12
New York City
Eddie waited in a corner of the spacious marble lobby of the
Delacourt hotel, watching the doors to 44th Street. He could see a small but excited crowd through the glass, hotel staff keeping back anyone who had no legitimate business in the building.
Almost eight p.m. The tide would reach its highest point at 8.14, and he still needed Lola’s go-ahead before the operation could begin. Matt would have to work fast.
Someone pushed through the throng outside, and was briefly quizzed by a doorman before coming in: Zec, dressed in a heavy overcoat and seeming irritated at having his entry challenged. He spotted Eddie and sat next to him. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked, indicating the bustle outside.
‘Paparazzi,’ said Eddie disinterestedly. ‘Some celebrity’s in the hotel.’ He gave the Bosnian a sour look. ‘You got the thing?’
Zec handed him a small memory card. ‘Your wife’s handprint. Put it in the prototyper, and the machine will do the rest. Just remember to wait until it cools to body temperature before putting it on the scanner.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘I was also told to remind you what will happen to your wife if you do not bring me the Codex.’
‘I’m not fucking deaf,’ Eddie growled, aware the statement might not be entirely truthful. ‘You already told me.’
‘Just doing my job.’
‘Your wife and son know about your job?’ Zec was unprepared for the question, and looked sharply at him. ‘Think your wife’d approve of you threatening to kill mine? Kid proud of Daddy the murderer?’
‘Shut up,’ Zec snapped. ‘The only people I have killed are legitimate mission targets. Civilian casualties were not my fault.’
‘Well, that makes it all better, dunnit?’ Eddie regarded him sourly. ‘No way Hugo would have worked with you if you’d told him that. But who needs morals when you’ve got money, right?’ The accusation appeared to sting the Bosnian, which gave Eddie a moment of gratification. ‘Now, I want to talk to Nina.’
‘I thought you might.’ Zec made a call. ‘Mr Khoil? Chase wants to speak to his wife.’ He listened to the reply, then handed the phone to Eddie.
‘Mr Chase,’ said Khoil. ‘I hope you are ready to bring me the Codex. Otherwise, you know what will hap —’
‘Yeah, yeah, spare me the fucking threats,’ Eddie snapped. ‘I already had them from your errand boy. Where’s Nina?’
‘She is here with me.’
A pause, a hollow echo down the line, then Nina spoke. ‘Eddie? Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine - what about you?’
For a moment, it seemed that she hadn’t heard him. ‘Eddie? Are you there - oh, thank God. Yeah, I’m okay. Look, Eddie, you can’t go through with this. I know part of what the Khoils are planning. They—’
‘Enough,’ said Khoil. The faint echoing effect disappeared. ‘Mr Chase, it is time to bring me the Codex. Do so, and your wife will be returned to you unharmed.’ With that, the line fell silent.
Eddie returned the phone to Zec, using all his willpower not to say out loud the thought dominating his mind: Khoil was lying. Nina wasn’t with him, the delay of the satellite connection proving she was still in India. The moment Khoil - who from the instant response on his side of the call clearly
And so would the man who obtained the Codex for him, Eddie knew. But all he could do for now was play his part - and hope that Plan B worked.
His phone trilled. ‘Lola?’
‘Everything’s ready,’ said Lola. ‘You remember the locker numbers?’
‘Burned into my mind.’
‘Okay. Good luck.’ She rang off.
Eddie stood, picking up a large black leather briefcase with gleaming steel trim. ‘That was the go-signal,’ he told Zec. ‘I’ll meet you back here when I’m done.’
‘With the Codex.’
‘Obviously with the fucking Codex. You just be ready with Nina.’ He headed for the doors, glancing back at Zec . . . then past him, to a couch. Dressed in a suit, reading a newspaper, Mac briefly looked up at him. At his feet was another black briefcase.
Eddie stepped outside, feeling the bite of the December cold as he pushed through the crowd and walked to the end of 44th Street. The United Nations complex rose on the other side of First Avenue, a towering grid of lights against the dark sky.
He raised his phone again. ‘Matt? It’s Eddie. I’m ready.’
‘Roger that, mate,’ said the Australian. ‘We’re in the pipe, five by five.’
On the far side of the UN, a boat bobbed in the East River. Radi Bashir shivered in his thick coat as he gazed nervously at the glowing glass slab of the Secretariat Building. He didn’t know what the rules were regarding boating off Manhattan, but he was sure they were breaking them by dropping anchor in the busy waterway. Any official attention they attracted would undoubtedly be magnified when it was realised that all three of the boat’s occupants were foreign nationals . . . and two of them were Arabs.
Karima popped up through the hatch to the lower deck. ‘Eddie just called. He’s going in.’ She ducked back. With a last look round for any boats that might belong to the NYPD’s Harbor Unit, Rad climbed down after her.
Matt Trulli had set up shop in the small cabin, two laptop computers and a complex remote control unit crammed on to a little table and secured with duct tape. A porthole was open, cold air coming through it; below it was a large spool of fibre-optic cable, the slender but strong glass thread running out through the window. The spool was connected to one of the laptops - and the other end of the line to the Remotely Operated Vehicle currently picking its way through a water pipe beneath the river’s western bank.
‘All right, you little beaut,’ Matt muttered, using two joysticks to guide the ROV. ‘Go on in there . . .’ On the laptop’s screen, a view from one of the robot’s cameras revealed a fat, plastic-sheathed cable disappearing into the darkness of the circular channel. The spool slowly turned, the robot’s fibre-optic control cable feeding out as it moved forward.
The ground under Manhattan was criss-crossed by myriad networks of underground conduits, from subway tunnels to steam pipes to the city’s telecommunications backbone. This particular system, originally constructed in the early twentieth century to provide the city’s fire hydrants with a supply of water straight from the river, had been out of use for almost a quarter of a century, superseded by more powerful pumping systems - until an enterprising telecoms company realised they were the perfect way to spread the hundreds of miles of fibre-optic lines needed to meet the city’s ever-growing demand for broadband without having to dig up half the streets in Manhattan.
The cables had been installed entirely by robots, designed to crawl through the narrow, flooded confines. Matt’s machine was following their tracks . . . but considerably more quickly. Servo was a metre-long, vaguely snake-like construct, made from three tubular sections linked by universal joints: a flexible torpedo able to bend and twist through narrow underwater spaces. The rearmost segment housed the propeller and steering vanes, the middle one the battery pack, while the front section contained cameras, lights and a folded manipulator arm.
Matt glanced at the other laptop, which displayed a graphic of the pipeline system overlaid on a plan of the United Nations. A blinking cursor showed Servo’s position, not far from the outline of the Secretariat Building. ‘What’s the time?’ he asked.
‘Eight oh four,’ Karima told him.
‘Christ, we’ve only got ten minutes to high tide. Pick up the pace, Servo!’ he told the screen as he thumbed the throttle wheel on one joystick. The fibre-optic spool turned faster.
