Sam Leith - The Coincidence Engine

‘Thanks.’ The boy shouldered his rucksack and walked out of the building.

‘Next,’ she said, turning her empty smile on the two men waiting in the line. They looked at each other, then one of them mumbled about having forgotten something and they walked out of the office and round to the right, where young Mr Clever had gone. She looked at her nails and wondered what Chef Boyardee was going to prepare for her dinner tonight.

Outside, Sherman and Davidoff walked among the rows of cars keeping the kid in sight. They pretended to be looking for a car of their own – though Davidoff’s nervousness meant that he had to be prevented from hard-targeting behind the nearest SUV whenever the boy glanced round. As soon as they’d made the boy’s car and noted down the number plate, they returned to their own, parked up outside the fence within sight of the exit. Davidoff turned the engine on and let it idle.

He’d be nervous driving a new car. They had no way to know whether or not he’d driven in America before, but it was a safe bet he’d take a bit of time to familiarise himself with the controls. Sure enough, it was getting on for five minutes before the silver Pontiac rolled out of the car park and turned, hesitatingly, onto the road and rolled west.

The two men gave him six car-lengths or so of a start, and then pulled out behind him and began to follow.

He joined the 285 heading north towards the west side of the city. Davidoff was driving. Sherman opened the glove compartment and pulled out the little map of the area that they’d given him at the hire car place. Their own car, too, was a rental and they hadn’t thought to buy an atlas. Sherman thought that if the kid headed out of town that was a decision they might regret.

The silver Pontiac pulled out ahead of them and was momentarily obscured by a white eighteen-wheeler. It had ‘Xpress Global Systems’ written on the side in blue block capitals, and underneath, in smaller letters: ‘A division of MIC Industrial Futures’.

‘Fancy that,’ Sherman said whimsically. ‘On our team.’

‘What?’

‘The truck.’

‘Uh?’

Davidoff squinted.

‘This haulage company or whatever it is. Works for the same people we do. We should flash our lights.’

Davidoff grunted again, plainly having not the faintest idea what Sherman was talking about. He pushed the pedal down and came up behind the truck, glanced in his wing mirror and pulled out round it. A corner of the silver car became visible again, back in the slow lane, a few cars ahead. As they got closer, though, Sherman frowned.

As their angle on the front of the truck narrowed, a second silver Pontiac came into view, on the tail of the other. At this range it was hard to make out the number plates. One of them was their boy, but the other one…

‘Better get a bit closer. There’s another silver bloody car up there. We don’t want to lose -’

There was a bang.

Davidoff abruptly pumped the brake and Sherman was thrown forward. Something flew up from the road, very fast, and smacked the top half of the windscreen before bouncing up off and behind them. Sherman, startled, looked round and looked behind. Something black disappearing under the wheels of the car following.

‘What was -?’

Davidoff, frowning a little but with the car under control. Up ahead Sherman could see the front tyre of the eighteen-wheeler flapping in rags. The driver was slowing down, trying to get a slight fishtail under control. Davidoff let the car fall back, then powered forward past it. They’d lost a couple of hundred metres on the Pontiacs.

‘Blowout,’ he said. ‘Step on it. We’re losing them.’

Ahead, there was a cloverleaf junction and the traffic was slowing down as a column of cars joined the freeway from the right. The two Pontiacs, further on, went under the shadow of an overpass. A car joining the freeway shot across their bows without signalling. Davidoff muttered something and braked again.

It was a silver Pontiac. It lurched out wide into the left-hand lane, accelerated round an SUV, waggled back into the middle lane and shot off up under the overpass.

‘It’s – hang on…’ Sherman could see, through the traffic ahead, the other two silver Pontiacs. The third caught them up. ‘We’ve got to catch up with the -’

‘I can see,’ said Davidoff in a voice at once distracted and alive with irritation. ‘I’m trying but these – SHIT!’

The people in this place were maniacs. They were carved up again, this time someone swinging in from behind, then undertaking and cutting back in front of them, before going wide and, with a honk of horns, screeching round that SUV.

Another – oh, for crying out loud.

As Davidoff concentrated on trying not to be crashed into, Sherman scanned the road ahead. He could now see four identical silver Pontiacs. At least four. One of them – one of them was taking the exit. It was marked Arthur Langford Parkway East. He couldn’t make out the licence plate.

‘Davidoff – he’s leaving. He’s taking the exit.’ Davidoff wrenched the wheel. They were in the slip road. Just as they were about to be committed, Sherman had second thoughts.

‘No! It’s the other one! Don’t take the exit! Stay on the road.’

Davidoff swore again, wrenched the wheel back and they crossed the stripy lines back onto the main road, narrowly missing the sand-filled oil drums protecting the junction. A dirty white Toyota behind them roared up the exit, missing their rear bumper by a smaller distance than Sherman was comfortable with, its horn emitting a wail of outrage.

He could see three Pontiacs several car-lengths ahead. Davidoff was making valiant efforts to catch up with them, weaving freely in and out of all four lanes of traffic. To their right, Sherman became aware of another line of traffic sloping down a ramp and waiting to join the freeway – the westbound traffic from the road they’d just passed under. Rush hour was approaching and these would be the first people making their way out from the centre of town into the western suburbs. The Pontiacs, where he could make them out, glimpsing the tops of their roofs, were just past where the traffic merged.

The traffic had slowed to twenty or thirty miles an hour. The sun winked off an angle of one of the cars waiting to join the freeway and Sherman glanced sideways. Just ahead and to the right of them, spilling into the traffic ahead, were three more silver Pontiacs, tailing a wood-panelled station wagon, which was itself tailgating another silver Pontiac.

Sherman had lost count. Seven, was it? Maybe eight. A rise in the road a little later on allowed him to see them all at once, spread out across four lanes and a couple of hundred metres of the road ahead.

Sherman had by this stage formed a hunch. The boy was leaving town, and he was most likely to head west. West was where the aeroplane thing had happened. West was where he was supposed to be flying, or had at least bought a ticket to. West was the best bet. Two Pontiacs whose numbers were impossible to see took off along the eastbound exit.

The main pack of Pontiacs carried on. Sherman leaned forward in his seat, his jaw working. The exit for the westbound carriageway of the interstate came off the left, the fast lane. One of the silver cars, its indicator winking for a good forty seconds before it made its way into the faster traffic, pulled out. The indicator stayed on. It was travelling slightly too slowly – as if its driver wasn’t confident about what he was doing.

He had slowed enough to give a glimpse of the first two digits of the number plate… B4… 84… B4? Was it?

‘Got you,’ said Sherman. ‘Follow that one.’

Davidoff swung out across two lanes of traffic and entered the slip road only three cars behind the target. None of those cars was silver. ‘Hope you’re sure about this,’ he said.