The bartender at Murphy’s was a thick-armed guy named Chuck. He had a graying beard and a ruddy complexion. At 8 A.M., Tyler was one of three at the bar. He drank coffee. The other two were drinking beer and booze, and they looked it. Chuck had pocketed one of Tyler’s twenty-dollar bills to play the double role of telephone operator.
Tyler was reading through the entire NTSB file on the Genoa, Illinois, accident for the fifth time. Rucker had supplied it before their departure by private jet to New York. Rucker, who had been scheduled to attend the test run of the bullet train, now intended to meet with O’Malley prior to the event. Tyler doubted he’d be granted that interview.
From the Genoa paperwork, the investigation looked straightforward enough. The vehicle in question was believed to have stalled on the crossing and to have been struck when it couldn’t move off the tracks in time. The tenor of the report seemed to be that this wasn’t the first time this had happened, and it wouldn’t be the last. Over a thousand people a year were struck by moving trains. Both crossing gates were shown in photographs in their lowered positions, supporting the claim that the auto had been out on the tracks—either intentionally or accidentally—when those gates had lowered automatically, signaling the arrival of the freight. There was nothing in the file to suggest the warning lights or one of the gates had failed to lower properly. The only mention of a 911 Emergency Communications call was an entry listed under Means of Notification. In Tyler’s mind, this indicated there would likely never be any proof that the tape of this call, long since missing, had contained incriminating evidence against NUR. He wondered if the train’s driver, Milrose, had made that call himself and what, if any, observations that call had contained.
To read the file, Alvarez’s wife was at fault. Listed anonymously as the “vehicle operator,” Juanita Alvarez was said to have failed to get herself and her children out of the vehicle and off the tracks in time. NTSB photographs showed the crushed minivan’s ignition switch in the “on” position, indicating either that the car was running or that the driver was trying to start it at the time of impact, and thus the ambiguity about responsibility for the vehicle operator’s failure to “secure a safe distance from the approaching train.”
The phone rang and the bartender, Chuck, answered. He listened and passed the receiver to Tyler. “Your call, pal.”
“You’re here,” Nell Priest said, somewhat desperately. “In the city, I mean. Two-one-two.”
“You’re on a pay phone?” Tyler inquired.
“Yes, of course.”
“We have a lot to catch up on.” Tyler said, “We need a favor from you, some files.”
“Did you say ‘we’?”
“That’s part of the explanation.”
“It certainly is.” She named a breakfast place near Union Square.
Tyler named the Marriott at Times Square. “Room eleven-twelve.” The return to government payroll had its privileges. “Make sure you aren’t followed,” Tyler stressed.
“Give me two hours,” she replied, not challenging his choice of the hotel.
When Nell Priest knocked at room 1112, no one answered. She waited and then knocked again. Behind her, the door to room 1111 opened, though she paid little attention until she heard Tyler’s voice say, “In here.” She turned around, stepped across, checking both directions first, and was quickly admitted.
Tyler wanted to hug her, to tell her how good it was to see her. Instead, he introduced her to Rucker as he locked the door. She looked to Tyler as he showed her to a chair. Confusion filled her face. Tyler explained that he’d turned himself in to Metro Police and had subsequently been released. Rucker had dropped the suspension, reinstating him.
“But he lacks the power to make arrests,” Rucker filled in.
“Which is where I come in?” Priest’s eyes searched Tyler’s.
Tyler said, “If O’Malley gets Alvarez, it’s the last any of us will ever hear from him.”
She reached into her purse and withdrew copies of the files Tyler had requested she bring. “Do you want these?”
Rucker stepped forward and blocked the exchange. He explained, “We’re asking you to cross over, Ms. Priest, and work for us. I can offer you legal protection—immunity from anything Northern Union might throw at you. In terms of your personal security, it’s your own risk, I’m afraid.”
Still looking at Tyler, she replied, “I crossed over a while ago. There’s no need for any of this.”
Not sensing the connection between these two, Rucker insensitively plowed on. “It needs to be made official. Essentially, I’m recruiting you as an NUS insider to provide information against Keith O’Malley, to inform me of his plans and to assist Agent Tyler in the arrest of Umberto Alvarez.”
Tyler said to her, “As you and I discussed, we’re assuming O’Malley will do everything to ensure that Alvarez is not arrested.”
“Agreed,” Nell said, her eyes pleading with Tyler. She didn’t want to be put through this.
Rucker added, “What we’re asking has risk for you, both personally and professionally.”
She said sarcastically to Rucker, “I pretty much figured that out for myself.”
“I’ve drawn up a paper for you to sign,” Rucker explained. “It’s to protect you, since I’m assuming you’ve signed a nondisclosure agreement with NUS.”
“I have.” The files still remained gripped in her hand. “Am I the only one who’s worried about Peter in all this?”
“The way we help Peter,” Rucker said, in a patronizing tone, “is to bring down Keith O’Malley. These papers make the exchange of any inside information at the official request of the NTSB. Whatever penalties are named in your NDA are overridden by this.”
Her eyes once again found Tyler’s and asked why it had to be done so formally. He felt a sadness, a heaviness in her, and wanted to rush to an explanation. “We may not beat him to Alvarez. It may come down to a conspiracy charge. Loren wants every precaution taken to nail him on whatever we can.”
“You want me to sign papers, I’ll sign papers.” She signed the documents and then handed the NUR paperwork over to Tyler. “He won’t derail the F-A-S-T Track. He won’t even get to it,” she injected. “This is not some freight running a Midwestern route. We’ve been focused on the security of this train from its inception. And not just because of Alvarez. It’s a great target for any weirdo out there, and O’Malley has taken every precaution there is. It’s inspected, top to bottom, several times daily; it’s watched by a dozen guards around the clock; when it rolls, a lead locomotive will run on ahead of it, to trip any devices that may have been set on the rails themselves. The invited guests have been screened and will be required to pass through two separate security checkpoints before getting anywhere near the train. That goes for maintenance, catering, even Penn Station employees. I’m telling you, this is a military operation. No way he gets this train.”
Neither man chose to speak, Priest’s words hanging in the air. She glanced at Tyler, and he felt a connection with her that he treasured.
Rucker, oblivious, took up the signed document and thanked her. “If I can push the necessary warrants through, will you plant a listening device for us? Today, if possible.”
“I could try. But he sweeps the offices regularly. It won’t last long, and when it’s found he’ll know someone is onto him, and whatever he has will be shredded or destroyed. FYI.” She added, “If it hasn’t already been. He’s one careful man, I’ll tell you what.”
“We’ll reconsider,” Rucker announced. Collecting his things, he requested Priest’s mobile phone number and she supplied it. He said, “I want to know where both of you are at all times and what you’re doing.”
“Hopefully, yes,” Tyler said.
“Hopefully, nothing,” Rucker protested. “You keep me in the loop.” He shook Priest’s hand and hurried out. Tyler locked up behind him.
He sensed her spinning head. “You okay?”
“This was not wha
t I’d expected.”
He apologized and said, “We have different agendas, Rucker and I. O’Malley’s a friend of his, and he feels used. He agrees that these earlier derailments by Alvarez were possible warm-ups. That with this bullet train, he’ll make his statement.”
“He’s wrong. The trains operate off of completely different technologies. Alvarez is not going to sabotage the journal bearings on F-A-S-T Track. No way he’ll get that chance. So practicing on those freights won’t get him anywhere. That theory just doesn’t make sense.”
He stepped up to her, leaned over, and kissed her gently. Then he pulled up a chair to face her. She looked uncomfortable with the kiss—or was that longing, he wondered.
“You’re going to ask me for something,” she said in a hoarse whisper. To him, her lips, wet from their kiss, begged for another. He nodded. The air seemed still, the short space between them pulled at him.
“That’s what you want—another favor.”
“It’s not all I want,” he said, equally softly.
“No?” She moved a little closer. The air seemed quite still.
He reached out and ran his fingers from her ear down her neck, and then wrapped his hand around her neck and pulled her to him.
She checked him just as their lips were about to touch. “We’re mixing business with pleasure,” she cautioned. “Why don’t you ask me for whatever it is you want first?”
Tyler let go of her neck, his fingers slipping down her chest and running over her breasts and finally finding her arm and her hand. As she leaned back, they held hands. Her eyes were glassy and she held a faint, winsome smile on her moist lips.
She squeezed his hand. “If you’re trying to bribe me, this isn’t going to sit well for us.”
“I need you to get me onto the bullet train,” he told her bluntly. “The F-A-S-T Track. Well in advance of the test run.”
She let go of his hand and sat up straight. “How do I manage that?”
“There must be a maintenance group aboard the train. If I go on with them, maybe I go unnoticed. Who pays attention to guys in blue jumpsuits?”
She nodded slightly, “And maintenance would give you access to every part of the train.”
“Exactly.”
“And if O’Malley finds you?”
“I understand it’s not without risk,” he said.
“You’re kidding, right? Twelve guards. Everyone, everything screened.”
“There must be special badges,” he guessed. “You lift one of those and a maintenance jumpsuit. I dress for the party underneath the jumpsuit.”
“What if I don’t want you on that train?”
“I thought you said Alvarez couldn’t roll it.”
“Even so.”
“Are you going to be on it?”
“I was scheduled to be Gretchen Goheen’s personal bodyguard. She was to be on Daddy’s arm for the event. But now word is that they’ve had a little falling out, and that he doesn’t want Gretchen on the train. I’m still planning to take the ride, but who knows? O’Malley likes to change things at the last minute, and I’m not sure what my standing is at this point.”
He couldn’t talk business anymore. With Rucker gone he wanted to get down to what mattered. “I missed you, for what it’s worth.”
“You just bought yourself a pass and a maintenance jumpsuit,” she said. For a moment, he thought she was teasing. But then she came into his arms, and the room spun, and he didn’t care about Alvarez or Rucker or even Chester Washington. He didn’t think it could be love—not this soon—but whatever it was, it felt pretty damn close.
CHAPTER 27
24 Hours
The challenge was to derail a train carrying a hundred journalists and dignitaries, all moving 180 miles an hour, without any injuries or fatalities. Every teacher knew the importance of study, and Umberto Alvarez was no exception. His risky forays into NUR’s Park Avenue headquarters the past few months had armed him with data on the guidance and stabilizing systems, security procedures, and even the scheduling and routing of NUR’s vast freight fleet.
At 3:58 P.M., Thursday, December 18, the premature sunset of early winter cloaked the Meadows rail yard in a hazy dusk. Alvarez had selected the 4 P.M. shift change because of this gray light and the way the eye had difficulty picking up details in it. If he had any chance to slip through the front gate, it was now.
He had endlessly debated how to enter this well-guarded yard and finally decided deception outweighed stealth. He knew that all arriving trains were being thoroughly searched. He had risked placing his duffel on one of those trains but would not risk his life. Hiding a small black bag and a man were different altogether.
Posing as a security guard at shift change on a cold winter evening seemed a more unlikely way to enter the yard and therefore should be less expected.
To his advantage, O’Malley’s overtime rosters called for a dozen guards in the yard at all times, triple the usual. The more the merrier—the easier for Alvarez to get lost in those numbers. Ironically, a smaller crew might have meant easier detection of an intruder.
Standing in an alley facing the yard entrance, Alvarez unzipped the black nylon jacket he’d bought at the Salvation Army, uncovering a navy blue security uniform. That, combined with his identification tag, were to be his passport inside.
Leaving the ski coat unzipped so that his ID tag showed, Alvarez took a deep breath to settle himself. There would be twelve guards heading home in the next few minutes, thirteen arriving. He carried a red metal lunch box containing a tuna sandwich, a Coke, and a small bag of chips. The steel thermos held Blue Mountain coffee, perhaps the only clue to the man’s true identity.
If anything went wrong, he had contingency plans. This, too, was why he chose to enter on foot. If caught on an arriving train, he would have been inside the fenced yard. If busted at the gate, he could run a carefully planned route to a waiting cab, the driver of which had been paid fifty bucks for a ten-minute wait that was about to expire.
The plastic laminated ID, clipped to his breast pocket, flapped with each step, rhythmically clicking against a button. Still twenty yards away, he looked on as two entering guards grabbed hold of their IDs, displaying them for someone unseen who occupied the entrance booth. Clearly, there was no formal inspection of these tags going on; they passed through without breaking stride, without saying a word. His surmise had been accurate: this was not where they anticipated a penetration. It appeared, too, that the rank and file was simply going about its job in the way a mason or garbage collector does. Security guards were, for the most part, former college athletes who had bet too hard on professional sports advancing their minimally educated lives. Brawn, but not a lot of brain. If NUR management was concerned its train might come under attack, the guards here appeared more concerned with clocking in on time and staying warm. All the new arrivals were heading straight to an elevated office trailer.
The combination of the ID tag and the proper uniform appeared to be enough to get him through. He swallowed dryly, reached to hold up his tag toward the booth’s window, avoiding looking in, and kept walking as if he’d entered here a hundred times.
No one stopped him. No one called out. No one was counting heads.
As two arriving guards in front of him headed for the trailer, Alvarez turned right, into the yard and the endless lines of train cars. Sodium-vapor lights burned a bluish glow over the yard, struggling against the dusk. At a distance, in the haze, Alvarez saw a mangy dog duck under a freight car and take off. Fifty yards down the tracks, Alvarez himself disappeared.
Over these past months he had spent countless hours in rail yards just like this one, and yet this one was like no other. He believed it would be his last. Here, he’d board the bullet train for a first and a last time. From here he’d launch a final blow to Goheen and his corporation, one from which they could not recover. If all went well, not a single person would be hurt, but a billion-dollar corporation would fall.
&n
bsp; It took Alvarez nearly two hours to locate train #717, in part because he felt obligated to act out his role as an NUR security guard, to be seen patrolling, in part because of the daunting enormity of the Meadows yard. The handheld radio scanner clipped to his waist, a Uniden BC245XLT, was barely larger than a cell phone. It scanned three hundred channels, including those used by the dozens of limousine and taxi dispatchers. After nearly a half hour of scrutiny through an earpiece that ran the sounds continually, he had finally identified the channel in use by the NUS guards and had locked into this frequency. Each guard checked in with a dispatcher referred to as “Control” on a regular basis—every ten minutes—and reported his exact location within the yard. Alvarez found the regularity of these reports surprising, and disturbing. It meant the dispatcher was well organized; she could map out the deployment of their team for the best possible coverage of the site.
So, even after identifying 717 on the outskirts of the yard—nearly a half mile from the bullet train—Alvarez walked this freight train in its entirety two full laps as he attempted to role-play dispatcher and track the movements of the guards. The last thing he needed was to be spotted hauling that duffel out from underneath.
After about twenty minutes, he picked out a short window of time when no guards were in his immediate area. But his nerves were rattled by this impressive coordination of O’Malley’s guards. While communicating with each other the guards also used two flashes from their flashlights to acknowledge one another. These looked like huge white fireflies in the cold night.
Seizing the moment, Alvarez rolled under the freight and felt his way along the underside of the car. As he touched the duffel bag, energy sparked through him. He would have to move carefully now, one train to the next, bearing that duffel along with him. If a guard closed in, he hoped to cover himself by leaving the duffel behind and returning to it later. It was all a dance now, a fragile choreography. He watched for flashes. He listened for locations. The map of the yard—so carefully studied that he had even memorized Internet satellite photographs of it—remained imprinted in his brain. The dispatcher moved her chess pieces. Alvarez moved one train to the next, ever cautious, ever closer to the bullet. He’d waited eighteen months for this. He couldn’t blow it now.
Parallel Lies Page 25
