I waited.
I heard a train. On my left. A moving glow in the tunnel. It was coming on fast. Our train. Uptown. Behind me the crowd stirred. I heard the rush of air and the squeal of iron rims. Saw the lighted cab sway and jerk through the curve. I figured it was doing about thirty miles an hour. About forty-four feet per second. I wanted two seconds. I figured that would be enough. So I would have to go when the train was eighty-eight feet away. The cops wouldn't follow. Their reaction time would rob them of the margin they needed. And they were eight feet back from the platform edge to start with. And they had different priorities from me. They had wives and families and ambitions and pensions. They had houses and yards and lawns to mow and bulbs to plant.
I took another tiny step forward.
The headlight was coming straight at me. Head on. Rocking and jerking. It made it hard to judge distance.
Then I heard a train on my right.
A downtown train, approaching fast front the other direction. Symmetrical, but not perfectly synchronized. Like a pair of drapes closing, with the left-hand drape leading the right.
By how much?
I needed a three-second lag, for a total gap of five, because climbing up the downtown platform was going to take me a whole lot longer than jumping off the uptown.
I paused a whole second, guessing, estimating, feeling it, trying to judge.
The trains howled inward, one from the left, then one front the right.
Five hundred tons, and five hundred tons.
Closing speed, maybe sixty miles an hour.
The cops edged closer.
Decision time.
I went.
I jumped down, with the uptown train a hundred feet away. I landed two-footed between the rails and got steady and minced through the steps I had planned. Like a dance diagram in a book. Right foot, left foot high over the live rail, hands on the pillars. I paused a split second and checked right. The downtown train was very close. Behind me the uptown train slammed past. Its brakes were shrieking and grinding. A furious wind tore at my shirt. Lighted windows strobed by in the corner of my eye.
I stared right.
The downtown train looked huge.
Decision time.
I went.
Right foot high over the live rail, left foot down in the rail bed. The downtown train was almost on me. Just yards away. It was rocking and jerking. Its brakes were clamping hard. I could see the driver. His mouth was wide open. I could feel the air damming ahead of his cab.
I abandoned the choreography. Just flung myself towards the far platform. It was less than five feet away, but it felt infinitely distant. Like the plains horizon. But I got there. I stared right and saw every rivet and bolt on the downtown train. It was coming right at me. I got my palms flat on the platform edge and vaulted up. I thought the dense press of people was going to knock me right back down. But hands grabbed at me and pulled me up. The train slammed past my shoulder and the wash of air spun me around. Windows flashed past. Oblivious passengers read books and papers or stood and swayed. Hands hauled on me and dragged me into the crowd. People all around me were screaming. I saw their mouths open in panic but I couldn't hear them. The yelp of the train's brakes was drowning them out. I out my head down and barged on through the crowd. People stepped left and right to let me pass. Some of them slapped me on the back as I went by. A ragged cheer followed me out.
Only in New York.
I pushed through an exit turnstile and headed for the street.
FIFTY-SEVEN
MADISON SQUARE PARK WAS SEVEN BLOCKS NORTH. I had the best part of four hours to kill. I spent the time shopping and eating on Park Avenue South. Not because I had things to buy. Not because I was especially hungry. But because it's always best to give pursuers what they don't expect. Fugitives are supposed to run far and fast. They're not supposed to dawdle through the immediate neighbourhood, in and out of stores and cafes.
It was just after six in the morning. Delis and supermarkets and diners and coffee shops were all that was open. I started in a Food Emporium that had an entrance on 14th Street and an exit on 15th. I spent forty-five minutes in there. I took a basket and wandered the aisles and pretended to choose stuff. Less conspicuous than just hanging out. Less conspicuous than wandering the aisles without a basket. I didn't want an alert manager to call anything in. I developed a fantasy where I had an apartment nearby. I stocked its imaginary kitchen with enough stuff to last two whole days. Coffee, of course. Plus pancake mix, eggs, bacon, a loaf of bread, butter, some jam, a pack of salami, a quarter-pound of cheese. When I got bored and the basket got heavy I left it in a deserted aisle and slipped out the back of the store.
Next stop was a diner four blocks north. I walked on the right-hand sidewalk with my back to the traffic. In the diner I ate pancakes and bacon that someone else had shopped and cooked. More my style. I spent another forty minutes in there. Then I moved on half a block to a French brasserie. More coffee, and a croissant. Someone had left a New York Times on the chair across from me. I read it from end to end. No mention of a manhunt in the city. No mention of Sansom's Senate race in the national section.
I split the final two hours four separate ways. I moved from supermarket on the corner of Park and 22nd to a Duane Reade drugstore opposite and then to a CVS pharmacy on Park and 3rd. Visible evidence suggested that the nation spent more on hair care than food. Then at twenty-five minutes to ten I stopped shopping and stepped out to the bright new morning and looped around and took a good long careful look at my destination from the mouth of 24th Street, which was a shadowed anonymous canyon between two huge buildings. I saw nothing that worried me. No unexplained cars, no parked vans, no pairs or trios of dressed-down people with wires in their ears.
So at ten o'clock exactly I stepped into Madison Square Park.
I found Theresa Lee and Jacob Mark side by side on a bench near a dog run. They looked rested but nervous, and stressed, each in their own way. Each for their own reasons, presumably. They were two of maybe a hundred people sitting peacefully in the sun. The park was a rectangle of trees and lawns and paths. It was a small oasis, one block wide and three tall, fenced, surrounded by four busy sidewalks. Parks are reasonably good places for a clandestine rendezvous. Most hunters are attracted by moving targets. Most believe that fugitives stay in motion. Three of a hundred people sitting still while the city swirls around them attract less attention than three of a hundred hustling hard down the street.
Not perfect, but an acceptable risk.
I checked all around one last time and sat down next to Lee. She handed me a newspaper. One of the tabloids I had already seen. The HUNT headline. She said, 'It claims we shot three federal agents.'
'We shot four,' I said. 'Don't forget the medical guy.'
'But they make it sound like we used real guns. They make ii sound like the guys died.'
'They want to sell papers.'
'We're in trouble.'
'We knew that already. We didn't need a journalist to tell us.'
She said, 'Docherty came through again. He was texting messages to me all night long, while the phone was off.'
She lifted up off the bench and took a sheaf of paper out of her back pocket. Three sheets of yellowed hotel stationery, folded four ways.
I said, 'You took notes?'
She said, 'They were long messages. I didn't want to keep the phone on, if there were things I needed to review.'
'So what do we know?'
'The 17th Precinct checked transportation gateways. Standard procedure, after a major crime. Four men left the country three hours after the likely time of death. Through JFK. The 17th is calling them potential suspects. It's a plausible scenario.'