Lee Child - Gone Tomorrow

Subway? Possible. Probable, even. There were three lines within a block’s walk. Night-time schedules, a maximum twenty-minute wait on the platform, but then escape either uptown or downtown. But to where? Nowhere that needed a long walk at the other end. A gaggle of eight people hustling hard on the sidewalk was very noticeable. There were six hundred agents on the streets. The only other hotel option I knew was way west of even the Eighth Avenue line. A fifteen-minute walk, maybe more. Too big a risk of exposure.

So, the subway, but to where?

New York City. Three hundred and twenty square miles. Two hundred and five thousand acres. Eight million separate addresses. I stood there and sorted possibilities like a machine.

I drew a blank.

Then I smiled.

You talk too much, Lila.

I heard her voice in my head again. From the tea room at the Four Seasons. She was talking about the old Afghan fighters. Complaining about them, from her pretended perspective. In reality she was boasting about her own people, and the Red Army’s fruitless back-and-forth skirmishing against them. She had said: The mujahideen were intelligent. They had a habit of doubling back to positions we had previously written off as abandoned.

I set off back to Herald Square. To the R train. I could get out at Fifth and 59th. From there it was a short walk to the old buildings on 58th Street.

THE OLD BUILDINGS ON 58TH STREET WERE ALL DARK AND quiet. Four thirty in the morning, in a neighbourhood that does little business before ten. I was watching from fifty yards away. From a shadowed doorway on the far sidewalk across Madison Avenue. There was crime scene tape across the door with the single bell push. The left-hand building of the three. The one with the abandoned restaurant on the ground floor.

No lights in the windows.

No signs of activity.

The crime scene tape looked unbroken. And inevitably it would have been accompanied by an official NYPD seal. A small rectangle of paper, glued across the gap between door and jamb, at keyhole height. It was probably still there, untorn.

Which meant there was a back door.

Which was likely, with a restaurant on the premises. Restaurants generate all kinds of unpleasant garbage. All day long. It smells, and it attracts rats. Not acceptable to pile it on the sidewalk. Better to dump it in sealed cans outside the kitchen door, and then wheel the cans to the kerb for the night-time pick-up.

I moved twenty yards south to widen my angle. Saw no open alleys. The buildings were all cheek-by-jowl, all along the block. Next to the door with the crime scene tape was the old restaurant’s window. But next to that was another door. Architecturally it was part of the restaurant building’s neighbour. It was set into the ground floor of the next building along. But it was plain, it was black, it was unlabelled, it was a little scarred, it had no step, and it was a lot wider than a normal door. It had no handle on the outside. Just a keyhole. Without a key it opened only from the inside. I made a bet with myself that it let out of a covered alley. I figured that the restaurant’s neighbour was two rooms wide on the ground floor, and three rooms wide above. At the second-floor level the block was solid. But below that, at street level, there were passageways leading to rear entrances, all of them discreetly boxed in and built over. Air rights in Manhattan are worth a fortune. The city sells itself up and down, as well as side to side.

I moved back to my shadowed doorway. I was counting time in my head. Forty-four minutes from the time Lila’s guys had been due to grab me up. Maybe thirty-four from the time Lila had expected their mission-accomplished call. Maybe twenty-four from the time she had finally accepted that things had not gone well. Maybe fourteen from the time she had first been tempted to call me.

Lila, you talk too much.

I pressed back in the darkness and waited. The scene in front of me was absolutely deserted. Occasional cars or taxicabs on Madison. No traffic at all on 58th. No pedestrians anywhere. No dog walkers, no partygoers staggering home. Garbage collection was over. Bagel deliveries hadn’t started.

The dead of night.

The city that doesn’t sleep was at least resting comfortably.

I waited.

Three minutes later the phone in my pocket started to vibrate.

I kept my eyes on the restaurant building and opened the phone. Raised it to my ear and said, ‘Yes?’

She asked, ‘What happened?’

‘You didn’t show.’

‘Did you expect me to?’

‘I didn’t give it much thought.’

‘What happened to my people?’

‘They’re in the system.’

‘We can still deal.’

‘How? You can’t afford to lose any more men.’

‘We can work something out.’

‘OK. But the price just went up.’

‘How much?’

‘Seventy-five.’

‘Where are you now?’

‘Right outside your house.’ There was a pause.

There was movement at a window. Fourth floor, the left-hand of two. A darkened room. Faint, ghostly, barely perceptible from fifty yards.

Maybe the shift of a drape. Maybe a white shirt. Maybe imaginary.

She said, ‘No, you’re not outside my house.’ But she didn’t sound sure.

She said, ‘Where do you want to meet?’

I said, ‘What does it matter? You won’t show.’

‘I’ll send someone.’

‘You can’t afford to. You’re down to your last six guys.’

She started to say something, and stopped.

I said, ‘Times Square.’

‘OK.’

‘Tomorrow morning at ten.’

‘Why?’

‘I want people around.’

‘That’s too late.’

‘For what?’

‘I want it now.’

‘Tomorrow at ten. Take it or leave it.’

She said, ‘Stay on the line.’

‘Why?’

‘I have to count my money. To check that I have seventy- five.’

I unzipped my jacket.

I put my glove on.

I heard Lila Hoth, breathing.

Fifty yards away the black door opened. The covered alley. A man stepped out. Small, dark, wiry. And wary. He checked the sidewalk, left and right. He peered across the street.

I put the phone in my pocket. Still open. Still live.

I raised the MP5.

Sub-machine guns were developed for close-quarters combat, but many of them are as accurate as rifles out to medium ranges. Certainly the H amp;K was reliable out to at least a hundred yards. Mine was fitted with iron sights. I moved the selector lever to single shot and put the front sight square on the guy’s centre mass.

Fifty yards away he stepped to the kerb. Scanned right, scanned left, scanned ahead. He saw the same nothing I was seeing. Just cool air and a thin night mist.

He stepped back to the door.

A taxicab passed by in front of me.

Fifty yards away the guy pushed the door.

I waited until I judged his momentum was all set to move forward. Then I pulled the trigger and shot him in the back. Bull’s-eye. A slow bullet. A perceptible delay. Fire, hit. The SD is advertised as silent. It isn’t. It makes a sound. Louder than the polite lithe spit you would get in a movie. But not worse than the kind of thump you would get from dropping a phone book on a table from about a yard. Noticeable in any environment, but not remarkable in a city.

Fifty yards away the guy pitched forward and went down with his torso in the alley and his legs on the sidewalk. I put a second bullet into him for safety’s sake and let the gun fall against its strap and took the phone back out of my pocket.

I said, ‘You still there?’

She said, ‘We’re still counting.’

You’re one short, I thought.