Andrew Grant - Even

“We do know. Think about it. How much does a black-market kidney cost? Including the surgery?”

“I don’t know. One hundred fifty thousand dollars, maybe? Why?”

“Taylor said they were doing one procedure a day. They have five clinics. That’s $250 million a year, even if they stop for Christmas. You’d want a pretty big bang to turn your back on that amount of bucks.”

The two youths had moved farther down the street. They were lurking near another row of parked cars. I strolled to the end of the block to take a closer look. I saw one of them hook a piece of gum out of his mouth and stick it to the top of the aerial on an old, square Chevrolet. Then they moved on to the next car in line. It was an XKR in slate-gray metallic, gleaming as though it had just rolled out of the showroom.

The guy who’d been chewing the gum leaned on the Jaguar’s front wing with both hands, fingers spread wide like fat starfishes. He pressed down for ten seconds before straightening up and looking to see how much grease and filth had been transferred to the paint. His pal nodded and started to idly pick at the tip of the windshield wiper. Then they noticed me watching them. Instinctively I began to melt away, but I stopped. Because something struck me. I wasn’t working. I was on my own time. There was no need to be invisible, that night. It didn’t matter who saw me, or if anyone remembered my face afterward. I could stare at those guys as blatantly as I liked. I could even go over and encourage them to show a little more respect for other people’s vehicles.

The idea was growing on me. But before I could act on it my phone began to ring again. And this time, it was Tanya.

“David, I’m so sorry,” she said.

“You’re not coming,” I said.

“No.”

“Why not? What is it this time?”

“Don’t be cross, David. I’m in trouble.”

“Why? What happened?”

“Inside my apartment. Two guys grabbed me. Now they’re holding me.”

“Are you hurt?”

“No. I’m OK. So far.”

“Good. Now, where are you?”

“At the clinic.”

“They’re holding you at the clinic? On Sixty-sixth Street?”

“Yes.”

“Have they said what they want?”

“Yes. You. They want you to come here, to the clinic, on your own.”

“Me?”

“Yes. They say if you come alone, inside one hour, they’ll let me go.”

“They asked for me by name?”

“Yes. But David, don’t do it. Find Mansell. I’ll be-Ow. Someone just hit me.”

“Don’t be silly, Tanya. I’m coming to get you. Don’t worry. This will all work out fine. Now, tell me. How many people are holding you? One. Two. Three. Four.”

“Yes.”

“Which part of the building are you in? The basement. Ground floor. First floor.”

“Yes. Ow. They hit me again. They say our time’s up.”

“OK. Stay strong then, Tanya. I’m on my way. There’s nothing to worry about. And whoever these guys are, they’re going to pay.”

“One more thing. They’re going to text a photo of me to your phone. To remember me by. Because they say if you don’t make it here inside an hour, or don’t come alone, you won’t recognize what you find.”

“Tell them not to bother,” I said. “I won’t be needing it.”

Dead-letter boxes went out with the ark, but the navy still trains you to use them.

It’s not that unreasonable, if you think about it. Often the simplest solution is the best, and it’s unwise to always rely on technology. And whether we thought we’d ever need the skill or not, we were sent into a south London housing estate, in pairs, to practice. One person to leave a coded message, the other to retrieve it.

My role had been to retrieve. I waited until the agreed time, then approached the drop. I walked past twice, to be sure no one was watching. But when I was happy the coast was clear, I found there was no package to pick up. I was annoyed, rather than worried. I assumed the other guy had screwed up, so I pulled back to our rendezvous point to share my thoughts on his performance. I was fifty feet away when someone sprang out at me from a gap in a broken-down fence. It was a guy from the next group up on our course. He said my partner had been mugged by a bunch of local youths and dragged into a lockup garage around the next corner. There were eight of them, and they’d been laying into him with baseball bats. He was hurt pretty bad.

We moved silently forward and peeked around the end of the fence. I could see the garage. It was on its own, surrounded by crumbling, gravel-strewn tarmac. A trail of blood led to a single vehicle-sized door at the front, which was now closed. The guy from the course wanted to rush it. With two of us he thought we’d be OK. I wasn’t so sure. There was no way of approaching silently or under cover. We had no weapons. No knowledge of the youths’ objectives or disposition. Nothing to force open the door. No information on the area or surroundings. And strong odds we’d end up giving them three hostages instead of one.

I pulled out my phone. It was the right decision to make. The whole scenario had been staged. The emergency procedures were drummed into us every day. We all knew the backup facilities that were available to us. The question was, did you have the presence of mind to use them when it really counted? Or would you become John Wayne and make the situation worse?

Varley, Weston, and Lavine were already in their mobile command center when I got there, twenty minutes after I sent the balloon up. It was tucked in at the end of a row of maintenance vehicles behind Temple Emanu-El on Sixty-fifth and Fifth. All three were in the control room. Weston was nearest the front, sitting at a console. The others were standing behind him. They were all staring at an array of flat-panel monitors. There were nine, arranged in a square that covered the whole end wall. None of them were working.

The central panel flickered into life just as I walked in. It showed a dainty four-story building, only two windows wide with ornate stone carvings around the frames and a sloping roof covered with embossed copper sheeting. The hulking, utilitarian offices that bore down on each side made it seem tiny and out of place, like a slice of old-world Europe sandwiched between two concrete cubes.

“The external camera’s online,” Weston said.

“That’s the place?” I said.

“It is,” Lavine said. “Looks respectable, doesn’t it, for a human chop shop.”

“It does,” I said. “But we can soon change that.”

“That won’t be easy,” Varley said. “We have no ground-level access at the back. No approach for a vehicle. First- and second-floor windows are heavily barred. There are no skylights.”

“What about a cellar?” I said.

“There’s no access to one. And we can’t blast through from the neighboring buildings. Old place like that, there’s too much risk of collapse.”

“That just leaves the front,” I said.

“Right. The front door, and the two dormer windows on the roof.”

“What about inside?” I said. “Any idea where they’re holding her? She told me the first floor on the phone, but she could have been moved.”

“Nothing yet. But we’ve got surveillance teams in both office buildings. Kyle, any word on the fiber cameras?”

“Any minute now,” Weston said. “They’ve finished drilling through. The cables are all in place. Wait-the first camera’s coming up now.”

As we watched, a shadowy, indistinct picture spread across the bottom left-hand monitor. I had to look closely, but could just about make out three rows of shelves piled up with bedding and towels. They were leading away from us, toward a distant flight of stone steps.