Delivering Caliban (9 page)

If it were him, he’d have left the city behind.

There was the airport, but it was eight miles away and the police would have sent a description of her there already. She might have taken a car, either her own or a rental, in which case he had no chance of finding her in time, even if he somehow managed to discover her licence plate number or the rental agency she’d used.

That left public transport. A train, or that icon of American intercity travel: the Greyhound.

He remembered that the station he’d arrived at by train doubled as a bus station, and was a little further up Main.

Fifteen

Langley, Virginia

Monday 20 May, 3.25 pm

Naomi came in without knocking and stood across the desk from Giordano, hand poised and holding a sheet of paper. He took the hint and dug a gap between the piles of articles and memoranda. Never a tidy man, Giordano had let his desk come to resemble one of those recycling bins Adrienne was always encouraging him to use for their waste.

He peered through his glasses at the printout Naomi dropped in front of him. It showed a copy of a passport’s photo page with name, date of birth and the usual other data.

John Purkiss
. The face gazed back affably, the hair dark, the cheeks a little shadowed.

Giordano raised his eyebrows. ‘Doesn’t ring any bells.’

‘British SIS. Arrived JFK from London at two this afternoon, alone as far as we can tell. The Feds took him in for a little light questioning. Let him go after ten minutes.’

‘
Today…’

‘
Yes sir.’ She meant that she understood the potential significance of the timing. Known foreign agents came and went all the time. This one had arrived sixteen hours after a Company operative had been murdered, in the same city.

‘
Any idea where he is now?’

‘
No sir. This info came through just a minute ago.’ It was now three-thirty p.m. Naomi looked genuinely sorry. ‘Our ears in the British Embassy are on alert, of course, in case he goes there.’

‘
All right.’ He gave the little wave that so many people found annoying:
run along now
.

In a moment he looked up. ‘What?’

‘Boss, why would the FBI question him?’

Giordano considered, tonguing lunch chicken out of a tooth. ‘Like you said, it was over in ten minutes. They probably just wanted to put the frighteners on him, let him know they were on to his presence in the city. Who understands the arcane workings of the Feeb mind? I didn’t say that, by the way.’

When she’d gone, Giordano took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Naomi was right. The Feds, even the paranoid New York ones, didn’t normally routinely haul in foreign spooks for a pep talk, least of all British ones. The Brits were our buddies again, after all, as the President kept saying now that he’d got the reelection business over and could concentrate on establishing his international legacy.

The FBI people had collared Purkiss for a reason. Probably they hadn’t got much from him and were tailing him even now.

Which meant they knew why he was here.

Giordano debated getting up and walking the ten yards or so after Naomi to call her back. Instead he picked up the phone and heard it ringing in her office down the corridor. She answered it in a rush.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Another word?’

When she’d come back, he said: ‘Find out who the Feds were that spoke to Purkiss. Give the job to Kenny if you like.’

‘That’s okay, boss. I’ll do it.’ She beamed, vindicated. ‘Want me to have them put under surveillance?’

‘
No, I want you to have them terminated with extreme prejudice.’ After a full five seconds he laughed at her expression. ‘Good God, girl. Too many Jason Bourne movies on your TiVo. Just their names is fine. If I need to speak with them I’ll make a couple of calls myself.’ He placed the glasses back on his nose like a pair of pince-nez. ‘And may I remind you, Agent, that the Central Intelligence Agency is forbidden by federal law from conducting surveillance activities on US soil.’

‘
If you say so, sir.’

One of these days, he thought, she was going to put her tongue out at him. He let them run rings around him like a big teddybear of an uncle.

*

Giordano called Adrienne, something he often did when under pressure. Just the sound of her calm, no-bullshit tone was enough to both ease and lift his spirits. He told her it was ‘staff trouble’ he was having, which was as much as he could reveal. After he’d offloaded, she in turn told him about the difficult conversation she’d had with her son Adam, Giordano’s stepson. The boy was a grad student in business at Columbia who was talking about jacking it all in and becoming an aid worker in Somalia. Adrienne was disappointed but supportive of her son. Giordano thought he was nuts, and had told both him and Adrienne as much. Adam now referred to his stepfather as “that fascist”. Resorting to the F word put you beyond the bounds of rational debate, in Giordano’s opinion.

He wondered not for the first time what his and Adrienne’s own kids would have been like, if they’d met ten years earlier and had had any. It might have been an attractive combination: her warmth and people skills with his analytical mind and drive. On the other hand, he thought, surveying his desk, they might have ended up overweight slobs like him with the added handicap of their mom’s driving abilities.

After the call he sat with the phone in his hands. He was kidding himself. The call to Adrienne had been a distraction, a way of stalling.

This Purkiss. Not Grosvenor’s killer, because he’d arrived the day after her murder. Did he have an accomplice? It was the only explanation that made sense.

Giordano heaved himself over the desk, picked up the phone.

.

Sixteen

New York City

Monday 20 May, 4.05 pm

The trick, Purkiss had learned, was to fix on a distant point and allow it to dwindle so that it became a pinpoint, then to focus your vision on it so intently that the rest of the visual field seemed to expand around it.

He chose the Statue of Liberty. The green figure, so familiar even to those who hadn’t seen it, stretched skywards over to his left. It drew his gaze and held it.

The movement from his left was both seen and felt. At the same time, his heightened awareness told him something was happening behind him and on his right.

Two men approaching. At least.

Purkiss did what would be least expected and instead of turning one way or the other, stepped backwards and rightwards. He collided with the man just as the one on the left moved fully into view, and brought his elbow round as he did so. He felt it collide with the solid bulk of a torso and heard a gasp.

The blow came so suddenly and unexpectedly that Purkiss didn’t even make an effort to parry it: a knuckle strike to the left side of his neck that seemed to punch all voluntary control from his body so that he was inhabiting it but unable to manipulate it in any way. He saw the railing rush towards him, the water tilting beyond; felt hands grab each arm and jerk him back before he collided with the rail; heard shrieks on either side along the esplanade. He was dropped to his knees, the hard concrete of the walkway biting through the material of his trouser legs, and lowered only fractionally more gently to the ground so that his face was turned sideways and through his swimming, roiling vision he identified a pair of tasselled loafers inches from his face.

His arms were jerked behind his back and he felt the ratcheting grind of cuffs being clamped shut around his wrists. Hands hauled him to a sitting position against the railing. He tipped sideways a little and vomited thinly. Around him people were backing away, in some cases running.

Above him, limned by the bright afternoon sun, stood two men. They kaleidoscoped in and out of focus but he made out that one was white and curly-haired – the man Kendrick had identified earlier – and the other was African-American with a shaved head. Both wore dark suits and sunglasses. The black man was holding up some sort of ID, a badge in a leather casing. He brandished it from left to right for the benefit of the passersby, then pushed it towards Purkiss. Purkiss couldn’t make out the details, apart from the arching words
Central Intelligence Agency
.

He tried to speak but the words came out as a slurry of sounds unintelligible even to him. The men didn’t read him the familiar Miranda rights. When they seemed satisfied he wasn’t going to vomit again or pass out they seized his arms and pulled him upright once more. He swayed but kept his balance. One on either side of him, they began to march him back across the park.

*

He stumbled towards the entrance between the two men, the crowds peeling aside, their fascinated stares lingering. The men had done a brief, professional frisk but had left the phone in his pocket. It was useless to him there.

Beyond the park entrance, in the sudden shadow of the city once more, they reached a slate-grey Crown Victoria, a standard government issue car. The shaven-headed man pushed Purkiss’s head down into the back, slid in beside him. The curly-haired one got in the driver’s seat.

The car pulled away into the traffic. Both the men remained silent. They’d be armed; Purkiss had seen the bulge of  shoulder holsters under their jackets.

They weren’t Company; or if they were, they were acting independently and beyond their remit. Beyond this, he knew nothing about them. He’d been seated behind the passenger seat, not the driver’s, so even if he could somehow contrive to bring his legs up he wouldn’t be able to get a stranglehold on the driver. In any case, the man next to him would react within a second.

The Crown Vic headed up a wide main thoroughfare along the western side of the island, the Jersey shore looming intermittently between the buildings across the water. At one point the man beside him murmured into a cell phone and Purkiss strained to hear; but the blow to his neck had knocked his hearing out of kilter and it hadn’t yet returned to normal.

The impact came from the left, a shocking fist into the side of the car that shunted it sideways into the next lane in a crump of buckling metal segueing into the screams of tyres and blaring horns. The man next to Purkiss was driven across the space between them as his door stove in; the driver himself was shoved sideways as the side airbag bloomed, usurping his space behind the wheel. A violent jolt followed as the car behind tailended the Crown Vic.

The shaven-headed man’s face was inches from Purkiss’s own and he took the chance, snapping his forehead forward into the bridge of the man’s nose. The man recoiled with a cry, blood gouting from his nostrils. He flailed, half-sliding down the seat, not unconscious but far from fully alert. Purkiss pressed his back against the door on his side and kicked out through the partition between the front seats, catching the driver in the side of the face with the tip of his shoe. The man was quick to pull back and avoided the full force of the kick. His right hand groped inside his jacket, the front of which was pressed against his body by the tumescent airbag.

Behind his back Purkiss’s cuffed hands scrabbled for the door release. His fingers found the lever, snapped at it; but the central locking system was in place. He wouldn’t get another kick in and the man’s arm was burrowing more deeply into his jacket. In a few seconds he’d have the gun.

Beside Purkiss’s ear the window exploded inwards, nuggets of safety glass hailing past his face. Some sort of small battering ram was knocking out the remaining fragments of the window. Once more hands were grabbing at his shoulders. He heaved himself forwards to allow them to reach under his arms, pressed downwards with his feet to help lever himself up and back. Awkwardly he half-pushed himself and was half-hauled through the window frame. For a moment he was horizontal, suspended crazily from the car; then the hands righted him and he stood blinking in the middle of a downtown Manhattan street, a cacophony of yells and horns raging around him.

‘Come on.’

Two people, once again, a man and a woman this time propelling him forwards and towards the pavement. Like the two men in the park they wielded shields in leather folders, held up like crucifixes against a crowd of vampires.

The FBI agents, Berg and Nakamura.

Berg dragged at the rear door of a Ford Taurus parked up on a yellow line on the pavement and said, ‘Get in.’ Behind her a man was approaching, running across the street, weaving among the stalled traffic.

Nakamura yelled, ‘Watch out,’ his arm coming up, a pistol levelled.

Purkiss said, ‘No, he’s with me.’

The man reached them. Thin, unkempt, with bad teeth and the sallow eyes of a wolf.

Berg stared at him, then back at Purkiss. Then she said: ‘In. Both of you.’

Purkiss dropped into the seat, shifting over to make room for Kendrick. Nakamura took the wheel.

*

The noise dwindled behind as they plunged into the bustle of Lower Manhattan. In the front passenger seat Berg took something from her pocket and handed it back.

‘
The cuffs.’

It was a universal key, something Purkiss wasn’t surprised to see in the FBI arsenal. Kendrick took it and sprung the cuffs after a few seconds of fiddling. Purkiss rubbed the feeling back into his wrists.

He said: ‘Where are we going?’

Berg said, ‘Haven’t decided yet.’ She turned in her seat to look at him. ‘Those guys say who they were?’

‘No. They had CIA ID, though.’

‘
Their names are Barker and Campbell. And yes, they’re Company, all right.’

‘
Then why are we running away? Why not arrest them? Assuming they’ve done something arrestable, of course.’

Nakamura laughed. Berg said, ‘They’ve certainly done something arrestable. Apprehending a foreign national on US soil. That’s our jurisdiction, not theirs. The reason we’re not arresting them is because we’ve been warned off.’

‘By whom?’

‘
Our own high command.’

Purkiss took a moment to absorb this, found that he couldn’t. He glanced at Kendrick. ‘Thanks.’

‘Any time you need your arse wiped.’

As soon as he’d seen Kendrick running across the street, Purkiss had grasped what had happened. Kendrick hadn’t been able to make a move in the park when he’d seen Purkiss being taken down by the two men. He’d followed the Crown Vic in his rental car and had rammed it at what seemed to be an opportune moment. And had turned out to be one.

He’d rung Kendrick from Hamburg as soon as Vale had told him about the New York killing of the third agent, Grosvenor. Kendrick had been available immediately, so Purkiss had booked him on the Heathrow-to-JFK flight that he himself would be connecting with. The US was a vast arena and Purkiss decided he’d do well with backup.

Tony Kendrick was an ex-paratrooper whom Purkiss had met in Iraq some eight years earlier. He was a civilian now. Purkiss hired him on a freelance basis when he needed an extra pair of hands, or an extra gun. There’d been three of them once: Purkiss, Kendrick and Abby.

A police car shot past, siren squealing. Purkiss thought he knew where it was heading.

Berg said: ‘We’ve got questions for each other. I’ll go first. We know you’re here on a job, Purkiss. No bullshit this time. We just can’t figure out what it is. Danny here and I –’ she nodded at Nakamura – ‘were at JFK on another job, looking for a suspect in a different cae who we thought might turn up from abroad. While we were there we noticed those two CIA guys, Campbell and Barker, hanging round. We got curious. We knew them for Company, and then when you arrived at the passport desk and they took an obvious interest in you, we moved in. We’re jealous of our turf, Purkiss. The law’s clear. Here in the US, the Company butts out. And if the Company decides to start following people here, it becomes our business.

‘So we shook you down a little, didn’t get anything out of you as expected, then let you go. Campbell and Barker took off after you, so we followed. You’re good – you nearly lost them, and us – but we picked you up again on the subway and were on to you when you reached Battery Park.’

Nakamura took over: ‘You met up with some guy there, we don’t know who. Then we saw the two Company assholes take you down. We called in for authorisation to make a move. Berg’s idea. Big fuckin’ mistake. Our boss tells us to back off. Walk away. Says it’s an internal CIA matter. Like Berg says, we’re jealous of our turf. So we decide to ignore him. Next thing, this guy –’ he jerked a thumb over his shoulder at Kendrick – ‘comes out of nowhere and rams you. And we haul you out.’

‘And we’re officially in violation of direct orders from our superiors. A firing offence, at best.’ Berg shook her head, as if amazing herself. ‘So. Your turn. And Purkiss?’

‘
Yes.’

‘
Make it good. Because I am having a really bad day.’