by Alan Glynn
They shake. Dorsey has a laptop under her arm. She places it on the table. She turns to the man directly behind her.
He’s rugged and tanned, in his fifties.
Expensive-looking suit.
Something about him says lawyer.
‘Jimmy, this is Ned Goldstein. He’s with Reynolds, Fleischman & Brock.’ She pauses. ‘Attorneys.’
OK.
They shake, and then Jimmy introduces Tom Szymanski.
The next thirty minutes or so pass in a blur.
Dorsey sits opposite Jimmy, and Goldstein opposite Szymanski.
Goldstein, it turns out, specialises in whistleblower cases and has worked with Dorsey on several occasions in the past. The first thing he does is quiz Jimmy and Szymanski on what they perceive their current level of danger to be. Calmly and discreetly, Szymanski points out three parked vehicles in the vicinity that he judges to be Gideon surveillance units. He also outlines what he believes Gideon’s strategy would most likely be in circumstances such as these. Goldstein proceeds to grill Szymanski on his background, his history in the military and his subsequent employment record with Gideon.
While this is going on, Dorsey checks with Jimmy that he has prepped Szymanski for the interview, exactly as they’d agreed on the phone. Jimmy says he has but adds that Szymanski is adamant he doesn’t want to be filmed or photographed. Dorsey makes a face. OK. They go over the questions again and Jimmy outlines in general terms what Szymanski’s answers will be. When Goldstein has given the all-clear, Dorsey says, the interview should go ahead without delay. She will record it, simultaneously transcribing as much of it as she can, and will then immediately upload a text version onto her website and her Facebook page.
She says that given the incendiary nature of the central claim about Senator Rundle’s injury, the interview will be picked up straightaway and will go viral on Twitter in a matter of minutes. That level of public awareness will effectively provide cover for Jimmy and Szymanski, but she warns him that it will also be insane and unlike anything either of them has ever experienced before in their entire lives. Avoiding photographers and camera crews will not be easy.
Is he prepared for this?
Jimmy says yes. Nodding. He is. He also says he understands that the Senator Rundle aspect of the story will dominate at first, and probably for days, but that behind it is the even bigger story of BRX and Gideon Global, which is one he fully intends pursuing – all the way back to the hills of Buenke, and even further back, to the rugged coastline of Donegal.
‘Absolutely,’ Dorsey says, smiling, ‘I’d expect nothing less.’
‘And listen, thanks for everything you’re doing.’
‘Hey, this is your story, Jimmy, and I’m happy to help out – by doing this, by putting you in touch with people later if you want, whatever. These bastards deserve all they get.’ She pauses. ‘But remember one thing. If it all goes pear-shaped for some reason, or turns out to be a crock of shit, it’ll still be your story.’
Jimmy says nothing, but acknowledges the point with a nod.
He looks at Tom Szymanski and wonders how he’s coping. This can’t be easy for him.
He seems to be coping fine.
Ellen Dorsey turns to Ned Goldstein. The lawyer shrugs his shoulders. ‘All looks kosher to me. I think we’re good to go.’
Dorsey opens her laptop. She takes a small recording device from her pocket, checks it and turns it on. She places it on the table between Jimmy and Szymanski.
She places her hands over the keyboard, poised. She looks up. ‘Gentlemen?’
Jimmy swallows.
As he is forming the first question in his mind, he notices the car across the street, the one with the tinted windows, starting up and pulling out of its place.
He closes his eyes. ‘Mr Szymanski, can you tell me first of all the exact date on which you started working as a private military contractor for Gideon Global?’
When Jimmy opens his eyes, the car has gone.
14
A few hours later – and a few blocks northwest of this Third Avenue coffee shop – James Vaughan opens his eyes and yawns. He takes an afternoon nap most days now. Doctor’s orders. It’s not the hardest thing in the world to do, an hour or so in bed after lunch, but he does find it interrupts his rhythm. Leaves him a little cranky.
He gets dressed and goes into the study.
There’d been no word from Clark by the time he was hitting the hay, and since his nap is sacrosanct, involving a complete communications blackout, Vaughan is anxious that he might have missed something. If there are any messages for him they’ll be here on his phone, but before checking he decides to go online first and see what developments there have been.
It’s pretty ugly.
On site after site, one story dominates.
Rise and fall, rise and fall . . .
When he heard that guy outside the hotel shout the word Buenke, Vaughan figured, at some level, that the game was up. Then when he heard the uncertainty in Clark’s voice a while later, he was left in little doubt.
He watches a couple of news clips, and winces more than once.
It’s not going to be easy for the Rundle boys, being hounded and savaged like this by reporters. But in a way they were asking for it.
Vaughan himself has never courted publicity. The very idea of it horrifies him, and always has. In fact – thinking about it – the first time he ever encountered the gentlemen of the press was at his grandfather’s funeral in the late 1930s, when he’d still only have been a small boy. He can see it now, the crowds on Fifth Avenue for the service, the carriage strewn with violets, the stiff collar and breeches he was made to wear and how uneasy he felt in the church having to file past the open casket. He clearly remembers the texture of his grandfather’s hands and face, too, bloodless and waxy.
That haunted him all the way out to Woodlawn.
But in the end, it was the press photographers he remembers most, the flashbulbs, dozens of them, all going off like so many tiny explosions, and then these grubby little men with their pencil stubs and notepads.
Who are these people, he remembers thinking at the time.
Who indeed.
He trawls through a few more reports. At this stage, the main focus is on J.J. and his trip to Paris. Was there really a motorcycle accident? Was there really a motorcyclist? The search is well and truly on now and that can only end one way.
In tears.
But Vaughan knows that the background stuff will come into focus as well, sooner or later, and that it won’t be long before the word Buenke is on everyone’s lips.
Thanaxite, too.
It’s a damn shame.
He checks his phone – a text from Meredith, who’s in LA for a few days, and due back tomorrow. Then three voice messages and four texts, all from Clark.
Oh dear.
He deletes them, and turns to go.
What exactly is it about the phrase You’re on your own, he wonders, that Clark didn’t understand?
*
Tom Szymanski paces back and forth between the window and the bed. In this hotel room he can do that, there’s enough space, unlike where he stayed before, in midtown, which was cramped, but at least there he was free to get shitfaced, bring a hooker back, whatever. Here he feels constrained, like he’s supposed to be on his best behaviour or something. It’s only been twelve hours since the interview in the coffee shop and already, already, he’s acquired an entourage – legal advisors, media handlers, a fucking bodyguard. He probably hasn’t gone about all of this in the best way possible – but in his defence, how was he supposed to know what to do, or say? This isn’t exactly the kind of shit he’s been trained for. Anyway, twenty minutes after Ellen Dorsey posted the interview on her webpage and did whatever Twitter shit it is that people do these days, a couple of photographers showed up, then a local news crew. Dorsey seemed a bit alarmed herself by how fast it was all happening, but then she tried to make out like it was bet
ter this way, that if he had his photo out there, his mug in the public domain, he’d be better protected, it’d be the perfect deflector shield against the very powerful and influential people he had chosen to go up against.
What the fuck?
He hadn’t chosen to go up against anyone, it had all just happened, and continued happening, inside the door of the coffee shop, then outside on the street, moving along the sidewalk, more and more people arriving, so that pretty quickly it became a circus, and he got separated from Jimmy Gilroy and Ellen Dorsey and her lawyer, and before he knew it . . . shit, before he knew anything this other woman was shoving a business card into his hand and asking him how’d he like to go on the Evening News with Katie Couric, or do 60 Minutes, or if the sound of a nice, juicy book contract appealed to him at all? If she hadn’t been so gorgeous he might have moved on, but really, this woman was like a fucking movie star, with the eyes, and the lips, and the hips, and the OMG rack, and before he could catch his breath he was sitting next to her in the back of a town car, riding up here to this hotel . . .
For a series of . . . meetings . . .
It crossed his mind at one point that she might be a Gideon plant, but no, thinking about it, Ellen Dorsey had been right – with the interview out there on the web, and his name, and his history, and pictures now too, actual footage of him on Third Avenue from that morning, BRX and Gideon wouldn’t be so stupid as to go anywhere near him.
This Zambelli woman was on the level, she was a bona fide PR princess with a pair of stones on her that would put any man to shame.
She’d nabbed him, for Christ’s sake.
Look at him.
Holed up in a fucking executive suite, waiting for a deluxe cheeseburger he ordered and watching himself on TV, while out there, in the other room, some grand strategy is being devised, tomorrow’s assault on the world’s media.
He stops at the window and looks out at the shimmering lights of Manhattan’s upper east side.
What’s he doing here? What’s his strategy?
He doesn’t know.
It felt weird bailing on Jimmy Gilroy and Ellen Dorsey like that, but then, what does he owe them? He did their interview, gave them their scoop.
He turns away from the window.
What does he owe anyone for that matter? What does he owe the various people who’ve been trying to contact him since early afternoon apparently, looking to hook up with him? So-called friends, family members – and obscure ones, too.
His ex-brother-in-law?
Jesus Christ.
He doesn’t owe them anything.
He looks over at the end of the bed.
He still has his gun. It’s in the pocket of his leather jacket there.
He could . . .
What?
Flip? Work himself up to it? An improvised frenzy, right here in the bedroom maybe? Or how about downstairs in the lobby? Or live on-air in some TV studio? Take his new movie-star girlfriend with him and go out in a blaze of glory?
Yeah.
He wishes he were that insane. It’d be a lot easier.
On Fox now they’re showing clips of Paris, the Eiffel Tower, some big hotel, streets, traffic.
The special correspondents, it would seem, are on the case, arriving into the city in their droves. It won’t be long before they start arriving in Congo as well, and chartering small private planes to take them as near to the remote village of Buenke as they can get.
And it won’t be long before everything Tom Szymanski said in his interview is checked and verified – Ray Kroner going postal and killing all those people, then Senator Rundle getting his hand crushed in the door of an SUV.
That chiefly.
But it won’t stop there, it occurs to him, the coverage, the attention, not by a long shot – and it’s going to take all his reserves of sanity to get through it.
All his reserves of energy.
Speaking of which.
He looks over at the door.
Where’s that fucking cheeseburger he ordered?
*
Over on the west side, standing at a window of his apartment on the fifty-seventh floor, glass in hand, Clark Rundle gazes down at the jewel-encrusted city spread out below like a vast, magnificent cache of pirate’s booty.
After a while, and abruptly, he shifts focus and gazes into his glass.
Single malt Scotch whisky. This is the fourth or fifth one he’s had, he thinks. He’s not a big drinker, but he knows that he’s reached a tipping point here, the sensation in his stomach – this little red-hot coal of euphoria, burning steadily now for maybe the last twenty minutes – is due to subside, and fade.
Inevitably.
Leaving him with the dying embers of . . .
Oh please.
There. You see?
It’s gone.
He drains his glass and turns away from the window.
The room before him is enormous, like a downtown loft space –furnished in a minimalist style, with wide, pine floorboards, a couple of bare leather couches, a tinted glass coffee table and two large, modernist canvases hung on walls at either end.
That’s it.
Is it any wonder no-one ever comes in here?
He goes over to the coffee table and puts his glass down beside the bottle of smoky Laphroaig.
Outside, the phone rings.
Again.
Eve is under instructions to screen all calls.
His own cell is turned off.
He looks down at the bottle.
Does he pour himself another one? He’s not sure he can re-live – as he will inevitably have to, again and again – those final few moments in the car today beside Don Ribcoff . . . without some form of . . . of fortification. Especially that final moment, that very, very final moment, when he picked up his laptop and swung it sideways straight into Ribcoff’s forehead . . . withdrew it and swung it back, even harder this time, aiming better, the right angle of its corner ramming directly into the centre of Ribcoff’s now-turned and very startled face.
The bridge of his nose?
Definitely the bridge of his nose the next time, going by the sound, and no question about it the time after that, cartilage, sinew, muscle.
Blood.
Spurting, spraying . . . everywhere.
The few times after that? You’re talking fucking . . . serious laundry bills.
He picks up the bottle, hesitates, then pours himself another measure, a generous one.
He remembers getting out of the car somewhere down around Twenty-third Street and being met – taken in hand, transferred to another car – by some of his people. Luckily, the driver of the original car was one of his, too, and not a Gideon driver – well, he’s assuming luckily – because you never know.
And then?
And then it was busy.
All day.
He’s been busy . . . all day.
Talking.
To this one and that one.
Rationalising, explaining, making calls, responding. Earlier on, there was that very long shower he had to take, and then later – he’s a little muddled about the sequence of things at the moment – yeah, later, watching TV and checking news websites.
Because, Jesus Christ . . .
J.J.
His big brother.
All day he’s had to watch the poor bastard being crucified.
Vilified, ridiculed.
While knowing at the same time, that somehow – and sooner rather than later – he’s next in line.
For the hammer and nails.
And the cheap cracks.
He lifts the glass to his lips, well beyond that tipping point now. No euphoria anymore, just . . .
Oh Jesus.
He was so angry in the car today, about Nora . . . and with Ribcoff – for delaying, for maintaining that stupid pretence of military precision, when it was clear what they had to do.
Despite the enormous risks.
Just go in there and . . .
>
Because two or three minutes earlier and everything would have been different.
Everything would be different now.
Yeah.
He throws his head back and drains the glass, though this time feeling a little sick as he does so.
Like he’s had enough.
He stares at the plain wall in front of him, and then down at the floorboards.
How many messages did he leave today for Jimmy Vaughan? A lot. And that’s what makes him the sickest, that’s what –
Rundle looks up. The door is opening.
It’s Eve, looking gaunt and exhausted. She remains standing in the doorway.
‘Clark.’ She whispers it. ‘There are two police detectives downstairs. They want to speak with you.’
Rundle swallows. ‘OK.’ He shrugs. ‘Send them up.’
Shit. This is about Don Ribcoff, isn’t it? That driver today, he’s sure of it. Or one of the others maybe, one of the Gideon contractors. There were so many of them around the place, it was sometimes hard to tell who was with who, and –
Their loyalties would be with Ribcoff, wouldn’t they?
Clearly.
He shakes his head.
All they’d need is the laptop. Which of course he doesn’t remember taking with him from the car, and that’s because he didn’t take it with him, he left it there.
Do these detectives have it now? This choice piece of evidence?
Definitive, case-busting?
Rundle turns around and does something he’s been threatening to do all day. He steps forward, heaves loudly and throws up – all over one of the leather couches.
Half a pint of whisky.
The sum total of what he’s got.
And when he’s finished, he wipes his mouth with the sleeve of his jacket.
Standing there, facing the window, he takes a few deep breaths.
A moment later, from outside, he hears the door opening, and voices.
*
A little after eleven o’clock the next morning Ellen Dorsey takes Jimmy to the offices of Parallax magazine on Forty-first Street. She introduces him to the editor, Max Daitch, an intense guy in his mid-thirties who sits behind a mahogany desk piled high with papers and books.