CHAPTER 12
It was after nine o’clock when Daniel climbed the last few steps up from Delancy Street Metro. His first glimpse of Chinatown matched his expectations; it was dirty and noisy, with the heady aromas of exotic spices and roasting meats wafting from the many restaurants. Here, as the sun went down, like a great many of the less desirable parts of major cities, the more dubious members of society came out.
He crossed over onto the south side of the road and made his way west towards Orchard. Delancy Street led onto Williamsburg Bridge – one of the main arteries leading east out of Manhattan – and even at this time of night a stream of red taillights clogged all eight lanes.
Boxes of discarded rubbish littered the pavement – the sidewalk, he reminded himself – and the calls of shop owners merged with traffic horns and echoed off the buildings. He reached the corner of Orchard Street and paused before turning left.
William Cross stepped off the subway train following Daniel’s and consulted the three-dimensional image on his phone. The three tight red dots at ground level pulsed with clockwork-like regularity. Cross moved to the exit and made his way up to the street. He watched as the red dots on his phone moved two blocks west then south, crossing over Broome Street and then turning left again after a short distance into a side alley. They stopped for a few moments before continuing, going into a building and making their way down into a basement.
Cross covered the ground to the side alley surprisingly quickly despite appearing to only saunter along. The red dots on his phone display had been static for a number of minutes – whoever Tiberius was meeting, they were now together. The sound of several voices in the alley made Cross pause at the entrance before turning in to it. He glanced around the corner and saw five Asian men about ten metres away. He put the phone into his jacket pocket and turned the collar up on his trench coat.
‘Hey, man, where d’you think you’re going?’ one of the young Asians asked Cross as he headed towards them. All five were standing close to the doorway which Tiberius had taken. ‘Think maybe you’ve taken a wrong turn.’
‘I’m just …’ Cross waved a hand, ‘heading over to Ludlow. Thought I’d take a short cut.’
‘There’s no short cut to Ludlow here,’ another of the men said.
Cross looked around the men and at the cars passing the alley entrance on Ludlow Street, thirty or so metres away.
‘I can see it there,’ Cross said, still walking towards the men.
‘I said there’s no short cut here, fool,’ the man repeated. ‘What’s the matter, man? You deaf or something?’
‘No, I can hear you well enough.’ Cross made his way closer to them.
‘Then what the hell are you doing? Move your white ass back down that way.’
Cross continued walking, his shoulders slumped and his head slightly bowed. ‘I don’t want any trouble,’ he muttered. ‘I’ll be past you in a second or two.’
‘You’ll be dead in a second or two,’ the first Asian man said pulling a wide-bladed knife from a hidden sheath on his back, ‘if you don’t stop walking.’
The other men fanned out to block Cross’s path, each one pulling out a similar-looking knife. Cross stopped and held his hands out, palms wide. ‘Whoa, there’s no need for that.’
‘Too late, idiot,’ the first man said. ‘You had your chance.’
He swung the blade at Cross, who seemed not even to be looking as the knife sliced through the air towards him but he snapped his left wrist out to meet the man’s hand at the last second. It was so sudden, so fierce, that the man’s hand opened and sent the blade spinning away. Cross jabbed his right hand, fingers straight out, into the man’s throat. There was a snap and the man fell to the floor gasping for life.
For a moment the other four men stood with looks of confusion on their faces before they comprehended what had happened. They each lashed out at Cross with their blades. It was the last thing they ever did.
‘Most combat,’ Cross’s Special Forces Instructor at Catterick had told him, ‘as generally perceived by the public is a series of blows and counter-blows. Clumsy punches which form the majority of fights and often lead to long, drawn-out scuffles.’
But Cross had been taught that there were places on a person’s body which, if struck correctly and with enough force, could either kill or immobilise quickly and quietly. The throat was one such place, as was the temple above each eye, the corner of the jaw, the nose, a spot on either side of the neck and three places on the chest around the heart.
William Cross knew all of these soft spots plus a dozen more – nerve cluster points which could paralyse a man; make him stop breathing; or simply induce a coma – and at Catterick he’d been trained to defeat an enemy with the minimum of fuss.
The four remaining men slashed at him with their knives and threw ineffective kicks and punches – one actually managed to land a fist against his head – but within a matter of seconds they all lay on the ground; bleeding and silent.
Cross put his hand up to where the punch had struck to find a trace of blood; the man had been wearing a ring. Cross dragged the five bodies farther down the alley and left them hidden behind a large trash dumpster. A quick scan of the alley told him that the fight hadn’t been witnessed; at least no one was rushing to the Asian men’s aid. He took out his phone, tapped the screen and checked on the position of the red dots.
Cross swore under his breath.
The tracking display was clear. The red dots were gone.
Daniel let the loud clang of the metal door echo around him before making his way down the concrete steps. The dull glow of an electric light gave the stairway an eerie atmosphere. It was humid and the stale aroma of damp air drifted up from below. He patted the bundles of money tucked into his waist, and silently hoped that this wasn’t a mistake.
Another metal door that had a narrow hatch at head height sat a few metres on from the bottom of the stairs. Daniel moved up to the door and knocked on it, nervously. The hatch slid open after a few seconds and a pair of fierce-looking eyes came into view.
‘Yeah?’ the man said. ‘Whaddya want?’
‘I’m here to see Pickford,’ Daniel offered. ‘I … I have an appointment.’
The man behind the door laughed. ‘You have an appointment?’ He laughed again. ‘Damn, where you think you’re at? The dentist?’
‘My name’s Daniel. He is expecting me.’
The man gave another laugh. ‘Sure, hold on.’
The hatch slid back into place with a clang. It was another minute before Daniel heard bolts being drawn back and the metal door opening. The man with the fierce eyes stood with an expectant look on his face. He was tall; well over two metres, and had a body-builder’s physique – the sort that his dad used to described as “a brick out-house”.
‘Mr Pickford says that he’s ready for his nine thirty appointment,’ the guard said with a snort. He gave a sideways nod with his head. ‘Come on.’
Daniel moved past the man and was surprised to see how modern and secure the corridor leading away from the doorway was. The lighting was bright but not over-whelming and the passageway had a surgical cleanliness. A small room off the doorway looked to be where the man did his guard duty. The stairway had been old and decrepit, but everything this side of the door was its opposite.
The man closed the door and slid three large bolts into place. He tapped in a sequence of numbers on a keypad on the wall and a magnetic lock sealed the door even tighter.
The guard saw the surprise on Daniel’s face. ‘What? Just ‘cos we’re in Chinatown, it don’t mean that we’re in China.’ He moved past Daniel. ‘Follow me.’
He headed off along the corridor with Daniel having to hurry to keep up with the guard’s long stride. After fifteen or so metres the man stopped by another door and knocked twice. A man’s voice from the room beyond – Pickford’s, perhaps? – called “come in”.
The guard looked at Daniel. ‘Well, he don’t want to see me,’ he said and
walked back down the corridor to his guard room.
Daniel turned the handle on the door and pushed it open. The large room beyond was an Aladdin’s cave; racks of shelves lined the walls, and a series of perspex-covered tables sat in the open space. Lit from below, the tables looked white.
Pickford sat on a padded stool by the nearest table eating from a bowl of pretzels, with another man at his shoulder. Daniel had been wondering what Pickford might look like from his voice and if it’d been a contest he would’ve lost. Pickford was a small man; his left arm withered and twisted, and his eyes were two different colours.
‘You must be Danny,’ Pickford said. ‘Come in, come in.’
Daniel closed the door and stepped over to the table. He suddenly had a flashback to school, he felt as if he’d walked into the Headmaster’s office.
‘Remind me again what it was you wanted?’ Pickford said as Daniel reached the table. His accent was coarse, and typically “New York”.
‘I need a cell phone,’ Daniel muttered.
‘Right, right,’ Pickford said, popping another pretzel into his mouth. ‘Just a regular cell phone? Or can I tempt you with some other …’ He waved his good arm towards the racks of equipment, ‘… stuff.’
Daniel eyed the shelving units speculatively. ‘What else do you have?’
Pickford laughed. ‘Man, I have everything,’ he said. ‘You don’t have a passport or DNA card, right?’
Daniel nodded.
‘Want one?’
‘You can do that?’
‘Okay, I’m not gonna take that as an insult ‘cos I’m guessing you’re new in town, but trust me when I say that I have everything.’
‘The only thing is …’ Daniel began.
Pickford’s eyes narrowed. ‘What?’
‘I’m kind of in hiding, so the DNA card would have to be –’
‘Say no more,’ Pickford said holding up his good hand. ‘Say no more. I don’t ask so I don’t have to know. Just tell me the name you want on the documents and it’s a done deal. The only question, my young friend, is whether you have what I ask for in return.’ He rubbed the fingers on his right hand together.
Daniel instinctively touched his shirt covering the bundles of money.
‘Ah,’ Pickford muttered, ‘I see you came prepared. That’s good. I really don’t like it when people waste my time. So, let’s talk about the cell phone, shall we? What sort do you want? Just a standard cell?’ His eyes squinted. ‘Or something a little more … special?’
Daniel thought for a moment, a smile on his lips. ‘Special sounds good.’
A dozen different models of cell phone lay on the perspex table in front of Daniel.
‘It’s not so much what the cell looks like,’ Pickford said, ‘it’s what drives it that’s the key. You pick a model that you like the look of and we’ll fix it so that it’ll do what you want. So how far do you want to go? Interesting? Geeky? State-of-the-art, all-singing and dancing? What?’
Daniel unbuttoned his shirt, pulled out all of the bundles of money and placed them on the table. The man at Pickford’s shoulder gave an involuntary gasp.
‘You gotta excuse Luca,’ Pickford said shaking his head and looking up at the man, ‘he’s new.’ He turned back to the money on the table. ‘So, state-of-the-art, all-singing and dancing it is.’
Pickford ejected the SIM card out of a small black unit and handed it to Luca to slip into the phone Daniel had selected. A charging unit sat on the table.
‘So, you got X-ray, a sonar image builder, an optional holographic display,’ Pickford told Daniel, ‘the top five hundred apps, plus I also put in a little favourite of my own in free-of-charge.’
Luca shot him an incredulous look.
‘What?’ Pickford asked. ‘I gotta soft spot for the kid, what can I say?’ He turned back to Daniel. ‘In my line of work I prefer people not to know where I am so, considering what you said about being in hiding, I’ve included a little dampening field software I had specially written that I thought you might have need of.’ He leaned a little closer. ‘Not even Homeland or NSA have anything like this.’
‘What does it do?’
‘The fancy, scientific explanation is that it creates a ten-foot, negatively-charge polarised bubble around the cell which deflects all GPS and requisition-mandate reflective signals,’ Pickford said with a crooked smile. ‘The less than scientific explanation is that it turns you into the invisible man. No satellite or tracking system’ll be able to locate the phone. The only way anyone could tell where you are, is if they look for the hole you make but who’s gonna go through all that trouble? Besides, there are more of these little babies out there than you might think.’
‘What about making calls?’
Pickford looked blankly at him. ‘It’s a phone; you dial then you speak.’
‘No I mean … I can’t have my name on any contract.’
‘Oh, I get you. Not a problem. This little baby’ll connect to the closest network with the strongest signal. Don’t worry about having to pay another cell bill either; free calls for life. Guaranteed.’
‘Or my money back?’
Pickford paused. ‘Yeah, sure. Why not?’
Daniel took the phone. ‘Thank you.’
‘Hey, don’t thank me kid,’ Pickford said, sliding the money over to Luca. ‘You’re getting what you’re paying for. Call me old-fashioned, but it warms my heart knowing that a customer’s happy.’
Daniel smiled and shook the small man’s hand.
‘I was just thinking,’ Pickford said, his eyes squinting. ‘With the new passport and ID card, do you really want to keep that look?’
‘What’s wrong with the way I look?’
‘Nothing, it’s just that if you want to pretend to be someone else then maybe it’ll better if you look like someone else. I’ve people here who could do something with your hair, if you’d like.’
‘What’s wrong with my hair?’
‘Geez, don’t be so defensive, will you? I’m just saying that if you’re gonna have new documents then why not have a different look.’
Daniel thought about it then nodded. Pickford made sense. ‘Okay, what do you have in mind?’
When Daniel walked back into the Aladdin’s cave, rubbing a hand through his short dark hair, Pickford was holding a plasma Tablet screen in his one good hand. He looked up with a serious expression.
‘Did you come here with anyone tonight, Danny?’ the short man asked.
‘No. Why?’
Pickford offered him the Tablet. ‘So you’re tellin’ me you don’t know this guy?’
Daniel looked at the screen. It was a live-feed from a camera by the doorway he’d come through in the alley, and he watched as William Cross paced around. The man in the trench coat was consulting his phone and looking at the doorway. The man’s body language suggested that he was searching for something.
‘I’ve never seen him before,’ Daniel said.
‘So it’s just coincidence that just after you get here this guy takes out five of my men and puts them behind a dumpster?’
Daniel looked at the screen with renewed interest. The man glanced up and spotted the camera – giving Daniel a clear look at his face – he froze for a second then put his phone into his jacket and turned away, heading back down the alley.
‘I don’t know who he is.’ Daniel handed back the screen. ‘I swear.’
‘Right.’ From the way Pickford had spoken the word and chewed at a lip, Daniel wasn’t sure the man believed him. ‘Right.’ Pickford passed the Tablet to Luca. ‘They take the passport pics?’
Daniel nodded.
‘You look good with brown eyes,’ Pickford added. ‘Come back tomorrow and I’ll have the passport and DNA card ready, the matching lens case and laminator too.’
A look of concern came over Daniel’s face.
‘Hey, kid,’ Pickford said, holding his one good hand up, ‘if I was in the habit of ripping people off then I’d go out of bu
siness pretty damn quick.’
‘So you’re saying that I just have to trust you?’
‘That’s about the sum of it, yeah.’
Daniel took in a deep lungful of air. ‘I’ve been told not to trust anyone.’
‘That’s a smart thing to do,’ Pickford began, ‘and something that I’d normally encourage, but then I’m not just anyone. I’m me, and if you want the stuff I’ve got then you’re gonna have to have a little faith. Just the same as me having a little faith in believing you, when you say that you don’t know that guy.’
Daniel had no option. ‘Okay. I guess I’ll have to then. I guess we’ll have to trust each other.’
‘Smart decision, kid,’ Pickford said nodding his head. ‘Oh, and one other thing.’
‘What?’
‘I think it might be best if you left by the back door,’ Pickford said with a crooked smile. ‘Hope you don’t mind.’
Dryden’s phone beeped in his ear. He stopped writing the document on his screen and tapped his earpiece. ‘Yes?’
‘We’ve lost visual contact with Tiberius, sir,’ Matthews told him.
Dryden paused slightly. ‘And just how exactly how did we manage to do that?’
‘We tracked him entering an industrial building on the edge of Chinatown over an hour ago –’
‘And?’
‘And there’s no indication that he left. I’ve been running a camera scan for a two block radius since we lost visual but he—’ Matthews took a breath ‘—he seems to have vanished.’
‘Is he a magician, Matthews?’
‘I … I don’t follow you, sir?’
‘Can he disappear into thin air?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Then he’s still there. So find him.’