‘It’s O.K. Corral back there. A gun fight’s going on.’
‘Was someone shooting at you, Sandy? You’re not hurt, are you?’
‘No. But never mind the questions. Drive, for fuck’s sake.’
‘Why don’t we go to the police? I can’t take much more of this. I can’t protect Mikey any more. And I don’t see how any of us can protect Connie. I’m frightened, Sandy. I really am...’
‘Protect Mikey? Listen Ed, one of those raving lunatics waving a gun around back there is the effing police, I’ve just discovered. Oh, and the other one is your dangerous half-wit of a brother!’
‘No. No. It can’t be.’
‘I’m afraid so. And I want to know how the hell he found us.’
‘Oh my God.’
Ed turned to look directly at Jones as she spoke, and seemed to lose concentration. The car hit the curb again.
Jones grabbed the steering wheel and straightened the vehicle up.
‘Is it safe to stop?’ asked Ed weakly.
Jones thought for a moment. They had been driving for more than ten minutes and had put a considerable distance between themselves and the Wall Street incident. They’d pulled out of the financial district into parts of New York where there was always traffic, day and night. They were no longer conspicuous.
‘I reckon so,’ she said.
Ed turned into a side road and drew the car to a halt, slumping over the steering wheel.
‘Was Mikey shot back there?’
‘How the hell do I know?’ asked Jones, who was not feeling at all sympathetic concerning Mikey MacEntee. ‘It was all I could do to save my own skin.’
‘Oh my God! What’s he doing? What’s he playing at? Was he on his own?’
‘He seemed to be. As far as I could make out. It’s how he got to be there in the first place that I want to know.’
‘That’s nothing to do with me,’ said Ed quickly. ‘I haven’t spoken to him since early this morning. I certainly didn’t tell him I was meeting you, or where. You believe me, don’t you?’
‘I don’t know what to believe.’
Jones studied Ed carefully. He looked a complete wreck. Could it really be possible that he had deliberately led his crazy brother to them?
‘I thought at first that Gaynor had set us up,’ Jones continued. ‘But she didn’t react like that.’
Jones raised her hands to her face, trying to concentrate, to apply logic to a desperate situation.
‘Let’s try and work this out, Ed. It goes without saying, I hope, that I didn’t tell Mikey anything. When he questioned me at Princeton, I didn’t even have anything to tell. You say it wasn’t you. That leaves Gaynor, Dom or Connie. It’s idiotic that it would be Connie. Apart from which Dom’s got her under guard almost. He won’t leave her for a minute. None of this makes any sense.’
Jones tried desperately to think how a professional would. How they did it in all those movies she’d watched. The idea of electronic surveillance sprung to mind. It was perhaps the only other alternative.
‘Could Mikey have bugged your car in some way, like you think he did your phone at home?’
‘Sandy, this isn’t even my car.’
‘Of course not.’ Jones was angry with herself for forgetting. ‘And, anyway, he homed in on me. We were a hundred yards or so apart when he turned up. Modern surveillance equipment is usually dead accurate. It would have led him straight to you. Not me.’
The interior of the car was cool. But Jones was sweating.
Suddenly she smashed one clenched fist into the dashboard, and with her other hand reached into her jacket pocket.
‘Your pen, Ed,’ she said. ‘Your fucking pen. I didn’t return it to you. Did Mikey give it to you by any chance?’
Ed nodded.
‘Yes. Just a few weeks ago. For my birthday.’
Jones produced the pen and began to attack it. She unscrewed its shaft and inside found a tiny battery attached to an equally tiny cylindrical object.
‘That’s a transmitter,’ she said.
At once she got out of the car and hurried around to the driver’s side, at the same time throwing both the transmitter and its battery on the ground and crunching them beneath her feet.
‘Move across, Ed,’ she commanded. ‘I’m driving, and we’re getting out of here. Mikey, or some other bastard, could still be tracking us.’
She slammed the gear shift into drive and took off at speed, only slowing down when they had put several blocks between themselves and the abandoned surveillance gadget.
‘I just can’t believe it,’ said Ed. ‘I really liked that pen. I carried it with me all the time. Mikey knew that. It never occurred to me for a moment.’
He broke off and grabbed Jones’s arm.
‘Oh my God. Is it a voice transmitter? Does that mean he’s heard all that we’ve been saying tonight?’
Jones shook her head. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘For a start he didn’t behave back there like a man who knew what he was getting into. I think he just followed the signal when he picked it up. And you know what, I also think it could have been a chance thing. We recently did an item on modern surveillance on my TV show. Even the most powerful of these particular little babies will only work within a radius of a couple of miles or so. They’re air-band, not satellite or anything like that. Now, we believe that Mikey had no idea you were in New York, right?’
‘Right.’
‘But this is where he works most of the time?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘So suddenly, I reckon, we come into range of him and his radio receiver, after we’ve taken off in our separate cars. The signal bleeps at him. He tunes in, but doesn’t get any conversation because I’m on my own with your pen. He gives chase, and tracks the signal down straight to where I’m having my confrontation with Gaynor. Does that make sense to you?’
Ed nodded. ‘I guess so. Mikey was obsessed with me knowing more than I was telling him about RECAP and Paul. And he was always into spy gadgets. Even as a boy.’
‘This is the sort of gadget anybody can buy on the net, Ed. It’s not very sophisticated. I very much doubt it’s FBI issue.’
Ed gave a little snort.
‘The FBI probably don’t trust him with any of their stuff,’ he said.
‘Well, there are restrictions, you know,’ Jones pointed out. ‘More than likely the bastards encourage their people to do this kind of thing unofficially. They’re not supposed to go round bugging people. Remember the row when it was revealed that George Bush had authorized the use of electronic surveillance equipment on private citizens after 9/11? All hell broke out in the UK too, when the boss of the Met was caught out secretly recording telephone conversations.’
‘I’ll bet Mikey’s got in way out of his depth,’ said Ed, with uncanny accuracy. But then, he was Mikey’s brother.
‘His whole life has been that way,’ Ed continued. ‘A series of games that eventually catch up with him. Some game this time.’
‘I just wonder who he’s reporting back to,’ said Jones. ‘There has to be somebody. And just how far up the chain of command in this crazy country? That’s what I’d like to know.’
‘It’s all totally unreal, Sandy, isn’t it?’ Ed commented. ‘My brother bugging me. Connie on the run. Paul dead. Marion dreadfully injured.’
Ed fell back in his seat. He looked worn out.
‘Where are we going, anyway?’ he asked.
‘Round in circles at the moment,’ Sandy replied. ‘But I’ve just had an idea. We’ve really got to get out of this town and out of this country fast, Ed. It’s even more dangerous than I realized. And our only bargaining tool, the only thing that might stop whatever is going on here, and save Connie, is the Ruders Theory. So it’s more urgent than ever that we get to the UK—’