Gideon’s Sword gc-1 Page 10

  He glanced at his watch again. It had already been three.

  Another pair of rounds banged through the metal, bracketing him, spraying him with paint chips, and he returned fire once again. The sirens were getting louder — and then he heard wheels screeching to a stop outside.

  He saw a flash of black behind the pallets—​the killer was finally fleeing. Backing quickly out of the ruined rear seat, he jumped up, ready to sprint to the door, when two more rounds suddenly whined past him. As he dove to the floor he realized the son of a bitch had feinted, pretending flight, in order to flush him out. He rolled, fired, and saw the black-clad figure vanish into a dark corner; he evidently had his own method of ingress and egress.

  There was a sudden pounding on the forward door of the warehouse; it was still locked, the alarm blaring. To follow the killer out his own exit hole would be suicide; Gideon needed to find another way. He looked wildly around but the only possible escape route lay above, through some louvered vents in the ceiling. Quickly he sprinted across the warehouse to a metal support and began shimmying up it.

  “Open up!” yelled the cops. There was more pounding, followed by the crash of a battering ram.

  Higher he climbed, using bolts as rungs; he reached a metal collar beam and crawled across it to a gusset, reached up again, grabbed a truss web member, and worked his way up it until he was at the level of the louvered vents.

  The battering ram smashed into the metal door again, and again, and Gideon offered a silent prayer of thanks for the fine workmanship.

  “Roland! You in there? Open up!”

  Crawling up the sloping angle-iron truss on his hands and knees, Gideon gripped the iron, crouched again, and launched himself across the narrow gap, grasping the open louver, his feet swinging free.

  A moment later, as the metal door caved in with a great crash, he hoisted himself up, crawled out the louver onto the sloping roof, and lay flat, breathing hard. Would they think of looking up here? They certainly would: as soon as they discovered the decapitated guard, the police warehouse was going to look like Grand Central Terminal.

  Sliding down the pitch of the roof, he reached the drip edge along the back and peered over. Good — all the activity was still concentrated at the front. He could hear shouting and expostulations of horror and fury as the police found the guard’s decapitated body.

  What a balls-up.

  Gideon grasped the drip edge, swung over, dropped to the ground, and headed to his previous opening. Then he reconsidered. The killer seemed to know an awful lot about his movements; he might be waiting there in ambush. Instead, Gideon sprinted to another part of the fence, climbed it, and as quickly as he could cut a crude gap through the concertina wire.

  “Hey! You!”

  Damn. He forced his way through the wire, feeling it slice his clothes and skin, and half climbed, half tumbled down the far side, landing in some bushes.

  “Over here!” the cop yelled. “Suspect in flight! This way!”

  Boom, the cop fired at him as he darted across the overgrown lot at the rear of the warehouse, dodging between abandoned containers, burned-out cars, and dumped refrigerators. He sprinted toward the railroad tracks running alongside the river; leaping over them and pushing through a sagging fence, he reached the embankment of riprap at the river’s edge. An onshore wind brought with it the sulfurous stench of the Harlem River. Hopping and skipping from rock to rock, he dove in.

  He swam underwater as far as he could, surfaced to gulp air, swam some more, and then—​with as little disturbance as possible—​returned to the surface. Jettisoning the heavy weight of the bolt cutters, he let himself drift downstream, floating without treading water, keeping his head as low in the water as possible. He could hear shouts from the shore and an unintelligible screed over an electronic megaphone. A feeble spotlight swung out over the water, but he was already out of reach; nevertheless, he turned his head to show only his black hair. There was quite a lot of flotsam bobbing downstream along with him, and for once he was grateful for the slovenly habits of New Yorkers. He wondered if he’d need to get a battery of shots after this little immersion, then realized it didn’t matter—​he was a dead man anyway.

  He drifted along, letting the river take him downstream toward the fantastical arched and lighted form of the RFK Bridge. Slowly, the sluggish current moved him toward the Manhattan side of the river. Now he was thoroughly out of sight of the cops. Kicking his way over to the riverbank, he crawled up on a riprap boulder and began squeezing the water out of his clothes. He’d lost the Python somewhere in the river; good riddance to it. He would have had to toss it anyway, since shells and rounds had been left back in the warehouse; besides, it was too heavy a gun for his purposes.

  He reached into his pocket and extracted the ziplock bag. It was still sealed, the cell phone inside safe and dry.

  Balancing on the rocks, he made his way up the embankment, through yet another busted up chain-link fence, and found himself in a huge salt storage yard for the road department, mounds of white rising up around him like snowy mountains in some alien landscape painted by Nicholas Roerich.

  The thought of Roerich triggered a rather interesting memory.

  He would never get a cab this far uptown at four o’clock in the morning, especially in his sopping condition. He had a long walk back to the hotel, where he’d have to sneak his shit out and find another place to go to ground. And then it would be time to renew his old acquaintance with Tom O’Brien at Columbia.

  He wondered what good old Tom would make of all this.

  23

  Gideon Crew walked east on 49th Street, still slightly damp from his misadventure of the previous night. It was eight o’clock in the morning and the sidewalks were in the full flow of the morning’s rush hour, commuters pouring out of the surrounding apartment buildings and heading for taxis or public transportation. Gideon was not normally given to paranoid thinking, but ever since he’d sneaked out of the hotel he’d had the uncanny feeling he was being followed. Nothing he could put his finger on — just a feeling. No doubt it had something to do with lingering worries from the previous evening’s shootout. The one thing he couldn’t do was allow whoever it was—​if there was indeed someone—​to follow him to Tom O’Brien’s place up at Columbia University. Tom O’Brien was to be his secret weapon in this and nobody—nobody—​could know.

  He slowed his pace until most of the pedestrians—​swift-​walking New Yorkers, all—​were flowing past him. Then he casually paused to look at himself in a window while turning his attention behind. It was as he thought: an Asian man in a tracksuit, face half-​hidden by a baseball cap, was a hundred yards back, also slowing down, apparently keeping pace.

  Gideon swore under his breath. While it might still be in his imagination, he could take no chances. Even if it wasn’t that particular fellow, with all these crowds it could be anyone. He had to assume he was being followed and act accordingly.

  He crossed Broadway and entered the subway station, going to the downtown platform. The station was packed, and it was impossible to know if the man in the tracksuit had followed him down. But it didn’t matter — there was one surefire way to lose the son of a bitch. Gideon had done it before. It was fun and dangerous and foolproof. He felt his heart quicken in anticipation.

  He waited until he heard a faint rumble from the uptown tracks across the way. As he leaned out, he could see the headlights of a local coming up the tunnel, closing in fast on the platform.

  Waiting for just the right moment, and making sure no other trains were coming, he leapt down onto the tracks. There was a gratifying chorus of screams, shouts, and loud admonishments from the waiting crowd. Ignoring them, he hopped over the third rail, crossed the uptown local tracks just ahead of the arriving train, and scrambled onto the platform. More screaming, shouts, hollering—people are so excitable, he thought. But the platform was unbelievably crowded, no one could move, and as the local pulled in he forced his way
inside, mingling with the crush of commuters and instantly rendering himself anonymous.

  As the train pulled out he saw, through the grimy window, across the rails, the Asian man in a tracksuit still standing on the downtown platform, staring in his direction.

  Screw you, too, thought Gideon, settling in to read the Post over the shoulder of the person standing next to him.

  24

  Like the whining of a mosquito, the persistent sound of a buzzer intruded into the exceedingly pleasant dream of Tom O’Brien. He sat up with a groan and looked at his clock. Nine thirty in the morning. Who could possibly be disturbing him at this ungodly hour?

  The buzzer sounded again, three short blasts. O’Brien muttered, throwing off the covers, pushing the cat to the floor, and picking his way through the strewn apartment to the door. He pushed the intercom button. “Go fuck yourself.”

  “It’s me. Gideon. Let me up.”

  “Do you have any idea what time it is?”

  “Just let me up, you can bitch later.”

  O’Brien thumbed the door-lock button, unlatched his front door, and wandered back to his bed, sitting down and rubbing his face.

  A minute later Gideon came in, carrying a bulky Pelican case. O’Brien stared at him. “Well, well, look what the cat dragged in. When did you blow into town?”

  Ignoring this, Gideon set down the case, went to the window, and, standing next to it, opened the curtain with a finger and peered out.

  “Cops after you? You still boosting shit out of museums?”

  “You know I gave that up a long time ago.”

  “You look like yesterday’s feces.”

  “You’re always so affirmative, that’s one of the things I like about you. Where’s the coffee?”

  O’Brien pointed a finger toward the Pullman kitchen at the back of the studio apartment. Avoiding the moldy dishes in the sink, Gideon rattled around and soon emerged with a coffeepot and mugs.

  “Man, you’re ripe,” said O’Brien, helping himself to a cup. “And your duds are revolting. What the hell you been doing?”

  “I’ve been swimming in the Harlem River and being chased across subway tracks.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  “I’m not kidding.”

  “Want to take a shower?”

  “Love to. And also — got any clothes I can borrow?”

  O’Brien went into his closet and sorted through a huge pile of suspiciously dirty clothing sitting on the floor, picking out a few items and tossing them toward Gideon.

  Ten minutes later, he was cleaned up and dressed in reasonably fresh clothes. They felt a little loose on him—​O’Brien hadn’t stayed quite as skinny as Gideon—​and they were covered with satanic designs and logos of the death metal band Cannibal Corpse.

  “You look marvelous,” O’Brien said. “But you’ve got the pants pulled up too high.” He reached over and tugged them so they were hanging halfway down Gideon’s ass. “That’s how it’s supposed to look.”

  “Your taste in music and clothing is atrocious.” Gideon hiked them back up. “Look, I need your help. I’ve got a few problems for you to solve.”

  O’Brien shrugged, sipped his coffee.

  Gideon unlocked the Pelican case and removed a piece of paper. “I’m working on an assignment, undercover. I can’t tell you much about it — except that I’m looking for a set of plans.”

  “Plans? What sort of plans?”

  “To a weapon.”

  “Cloak and dagger, man. What kind of weapon?”

  “I don’t know. And that’s really all I can safely tell you.” He handed him the piece of paper. “There is a bunch of numbers here. I have no idea what they mean. I want you to tell me.”

  “Is it some kind of code?”

  “All I know is it has something to do with weapon plans.”

  O’Brien eyeballed the sheet. “I can tell you right off that there’s a theoretical upper limit to the amount of information that could be contained in these numbers, and it isn’t even enough to detail the plans for a pop-gun.”

  “The numbers could be something else, a passcode, bank account or safe-deposit, directions to a hiding place, the encoded name and address of a contact…or, for all I know, a recipe for chop suey.”

  O’Brien grunted. Over the years, he had gotten used to his friend’s vanishings and reappearances, his black moods, his secretive doings and quasi-criminal habits. But this really took the cake. He stared at the numbers, then a smile cracked his face. “These numbers are anything but random,” he said.

  “How do you know?”

  O’Brien grunted. “Just looking at ’em. I doubt this is a code at all.”

  “What is it, then?”

  O’Brien shrugged, laid the paper down. “What other goodies you got in that case?”

  Gideon reached in and pulled out a passport and credit card. O’Brien took them; both were Chinese. He stared. “Is all this…legal?”

  “It’s necessary — for our country.”

  “Since when did you become a patriot?”

  “What’s wrong with patriotism — especially when it pays?”

  “Patriotism, my dear chap, is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”

  “Spare me your left-wing twaddle. I don’t see you packing your bags and moving to Russia.”

  “All right, all right, stop hyperventilating. So what do you want me to do with the passport and credit card?”

  “Both have magnetic stripes containing data. I want you to download that data and parse it, see if anything unusual is hidden in it.”

  “Piece of cake. Next?”

  Gideon reached back into the case and removed, with enormous gravitas, a ziplock bag containing a cell phone. He laid it in O’Brien’s palm. “This is really important. This phone belonged to a Chinese physicist. I need you to extract all the information this phone contains. I’ve already gotten its list of recent calls and contacts, but that’s suspiciously short — there might be more that have been hidden or deleted. If he’s used it for web browsing, I want the entire history. If there are photos I want those, too. And finally — and most important — I think there’s a very good chance the plans for the weapon are hidden in that phone.”

  “Lucky for you I read and write Mandarin.”

  “Why do you think I’m here?” said Gideon. “It isn’t because I miss your ugly mug. You are a gentleman of singular and diverse endowments.”

  “And not just in the intellectual department.” O’Brien laid the cell phone on a table. “Any money in it for me?”

  Gideon extracted from his pocket a massive, sodden roll of banknotes.

  “That’s a charming Kansas City roll you got there.”

  Gideon peeled off ten limp bills. “A thousand dollars. I’ll give you another thousand when you’re done. And I need it, like, done yesterday.”

  O’Brien collected the wet money and lovingly spread it out on his windowsill to dry. “This is a challenge. I like challenges.”

  Gideon seemed to hesitate. “One other thing.” His voice was suddenly different.

  O’Brien looked over. Gideon was removing a manila envelope. “I’ve got some X-rays and CT scans here. Friend of mine. The guy doesn’t feel right, wants a doctor to look these over.”

  O’Brien frowned. “Why doesn’t he ask his own doctor? I don’t know shit about medicine. Or take it to your doctor, for Chrissakes.”

  “I’m busy. Look, he just wants a second opinion. Surely you know some good doctors around here.”

  “Well, sure, we got a few at the medical school.” He opened the file, picked up an X-ray. “Name’s been cut out.”

  “The guy values his privacy.”

  “Is there anything you do that isn’t shady? Doctors are expensive.”

  Gideon laid two more C notes on the table. “Just take care of it, okay?”

  “Right, fine, no need to get snippy.” He was taken aback by Gideon’s sudden short tone of voice. “It’s gonna take time.
These guys are busy.”

  “Be careful and for God’s sake keep your big mouth shut. No kidding. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

  “Please,” groaned O’Brien, “not before noon.”

  25

  The hourly rate hotel room was about as sordid as they came, like something out of a 1950s noir film: the blinking neon light outside the window, elephant stains on the walls, pressed-tin ceiling coated with fifty layers of paint, sagging bed, and smell of frying hamburger in the passageway outside. Gideon Crew dumped his shopping bags on the bed and began unloading them.

  “How are we gonna do it if the bed’s covered with stuff?” asked the prostitute, standing in the door, pouting.

  “Sorry,” said Gideon, “we’re not doing it.”

  “Oh yeah? Are you one of those guys who just wants to talk?”

  “Not really.” He laid out everything on the bed and stared at it, looking for inspiration, his eye roving over the fake paunches, the cheek inserts, the noses and wigs and beards, latex, prostheses, tattoos, pads. Next to this assortment, he spread out some of the clothing he had bought. While he had shaken off his pursuer, it hadn’t been easy and the man was a serious professional. He had two places to visit, and it was likely the man, or possibly a compatriot, would be lurking at one or both of them. It would take more than a disguise to pull this off; it would take creating a new role, and for that the woman was essential. Gideon straightened up and looked at the prostitute. She was nice looking, not drugged out, with a bright-eyed, wiseass attitude. Dyed black hair, pale skin, dark lipstick, slender figure, small sharp nose—​he liked the Goth look of her. He sorted through the clothes, picked out a black T-shirt, and laid it aside. Camo pants and black leather boots with thick soles completed the wardrobe.