The British a.s.sa.s.sin entered the Holland Tunnel from Manhattan to New Jersey at a little after twelve noon.
It began to snow lightly when he came out of the tunnel. He turned up the heat in the rental car, a Chevy Camaro LS, which he thought would be c.r.a.p, but it was actually surprisingly nice, fast, comfortable, and quiet.
He drove through Jersey City and got off I-78 before the Newark Bay Bridge. At a Sh.e.l.l station on the opposite side of the exit ramp, he stopped and went in and bought a cold bottle of raspberry-lime seltzer that he drank as he checked the address again on his phone.
After he had his bearings, he sat patiently, sipping his refreshing beverage as he looked out at the traffic on the exit ramp for another few minutes. He"d already made several maneuvers to deter surveillance, but you couldn"t be too careful.
Things were looking positive, for a change. He"d been able to establish contact with a new representative for the client last night, and everything was full speed ahead again. Regrettably, someone had tortured the information regarding his whereabouts out of his handler, Pavel. They didn"t know who this inquisitive person was, but they were thinking perhaps a member of the CIA, as the torturer seemed to know a lot about what was going on and was an American.
He thought about what had happened at Gramercy Park. Whoever was after him, he was confident he could handle it.
The client apologized profusely for such an unfortunate incident and, in addition to getting him a new handler, offered compensation for the screwup on their end in the form of a 50 percent increase in fee upon completion of the job.
Being a good sport, the British a.s.sa.s.sin had readily accepted the apology. And, of course, the money. It was the least he could do. One never wanted to disappoint so gracious a client.
Drink and thoughts finished, he pulled out of the gas station. Ten miles and minutes later, he pulled off 440 onto Pulaski Street near Port Jersey Boulevard. He pa.s.sed along a couple of football field lengths of chain-link fence with shipping containers stacked behind it before turning into a parking lot.
The low, ugly brown brick building he parked in front of had the words FLEET LINE RENTALS above the door. There was a security camera bolted to the brick beside the sign, so he pulled a bloodred Washington Nationals ball cap low over his eyes before he got out of the car.
Spa music was playing softly in the small reception area inside. The office was quite dingy, but in one wall sat a plate gla.s.s window with an open view of the Manhattan skyline across New York Bay.
"Can I help you?" said a middle-aged woman from a windowed slot in the scuffed Sheetrock wall after a couple of moments.
"Yes. I spoke to Mr. Rodriguez this morning. My name is Peters," the British a.s.sa.s.sin said with a perfect Midwestern American accent. "Is he around?"
"He"s on the phone. If you have a seat, he"ll be more than happy to help you when he"s done."
As he waited, he took out his phone but decided not to fiddle with it. He was trying to quit that nasty modern habit. He turned it in his hand as another atrocious spa song began. He stared out at the distant lower Manhattan skyline, the ugly new Freedom Tower standing out like a broken tooth. As he watched, two tugs appeared close offsh.o.r.e, pulling a bulk freighter through the Claremont Terminal Channel.
"Mr. Peters?" said Rodriguez, suddenly standing beside him. He was a heavy, very pale, bald Hispanic man with striking hazel eyes.
"Mr. Rodriguez. Thanks for meeting with me," the British a.s.sa.s.sin said, shaking Rodriguez"s soft, gold-ringed hand.
"Thank you for waiting," Rodriguez said, swiping away sweat from his forehead as he nodded rapidly with a little smile. "I had one of my guys bring her up this morning so you could take a look right away. If you"ll follow me."
They went out back. Parked in front of a five-vehicle bay of garage doors was a fifty-thousand-pound tri-axle Caterpillar dump truck, blue in color. It looked far bigger than it had in the online ad, the British a.s.sa.s.sin thought, concerned. A real monster. Maybe it was too big.
He took a slow walk around it.
"How old?"
"Two thousand eleven. But it runs perfectly," Rodriguez said. "Listen." He nimbly climbed up and turned it over. It coughed once, and again, and then snarled to throaty, rumbling life.
"Sounds great," the a.s.sa.s.sin said.
"You need it for a month?"
"Yes," the a.s.sa.s.sin said. "Tell me: off the top of your head, how wide is it?"
"Did you say wide?" Rodriguez said, squinting at him.
The British a.s.sa.s.sin smiled, nodded.
"Um, standard width," Rodriguez said with a shrug. "Eight and a half feet, same as a tractor-trailer."
Excellent, the British a.s.sa.s.sin thought. It would be snug, but it would fit.
"Shall we start the paperwork?" asked Rodriguez hopefully.
The British a.s.sa.s.sin smiled again.
"Yes," he said. "Let"s."
Chapter 46.
Around two on Wednesday, Doyle called with news on the Rafael Arruda drug hit that he needed to share with me in person.
Thirty minutes later, I found him and my other protege, Detective Lopez, in Washington Heights" Thirty-Third Precinct"s second-floor break room.
With a grand flourish, I placed on the table, between the Styrofoam cups of wretched coffee they were nursing, the plastic bag I was holding and removed the two huge waxed paper soda cups and perfectly greasy white paper bags that I"d just brought them from Shake Shack.
"Eat, gentlemen," I said. "And talk."
"We"d hit a brick wall in the investigation, Mike," Doyle said between bites of his double cheese with bacon. "No witnesses, no nothing. So we decided to go back and look at all our video that faced the street near the drug building two weeks prior. I mean, it was just hours and hours of nothing. I was thinking maybe we could market the tape as the breakthrough cure for insomnia when we saw him."
"Who?" I said.
"This neighborhood guy," said Arturo, smiling. "His name is Sol. Sol Badillo. But everybody calls him Jinete, which means, like, jockey in Spanish, on account of he used to be a horse trainer or something when he was younger."
"Sol"s one of these hang-around guys you often see in an inner-city hood," Doyle said. "Divorced, late fifties, lives with his grown daughter. He"s sort of a super"s helper, runs errands in the local stores, deals a little weed on the side. He"s in and out of the barbershop every five minutes. He patrols the block the way a beat cop does, but instead of enforcing the law, he more likely helps the friendly neighborhood crooks break it."
"Exactly," Arturo said. "In medieval times, this guy would be, like, the town crier or fool. He shuffles around twenty-four/seven and acts like he"s half homeless or crazy, but meanwhile, he knows everything and everyone on the block. He"s like the block"s memory. Its underground eyewitness news anchor."
"Go on," I said, smiling. I liked the sound of this.
"Jinete was actually one of the first guys we canva.s.sed," said Doyle. "Of course, he said he didn"t know anything, but then we saw him in the video. Two weeks prior to the hit, plain as day, he puts a camera in a car parked across the street from the drug building."
"The camera was pointing right at the building?" I said.
Doyle nodded, sipping his shake.
"So you"re thinking he was working for whoever killed Arruda?" I said.
"Not thinking," said Doyle with a wink. "We"re knowing he was involved. We spoke to Jinete again two days ago. We showed him the video, and he finally broke down and told us everything."
"So who hired him?" I said excitedly.
Doyle took a printout from a folder. It was a blown-up photocopy of a driver"s license. Some blond guy on it. Matthew Leroux, it said, with an address in SoHo.
"Jinete said this guy, Leroux, gave him money to rent a car and the camera and five grand."
"The guy gave Jinete his name?"
"No," Arturo said. "Jinete said Leroux called himself Bill. He said he was a slick guy. Spoke fluent Spanish. They met several times. But like I said, Jinete is no fool. He likes to know who the h.e.l.l he"s working with, so he actually had his daughter secretly follow the guy after one of their meetings. She followed him all the way back to Chelsea."
"Chelsea," I said. "I thought the address on the license was in SoHo."
"Chelsea is where this guy, Leroux, has an art gallery," said Arturo, wide-eyed. "He must have gotten bored perusing the canvases, so he decided to up and slaughter a drug gang."
I looked at the photo, a tingle beginning in my stomach. This was good. d.a.m.n good. We were finally getting a break.
"Did you speak to Leroux?"
"No, we wanted to talk to you first, of course, Mr. National Security," Arturo said.
"We do good or what, Mike?" said Doyle, smiling.
"No," I said, taking out my phone to call Paul Ernenwein. "You did amazing."
Chapter 47.
A reporter was doing a cutaway to get the United Nations in the background when Matthew and Sophie came up the steps on Ralph Bunche Park onto East 43rd.
It was morning, just after rush hour, on Thursday, and the pair was on the hunt.
They didn"t look like it, of course.
Idly wandering around on the sidewalk in front of the flag-draped United Nations Plaza on First Avenue, clutching maps and a zoom lens Nikon, they looked like a young, stylish, maybe European couple touring the Big Apple for the first time.
As they walked west on 43rd, a street cleaner came down the street, churning a cloud of dust onto a rack of Citi Bikes before it made a U-turn. In the distant haze to the west, the green copper cathedral-like roof of Grand Central Terminal could be made out, and above it, the lip of the MetLife Building, where their target had set up his blind.
This morning"s question was, where would he set up his next one? Matthew thought, frustrated.
After their first attempt at taking out the British sniper had failed, it was all about outthinking the a.s.sa.s.sin now. And outmaneuvering him.
They needed to find this b.a.s.t.a.r.d, Matthew thought.
Find him and put him down once and for all.
Sophie bought a half-pint of blueberries and some almonds and dates from a fruit seller on the corner of Second Avenue. They crossed the street and stopped and stood, chewing, beside a pay phone kiosk, silently watching the pa.s.sing pedestrians and traffic on the avenue.
"Okay. What are the motorcade routes again?" Matthew said after he finished his nuts and berries.
"All right," Sophie said. "From the Waldorf to the UN, you have four avenue blocks and seven cross streets. Because of the length of the motorcade, they hate making turns, so usually they cordon off Fiftieth or Forty-Eighth and take it all the way to blocked-off First Avenue and down several blocks south to the UN"s entrance."
"That"s the most direct route, but they have to have alternatives," Matthew said.
"They could do Park to Forty-Sixth to First, but that"s about it. They have several dozen vehicles, Matthew, and they need to get crosstown as quickly as possible."
"It"ll be Fiftieth, Forty-Eighth, or Forty-Sixth, then, where the next attack will come," Matthew said, nodding. "That"s where the motorcade is most vulnerable. Where it can be boxed in."
"Do you still think it"ll be an attack on the motorcade itself?"
"Yes. He"s tried the long shot. It didn"t work out. He"ll want to be closer this time. Point-blank range, maybe, or ambush with the use of some sort of explosives. He needs to change tactics. That"s what I would do."
"You"re right," said Sophie. "He"s got everyone thinking long-range shot now, so it"s time to switch up the script. Go for an up-close, in-your-face surprise. But how? The president"s car is impenetrable."
"So we"re told," said Matthew, looking at her bleakly. "Remember that they said the t.i.tanic was unsinkable. We need to expect the unexpected."
"What do you mean?"
"Call it a hunch, Sophie. Intuition. I know this guy. He"s a perfectionist. Winning is everything to him. War inspires artistry, and this guy truly thinks he"s Michelangelo. If he can"t do this with pizzazz, he won"t do it at all."
"But from where, Matthew?" Sophie said, looking up at the millions of windows. "Where will it come from?"
Matthew smiled and put his arm around his wife"s waist and kissed her.
"That"s what we"re here for, baby. We"re the dream team. We"re the hunters who hunt hunters. We"ll find him."
"I don"t know, Matthew. Maybe we"re in too far this time."
"We take it the whole way, babe," Matthew said. "Just like we decided in the beginning. We have to find this fool. We have no choice."
But what if he finds us first? Sophie thought, but didn"t say.
Chapter 48.
My just-popped can of Diet c.o.ke hissed along with the old radiator in the corner of the small, dark room as Paul Ernenwein and I sat in a too-warm, windowless, secure comm room in a nondescript FBI building on East 56th.