City of Shadows

Chapter 9

12 September 2001, New York

Faith was picking through the scattered circuit boards on the desk. They were specifically querying the motherboards first. That’s where the cache memory was, lodged in these ridiculously bulky chips of dark silicon on tiny hair-thin metal seating pins.

They had both been meticulously teasing small charges of electricity into the circuits, stirring them to life and diverting the random nuggets of dormant information to a connected monitor. What they were getting mostly was useless gibberish: random packets of hexadecimal, every now and then punctuated with snippets of English. Faith’s internal clock informed her they had spent nearly twelve hours on this process. Twelve hours during which their targets must be putting a healthy distance between them.

She picked up the motherboard of a yet unchecked computer and prepared to hand it to Abel to jury-rig a connection to the monitor when her eyes settled on a pad of lined writing paper half buried beneath the mess on the desk. She reached out and picked it up. The last used sheet had been torn away roughly, leaving a few tattered paper shreds attached to the glue binding at the top, the tops of several letters in biro. That’s all.

But that wasn’t what Faith was focusing on.

It was the shallow indentations on the page that had been directly beneath the torn-away page. She held the pad close to her face, tilting it so that light from the desk lamp fell obliquely across the paper. She could make out the faintest lines of indentation… the hard tip of a biro pressed too heavily, too quickly on the page above. The scrawl of someone in a hurry. Perhaps someone thinking, making a desperate decision. Writing lists, pros and cons.

She could make out a word, very faint and not entirely complete. But her mind quickly produced a very brief shortlist of possible word variables. Only one of them had any relevance to the data she’d been uploaded with for the mission.

She put the pad down. ‘The team leader, Madelaine Carter, is taking the team to her childhood home.’

Abel looked up from the soldering iron in his hand and a curl of blue smoke twisted in the harsh light of the desktop lamp as he put down the motherboard he was working on. ‘Why do you conclude that?’

Faith handed him the pad of paper. He squinted at it. And, just as she had, his eyes picked out the faintest markings of writing.

‘Boston,’ he said.

Faith nodded. ‘She is going home.’

They emerged from the archway. As they paced swiftly towards the intersection between Wythe Avenue and South 6th Street, a Bluetooth conversation passed quickly between them. They needed a vehicle. They needed a vehicle now. They needed to make up for the lost twelve hours.

Abel stood at the entrance to the alleyway. It was dark now, an hour after midnight. Street lights bathed the Brooklyn intersection opposite with sickly neon, punctuated by the regular circular blue flicker of police lights.

An NYPD squad car was parked diagonally across the intersection, impeding the flow of traffic in both directions. Cones placed out to help make the point. No traffic was being allowed on to the slip road and up the ramp on to the Williamsburg Bridge. No traffic, that is, except emergency vehicles: fire engines, mobile cranes and diggers heading over into Manhattan, the occasional solitary ambulance heading slowly back out. No sirens. No horn. No rush.

Even now, at this late hour, there were still a few pedestrians out, craning their necks to get a look past the towering supports of the bridge at the apocalyptic haze on the far side. Manhattan glowed with a million office lights as usual, but tonight the light pollution was enhanced by powerful halogen floodlights towards the south end of the island that leaked an unstinting glare into the night sky like an unnaturally early dawn.

Faith stood beside Abel, both of them now evaluating the situation. Both of them staring covetously at the NYPD squad car, parked across South 6th Street. Two policemen stood guard ready to wave back any non-emergency traffic trying to pick through the cones to cross the bridge. Not that anybody was trying to get across.

The support units exchanged a cursory glance.

Perfect.

Abel led the way towards the nearest of the two policemen.

The policeman noticed Abel’s strident steps approaching him. ‘Sir, you need to step back!’

Abel drew up a few steps short of the cop. ‘Why?’

‘We’re keeping this access-way across the river clear for emergency vehicles.’ He waved his hands at Abel. ‘Please step back now, sir. There will be more fire trucks and heavy vehicles passing through at any time.’

‘Please give me the ignition key to your car.’

The cop ignored him. ‘Just step back off the road, sir.’

Abel reached out and grabbed one of the cop’s fingers and twisted sharply with a flick of his wrist. ‘Please give me the ignition key to your car.’

‘Hey! Ow! Hey!’ His other hand — clearly not his gun hand — fumbled around his ample waist to find the leather flap of his holster.

‘I will break your finger,’ said Abel politely. ‘This is a warning. Please comply to avoid further discomfort.’

The cop lifted the flap and grabbed hold of the gun’s grip. He pulled the weapon out and levelled it at Abel’s face. ‘Let go! Now! Let go and get down on the ground!’

Abel snatched the gun out of his hand as calmly as a toad lassoing a passing mosquito with its tongue.

‘Jesus!’ The cop’s jaw dropped open.

The other cop challenged Abel from across the street. ‘Drop that weapon! Now! ’

‘I require the ignition key to your vehicle,’ said Abel calmly. ‘Please provide this.’

‘Drop the weapon now or you will be fired upon!’ the other cop barked, a gun levelled at Abel, taking slow steps towards him. His voice was shrill. High-pitched. Warbling with fear.

Abel swung the gun in his hand quickly. A microsecond to aim, then three shots fired in rapid succession. The first shot killed the approaching cop, the other two were unnecessary. Faith immediately paced over towards his prone body ready to frisk his pockets and belt pouches.

‘Hey… p-please! Don’t sh-shoot, man!’ the other cop pleaded, his hand and finger still twisted in Abel’s firm grasp.

‘Do you have the vehicle ignition key?’

‘It’s in the c-car, man!’ He grimaced in agony. ‘It’s in the car!’

Abel shot a Bluetooth instruction to Faith and she changed direction towards the squad car.

‘You will not discuss this intervention with anyone,’ said Abel.

‘Whuh?’ Then the cop understood and nodded vigorously. ‘No! OK! Sure… I… I won’t d-discuss this. I promise.’

‘Your promise is not required,’ said Abel. Then he calmly shot the second cop dead.

He noted the pedestrians nearby staring at him. Frozen with shock. It would take too much valuable time to pursue them all and kill them. He decided so many eyewitnesses were an unfortunate collateral contamination, but nothing that could be helped.

The squad car rattled to life as Faith settled into the driver’s seat. Its siren squawked for a second before it was turned off. Abel made his way over, pulled the passenger side open and got in beside Faith. The car rocked under his weight.

‘Boston,’ she said.

He nodded. ‘Please proceed.’