by Tom Clancy
It never changed in this city, he thought. Whether the commotion was about a blizzard, a terrorist threat, or some hot-ticket Broadway opening. You got the obligatory buildup, countless gasbag media experts, and in the end nothing was what they claimed it would be. Unless you were a complete greenhorn, fresh off a bus from Kansas or wherever it was the deer and antelope played, you realized their chatter was so much white noise, hardly different from the everyday racket on a midtown street.
You knew, you damned well did. And if you were smart you learned to check your expectations, use common sense, and hope that the next corner you turned didn’t lead under a falling metal construction beam.
As he struggled to maintain his traction on the northbound FDR Drive, heading toward upper Manhattan from East 23rd Street, Sullivan was trying hard to apply that perspective to the deal he was about to clinch. Despite his better instincts, it wasn’t easy. He was chasing again, and he knew it. Chasing the perfect deal that would put him in a position where money wasn’t a constant squeeze. Call it an obsession and he wouldn’t argue. But his latest number was special. Unique merchandise, a fat cash earning, and excellent value for his buyer, who stood to make a huge bundle of his own on turnaround.
If that didn’t translate into perfection, it very definitely came close.
The Jag’s powerful heater had been blasting away for a while now, and Sullivan took one hand off the steering wheel long enough to unzip his Altair ski jacket, a sharp-looking piece of outerwear he’d ordered from Switzerland for a small fortune. Although he wondered if maybe it wasn’t the torrent of warm air making him perspire. Maybe he was just kind of giddy. He could imagine the tremendous profits that would be generated down the line—or lines, plural, since his different goods would eventually wind up in different places. Spreading the wealth, sharing his success . . . Patrick Sullivan supposed he’d helped create a whole alternative economy in the past few months; call him an enterprising capitalist. And his latest commodity, well, unlike the storm, it would live up to its advance billing. He couldn’t downplay its unique worth if he tried.
Tonight was about breaking ties, Sullivan thought. About personal expansion, and taking a giant step to secure his future. And he incidentally might be doing the world a favor in the process. When all was said and done, Hasul the Vampire stood to become the major loser in this whole thing—and that freakish bastard and his night stalkers couldn’t very well go looking for help or sympathy from anyone.
But Sullivan refused to be troubled with the broad view. If that qualified him as selfish, so it went. He took pride in being a stand-up businessman, a solid provider. All his customers came away satisfied. The people who depended on him for support were happy and comfortable. He met his financial commitments, looked out for his own, and made sure he lived a little, too. A man ought to keep something on the side, no punishable offense there. Sullivan was doing okay in his mind, maybe better than okay, though he knew some would judge him by a hypocritical and unrealistic standard they would never dream of applying to themselves.
Now Sullivan checked the road sign just ahead and was a bit surprised to see he’d almost reached the East 96th Street exit. With the evening rush hour long past and the weather bad as it was, traffic had been light, and his trip uptown shorter than usual in spite of the slippery conditions that had forced him to stay below the forty-five mph speed limit. Most of the other vehicles on the Drive with him were taxicabs going out to La Guardia for inbound fares, but the airport was certain to be a mess of delays and cancellations, and those poor tired hacks wouldn’t have much to show for the fuel they burned.
Approaching 103rd Street, Sullivan glanced up at the footbridge to Randalls Island on the chance he’d see a solitary figure moving across from the esplanade, but its stairs and walkway were deserted. This noted for the record, he went on for maybe a quarter mile, then bore left before the road split and diverted him onto the great beyond of Harlem River Drive. The factories and commercial warehouses of Queens to his right over the river, he swung onto the entrance ramp for the Triboro Bridge, tapping the brake pedal, slowing to a crawl as he took its long ascending curve to the span.
Sullivan found the deck of the bridge spur crossing the river as clear of traffic as the highway. At the toll plaza he pulled up to the cash-only booth and stopped to pay the transit cop, whose subtle eyeballing gave him a reflexive twinge of paranoia. He could remember a time when the city’s tollbooths were manned by ordinary clerks, and hadn’t quite grown accustomed to the heightened security that had turned the approaches to New York bridges and tunnels into fortified checkpoints. Nowadays it seemed as if you couldn’t go from one borough to the next without passing an armed police guard, welcome to the new millennium.
The barrier lifted and Sullivan went on to merge across several lanes to the Randalls/Wards Island down ramp, pausing briefly to flick on his high beams in the pitch darkness at its bottom. Sleet battered the idling Jaguar’s roof and windshield. Rubbish blew over the narrow strip of blacktop, the strong winds pushing it into small, loose mounds against the pylons of the Hell Gate railroad trestle and viaducts to his left.
Sullivan drove slowly forward past old Downing Stadium, his brights glancing off reflectorized signs for the FDNY training school, a drug rehab clinic, a men’s homeless shelter, and a high-security state psychiatric center, its grim sprawl of buildings recessed behind a forbidding forty-foot cyclone fence topped with razor wire. A quick left put him onto an access road that led past the Department of Sanitation sewage-treatment plant at the island’s eastern fringe, where parked garbage trucks, industrial trailers, and enormous steel Dumpsters jostled together inside another tall, ugly chain-link enclosure.
After a few minutes the access road took him across a murky channel of inlet water and dead-ended on Wards Island. Here a third fence, this one only ten or twelve feet high, measured the boundary of a neglected waterfront park. The entrance gate had been completely torn from its hinges and lay on the ground beside an opening easily wide enough for the Jag.
Sullivan ignored the NO CARS ALLOWED BY ORDER OF POLICE DEPARTMENT sign on the toppled gate and rolled through into the park.
He steered across the paved footpaths snaking down a series of gradual slopes to the riverbank, his headlights slipping over dead winter grass, disclosing fresh scabs of ice at the bases of trees and wooden benches. Directly ahead of him in the shadows, a concrete utility building with public restrooms on one side stood just about where the descending paths became too narrow for his tires. He nosed to a halt a few yards uphill of the small, squat structure, and then sat back in his seat, keeping the Jag’s lights and wipers switched on, running its engine so the heater would continue to blow. His expensive mountain skiwear notwithstanding, he’d decided the dampness under his arms could only be a result of nerves.
Sullivan waited, staring into the night. He observed no sign of anyone standing near the park house and checked the backlit face of his dashboard clock. A quarter of eleven; he’d arrived for his meet right on the button. If experience was a guide, his man would show. Still, Sullivan felt a mild sort of annoyance. Having already torn himself from the Chelsea apartment’s blissful comforts for the unbelievable wind and cold of this stinking island, it wasn’t so much the waiting that bugged him. Once he was here, he was here. But other things mattered. Or ought to matter, anyway.
Several minutes ticked by. The gusts blew stiffly off the river, howled around the car, whipped sleet against its roof and windows. Bare treetop branches blew and swayed in the heavy gusts. Sullivan reclined in his seat and thought of the attaché in the rear. He’d brought the special merchandise at serious risk. As usual he’d agreed to a time and place chosen by his buyer. No, he decided, his impatience wasn’t unwarranted. He was entitled to get back some of the respect and consideration he gave....
A single, hard rap on the passenger’s window jolted Sullivan from his thoughts. He straightened with a sharp intake of breath, then glanced over his shou
lder as a black-gloved fist knocked on the window a second time.
The man outside the car was tall, thin, and wore one of those draping Aussie outback coats that flowed down below the knees like a cloak. Combed straight back over his head, his dark hair was soaked, his open umbrella offering limited cover against the slanting wetness.
Sullivan exhaled. His buyer had arrived true to form. The way he’d glided toward the car out of nowhere, moving right up to his window without a sound, you could almost believe he had cats’ blood in his veins.
Unlocking the passenger door with his master control, Sullivan leaned across the seat, grabbed the handle, and pushed it open.
“Lathrop,” he said. “You’d better get in.”
“I’ve been sitting here a while,” Sullivan said.
“That right?”
“Yes. Waiting in this god-awful storm. It isn’t something I appreciate.”
Lathrop looked at him across the front seat.
“Rough day at the office?” he said.
“I’m serious.”
“I know,” Lathrop said. “And I’m just trying to understand why you’re so irritable. My guess would be you’re tired, but the sporty new jacket makes it hard to tell.”
Sullivan was in no mood for the sarcasm. “I told you, this isn’t a joke—”
“I’ll bet the women love your youthful, athletic image.”
Sullivan swallowed his frustration. He wasn’t sure what that remark was meant to suggest, or exactly how much Lathrop knew about him. But his words had a way of slipping right under the skin.
“Listen, I just wanted to get across a point,” he said. “Let’s concentrate on what’s important.”
Lathrop gave him a nod. “Let’s.”
Sullivan fell silent. After a moment or two he produced a low grunt, reached up, and turned on the roof light. Shifting around behind the steering wheel, he took a hard, flat, black leatherette gemstone case from an inner pocket of his jacket and carefully set it on the armrest between Lathrop and himself.
“Here.” Sullivan opened the magnetized latches securing the case’s lid and lifted it off. “Check these out.”
Lathrop bent over the case to examine its contents.
“That brilliant in the middle’s damned sexy,” Sullivan said. “Go ahead, hold it up, you’ll see for yourself.”
Lathrop reached into the case for the stone without removing his gloves, a small magnifying loupe in one hand now. He held it to his eye and slowly examined the stone, turning it under the interior light, giving it a long, discerning look.
“Nice,” he said. “Very nice.”
Sullivan nodded.
“It was brighter around us, you’d be even more impressed,” he said. “The three caraters, they should pull, say, between fifteen and twenty thousand apiece. That’s at the Exchange or anyplace else, doesn’t matter how or where you move them. But the one you’re holding, its size and weight are exceptional. And check out the life in it. The fire. That’s hard-on sexy. A fifteen-carat Kashmir, top grade, brings in . . .”
“I know what it should bring. Provided I’m able to get certs.”
“It’s the same quality as everything else you’ve bought from me. Send it to the AGL for a grading report. Or the Gubelin lab in Switzerland. Whichever you like. The experts can run their usual tests. I guarantee it’s going to pass with flying colors.”
Lathrop finished his inspection, returned the stone to its foam-rubber compartment, pocketed his loupe.
“Blue, especially,” he said. “That right?”
Sullivan smiled faintly at the remark. Some of the edginess had gone out of him.
“Yeah,” he said. “You’ve got it there.”
Silence. Lathrop looked at him, water dripping from his slicked-back hair, a splotch of moisture spreading under the tip of the folded umbrella beside his leg.
“What are you asking for the lot?” he said.
Sullivan hesitated a moment. He’d been a salesman his whole adult life and ordinarily wasn’t concerned about coming off as overanxious. But tonight it required some effort.
“I figured it would make sense to put together a square package, work out a price—”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Lathrop said. “I know I can move the stones. Taking on the other thing is an expensive gamble even if your claims about it are true.”
Sullivan shook his head.
“I’m not the type to make up stories,” he said. “What I’ve got with Dragonfly . . . I could sit forever rattling off a list of interested parties. Countries, starting with our own U.S. of A. . . . look at what they’ve been up to at Los Alamos lately. And on that mountain laboratory in California . . . Liver-more, I think it’s called. Bring it to the fucking government, you’d rake in a heap. And private outfits, Jesus Christ, they’d do anything to get their hands on it. There’s that German megacorp for one. UpLink International’s another example. Money up the ass, there, I’m telling you from my own experience. You need more choices, I could reel a dozen of them off the top of my head.”
Lathrop didn’t answer. He’d suddenly turned toward the windshield and was gazing outside with a distant look on his face, his head tilted sideways, his mouth slightly open, the corner of his upper lip twisting upward in what almost resembled a sneer. Sullivan had noticed these mannerisms before and couldn’t quite figure out their significance . . . but they always reinforced his impression of Lathrop as being somehow catlike. It was as if he was tasting the air, his full attention captured by a trail nobody else could detect.
“Those interested parties,” Lathrop said after a while. His voice had a slight faraway quality that matched his expression. “Why not take it to them yourself, cut out the middleman?”
“Bad business.” Sullivan said, shaking his head. “I know how far I can push my situation.” He shrugged. “It’s about feeling a certain level of comfort.”
Lathrop kept staring out the ice-crusted windshield toward the blurred black line of the water.
“You brought everything?”
“In that briefcase.” Sullivan nodded at the backseat. “It’s all inside except the keys.”
“So your comfort level doesn’t allow for trusting me enough to hand them over tonight.”
“Come on,” Sullivan said. “As it stands, you’d have the brilliants. That ought to be plenty acceptable.”
Lathrop turned to him. “What’s your asking price?”
“Five hundred thou, all inclusive. You wire half the money into the usual account. I confirm payment, send you the keys right away. Then you transfer the balance and we’re settled.”
A pause. Lathrop stretched it out a while before extending his right hand across the seat.
“Okay, we’ve got a deal,” he said. “Mazel and broche.”
Sullivan couldn’t help but smile again.
“Is that the expression they use?” he said, accepting the handshake.
Lathrop nodded. “Luck and blessings. Those words are tradition. A seal. Binding as any written contract.”
Sullivan was feeling pleased with himself.
“May you live as long as you want, and never want as long as you live,” he said. “That’s how my Mick ancestors would’ve spun it.”
Lathrop sat there without comment, still shaking Sullivan’s hand, clasping it in his own....
And then he abruptly stopped shaking it and tightened his grip.
Sullivan lifted his eyebrows in confusion, tried to pull away, realized he couldn’t. Lathrop would not let go. He kept holding on, staring at him across the seat.
Sullivan’s grin became a wince of pain. He tried pulling free again without success. Lathrop’s hand was a clamp around his knuckles, squeezing them hard, crushing them painfully together.
“Hey,” Sullivan said. “What is this? You’re—”
One glimpse of the pistol Lathrop withdrew from his left coat pocket silenced him. A long-barreled .45 automatic, its muzzle came up fast and pushed into the
soft flesh below his ear.
“Open your door and get out of the car,” Lathrop said.
“I don’t understand. . . .”
“I told you to get out,” Lathrop said. “Try to take off, I’ll kill you on the spot. You have a problem with those instructions?”
Sullivan swallowed, felt the pressure of the gun against his jaw.
“No,” he said. “No, I don’t.”
Lathrop grinned at him.
“Good business,” he said.
Sullivan knew he’d set himself up for a ripoff of monumental proportions and was only hoping that would be the worst of it, praying to Heaven above that would be the worst. How on earth could he have been so careless and stupid?
He stood inside the darkened park house where Lathrop had led him at gunpoint, his back to a cold, graffiti-scribbled concrete wall, his feet awash in crumpled food wrappers, soda cans, tossed syringes and crack vials, and whatever other unnameable filth a scabby parade of junkies and derelict winos had left here over the decades. He was sick to his stomach, overcome with fear and the grossly horrible stink of the place.
Lathrop, meanwhile, seemed unaffected by their blighted surroundings. He faced Sullivan in silence, a small flashlight in one hand, the .45 leveled in his other. His tall form cutting a dark silhouette against the park house’s barely open steel door.
“I don’t see why you’d want to do this,” Sullivan said. “I’ve always been straight with you. You’ve got some complaints about money, or my terms, we can work it out.”
“Wrong,” Lathrop said softly. “We can’t.”
Sullivan’s nausea rose higher in his throat. It occurred to him to remind Lathrop about the Dragonfly keys, but then he realized that would be a severe blunder and flushed the idea in a hurry. If Lathrop had forgotten about the keys, or thought he didn’t need them, so much the better. He would learn. And maybe then Sullivan could work them for leverage.
“I won’t try to change your mind,” he said at last. “Take anything you want. Just don’t . . . it would be a mistake for you to get carried away.”
