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This was a dangerous game, and the stakes were as high as he’d ever played for. The positive in it all, if there was one, was that his search team was the best, and he could access a lot of proprietary NSA intel if necessary, as well as use Homeland Security to augment their efforts. His team couldn’t go overt but they could come pretty close, so Sid was confident they’d get Derrigan sooner rather than later.

He just hoped it was soon enough.

* * *

Koshi was buzzed. His group had polished off a fair amount of liquor at the restaurant and then they’d stopped in for a nightcap at one of the large dance clubs in the Village. The gang had three or four haunts they favored, and the sushi place was closest to a club that catered to a mostly Asian crowd, so they dropped in to see if anything was jumping. It was a Thursday and the crowd was thick, packed to the rafters with those trying to get a jumpstart on the weekend’s partying.

Koshi had downed a few Red Bull and vodka cocktails, and then reluctantly pulled away from the group, bidding them a fond goodnight. It was midnight by that point, but the streets were still humming with pedestrians, so he felt okay hoofing it to his place, which was eight long blocks away. He reasoned the exercise would help sober him up, and began making a mental checklist of the items he’d need to pack for a couple of days at his cousin’s. There was no way he would be leaving tonight for Jersey, but he could get out by six a.m. and be there by eight, which would be fine, he was sure. Michael was over-reacting to what was a completely routine security job. Even if they were questioned, what could he possibly tell anyone? That he had failed to find some old man’s lost e-mail? Wow. Stop the presses for that newsflash. Still, Michael didn’t tend to go off half-cocked, and he’d never been alarmist before, so better to be safe than sorry.

It was a balmy night familiar to early September, one of his favorite times to be out in the city. Summer could get unbearably muggy and hot, but this year had been mild and the fall was shaping up to be a beauty. There were very few places in the world where it was as good to be young, single, and with some money in your pocket than in New York. Koshi was making the most of it. His consulting business paid extremely well — he was always in demand as a programmer as well as a hacker. Of course, the hacking paid far better, and it was truly what he enjoyed doing, so Koshi couldn’t complain about much. Sure, he drank too much on occasion and burned the candle at both ends, but that was what you were supposed to do when you were in your twenties. So what the hell. He had plenty of time to grow up later. For now, life was a party and a game.

Two blocks from his house a figure startled him, stepping out of a doorway and blocking the sidewalk. One of the town’s homeless population, wanting a cigarette or a handout. Koshi was used to such encounters. He fished out a Marlboro and tossed it to the man even as he skillfully avoided any contact. Some of these creeps could be dangerous, especially late at night, so he kept a few feet of distance between himself and the shabbily dressed vagrant. Koshi picked up the sour scent of alcohol and nicotine, as well as urine and general decay.

“God bless you, man,” the shambling form mumbled as he passed. “You got a light?”

“Gotta run, bruthah. Enjoy the smoke,” Koshi responded without stopping. He knew from experience that if you engaged street people you were setting yourself up for them to hit you up for something else. A light would turn into a request for some spare change, which could easily spiral into a demand. Best just to avoid the whole mess and pick up the pace.

Koshi’s combat boots thunked against the sidewalk as he rounded the corner of his block. He automatically checked behind over his shoulder, as well as across the street and down the block, before turning and unlocking the building’s front door. When you lived in the city, you became sensitive to potential threats, and by now this sort of late night scan was routine. Everything was quiet.

He mounted the stairs to his apartment, which was on the second floor, situated over a dry cleaner’s shop. As he stepped onto the landing, he felt a tickle of apprehension. What the fuck. Michael had him afraid of his own shadow. There was nobody around, just his battered door with three deadbolts, and opposite, the door of his neighbor — a geriatric Vietnam vet who drank his dinner and was usually passed out by nightfall. Koshi keyed his locks, humming drunkenly to himself, and pushed his door open.

The electric current hit him with blinding suddenness, his legs buckling like spaghetti as his muscles lost control. The wavering hulk of two figures stood over him, one of whom was holding a cattle prod. Both wore black and were smiling.

“Koshi Yamaguchi, I presume?” the shorter of the two inquired conversationally. Then everything went dark.

* * *

The East River at dawn was eerily calm before the bustle of the city got into full gear. Joggers and bicyclists moved along the waterfront paths — the more athletically inclined of the island’s residents striving, as always, to get in their exercise before the workday began. Laborers lounged around roach coaches along the concrete embankments that framed the river, joking with one another before starting their construction shifts.

A six year old boy strolled along, gripping the hand of his eighty-four year old great-grandfather. This was their bonding time. They ambled along the river as the old man had done with his children, then his grandchildren, and now this generation.

Things in the city had changed dramatically since the Great Depression, which was the environment he’d been raised in. His father, a railroad man, had been one of the fortunate few who remained employed throughout those days of darkness. He still remembered the shanties in the parks of that era, the Hoovervilles where the homeless and downtrodden had hung their hats even as the wealthiest people in America rode by in their exotic automobiles on their way to day jobs on Wall Street. Even as a teenager, during the 1939 World Fair, he remembered the stark contrast between the haves and the have nots.

He’d lived in the city his entire life, through the post-World War II era prosperity and the hope of the fifties, through the troubled and divided years that marked the sixties and seventies, when crime soared through Manhattan and his neighborhood went from a relatively-safe family area to a violent ghetto. Then a trend of surprising urbanization and newfound prosperity had hit, and after decades in squalor, he’d found himself with new neighbors who’d paid seven figures for rundown brownstone walkups that had previously housed drug gangs and addicts.

The more things changed, the more they stayed the same, though. The concentration of wealth and power had never been greater with the financial elite than it was today, with some hedge fund managers making as much per year as the gross domestic product of small nations. Even as the average Joe couldn’t afford a cup of coffee on the island anymore, the wealthy got wealthier — as they had done so since the dawn of civilization. There were some things that would be perennial.

For now, the old man had his memories and his treasured quiet time with his great-grandson, Bernard, before he had to get the boy home to his ma so they could truck off to school. These weekday morning walks lasted half an hour and were an important time for the old man; a reminder of the vitality of new life as well as of his ebbing time on earth. The cycle was relentless, he’d seen far too much to try to fight it anymore. He had his small chunk carved out for walks with Bernard, and that, in the end, was enough.