Gone Tomorrow
‘They were, but they aren’t any more.’
‘I know.’
‘How do you know?’
‘They turned in Leonid and his buddy. Therefore they’ve moved somewhere Leonid and his buddy don’t know. Layers upon layers.’
‘Why did they turn in Leonid and his buddy?’
‘To encourage the other thirteen. And to feed the machine. We’ll rough them up a little, the Arab media will call it torture, they’ll get ten new recruits. Net gain of eight. And Leonid and his pal are no big loss, anyway. They were hopeless.’
‘Will the other thirteen be better?’
‘Law of averages says yes.’
‘Thirteen is an insane number.’
‘Fifteen, including the Hoths themselves.’
‘You shouldn’t do it.’
‘Especially unarmed.’
She glanced at the bag. Then she looked back at me. ‘Can you find them?’
‘What are they doing for money?
‘We can’t trace them that way. They stopped using credit cards and ATMs six days ago.’
‘Which makes sense.’
‘Which makes them hard to find.’
I asked, ‘Is Jacob Mark safely back in Jersey?’
‘You think he shouldn’t be involved?’
‘But I should?’
‘You are,’ I said. ‘You brought me the bag.’
‘I’m guarding ii.’
‘What else are your counterterrorism people doing?’
‘Searching,’ she said. ‘With the FBI and the Department of Defense. There are six hundred people on the street right now.’
‘Where are they looking?’
‘Anywhere bought or rented inside the last three months. The city is cooperating. Plus they’re inspecting hotel registers and business apartment leases and warehouse operations, across all five boroughs.’
‘OK.’
‘Word on the street is it’s all about a Pentagon file on a USB memory stick.’
‘Close enough.’
‘Do you know where it is?’
‘Close enough.’
‘Where is it?’
‘Nowhere between Ninth Avenue and Park and 30th Street and 45th.’
‘I suppose I deserve that.’
‘You’ll figure it out.’
‘Do you really know? Docherty figures you don’t. He figures you’re trying to bluff your way out of trouble.’
‘Docherty is clearly a very cynical man.’
‘Cynical or right?’
‘I know where it is.’
‘So go get it. Leave the Hoths for someone else.’
I didn’t answer that. Instead I said, ‘Do you spend time in the gym?’
‘Not much,’ she said. ‘Why?’
‘I’m wondering how hard it would be to overpower you.’
‘Not very,’ she said. I didn’t answer.
She asked, ‘When are you planning on setting out?’
‘Two hours,’ I said. ‘Then another two hours to find them, and attack at four in the morning. My favourite time. Something we learned from the Soviets. They had doctors working on it. People hit a low at four in the morning. It’s a universal truth.’
‘You’re making that up.’
‘I’m not.’
‘You won’t find them in two hours.’
‘I think I will.’
‘The missing file is about Sansom, right?’
‘Partially.’
‘Does he know you’ve got it?’
‘I haven’t got it. But I know where it is.’
‘Does he know that?’
I nodded.
Lee said, ‘So you made a bargain with him. Get me and Docherty and Jacob Mark out of trouble, and you’ll lead him to it.’
‘The bargain was designed to get myself out of trouble, first and foremost.’
‘Didn’t work for you. You’re still on the hook with the feds.’
‘It worked for me as far as the NYPD is concerned.’
‘And it worked for the rest of us all around. For which I thank you.’
‘You’re welcome.’
She asked, ‘How are the Hoths planning to get out of the country?’
‘I don’t think they are. I think that option disappeared a few days ago. I think they expected things to go more smoothly than they have. Now it’s about finishing the job, do or die.’
‘Like a suicide mission?’
‘That’s what they’re good at.’
‘Which makes it worse for you.’
‘If they like suicide, I’m happy to help.’
Lee moved on the bed and the tail of her shirt got trapped underneath her and the silk pulled tight over the shape of the gun on her hip. A Glock 17, I figured, in a pancake holster.
I asked her, ‘Who knows you’re here?’
‘Docherty,’ she said.
‘When is he expecting you back?’
‘Tomorrow,’ she said.
I said nothing.
She said, ‘What do you want to do right now?
‘Honest answer?
‘Please.’
‘I want to unbutton your shirt.’
‘You say that to a lot of police officers?’
‘I used to. Police officers were all the people I knew.’
‘Danger makes you horny?’
‘Women make me horny.’
‘All women?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Not all women.’
She was quiet for a long moment and then she said, ‘Not a good idea.’
I said, ‘OK.’
‘You’re taking no for an answer?’
‘Aren’t I supposed to?’
She was quiet for another long moment and then she said, ‘I’ve changed my mind.’
‘About what?’
‘About it not being a good idea.’
‘Excellent.’
‘But I worked Vice for a year. Entrapment stings. We needed proof that the guy had a reasonable expectation of what he thought he was going to get. So we made him take his shirt off first. As proof of intent.’
‘I could do that,’ I said.
‘I think you should.’
‘You going to arrest me?’
‘No.’
I peeled my new T-shirt off. Tossed it across the room. It landed on the table. Lee spent a moment staring at my scar, the same way Susan Mark had on the train. The awful raised tracery of stitches from the shrapnel from the truck bomb at the Beirut barracks. I let her look for a minute and then I said, ‘Your turn. With the shirt.’
She said, ‘I’m a traditional kind of girl.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘You would have to kiss me first.’
‘I could do that,’ I said. And I did. Slowly and gently and a little tentatively at first, in a way that felt exploratory, and in a way that gave me time to savour the new month, the new taste, the new teeth, the new tongue. It was all good. Then we passed some kind of a threshold and got into it harder. A short minute later we were completely out of control.
Afterwards she showered, and then I showered. She dressed, and I dressed. She kissed me one more time, and told me to call her if I needed her, and wished me luck, and walked out through the door. She left the black bag on the floor near the bathroom.
SEVENTY- ONE
I HEFTED THE BAG OVER To THE BED. ABOUT EIGHT POUNDS, I figured. It hit the rucked sheet and made a satisfying metallic sound. I unzipped it and parted the flaps like a mouth and looked inside.
First thing I saw was a file folder.
It was legal sized, and khaki in colour, and made of thick paper or thin card, depending on your point of view. It held twenty-one printed-out sheets. Immigration records, for twenty-one separate people. Two women, nineteen men. Citizens of Turkmenistan. They had entered the United States from Tajikistan three months ago. Linked itineraries. There were digital photographs and digital fingerprints, from the immigration booths at JFK. The photographs had a slight fish-eye distortion. They were in colour. I recognized Lila and Svetlana easily. And Leonid and his buddy. I didn’t know the other seventeen. Four of them already had exit notations. They were the four that had left. I dropped their sheets in the trash and laid out the unknown thirteen on the bed for a better look.
All thirteen faces looked bored and tired. Local flights, connections, a long transatlantic flight, jet lag, a long wait in JFK’s immigration hall. Sullen glances at the camera, faces held level, eyes swivelling up towards the lens. Which told me all thirteen were somewhat short in stature. I cross-checked with Leonid’s sheet. His gaze was just as bored and tired as the others, but it was level. He was the tallest of the party. I checked Svetlana Hoth’s sheet. She was the shortest. The others were all somewhere in between, small wiry Middle Eastern men worn down to bone and muscle and sinew by climate and diet and culture. I looked hard at them, one through thirteen, over and over again, until I had their expressions fixed firmly in my mind.