“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah. Jim—”
“Call me Chapel. Everybody does.”
“Okay. Chapel. I’ll get those numbers. And I’ll make the calls for you, that’s part of my job. I’m sorry I questioned you. I don’t ever get to meet the people whose lives I touch. Sometimes I forget that sort of thing.”
“It’s an occupational hazard. We’re in the business of protecting people, but to do that, sometimes we can’t tell them the whole truth. Sometimes we have to lie to them, frankly. If you do that long enough, you forget that it’s not a good thing. People like Banks forget that’s a regrettable necessity, not the whole of their job. I won’t make that mistake, not if I can help it.”
“Thanks, cutie. Okay, I’ll take care of that. Anything else?”
“I need as much information on those people as you can dig up. I need to know what they do for a living, where they hang out after work, what kind of family they have.”
“Want their shoe sizes? I can get those,” Angel joked.
“I somehow doubt that,” Chapel told her.
“Seriously? Do you know how many people buy their shoes online these days? People are lazy. They’ll do anything they can online because then they don’t have to get off the couch. Look at me — I’m saving the world and I can do it from my bathtub, if I feel like it.”
Chapel fought down the urge to ask if she was in the bath right at that moment. He had work to do. Focus, he thought. “Okay. Okay. The real thing I want to know is why they’re on that list. You have any idea about that, Angel?”
“I didn’t get any details you haven’t already heard,” she told him. “Looking at this list, I don’t see any immediate connections. Maybe something’ll come up as I get more facts on them. Let’s start with the first name on your list — the one in Brighton Beach. Name, Bryant, Dr. Helen. Lives on Neptune Avenue. Sounds like a fun place. Occupation: Genetic Counselor.”
“What’s a genetic counselor?” Chapel asked.
“Let me Google her… ooh, she’s got a website! I love it when they have websites. Nice-looking lady, if your taste runs to older women. Looks like she’s an ob-gyn. She sees pregnant women and helps them find out if their babies are healthy, and what they can do if it turns out the babies have genetic problems. Oh my God, that must be the saddest job in the world sometimes. Can you imagine?”
“I’ve never had kids. Never got the chance,” Chapel said.
“A man of your age should have a wife, Chapel. A wife and lots of happy little healthy babies. I’m finding all kinds of stuff about Dr. Bryant here. Looks like she’s pretty famous in certain circles — she’s won all kinds of awards, gotten commendations from numerous institutes, worked for the National Institutes of Health for a long time… did fieldwork in Africa during the early part of the AIDS crisis. Weird, looks like there’s a police bulletin about her too. Let me just take a peek…”
Chapel imagined Angel crouched forward looking at her computer screen, scanning through dozens of web pages at once. When she didn’t come back on the line after a few seconds, he began to wonder what she’d found. “Angel? Is everything okay?”
“No, sweetie. It’s not. At least, not for Dr. Bryant.”
IN TRANSIT: APRIL 12, T+8:02
“Goddamn it, no!” Chapel shouted, and he punched the instrument panel of the helicopter with his good fist. The pilot started to protest, but the look on Chapel’s face must have warned him off. “She can’t be dead. I can’t be too late.”
“The police are already on the scene,” Angel told him.
“Damn it,” Chapel said, but more muted this time. He’d known how tight the time frame was, known that people had already died at the hands of the detainees. But this was the first civilian — the others had been military personnel. That didn’t make their deaths much easier to bear. But they’d known what they were getting into, or at least known they were dealing with dangerous people. Nobody had even told Dr. Bryant she was in danger.
“Do you still want to go to Brooklyn?” Angel asked. “I can change your flight plan and take you to the next address instead.”
“No,” Chapel said. “No. I need to see the crime scene. There might be some evidence there that can help me track this bastard. And we know he was in the area recently — maybe I can catch him now before he moves on to the next target.”
“All right, Chapel. You’ll be on the ground in a few minutes.”
The chopper curved in over New York Harbor and then made a straight line across Brooklyn, an endless sea of two- and three-story buildings, rows of brownstones and warehouses and churches punctuated in only a few places by taller structures. The pilot shed altitude as they came in over a rectangular slice of greenery by the ocean. It looked like a salt marsh. On the far side Chapel saw the heliport, a commercial pad with a few civilian choppers sitting dormant. Chapel slapped the pilot’s shoulder in thanks, and the kid gave him a thumbs-up. Before the skids had even touched asphalt, Chapel jumped out of the side hatch. It felt good to have his feet on solid ground again, though he knew it would take a while before his head stopped thrumming with the sound of the rotor blades.
The chopper lifted off again as soon as he was clear. It would head for the nearest air base where it could refuel, in case he needed it again in a hurry. In a few seconds it was gone from view and Chapel could hear nothing but ocean waves and distant car traffic. The silence was a dramatic change.
“Did you get me that car?” Chapel asked, and when Angel didn’t answer, it took him a second to realize he’d left his headphones in the chopper. He reached for his BlackBerry, wondering how he would make contact with her — she hadn’t exactly given him her phone number.
Before he had a chance to call the DIA and ask to be connected to the sexiest-sounding woman working there, someone called his name and he looked up.
A courier in a FedEx uniform came jogging up and handed Chapel a package. He signed for it, and the courier left before Chapel could figure out who was sending him a parcel at a heliport he’d never heard of an hour ago.
He tore open the package and found a cell phone inside, still in its box. There was a plastic blister package in the parcel as well, holding a tiny in-ear attachment for the phone.
He managed to get all the packaging undone without too much trouble. The new phone was a touch-screen model that was all screen and no buttons. He’d always wanted one of those, frankly — the tiny keys on his BlackBerry were hard to use with his less sensitive artificial fingers. He put the earpiece in his ear and powered on the phone. It looked like its batteries had a decent charge.
“Let me guess,” he said, as the screen lit up. “Is that you, Angel?”
“Hi, sweetie,” she said. “I figured it was time for an upgrade.”
“You know, it’s DoD policy that we only use BlackBerrys,” he told her. “This brand is a no-no.”
“It’s got sixteen times the memory and twice the screen resolution. I’m a high-definition kind of girl. It works with the 4G network and Wi-Fi and the best hands-free transceiver on the market. Namely the one in your ear right now. Keep it there — and keep the phone in your pocket — and we never have to be apart. Sound good?”
“I’m receiving you loud and clear.”
“Good. And, sweetie, you don’t have to shout. Just talk normally and I’ll hear you. In fact, I’ll hear everything you do, so I can give you advice on the fly. Your car is waiting at the entrance to the heliport. We’ll get you to Dr. Bryant’s place right away. In the meantime, I’ll walk you through the process of migrating all your data from your old phone. I can do most of that for you from here.”