Nelson DeMille - Night Fall

I said to the sergeant, “What’s the route?”

He replied, “We’re going to shoot over to the West Side, unless you have a preference.”

“Sounds good.” I said to him, “Do you understand that some folks might want to fuck with us?”

“Yeah. They can fuck away all they want.”

“Everybody on this detail knows the drill?”

“Yup.”

“So, what do you think of the FBI?”

He laughed and said, “No comment.”

“How about the CIA?”

“Never met one.”

Lucky you. I sat back in the seat and looked at my watch. It was 8:21, and depending on traffic, we’d be maybe fifteen minutes late, which was fine. Nash, the control freak, and his breakfast club would be at least fifteen minutes early anyway, thinking we’d be early. They could sit and sweat into their caffe lattes.

Most meetings are mind-fucking games, and this one was going to be an orgy.

We made our way through traffic, and within ten minutes, we were heading south on Joe DiMaggio Highway, also known as Twelfth Avenue, and while we’re at it, West Street. Whatever, it ran along the Hudson River, and it was a nice drive on a sunny day. The three-car convoy was weaving around traffic, and making better time than the civilians, who’d get a ticket for driving like that.

It was about a five-mile run down to the Trade Center, whose Twin Towers I could see long before we got there.

In my jacket was the video store tape of A Man and a Woman, which I’d put inside the cardboard case from Jill’s tape that said, “Property of the Bayview Hotel-Please Return.” If the Feds had any kind of warrant when I got there, they could serve the warrant on me, or Kate, or Jill, and try to take the tape, or us-or the tape and us-to another location. But they couldn’t serve a warrant on Patrolman Alvarez, even if they had a clue that he had the X-rated version of the tape.

In any case, I didn’t think Nash and company wanted a major scene in a public restaurant where about three hundred people would be having breakfast. But maybe, if I was in one of my perverse moods, I’d give them my R-rated version of A Man and a Woman.

I looked through the windshield, and I could see the patrol car with Jill and Alvarez, but I couldn’t see the lead car with Kate. Traffic was moving, but it was erratic, and a lot of truckers were driving badly this morning.

I looked at my watch. 8:31. We’d just passed the 30 thStreet Heliport, and the Chelsea Piers were coming up. About another three miles at this speed, and we’d be pulling up to the Vesey Street side of the North Tower at about 8:45, give or take.

I actually wasn’t expecting any problems on the ride there, or during the walk into the lobby, or in the elevator that went directly to Windows on the World on the 107 thfloor. In fact, I didn’t expect any problems at the breakfast meeting, which was basically a show-and-tell, to see whose dicks were bigger, and whose balls weighed the most.

I know how Nash’s mind works, and the guy is patient, cunning, and sometimes smart. He wanted to see who I showed up with. He wanted to hear what I had to say. He wanted to get a reading on Jill Winslow, and he wanted to see if we actually had the tape with us. Nash wasn’t going to bring anyone to that meeting who wasn’t already part of a conspiracy, so there wouldn’t be anyone there from the attorney general’s office, unless it was someone who was in on this, or an impostor, which is part of the CIA culture. I mean, Ted Nash often poses as an FBI agent, and when I first met him, he said he was an employee of the Department of Agriculture. Then, for a while, he made believe he was dead. And sometimes he poses as a possible ex-lover of Kate Mayfield. The only time he’s not acting is when he’s being an asshole.

Maybe, too, Nash, because he was a sick prick, had invited Mark Winslow to breakfast for the purpose of messing with Jill’s mind. Same with Bud Mitchell, who I was fairly sure would be there.

In any case, the breakfast meeting was, for Nash, a voir dire-a look-and-talk. The problem would come after the meeting, at which time, I was sure, Nash would make his move. Or, to put it another way, it was like the banquet where you invited your enemies to sit, talk, and eat, then killed them afterward. Actually, breakfast was my idea, but you get the point.

Nash must know, if he had half a brain, that I would mobilize some muscle for this, and that the muscle would be NYPD. Therefore, he had a counter-force waiting in the wings. But as the sergeant in the front of me had said, “They can fuck away all they want.”

I understood, of course, that I was having a personal problem with Mr. Ted Nash, and that some of this had to do with that. But even if I didn’t know the guy, or even if I liked him (which I didn’t), I don’t see how I could have handled this any differently.

The sergeant in front said to me, “My instructions are to wait for your meeting to end, then take you and your party out of the building into the patrol cars. Correct?”

“Correct. This is where you might run into some Federal types with different plans.”

He said to me, “I had a situation like that once-Feds wanted this guy on a drug charge, and I had an arrest warrant for the same guy on the same charge.”

“Who got the guy?”

“We did. But the Feds got him later.” He added, “In the end, they get their way. You know, the FBI always gets their man, blah, blah, blah. But in the beginning, on the spot, we get first dibs.”

“Right.”

He asked me, “Where to afterward?”

“I’m not sure yet. Anyplace but the Federal Detention Center.”

He laughed.

I looked out the window at the river and the Jersey shore. Tomorrow, or this afternoon, I expected to be at the ATTF offices at 26 Federal Plaza with my feet up on Jack Koenig’s desk, and his office filled with good guys. The FBI, for all my personal problems with them, were straight shooters, professionals, and very letter-of-the-law men and women. As soon as this case got transferred from John Corey’s part-time, off-duty hobby to the FBI, I could go on vacation with Kate. Maybe she wanted to see where I’d spent a month and a half in Yemen.

The traffic got snarled around the Holland Tunnel, and I said to the guys in front, “Do you have the middle car in sight?”

The driver replied, “Not anymore. You want me to call them?”

“Yeah.”

He called both cars, and the lead car with Kate replied, “We’re here. Parked on Vesey and going into WTC North.”

“Ten-four.”

The second car reported, “We’re turning off West. ETA about two minutes.”

“Ten-four.”

I looked at my watch. It was 8:39. We should be about five minutes from the Vesey Street side of the big pedestrian plaza that surrounded the Trade Center complex. A few minutes walk to the North Tower lobby, then up the high-speed elevator to the lobby of Windows on the World. I said to the sergeant, “I need both of you to come with me.”

He nodded and said, “We got one guy from the lead vehicle watching the cars. We’re with you.”

“Good.”

We turned onto Vesey Street, and at 8:44 we pulled up beside two double-parked patrol cars. I got out, and the two cops with me followed. They spoke to the cop watching the vehicles, who just got off his portable radio, and he said to us, “Two civilians”-meaning Kate and Jill-“with four officers inside.”

I climbed the steps from the sidewalk to the raised plaza and began walking toward the entrance of the North Tower. It was 8:45A.M.

As I crossed the busy plaza, I heard what sounded like a low rumble off in the distance, and I could see a few people around me looking up. The two cops with me also glanced up, and one of them said, “Sounds like an aircraft coming in too low at Newark.”