“Too fast, apparently!” All composure left Claney’s face, replaced by fury. “You got rid of this Kathleen girl without letting me know first! You’ve trashed the police station! You’ve started a shootout right in the center of Manhattan! And here’s the result: Shelby’s on the loose, bracelet-free, the hard disk in his pocket! How do you suggest we find him?”
The Congressman’s glare stabbed Dickens who didn’t blink an eyelid.
“Kirk,” Binelli hurried to step in, turning to the blond man, “didn’t you say that the hard disk had a special connector?”
“Yes, sir,” Dickens nodded. “You can only access the data either from Baker’s workplace or from your own.”
“But the police,” Binelli twisted in his chair, reached for the cup, remembered it was empty and lay his clenched fists on the desk to hide his trembling fingers. “If the police found the hard disk, would they be able to access the data?”
“Theoretically yes, sir. The data is encrypted by a built-in encoder. The key to it is in the security server’s memory.” Dickens spoke as if reporting to a sergeant major on parade. His pale eyes remained cold. “In order to copy it and access the data, you need to obtain the remote password. And I’m the only person who can enter it, sir.”
“Which means-” Claney turned to Binelli.
“Which means neither Shelby nor the police can read it.”
The manager held his breath watching the Congressman’s reaction. For a brief moment, Claney hesitated.
“I want you to find Shelby,” he looked up at Dickens’ face. “Tomorrow morning I’m meeting with the President. The day after, he and I unveil the Vaccination project. You have just over twenty-four hours to do it.”
With a wave of his hand, Claney dismissed him. Mechanically, Binelli nodded. The blond man about-turned and headed for the opening in the wall.
The raincoat and cap smelled of mothballs. Frank had bought them from a migrant by the subway exit. Both looked as if the man had unearthed them in his storage box that very morning, and then only in order to sell them.
Frank sniggered at his own rambling. He had more important things to think about. He rubbed his cheeks and perked up. He needed to make a plan and decide, at the very least, what to do next and where to spend the night.
Frank hid his ears under the cap, raised the collar and shoved his hands deep into the raincoat pockets, feeling for a hefty metal-cased device in the right one. Frank didn’t know much about computers but this definitely looked like the kind of thing to be hooked up to one. The device resembled a portable hard drive encased in a sturdy — possibly, even anti-shock — casing.
Now why would Kathleen have sent it to him, of all people? Why by mail, of all things?
Frank stopped in his tracks. He shut his eyes and gave out a sharp breath, but the nightmare refused to go: Kathleen, staring at him with her eyes glazed over; the old post office manager, gasping, his agonized mouth bleeding; the woman in the subway and her disfigured, harrowed face.
The street swam before his eyes. His ears droned. Frank pulled his hands out of his pockets, turned to face the wall and grasped at it, feeling the stone. He vomited violently, spasms squeezing his throat. He spat pink and yellow, wiped his mouth and breathed deeply. After a minute, he started again along the street.
The rain had stopped, but it hadn’t made matters any better. A cold Northern wind dragged the thunderclouds away from Harlem. Migrants hurried toward him along the sidewalk heading for the subway entrance. They gave him a wide berth with his swaying, drunken gait. Mike must have told him the truth about the curfew: all Bronx camp dwellers seemed in a hurry to leave Manhattan.
Frank stole a glance at his watch: very soon the streets would be deserted. A patrol car appeared at the intersection, so he shoved his hands back into his pockets and strode as naturally as he could, his back straight, The cops drove past paying no attention to him.
The moment the patrol car turned off, Frank crossed the street to the busier side, passed the intersection and joined a bus queue not quite knowing yet why he was doing it. The bus wasn’t the safest option: sooner or later he’d attract attention by not getting off, and either the driver or one of the passengers would recognize and report him.
The line started moving — deep in his thoughts, he hadn’t even noticed the approaching bus. Frank was the last to get on. He handed the driver a fifty-dollar note. The driver didn’t look surprised: the proximity of Bronx with its hordes of braceletless migrants made cash transactions a common-or-garden occurrence. To pay for a ride, normally all you had to do was sweep the bracelet over the scanner by the entrance allowing the system to read the chip and extract the fare from your personal account, but without a bracelet, migrants couldn’t use electronic payments.
Without looking at Frank, the driver counted his change. Frank made his way along the crowded bus, grabbed onto a rail overhead and stood there staring at the tinted door window.
Smoothly, the bus accelerated; the engine purred in the back, giving a light whine whenever the gears changed; the hydraulic brakes hissed.
He had to make up his mind. Frank rubbed his temple, felt the graze on his chin and froze as his eyes followed a poster on a newsstand wall. Only a week left till the Fifty-Ninth Boxing Cup. Next to him, two dark-skinned guys were busy commenting on the last Cup, one of them rhapsodizing over the final when a certain Red Jack had knocked Rudy Novak out in the twenty-first second.
Frank listened with half an ear trying to find his bearings. He turned round and touched the speaker’s sleeve,
“D’you know if Max’s club is far from here?”
The two exchanged glances. One of them seemed to be of Hindi origin, the other, an African American.
“Why, do you know him?” the Hindi squinted.
“I do.”
The bus jerked under braking. The passengers swayed, a few unhappy voices cursing the driver. Frank had to grab at the exit rail with his other hand.
“You get off here,” grabbing his friend’s shoulder, the black guy pointed out of the window as the bus kept going. “go past two houses and turn north. Then it’s about a block further.”
“Thanks,” Frank saluted him and started for the door. “Now I remember.” He smiled, unable to conceal his excitement.
“Are you one of Max’s students?” The Indian leaned across the rail and touched Frank’s shoulder. “We seem to be about the same age. I remember most of them, but not you…”
“Nah. Just a friend,” Frank jumped out not waiting for the door to finish opening.
Shame he hadn’t had a chance to find out more. He wondered if the club still functioned. Did Max still train new competing boxers?
The bus moved on, drenching him in acrid dirty smoke. Frank turned a corner and strode West toward Seventh Avenue.
Another quarter of an hour, and he’d be there. He’d see his old coach. How could he have forgotten his second father? Frank thumped his fist into his palm. His coach used to say that every problem had a solution, whether in the ring or outside of it. He used to say that thinking was man’s main weapon. A thousand times so! Which was exactly why Frank had won all those competitions for him and later, had entered and even graduated from law school. All right, the injury had hindered his boxing career, but what difference did it make now? He’d made up for it with his brilliant legal advance. Now he was a government lawyer, all thanks to his old coach and Frank’s own ability to use thinking as a weapon.
Frank recalled the past year’s events and felt embarrassed. He’d thrown everything to the wind, all his old principles: he’d fallen for Kathleen and placed all his trust in her. He stopped in his tracks on the curb, nearly jumping the red light. A turning cab honked at him. The lights blinkered and turned green.