CHAPTER 8
Daniel awoke on his second morning in America in the less than salubrious surroundings of room 405 in The Hotel on the Park. He’d found the place in the Yellow Pages listed under “Budget Accommodation”, and it was so far out of the city that it was half way to Connecticut.
The man on the front desk, who greeted him with a grunt on his arrival the previous evening, wore a sweat-stained vest – it may once have been white – scratched at his fat belly and demanded a week’s payment for the room in advance. It looked as if he hadn’t shaved in a month.
The “hotel” was in reality a near-derelict tenement of twenty rooms set over five floors. The room chosen for him had, so the man on the desk informed him, a view over the park and as such warranted an extra fifty bucks per night.
In the thin, grey morning light Daniel discovered that the “park” was in fact a dozen square metres of browned grass, squeezed in between other similarly derelict buildings, with a rusting two-seater swing on one side. A broken down chain-link fence surrounded the grass. Even so, it was the best view to be had.
As soon as Daniel closed the room door behind him he double-locked it, put the security bar in place and wedged a rickety chair under the handle. It was the sort of hotel room he’d only seen before in movies; the kind of place where drug deals and murders happened with frightening regularity. A place where the manager didn’t ask any questions.
The night had been filled with noise: knocking water pipes, the sound of arguments coming from nearby rooms and the occasional gun shot from somewhere outside. His sleep had been fitful at best.
It was the safest he’d felt in the last two days.
He was happy, though, that he’d decided to leave the majority of his money in the locker at the train station.
He climbed out of the bed and padded across the sticky carpet to the bathroom. Switching on the light he noticed a number of red bite marks over his body, arms and legs. Confused, he ran a hand over one; it was lumpy and hard, and when he scratched it, it only made it feel worse.
He went back into the bedroom and pulled the duvet off the bed. A dozen or so small brown insects scurried for safety. Of course, he should’ve thought about that.
He took a quick shower – reluctant to spend any more time in the grimy cubicle than was necessary. At least he had the towels and soft slippers from the Cerillo hotel to use. He dried himself down, wrapped the large towel around his waist and slung one of the smaller ones over his shoulder. The slippers stopped his feet getting dirty as he moved back into the bedroom.
He picked up the TV remote control. At least the thin screen fixed to the wall worked. Daniel flicked through a number of channels – various news stations, one of the dreadful American soap operas and some children’s cartoons – until he came across an old martial arts film. Bruce Lee had a series of bloody slashes across his chest and face but still managed to cut a swathe through a host of men determined to kill him.
Daniel studied Lee’s movements; the way he almost danced between kicks and punches. Daniel re-wound the film a few minutes, dropped the remote onto the bed and adopted a similar stance to the actor. As Lee dispatched foe after foe, Daniel tried to imitate his movements. He’d never even considered martial arts before but Daniel found that his attempts were satisfyingly close.
The actor had died many years before Daniel had even been born, but he knew that Lee was still regarded as a martial arts legend. He had no idea what lay ahead but decided that being able to defend himself was surely a good thing.
When Daniel stepped out of the antique lift into the lobby the fat man behind the desk turned to stare at him. He wore the same dirty vest from the night before and had a wooden tooth-pick between his lips. An old black man with white hair, sitting in a wicker chair a few feet away from the desk, also turned to look at Daniel. He got the impression, from the look on both men’s faces, that they’d been talking and had stopped the moment the lift doors opened.
‘Goin’ out?’ the fat man asked.
‘Yeah,’ Daniel replied as he moved over to the desk. ‘Is there a POD place close?’ A print-on-demand shop would be his best option to get the book he wanted.
‘You lookin’ for somethin’ to read, huh?’ The expression on the man’s face suggested that he thought Daniel was mad.
‘I guess.’
‘There’s one over on Plymouth.’
‘Thanks.’ Daniel turned to go.
‘You’re British, right?’
Daniel stopped, and turned back. ‘Yeah.’
‘How’d you like it here?’
‘It’s okay.’
‘Sleep alright?’
‘Not really,’ Daniel said. ‘The bed seems to be infested with something.’
‘Infested?’ The man made the question sound like a statement. ‘Really?’
Daniel nodded. ‘I think they might be bed bugs or something.’
‘You don’t say?’ The man rolled the tooth-pick from one side of his lips to the other. ‘I’ll call the exterminators at once.’
The black man sniggered, but the fat man didn’t move. He continued to lounge on the desk top with a lop-sided grin and stare at Daniel through blood-shot eyes.
It was clear that he had no such intention.
Daniel gave him a cold smile. ‘Great.’
Daniel walked into Rory’s Print ‘N Copy. The place was one large room with a dozen terminals sitting on separate tables, had two large print machines set against one wall and a curved counter opposite. From the smell of the place and the peeling paint Daniel guessed that it hadn’t been decorated or cleaned since the last century. Two other people sat at terminals.
A man leaned on the counter, idly flipping through a music magazine. He wore a faded t-shirt and the badge pinned to his chest suggested his name was “Jimbo”. He looked to be not much older than Daniel and one glance told him that Jimbo would have preferred to be anywhere else but there.
Daniel moved over to the counter and took out his wallet. ‘One POD credit, thanks.’
Jimbo moved with such lethargy that it almost looked as if he was being coerced. He jabbed a button on a pad sitting next to the Cash Register. A small grey box whirred and a thin plastic card came out of it. ‘Forty bucks.’
Daniel gave him a hundred dollar bill. From Jimbo’s reaction anyone looking would have thought that he’d been handed a bag of dog dirt. He took the change from the Register and held it limply out to Daniel, along with the plastic card.
Daniel thanked him with a smile, which only seemed to irritate Jimbo even more, and moved over to one of the many free terminals. The screen came to life as soon as he tapped it and searched the name “Lee, Bruce” for available books. He highlighted one of the returned results, entered the plastic card into a slot and confirmed the order.
Daniel closed the search screen, went over to one of the printers and pushed the card into it. A couple of minutes later, from the wide tray half way down the printer, Daniel collected the printed and bound book. He held it up to his nose and flipped through the pages; there was nothing quite like the smell of a newly printed book. He closed it up and ran his hand over the cover.
A black-and-white picture of the author, in a classic pose with fists raised, dominated the space. Simple white letters to the left of Bruce Lee’s face read Tao of Jeet Kune Do.
The man sitting in a light grey saloon parked opposite Rory’s Print ‘N Copy appeared to be reading the morning’s paper. But that’s what he’d been trained to do – to make it appear he was doing one thing when he was doing another. Out of the corner of his eye he watched as Daniel left the shop – a small, brown paper-wrapped bundle in the young man’s hand – and head back the way he had come towards The Hotel on the Park.
The chatter between the local police district dispatch and various Officers played at low volume from small speakers in the car’s doors.
The man waited until Daniel had turned the first corner before neatly folding the paper. He placed it on the
passenger seat, turned off the police band radio and got out of the car. Another thing William Cross had been trained to do was to blend in; if anyone had call to describe him to the authorities – and over the years there had been many – the best most could manage was “average”. His fall-back position was disguise but experience told him that if you didn’t stand out in the first place, then no one looked at you twice.
It took Cross less than two minutes inside Rory’s to find out what he needed. He returned to the car, took out a small mobile phone and pressed the display window. Two more taps on the screen and the secure call was made.
‘It’s me,’ Cross said. His voice, like his appearance, was hard to pin-point. Was it British? Australian, maybe? But then there was also a hint of American in it. His accent gave about as much away as his body did.
‘Tiberius has just acquired a book by Bruce Lee on martial arts,’ he continued, then paused, listening to the response.
‘On his way back to the hotel, by the looks of it,’ Cross said.
He listened to the voice. ‘I’ve located the locker he’s using at Giuliani Central if you want me to take his funds…’ Cross offered, waiting for the reply.
‘Understood,’ he said. ‘Follow and observe only.’
When Daniel asked the fat man in the hotel if there was a gym anywhere close, the white-haired black man in the wicker chair gave the same wheezy laugh as he had before. The fat man rolled the tooth-pick across his lips.
‘There’s a boxing gym down on Franklin,’ he offered. He looked Daniel up and down. ‘But maybe the “Y” on Columbus would suit you better, if you know what I mean.’
The old man sniggered again. Daniel gave the man a forced smile and turned to go up to his room.
‘You got a book, then?’ the man asked.
‘So it’d seem,’ Daniel answered without turning back.
‘Goddamn stuck-up Brit,’ the man spat after Daniel had stepped into the lift. ‘What makes him think he’s so special?’
Daniel was beginning to feel almost normal again after two hours at the YMCA on Columbus Avenue. He hadn’t been able to exercise for the last three days, and his body welcomed the familiar rush of endorphins and adrenaline. The building was grubby, untended and smelled of stale sweat but it at least had a treadmill and a bike. When he ran it was one of the few times when he could actually think. There was something about the activity that allowed his mind to relax and his subconscious to roam free.
He thought back to the library. It seemed obvious now that Dryden had somehow been alerted that Daniel had search the Net for information about him but what kind of capability would the man need to be able to track him and shut down individual terminals? And to be able to do it so quickly?
He must’ve hacked into the library’s security and been watching him to know precisely where he was. What sort of man was he up against?
Daniel glanced around the room and looked for any cameras. Was he being watched at this very moment? He’d taken four subway trains from Manhattan and double-backed twice before ending up at The Hotel on the Park but that didn’t mean, if he was being followed, that he’d managed to lose them. Then again, if they did know where he was, why hadn’t they tried to capture him?
He told his brain to ease up otherwise he’d end just as paranoid as the professor.
He needed to know more about Dryden, that was clear, and about the programme the professor had mentioned. Daniel needed to know where he came from. And if Dryden was so easily able to detect him looking then it didn’t take a genius to realise that he wasn’t going to be able to do that with standard equipment.
The first thing he’d need was a new phone. Okay, maybe the first thing he needed was a new place to stay. Keep moving; that was the key. He remembered a story he’d heard about Yasser Arafat, the one-time leader of the Palestine Liberation Organisation – rumour had it that he never slept in the same place twice for fear of assassination by the Israelis.
But what sort of life would that be? Always running away, always afraid. No, he had to find somewhere obscure, somewhere off the grid. He had to make himself the needle in the haystack, and what better place than among the twelve-and-a-half million people of New York City? Hiding away in the suburbs near the Connecticut border might have seemed like a good idea but he stood out too much here – his accent alone betrayed him as an outsider. In New York, though, he’d be one of the many and simply melt into the mixing pot.
Another forty-five minutes on the treadmill, he told himself, then a shower. He’d go back to the hotel, collect his things and head into the city this afternoon. He’d find another place to stay where they didn’t ask too many questions. Tomorrow he’d go shopping.
He might even be able to fit in another visit to the library.
In the YMCA changing room, William Cross eased Daniel’s locker door open. None of the other four men in the room paid him any attention.
Shielding the locker with his body he took out a slim metal box from his jacket pocket, opened it and placed it on the shelf. The box held three miniature black discs and a pair of angled tweezers. He removed the back casing from Daniel’s watch and picked up one of the discs with the tweezers. He placed it carefully next to the mechanism then sealed the watch back up. Another disc went under the lapel of Daniel’s jacket and the third beneath the insole of one of Daniel’s shoes. Cross snapped the box shut, slipped it back into his jacket and closed the locker door.
He made his way back onto the street, took out his mobile phone and tapped the screen. An aerial view of the immediate area was displayed. He touched the screen where the YMCA was and drew his finger upwards. The display zoomed in on the building. He tapped the screen twice and the display changed to a three-dimensional view, showing the different floors and rooms. He tightened the focus, and onto the three red dots which pulsed in the changing room.
Cross tapped the screen again and the display closed. He returned the phone to his jacket and walked back to where his grey saloon was parked.