Yeah? What about my face?
We’ll try and keep it out of this. Plus, Fess has never seen you before. Me, he has, but he doesn’t know that I’m involved in this yet. Better to keep it that way. He already knows about Michael, so that wouldn’t matter. Go on – break a leg.
The van was a windowless Dodge, white, an older model, but in perfect condition. Its driver was a woman – thin, short hair, forties, in a green bomber jacket. She stopped beside the trailer, rolled down her window and stared at them, waiting. It was early morning in the trailer park, with no one else around.
Towse spoke first.
How do you want to do this?
When you’re done with the van, park it on the street over there, near that bar. Put the key in the glovebox, lock the door with the button, then walk away.
OK.
Do it by this time tomorrow. Otherwise, we have to report the van stolen. We don’t want to do that.
Anything else?
Our plates are clean. Keep them that way. If you’re doing anything you shouldn’t, use your own plates for that.
She got out, gave the key to Michael and walked off, up the street. She wore work jeans and work boots and bounced as she walked, her clothes hiding muscle.
They watched her go.
Who was she?
The beauty of it is, Michael, that even I don’t need to know. Go wake up Aoife. It’s time to go shopping.
It was late evening when the van pulled into an industrial park between Bayonne and Jersey City. The sky was bright only in the west. The food trucks had already switched off their cookers, pulled down their shutters, returned to the commissaries where they would clean up, restock and prepare for the morning. Lights went off in office windows, came on in the parking lots. The day declined over courier depots and plant-hire firms, carpet warehouses, wholesale stores for immigrant communities, outlets for factory-damaged electric appliances, African churches, pop-up boutiques, martial-arts dojos, mattress retailers, muffler-repair shops, rental storage units, climbing walls, paint stores and – here and there – the odd vacant unit, marked hopefully For Rent, a wallflower waiting to rejoin the dance. And in the trees – young, thin of branch, tender of leaf, so that the sky and the floodlights shone through them – a few lonely male robins sang the evening to rest.
The van turned into the parking lot of Unit 103 Bayonne
Enterprise Zone. We can watch it on the CCTV.
Unit 103 is a long, rectangular, windowless building, with blue sheet walls and a roof that bristles with cooling ducts. A cage at one end houses backup generators. The sign on the roof says Epic NJ5.
There are two shabby cars parked by the entrance. The van drives past them, then reverses into a parking space, tail to the wall. It rocks on its springs, people moving inside it. Finally, two white figures get out, lugging a couple of heavy nylon bags. They walk to the door of the building, press the intercom buzzer. This activates a video recording, so we know what the guards saw when they looked at their screen: two hooded people, dressed in white hazmat suits, gas masks hanging loose from their straps, hiding most of their faces apart from their eyes. One of them speaks.
TriState Pest Control, he says. We’ve come about the ants.
What ants?
The ants in section four of hall two . . . Uh . . . We have to get rid of them before they get into the circuits.
I don’t know about any ants. Come back in business hours.
We have to fumigate. We can’t do that when there’s people around.
On the tape, the first guard can be heard talking to his colleague in Spanish.
Do people even work in there in the daytime? I only ever get night shifts, here.
Beats me. I’ve only been posted here a couple of times myself. The place is full of, like, computers and stuff. We’re not allowed to touch them. That’s all I need to know.
The first guard keys the intercom again.
We weren’t told you were coming. We can’t let you in.
Uh . . . Call your supervisor. They’ll know about us.
The guards press the speed dial for their control room in Hoboken. The phone call is answered on the second buzz.
Aardvark Security, said a voice on the line. Hobbes speaking.
Oh . . . Hi, Mr Hobbes . . . I don’t think we know each other? . . . This is Gonzales. I’m shift supervisor at . . . I think it’s called Epic? It’s that big computer place in the Bayonne enterprise park? Some pest-control guys say we’re supposed to let them in, but we’ve got no paperwork. They say you should have it.
Where’s that, you say? Let me have a look . . .
You can hear a rustle of papers at the end of the phone line, the tap of a keyboard. There is also what sounds like the clink of ice in a glass, and the distant twang of a lonesome country ballad.
Yeah, said Hobbes. Here it is. Epic. Ants. Fumigation. You can switch off the systems and let them in.
More rustling of paper.
Oh, and one more thing, Lopes.
Gonzales, sir.
Sure. Gonzales. It says here that the fumigation gas is highly poisonous. You have to stay out of the building until it’s done.
We have to watch the cameras, sir.
I’ll watch them from here. Go outside and patrol the perimeter until they’re finished. And stay out there for two hours after.
The guards buzz the door, then watch the two pest-control operatives bustle past them, their hazmat suits swishing, heads down, as they drag their heavy bags along the floor. They pass through the man-trap doors between the lobby and the climate-controlled server hall. A moment later, they reappear on a different set of cameras, heading down the central aisle. Electric eyes flutter and blink, red and white, in row after row of servers and data storage units, as if sensing the danger as it walks past.
We see the two ghostly figures reach the further end of the hall, where a black metal box, the size of a filing cabinet, stands by itself in a padlocked steel cage. They assemble a tent, a fumigation barrier, over the cage and its black metal obelisk. Zipping their suits and adjusting their gas masks, they go inside the tent. White vapour seeps from under it. Ten minutes later, they’re done.
The guards, hanging about in the parking lot, saw them leave the building, dragging their stuff to the van. Then it was gone.
The van pulled over on the Port Jersey breakwater. Aoife and Michael sat for a few moments, looking at the Statue of Liberty, then Aoife got out, took off the false plates and threw them into the harbour. She reattached the real plates with an electric screwdriver, and then they crammed their hazmat suits into the nylon bags, added some rocks from the breakwater, and sent them after the fake plates. They got back in the van and turned west.
You should have done the talking, Michael said.
If they’d heard a woman’s voice, they’d have looked a lot closer. Anyway, it was time you did something to earn your keep.
I did the computer stuff.
You plugged in Towse’s application and pressed return, like he told you. Anyone could have done that. No offence, but I still don’t know why Towse wants you.
Me neither. But here we are.
They were back in Bayonne, driving south on Avenue A, when the first police car overtook them, lights flashing, siren on. Then another, and another.
Neither one spoke. A block from the bar, they could see the street up ahead dammed by police cars, slewed across the junction, lights strobing. Aoife parked by the curb.
This is where we get out.
What about the van?
We leave it here. Towse’s people will find it. If it was up to me, we’d torch it, to destroy any evidence. That’s what they do where I come from.
Where do you come from?
Never mind. Get out. Take Towse’s computer.
She put the key in the glo
vebox, locked the driver’s door with the button, and closed it from the outside.
Put your arm around me.
What?
Put your arm around me. We’re going for a stroll.
She grabbed his arm, steered him down Avenue A. There were more cop cars here, and a city ambulance, and yellow tape across the road where a crowd had gathered. A helicopter floated through the bracket of sky at the end of the avenue, its spotlight stabbing the ground. Aoife tightened her arm around Michael’s waist, settled her hand on his hip and dragged him towards the police line.
What the hell are you doing?
Aoife turned a loving face up to his, put her mouth to his ear.
Shut up and keep moving. We need to find out what’s going on.
They pushed their way to the front of the crowd. There were police cars down by the edge of the water, their beacons splashing red across the trailers in the park. A cordon of unmarked SUVs, parked nose to tail, hid the front of the bar from the onlookers. As they watched, two paramedics appeared from between the SUVs, wheeling a sheet-covered stretcher. They were followed by two men wearing windbreakers that looked like they should have FBI on them, but didn’t. A Bayonne cop lowered the tape, and the ambulance, hitting its siren, was gone. Aoife tapped the cop on the shoulder.
Hey, officer. What’s going on?
She smiled at him. He smiled back, hooked his thumbs in the belt that held his gun and his night stick. He was young, still good-looking, and knew this himself.
The Feds just raided that bar. And that trailer park, down the street there.
Aoife made her eyes round.
Wow . . . The Feds? Here? Where I live? . . . Say, who was in that ambulance?
I heard the barman went nuts when they tried to question him. They had to taser him. Several times.
Oh my God! Which Feds are they, exactly? ATF? FBI? DEA? I can’t wait to tell the guys at work!
The cop hitched his belt again, looked thoughtful.
I don’t know, exactly . . . Dispatch didn’t say . . .
Michael grabbed Aoife’s arm, yanked her into the crowd. As the people closed around them, he heaved on her arm again, dragging her off balance. Instinctively, she raised her right knee between his legs, felt the breath go out of him. The rubberneckers, ignoring them, left them in their own little pocket of space, between the back of the crowd and the wall of a house. Michael bent double, gasping.
You kicked me!
I was talking to that cop! What the hell is wrong with you?
He straightened, pointed over the heads of the crowd.
Look!
Beyond the police line, by the door to the bar, a woman was giving orders to men in dark suits. She looked like someone’s aunt: round of face, slightly rumpled, smiling kindly. Her sweatshirt had a word on it. Stanford, it said.
Aoife ducked behind the crowd.
We have to get out of here, fast, Michael. That’s Barb Collins, from Inscape.
I know.
No you don’t, Michael. You don’t know the half of it.
The distance from Bayonne, New Jersey to Staten Island, New York is roughly five miles, as the crow flies. But when it’s late, and you’re on foot, taking the back streets, having to turn away and pretend to be necking when headlights appear, it must feel a lot further.
They didn’t speak much. The night seemed to be listening. At Bergen Point the streets ran together, funnelling them up concrete stilts over oil tanks and houses. The harbour appeared on either side, reflecting the lights of New York and New Jersey.
Bayonne Bridge, lately rebuilt so bigger ships could pass under it, had a new walkway for people, on its harbour side. It hung out over the waters of the Kill Van Kull, 200 feet below. Aoife was too tired to think. It took her some time to realise what crossing this bridge might mean to Michael. We should have gone the other way, she thought. To Jersey City, the Lincoln Tunnel. She had grown unused to sensitive people. Lately, most of the men whom she’d known had been thugs. The only thing she could do for him now, having come this far, was to put herself between him and the drop.
They found a good hotel by the Staten Island Expressway. Good, in the sense that it was willing to rent a room, for cash, no ID, to two empty-handed people in the middle of the night.
The room smelled of all the bodily fluids and liquor that had ever been spilled there. They used their quarters to buy chips and bottled water from the machine by the broken elevator, then ate in the room, sitting on plastic chairs either side of the bed. Aoife had her back to the window, expressway lights flaring in its stained curtain. Belfast Rules: never sit with your back to the door.
So, you know about Barb Collins, Michael said.
Towse told me to watch out for her. She’s an ex-Oakland vice cop. She had a bad reputation, even for Oakland. Graft, extreme brutality.
Evidence would go missing. Drugs and weapons. A couple of dealers disappeared too, after they said she’d seized more of their product than she turned in as evidence. The FBI was called in, but she’s really smart, and she’d worked with Feds a lot, so she knew all their procedures. Then Fess hired her as a special adviser. To work for him on his special projects.
She doesn’t look like a cop.
Neither do I. But I used to be one.
Really? . . . Where?
She yawned, despite herself.
Forget it. I shouldn’t have said that.
She laid her head back on the sill, closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them; she was scared she might fall asleep.
He spoke again:
What happens next?
I don’t know . . .
She forced herself to think through the problem.
I have some cash and a clean passport. I could probably get myself out of this country . . . But I’ve got no papers for you.
She wondered why she was being level with him. What if he panicked, dragged her down with him? What truth did she owe him? But he seemed a nice guy.
I might be able to sneak back into Canada, he said, after a while. Go to Minnesota, and walk across the border into Manitoba. My parents told me they knew people who’d done that. They said it was easy.
They’d find you and snatch you, even in Canada. I know how they’d do it. I’ve seen it done.
She yawned again. Why was she trusting him? He was just a mark. Then again, he had managed to get his lines straight, back at the data centre. He seemed to have a stubborn streak. Why else was he still in this game? By now, most civilians would have folded from the stress.
So I’m on my own, he said.
She thought about that, then relented.
Not yet . . . There’s a chance that Towse got away. He gave me an emergency fallback, a way to make contact if we got separated.
What’s that?
It’s a radio show.
A radio show?
Sort of a cult thing. That barman works on it, as a call screener. Or he did, before they tased his brains out. It goes out live from New Jersey, one night a week, but only on the Internet. If he’s free, Towse will use it to send us a message.
She touched the bedspread, quickly withdrew her hand.
I’m going to sleep on top of the sheets, with my clothes on. You can have the other side, if you want. Though the floor might be cleaner.
The Staten Island Ferry docks at the southern tip of Manhattan Island. From there, walking north, you pass through the financial district: Wall Street, Freedom Plaza, all those banks, brokerages, hedge funds and exchanges, stacked in racks of glass and steel, and all the smaller bottom-feeders that scavenge the undertow, sucking in sludgy data, trying to filter it for gold. Phone lines, fibre optics, IR links, satellite dishes, laser comms, microwave links, even – if you know where to look – a few ancient but functioning pneumatic-tube systems, all searching for meaning in the cosmos
of money, moving the odds around, hedging the bets. When the aliens make contact, the people on Wall Street will know about it first. They could be talking to them already, in secret, trying to cut themselves a side deal, to short-sell the Earth.
You might wonder, then, whether any of these twitching financial antennae pinged, or bleeped, or traced a zigzag on paper, as Aoife and Michael wandered up Broadway. Did any of them sense the danger that was coiled on the hard drive of Towse’s computer, swinging so innocently in its nylon bag? Or did they walk through the beast’s lair without being noticed, ghosting through its lattice, fundamental particles too fleeting to detect? Did the beast really not see them? Or did it see them, and say nothing, and choose to let them pass?
Their next lodging was in Brighton Beach, in the ghost of a seaside boarding house, a couple of blocks from the sea.
Don’t make noise, said the old lady who lurked in the parlour. And let yourselves out when you’re done.
Done. They hadn’t told her what they would do in the room, but that was her default assumption. They were healthy-looking young people, paying cash, and if Coney Island still had a season, this wasn’t it. But, turning the key, Aoife felt suddenly aware of Michael in the hall behind her. She had flirted at him in Palo Alto, but that was strictly operational, one of several lures she had dangled whilst trying to hook him. She didn’t even know if that lure had worked. And, of course, she didn’t care.
The room smelled of wallpaper paste that had never quite dried in the air from the ocean, but it was otherwise clean, and it had two separate beds, pushed together. Aoife opened the curtains and pushed them apart.
That Tuesday evening, they bought a second-hand burner phone from a Russian woman in a kiosk, and a pen and a notebook as well. Nine o’clock found them sitting on the curb on Brighton Beach Avenue, stealing Wi-Fi from a coffee shop. When cars went past, or trains rattled on the elevated tracks, they had to lean together to hear the phone’s feeble speaker.
The radio show began cold, at a minute past nine, when the host wandered on-mic and accused his producer of having fiddled with the levels on the sound desk. He fired the producer, played some thrash rock, came back on the mic, rehired the producer, and then gave a ten-minute rant about gas-station sandwiches. A caller rang in to disagree with the host. The host hung up on the caller. The show was already twenty minutes in.
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