by Tim Stevens
He tried to speak but the words came out as a slurry of sounds unintelligible even to him. The men didn’t read him the familiar Miranda rights. When they seemed satisfied he wasn’t going to vomit again or pass out they seized his arms and pulled him upright once more. He swayed but kept his balance. One on either side of him, they began to march him back across the park.
*
He stumbled towards the entrance between the two men, the crowds peeling aside, their fascinated stares lingering. The men had done a brief, professional frisk but had left the phone in his pocket. It was useless to him there.
Beyond the park entrance, in the sudden shadow of the city once more, they reached a slate-grey Crown Victoria, a standard government issue car. The shaven-headed man pushed Purkiss’s head down into the back, slid in beside him. The curly-haired one got in the driver’s seat.
The car pulled away into the traffic. Both the men remained silent. They’d be armed; Purkiss had seen the bulge of shoulder holsters under their jackets.
They weren’t Company; or if they were, they were acting independently and beyond their remit. Beyond this, he knew nothing about them. He’d been seated behind the passenger seat, not the driver’s, so even if he could somehow contrive to bring his legs up he wouldn’t be able to get a stranglehold on the driver. In any case, the man next to him would react within a second.
The Crown Vic headed up a wide main thoroughfare along the western side of the island, the Jersey shore looming intermittently between the buildings across the water. At one point the man beside him murmured into a cell phone and Purkiss strained to hear; but the blow to his neck had knocked his hearing out of kilter and it hadn’t yet returned to normal.
The impact came from the left, a shocking fist into the side of the car that shunted it sideways into the next lane in a crump of buckling metal segueing into the screams of tyres and blaring horns. The man next to Purkiss was driven across the space between them as his door stove in; the driver himself was shoved sideways as the side airbag bloomed, usurping his space behind the wheel. A violent jolt followed as the car behind tailended the Crown Vic.
The shaven-headed man’s face was inches from Purkiss’s own and he took the chance, snapping his forehead forward into the bridge of the man’s nose. The man recoiled with a cry, blood gouting from his nostrils. He flailed, half-sliding down the seat, not unconscious but far from fully alert. Purkiss pressed his back against the door on his side and kicked out through the partition between the front seats, catching the driver in the side of the face with the tip of his shoe. The man was quick to pull back and avoided the full force of the kick. His right hand groped inside his jacket, the front of which was pressed against his body by the tumescent airbag.
Behind his back Purkiss’s cuffed hands scrabbled for the door release. His fingers found the lever, snapped at it; but the central locking system was in place. He wouldn’t get another kick in and the man’s arm was burrowing more deeply into his jacket. In a few seconds he’d have the gun.
Beside Purkiss’s ear the window exploded inwards, nuggets of safety glass hailing past his face. Some sort of small battering ram was knocking out the remaining fragments of the window. Once more hands were grabbing at his shoulders. He heaved himself forwards to allow them to reach under his arms, pressed downwards with his feet to help lever himself up and back. Awkwardly he half-pushed himself and was half-hauled through the window frame. For a moment he was horizontal, suspended crazily from the car; then the hands righted him and he stood blinking in the middle of a downtown Manhattan street, a cacophony of yells and horns raging around him.
‘Come on.’
Two people, once again, a man and a woman this time propelling him forwards and towards the pavement. Like the two men in the park they wielded shields in leather folders, held up like crucifixes against a crowd of vampires.
The FBI agents, Berg and Nakamura.
Berg dragged at the rear door of a Ford Taurus parked up on a yellow line on the pavement and said, ‘Get in.’ Behind her a man was approaching, running across the street, weaving among the stalled traffic.
Nakamura yelled, ‘Watch out,’ his arm coming up, a pistol levelled.
Purkiss said, ‘No, he’s with me.’
The man reached them. Thin, unkempt, with bad teeth and the sallow eyes of a wolf.
Berg stared at him, then back at Purkiss. Then she said: ‘In. Both of you.’
Purkiss dropped into the seat, shifting over to make room for Kendrick. Nakamura took the wheel.
*
The noise dwindled behind as they plunged into the bustle of Lower Manhattan. In the front passenger seat Berg took something from her pocket and handed it back.
‘The cuffs.’
It was a universal key, something Purkiss wasn’t surprised to see in the FBI arsenal. Kendrick took it and sprung the cuffs after a few seconds of fiddling. Purkiss rubbed the feeling back into his wrists.
He said: ‘Where are we going?’
Berg said, ‘Haven’t decided yet.’ She turned in her seat to look at him. ‘Those guys say who they were?’
‘No. They had CIA ID, though.’
‘Their names are Barker and Campbell. And yes, they’re Company, all right.’
‘Then why are we running away? Why not arrest them? Assuming they’ve done something arrestable, of course.’
Nakamura laughed. Berg said, ‘They’ve certainly done something arrestable. Apprehending a foreign national on US soil. That’s our jurisdiction, not theirs. The reason we’re not arresting them is because we’ve been warned off.’
‘By whom?’
‘Our own high command.’
Purkiss took a moment to absorb this, found that he couldn’t. He glanced at Kendrick. ‘Thanks.’
‘Any time you need your arse wiped.’
As soon as he’d seen Kendrick running across the street, Purkiss had grasped what had happened. Kendrick hadn’t been able to make a move in the park when he’d seen Purkiss being taken down by the two men. He’d followed the Crown Vic in his rental car and had rammed it at what seemed to be an opportune moment. And had turned out to be one.
He’d rung Kendrick from Hamburg as soon as Vale had told him about the New York killing of the third agent, Grosvenor. Kendrick had been available immediately, so Purkiss had booked him on the Heathrow-to-JFK flight that he himself would be connecting with. The US was a vast arena and Purkiss decided he’d do well with backup.
Tony Kendrick was an ex-paratrooper whom Purkiss had met in Iraq some eight years earlier. He was a civilian now. Purkiss hired him on a freelance basis when he needed an extra pair of hands, or an extra gun. There’d been three of them once: Purkiss, Kendrick and Abby.
A police car shot past, siren squealing. Purkiss thought he knew where it was heading.
Berg said: ‘We’ve got questions for each other. I’ll go first. We know you’re here on a job, Purkiss. No bullshit this time. We just can’t figure out what it is. Danny here and I –’ she nodded at Nakamura – ‘were at JFK on another job, looking for a suspect in a different cae who we thought might turn up from abroad. While we were there we noticed those two CIA guys, Campbell and Barker, hanging round. We got curious. We knew them for Company, and then when you arrived at the passport desk and they took an obvious interest in you, we moved in. We’re jealous of our turf, Purkiss. The law’s clear. Here in the US, the Company butts out. And if the Company decides to start following people here, it becomes our business.
‘So we shook you down a little, didn’t get anything out of you as expected, then let you go. Campbell and Barker took off after you, so we followed. You’re good – you nearly lost them, and us – but we picked you up again on the subway and were on to you when you reached Battery Park.’
Nakamura took over: ‘You met up with some guy there, we don’t know who. Then we saw the two Company assholes take you down. We called in for authorisation to make a move. Berg’s idea. Big fuckin’ mistake. Our b
oss tells us to back off. Walk away. Says it’s an internal CIA matter. Like Berg says, we’re jealous of our turf. So we decide to ignore him. Next thing, this guy –’ he jerked a thumb over his shoulder at Kendrick – ‘comes out of nowhere and rams you. And we haul you out.’
‘And we’re officially in violation of direct orders from our superiors. A firing offence, at best.’ Berg shook her head, as if amazing herself. ‘So. Your turn. And Purkiss?’
‘Yes.’
‘Make it good. Because I am having a really bad day.’
Seventeen
Outside Charlottesville, Virginia
Monday 20 May, 11.10 pm
Pope had asked for the fastest car the rental firm had available, short of a sports vehicle. He’d chosen a Mercedes E-class saloon.
His preferred means of travel, the train, wasn’t an option because there were no more running that night. Neither could he take a bus, because speed was of the essence.
He veered through the snarl of North Virginia traffic, reaching interstate 95 within an hour. She had an hour’s head start on him. At this rate he would make Washington by midnight, around the time her Greyhound was due to arrive.
He’d done a quick scout of the station to see if she was there waiting for a bus or a train, then checked the schedules. No trains since this afternoon, so she wouldn’t have left that way.
At the bus station ticket office he said, ‘I’m looking for my girlfriend. I think she may have taken a bus this evening.’
The woman behind the screen eyed him with distaste. He smiled.
‘Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. She’s running away and I’m stalking her.’ He held up his phone. Onto it he’d loaded a photo of Ramirez for recognition purposes, one he’d taken in her flat. It showed her with her grandmother, grinning at the camera. He held the phone out, her photo showing on the screen. ‘Her phone. She’s left it behind. I think she went to Washington and she’ll be going insane knowing she’s left this behind. If she’s gone there, I need to catch up with her.’
The woman looked at the picture, then at him. She smiled back. Pope wondered if she’d need stitches.
‘Yeah, she was here. Bought a ticket for the nine o’clock ’Hound to Washington. Should be around one third of the way there now.’
He beamed. ‘Thanks so much.’
The rental place was down the road.
*
Pope wondered as he drove how the girl would react. She’d be terrified, no doubt. But someone who could keep their cool and escape from a murder scene with a purposeful journey in mind, someone who was a civilian and not accustomed to the sordid arts of death, had to have something about them that was tough. He had no fears that she’d be difficult to subdue or keep under control; but she might make life a little more difficult than he’d been expecting.
Of more concern to him now was the fact that there had been a murder or murders from which she’d had to flee. Either she’d killed somebody who’d been following her - unlikely, he thought - or someone else had got caught in the crossfire. Either way, it suggested some other party was pursing her. He couldn’t think of a reason at the moment, and it nagged at him.
There’d been one mention of her as a girl on the recording he’d listened to and committed to memory. He didn’t like to submerge himself in the remembered diary while he was driving, for obvious reasons, but he did want to explore that mention of her again. It would have to wait.
A flash of inspiration hit him, a thought so blindingly obvious that he was astonished at himself. He turned on the car radio. In an age when all news was assumed to be obtainable solely online, he’d forgotten about the tried and tested medium of local radio.
The stations were unfamiliar and he flicked through them at random. Loud rock music was followed by sickly country fiddles. A talk show host ranted, an evangelist roared. He settled on a quiet-sounding political debate programme and waited for the news broadcast.
It came after fifteen minutes. Police had been called to an apartment in Greenbrier, Charlottesville, after neighbours had reported sounds of a struggle and shots fired. Two individuals had been identified as having been shot dead, their names not yet released. The Charlottesville PD would like to speak to a Ms Nina Ramirez in connection with the shootings. A description followed.
Two people dead. She definitely hadn’t killed them. Friends, then, probably, who’d got in the way.
But in the way of whom?
*
He was on Interstate 95 passing the town of Dumfries when it happened.
The news had ended but he kept the radio on at a low volume, in case of updates. He’d been thinking about something else that had been bothering him but hadn’t risen to his full consciousness until now: why was she going to Washington, anyway?
The blacktop curved leftwards, the lights arcing through a light patina of drizzle on his windscreen. Traffic was still steady, but lighter than it had been nearer Charlottesville. He suspected it would begin to thicken as he neared the capital.
The bus was fifty yards ahead of him round the curve, stopped on the hard shoulder at a slant so that it blocked half of the outermost lane. Its hazard lights were flashing. Cars swerved irritably into the adjacent lane to avoid it. Even from a distance Pope recognised the Greyhound markings on the side visible to him.
He eased the brake down, slowing and at the same time shifting towards the hard shoulder.
A car was parked behind the bus, a nondescript saloon, its headlights on. The streetlights cast the bus’s windows into shadow so that Pope couldn’t detect any movement through them.
He stopped behind the car and killed the engine. Waited a moment, winding down the window to listen. All he could hear was road sounds: distant truck horns, cars steaming past through the thin rain.
Pope stepped out.
As he did so the hazard lights of the bus switched to a single blinking indicator and its exhaust billowed. With a rumble it pulled away on to the road.
Pope’s impulse was to dive back into his seat and fire the engine but a stronger instinct made him approach the car, his posture slightly stooped and loping. He peered in. There was nobody inside.
A yell hit his ear on the right. A man’s shout.
Pope straightened and stared in its direction. Beyond the safety rail on the side of the road, a bank sloped down into darkness. There was some kind of scrubby field below the Interstate, undeveloped land.
His night vision was still impaired by the brightness of the headlights he’d been facing for the last couple of hours; but if he couldn’t make out details, he could still see the outlines of the figures moving at a clip across the ground.
The one in front was a woman.
Pope vaulted over the railing and half slid, half scrambled down the slope.
Eighteen
Between Charlottesville, Virginia and Washington D.C.
Monday 20 May, 11.25 pm
An hour into the bus ride, Nina began to notice the car behind, and wonder if it was following her. Half an hour later she was convinced.
It was a dark grey sedan, with the Toyota symbol on the front. Nina didn’t know much about cars - didn’t drive, herself - so that exact make wasn’t clear. Sometimes it was right behind the Greyhound, sometimes it dropped back a car or two; but always it was there. When the bus driver put on an unaccustomed burst of speed and overtook a truck ahead of them, the Toyota followed suit and swung into place at their rear.
Nina couldn’t see through the windshield in the darkness. This wasn’t surprising, but the blackness of the glass seemed sinister, as though there was an added veil of secrecy about the vehicle.
Glad that she’d chosen the rearmost seat, she nonetheless felt nervous about turning and staring back through the window. Surely the occupants of the Toyota would see her waxen face peering through the glass at them? But then it didn’t matter; they knew she was on the bus, and whether she’d spotted them or not would be of no relevance.
A road s
ign loomed as the bus slowed temporarily: Washington D.C., 42 miles.
Nina made her decision.
Barely trusting her legs to support her, she wove to her feet, lifted the violin case and picked her way down the aisle towards the front, brushing newspapers and barging jutting elbows and knees. As she neared the bulging glass face of the bus she saw the driver’s eyes in the mirror, wide and wary. A crazy, he’d be thinking. He’d have had experience of them. Of the likes of her.
When she got close enough to make herself heard without violating his personal space, she said, low and shakily: ‘Please stop the bus. I need to get off.’
For a moment she thought he hadn’t heard, and she cleared her throat to repeat herself when he said, ‘Miss, I need you to sit down. Right now.’
His voice was low and warning, as though he’d had to deal with this kind of scenario before. She took a step back to show she wasn’t a threat, wasn’t going to seize the wheel from his hands.
‘There’s somebody following this bus. I need to get off.’
‘I said, you need to sit down. Or I’ll call for a police escort.’
The idea struck her that this might be a good idea, and she suppressed a laugh. Then she remembered that she couldn’t be sure the police weren’t in on it.
‘Please,’ she said. ‘Stop the bus, let me off, and go on your way. I’ll be out of your hair.’
‘I’ll also be in breach of the rules.’ He was a tired-looking fifty. In profile she could see he hadn’t shaved since at least that morning. His expression said: I don’t need this.