His eyes are a deep blue, but a deep something else as well.
They stare at each other for a moment, traffic rumbling past, cars, yellow cabs, vans.
SUVs.
Then the guy extends his hand, ‘Tom Szymanski.’
They shake.
‘So, Tom,’ Jimmy says, ‘what do you say we go somewhere and sit down, get a cup of coffee, yeah?’
The car pulls into a space across the street from the coffee shop. It has tinted windows, but isn’t anything conspicuous, isn’t a limo or an SUV – there are enough of those around the place already.
In a booth along the side window of the coffee shop sit Jimmy Gilroy and Tom Szymanski.
Rundle can see them clearly from here.
They’re facing each other over cups of coffee, talking.
About fucking what, though? Because the thing is, how did they hook up?
Rundle has that horrible sensation of being in the middle of a dream you are aware of having but can’t direct in any way or put a stop to.
Next to him, Ribcoff sits with an open laptop, a Bluetooth headset and two separate phones on the go. Switching between devices, he taps keys, whispers instructions, waits, listens. There’s no point interrupting him. He’s doing his job.
Rundle has his own laptop open in front of him and is keeping an eye on developments more generally. J.J.’s speech went really well and is already being blogged about and dissected on various political websites. Only one blogger he’s come across so far has mentioned what happened outside the hotel, and that was a throwaway comment about no event in New York ever being complete without its requisite crazy person.
All the live feeds came from inside the hotel.
However, there must have been at least one camera crew outside that caught the incident – even though it only lasted a couple of seconds, even though they’d have been taken by surprise, even though they’d initially have been facing the wrong way.
The other straw he’s desperately clutching at is the fact that what Tom Szymanski said didn’t make much sense.
Because who’s ever heard of Buenke? If he’d said Congo, now that would have been different. Rundle feels his stomach lurch at the very thought of it. But Szymanski didn’t say Congo. And it’s unlikely anyone will have picked up on what he did say.
Which means that nothing really bad has happened.
Not yet, at any rate.
‘Don,’ Rundle says, glancing across the street now, a slight crack in his voice. ‘What’s next?’
‘We’re sending an asset in,’ Ribcoff replies, without looking up from the laptop. ‘He’ll be wired every which way to Sunday, so we’ll be able to see the subjects at close range and hear what they’re saying.’
‘But -’
‘And out in Jersey they’re working on background stuff, see what we can dig up. Just in case.’
Just in case what? They have to wage some kind of a PR offensive afterwards? When the dust settles?
That’ll be too late.
Jesus.
With the resources they have at their disposal, you’d think they could…
Rundle’s heart is thumping. ‘Look, Don, we know what they’re saying, or will be saying sooner or later, so…’
Ribcoff looks up. ‘What?’
‘This is an extreme situation. It requires an extreme solution.’
‘You think I don’t know that, Clark? But it’s also a live situation… it’s unpredictable, highly volatile, it’s unfolding in real time, and in an exposed, public location.’ He pauses. ‘I mean, midtown Manhattan? On a busy weekday morning? This isn’t fucking Baghdad here. Our options are very limited.’
The first twenty minutes are awkward, a period of adjustment. A lot of it is linguistic. Tom Szymanski is obviously smart, but he’s not familiar with Jimmy’s accent or with certain expressions he might use. And while Jimmy himself, like every other person on the planet, is exposed to the lingo here on a daily basis – he finds there’s something disconcertingly raw about the way Tom Szymanski speaks.
So, at first, they stumble over each other’s words.
‘What?’
‘Sorry?’
But then it settles down.
They stop at the first coffee shop they come to and take a booth by the window siding onto Fifty-fifth Street. The place isn’t that busy, there are only a few people dotted around, sitting at tables or at the counter.
The other four booths along by the window, two ahead of them, two behind, are empty.
The waitress is a grumpy-looking Latina woman in her forties.
Behind the counter two young guys work quietly, chopping and slicing – prepping, Jimmy imagines, for the lunchtime crowd later.
Coffees arrive, both black.
Jimmy takes the lead in offering up information. He’s a political journalist who has written for a national newspaper and is currently working on a freelance book project. A significant area of his research concerns the involvement of BRX in a mining concession in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Tom Szymanski nods along at this, taking occasional sips from his coffee.
‘So when we were outside the hotel back there,’ Jimmy says, ‘and I heard you refer to Buenke, naturally I was curious.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Well, it’s not exactly common knowledge that BRX is in there. They won’t talk about it, and certainly not to someone like me. So yeah. Of course.’ Jimmy pauses, trying to pace this, but aware, too, that time is short. ‘And you seemed to be implying that Senator Rundle himself has been to Buenke? Is that correct?’
‘I wasn’t implying it. I said it.’
‘OK.’
‘That lying cocksucker was there, let me tell you.’
‘How do you know?’ This sounds very abrupt. Jimmy braces himself.
‘How do I know? Coz I was there, too. I saw him.’
‘Really?’
Szymanski looks around, nods. ‘Yeah, for the last couple of years I’ve been working as a contractor for Gideon Global. Half of that time I’ve spent in Congo, shunting people back and forth between the airstrip and the mine. Or guarding the mine. Or escorting shipments of whatever shit it is they’re digging up out there from the mine to the airstrip.’
‘Wow.’
Wow? Jimmy needs to step it up here, to focus, and get some of this down. He reaches for his pocket. ‘Do you mind if I take notes?’
Szymanski shakes his head.
Jimmy pulls out his notebook and pen, flips to an empty page. ‘Go on.’
‘It’s a shithole of a place, believe me.’ Then he sighs, impatient at something, or exasperated. ‘Actually, that’s not true. It’s a beautiful fucking country, and I mean breathtaking, man, like nothing you’ve ever seen. And I’d hazard a guess that the people are pretty cool, too, but I never really got near any of them. I did see some of the shit they have to put up with, though, and that was enough for me. Basically BRX calls the shots, but the local heavy is a guy called -’
‘Arnold Kimbela.’
‘Yeah. Fucking dirtbag.’ He rolls his eyes. ‘Anyway, that’s who the senator was down there seeing. The colonel. At his so-called compound.’
Jimmy stares at the page in his notebook. ‘When exactly… are we talking about?’
Szymanski laughs at this. ‘Two weeks ago, more or less.’ He holds up his hand. ‘This? The injured hand? It didn’t happen in fucking Paris. That was all made up. It happened in Congo. We were on our way back to the airstrip.’
As Jimmy continues staring at the page in his notebook, his brain tries to process the information he’s just heard, but its significance is almost too huge to take in at once – implications, ramifications, spin off it like pieces of shrapnel.