Tim Stevens - Delivering Caliban

Everybody had glanced across and appraised Pope and, of course, Nina; but when Pope had steered them over to the solitary man the rest of the customers, perhaps twelve in all, lost interest. Pope held a fan of dollar bills up between his fingers.

‘We need a ride to New York.’

The man finished swallowing, nodding as he did so. ‘Going to Queens, as it happens.’

After refusing the offer of cash, the man reapplied himself to his meal. Pope wanted to say, no, fifteen minutes is too long to wait; twenty is even worse. We need to go now. But there was no legitimate reason why the time taken to finish a truck stop meal should make any difference, unless of course Pope and Nina were on the run. So Pope sat Nina on one of the stools and propped himself beside her and ordered coffee for two. In the long mirror on the opposite side of the counter he watched the windows, waiting for the sweeping lights beyond to change to flickering blue and red.

The trucker — Joel, he’d introduced himself as — made enthusiastic recommendations about the meatloaf, the cherry pie, and Pope answered him politely but non-committally. In answer to the inevitable question he said he was Mark Logan — the name on his driver’s licence — and that the lady, his girlfriend, was Carmela. Her mother in Brooklyn was seriously ill and they were travelling overnight to see her; that was why she sat silent and jumpy. Their car had broken down five miles back; the AA were taking care of it, but it would take a couple of days to fix.

‘Pissy luck, man,’ said Joel, sounding genuinely sorry.

The minute hand of the clock on the wall swept impossibly quickly through ten minutes, then fifteen. Pope felt the knot of tension in his stomach start to unfurl and spread branches.

He glanced at Nina. She sat resting her elbows on the counter, her head lowered, the coffee untouched before her. She hadn’t said anything since the crash. Every now and again she’d look up, but not at him; her eyes would flick about as though following an invisible point of darting light.

He understood that this was more than a delayed reaction to the violence of the last half a day, the horror and confusion of what he’d revealed to her about her parents. The girl was ill.

Pope had known a boy at school who’d started to behave oddly at the age of fifteen: his grades had begun to drop, he’d starting cutting himself off from the few friends he had, and he used to sit in one corner of the classroom filling both exercise and text books with doodles. One day the teacher had confronted him when he started drawing on the walls, and he’d laughed and run out. He hadn’t returned to the school, but a few years later Pope had met him by chance in the street. The boy had put on an enormous amount of weight, walked with a peculiar slow deliberation, and his eyes seldom blinked. He’d shown no recognition whatsoever when Pope met his gaze.

Curious, Pope did a little digging and discovered the boy had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. He learned that the symptoms — hallucinations, delusions — could exist on a spectrum and were present sometimes in people who were otherwise highly functioning.

The trucker, Joel, was bantering with the blowsy blonde behind the counter as he settled the bill. Pope leaned towards Nina and said, ‘It’s the voices, isn’t it?’

She didn’t look at him, quite, but her eyes flicked sideways in his direction, and her breathing caught.

‘We can talk later, if you want,’ he murmured. ‘I know what it’s like. I hear them, too.’

It was, by his calculation, only the third lie he’d told her. He’d lied earlier when he told her the CIA men pursuing her wanted her dead.

And he’d lied when he told her: You can survive this .

Manhattan, New York City

Monday 20 May, 10.25 pm

Giordano’s phone rang as he was heading down the corridor to the offices where Campbell and Barker were being kept. He was in the Company’s Midtown base, a cleverly anonymous warren fronted by an old, apparently residential brownstone.

It was Naomi. ‘Boss, can you talk?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You may have heard already, but there’s been a shooting out in New Jersey. Four Company agents dead.’

‘What?’

‘A real firefight. Some kind of explosion, M16s being used, the works. At the home of an ex-agent, Dennis Crosby.’

‘What the hell happened?’

‘I don’t have much else at the moment. One of my contacts in the Jersey PD who I’d primed to look out for Purkiss phoned it in a few minutes ago. Happened around six this evening.’

‘I haven’t been told any of this… Naomi, thanks. Keep me up to date.’

‘Sure.’

Giordano paused in the corridor, gripping his forehead. Then he continued down to the office he was looking for, the floorboards wincing under his bulky stride. He knocked on the door and opened without waiting for a reply.

The two men, Campbell and Barker, sat with another agent.

‘Giordano,’ he said to the third man. ‘Out. I want to talk to these guys alone.’

*

Afterwards he wandered back and found Krugmann, the head of Midtown, in conversation with a group of people in an open plan area.

‘A word,’ he said. Krugmann glared at him craggily. He dismissed the others and took Giordano to his own office, closing the door. Giordano knew the man resented his intrusion, felt the Langley officer was pissing all over his territory. That was too bad. Whatever you need, you’ve got. No restrictions , the Director had said.

‘They talk to you?’ Krugmann said.

‘Never mind that. Four operatives killed in a firefight three hours ago? You were going to tell me this — when?’

Krugmann wiped a hand across his face. ‘You just got here, Ray. And with the greatest respect, what’s it got to do with you?’

‘What’s it — ? With slightly less respect, Bob , I’m investigating the systematic assassination of until tonight three Company executives. Investigating on the express orders of the Director. So that’s what the shooting of four more agents has to do with me.’

Krugmann gazed at him from under tortoise lids. ‘You’d better sit down,’ he said, indicating a chair and sinking into one himself.

Giordano sat.

‘What were the agents doing there? At this Crosby’s house?’

Krugmann steepled his fingers, touched the tips to his lips. ‘We don’t know.’

‘Don’t know.’

‘That’s right, Ray.’ Krugmann leaned back in his swivel chair, clasping his hands behind his head, sighing as he stretched. ‘There was no sanctioned operation. These four men were acting on their own.’

‘Oh, Jesus.’ Giordano stared at Krugmann. ‘A freelance cell.’

‘Something like that, it appears. Yes.’ Krugmann’s tone dropped. ‘These guys were from New York, which means I and the other borough chiefs are up to our eyelashes in the shit right now.’

Giordano flicked his fingers in a come hither gesture. ‘Give me some facts. Names.’

*

Despite his bulk he could work quickly, Giordano, and he absorbed and assimilated the information as he read it off the reports. One fact caught his attention and he paused at it.

The police responded to an anonymous call from an individual claiming to be a Federal agent.

There was nothing unusual about a person phoning in anonymously with information, nor with such a person living out their fantasies and pretending to be someone they weren’t. But it made Giordano think of something.

To Krugmann he said, ‘Keep Campbell and Barker in the building. I need to speak to them again for a minute.’

Campbell had told him there’d been a woman on the scene. He’d caught only a glimpse — he’d been buried beneath an airbag at the time — but she’d looked tough, like a professional.