The Darkest Day

TWENTY-EIGHT

Victor left the building ten minutes after Guerrero and Wallinger had exited the apartment. He didn’t know if they would be outside waiting for him, making themselves obvious to let him know he was going to be watched in the hope of scaring him into a mistake, or incognito so they could find out what he was up to. He left through the main entrance anyway. If he slipped out of the back they would become suspicious of him if they were not already, and if they were then they would only become more determined to find out what his real intentions were.

He saw no government-issue vehicles on the street outside and no other signs they were present. The street was the same as it had been when he arrived except the rust-spotted grey cargo van had gone. The other vehicles he had seen earlier were still present.

Now that Homeland Security were on to Raven and the apartment safe house it was no longer viable as a strike point. But he had another option: 10028 was the zip code for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was located on the Upper East Side. He could be there in twenty minutes, but he couldn’t risk a direct route and didn’t have the luxury of time for proper counter surveillance if the number 4 meant four p.m. Maybe Victor was being shadowed. Maybe he wasn’t. There was no way to be sure, given the short time frame.

It made little difference to his behaviour. He always conducted himself as if enemies were close. Guerrero and Wallinger were looking for Raven, not him, and it seemed as if they believed his cover story. They also seemed to be operating alone. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t have called in backup — local cops or other cooperating agencies.

He saw no one on the street who hadn’t been there when he had entered Raven’s building.

Apart from the two figures now sitting in the front of the midnight-blue panel van.

The vehicle was a new model Ford. The windows had a dark tint. The vehicle sat on the kerb, unremarkable apart from the fact it had two people inside. At this range, he could not make out any details, but the height and breadth of shoulders indicated two men. He saw their silhouettes and not much else. Two men sitting inside a parked Ford van was common enough, apart from the fact that the silhouettes had not been there fifteen minutes before. They weren’t moving either. They sat stationary, without any arm movements. If they were talking, they did so without large gesticulations or head movements. They did not look at one another.

They could be bored, or they could be focused. There was a simple way to find out which.

Victor approached the dirty red Impala. It was parked about fifty metres from the van, on the opposite side of the road. He went down on one knee and removed a shoelace, folded the string in half and tied a slip knot across the centre of the folded lace, creating a loop.

He stood and pulled the two loose ends to shorten the loop and extended the lace until it was taut, with the loop in the centre. He then pushed the loop into the corner gap where the driver’s door met the chassis. With a sawing motion he worked the lace through the gap and behind the door until the loop was over the locking mechanism. He pulled both ends of the lace at the same time to tighten the loop around the mechanism and then pulled upwards to unlock the door.

He climbed inside and rethreaded the lace into his shoe while he watched the panel van in his driver’s side mirror. The reflection of the silhouettes was now too small to identify any telling movements even if they made them. The silhouettes blurred and distorted to one dark mass.

He sat a while longer. They couldn’t see him watching via the wing mirror any easier than he could see them. He waited because if they were shadows he wanted to make them nervous. And if not nervous, anxious. The longer he waited, the more questions would be conjured up in their minds. Had they been spotted? What was he going to do? Where was he going to go?

Once he pulled away, they would fall into shadow thinking. They would be concentrated on following him and staying hidden. The questions would fade away from priority, but the effect would still be felt. They might be less patient or more obvious.

They were. Exhaust gases were condensing from the Ford before Victor had pulled out all of the way from his space. Too soon. Too eager. Nervous or anxious.

Which was good, because it answered his own question without further need to confirm what he had suspected, but bad because he had picked up a tail. At this time, he had no idea who they were. Wallinger and Guerrero or colleagues of theirs seemed most obvious, but he couldn’t afford to assume.

He was suspicious of Halleck too, of course. The man had wanted his own people to assist and Victor had turned down the offer. Not that it had been an offer. Halleck had made it clear he didn’t trust Victor, and he was right not to. So it made sense that he would put his own people in the field too. But Victor didn’t know their greater intentions. Were they on his tail only to observe, or did they have other orders?

The panel van stayed back the textbook distance of two car lengths. Victor drove around for fifteen minutes, turning at random and changing lanes when the mood took him. The Ford stayed with him the whole time. He pulled into a parking garage to test their orders. It would have made as good a place as any to make a move on him as they were going to get, but they didn’t follow him in there. They waited until he drove out again and continued following. Just watchers then. For the time being, at least.

He did nothing to indicate he had made them, and if they were Halleck’s people, they would think he was performing routine counter surveillance.

But he couldn’t be sure Halleck had sent them. Halleck had been right when he baited Victor about his past. There were numerous individuals and organisations out there that wanted his head. He was never surprised when someone tracked him down. He was as hard to corner as anyone, but unless he lived off the land in some faraway corner of nowhere, then there was always the risk of exposure. And he wasn’t prepared to give up everything just to stay vertical.

He ditched the Impala a few blocks later. He didn’t like confining himself in a vehicle unless he had to. Besides, he wanted to know more about his shadows. Were the two in the van the sum total, or were they part of a larger team?

He set off north, because he needed to head south. The panel van passed him by and disappeared into the distance. He had walked for a couple of blocks when it began to rain. It came down straight and hard. Buses passed by on the street before him, sending waves through the flooded road that crashed against the kerb. Cars followed, some with lights on, all with wipers struggling to cope with the downpour. Pedestrians without umbrellas hunched and hurried, dodging around those that had planned ahead and could walk with a smug slowness. A taxi, too close to the kerb, sent up a spray that showered unfortunate passers-by.

Victor walked at a slow pace. The rain darkened his overcoat and flattened his hair. He liked the weather. He liked rain. He always had. Rain helped him stay alive. It helped identify watchers and shadows. People walked faster in the rain or didn’t walk at all or stayed indoors. Streets were less busy as a result, creating fewer potential threats to evaluate. Almost no one loitered in the rain, even if waiting for someone special. People sought cover, not the best vantage points. Anyone who did not huddle under awnings or in doorways stood out, and a watcher who wanted to stay dry himself, or at least wanted to appear as someone who did, limited his ability to watch and follow in doing so.

Victor walked at a slow pace despite the rainstorm, because if someone else matched his pace it was as good as signposting his or her intentions. An umbrella would have kept the rain away, but only at the expense of tying up one hand and limiting his vision. Soaked with rainwater was always preferable to being soaked with his own blood.

Some tourists had been caught out and were a comical spectacle, underdressed and unprepared. Victor would have felt sorry for them but they were smiling and laughing at their own misfortune and how ridiculous they looked and Victor remembered when he was a boy and rain was nothing but fun.

As a child puddles had begged him to splash through them. Soaked to the skin had been something to achieve, not avoid. Watching the wisps of steam rising when indoors had inspired his imagination to thoughts of wizards and spells.

A lorry rumbled past and Victor slammed the door in his mind shut. If he could, he would erase any memory of his young life. Memories of that time were a distraction he had to fight against. Thinking about the past meant not paying attention to the present. He had too many enemies to ever risk indulging in nostalgia.

Thousands of raindrops pelted the road surface and pavements every second. He wondered if there was a pattern to it, some formula, some rhythm — algorithm — known only to nature. The intermittent wind swept patterns through the rain. Headlights glowed on the road surface.

A young woman used a plastic carrier bag as a rain shield as she ran along the pavement. She wore a dress, thin and white. To be courteous, he looked away until she had passed.

When he looked back, a man was standing on the pavement opposite, positioned near to the kerb, not under the shelter of any awning or doorway, hair flattened by the downpour.