May 2
7th Avenue at East 23rd Street
New York City
7:47 A.M. EDT
Jeffrey Connor strode south with determination, covering the long blocks between his temporary abode—now, he mused balefully, maybe even more temporary—and the FBI offices. His progress was at a pace only slightly slower than a taxi’s would have been.
That, despite traffic lights that were today working normally, at least for New York.
The previous day’s snarl was resolved. Already, it had faded to only one of the omnipresent inconveniences that most New Yorkers automatically bury in a merciful, jaded, collective amnesia: Stuff happens. Well, wha’cha gonna do? Somebody just fix the damn thing, fer cryin’ out loud … Hey! Yeah, you! I’m walkin’ here…
Like them, Connor’s own thoughts were instead focused on what maladies, city-life and other, the current day had in store.
And so he walked, lost in thought.
He had much time to think, despite his pace. Four miles to Federal Plaza is a healthy walk, especially on the already crowded sidewalk of Seventh Avenue.
Connor told himself he needed the exercise; while presumably comfortable enough for most other purposes, the suite’s sofa had been particularly ill-suited for a good night’s rest.
• • •
Connor had awakened shortly after 6 a.m., roused from a fitful sleep when sunlight smashed loudly through the balcony’s plate-glass doors and collided painfully with the sofa. His mouth had tasted of stale vodka, which cohabited with a surly headache. Both joined forces to remind him of how he had spent the evening before.
To reproach him for it, rather.
Alcohol and spy stories, he told himself. Great fun. Now I know a new recipe for disaster.
At least, disaster for morose FBI agents who had been lured to a table, plied with sympathetic rounds of drink, cunningly anesthetized by a pair of old-school spooks until his Katie problems seemed to melt into a shared, inevitable—and somehow even humorous—aspect of the trio’s chosen careers.
Gradually, Beck Casey and Ian Tatum had cajoled, chided, compassionately coaxed Connor from the black mood that had possessed him.
And then those two bastards milked me, Connor berated himself. Milked me goddamn dry.
Connor recalled, though at best vaguely, describing his session with the woman from Shin Bet.
He colored scarlet at the memory.
Beck and his English friend had been suitably interested; had offered various insights on Israelis and their unique cultural quirks; had proffered advice, alternately encouraging and cautionary; had related their own experiences—invariably laugh-inducing, though in retrospect remarkably lacking in details, if in any way verifiable at all—involving promises originating from the Promised Land; had—
Had played me like a rookie, Connor realized. Had kept me talking, when I should have known to keep my drunk-ass mouth shut. Damn them. Damn me, for falling for it…
But even that was not the end of it, or—for Connor’s ego—the worst.
Connor had stumbled to the bathroom, praying for aspirin; the door to the room he ostensibly shared with Katie was closed tight, but that of Beck’s room had been slightly ajar.
He eased it wider. The bed had been slept in, but there was no sign of its obviously earlier-rising previous occupant. It was humiliating: apparently, Connor’s prospective father-in-law had a superhuman immunity to the after-effects of both alcohol and late-night carousing.
An infuriatingly cheerful-sounding note tucked into the bathroom mirror—addressed, Connor noted with a grimace, to both Katie and himself—once more poured salt in Connor’s wounded pride, professional and personal alike.
Had an early meeting, it read. Tonight, dinner for sure. All of us this time.
It had been signed, with no trace of irony: “Dad.”
Then, an apparent after-thought.
P.S.: Every couple has a rough spot or two. Work it out. You kids love each other. You both just need to remember that.
Connor had winced; in Katie’s present state of mind, such parental advice would be predictably counterproductive.
Yeah, ‘Dad.’ That’ll help, oh yeah. Thanks for everything, ‘Dad.’
Nevertheless, Connor had carefully refolded the note, just as carefully returned it to the mirror frame.
A quarter hour later, he slipped out of the suite—equally carefully, easing the door shut with a caution he told himself was consideration for a still-sleeping Katie.
But he knew that was only a partial truth, at best.
• • •
New York City is an urban polyglot: An observant pedestrian learns to expect a series of figurative frontier-crossings—cultural and economic, as well as linguistic—every few blocks. By the time Connor was crossing Fifth Avenue at Worth Street, he had traversed a veritable United Nations of neighborhood realms and fiefdoms.
His foot had just stepped onto another of them—the sidewalk at Federal Plaza, a.k.a. Foley Square, arguably the most visible physical embodiment of the United States in New York City—when an overly cheerful voice spoke at his elbow.
“Hey, kid, got a minute for your ol’ Uncle Denny?”
A smiling Dennis Littrell—freshly shaven, immaculately groomed, don in a suit that might have cost a month’s worth of Connor’s government salary—matched his step to the FBI agent’s pace.
Quickly, Connor’s head pivoted, scanned the crowd for any overly interested onlookers.
“What are you doing here—” Connor began, just as Denny took his elbow.
“Let’s talk. C’mon. Just need a minute, okay?”
The newsman led him to one of the more secluded of the serpentine green benches in the building’s shadow.
“You probably don’t want to be seen talking to me right now,” Denny grinned. “There’s probably a lot of people wondering where I got all that stuff for my big broadcast, right?”
“Good guess. What do you want, Denny?”
“First off, I want you to know that—as far as I’m concerned—we’re all even, okay? For me getting you and Katie out of D.C., I mean. No obligations. ’Cept on my part. Believe it, I’m never going to disclose my sources. Hey, I especially wouldn’t put you in the jackpot for anything. With your bosses, of course. Cross my heart.”
“Okay. Sure. You were here, waiting for me outside a building full of trained investigators just to tell me that. What do you really want from me, Denny?”
Denny shook his head in what might have passed for sadness.
“I should be offended. I mean, after what the three of us went through. How’s Katie, by the way? You two kids settling in here comfortably, instead of being dead down in Washington? Glad I could help there.”
The newsman shrugged, making the gesture seem magnanimous.
“But just by way of making conversation,” he smiled, “you hear anything new about the attack yesterday?”
“You need to talk to the Secret Service,” Connor said. “When a President is assassinated, they’re the guys who—”
“Oh, not that attack,” Denny interrupted. “The other one. You know: the one that took down the traffic lights.”
Connor frowned.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Denny made a face of his own. “Don’t be that way, kid. I’m just asking you to confirm what’s going on.”
“Why don’t you tell me what you think is happening, Denny.”
Denny sighed, unmistakably theatrical.
“Okay, we’ll play it that way. What I think is that our fair city’s little traffic fuck-up yesterday maybe wasn’t just a glitch in the system. That maybe it was a little more … oh, let’s call it ‘nefarious.’ Just nod, if you don’t want to say it out loud.”
No nod. Instead: “What makes you say that?”
“The news never sleeps, kid. Neither does a newsie. See, before dawn this morning, I started phoning around to some people I know, called in some favors, twisted one or two arms. Everybody’s being pretty hush-hush about it, of course. But there’s this one guy—old friend, cop source who works in the city’s—”
Denny stopped himself, chuckled. “Well, guess you don’t have to know that. Or his name. But my guy says rumor around his shop is it wasn’t just a computer glitch. That is, not an accidental one.”
“Rumor, huh? You’re chasing rumors now?”
“I’m chasing the story. I have another old friend who confirms—off the record, no attribution, but solid—that all sorts of spooky government types have been pawing through the municipal systems. All night long.”
“Who are these ‘government types’ supposed to have been?”
“I’m assuming it was your people. Somebody hacks the computer, you G-men get the call, right?”
“I’m not in cyber crimes,” Connor said.
“No, you hunt terrorists,” Denny retorted. “It doesn’t take a genius to link the dots here.”
He leaned closer, hoping that his bluff was masked in sufficient confidence.
“Hell of a mess, wasn’t it? They even had to cancel that motorcade from Newark, remember? I’ll even bet you guys think that’s why the President ended up on a helicopter in the first place.”
He sat back on the bench, but his eyes never left Connor’s face. “Same signal, kid. Just nod if I’m in the ballpark.”
Connor stood. “Can’t help you.”
“Can’t, or won’t?”
“Adds up to the same thing, doesn’t it?”
Denny had just opened his mouth to reply when another voice spoke from behind them.
“Good morning, Jeffrey,” said Tavah Duhahi, though both her smile and her eyes were fixed firmly on his companion. “Will you not introduce me to your elegant friend?”