could do to muster the strength to climb out of the cab. She paid the driver from her stash of dollar bills, then stood still for a moment trying to be sure that she had control of her body.
The rain, thankfully, had eased, because Jones’s grey plastic raincoat, now badly torn, was likely to provide even less protection than before. She still felt extremely shaky and her left leg almost gave way when she tried to put her full weight on it. She took a step sideways and reached out to hold on to a water hydrant to steady herself.
Passers-by were glancing at her curiously, then quickly turning away. She wasn’t surprised. She was a mess. But even in her state of shock she was aware that most of the blood that had been splashed on her had landed on her torn raincoat. She shrugged herself out of it, scrunched it up, and tucked it under one arm.
Moving as quickly as her injured leg would allow, while also trying to be inconspicuous, she made her way up the station steps, past the line of pavement cafes, and into the cavernous central hall, where she stood at the top of the steps overlooking the concourse and glanced anxiously around for the nearest public convenience.
There was a pronounced police presence. Two machine-gun-toting soldiers, wearing fatigues and flak jackets, stood just to Jones’s left, fortunately facing away from her.
Involuntarily Jones took a step backwards, but reminded herself that this was, of course, normal in America. And had been since 9/11.
Nonetheless, she retreated through the imposing gateway from which she had just entered. Then, standing outside, she remembered The Campbell Apartment, an unlikely cocktail bar to which she had been introduced on her last visit to New York, and headed for the heavy wooden doors which she knew led to it. The Apartment had been leased in the 1920s and 30s by a businessman and alleged bootlegger called John W. Campbell who transformed the thirty-by sixty-foot room into a reproduction Florentine palace which he used both as an office and for entertaining. Or actually, some said, for storing and selling his illegal hooch.
Jones knew the bar would be closed that early in the day, but hoped that the exterior doors would be open. They were. She hurried across the tiled ground floor lobby, from which a short flight of steps led to The Apartment itself, and ran up them as fast as her battered legs could carry her. At the top was a ladies’ lavatory. To her relief, that was open too. And it was deserted.
Once inside, she studied her reflection in the wall mirror. No wonder people had been looking at her curiously. There were splashes of blood on her face. Her right cheek still bore the signs of the damage it had incurred the previous day, and her chin was now swollen on one side and seemed to be turning a bluish yellow colour almost as she watched. It was also seeping liquid from an unpleasant looking graze. Obliquely she wondered which of the blood splashes were her own and which might be poor Marion’s.
She shivered. Her body felt icy cold and yet her face was burning. Her heart was still racing.
She dumped her destroyed raincoat in the trash can fastened to one wall, reached for some paper towels, ran the cold tap in the washbasin, soaked the towels and dabbed them against her damaged face. The cold water felt wonderful, cooling and restorative. She reali
zed then how thirsty she was. She dropped the paper towels on the floor, cupped her hands underneath the tap, raised them to her mouth and drank the water gratefully. She wiped her face dry with more paper towels, then paused to look in the mirror again. She still didn’t look good. Her face was clean enough now and pretty much free of blood. It was also a pale whitish grey. Her features were drawn. It was almost as if she had aged twenty years in as many minutes.
Obliquely, she wished she had her make-up with her, but that was in the bag she had left in Dom’s apartment. Hopefully it and Connie would arrive soon.
The graze on her chin continued to ooze a little, but seemed to be actually only a shallow wound. Most of the blood she had wiped away must have come from Marion. She was surprised to find that she could think about that in such a detached way. She was operating on a kind of auto pilot.
She ran her tongue over her teeth. Somewhat to her surprise they all seemed to be there and apparently undamaged, although her gums were sore.
She turned her attention to her clothes. She was wearing the same jeans and hoody she’d had laundered at the Soho House. Both were dirty and torn. The rip in the left sleeve of the hoody was so bad that the lower half had become almost detached from the upper, and was hanging from just a few threads of wool. She rolled both sleeves up, which improved things very slightly.
She rubbed ineffectually at the dirty marks and the few spots of blood which her raincoat had not protected her from. There was nothing at all she could do about the rip in the knee of her jeans. In any case, she only needed to make herself presentable enough to meet Connie at the appointed spot. Fortunately both her jeans and her tracksuit top were black. And this was New York. Hopefully nobody would even notice. She glanced at her watch again. If Connie had followed her instructions and left the loft apartment immediately, she would arrive soon.
She made her way back to the station concourse, keeping her head down, and limping as little as possible.
Remembering something from all those bad movies she’d watched, she paused at a news stand to buy a paper. At the entrance to platform one she propped herself against a conveniently positioned wall and held the newspaper up in front of her face. She didn’t really know what she was playing at, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. She still had a famous face – barely known in America, outside of scientific circles, it was true, but Britons did travel – and she had just left the scene of a terrible crime.
With one eye she peeped around the edge of the paper.
Connie arrived only a couple of minutes later, hurrying across the concourse. She had at least followed the first of Jones’s instructions and was wearing a baseball cap which she had presumably found among Dom’s belongings. Unfortunately, however, she hadn’t managed to tuck in all of her expansive red hair. And the cap was a strident yellow colour. The result was that she was probably likely to attract attention to herself even more than usual, particularly as she was wearing a green coat.
Oh my God, thought Jones. She had tried so hard to make herself inconspicuous, and now this multi-coloured vision, hair sticking out like a clown’s around the skull cap effect of the baseball cap, was tearing across the station, attracting a certain amount of attention even in this city.
A passing cop glanced first at the approaching Connie, and then at Jones. Jones buried herself deeper in her newspaper. The cop walked on by. Jones peeped around the newspaper again.
To her relief she saw that Connie had her bag over one shoulder, and the smaller cloth bag she always carried over the other. Both were being wielded almost like weapons. The station was far from crowded, nonetheless Connie scattered people in all directions as she rocketed through them like a multi-coloured windmill.
Jones would have laughed out loud at the sight of her, were it not for the tragic nature of the occasion. And as Connie approached she could see that tears were streaming down her face. Her anguish was all too apparent. She was oblivious to everything, looking but not seeing. She rushed right past Jones, who lowered her newspaper.
‘Connie,’ she called after her, sotto voce.
Connie turned, saw Jones, and threw herself at her, grabbing her shoulders, knocking the newspaper out of her hands.
‘Sandy, Sandy. Tell me everything that’s happened. I have to go to Marion. I have to!’ she shouted.
People began to stare. Jones had to stop her behaving like this. She pushed her away as gently as possible, then grabbed both her hands.
‘Connie, shush, shush,’ she said. ‘You must calm down. You are in terrible danger. And people are staring …’
‘Do you think I care?’ Connie’s green eyes blazed. ‘Do you think I care about myself? I have to find Marion. I have to go to her …’
‘Connie, for God’s sake …’
Jones looked anxiously around. Connie was behaving crazily. They could not afford the attentions of a curious police officer.
‘We can’t stay here,’ Jones continued. ‘We need to go somewhere we can talk. Please.’
Perhaps surprisingly, Connie stopped shouting and nodded her agreement. She didn’t seem able to stop crying, though.
Jones coaxed her across the concourse to the Vanderbilt entrance and the Campbell Apartment. The place was still deserted. It was the nearest to private she could come up with at the moment.
Once inside she wrapped her arms around Connie and drew her close. Connie’s body felt so tense, it was almost as if she were made of some substance much less malleable than flesh and blood.
‘It’s my fault, it’s all my fault,’ she wailed into Jones’s shoulder.
‘No, Connie, no,’ Jones soothed. ‘Of course it’s not your fault.’
‘Yes, it is. I should never have involved Marion. None of this has anything to do with her. But I did involve her. I got her into it. And now she might be dead …’
Jones didn’t know what to say, so she didn’t speak. It seemed like for ever but was probably only a minute or two before Connie’s sobs eased. Jones continued to hold on to her. The almost comical baseball hat had fallen from her head. Jones stroked her hair gently.
‘Listen, Connie, it’s not just you who is in danger, it’s me too,’ she said. ‘We have to work out what to do next. We both have to at least try to be calm and rational.’
Jones reckoned that Connie Pike was just about the most unselfish person she had ever met. She knew that if anything could get through to her it was the suggestion that somebody else dear to her might also be in danger, because, in her mind at any rate, of her actions.
After a few seconds Connie stopped sobbing and looked at Jones as if seeing her, and the state she was in, for the first time.
‘You’re hurt too,’ she said. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine,’ Jones replied, for the second time that morning. It was a considerable exaggeration.
Connie nodded. She was clearly making a huge effort to pull herself together.
‘All right, let’s talk,’ she said. ‘And first I have to know everything about Marion.’
Jones gestured towards the flight of steps leading up to the locked and bolted Campbell Apartment itself.
‘It’s not a Chesterfield, but why don’t we sit down,’ she suggested.
Connie did so at once. Jones joined her gratefully, stretching out her injured leg before her, and proceeded to tell the other woman everything, just as she had demanded, even about her fears that one of Marion’s legs had been severed. Connie reacted with only the faintest flicker of an eyelid. Jones told her about the truck reversing back at both of them, and how it was possible that its far-side wheels may have run over Marion’s head.
Connie then let out a little gasp, and her eyes filled with tears again. Almost impatiently she brushed them away with the back of one hand.
‘Possible?’ she queried.
‘Well, I really don’t know,’ Jones continued honestly. ‘Dom pushed us both out of the way. He knocked all the breath from my body. By the time I’d recover
ed enough to get up on my feet again, and I tried to see what had happened to Marion, she was just lying there, with a crowd gathering around her. Oh God, that sounds awful.’
Connie put a hand lightly on Jones’s right arm.
‘Did you think she was dead, Sandy?’ she asked, even more quietly. ‘Was that what you thought?’
‘I couldn’t be sure,’ Jones answered truthfully. ‘But if she is alive, then she has certainly suffered the most dreadful injuries.’
‘That I can live with,’ said Connie almost absently, adding almost conversationally, ‘but I don’t think I could live without her, not without Marion.’
‘Oh, Connie,’ Jones murmured.
‘Thing is,’ Connie continued, ‘before we do anything else, I have to find out about Marion. You must see that.’
‘I do. But I don’t see how without putting both of us at risk.’
‘That’s the sort of thing Dom would sort out …’
‘Connie. I don’t see how we can trust him. He had the information to set that incident up. And don’t you think he’d have the means? He moves in nefarious ways …’
‘But he saved your life, Sandy. And he may have saved Marion’s life. He’s probably put himself in danger …’
Jones opened her mouth to try to explain further.
She was interrupted by a loud bang and a crash as the big double doors to The Campbell Apartment foyer burst open. In strode the Dominator, his huge form filling the door frame. Jones was astonished. She could not imagine how the big man had found her, and Connie, so quickly. And Dom looked even bigger and more menacing than ever.
‘So here you are, you dumb fucking bitch,’ he yelled at Jones. ‘What the hell did you jump out of ma cab for?’
For what seemed like the umpteenth time since she’d arrived in America, Jones was overwhelmed by panic. She quite surprised herself by managing to speak. And at volume.
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