by Andrew Grant
I showed him the picture that Fothergill had given me of a typical gas canister three days ago, when he’d first briefed me on this whole mess. It was almost identical to the one I’d found at the machine shop. You couldn’t see any emblems or markings, and the spring clips were slightly different, but it was clearly from the same family. The guy studied the image intently for a moment, nodded, then folded the paper and placed it carefully on the table between the beer bottles.
“Excellent,” he said. “Then there’s no need to delay any further. Just one final precaution, as is our custom. I think you know what I’m referring to. Perhaps one of the restrooms would be appropriate, for privacy?”
The woman stood up and reached back greedily, taking my right arm. I grabbed the picture, then let her help me to my feet and lead me away from the table. She was moving faster than yesterday, and her body was much more tense. Either she hadn’t killed many people, or she enjoyed it too much. I suspected the latter, which wasn’t a bad thing. It would make her easier to neutralize. I wasn’t sure about the guy, though. He seemed a much calmer character. I kept expecting to feel him take his place on my left, but when I looked around I saw he hadn’t moved from his seat. He must have thought that two of his people could take me, with the benefit of surprise. The fool. I couldn’t wait to see his face when I came back from the bathroom. And then hear what excuses he could come up with.
I waited till we were halfway across the bar, then looked over at the DJ. I wanted to make sure the appearance of this new woman wasn’t making her too suspicious. I needn’t have worried, though. She was completely occupied with her iPod again, which made me wonder which song she’d choose next. Without realizing it, she was effectively picking the sound track to this stranger’s death. I couldn’t help wondering what would be appropriate. And whether any music would be playing when my time came. If so, I hoped someone with better taste would be selecting it. I was still thinking about that when I heard a different kind of noise altogether. Something extremely familiar, but totally unexpected. Like someone swatting flies on a table with a rolled-up magazine. Twice, in rapid succession. It was coming from the foot of the stairs. I spun around and saw a man standing there. It was Fothergill. He had a pistol in his hand. A twist of smoke was still leaking from the suppressor attached to its barrel. The gun was pointing at the table I’d just left. I turned to look. The man I’d been talking to had been hit. He was still in his seat, but his head had been thrown back against the wall and two ragged holes were torn in his chest. One had dissected the I of the word “Chicago,” and the other had hit the center of the O, like the writing on his hoodie had served as a target.
“David,” Fothergill said, whipping the gun around in my direction. “Get down.”
The muzzle flashed before I had time to react, and the woman at my side screamed and pitched headfirst into the door to the bathroom. She lay there for a moment, gently twitching, until Fothergill had moved in close enough to put two more rounds through the back of her skull. Then he went back to the table, poked the guy cautiously with his toe, and finally leaned over to check for a pulse.
“What kind of insane world do you live in?” I said, as soon as we both had our feet on the sidewalk. “How does killing those two even come close to being a good idea?”
Fothergill didn’t answer.
“What on earth were you thinking in there?” I said.
“You could show a little gratitude, perhaps,” he said. “I just saved your life.”
“You nearly got me killed, is what you did. And what about the witnesses? The barman and the DJ. What’s going to happen to them?”
“They’ll be taken care of. The club owner will see to that. He’s an old friend. And he owes me.”
“Taken care of, how, exactly?”
“You’re not getting squeamish, now, are you David? Don’t worry. They’ll just be paid off.”
“What makes you think that’ll stick? Either one of them could take the cash and go to the police, anyway. Or both of them could.”
“No. Carlos runs a tight ship. It doesn’t work that way in his place.”
“How naive can you be? It works that way in every place.”
“Time will tell. You’ll see.”
“Maybe. But why did you do it, in the first place? Two hits, in public, for no reason?”
“They were going to ambush you.”
“No shit. If only someone had told me.”
“No. Really. They weren’t just planning a knife fight in the bathroom, like with Young. They were going to snatch you. Take you somewhere else. Probably torture you. Then dump the pieces in the lake, I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw their vehicle. When I arrived. The blue Cadillac. They pulled it around the back of the restaurant, next door. It’s only a few seconds to the club from there, if you cut through the alley. Easy to carry someone’s unconscious body.”
“So?”
“I saw inside the trunk. They were checking it over. It was lined with thick, black, rubbery sheeting. Some kind of heavy-duty PVC, I guess. And it was full of other weird stuff. They had gags. A strait-jacket. Rope. Chain. Padlocks. All sorts of nasty things.”
“Maybe the two of them were just bondage freaks.”
“David, be serious. This was heavy-duty stuff. And it had your name all over it.”
“Maybe. They could have been planning to lift me, I guess. It’s always possible. But there’s a difference between planning and succeeding.”
“You could be right. But I had a decision to make, and I just didn’t feel like I could take that chance. This is your life we’re talking about. I wasn’t about to gamble with it.”
“There was no gamble involved. Everything was under control.”
“Really?” he said, lifting his injured arm and pointing to the spot where the bullet had struck. “Look what happened last time I made that assumption.”
“OK, I appreciate the sentiment,” I said. “But the thing is, Richard, that wasn’t your call.”
“Really? That’s how you feel? I can’t believe you’re upset about this. Killing children, remember? No reason to keep those other guys alive? Or is it a case of one rule for you, and one for everyone else?”
I didn’t reply.
“I thought so,” he said.
“When they parked the car, was anyone with it?” I said. “I mean, anyone other than the two people you shot?”
Fothergill took a moment to think.
“No,” he said. “Just them. The man and the woman. Why?”
“ ’Cause they were no ordinary pair,” I said. “I don’t care about her, but the guy was clearly running their show. We needed to take him alive. To talk to him. He was our last link to McIntyre. Without him, we have no idea where to look.”
“It was a question of priority. Taking him wasn’t worth losing you. Not in my opinion, anyway. And I’m sure not in London’s, either. You might be a royal pain in the ass, but you’re an expensive pain, too. I wasn’t about to lose you on my watch.”
“There was no question of losing me. The situation was completely under control. Until you got there. Now we’re back to square one.”
“So you say. I saw it differently. And we still have all that computer stuff, remember. That I found at the machine shop. Which you missed, when you were having that little gun battle of your own. It’s all at the consulate, already. The gurus are working on it. They’ll find something. They always do.”
“Let’s hope so. Do they have a timescale?”
“Not yet. It’s a question of ‘How long’s a piece of string?’ They’re no slouches, though. Shall we make our way back and see if they’ve made any headway?”
“We might as well. Since there are no warm bodies left to interrogate.”
“Come on, then. And let’s stop bickering. We’re like spoiled kids. One quick question, though, first. You said you didn’t care about that girl?”
�
�That’s right.”
“So how come, after I’d shot her, you went back and took something out of her jeans pocket?”
I shrugged.
“Some kind of memento, perhaps?” he said. “That speaks of a slightly less disinterested attitude than you’ve been letting on. I hope there are no conflicts of interest emerging here?”
“No,” I said. “None.”
“Then why did you want something of hers?”
“I didn’t.”
“So what did you take?”
“Something of mine.”
“What?”
“My shorts.”
Fothergill’s eyebrows arched, and his mouth began to open.
“Don’t even ask,” I said.
He was alluding to a road I knew I’d never be going down again.
THIRTEEN
All change is for the worse.
That was a phrase I heard a lot when I was growing up. I guess the advances of the sixties didn’t sit too comfortably with my parents. I sometimes thought they’d be happier if time had stood still at the start of the thirties. As in, the eighteen-thirties. They didn’t see the potential for changing your life, to take advantage of circumstances. For changing your routine, to benefit from new facilities. Or for changing your plans, to make the most of whatever the gods of fate saw fit to throw in your path.
We reached the consulate without incident, but once we got there three interesting things happened, one after the other. When the guard on duty at the garage saw Fothergill approaching, he came straight out of his booth and offered to park the car for him. Then the doorman from the foyer walked across with us and hit the button for the fourteenth floor, without waiting to be asked. And the receptionist left her desk and unlocked the door that led directly to Fothergill’s corridor, saving us from dawdling our way through the sniffer machines.
I watched each one carefully. They behaved in exactly the same way, and their expressions and body language told me exactly the same thing. They weren’t acting out of sympathy for Fothergill’s injury. They weren’t in a rush to get him out of their hair, even though it was pushing five and they probably wanted to go home. They were doing these things because they all seemed to genuinely like him, and were happy to see him back in the fold, safe and sound.
It was a strange phenomenon to observe, especially since it involved someone who wore the same uniform as me. Someone who’d cut his teeth in the field, like me. Who’d also lived a large portion of his life on the outside, looking in. Fothergill had somehow turned all that on its head. He’d been absorbed by the crowd and was now on the inside, looking out. At me. I wondered how that would feel. To be part of something that wasn’t temporary. Something with some stability—transfers and repostings permitting. I hadn’t known Fothergill as an agent, but it was clear that now he’d put down roots. He was welcome here. He was flourishing. And for the first time, I began to wonder if my future could ever hold anything like that. I’d never really thought about it consciously before. My longterm planning had never gone beyond a vague image of my number coming up, leaving me sprawling in an alleyway or a hotel room. And everything after that going dark.
Fothergill dropped into the chair behind his desk and started to swing lazily from side to side, reinforcing the image of comfort and familiarity. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d produced a couple of cigars for us to smoke, like we were at some kind of exclusive club. Instead, though, he pulled out his phone and called down to the IT guys for a progress report.
“Anything?” I said.
“Not yet,” he said. “But they’re good. And they’re pulling out all the stops. They’ll come through with something. I’m pretty confident.”
“I hope you’re right. I can’t see what you’re hoping to get out of this, though. Who would leave vital contact details lying around on some laptop? These guys weren’t amateurs.”
“All the data was encrypted. And they’d need some sort of backup, in case of injuries or fatalities. That’s how teams work. Not everyone runs around on their own, with everything stored in their head.”
“I’m not saying there’ll be nothing useful, when you get it all deciphered. But encrypted or not, they wouldn’t have just left Mc-Intyre’s cell number in their address book for anyone to find. And even if they did, what are the chances of him still using the same phone? He’d have dumped it the moment he got out of the building, after he shot you.”
“You’d be surprised what we find. People are careless. And it’s all about lateral thinking. Finding oblique ways to achieve the same goal. Like nicking Al Capone for tax evasion. All they cared about was getting him behind bars, not how or why.”
“Excellent point. Maybe McIntyre won’t have paid his cell phone bill. Then we could dress up as debt collectors and catch him that way.”
“See? You’re getting it. In the meantime, you sound tired. Do you need a caffeine fix?”
Fothergill reverted to small talk until after his assistant had delivered the coffee. Then he called IT again.
“Still nothing,” he said.
“And there won’t be anything if you keep harassing them,” I said. “Give them the time they need to do their jobs.”
“You’re right. I can ride people too hard, sometimes. I just keep thinking back to those people in the bar. I can’t see that stopping them will really be a long-term problem. Can you? I mean, what would they have told us?”
I shrugged.
“Probably nothing,” he said. “Or whatever they thought we wanted to hear. Either way, we’d be no further along. Dispassionate, factual evidence is what we need. Taken directly from their computers. Properly analyzed. That’s what’s going to break this. As long as we get it quickly enough.”
Fothergill drained the final drops of his coffee, then sat for a moment and stared into the empty cup.
“Need a refill?” he said. “Or something to eat? I could call back down.”
I declined. I wouldn’t have objected to another drink, actually, but I was used to fetching things when I needed them. Not sitting back and waiting for them to be delivered. Like the situation with McIntyre. My preference would be to get out of the office and start shaking things loose for myself. I was itching to move, but I knew that in the circumstances, waiting for a solid lead was the right thing to do. And I had to confess, part of me was fascinated with Fothergill. Watching him work was a revelation. He wasn’t in the field anymore, but he could still get things done. Unlike most desk jockeys, who are completely useless. And he’d shown at the Commissariat that he could still get his hands dirty when he thought he needed to. It’s just that he worked in a different way, now. He’d pulled himself into the center of the web. Nearly everything was achieved through other people. As it was with me, really. Only in a way, his approach was more honest. At least the people who were involved knew what was happening to them. They knew what they were part of, and stayed on board voluntarily. That was a galaxy away from the lies and deceit that are the basic building blocks of my world.
I listened to Fothergill call his assistant and order a sandwich, and realized there was still plenty to think about. There was bound to be more to his situation than met the eye. But I’d never previously been able to see any kind of life beyond what I knew in the field. Now I was feeling something new. For the first time, I felt like I was maybe looking at a future version of myself.
“I think I’ll pass on a drink, too,” Fothergill said. “Just stick with the snack. Then I need to check that McIntyre’s description went out to everywhere that needs it. The U.S. is big enough, but having to chase him all over the world would be worse. If we can keep him from leaving the country, we might still have a chance.”
“How did he get into the country?” I said.
“We don’t know. He didn’t leave any trace.”
“So how do you expect to spot him sneaking back out?”
“No one was looking, before. Everyone is, now.”
“He could
use the same route in reverse, and no one would know. Or try something else, completely different. He’ll have all kind of tricks up his sleeve. You can count on it.”
“Maybe. But don’t forget—something’s changed. We’re expecting him. He won’t have such an easy run this time.”
“Expecting him, how? He won’t use his real name, for a start. He’ll have a choice of IDs. And all of them will be indistinguishable from government issue. There’s no net tight enough to catch him. Not without a huge slice of luck.”
“We’re also distributing his photo. An up-to-date one, before you object. From the CCTV in this building, taken a few days ago.”
“There’s no point. No one’s going to recognize him from a picture. You’ll just have to accept it. If he wants to leave, he’s as good as gone.”
“We’d better hope he decides to stay, then.”
“That won’t help, either. If he goes to ground there’s no way we’re going to unearth him. Not without enough feet on the street. London need to get over whatever’s been bugging them. Maybe I should fly over there and have a word, myself.”
Fothergill was shaping up to reply when there was a knock on the door. A woman I’d never seen before came in, placed a sandwich in a brown cardboard wrapper carefully on his desk, and left again without ever making eye contact with either of us.
“David, this negativity is getting tiresome,” Fothergill said as he unwrapped his food. “Sure you won’t join me? I could split it.”
I shook my head.
“Look, I know there are problems,” he said. “I’m doing my best to work around them. But right now we need helpful suggestions. Not criticism. So if you’ve got anything useful to add, let’s hear it.”
“OK,” I said. “If we’re going to catch him, we’re going to have to make him come to us. Trick him into breaking cover. We need to come up with a ruse.”
“Good. Interesting idea. Lure him out. I like it. How?”
“I don’t know yet.”
