I said, 'The feds are here. How did that happen?'
'Shit,' she said. 'Either they're monitoring our dispatcher or one of our guys is looking for a better job.'
'Who takes precedence tonight?'
'They do. Always. You should get the hell out of there.'
I closed the phone and put it back in my pocket. The eight guys from the Crown Vics stepped into the shadows. The square went quiet. There was a faulty letter in a lit-up sign to my left. It sputtered on and off at random intervals. I heard rats in the mulch behind me.
I waited.
Two minutes. Three.
Then thirty-nine minutes into my forty I sensed human movement far to my right. Footfalls, disturbed air, holes in the darkness. I watched and saw figures moving through shadows and dim light.
Seven men.
Which was good news. The more now, the fewer later.
And which was flattering. Lila was risking more than half her force, because she thought I would be hard to take.
All seven men were small, and neat, and wary. They were all dressed like me, in dark clothes baggy enough to conceal weapons. But they weren't going to shoot me. Lila's need to know was like body armour. They saw me and paused thirty yards away.
I sat still.
In theory this should have been the easy part. They approach me, the NYPD guys move in, I walk away and go about my business.
But not with the feds on the scene. At best they would want all of us. At worst they would want me more than them. I knew where the memory stick was. Lila's people didn't.
I sat still.
Thirty yards away the seven men separated. Two stood still, anchored half-right of my position. Two scooted left and looped around and headed for my other flank. Three walked on, to get around behind me.
I stood up. The two men on my right started to move in. The two on my left were halfway through their flanking manoeuvre. The three behind me were out of sight. I guessed the NYPD guys were already on their feet. I guessed the feds were moving too.
A fluid situation.
I ran.
Straight ahead, to the subway gazebo twenty feet in front of me. Down the stairs. I heard feet clattering after me. Loud echoes. A big crowd. Probably close to forty people, all strung out in a crazy Pied Piper chase.
I made it into a tiled corridor and out again into the underground plaza. No violinist this time, just stale air and trash and one old guy pushing a broom with a threadbare head a yard wide. I ran past him and stopped and skidded on my new soles and changed direction and headed for the uptown R train. I jumped the turnstile and ran on to the platform and all the way to the end.
And stopped.
And turned.
Behind me three separate groups followed one after the other. First came Lila Hoth's seven men. They raced towards me. They saw I had nowhere to go. They stopped. I saw looks of wolfish satisfaction on their faces. Then I saw their inevitable conclusion: too good to be true. Some thoughts are clear in any language. They turned suddenly and saw the NYPD counter-terrorism squad hustling right behind them.
And right behind the NYPD guys were four of the eight federal agents.
No one else on the platform. No civilians. On the downtown platform opposite was a lone guy on a bench. Young. Maybe drunk. Maybe worse. He was staring across at the sudden commotion. It was twenty minutes to four in the morning. The guy looked dazed. Like he wasn't making much sense out of what he was seeing.
It looked like a gang war. But what he was actually seeing was a fast and efficient takedown by the NYPD. None of their guys stopped running. They all piled in yelling with weapons drawn and badges visible and they exploited their big physiques and their three-to-one numerical advantage and simply swamped the seven men. No contest. No contest at all. They clubbed all seven to the ground and threw them on their fronts and slammed cuffs on their wrists and hauled them away. No pauses. No delays. No Miranda warnings, just maximum speed and brutality. Perfect tactics. Literally seconds later they were gone again. Echoes clattered and died. The station went quiet. The guy opposite was still staring but suddenly he was seeing nothing except a silent platform with me standing alone at one end and the four federal agents about thirty feet from me. Nothing between us. Nothing at all. Just harsh white light and empty space.
Nothing happened for the best part of a minute. Then across the tracks I saw the other four federal agents arrive on the downtown platform. They took up position directly opposite me and stood still. They all smiled a little, like they had made a smart move in a game of chess. Which they had. No point in more cross-track exploits. The four agents on my side were between me and the exit. At my back was a blank white wall and the mouth of the tunnel.
Checkmate.
I stood still. Breathed the tainted underground air and listened to the faint roar of ventilation and the rumble of distant trains elsewhere in the system.
The agent nearest me took a gun out from under his coat.
He took a step towards me.
He said, 'Raise your hands.'
SEVENTY-FIVE
NIGHT-TIME SCHEDULES. TWENTY-MINUTE GAPS BETWEEN trains. We had been down there maybe four minutes. Therefore arithmetically the maximum delay before the next train would be sixteen minutes. The minimum would be no delay at all.
The minimum delay didn't happen. The tunnel stayed dark and quiet.
'Raise your hands,' the lead agent called again. He was a white man of about forty. Certainly ex-military. DoD, not FBI. Similar type to the three I had already met. But maybe a little older. Maybe a little wiser. Maybe a little better. Maybe this was an A team, not a B team.
'I'll shoot,' the lead agent called. But he wouldn't. Empty threat. They wanted the memory stick. I knew where it was. They didn't.
Median delay before the next train, eight minutes. As likely to be more as less. The guy with the gun took another step forward. His three colleagues followed. Across the tracks the other four stood still. The young guy on the bench was watching, vacantly.
The tunnel stayed dark and quiet.
The lead agent said, 'All this hassle could be over a minute from now. Just tell us where it is.'
I said, 'Where what is?'
'You know what.'
'What hassle?'
'We're running out of patience. And you're missing one important factor.'
'Which is?'
'Whatever intellectual gifts you have, they're hardly likely to be unique. In fact they're probably fairly ordinary. Which means that if you figured it out, we can figure it out too. Which means your continued existence would become surplus to requirements.'
'So go ahead,' I said. 'Figure it out.'
He raised his gun higher and straighter. It was a Glock 17. Maybe twenty-five ounces fully loaded. By far the lightest service pistol on the market. Made partly from plastic. The guy had short thick arms. He could probably hold the pose indefinitely.
'Last chance,' he said.
Across the tracks the young guy got off his bench and walked away. Long inconsistent strides, not entirely in a straight line. He was prepared to waste a two-dollar Metrocard swipe in exchange for a quiet life. He made it to the exit and disappeared from sight.
No witnesses.
Median delay before the next train, maybe six minutes.
I said, 'I don't know who you are.'
The guy said, 'Federal agents.'
'Prove it.'
The guy kept his gun aimed at my centre mass but nodded over his shoulder at the agent behind him, who stepped out and moved forward into the no-man's-land between us. He paused there and put his hand in his inside jacket pocket and came back with a leather badge holder. He held it eye-height to me and let it fall open. There were two separate pieces of ID in it. I couldn't read either one of them. They were too far away, and both of them were behind scratched plastic windows.