Delivering Caliban (7 page)

Twelve

New York City

Monday 20 May, 2.15 pm

They closed in on Purkiss a minute or so after he’d presented his passport at the desk. A tall woman in a grey trouser suit with short, highlighted blonde hair, and a beefy Asian man, also besuited. They’d appeared out of nowhere.

‘Sir, you need to come with us.’ The woman spoke, her voice firm, confident. The man touched his elbow lightly.

Purkiss let them steer him between them away from the queue at passport control and down a side corridor. He was aware of the curious and thrilled stares prying at his back.

In a square room with walls painted an institutional pastel they sat him behind a table that was bolted to the floor. He half-expected to see an overflowing ashtray on it until he remembered New York was smoke free.

After the experience flying to Hamburg and in the airport afterwards, his senses had been tuned to fever pitch, both on the plane from Hamburg back to Heathrow and on the connecting flight to JFK. There’d been no-one suspicious, he was certain of it. If you excluded the wiry man with unshaven, sallow cheeks and dirty jeans across the aisle a few rows behind him. The man had sat through the entire seven-hour flight with headphones on, jaw working a piece of gum.

The woman pulled up a chair and sat across from Purkiss. The man remained standing, his hands in his pockets, his head lowered.

Purkiss didn’t feign outrage, or the normal nervousness a civilian would feel when pulled aside by what was obviously a pair of federal agents. He held the woman’s gaze, calmly, without challenge. She studied his face.

‘Mr Purkiss, I’m Special Agent Berg. This is Special Agent Nakamura. Federal Bureau of Investigation.’

Purkiss said nothing.

She drew a tablet computer from her bag and touched the screen. ‘John Purkiss. Secret Intelligence Service.’ She turned the tablet to show him his mug shot.

So that was it. He was on the database from back when he’d been a Service agent, and his appearance at Immigration had tripped their radar.

‘I used to be. I no longer work for them.’

This was both true and untrue. Technically he was employed solely by Vale, who was registered as a limited company. But Vale was funded at least in part by the Service. Purkiss suspected the Home Office contributed as well.

She gave him a deadpan look of utter scepticism. He raised his eyebrows.

‘
Check with London, if you like, or with the embassy here in New York. I left the Service in 2008.’

Behind her shoulder Nakamura gave a tiny snort. Purkiss ignored him.

Berg said: ‘In which case, Mr Purkiss, what’s your business in the United States?’

‘
Road trip.’

‘
Excuse me?’

‘
I intend to rent a car and take a trip across country. Explore the mythic American landscape. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, but I never got a chance when I was with the Service.’

‘
Jack Kerouac.’ This from the other agent.

‘
If you like. Not following in Kerouac’s footsteps, though. I just want to go where the road takes me.’

It was an absurd story. Purkiss didn’t blame them for what they were doing. A foreign spook on your turf... their suspiciousness was natural. But he felt irritated and frustrated; this was something he should have anticipated. At worst, they’d make up some excuse and deport him, Vale would smooth things over, and he’d return. But probably in a day or two’s time, at the earliest, and by then Pope would be even further out of reach than he was now.

‘You’re here how long?’ Berg.

‘
Ninety days. Just like anyone else. Then I’ll be heading back. I’m not looking to immigrate.’

They watched him. He had time, so he looked back levelly. At Berg, not Nakamura. He suspected the man was going to start cutting up rough in a moment and he wanted to give the impression he wasn’t prepared for him. If he maintained eye contact with him he’d betray his intentions.

After a full twenty seconds Purkiss said: ‘How long is this going to go on for?’

‘
Why?’ Nakamura spoke up. ‘Got someplace you need to be?’

Purkiss raised his palms. ‘Getting hungry, that’s all. And I don’t know if you’re going to wait till I confess to being on some mission in your country. If so, we’ll be here a long time. Forever, actually.’

The two agents didn’t look at each other but something passed between them, invisible communication that ends to develop between working cops paired together for several years. Purkiss began to wonder. Had they got anything else on him? Had they somehow linked him to the killings in Amsterdam or here in New York? It didn’t make sense. If anyone had connected him with the investigation into the killings it would be the CIA. And they’d hardly share the intelligence with the FBI, even though it was properly the Feds’ business if somebody linked to a crime against American citizens arrived on US soil. The rivalry between the two agencies was too great for that.

Berg said, ‘Where do you intend to head after this?’

Purkiss shrugged. ‘I was going to take a cheap hotel in Manhattan. Greenwich Village, maybe. Soak up the city for a day or two, while I make some plans. Then head west.’ He closed his eyes for a second, sighed. ‘Look. I know how you feel. I’m unwanted here. But seriously, I’m on holiday. I’m no threat to you or your country. If you’re going to deport me, please call London first. They’ll vouch for me. And they’re not going to lie to you, not about this.’ He was telling the truth. London was cosying up to the newly reelected President with renewed vigour, and wouldn’t want to scupper things. It was one of the reasons Pope’s responsibility for the killings couldn’t be shared with the Company.

Berg glanced back at Nakamura, who nodded. Purkiss realised for the first time that they were on a more-or-less equal footing, though he’d assumed before that Berg was the senior partner. She stood, stepped towards Nakamura and conferred with him in murmurs.

Nakamura rolled his eyes. Berg turned back to Purkiss and said, ‘Okay. You can go.’

‘
That’s it?’ He rose.

‘
Go. I won’t even warn you what’ll happen if you’re caught doing anything wrong.’ Her face was suddenly in his personal space. ‘And I mean anything. A parking violation. Public spitting. Jaywalking.’

‘
Understood.’

He picked up his holdall – they hadn’t searched it; hadn’t had probable cause – and followed Nakamura back down the corridor into the main concourse. Taking a moment to orientate himself, he headed towards the duty channels.

Once, he glanced back, and saw the two agents standing together, Nakamura half a head shorter than Berg. They were watching him.

*

Purkiss rode the escalator towards a ceiling-high clear glass wall, the exit to the subway system beyond it. At the top, the scruffy gum-chewing man from the plane was loitering. Purkiss ignored him and walked past, turning towards the subway entrance.

An hour later, having roved back and forth between Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan on a subway system he found just as Byzantine as ever, he emerged at Whitehall Street. The early afternoon spring heat was more acute than it had been in Amsterdam and Hamburg and even London, and he felt the prickle of sweat at his shirt collar.

He was fairly confident he hadn’t been followed. Perhaps eighty per cent.

Purkiss thumbed a text message into his phone as he walked.
Battery Park in ten minutes.
Before entering the subway he’d sent another:
I’m going to wander for a while. Head to Manhattan and stay above ground near the southern tip.

For a few minutes, with the salt breeze coming in from the harbour and the sky deep blue with the merest streak of cloud overhead, Purkiss allowed himself to enjoy the moment.  Behind him the city towered, compact yet vast. He’d been there twice before, once as a student and again six years ago with Claire, the cityscape changed forever in between by the attacks on the Twin Towers.

Battery Park was strewn with office workers taking late lunch breaks, mothers with baby buggies, and tourists. Purkiss consulted a legend on a signpost and set off deeper into the park. Of all places in New York to choose for a meeting of espions, he thought, there couldn’t have been a more cliched one. It was like Waterloo Bridge or the Brandenburg Gate.

The man was alone on a bench, scattering the dregs from a paper bag to the assortment of pigeons and other birds strutting around his feet. Thirties, average size, fair hair. Purkiss sat beside him as though glad to rest his feet and said, ‘Catching the weather while it lasts.’

The other man said: ‘Storms by tomorrow morning, they reckon.’

The parole and countersign over, they sat in silence for ten seconds. Purkiss surveyed the lawn in front of him, the path stretching to either side. Nobody obvious.

He said, ‘So. Tell me.’

The other man – Vale had said his name was Delatour – glanced directly at Purkiss. It was less obvious than if he’d muttered from the side of his mouth. ‘I believe we have visual confirmation of Pope’s entry into the United States via JFK approximately two hours before the killing.’

He held up a smartphone, one of the larger brands that was almost a tablet computer. On the screen was a captured image from a black-and-white surveillance camera, taken from above and to the left of the same passport control area Purkiss himself had been stopped at earlier. Delatour tapped the screen to zoom in. Standing patiently in line was Pope. The image wasn’t in perfect focus but it was sharp enough.

‘
I’ve checked the passenger manifest,’ said Delatour. ‘He was travelling under the name of Brian Sopwith.’

It made no difference. It was an alias he wouldn’t have used before, and wouldn’t use again. Purkiss gazed at a dog sprinting after a squirrel, its hapless owner in tow.

Delatour was Service, working out of the British Embassy. He was one of Vale’s contacts in the city and had both first notified Vale of Grosvenor’s murder and agreed to help with confirmation that Pope was responsible, as if there’d been much doubt otherwise.

The problem with New York, as Purkiss well knew, was that unlike Amsterdam or Hamburg or any of the big European cities, the Service couldn’t simply monitor CIA signals and operations. It was the Company’s home turf, and that meant foreign services were constantly on the back foot. Delatour had no leads on Grosvenor or many other Company operatives in the city, no access into their operations. And therefore no leads as to Grosvenor’s possible connection with Pope.

Nonetheless, Delatour touched the screen and another picture appeared. A mild-looking woman with dark, bobbed hair, in her late fifties or thereabouts.

‘
Sylvia Grosvenor,’ he said. ‘Mostly winding down in her career, as far as we can tell. Passed over for promotion once too often, and by now too old to make it back up the greasy pole. Probably embittered. Still active, often out of the city. That’s what our sources have gleaned, anyway.’

‘
Anything on her operations?’

Delatour took back the smartphone. ‘Virtually nothing. Some low-level work in Canada and in North Africa over the last twenty years, mainly looking at Islamist groups. Nothing spectacular, nothing to bring her to anybody’s attention.’

Purkiss’s own phone buzzed in his pocket. He fished it out. A text mesage read:
You’re clean, far as I can tell. Bit difficult to tell about those trees straight in front of you. I’ve got wheels if you need them.

He put the phone away, scanning the treeline ahead. The foliage was dense with spring bloom, and yes, it was possible somebody was lurking there, but he couldn’t tell.

To Delatour he said, ‘What about extracurricular activities?’

‘
Grosvenor? Again, not much. Single. Occasionally men round, but nothing serious.’

‘
Any evidence of black ops links? Unofficial missions?’