Day of the Predator

CHAPTER 10

2001, New York

Maddy was entirely engrossed in Big Brother USA when Bob interrupted. She’d been watching Nicole and Hardy quietly plotting together in the kitchen against the other two. It was a rerun of the previous week’s shows on FOX and she already knew who was facing imminent eviction. She’d seen this show at least four times already, but for some reason, despite knowing the outcome, it was still compulsive viewing.

So it was with mild irritation that she answered the dialogue box that had popped up on the monitor over the top of Big Brother.

› Maddy?

She sat forward and spoke into the desk mic rather than tap out an answer on the keyboard.

‘What is it, Bob? I’m watching Big Brother right now.’

› I am picking up incoming tachyon particles.

Her mouth dropped open and she dribbled milk and Rice Krispies on to her T-shirt.

‘You’re kidding me, right?’

› Kidding?

‘Joking.’

› Not joking, Maddy. There is a directed communication beam coming in from down-time.

‘From down-time… You mean the future?’

› Affirmative.

Maddy dropped her spoon back in the breakfast bowl and sat back in her chair. She looked around. Liam was still fast asleep on his bunk and Sal was out clothes shopping for Bob.

Oh my God… a message from the future?

She realized then and there that it could only be from the agency — their first contact with the rest of the organization — and just when they were really beginning to wonder whether the three of them were all on their own.

‘What’s the message, Bob?’

› Just a moment… just a moment. Decoding…

Sal had decided not to bother going uptown, over the bridge into Manhattan. The clothes shops there were all modern chain stores and none of them were likely to have much that would fit a seven-foot mountain of muscle.

Instead she headed into Brooklyn, an area she hadn’t explored at all thus far. Foster had been so very keen on her focusing her attentive eyes on Manhattan and Times Square — taking in every tiny detail until she knew everything that was meant to be there, every tiny event that was meant to happen — that she’d had no time to explore the city this side of the Hudson River.

Away from the bridge and South 6th Street, she found myriad quieter backstreets, and one in particular lined with odd little boutiques selling second-hand furniture and dusty old books. The chaos of goods piled outside the storefronts and cluttering the narrow street reminded her vaguely of the market-place near her home in Mumbai.

She found herself wiping a solitary tear from her cheek and chided herself for crying for her parents… because — stupid — they weren’t dead. The grim fate that awaited them wasn’t going to happen for another twenty-five years. At this moment in time, her mum and dad were just kids her age, enjoying their childhood and not due to meet for another decade yet. Strange, that. Stood side by side, she and her mum could probably pass as sisters.

Her attention was drawn to a shop with a curious mix of antique knick-knacks spilling out of its entrance and on to the pavement. Ancient-looking wooden furniture, a rocking-horse and clothes that looked like surplus theatrical costumes. But among them, bric-a-brac, a second-hand TV set, a toaster, a Dyson vacuum cleaner. A little bit of everything, it seemed.

She figured she had as much chance of finding something here that might fit Bob as she might anywhere else and, anyway, everything here appeared to be pretty cheap. She stepped inside the boutique and squeezed through the front of the store, cluttered with a set of chrome bar stools and several flaking display-window mannequins wearing dodgy-looking leather corsets and feather boas.

‘May I help you, young lady?’

The voice seemed to come out of nowhere and she jumped. Then she spotted a tiny old lady with jet-black hair who was even shorter than she was.

‘I, uh… You made me jump.’

She smiled. ‘I’m sorry, my dear. I do tend to blend into the store.’

Sal laughed. She could imagine a customer slapping ten dollars down on the counter for the ‘realistic old lady mannequin’, tucking her under one arm and walking out with her.

‘What are you after, my dear?’

‘You have a clothes section?’

She waved an arm. ‘At the back. I have racks and racks of old, old clothes and party costumes. Lots of cast-outs from the Broadway theatres and a few antique items too.’

‘Thank you.’

Sal weaved her way further into the store, her nose tickled and teased by the dust that seemed to be on everything and the faint smell of mothballs and turpentine. She found the clothes racks at the back and almost found herself giggling at the bizarre mix of garments on display. She flicked through the racks in front of her, chuckling at some of the exotic costumes and cooing appreciatively at others. Eventually she found some things that looked suitable for Bob: a baggy pair of striped trousers with extra-long legs that she suspected might have been part of a clown’s outfit at one time and an extra-large bright orange and pink Hawaiian shirt that looked like it might just about fit over the top of his broad shoulders and rippling muscles.

‘You must have a very big friend,’ said the old lady as she took Sal’s payment and folded the clothes into a plastic bag for her.

‘Uncle,’ she replied. ‘My Uncle Bob. He’s a very big man.’ Sal was about to add that he was also pretty dumb as well — dumb, and kind of child-like — when she spotted something dangling from a hanger on one wall: a white tunic, buttoned down the left side, with an emblem on the chest that she recognized — the White Star lines. It was a steward’s tunic just like Liam’s.

She pointed at it. ‘Is that… is that a uniform from the Titanic?’

The old woman looked round at where she was pointing. ‘Oh, that? No, it would be worth a lot more if it was genuine. I could sell it to a museum or a collector for thousands of dollars. Unfortunately it’s not; it’s just a theatre costume. Not a very well-made costume either. Friends of mine… they did a production set on the Titanic. It didn’t do very well. You want to have a look at it?’

Sal shook her head. She could’ve said something about it being a funny coincidence that her bunk-buddy was a young lad who’d actually worked on the ship for real. The old lady would think her mad, of course, or that she was just being cheeky. Mind you, in just over half an hour’s time, when the first plane hit the Twin Towers, whatever odd conversation she might have now would be instantly forgotten.

Sal returned to the archway with Bob’s clothes and some groceries before the first plane hit and the Manhattan sky started to fill with smoke. She was about to mention the coincidence to Liam — the steward’s tunic exactly like his — when she realized by the expressions on Maddy’s and Liam’s faces that something important had just happened.

She forgot all about it.