Andrew Britton - The Operative

“Fascinating,” May said. He finished his coffee, then turned and offered Hunt his hand. “You’ve done an excellent job here, and I’ll be sure to highlight that in my report.”

“Thank you,” Hunt replied, without enthusiasm. “Well, let’s get you over to Penn Station so I can go back to the office to close out the file. I’ll walk you to the subway.”

May thanked Dr. Gillani. She responded with a little smile but did not look back or leave her post.

“She’s watching for facial signals and muscular reactions along her body,” Hunt explained. “It’s being recorded, but this way she can give Dr. Samson instructions.”

“I see.”

The men were silent as they left the corner penthouse and walked to the elevator. Dr. Gillani had rented two of the ten apartments on the floor, using Trask’s money. She had her hypnotherapy practice in one-this one-and lived in the other next door.

May checked his cell phone on the way down. The assistant director held the phone straight in front of him. If there were overhead cameras in the elevator, they would not be able to see the screen.

The iPhone was not equipped with encryption software, so messages were either oblique or coded with “words of the day.” This was a simple substitution dictionary physically downloaded via USB each morning and overwritten the following morning. The user had to check any unclear words manually so that anyone scanning the Wi-Fi signal would not be able to intercept the dictionary.

“Damn,” he said.

Hunt looked at him. He didn’t have to ask what it was about. “Update?”

“Yeah.”

The door opened, and they crossed the lobby in silence. A few people moved around them, some tenants taking their dogs for a walk, deliverymen arriving with dinner for others. A few were sitting in the chairs along the walls, working on laptops. May had admired the maritime murals when he entered an hour before. He didn’t notice them now.

“Two agents were killed at the hotel,” May said when they were outside. “By another agent.”

“Obviously an impostor,” Hunt said.

They walked east, turned north on Washington Street. Hunt walked slightly apart from May, to his left. He was still decrypting the message as they passed the dark edifice of One Western Union International Plaza, which was also on the left. To the right was the deep, sloping entranceway to the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. A block ahead, a footbridge over the tunnel ramp led to the subway entrance.

The building had a large overhang supported by columns. A homeless man was huddled against the locked doors of the twenty-story black tower. While May was concentrating on the phone, Hunt stopped and walked over to the older African American, who was huddled in a worn blanket. There were no security cameras under here. They were all on the street, watching the street. Hunt had avoided them by walking close to the building. All they would show was May.

Hunt kicked the man hard in the face with the bottom of his shoe. The homeless man yelped. May looked over.

“Alex! What are you-”

“Goddamn beggar!” Hunt snarled. He stomped on the cheek of the fallen man.

May shoved his phone in his pocket as he ran over. He bear-hugged the bigger man, but Hunt was ready for him. He was expecting him.

Hunt gave May a hard elbow to the chest, breaking the hold, then turned. He swung hard at the man’s face, catching him against his left ear. He threw an uppercut to his jaw, then jabbed his nose. May staggered back against the black tile wall. Hunt had taken pains to hit him square, never punching down, so it would look like a shorter man-which the homeless person was-had hit him. While May sucked blood up his nose, Hunt drove his knuckles repeatedly into his windpipe. Then he scratched his eyes, his cheeks, his neck as he went down.

He had to make it look like a scrap.

When May hit the sidewalk, Hunt pulled an old boot from the dazed beggar, slipped his fist inside, and pounded the heel hard, repeatedly, into May’s face. Then he put the boot, covered with blood, back on the homeless man, bent over May, grabbed his ears, and drove his head hard into the concrete.

Brain tissue clung to the pavement. May was no longer breathing.

Hunt glanced behind him to make sure no one was walking by. The street was empty. He had been down this road often enough to know that dog walkers preferred Battery Park across the street. Except for people coming in from the subway-and there were few this time of night-the street was largely untraveled. Even if anyone came by, the darkness beside the office building was thick. Because of the high fence beside the tunnel entrance, the street was invisible from the buildings across the way on Trinity Place.

Pulling a handkerchief from his pocket, he fished May’s wallet from his inside jacket pocket and tucked it in the bundle of garments that was the homeless man.

“Wha-”

“Shut up, pig,” Hunt said to the groggy man.

Then he took off May’s big college ring and punched the man again, leaving an impression on his jaw. He hit him several times in the side of the head, until blood oozed from his ear. Then he wiped his prints off and put the ring back on May’s dead finger. The cops would conclude that there had been an attempted mugging, a struggle, and mutual assured destruction.

Hunt walked to the street and made a final check. No one was around. He walked quickly back to his building.

You had to make a visit now, he thought angrily.

They’d needed the cover of a legitimate FBI project to justify Hunt’s presence. But they also needed a little more time to finish. May had not recognized Yasmin Rassin, but then he did not know Veil was not on her way to Pakistan as planned. When he learned that back at his office, when he saw her photograph, he would have put things together.

And then there was this latest news. Of all the goddamn luck, to have someone “made” at the hotel. The man at the hotel wasn’t real FBI; he was a Saudi medical student at Johns Hopkins. Unlike the “Indian rani,” he had actually volunteered to be part of Gillani’s bogus trauma mitigation studies. Still, that would put the Bureau in Baltimore under all kinds of scrutiny. If they found the kid, he would remember nothing, but they would learn from e-mails that he had been to New York, that he had been here.

All they needed was another day. Hopefully, the kid would return to his daily life and would remain hidden for that long.

Hunt walked through the revolving door at One West. He looked at the concierge and shook his head. “Text, text, text.”

“Sir?”

“My friend,” Hunt said. “I got tired of waiting. Pointed to the subway. He can find it himself.”

“I don’t blame you.” The doorman smiled. “It’s the same with my kids.”

“Hey, how are they?”

“Good, sir. Thank you for asking.”

Hunt smiled until he passed the reception desk. He liked the young man as far as that went, but he couldn’t worry about anything but the mission right now. All he wanted was the doorman’s good will and something resembling an alibi. Even if the police called him in as part of their investigation, they wouldn’t have cause to arrest him in time. Not before the second part of the operation put everything else in the city-in the nation-on hold.

He took the penthouse elevator and returned to the laboratory. He was not about to let a premature review of the FBI’s investment in the Xana project jeopardize the program, not when they were so close to realizing their goal.

“Is everything all right?” Dr. Gillani asked when he stepped up behind her.

“It’s been taken care of,” he assured her.

“Functionaries,” she said disdainfully. “It is their job to collect enough small minds to stop larger ones.”