But the man had not thought things through properly. And now it was too late, far too late, to even attempt to put a stop to it all. He liked to project an image of himself to those around him which he could not always live up to. He was inclined to let his imagination run away with him. Yet never in his wildest imaginings had it occurred to him that a situation like this might develop.
The Man in Black was waiting for the Enforcer. The Enforcer and his Apprentice. He didn’t really want anything to do with them. They frightened the life out of him. But he had to be there. He had to know.
He heard them before he saw them, the low rumble of the engine of the Chevy pick-up truck, and the rhythmic squeal of its tyres as it swung round and round the winding ramp which snaked its way down from street level.
The truck coasted to a halt in its allotted parking space. Both the front doors opened. The Enforcer had been driving. He had sandy hair thinning at the front and a small neat moustache. He was wearing a tweed jacket over corduroy trousers bagging slightly at the knee. He looked like a schoolmaster, until you saw his eyes. There was no life in those eyes. The man in the black suit thought they were the most frightening eyes he had ever seen.
The Apprentice was very young and very cocky. He had orange hair and freckles, and he walked with a swagger. He was swaggering now, but the Man in Black could see that he was sweating and his hands, hanging loosely at his sides as if he were John Wayne, were trembling.
The Enforcer strolled casually to the front of the truck and bent down to examine its big chrome over-bumper. He leaned close until his face was just inches away, reaching into the pocket of his trousers to remove a white handkerchief with which he thoroughly wiped the protective metal bars.
Then he straightened up and, still holding the handkerchief in one hand, walked slowly towards the Man in Black. The handkerchief had turned pink, in places bright red.
It was blood, for sure. Blood thick enough to have been still clinging to the undersides of those bars, in spite of the heavy rain.
The Man in Black gulped. His throat was made of sandpaper. He felt sick. He struggled not to let it show, not to let his so carefully orchestrated act drop.
The Chelsea warehouse was the new secret headquarters of the FBI’s anti-terrorism unit, set up after 9/11. And the special agents employed there were a breed apart. They had much in common with their brothers and sisters who represented the public face of the Bureau and who worked out of the FBI’s famous New York headquarters at 26, Federal Plaza, and other openly declared addresses throughout the country. But the Chelsea Feds were there to perform tasks and pursue courses of action that took them much further along an extremely rocky road, in a country still purporting to be a benevolent democracy. They had carte blanche to do whatever was necessary to protect an America which had never quite recovered from the blind panic which followed the deadliest terror attack in human history. They had never played by the rules. They weren’t supposed to.
But word was, that under the auspices of arguably the most maverick and unpredictable president of all time, they had been given an autonomy and a level of operational freedom way beyond anything that had originally been intended.
The Enforcer and his Apprentice were considered to be two of the Chelsea Feds’ finest sons. They did what others neither would nor could do.
The Man in Black sucked his dry lips. He was totally out of his depth. And he knew it.
Part Four
Our consciousness rarely registers the beginning of growth within us any more than without us; there have been many circulations of the sap before we detect the smallest sign of the bud.
Thirteen
It was all Jones could do to muster the strength to climb out of the cab. She paid the driver from her stash of dollar bills, then stood still for a moment trying to be sure that she had control of her body.
The rain, thankfully, had eased, because Jones’s grey plastic raincoat, now badly torn, was likely to provide even less protection than before. She still felt extremely shaky and her left leg almost gave way when she tried to put her full weight on it. She took a step sideways and reached out to hold on to a water hydrant to steady herself.
Passers-by were glancing at her curiously, then quickly turning away. She wasn’t surprised. She was a mess. But even in her state of shock she was aware that most of the blood that had been splashed on her had landed on her torn raincoat. She shrugged herself out of it, scrunched it up, and tucked it under one arm.
Moving as quickly as her injured leg would allow, while also trying to be inconspicuous, she made her way up the station steps, past the line of pavement cafes, and into the cavernous central hall, where she stood at the top of the steps overlooking the concourse and glanced anxiously around for the nearest public convenience.
There was a pronounced police presence. Two machine-gun-toting soldiers, wearing fatigues and flak jackets, stood just to Jones’s left, fortunately facing away from her.
Involuntarily Jones took a step backwards, but reminded herself that this was, of course, normal in America. And had been since 9/11.
Nonetheless, she retreated through the imposing gateway from which she had just entered. Then, standing outside, she remembered The Campbell Apartment, an unlikely cocktail bar to which she had been introduced on her last visit to New York, and headed for the heavy wooden doors which she knew led to it. The Apartment had been leased in the 1920s and 30s by a businessman and alleged bootlegger called John W. Campbell who transformed the thirty-by sixty-foot room into a reproduction Florentine palace which he used both as an office and for entertaining. Or actually, some said, for storing and selling his illegal hooch.
Jones knew the bar would be closed that early in the day, but hoped that the exterior doors would be open. They were. She hurried across the tiled ground floor lobby, from which a short flight of steps led to The Apartment itself, and ran up them as fast as her battered legs could carry her. At the top was a ladies’ lavatory. To her relief, that was open too. And it was deserted.
Once inside, she studied her reflection in the wall mirror. No wonder people had been looking at her curiously. There were splashes of blood on her face. Her right cheek still bore the signs of the damage it had incurred the previous day, and her chin was now swollen on one side and seemed to be turning a bluish yellow colour almost as she watched. It was also seeping liquid from an unpleasant looking graze. Obliquely she wondered which of the blood splashes were her own and which might be poor Marion’s.
She shivered. Her body felt icy cold and yet her face was burning. Her heart was still racing.
She dumped her destroyed raincoat in the trash can fastened to one wall, reached for some paper towels, ran the cold tap in the washbasin, soaked the towels and dabbed them against her damaged face. The cold water felt wonderful, cooling and restorative. She realized then how thirsty she was. She dropped the paper towels on the floor, cupped her hands underneath the tap, raised them to her mouth and drank the water gratefully. She wiped her face dry with more paper towels, then paused to look in the mirror again. She still didn’t look good. Her face was clean enough now and pretty much free of blood. It was also a pale whitish grey. Her features were drawn. It was almost as if she had aged twenty years in as many minutes.