cap and sunglasses. His face was dark from several days’ growth. He carried a construction worker’s lunch box and looked like any other tradesman in the city.
“Yes,” she said.
“How was your flight?”
“It was good.”
“And you have brought a gift?”
“Yes.”
“What did you tell the police officers?”
“They asked if I was lost. I said I was waiting for a friend who was late.”
“Is that all?”
“They asked about my accent. I told them I was a travel writer from Amsterdam. That’s all.”
After considering her answers, he glanced around. “Walk this way.” He nodded across the concourse.
At that time, two men, who had been provided security camera footage of Aleena in the preboarding area of Schiphol Airport, arrived out of breath and started searching the terminal for her.
Scanning the crowd, one glimpsed a bright orange scarf-the telltale identifier from central intelligence in Moscow. The two men began making their way through the forest of commuters to catch up to their target.
When Aleena and her contact cleared the concourse area, the man said, “May I have the gift, please?”
Aleena reached into her bag and handed him the music box. He stopped and immediately examined specific points. He was meticulous until he’d confirmed the item as being the one he needed. He placed it in his lunch box, then, as quickly as he’d emerged, he disappeared, leaving Aleena alone.
The delivery took less than thirty seconds.
Aleena decided to return to the concourse and leave from that level. As she walked, she took stock of the thousands of innocent people going about their lives in Grand Central, then thought of the millions busy with their lives across New York City, and recalled the headline in the newspaper on the plane about murders, abductions, fears of terror attacks at the UN meeting.
Tears stung her eyes.
Struggling to comprehend, she put her hand to her face.
Joost was dead.
Icy threads of fear webbed up her back.
Her mind was racing.
She searched the main concourse for a landmark, a sign. Was it west, or east? She’d go back to the information booth and get directions to the hotel there. She headed toward the booth when suddenly two men materialized, walking on either side of her. They were big men in sport jackets.
“Aleena Visser?”
“Yes.”
One flashed an official police ID.
“FBI, come with us, you’re under arrest.”
“Arrest? For what? May I see your ID again?”
One of the men gripped her upper left arm. The other man had her right.
“Don’t resist.”
They escorted her through the terminal, to the nearest ramp down to the trains. Something about the look of the men, the cut of their hair, their facial features, told her that they were not Americans.
They were Eastern European, Russian.
Aleena’s pulse quickened-her thoughts swirled.
Joost was rumored to have many enemies in Russian security.
Amid the throngs of commuters, the men practically lifted Aleena as they hurried her down the stairway, closer to the trains. A rush of hot air thundered toward them, the grind of steel on steel.
Aleena’s primal instinct to survive took over.
She had taken self-defense courses and with cobra speed succeeded in breaking free and gripping the groin of one of the men, squeezing, crushing with every iota of strength until he doubled over, stopping them dead on the stairs. At the same time commuters bumped and shoved them, enabling her to shake herself loose from the second man, rush down the stairs and up another flight to the main concourse.
Aleena moved fast.
The men pursued her, frightening her with their speed.
On the main concourse she ran for the first door, fearing there might be others with the two strangers. She shifted around people on Manhattan’s busy streets with one thought propelling her.
Glancing over her shoulder, she saw the men were gaining.
Aleena darted through traffic as fast as her feet could go.
* * *
Two blocks away, the dual stacks of a Peterbilt triaxle dump truck belched black smoke as Tony Grabeltinni grinded the gears of his eighteen-speed transmission. Tony, the owner-operator from Newark, was pissed off. Traffic was costing him money.
The lights were right; he had the chance to advance three blocks if he could cut around the idiot double- parked Mercedes. Tony upshifted and pushed the big Cat engine, getting his rig up to forty, fifty, fifty-five when-
Tony knew his reflex to brake was too late-the blur of a hand, a foot, a bag was hurled and an orange scarf landed on his windshield flapping like the flag of surrender.
Aleena Visser had been bounced some thirty feet.
A crowd gathered. A halo of blood grew around her head.
“I never saw her! Christ, she ran into me!” Tony said as people called for help on cell phones. A woman was holding Aleena’s hand, touching her neck for a pulse.
Among the bystanders were the two men in sport jackets.
They gazed down at the scene until they heard the approaching sirens, then they walked away.
One of them reached for his cell phone and spoke quietly in Russian.
“Yes, we’re certain that she was never out of our sight,” he lied, preferring not to mention they’d lost sight of her for nearly a minute because he was confident she’d had no contact during that time.
“Yes, we maintained surveillance and confirm that she never made contact. Yes, she’s been removed. The threat has been removed, struck by a truck. It is clear that she may not survive her injuries.”
52
Jeff was running out of time.
He fell in with the passengers disembarking at the ferry terminal, feeling that every minute was working against him. His search across five boroughs for any lead to where the killers had bought coffee and take-out food
