Blood and Ashes (28 page)

‘Christ, Rink, those things stink,’ Vince said. He cracked a window, and also thumbed up the A/C unit.

‘Wait’ll my guts start working on them and you’ll know what really stinks. Sushi I can take, but Chinese food always has the same effect on me.’

‘Too much information,’ said Vince, and opened the window fully. ‘Just promise me that you’ll behave when we meet with Walter.’

‘Walter cracks them off like any man. I’m sure he’ll understand.’

Vince made a sound of disgust. ‘Jesus! Hunter, can’t you do anything with your buddy?’

I opened a window.

‘Thanks, that’s a great help . . .’

I swore under my breath. ‘Don’t you think you’ve more to worry about than Rink letting one slip, like the
whole of fucking Manhattan going to hell in the next few hours
?’

The fury of my words drove an uneasy silence through the car. Even Rink was surprised at my anger. ‘Hey, take it easy, buddy.’

I scrubbed my hands through my hair. ‘Yeah. OK. Sorry.’

I felt ashamed at the outburst. Vince and Rink were merely venting their fear through banter; I’d done the same a thousand times in the past. It was just that I’d fouler things in mind, and they demanded full attention. All we knew was that Hicks was planning a major attack somewhere in the metropolitan area of New York, which in all likelihood would be as devastating as the events that occurred on 9/11. The problem was that we had no idea about where, when or how the strike would take place, only that it would be soon and with catastrophic consequences. I wished we’d managed to speak to Jim Lloyd before his dog snacked on him: up-to-date details would have helped.

I was still mulling things over when we entered a private chamber in a nondescript office across Broadway from the Woolworth Building. Ironically, we were less than a stone’s throw from Ground Zero.

Walter was waiting for us, his Adirondacks costume replaced by a Western-style suit, pale blue with contrasting black stitching: the Boss Hogg look. He was chewing furiously on the end of a cigar like it was one of the ribs Rink had so recently polished off. Three laptop computers were glowing on the desk in front of him, their muted light turning Walter’s face the same colour as his suit. From this angle, I couldn’t make out what was on the screens but guessed that Walter had a direct line to his Arrowsake commanders, and maybe others. I wondered if the President had been filled in with the details yet.

Walter came out from behind the desk, shaking each of our hands in turn like a politician on the campaign trail. ‘Sit down, sit down,’ he said, indicating leather chairs arranged along the wall.

Neither Rink nor I took him up on the offer, but Vince followed the order without comment. A few seconds later he must have felt a bit hemmed in because he shifted uncomfortably. He sat side-on, perched on the edge of the chair so he could see between our shoulders.

‘Anything to report?’ Walter’s expression said that he didn’t expect so.

‘Jim Lloyd was a dead end,’ I said. The corresponding grimace was for my choice of words. ‘If he was using the same draft facility as he did with Don Griffiths, then his computer will be clean, no way of tracing anything back to Hicks. We don’t have any other leads.’

Walter waved his cigar while he propped himself against the edge of his desk. ‘Then we have to concentrate on what we do know. We know what Hicks is planning and that it is going to happen very soon, the main difficulty is that we have no idea where.’

‘Don said it would be here. Manhattan.’

‘Manhattan is a big island,’ said Walter. ‘With a population of more than one and a half million people spread over twenty-three square miles, it would be almost impossible to find him in time to stop him.’

‘Sounds defeatist,’ I said.

‘Just being realistic, son.’

I snorted at Walter’s use of the term of endearment, hearing for the first time how empty it sounded. Walter didn’t catch the reason for my cynicism, maybe assuming that he hadn’t made himself clear. ‘Hicks won’t be acting alone. He’ll have his team working with him. Our emphasis is on finding them, and they’ll lead us to their boss.’

‘Vince tried that already,’ I said.

Vince got up from his chair, muscling between us to stand alongside Walter. ‘I have inside knowledge on their hangouts, it’s worth a try.’

‘What’s the likelihood of any of them being there, seeing as Hicks now realises you were a plant? They’ll have abandoned all the places that you were familiar with. Moved on.’

‘Not so many places a gang of skinheads can congregate without someone noticing,’ Rink offered.

‘I already thought of that and have the NYPD keeping a lookout.’ Walter glanced over his shoulder as one of his computers chimed the signal for an incoming message. He ignored it. ‘We’ve also coordinated with the Anti-Defamation League to see if they can give us any up-to-date information on the racist skinhead movement. SHARP is helping us too.’

‘Sharp?’

Vince offered an explanation. ‘Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice. Anti-racist skins, if you can believe such a thing exists?’

‘I can believe it,’ I said. The skinhead movement began back in the UK. Originally it had nothing at all to do with racism and hatred; it was a working-class social commentary, all about pride and respect. As a youth, I’d even dabbled in the scene before the National Front and BNP subverted the movement to their blinkered way of thinking. Here in the US, the neo-Nazi organisations had taken on the uniform of shaven head and braces, the Doc Marten boots, and had twisted it until anyone with less than flowing locks was now looked on as a thug. As a Para, there had been times when I was on the wrong end of abuse, simply because I had a military haircut. I didn’t react to the baiting, because my accusers spoke from ignorance. Even now, most people didn’t know that there were skins out there who held to the original values: decent, law-abiding people who hated their bonehead contemporaries.

‘What about Homeland Security?’

‘They’re concentrating on the other angle,’ Walter said.

‘Any proof in it yet?’

‘They tracked an incoming Russian freighter. Preliminary tests on board the ship have proved negative, but they can’t be sure. The captain swore ignorance but did admit to having brought a small group of passengers from Vladivostok. They jumped ship to a private vessel thirty miles offshore at Montauk, Long Island. Homeland and the CIA are currently studying satellite imagery to validate and track the trajectory of this phantom boat. We should have the results through soon.’ Walter studied the tip of his cigar like it was a divining tool that would offer up all the answers. ‘They’re treating this as serious, Hunter. The passengers were all North Korean and they made no secret of their hatred of the USA. They were carrying a “very heavy” box between them when they disembarked at Montauk.’

‘It’s a lead-lined box?’ I asked. ‘Then the probability is that they have supplied Hicks just as Lloyd warned.’

Walter nodded glumly. ‘That’s the problem with allowing the Koreans to continue running their nuclear programme. We can never be sure that their due diligence process will be as stringent as ours. If Lloyd was right and there is a black market trade in by-products, well, I hate to think what that means.’

‘Lloyd was more specific than that. He said that Hicks wanted a plutonium isotope. If they’ve got their hands on the makings of an atomic bomb . . . Jesus.’

Walter’s eyes clouded as though searching distant memories and finding nothing he liked. ‘You ask me, Hicks doesn’t have the technology or expertise for that. But it doesn’t really matter.’

‘Not when they have the makings of a dirty bomb,’ I finished for him. ‘Can you imagine the devastation that could cause on this island?’

‘If we don’t find him soon, we won’t have to
imagine
anything.’

Back in my days with Arrowsake I’d been put through an ABC warfare survival training programme. It comprised a number of technical sessions, interminable hours of videotaped instructions delivered by a morose voice-over. By the time it was finished I’d gained a multitude of injections jabbed into my veins and the knowledge that without the full protection of a hazmat suit I’d be fucked whether in the blast zone or not. If Hicks’ plan came to fruition, Manhattan wasn’t going to be the place to be for decades to come.

A few days ago, running through the woods and cutting down my enemies, now that was my idea of combat, not being torn apart from within by a creeping isotope infecting my cells with cancer. I stole a glance at Rink. My friend shouldn’t have been here, he should’ve been back in the relative safety of Florida, but I wouldn’t say as much; Rink would be offended, and stick around out of sheer stubbornness.

‘We’d best get looking,’ I said.

‘There’s a place on Forty-Third Street I’d like to check, where some of Sam Gant’s buddies used to hang out,’ Vince said. ‘Maybe we can squeeze a location out of them that we aren’t already aware of.’

‘I’m all for squeezing,’ Rink said. ‘Lead the way, Special Agent.’

I was all for getting moving. The longer we dallied here the easier it was for Hicks to put his plan into motion. But bashing in the door of a skinhead clubhouse wasn’t the way. Anyone who was important to Hicks’ plan would be working from a strict set of instructions, primarily one that demanded total secrecy. Smacking heads would alleviate some of our frustration, but that would be all. Time was too short for that. Maybe even too short for me to make a phone call.

My relationship with Imogen Ballard was one we both recognised as being a shared convenience of comfort and friendship. When we first made love, I had wondered if she thought of her lost lover the way I did of her sister, Kate. But had her memory faded, and when we were together, did she now lose herself totally in me the way I’d reciprocated of late? I knew that I loved her, not with the full-on passion I’d found with Kate, or the lifetime devotion I felt for my ex-wife, Diane, but I loved her nonetheless. The least she deserved was a goodbye.

Rink was already moving for the door, Vince wavering because Walter hadn’t yet given the go-ahead. I took the moment of indecision to feel for the mobile phone in my pocket. Both the phones were there – the one Vince supplied and the pre-paid I’d purchased, and I rolled them between my fingers. If I phoned Imogen then what was I going to say? Hi, babe, sorry but I won’t be coming to Maine next week like we planned, cause I’ll probably be dead by then! Did I just tell her something had come up, a matter of life and death . . . probably mine and about a million others? But then where did the farewells end? I also wanted to speak with Diane, ask her about Hector and Paris, my dogs. Tell her to give them a hug for me, tell her I still loved her despite what had happened between us. My mother, Anita, and stepdad, Bob, they deserved a goodbye too, as did my brother, John, if I could even find him. Harvey Lucas, Don Griffiths, Millie, Beth and Ryan, the list went on. For such a solitary person I had a lot of people who turned out to mean a great deal to me.

Too many and too little time. The phones fell back into my jacket pocket. The only way I would see any of them again was if I stopped Hicks and his monstrous plan.

I moved to follow Rink. One of Walter’s computers chimed another incoming message, and in the sudden silence it sounded more insistent than the one before. Walter grunted, stepping round the back of his desk, and I watched his face, sensing that the message just might be the lead we all needed.

A shadow of a smile flickered at the corner of Walter’s mouth.

‘They’ve found him?’

‘No,’ Walter said. ‘But we’ve got a location on those who may have supplied him the plutonium. The FBI has them under observation in a titty bar on the Lower East Side.’ Walter tapped keys furiously, replying to the message. ‘I’ve told the team to hold back till you’re finished with them. If we want to know exactly what it is we’re up against we have to find out what they’ve supplied to Hicks. The way I see it: we haven’t time for the normal mode of lawful interrogation.’ Walter allowed his last words to hang between us.

The message rang loud and clear.

Chapter 37

In the packed streets, men and women hailed each other, shaking hands, exchanging hugs, laughing and dancing jigs to their own music. Some held Graggers – noise sticks not unlike soccer rattles – which they shook in time with their laughter, adding to the general air of festivity. Many wore fancy dress, while others were happier with their everyday garb, predominantly black, but joining in the celebratory joy just the same.

It made sense.

The Purim Feast is an important public holiday in the Jewish calendar, marked by the exchange of gifts, feasting and general wine-induced merriment, a time for people to let their hair down and enjoy themselves. Traditionally celebrated in the Hebrew month of Adar, it was a feast to mark the liberation of the Jews from their Persian overlords, when Esther outwitted the wicked Haman and led the Jews to victory over their persecutors.

It was the ideal time for Hicks to cause havoc and add validity to his statement to the government, more so when this year the fifteenth of Adar corresponded with today. Added to that he had found the ideal location. Lincoln Square between West Sixty-Sixth and Seventy-Seventh Streets on Amsterdam Avenue gave him everything he required. Here were the West End and Lincoln Square Synagogues, the Chabad of the West Sixties, all destinations of the Jewish community during this festive time. Nearby were schools, both Juilliard and La Guardia, which could only cause even more terror and confusion.