by Joe Craig
CHAPTER FOURTEEN – FACE OF POWER, FACE OF DEATH
“What happened?” It was Felix. Jimmy hadn’t noticed him come out of the bedroom. Then a knock on the door brought Jimmy’s mother in as well.
“Everything OK down here?” she asked. “We heard shouting.”
Jimmy didn’t know where to start – but he didn’t have to.
“Everything’s fine,” said Viggo. “We’ll have to talk about it in the morning.”
“You’re sure this is still a safe place?” Jimmy demanded.
“This is the only safe place,” replied Viggo.
Helen shot a puzzled glance at Viggo, who discreetly nodded towards the bathroom.
“Oh no!” Helen gasped, looking over the mess and piecing together what must have happened. “Jimmy, are you OK?” She rushed over to crouch beside him and took him by the shoulders. Jimmy dropped his eyes to the floor.
“I’m fine,” he mumbled.
“Woah, Jimmy,” Felix said, staring at the bathroom floor. “You completely trashed the bathroom. What were you doing in there?”
“Come on,” said Felix’s father gently. “Let’s all get some sleep.”
Felix ignored him and plonked himself down on the sofa.
“Well I’m going to bed,” grumbled Viggo. Neil Muzbeke gave a deep chuckle and followed him into the bedroom.
“Don’t stay up long,” he whispered, giving Felix’s hair a ruffle on his way past.
Jimmy, his mother and Felix were left in the living room.
“I’m glad you’re OK,” said Helen, pulling her son into a hug. Jimmy squirmed with embarrassment. Normally he would never have let his mum do this in front of his friends. But after a moment or two, Jimmy realised how much he needed the reassurance. In that instant, he wished he could tear his heart open and rip out all of the troubles that had built up inside him. Even in his mother’s arms there was doubt – he felt comforted, but how could he relax completely when she wouldn’t tell him who his real father was? He pulled away.
“What’s the matter?” Helen asked.
Jimmy didn’t know how to answer.
“He saw the images again,” Felix said quickly. “And he keeps getting those, like, pains in his head, or his ear, or wherever. You know what I mean.”
Jimmy’s mother turned him round and looked into his face.
“Are they getting stronger?” she asked, managing to hide the depth of her anxiety. Jimmy nodded. “And they’re always of the same things?” All Jimmy could do was nod again.
“Show her your notebook,” Felix cut in. “Oh, sorry,” he added. “I, like, read your notebook.” For a second, Jimmy felt the overwhelming urge to share his fears with Felix. He hadn’t told his friend yet that Ian Coates wasn’t his real father. He hadn’t even told Georgie. He opened his mouth and his tongue quivered, waiting to form the words. But they wouldn’t come. Instead, he gulped down his anguish.
“I’ll get it,” said Felix. His voice was bright and even now, in the dead of night, he had so much energy it almost made the walls buzz. He dashed into the bedroom to fetch Jimmy’s notebook. Jimmy was alone with his mother. He looked into her face.
“Your eyes are bloodshot,” she whispered. “You need some sleep.”
“I need to know who my father is,” Jimmy snapped. In his eyes was a challenge. Before Jimmy’s mother could react, Felix was back.
“Here you go,” he said, flicking through the book. “I thought you were better at colouring in than this, Jimmy.” He handed the book to Jimmy, open to a page in the middle with a picture of a dark black K.
Jimmy wasn’t paying attention. He was scowling at his mother, whose eyes were welling up.
“Maybe you should draw how you see them now,” Felix suggested. Jimmy knew what Felix was doing. It was obvious that something was going on between Jimmy and his mother, but Felix was trying to ease the tension. Jimmy was thankful that he was there.
He took a pen from Felix’s hand and started scribbling on the next page in the notebook. Felix had only brought the green felt-tip, so Jimmy started with the outline of the number 53. He was hardly concentrating though. He only glanced at the paper every now and again. His head was down, but his eyes were watching his mother.
When Jimmy had coloured in the whole page in green, leaving white spaces for the numbers 5 and 3, he flicked the page over and carried on drawing.
“It’s not just the images,” he explained quietly. “Or not what they look like anyway.”
“What do you mean?” Felix asked, fascinated by every move Jimmy’s pen made.
“It’s how they feel.” He was still watching his mother, letting his pen move without checking its progress. His hand wandered freely over the page, scrawling with such confidence that it looked as if his fingers didn’t need the rest of his body. Every move was definite. Every mark was strong. “I see these pictures in my head and I’ve no idea what they’re pictures of. But I know they represent something horrible. As if someone is in, like, terrible danger. It feels like if I put all the images together, somebody will get killed. I think my programming is trying to warn me, instead of train me. It’s like there’s going to be a murder and I have to stop it, but I can’t.”
“So someone is trying to kill you?” Felix asked. “We knew that already.”
Jimmy’s mother turned away and wiped her eyes on her sleeve.
“No,” said Jimmy. “It’s not me that’s going to get killed. But I don’t know who it is.” He flicked to the next page and went straight on drawing, even faster. The pen flew across the paper in a fury.
At last, Helen drew in a couple of deep breaths and summoned the strength to join in the questioning. But she remained facing to one side.
“How would your programming know all this, though?” she asked.
Jimmy shrugged. “Maybe I’ve seen something or heard something. Maybe we all have. But we just don’t realise the importance of what we’ve seen and heard. Maybe an assassin could, you know, put all of the little bits of information together and come up with the big picture.”
“Big picture?” Helen repeated. “So why is it giving you lots of small ones? And when is it going to tell you exactly who is in danger?”
“Erm,” Felix murmured, “I think it just has.” He snatched the notebook out of Jimmy’s hands. Slowly, he turned it round and held it up. Jimmy looked at it, amazed. On it was a new image. It wasn’t one of the pictures that had been flashing round his head. It was an image he had never realised was in his mind. But there it was – instantly recognisable.
Jimmy looked at his hands, then back at the picture. He had drawn it without paying attention to what he was doing. It was a sketch of a man’s face. The cheeks were round, and the hair was thinning. Under the eyes there were dark bags. This was a far better drawing than any of the others, and better than anything Jimmy had drawn before in his life. It was a superb portrait of the President of the United States, Alphonsus H Grogan.
The next morning, Jimmy was cramming cookies into his mouth one after the other, straight out of the box. His jaw was so tense he almost cracked his teeth every time he bit down. Next to him on the couch was Georgie, while Felix was leaning round the open door, trying to hear what was going on in the other apartment.
They were on the floor above, while beneath them the adults discussed what was going on. Except it sounded more like arguing than discussing.
“Keep quiet,” whispered Felix.
“I’m not saying anything,” protested Jimmy. “I’m just chewing.”
“Well, chew quieter.”
Jimmy dusted the crumbs off his lap. “It’s no good,” he announced, munching on his last cookie. “They don’t believe me.”
“What do you mean?” Georgie asked. She was tucking into a cinnamon bagel that was almost the size of her head.
“I mean,” Jimmy replied, “that if they believed me about the President being in danger, they’d have taken this.” He plucked his notebook from the arm
of the sofa and waved it about in the air. “And they would have gone straight to the police to warn them.”
“Warn them?” Georgie scoffed. “About what? A dodgy portrait artist drawing pictures of the President in green felt-tip?” She snatched the notebook and flung it to the floor.
“So you don’t believe me either?”
Georgie threw her hands up in despair.
“What is there for me to believe?”
“That the President is in danger. There’s an assassin after him. I can feel it.”
“Jimmy, people get ‘feelings’ about the President being in danger every day. Some of them keep quiet about it. They live happily ever after. The others go to the police and claim they have images in their head telling them it’s certain the President will be dead before the weekend.”
“And what happens to them?” Jimmy mumbled, pretending he didn’t know exactly what the answer was. Georgie sighed and held her head in her hands.
“What I’m saying,” she went on, “is that of course the President is in danger. He’s always in danger – he’s the President. But he has security, doesn’t he? And maybe your ‘images’ are to do with him, but maybe they’re not. And even if they are, we can’t do anything about it. If we tried, we’d all get locked up in a loony bin.”
“And then Miss Bennett would definitely find us,” added Felix. “I reckon she’s got a subscription to Loony Monthly Magazine.”
“Don’t you start on me as well,” Jimmy begged.
“I’m not starting,” Felix replied. “I believe you.”
Jimmy forced himself to smile. He knew he could always rely on Felix. It wasn’t much of a comfort today though. The worst thing was that he was filled with doubt himself. When he thought about it rationally, he knew that everything Georgie had said made sense. The images in his head could mean nothing except that he was slowly going crazy. Telling the authorities would only put them at a massive risk of being found by NJ7. And yet that feeling was so strong inside him. It swallowed the rational, sensible thoughts, reducing them to nothing but a squeak.
The images had come to him again in the night. They had been so strong this time that Jimmy could close his eyes at any moment and see them, scorched into his eyelids. The face of the President was there too, more clearly now than ever. With it came that same terror. It felt as if Jimmy was looking at the face of a dead man, but one with his eyes open, able to breathe and plead for Jimmy’s help.
Too late. The man’s time had run out.
Jimmy heard the click of the door of the apartment below, then feet on the stairs.
“Chris is leaving,” Felix whispered. He was leaning so far out of the door, Jimmy wondered how he didn’t overbalance. “He must be going to see his contacts about what happened last night.”
Jimmy had been so focused on the puzzle inside his head that he hadn’t had time to worry about the two men who had attacked him. It was almost enough to make him laugh – he wasn’t scared of killers with knives who came up the fire escape, but he was terrified of the pictures in his own imagination. The images were nothing – not even air – and yet his fear of them twisted his mind into knots.
Georgie got up and went to peer round the door as well, but Jimmy jumped to his feet and snatched a few dollars from the table.
“What are you doing?” Felix whispered. “Your mum’s coming up. Don’t act crazy.”
Jimmy ignored him and dashed towards the bathroom. The footsteps came closer, making their way up the stairs. Helen Coates pushed open the door to the apartment.
“Jimmy,” she announced, “I need to talk to you.” She looked up just as Jimmy disappeared through the bathroom window. The clang of the metal fire escape rang out.
“Jimmy!” Felix yelled. “Quick, we should go after him.” He ran to the window and was about to climb out. Helen gently pulled him back.
“Let him go,” she said.
“What?” Felix turned round and saw the sadness in her face.
“What do you mean, ‘Let him go’?” It was Georgie, standing by the bathroom door. “You can’t let my brother just wander off into New York. There are maniacs and muggers and Government agents out there!”
“It’s OK,” Helen explained. “He’ll be fine. He’s gone after Chris, hasn’t he?”
The others nodded, not understanding what could possibly be going through Helen Coates’ mind. Then she doubled their confusion.
“He thinks Chris is his father.”
Georgie and Felix both jolted slightly.
“Has he gone mad?” Georgie asked. “In fact, have you both gone mad?”
Helen sighed and finally looked her daughter in the eye.
“Jimmy is your half-brother, Georgie,” she replied.
A gust of cold air through the window sent shivers over Georgie’s skin. Her face fell first into shock, then quickly into thought. She looked like she was doing a complex mathematical sum in her head.
“Who is Jimmy’s father?” she asked angrily.
“It doesn’t matter,” Helen replied.
“Of course it matters!” Georgie exploded. Her fists were clenched and her face was twisted with anguish. “You can’t keep secrets from us. It’s not fair!” She looked across at Felix, who had gone red with embarrassment and was trying not to make eye contact. On the other side of him was the open window. Georgie looked out, grappling with her thoughts.
“You said he’s gone after Chris,” she said, more calmly now. “Is Christopher Viggo Jimmy’s real father?”
Her mother turned away and gestured to Felix. “Come on,” she said. “We should let Jimmy do what he has to. He’ll catch up with Chris and be perfectly safe.” She pulled the window closed and tried to usher the others out of the bathroom, but Georgie refused to move.
“Jimmy’s father is dead,” Helen announced. “That’s all that matters.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN – KNICKERBOCKER
The jumble of lights and smells of Chinatown was almost too much for Jimmy’s senses to take. He wasn’t used to being outdoors during daylight hours. Don’t look up, he heard a voice inside him whisper. The satellites will see your face. He twisted and ducked his way between the crowd, moving fast to catch up with Viggo.
Jimmy hunched his shoulders against the cold and the light drizzle. At Canal Street subway station, Viggo trotted down the stairs. His long coat rose up behind him like a cloak and he disappeared into the darkness. Jimmy pelted down the steps after him. He had to weave between the tourists and the commuters, who seemed to move in slow motion.
By then, Viggo had already swished through the turnstile. Jimmy ducked behind a corner. He could see Viggo standing on the platform, looking furtively from side to side, mentally noting the features of the people around him.
The luminous yellow numbers on the platform clock quivered to the next minute. How long until the next train? Jimmy gritted his teeth and fumbled for money to buy a ticket. His nerves were so on edge he could almost feel the electricity in the air.
Then came the rattle of the tracks. Behind him, a train swept into the station. The dust in the air swirled round him, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. All Jimmy could hear was every noise the train made magnified a thousand times. He never noticed anything unusual about the two men in black leather gloves, purchasing a ticket from the next machine.
The train stopped. The doors slid open. At last, Jimmy grabbed his ticket and charged towards the turnstiles. The train doors were closing. The back of Viggo’s head disappeared into a crowded carriage.
Jimmy swiped his ticket and surged forwards. This burst of speed sent him flying through the crowd. He slipped between the doors of the train, scraping his nose on the rubber seal. Made it, he thought with a smile, leaning against the door to catch his breath. He was in the carriage next to Viggo’s.
Two tall lean men were left behind on the station platform. One tapped a black umbrella on the concrete.
“Best not to do it in public a
nyway,” he mumbled.
His companion put his fists back in his pockets, discreetly putting away his knife.
“His time will come,” he grunted. “Sooner than he thinks.”
Both men had refined English accents.
Viggo stepped off the train at Times Square, so Jimmy did the same. There were enough people on the platform to keep Jimmy hidden as everybody made their way towards the exit. But Viggo took a different turn. He quickened his step and broke away from the crowd, heading down a tunnel signposted ‘Shuttle’.
Jimmy waited a few seconds, then turned the same corner. Viggo had disappeared round a bend in the tunnel, but Jimmy picked out his footsteps, echoing against the tiles with a regular tap. Suddenly the noise stopped. Is this the meeting place? Jimmy thought. If it was, he had to get a look at who Viggo was meeting. He edged round the corner, holding his breath. There was no sign of Viggo.
Jimmy held himself still. A minute went by, maybe more. To Jimmy it seemed like forever. Nobody passed him along the tunnel. The place was deserted and eerily quiet. It was as if Christopher Viggo had disintegrated to dust – except there was a door.
It was an old door, with white paint peeling off in some places and stained almost brown in others. Around it, the wall was smeared with an extra layer of muck. There were large patches of damp where the tiles had long since fallen off and smashed. The smell of this part of the tunnel was thick – like meat after it’s been left out of the fridge too long. All these were the marks of time. Jimmy reckoned this must have been one of the oldest parts of the subway network.
The door looked completely ordinary except for one thing – above it was a space with no tiles where the stone wall was exposed. And carved into the stone, in capital letters about fifteen centimetres high, was the single word KNICKERBOCKER. The word was so worn by time and dirt that at first glance it was hard to make out. But now that Jimmy had seen it, he couldn’t take his eyes off it.
What could it mean? he wondered. Was it some kind of code? What possible reason could there be for this dilapidated old door, labelled KNICKERBOCKER? Jimmy gingerly pressed against it, but it didn’t budge. No surprise there, he thought. But there was no keyhole either – there wasn’t even a handle. For a second he considered breaking it down, but he knew in his gut that was the wrong option. He needed to get through quietly, and without being observed.