by Blake Banner
“I’ll tell you why not, Lacklan. On the one hand, as I have already told you ad nauseum, I believe you are too volatile, and dangerously unpredictable. On the other hand…” He took a deep breath and sighed loudly. “I am still not one hundred percent satisfied that you are not in Omega’s pocket.”
“What?”
“You are awfully close with Benjamin Brown.”
“Ben?”
He nodded.
I said, “He keeps offering me a place in Omega and I keep telling him no.”
“You may well be telling the truth, but I can’t be one hundred percent sure, and my instincts tell me to steer clear of you, Walker. Whichever way you look at it, you are a dangerous man. And I don’t want to be involved with you.”
“Marni does.”
“So you say, but that isn’t what she tells me.”
“Where is she?”
He shook his head. “No. I’ve listened to what you have to say, Walker. I grant you are probably sincere, but I am afraid I don’t—I can’t—trust you. Do whatever you have to do, but stay away from Marni.”
He stood and I let him walk out of the bar. Then I got up and followed. On the street I ran the few yards to catch up with him, reached out, and grabbed his shoulder. “Gibbons! Wait a moment!”
He stopped and turned to face me. We almost collided and I staggered a couple of steps grabbing hold of him. He looked mad and snapped, “Good grief, Walker! What is it now?”
“I’m sorry. I just wanted to ask you, will you please ask Marni to call me? I want to apologize and explain.”
He rolled his eyes. “Don’t you ever give up? Very well, I’ll tell her, but don’t expect her to call. Now, goodbye, Lacklan!”
I watched him walk away with his pompous little strut, and smiled. Then I made my way back to my car, where I had left it on Broadway. I climbed in, slammed the door, and took the tracking device receiver out of the glove compartment. I switched it on and there he was, striding down 86th Street toward Central Park. His bleep stopped for fifteen or twenty seconds and then started moving faster. I figured he’d got into a taxi. The cab took him all the way down to the Civic Center and then across the Brooklyn Bridge. On the other side of the river, they came off at Anchorage Plaza and went, via Middagh Street, to Colombia Heights and finally stopped outside number 75. There he went inside.
You have to have a plan B in life. My plan A had been to try to persuade him we should be allies. But I had been sure from the start that he was going to be either hard or impossible to convince. So plan B had been to drop a micro-tracking device into his jacket pocket. Now I knew where he was, and chances were good that Marni was with him. If she wasn’t, it wouldn’t be long before he led me to her.
Six
Gibbons started to move at five thirty that evening. I was parked a hundred and fifty yards down the road, waiting for him to do something. I saw the bleep had been activated and after a moment, I saw him exit the house carrying a couple of suitcases. Marni was just behind him. They climbed into a Ford Focus and took off up the road toward the bridge. I let them get a mile away and then followed.
Over the bridge, he kept going west through heavy traffic until he reached St. John’s University. There he turned north up West Street. For a moment, I wondered if he was headed for the Upper West Side, if Marni had had a change of heart and he was going to deliver her to my place. But at Canal Park, he turned suddenly right and stared moving south-east again, down Canal Street, like he was going back to Brooklyn. I thought perhaps they were having an argument in the car and couldn’t decide what they were doing, but before I’d had a chance to think much about what the hell he was doing, he’d turned north again up Avenue of the Americas. Then he turned west, through Greenwich Village and West Village. And after that, he turned right into Bank Street and then south again on Greenwich Avenue. He was like a headless chicken on speed. I slowed and pulled over.
Gibbons didn’t strike me as the type to suddenly take leave of his senses. He was as obstinate as a burro with a grudge, but he was about as grounded as you could get without growing roots. It made a lot more sense that he was either trying to shake a tail, or he was trying to make sure he didn’t pick one up. That meant wherever he was going was important.
He eventually came to 6th Avenue and turned north. He passed the Hennessy Foundation and kept going. I started to follow again. He cut through the park a couple of times and then came out on Madison Avenue and I knew he was going to cross into the Bronx. After a couple more twists and turns, he did just that.
Once over the water, he made for Goose Island in the east, via Van Cortland Lake in the north and Throgs Neck in the south, traversing the entire Bronx in the process. In the growing darkness, he crossed Pelham Bridge and we headed through parkland and woodland toward Woodside and New Rochelle, and finally, after more than three hours of driving back and forth across New York, he pulled off Pelham Road onto Hudson Park Road, wound down some dark, empty paths and stopped outside a brace of large, iron gates set in a fifteen foot stone wall. I killed the lights and slipped silently into a small parking lot set nearby, in what looked like a village green.
There I sat and watched while he waited. After a moment, the gates swung open and the car moved into the grounds of a large, gabled house that sat on the shores of Echo Bay, on the East River. The gates clanged closed behind him and the car’s glowing red taillights disappeared from sight.
I lit a cigarette and settled to wait and think. Gibbons was not stupid and he had felt threatened by my insistence on seeing Marni, so he had decided to move her to what he considered a safe location. Judging by the size and grandeur of the house—at least what I could see of it in the dark—he was either very rich or very well connected. I figured it was most likely the latter, and some rich pal was lending him his riverside pad. His sympathetic views and his powerful connections were probably why Marni had hooked up with him in the first place.
I thought about the elaborate, roundabout route he’d taken to get there. It could be just a symptom of an excessively cautious, meticulous nature, but I didn’t think so. Remembering how he had turned up at the Bethesda Fountain, and how he had walked in to the Parlour, he didn’t strike me as an excessively cautious man. If anything, the opposite was true. So the pains he had taken to shake off any possible tail suggested to me that the security and alarm systems in the house were not exactly cutting edge; that its advantage lay in its being remote and out of the way, rather than high-tech secure. Not so much a fortress where to meet an enemy in combat, but a bolt hole where to go to ground and hide.
I took my infrared binoculars from the glove compartment, got out, and had a look at the gate and the wall. I couldn’t see any CCTV cameras. That didn’t mean there weren’t any, and, perhaps more important than that, it didn’t mean there were no dogs either. Give me a CCTV any day over a pissed Rottweiler.
I took a walk by the side of the wall to see where it would lead. It led over a rough stretch of green down to a beach on the shore of the river. There it climbed a small cliff and came to an end at a precipitous drop into the water. I didn’t think twice about it. It was too obvious. I took off my shoes and my socks and waded into the dark, icy water. I swam, shivering and spluttering, around the rocks and into a private cove where the beach led to a well-tended lawn. From there, handsome stone steps rose to a terrace and a set of French windows that gave onto a brightly lit drawing room in a large, pseudo-Jacobean house with tall gables and chimneypots. I could see all this clearly because the garden was floodlit by spotlights concealed in the trees.
The current this close to the shore was not dangerous, but it was strong enough for me to feel it trying to drag me into the deeper water. So I struck out for the shore. In a few strokes I found my feet and, keeping close to the rocks, I waded onto the sand. I found a nook between the small cliff and the base of the wall, settled there, and scanned the house with my binoculars. The image was smudged by the wet lenses, but it was clear e
nough. Marni was sitting at a table on the terrace, staring at the water and the lights of Glen Cove. Gibbons was behind her, framed in the doorway. It was hard to make out whether they were talking, but if they were, it wasn’t warm and fuzzy. Neither of them looked very happy.
I waited a while to see if any dogs picked up my scent, but nothing happened. So, staying close by the wall, I crawled on my belly to the cover of some bushes on the lawn, closer to the house. There I stopped and watched Gibbons step out and sit at the table as a girl in a maid’s uniform brought out a tray with drinks. I thought of some of the safe houses I’d been in over the years—take out pizza and you were lucky to get a TV. I guessed it paid to be connected.
I kept inching closer until I was able to pick up snatches of their conversation, or what there was of it. Mostly what I could make out was the odd unhappy comment from Marni, and Gibbons’ hectoring, nagging tones. I crawled a little closer. Marni was saying, “I am really not happy about this, Philip. It feels wrong.”
“Don’t be absurd, Marni. You are a scientist. You can’t be guided by feelings. You must apply rational thought. Would you rather be holed up with that barbarian?”
“I have known him all my life, Philip. We were very close at one time, and he has always been very loyal. He’s a good man. He’s just…”
“A barbarian. He is just a barbarian!”
“We should have him on our side, not against us.”
“We don’t need him. He is irrelevant.”
She gave a small laugh. “No, Philip. He is not irrelevant. He is very relevant.”
He looked across the table at her for a long moment. “You’re still infatuated with him, aren’t you?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I just know, a lot better than you do, what kind of man he is—and what he is capable of. We have our hands full with Omega, we don’t want Lacklan working against us, too. And aside from that, he could be a very powerful ally. You’ve seen what he did in Colorado and Arizona.” She paused a moment and added, “Single-handed!”
He shook his head. “You’re letting your feelings cloud your judgment. He’s a liability. And believe me, after the debate tomorrow, things will be very different. Tomorrow will be a game changer. They don’t know what they have got themselves into.”
I frowned, wondering what was going to happen the next day. It was the first I had heard about any debate. She turned to look at him with no real expression, then shook her head. “I hope you’re right, Philip. I worry that you’re overconfident. I think you’re underestimating Omega, and Lacklan. I think this whole thing could blow up in our faces.”
“Trust me. I’ve been working towards this my whole career. I know Omega. They are blinded by their own arrogance and greed. Tomorrow we will drop our first bombshell. They won’t be expecting it and the battle will shift in our favor. You’ll see.”
He reached over and patted her hand. After a while, he stood and went indoors. She sat for a while, alone, looking into the floodlit garden. For a moment, I was tempted to go to her and tell her that all her doubts were right; to come with me and I would protect her and look after her. Maybe I should have done that. But before I could make up my mind, she stood and followed Philip Gibbons inside, and closed the French windows.
I have wondered many times since then what would have happened if I had just walked in and confronted them, forced a showdown, even taken her by force if necessary. But something stayed my hand and I didn’t do it.
The temperature had dropped and a cold breeze was coming off the river. I realized I had started to shiver and decided to head for home. I crouch-ran back to the shore, waded into the dark, icy water and swam, against the current this time, back toward where I had left my shoes and socks. I pulled them on with numb, trembling fingers, ran back to the car, clambered inside, and switched on the hot air. Then I fired up the powerful twin engines and started back toward Manhattan, taking a more direct route this time than we had followed to get here.
I followed Boston Road as far as Morissania, where I turned onto 3rd Avenue. At the lights on 3rd and East 158th, I watched in my rear-view mirror as a cop patrol car pulled up behind me. There was nothing special about that and I had no reason to be worried, but for some reason, some sixth sense made me aware of him. After a moment, he put on his indicator, pulled out, and drew up alongside me. I didn’t look. I kept my eyes on the lights. But in my peripheral vision, I was aware that the driver and his partner were both looking at me.
My mind ran through the possible reasons. There was nothing special about the car except it was a ’68 classic. If that was it, they’d be looking at the car, not me. So what made them interested in me? The lights changed to green and I pulled away. They stayed with me till East 149th and then turned west. I carried on south toward the 3rd Avenue Bridge and Manhattan.
I picked up the unmarked Dodge Charger on the other side of the bridge, just past Harlem River Park. It stayed four or five cars behind me all the way to my apartment block, and as I decelerated to pull into my parking garage, I saw it slow behind me, like it was looking for a space to stop.
On my way up in the elevator I wondered if it was Ben, but that didn’t seem to make much sense. Why would he be following me? Besides, it wasn’t his style. It was too crude. Say what you like about Ben, but he wasn’t crude.
If not Ben, who then? Maybe I’d have to go and ask them, but that could wait. First I had more pressing jobs. I let myself in to my apartment, closed and locked the door, checked the rooms for visitors, and had a long, hot shower.
After that, I put a pizza in the oven and opened my laptop. I found the audio file for the bugs. There was a total of four hours of it. I switched it on and poured myself a generous glass of Bushmills. I listened for a minute or two to familiarize myself with the voices. The common language was English. The British guy’s Arabic was basic and the Pakistani guy’s English was better than his Arabic. But as I had expected, mostly it was just grunts and sporadic comments. What little conversation there was was the kind of garbage that most people talk about when they share a house. “Has anyone seen my cell phone?” “The girl in the grocery store is hot. I think she likes me.” “Man, I need to buy some new pants.” And so on.
Occasionally the Afghan guy would call them to order and bark at them in Arabic. I had learnt enough in my time with the Regiment to know that he was reminding them to stay focused. They were jihadists, warriors of God, they would get all the women they wanted when they joined Allah. But as long as they were fighting the holy war, it didn’t help anyone if they started thinking about girls.
Girls meant sex, sex could lead to love, love meant marriage, kids, and home. That was not the warrior’s way. There was no room for women and love in the warrior’s life. I smiled, but it wasn’t a happy smile.
“Tell me about it, Aatifa.”
Once I had familiarized myself with their voices I was able to have the file playing in the background. One part of my brain registered the steady flow of domestic noises and comments, alert for buzzwords or extended conversations, while the rest of my mind was able to focus on other things, like pizza, and wondering what Gibbons had meant about the next day being a game changer.
I switched on the news and stood staring out at the terrace, sipping my whiskey and listening to the drone of familiar half-lies and half-truths. America needed a wall to protect her from illegal Mexican immigrants. America did not need a wall to protect her from illegal Mexican immigrants. Islam was a religion of peace, those who feared it were jingoistic reactionaries and fascists. Islam was nothing but a call to arms, a call to jihad against the whole world. Islam was the greatest threat civilization had faced since Hitler. Climate change was a hoax, a conspiracy of the Left. Climate change was the biggest threat to life on Earth since the comet that wiped out the dinosaurs, sixty-five million years ago.
And then suddenly a woman was talking and I was listening.
“…in a surprise development that has had conference organize
rs scrambling to adjust their schedules, Professor Philip Gibbons, of Green College in Oxford, issued this morning a challenge to former president Dick Hennessy, to debate with him, tomorrow evening, in a public forum at the conference, his role and the role of the Hennessy Foundation, in preparing the world for the inevitable changes that global warming will bring…”
I moved to look at the TV. Zain Asher was on the screen with a picture of the UN building behind her.
“We tried to talk to Professor Gibbons earlier today but he was not available for comment. However, he did issue this brief statement through his secretary…” She read from a slip of paper. “While Democrats and Republicans present the world with an ever more grotesque circus of the absurd, and rally an ever more gullible public behind their banners, hurling abuse and accusations at each other, the world slides towards catastrophic near-annihilation. The Hennessys, through their cynical foundation, present themselves as champions of the poor, the weak and the marginalized, yet they are among the richest and most powerful people on Earth. Well, I have challenged Dick Hennessy to stand before the American people, before the people of the world, and defend his indefensible lack of action in the face of a threat that will, if left unchecked, wipe out the most vulnerable and the weakest people on the planet. This is a man who, during his tenure in office, spent two point four billion dollars bombing a single Arab nation, but consistently failed, despite his Democrat rhetoric, to put a single initiative in place to address the threat of climate change. Well I challenge him, and his foundation, to answer these charges tomorrow in open debate before the world.”
So this was it, this was his game changer. I sat on the arm of the sofa and continued to listen.
“We asked former President Dick Hennessy what he had to say to Professor Gibbons’ allegations, and, to many people’s astonishment, and the open distress of the conference organizers, Dick Hennessy good humouredly accepted Professor Gibbons’ challenge. Here is what he had to say.”
