by Tim Stevens
Aware of cars sliding to a stop now, Pope ducked his head to minimise the exposure of his face and took Nina by the elbow and bundled her across the road to the hard shoulder. She squatted on her haunches when they got there, and Pope took a moment to orientate himself. The truck stop blinked in the distance.
The police would be looking not for somebody who had abandoned the scene of an accident – an offence in itself – but a killer. And they’d have eyewitness accounts of a man and a young woman carrying a case of some kind.
If he could make it to New York, he could lose himself there, even with Nina in tow. All he needed was transport to take them another hundred miles.
*
‘Fifteen minutes? Maybe twenty?’
The trucker was shovelling food into his face at a steady, leisurely pace. He sat at the long counter that ran around three sides of the service area, and had been chatting to two other men when Pope and Nina came in. the two men drifted away to a larger group further down the counter.
Everybody had glanced across and appraised Pope and, of course, Nina; but when Pope had steered them over to the solitary man the rest of the customers, perhaps twelve in all, lost interest. Pope held a fan of dollar bills up between his fingers.
‘We need a ride to New York.’
The man finished swallowing, nodding as he did so. ‘Going to Queens, as it happens.’
After refusing the offer of cash, the man reapplied himself to his meal. Pope wanted to say, no, fifteen minutes is too long to wait; twenty is even worse. We need to go now. But there was no legitimate reason why the time taken to finish a truck stop meal should make any difference, unless of course Pope and Nina were on the run. So Pope sat Nina on one of the stools and propped himself beside her and ordered coffee for two. In the long mirror on the opposite side of the counter he watched the windows, waiting for the sweeping lights beyond to change to flickering blue and red.
The trucker – Joel, he’d introduced himself as – made enthusiastic recommendations about the meatloaf, the cherry pie, and Pope answered him politely but non-committally. In answer to the inevitable question he said he was Mark Logan – the name on his driver’s licence – and that the lady, his girlfriend, was Carmela. Her mother in Brooklyn was seriously ill and they were travelling overnight to see her; that was why she sat silent and jumpy. Their car had broken down five miles back; the AA were taking care of it, but it would take a couple of days to fix.
‘Pissy luck, man,’ said Joel, sounding genuinely sorry.
The minute hand of the clock on the wall swept impossibly quickly through ten minutes, then fifteen. Pope felt the knot of tension in his stomach start to unfurl and spread branches.
He glanced at Nina. She sat resting her elbows on the counter, her head lowered, the coffee untouched before her. She hadn’t said anything since the crash. Every now and again she’d look up, but not at him; her eyes would flick about as though following an invisible point of darting light.
He understood that this was more than a delayed reaction to the violence of the last half a day, the horror and confusion of what he’d revealed to her about her parents. The girl was ill.
Pope had known a boy at school who’d started to behave oddly at the age of fifteen: his grades had begun to drop, he’d starting cutting himself off from the few friends he had, and he used to sit in one corner of the classroom filling both exercise and text books with doodles. One day the teacher had confronted him when he started drawing on the walls, and he’d laughed and run out. He hadn’t returned to the school, but a few years later Pope had met him by chance in the street. The boy had put on an enormous amount of weight, walked with a peculiar slow deliberation, and his eyes seldom blinked. He’d shown no recognition whatsoever when Pope met his gaze.
Curious, Pope did a little digging and discovered the boy had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. He learned that the symptoms – hallucinations, delusions – could exist on a spectrum and were present sometimes in people who were otherwise highly functioning.
The trucker, Joel, was bantering with the blowsy blonde behind the counter as he settled the bill. Pope leaned towards Nina and said, ‘It’s the voices, isn’t it?’
She didn’t look at him, quite, but her eyes flicked sideways in his direction, and her breathing caught.
‘We can talk later, if you want,’ he murmured. ‘I know what it’s like. I hear them, too.’
It was, by his calculation, only the third lie he’d told her. He’d lied earlier when he told her the CIA men pursuing her wanted her dead.
And he’d lied when he told her: You can survive this.
Thirty-Two
Manhattan, New York City
Monday 20 May, 10.25 pm
Giordano’s phone rang as he was heading down the corridor to the offices where Campbell and Barker were being kept. He was in the Company’s Midtown base, a cleverly anonymous warren fronted by an old, apparently residential brownstone.
It was Naomi. ‘Boss, can you talk?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You may have heard already, but there’s been a shooting out in New Jersey. Four Company agents dead.’
‘What?’
‘A real firefight. Some kind of explosion, M16s being used, the works. At the home of an ex-agent, Dennis Crosby.’
‘What the hell happened?’
‘I don’t have much else at the moment. One of my contacts in the Jersey PD who I’d primed to look out for Purkiss phoned it in a few minutes ago. Happened around six this evening.’
‘I haven’t been told any of this… Naomi, thanks. Keep me up to date.’
‘Sure.’
Giordano paused in the corridor, gripping his forehead. Then he continued down to the office he was looking for, the floorboards wincing under his bulky stride. He knocked on the door and opened without waiting for a reply.
The two men, Campbell and Barker, sat with another agent.
‘Giordano,’ he said to the third man. ‘Out. I want to talk to these guys alone.’
*
Afterwards he wandered back and found Krugmann, the head of Midtown, in conversation with a group of people in an open plan area.
‘A word,’ he said. Krugmann glared at him craggily. He dismissed the others and took Giordano to his own office, closing the door. Giordano knew the man resented his intrusion, felt the Langley officer was pissing all over his territory. That was too bad. Whatever you need, you’ve got. No restrictions, the Director had said.
‘They talk to you?’ Krugmann said.
‘Never mind that. Four operatives killed in a firefight three hours ago? You were going to tell me this – when?’
Krugmann wiped a hand across his face. ‘You just got here, Ray. And with the greatest respect, what’s it got to do with you?’
‘What’s it –? With slightly less respect, Bob, I’m investigating the systematic assassination of until tonight three Company executives. Investigating on the express orders of the Director. So that’s what the shooting of four more agents has to do with me.’
Krugmann gazed at him from under tortoise lids. ‘You’d better sit down,’ he said, indicating a chair and sinking into one himself.
Giordano sat.
‘What were the agents doing there? At this Crosby’s house?’
Krugmann steepled his fingers, touched the tips to his lips. ‘We don’t know.’
‘Don’t know.’
‘That’s right, Ray.’ Krugmann leaned back in his swivel chair, clasping his hands behind his head, sighing as he stretched. ‘There was no sanctioned operation. These four men were acting on their own.’
‘Oh, Jesus.’ Giordano stared at Krugmann. ‘A freelance cell.’
‘Something like that, it appears. Yes.’ Krugmann’s tone dropped. ‘These guys were from New York, which means I and the other borough chiefs are up to our eyelashes in the shit right now.’
Giordano flicked his fingers in a come hither gesture. ‘Give me some facts. Names.’
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*
Despite his bulk he could work quickly, Giordano, and he absorbed and assimilated the information as he read it off the reports. One fact caught his attention and he paused at it.
The police responded to an anonymous call from an individual claiming to be a Federal agent.
There was nothing unusual about a person phoning in anonymously with information, nor with such a person living out their fantasies and pretending to be someone they weren’t. But it made Giordano think of something.
To Krugmann he said, ‘Keep Campbell and Barker in the building. I need to speak to them again for a minute.’
Campbell had told him there’d been a woman on the scene. He’d caught only a glimpse – he’d been buried beneath an airbag at the time – but she’d looked tough, like a professional.
Giordano pulled out his phone and called Naomi. She’d work more quickly than anyone here could, even if she was more than two hundred miles away.
‘Yeah. Get me someone in the FBI. The Director if you can, but somebody more junior will do if necessary. Just not too junior.’
In twenty minutes, and with only the briefest recourse to the co-operation is in the interests of both our services shtick, Giordano had a name. Two names, in fact. Barbara Berg and Daniel Nakamura. Both Special Agents with the Bureau who’d gone off the radar earlier this afternoon, and were now operating without sanction.
They were the same two agents who’d pulled Purkiss in for questioning at the airport.
They had Purkiss with them, he was sure of it. And that made finding him easier, because three people were more conspicuous than one.
‘I need an office,’ said Giordano. ‘I’m going to be here for a while. This one will do.’
Thirty-Three
Interstate 95, between Washington D.C and New York
Tuesday 21 May, 2.05 am
The truck was an eighteen-wheel behemoth, its white refrigerated trailer like a carapace from beneath which the head-like red cab protruded. Pope saw all manner of decorations through the windscreen as they approached; multicoloured disco lights, a statuette of a nude woman on the dashboard that no doubt gyrated when the engine was running, a buffalo skull mounted on the inner roof.
It was unlikely transport for two people on the run, so it would do.
Joel sang tunelessly under his breath as he helped up first Nina and then Pope. The inside was trimmed in red leather. Pope pulled the door closed and then shifted against it to give Nina room in the middle. She lowered her violin case into the footwell.
Since he’d mentioned the voices, she’d been noticeably different: readier to comply with his suggestions immediately, and even making eye contact on occasion. He had some way to go to get her back, but he felt he was making a start.
The engine started with a great coughing rumble, the entire vehicle shivering slightly as it shook itself awake. The cab smelled of onions and spearmint and diesel.
‘Rock and roll, people,’ said Joel, and the beast began to pull out.
Through the window Pope saw, back don the interstate, the massing emergency vehicles. The traffic cops were already setting up, diverting the stream of nighttime cars around the scene.
‘Damn,’ said Joel, staring at the rear view mirror. ‘That’s some fender bender.’
For a moment Pope thought the man would turn the truck round to investigate; but he joined the northward flow.
Joel was going to Queens. Pope had told him his destination was Brooklyn, but he intended at the last minute to ask to be dropped off in Manhattan. Just in case the driver was in radio contact with anybody during the journey and mentioned where he was taking his passengers.
‘So, Mike,’ said the driver. ‘What do you do for a living?’
‘It’s Mark,’ said Pope. Had the man been testing the cover name deliberately? But why would he? ‘I’m in insurance.’
‘Yeah? No kidding.’ Joel barked a laugh. ‘My first wife ran off with one of you guys.’
Pope said nothing.
‘You want to watch this guy, honey,’ Joel went on. ‘Always on the road. No telling what he gets up to.’ He gave Pope a leering wink.
Two more attempts at starting conversation followed before Joel gave up with an invisible shrug.
For ten minutes the only sounds were the rumble of the truck’s engine, the hissing of the tyres on the wet road and the tinny music from the radio, accompanied now and again by Joel’s off-key humming. Pope glanced at Nina. Yes, there was definite eye contact, if not yet a smile.
At two fifteen – Pope noted the time on the digital dashboard clock – the report came, cutting through the muzak. Joel reached across and turned up the volume.
‘– Issued a missing person’s report on a Ms Nina Ramirez, age twenty-six, height five two, weight one hundred and fifteen pounds, dark hair, eyes brown. Ms Ramirez is believed to be suffering from mental health problems and was last seen in Charlottesville, Virginia, at nine p.m. yesterday evening. Police believe she may have been heading in the direction of Washington D.C. and may pose a risk to herself.’
Pope listened hard. There was no mention of anybody of his description, nor of anyone else who might be with her.
The report ended with a telephone number and the music faded back in.
Nina stared up at Pope. Over her head he saw Joel’s profile, the jaw muscles bunched.
*
At two twenty-one – again by the dashboard clock – Joel said: ‘I got to call this in, man.’
Pope stared at him, saying nothing.
As though he’d been asked a question Joel said, ‘You both look like adults. But if she’s mentally sick… ah, man. I got to do the right thing.’
Nina blinked, glanced up at Pope again, looking confused.
Pope said, ‘It’s not her. My wife’s name is Carmela. She’s not missing. She’s right here.’
Joel shook his head. ‘I saw the way she reacted. It was her name they mentioned in the broadcast.’ He whistled thinly through his teeth. ‘Can’t ignore a missing person report when the person’s sat right up here beside me.’ As though addressing a child he said to Nina, ‘What’s your name, honey?’
She didn’t reply.
Pope said, ‘Look, Joel. Just keep on driving. Get us to New York. I’ll pay you, like I offered before.’
Another shake of the head.
‘Two hundred dollars.’
A pause; then the driver said, ‘Sorry. Can’t.’
There’ll be a bigger reward for turning her in, Pope thought.
Pope drew the Heckler & Koch from his pocket and transferred it to his left hand. Stretching his arm across the back of the seat behind Nina, he levelled the muzzle at Joel’s head.
‘Drive.’
*
Nina recoiled when she saw the gun and it was all Pope could do to keep it trained on the driver. She twisted round and away from his arm, straining against her seatbelt.
Joel didn’t jerk away, didn’t spin the wheel in fright. He simply muttered, ‘Holy shit,’ drawing out the first syllable.
‘He’s going to turn you in to your father’s people,’ said Pope, keeping his voice low and matter-of-fact. ‘That message on the radio didn’t originate with the police. How would they know you were headed for Washington? It’s the CIA. They must have found the men I killed by the side of the road.’
At the mention of CIA Joel’s eyes widened a fraction. Pope thought the driver realised he was dealing with two crazies here, not just one.
‘Get us to New York,’ Pope said in the same voice, to Joel this time. ‘No tricks. No attempts to alert anybody to the situation. Then I’ll let you go, unharmed.’ He’d dropped the American accent.
In the dim light of the cab’s interior, Pope saw sweat sheen the man’s forehead under the peak of his cap.
Nina hunched forward, avoiding contact with Pope’s outstretched arm behind her as though it was a python trying to drape itself across her neck. Pope kept his gaze fixed on the
driver’s face. The man was scared, but he was keeping his cool. It might mean he was planning something stupid.
After ten minutes Joel said, ‘Shit.’
‘What?’
‘Got to stop for gas.’
Pope leaned forward slightly and darted a look at the fuel gauge. The needle was touching the red and a light had come on.
‘Why didn’t you fill up back at the truck stop?’
‘Too expensive. My employers won’t pay up if I bring them receipts from that place.’ Joel nodded at the windscreen. ‘There’s a gas station five miles ahead. I always fill up there when I’m doing a night run to the city. Grab a last cup of coffee.’
Pope thought about it. There didn’t seem to be anything he could do. The last thing they needed was to run out of fuel in the middle of the Interstate.
The red and white lights of the service station came into view while they were still a mile or so away. Joel hauled the truck into the forecourt. Pope watched for a telltale flick of the headlights, perhaps a prearranged distress signal to be used in case of carjacking, but there was none.
The truck hissed to a stop beside a diesel pump. Pope said, ‘We’re all getting out. I’m putting the gun in my pocket, but it’s there and I’ve got my hand on it. I will use it if I have to.’
‘Yeah.’ The driver opened his door, looked across to see if it was all right for him to climb down. Pope jumped down himself and helped Nina to the ground, making no comment when she brought the violin with her. Quickly Pope led her round to the other side of the truck, where Joel had the nozzle in his grip and was already feeding fuel into the tank.
Pope watched the road as the flow continued. Vehicles were sweeping by mostly singly now, many of them delivery trucks like this one. There were no other cars in the service station forecourt. Pope had seen a clerk seated behind a counter inside the shop.
