Parallel Lies (9 page)

When Alvarez entered, McClaren was typing at one of three computers, his head down, his shoulders arched.

The room looked like an electronics lab, or a computer repair shop. Large sheets of brown Peg-Board occupied two of the walls, supporting wires of every description. The air smelled of solder and cigarettes, acrid and bitter. A trio of wooden doors placed on top of file cabinets held the computers and created a U-shaped office area for McClaren, directly in front of Alvarez. To his left, behind the computer where McClaren sat, a cluttered workbench filled the corner.

The thugs pulled the door shut. Alvarez heard himself be locked in. He took notice of two pipe bombs rigged on the inside of this door. Alvarez felt out of his element. The only sound came from a very small TV that ran CNN.A black rubber mat, with a wire running to the wall, fronted the workbench.

Randy McClaren had blown off the last three fingers of his left hand as a teenager in the IRA, and yet he was able to work his thumb and index finger so that he typed with dexterity. He did not look up. He spoke with a thick brogue. “Wanking Internet, I’m telling you. God’s good and gracious gift to his Christian Soldiers. Pass information in an instant, trade stocks, check the bank, and no fucking FBI listening in.” He turned and faced his guest, his freckles and carrottop hair making him look younger than his thirty years. But the coldness in his vivid green eyes left little doubt that he’d seen many horrors.

“The FBI will be listening in one of these days,” Alvarez warned.

McClaren typed the last few characters and clicked the mouse. “You’re new, so I’ll tell you this, but only once. You checked out or you wouldn’t be here. Doesn’t matter, mate:
don’t
ever
come here, don’t
ever
attempt to make contact with me without calling your friend. I’ll kill you if you do.”

“I’m prepared to make payment,” Alvarez said, his throat dry. He was intimidated, even afraid. He had no idea what was in this room, but he had a feeling it was a powder keg.

“Was just checking the accounts.” McClaren nodded toward the computer. “Have a seat.”

“Are we all set then?” Alvarez inquired.

McClaren indicated a small gray box. He handed it to Alvarez, who nearly dropped it.

McClaren nodded. “Nervous?”

“Uncomfortable,” Alvarez admitted. “Explosives are new to me.”

“Mine are safe. Nothing to worry about.”

Nonetheless, Alvarez felt no safer. This wasn’t his world. He’d been a science teacher, a father. Bomb makers? He wanted out of there.

McClaren stood and indicated his seat. Alvarez sat down, spent a minute at the keyboard, and electronically transferred the remainder of the money due.

“We wait for the e-mail,” McClaren said. Confirmation could take anywhere from five minutes to an hour or more. He glanced down at his socks. He wanted his boots back.

Alvarez studied the small polished aluminum box. It was about the size of a cigarette pack. “It’s enough explosive to break that steel pin I described?” Alvarez questioned. This was the only time his plans included explosives.

“The pin you described is most commonly used in high-speed train couplers, ehh, Laddie? Not bank-vault hinge pins, as you wanted me to believe.” His information stunned Alvarez: he had figured out the purpose of the explosive. McClaren warned, “If they catch you, they’ll ask you where you got it, and I could care less what you tell them as long
as I’m not mentioned. If I am mentioned, Laddie, a box this same size will be shoved up your ass and detonated.”

The e-mail notification chime rang on the computer. McClaren leaned over the keyboard and liked what he saw.

Alvarez slipped the box into his front pocket. McClaren caught this out of the corner of his eye. “You be careful of those switches. First the toggle, then five seconds, then the button. You’ll have ten minutes exactly, from the time you push the button. You can’t stop it. And if that magnetic connection is broken, she’ll blow as well.”

“Got it,” Alvarez declared.

“Get out of here.”

Alvarez wanted his boots back. He wanted away from there. McClaren would take his own head off someday—a bad wire, a missed switch.

Ten minutes later he was walking the streets of New York, a box of undetectable explosives in his pocket. He had work to do on the computer board he was assembling, and he needed the final details of the bullet train test run. He intended one last derailment as a diversion before the bullet train. There was much to do.

If he threw those two switches, the box in his pocket would blow, taking his own life, along with a couple dozen pedestrians.

New York. What a city.

Riding a bicycle uptown on Madison Avenue in December, Alvarez both sweated and shivered as he kept his eye on the cell phone antenna on the black Town Car he was following. He pedaled hard at times, managing to stay within a half block of the car, grateful for New York’s bumper-to-bumper evening traffic. The fact that she was riding in a Town Car confirmed for him that this was a business trip. When Daddy sent for her, it was always a stretch limousine, sometimes, an extended stretch.
Never
a Town Car.

After five hours of sleep he’d left his loft apartment with a feeling of destiny swelling in his chest. McClaren’s box could help him to roll the bullet train; this woman, and her secrets, could cripple William Goheen. He had designed it as a one-two punch, and so he followed her, intent on gaining access.

He’d stopped at St. Bart’s Church, lit three candles—one for each of his departed—and said prayers for thirty minutes before taking confession, where he had informed the father only that he had “a bad thing” planned, and though he would not seek forgiveness, nor absolution, that it relieved him to speak of it even in the abstract. The priest had given him twenty-five Hail Marys and some scripture in St. John to review, small penance for the deeds to come.

The bike was a brutal choice in this weather but a useful tool given that there was no cab driver to remember his face. A bicycle could jump a sidewalk and head the wrong way
down a one-way street or quickly switch lanes in almost any traffic. At red lights, he could jump off and cross with pedestrians. On the streets of New York, a bike was the vehicle of choice for surveillance.

The Town Car turned right on 64th Street.

Alvarez followed, pedaling hard and pulling closer. That was another plus: cabbies and limo drivers paid little attention to such cockroaches in their rearview mirrors. Bike riders were nonpeople.

Alvarez caught sight of the back of her head through the Town Car’s rear window—blonde hair tonight, her own, not a wig, parted so that one side fell to her ear, the other to her neck. Always a different look. Always provocative. She could get a man’s juices going from fifty yards. Always just enough makeup to conceal her real face. If she had been a spy instead of a call girl, she could have brought down governments. As it was, she brought down Japanese businessmen—brought them down to their knees, begging, as they volunteered fifteen hundred dollars an hour.

Alvarez needed a name and a phone number. The two hundred dollars in the pocket of his jeans was for the driver of the Town Car.

Upper East Side, the city’s old-money neighborhood—her John had to be some tycoon or dot-com dad here on a business trip; the Japanese favored the hotels near Times Square.

This was only the third time he’d followed her like this. The first had been a black-tie affair, and he’d thought she was simply attending, not working—but he’d stayed with her
after
the event. Her two-hour visit to the Essex House, the somewhat shaky gait to her wide-legged walk as she’d left the hotel, picked up there by the same Town Car and delivered to her doorstep, had suggested otherwise. The second time the same car again was involved; she was delivered to a Japanese half her height and twice her age. All doubt disappeared.

Stopped behind the Town Car at Park, waiting for a light, he briefly glanced back at the line of traffic, propelled by a nagging, nervous feeling. He mentally clicked off images of the string of cars behind him, including two city cabs, a Mercedes coupe, a Lexus SUV, a light blue four-door that had seen better days, and a green Ford Taurus.

The traffic light changed to green.

The Town Car turned onto 63rd and pulled over in front of a small luxury hotel, the Powell, where a uniformed doorman came around and opened the door for the stunning young woman. She carried an oversized purse—no telling what sex toys might lie inside. The doorman held the hotel’s door open for her and sized her up as she passed. Alvarez marked the time: 10:09 P.M. The Town Car waited out traffic and then backed up to claim a parking space—a rarity in this neighborhood. To check if he’d been followed, Alvarez circled the block and came back up 63rd.

He walked the bike up the sidewalk on the west side of Park and rounded the corner, back onto 63rd, the Powell’s flags a half block ahead. He stopped, leaned against a wall, and studied each and every car in sight. Although there were plenty of cabs to confuse him, he didn’t see the Lexus, nor the Mercedes, nor any of the others he had registered when that sense of dread had hit him at the stoplight. Convinced he was okay, he walked the bike up the sidewalk, preparing himself for the bribe he had in mind.

The Town Car was empty. The driver apparently had been given time off. Alvarez cursed himself for being so paranoid. He had wasted several minutes circling and scouting 63rd. Now he would have to wait for the driver’s return.

He glanced up and down the block, searching for a place to light. The narrow street, lined with immaculately maintained four-story brownstones that were fronted by high wrought-iron fences, spoke of the wealth and privilege of the Upper East Side. Opposing rows of mature maple trees, their
bare branches like delicate pen-and-ink drawings, offered an overhead canopy. An old man with a stoop walked his Dalmatian. An elegantly dressed couple strolled arm in arm, chatting privately; she carried Prada while he wore a cashmere overcoat.

The Lake House, a restaurant attached to the Powell, offered an opportunity, but Alvarez didn’t want to risk that the woman might be flirting at the bar with her client. He couldn’t afford to be seen by her. He spotted another restaurant directly across the street. It appeared crowded but worth a try. He walked the bike across, slipping between car bumpers, and chained it to an
ALTERNATE PARKING
signpost. He shed his zippered sweatshirt, exposing a more stylish, Italian black leather jacket. Spotting two empty tables through the window, he headed inside.

Murals and mirrors. The smell of olive oil and freshly baked bread. He checked and confirmed a good view of the Town Car, hoping he might be here but a few minutes.

The women inside, the waitresses as well as the patrons, all appeared under thirty, very Euro. Maybe employees from the chic boutiques just around the corner on Madison. Maybe this was just another one of those New York anomalies—chic and trendy in a starched-collar neighborhood. Alvarez’s Mediterranean looks drew some attention as he moved to a window seat with a view of the Town Car. A pale young woman with free-weight arms, nut-hard nipples, and Stairmaster buttocks led Alvarez to the banquette, passing him a wine list.

“Your server will be right with you.” She sounded German, not French. The Stairmaster did its stuff as she retreated.

With his attention divided between the Town Car and the front door of the Powell, Alvarez missed his server’s introduction.

“Excuse me, sir.” A creamy, youthful voice, this time with
a hint of Paris in the inflections. He glanced in her direction but only briefly. Pale skin. Red lips. Haunting gray-green eyes. Black top. Black pants. Black shoes. Looking back out the window, he ordered a Pinot Noir that she quoted at eight dollars a glass. He looked up at her once again, his mind working to place her—for suddenly he knew that face and, most of all, that cream-filled voice. But from where and how? His excellent memory briefly failed him. And now, as he sat there awaiting the wine’s delivery and the driver’s return to the Town Car, half lost in the past, half consumed by the present, he found himself straining to place her. What was she doing there, inside his thoughts, occupying him like an unsolved puzzle? He wanted her out.

He blocked her out temporarily, concentrating on the hotel and the black car across the street.

“Are you staying at the Powell?” His waitress again, delivering the warm bread and olive oil. He found her accent enchanting and knew full well it was her voice he recognized, more so than her looks. That told him he’d known her when they’d both been younger, and suddenly he placed her. He didn’t want her placing him, and yet he was a man intent on proving himself in all situations. He couldn’t stop himself from saying her name. “Mariam?” he questioned. “Marianne?”

“Jillian,” she answered tentatively.

“Umberto. Bert,” he abbreviated, returned to his college days. “Fredo and I—we were roommates. I came to your family home a couple of—”

“Oh, my God!” she exclaimed.

“You were …smaller …younger—”

“I was …twelve!”

“Much younger,” he said, once again dividing his attention between her and the Town Car. “You live here? In the city?”

“God bless rent control.”

“Fredo?” he asked. “Belgium, isn’t it?”

She nodded. “Married. Three children.”

He lost her then. Lost the whole room, the street, the hotel. Lost everything to memories of the twins and a life not too far removed. A nearby server banged two plates together, and Alvarez returned.

She grinned. Her hair was jet black and cut with bangs like a Chinese doll. Her two front teeth were stained faintly yellow, indicating a smoker. He wondered if her eyes could possibly be that shade of green, or if she wore pigmented contact lenses. A silver charm bracelet adorned her left ankle. She had long, elegant feet. In the last eighteen months, he had learned to quickly assess people this way. He looked for lies. He looked for
them
—the Northern Union Security agents like the one in the boxcar.