The Bid

by Adrian Magson

  While they waited, Ruth took over the iPad and looked again at Chadwick’s searches for airfields. The discovery of the photos of the man had energised her, and she sensed that they had picked up their first solid lead. It proved that James Chadwick hadn’t been imagining things about being followed, although there was still a possibility the man named Paul could have been nothing more than an obsessive who’d latched onto him.

  But obsessives sometimes became dangerous.

  The photos of the airfields were bugging her. She couldn’t put her finger on it, and she was certain she hadn’t seen any of these sites before. Yet a fragment of something was tugging at her memory, demanding attention.

  She flicked through the various links; more aerial shots of runways and taxiways, of fuel storage tanks, outbuildings and hangars—the latter mostly of wood and metal construction with rusting corrugated iron roofs and lots of windows. Many of the airfields appeared to be in partial use, some as museums, some as private flying clubs or small commercial bases. All the pictures carried the same air of melancholy she’d picked up seeing old WWII airfields back in England, their structures slowly fading into the ground beneath them, remembered and praised by a shrinking few, remnants of a bygone age.

  She pushed the iPad away, the links and pictures a clutter of confusion. She turned instead to the map she and Vaslik had found among Chadwick’s personal effects at StoneSeal’s offices.

  She spread it out on the desk and studied the circles and notations she’d seen earlier. Most of the writing meant nothing, seemingly no more than a private code of abbreviations that only Chadwick himself would be able to translate. There were numerous small question marks and asterisks dotted here and there, as if he’d been marking the locations for further investigation, but with no indication of what he might have been looking for. A couple of place names had even been underlined, presumably with the aim to look at them in more detail later. But one thing still very apparent was that the circles on the map were all in the same three states she’d noticed before: Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma.

  She revised her thoughts on needles in haystacks. This could turn out to be more like grains of dust they were searching for.

  While Ruth had been focussing on the maps, Brasher had been talking with Vaslik. He took out his cell phone and hit speed-dial. It was picked up immediately and he asked to speak to somebody called Janice. Moments later he said, “Jan, I’m on the Chadwick thing at the Cruxys offices. Can you give me the description Chadwick gave of the man who he said was following him?” He waited, then listened for a few moments before saying thank you and disconnecting.

  “Chadwick was asked for a description of the man who approached him, this Paul guy. He said he was mid-height, stocky but not fat, and could have been of Latino extraction but sounded pure American.” He tapped the screen of the iPad. “It’s not the guy you saw outside DiPalma’s place, Ruth—there’s no moustache. Could it have been muscles, here?”

  “No. He wasn’t that big or that young—and he walked upright. He looked very … ordinary.”

  “Most of them do. So now we’ve got three guys, possibly connected, possibly not.”

  “And the watcher I tangled with at Chadwick’s apartment,” Ruth reminded him.

  He nodded. “Him, too. It’s getting crowded.”

  “I wonder why Chadwick didn’t send in the photos when he called in his report,” Vaslik said. “He must have known it would strengthen his claim.”

  “Maybe he never got the chance,” Brasher replied quietly. “If this Paul guy was watching him this close, he might have figured that sooner or later he’d talk to us and decided to cut to the chase and take him.” He stopped as his phone buzzed and excused himself to take the call. He listened for a few moments, making quick notes on his notepad, then told the person on the other end to pull up a file of the suspect, before turning back to the others with a mixed look of triumph and uncertainty.

  “We’ve got a hit.” He tapped the photo of the second man, the weightlifter figure seen under the arches at the transit station. “NGI says his name is Bilal Ammar. Aged twenty-eight, he’s been here about fifteen years, came over from Egypt with his father, an IT consultant on a work visa, and settled in Queens. When his father died of cancer he dropped out of school and became radicalised at a local mosque in Queens. He came to our attention mixing with a known pro-terror support group running a website calling for jihad against the West. Most of the group are hot-heads who like mixing with protest marches and starting fights. Ammar was picked up in connection with two serious assaults on anti-jihadist Muslims who were trying to calm things down at a couple of larger mosques in the city.”

  “How come he’s walking free?”

  “The usual: they couldn’t prove anything because the victims were unwilling to identify him. In the end they had to let him go, but it was enough to get his face added to NGI.” He lifted his hands. “At least now we know he’s acquainted with this guy Paul, whoever he is … and quite possibly the other guys as well. And if we get the prints off the knife and hard hat, that might give us another one.”

  “Great,” Ruth murmured. “So we’ve got a potential terrorist cell.”

  twenty-one

  After running the remainder of the DVD, Tommy-Lee found sleep was hard to come by. It wasn’t just the prisoner’s first crazed reaction that had rattled him, though; he was thinking about the money he’d been promised and how, if he wanted to enjoy it, he had to make sure he could get away from here with his skin intact. Because one thing was certain: the more he came to know Paul, the less likely he could see himself being allowed to walk off into the sunset with a hearty handshake and a briefcase full of cash if things didn’t work out exactly the way the man wanted. No way.

  That meant he either had to cut and run now, before things went bad … or work to make himself indispensable to their plans. He had no illusions about what those plans might be, only that he valued the idea of the money more than he cared about the man on the other bed. Whatever James—the name was out there now and couldn’t be unheard—had done to get himself to this situation, it surely wasn’t anything to do with being in the army and turning in a couple of Paul’s friends to the authorities. It had to be a lot heavier than that. But that was James’s problem, and Tommy-Lee didn’t want any part of it.

  James had been awake most of the night, too, he knew that. And it didn’t take a college degree to guess why. After watching the rest of the DVD in silence, he’d asked to be allowed to wash and use the bucket. After that he’d asked Tommy-Lee to run the DVD again, this time with the sound cranked right up in case there was a faint message, a background noise—anything he might be able to latch onto. But there was nothing.

  Now it was daylight again and time to get down to business.

  Paul had said they’d be back about six this evening, which was their normal schedule. He’d already worked out that they avoided coming in full daylight because they didn’t want to be seen. Evenings, however, were easier, and they could always duck out of sight if they had to. But he was learning fast that Paul was a tricky bastard, quite capable of rolling up early if he felt like it. And being caught without having done his job as promised would be one serious mistake to make.

  Tommy-Lee stood up and washed his face, opened some tinned fruit and sliced meat, and gave some to the prisoner. He’d already sworn that when he got out of here, he was never going to touch sliced peaches, segmented pears, or apricots in syrup again. Ever.

  They ate in silence, Tommy-Lee standing occasionally to watch as a car or a truck trundled by on the road. He hadn’t actually asked Paul what would happen if anybody decided to stop here and take a look around. All he knew was if anybody did stop, he’d be over to the prisoner and clamping a hand over his mouth to stop him shouting for help.

  He needed that money too bad to let it go just like that.

  When they we
re both done eating, he dragged the chair close to the other bed and sat down. This time he was holding the knife, what little light there was kicking off the polished blade.

  He took no notice of the look on James’s face, nor the way he shrank back against the restraints; this was business and he had a job to do.

  “That DVD,” he said, talking casually, like he might with a friend. “They told me I had to show it to you and make sure you understood what it meant. You got that, right?”

  No reaction. The prisoner was too busy staring at him as if he’d grown horns. But that was good; it showed he’d thrown the guy off-balance, which was a chink in anybody’s armour. On the other hand, Tommy-Lee was used to dumb silence, which most detainees figured was their best weapon against jailers. Little did they realise that silence was only temporary; that after a while and the right “treatment,” they’d be singing like birds. True, there was usually a strong element of bullshit to look out for, even downright lies. They’d say just about anything to make it stop, often with just the right hint of fact to make it worth checking out and to stop the rough stuff. But in the end the truth always came out.

  Just occasionally one of the detainees would surprise them all by finding some way, some deep-down reserve to help them end it completely. Even with strip-searching and cell checks, there was a way of accomplishing it if they were determined or desperate enough. In his opinion it was no big loss. It just meant a lot of paperwork and everybody scratching around to cover their asses and pretend it hadn’t happened on their watch.

  He reached back for the DVD player and switched it on.

  “Sydney Street,” he said, eyes on the screen. “Now, I figure you know where that is, am I right? Looks like a nice place.”

  Nothing. Eyes staring right through him like he didn’t exist.

  “Come on, does it look familiar to you? Huh? Yeah, I guess it does.” He forwarded on to the close-up of the door. In interrogation sessions it was important to demonstrate right off that you had absolute control over the situation, in this case to show the prisoner that he, Tommy-Lee Roddick, dictated what would be seen and when. “See this house? That’s your front door, right? Nice place. Looks safe. Comfortable. Like, once you’re in there, ain’t nothing can touch you.” He leaned forward into the prisoner’s line of sight, dropping his voice to a whisper and playing with the man’s imagination. “Well, pal, not for much longer, if you don’t stop dicking around with these guys.”

  Nothing.

  He shrugged and ran the film to the school, where the boys were being shepherded into the big fancy building.

  “Now, I know you recognised this place, because this is where you lost it big the last time. It’s a school, I can see that—and a real fancy one, too. I have no idea what a preparatory school is, I admit, but I don’t exactly give a whole lot of shit, either. But something tells me you got a boy there, am I right?”

  This time there was something deep in the prisoner’s eyes, a flicker of light that showed he hadn’t entirely zoned out. Tommy-Lee had known detainees who could do that; they just shut down like robots losing power, like they’d gone somewhere else and left the body behind, and nothing you did could reach them. At least nothing that didn’t involve “treatment.”

  Then the lights would come back on sure enough.

  He placed the DVD player to one side and picked up the knife. The prisoner’s eyes followed the blade for a couple of seconds, then clamped tight, his lips trembling and sweat pouring down his face.

  Tommy-Lee put the knife down again, and picked up the DVD player. Hard then soft, that was the way to do it; remind them of the threat then come right in with a switch in focus to throw them off-balance. He ran the DVD forward, this time to the bit near the park showing the apartment building.

  “Hey, I’m kidding,” he said, and slapped the man’s shoulder until his eyes flickered open. “I’m playin’ with you. Look at this bit here.” He shoved the player right under the man’s nose. “It looks like New York or Chicago or wherever. Now that, I know you know. I saw your face and you recognised it right off. So where is it, huh? Tell me. And who is Valerie DiPalma? She your sister? A hooker? Your part-time squeeze?”

  For the first time the prisoner showed a definite physical move: he shook his head. But Tommy-Lee recognised it as a sign of inward denial. He wasn’t responding to the DVD or Tommy-Lee’s questions but to his own predicament, trying to shake the whole thing loose like a bad dream that wouldn’t go away.

  Tommy-Lee put the DVD player down and placed one foot on the bed rail, easing the chair up onto its back legs like he had all the time in the world. The ancient wood creaked loudly in the room, making the prisoner blink. “So. What are you thinking here, huh? You gonna do what they’re asking, which, fuck me I ain’t kidding, I have no idea what that is? Or are you gonna wait for the head man to come in here later today and use that big semi-auto he keeps tucked in his pants to blow your stupid head off ? And, by the way, it’s a forty-five so it would do that easy, no problem. I just hope I’m not in the room when he pulls the trigger, know what I mean?”

  This time there was a definite flicker of the eyes.

  Yes. It was the sign Tommy-Lee had been waiting for. It showed he was getting through and that the man wasn’t completely away with the birds. He pitched his weight forward, slamming the chair back onto its front legs and making the shed tremble so that a thin curtain of dust rained down from the ceiling. When he spoke, it was loud and angry and threatening and damned if it didn’t make him feel good for the first time in years.

  “Come on, get with the program, my friend!” he yelled. “You know what he’ll do? He’ll make a call to his boys, the same ones who took the footage of the house and the school and the apartment where Miss DiPalma lives, and tell them to go on in and start cutting! You want that on your conscience? Huh? Tell me, God-dammit!”

  With that he stood up, kicking the chair away and grabbing the knife, and stepped over to the window to stare though the glass at the nothing scenery outside. He was breathing hard through his nose, like a bull wanting a fight, and could feel the blood pounding in his veins. Man, he hadn’t felt like this in a long time; knowing you were this close to getting a response from somebody who didn’t want to talk but would do so eventually anyway. It was almost better than sex. True, it might be a bullshit answer full of lies and distortion, but any response was an opening. Create that and you had a way in. Sooner or later, they’d crack.

  “You really don’t want them to do that, my friend.” This time his voice was low and soft, the voice of a friend. Which was bullshit, of course, but it worked more times than it didn’t. “You don’t want to let them crazy ragheads loose on your nice little house and your cute little family, I’m telling you. Because they will, I know. I’ve seen ’em do it. Not these three who brought you here, but others just like them, in Iraq. They waste entire families to get what they want. Sometimes they do it just to show they can. Wives, daughters, sons … girlfriends—anybody and everybody.” He turned and lay down on his bed without looking at the prisoner, like he didn’t care. It was time to let the message sink in.

  “It’s your choice, my friend. Your choice.”

  “I know what they want from me.” The words were just loud enough for Tommy-Lee to hear and he lifted his head and checked his watch.

  “Say what?” He’d had his head down for nearly an hour, drifting in and out of sleep. Fifty-eight minutes for the prisoner to decide to say something voluntarily rather than having it forced out of him. Not bad considering the circumstances.

  “I know what they want. Can I have some water, please?”

  “Sure.” Tommy-Lee swung his feet to the floor and grabbed a bottle of water from the diminishing supply against the wall. The food was getting low, too, he noted, and wondered if it was a sign that they didn’t have long to go before they could all be out of here.

&nbs
p; He tipped the bottle so the prisoner could take it at a comfortable pace, and lowered it when he began to cough. But it wasn’t like before, when he looked as if he was about to croak. This time he seemed calm and in control, although his skin was the colour of uncooked dough and he looked clammy all over. Smelled bad, too.

  “Come on, then. What do they want?”

  “First your name.”

  “What?”

  “Tell me your name. You know I’m called James.”

  The statement seemed to give the prisoner a tiny boost, and Tommy-Lee swore silently to himself. Shit, there it was again: he’d been suckered into entering the one circle you never went into with detainees—the one where you knew their names. Once you had that, they became more than numbers or codes on a roster sheet or a cell door; they became people, with history and family and stuff.

  “Tommy-Lee,” he said finally, and felt like it had been torn out of him. “It’s Tommy-Lee.”

  James didn’t say anything for a few moments, as if allowing the knowledge to sink in. Then he said, “They’re planning something. Something bad.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know exactly. But I’m pretty certain it involves UAVs.”

  “What?”

  “Unmanned aerial vehicles. Drones.”

  Tommy-Lee looked closely at him, trying to figure out if the guy had lost his mind or was fooling with his head. “What? You mean like Reapers and stuff ?” It didn’t sound likely, he knew that; the only people with that kind of weaponry in the US was the US military.

  “Not those. Smaller commercial-grade models. Radio-controlled, fitted with cameras. They’re used in land surveys and aerial photography, law enforcement and checking out pipelines and fences. Have you heard of quad-copters?”