SEVENTY-FIVE
Night-time schedules. Twenty-minute gaps between trains. We had been down there maybe four minutes. Therefore arithmetically the maximum delay before the next train would be sixteen minutes. The minimum would be no delay at all.
The minimum delay didn’t happen. The tunnel stayed dark and quiet.
‘Raise your hands,’ the lead agent called again. He was a white man of about forty. Certainly ex-military. DoD, not FBI. Similar type to the three I had already met. But maybe a little older. Maybe a little wiser. Maybe a little better. Maybe this was an A team, not a B team.
‘I’ll shoot,’ the lead agent called. But he wouldn’t. Empty threat. They wanted the memory stick. I knew where it was. They didn’t.
Median delay before the next train, eight minutes. As likely to be more as less. The guy with the gun took another step forward. His three colleagues followed. Across the tracks the other four stood still. The young guy on the bench was watching, vacantly.
The tunnel stayed dark and quiet.
The lead agent said, ‘All this hassle could be over a minute from now. Just tell us where it is.’
I said, ‘Where what is?’
‘You know what.’
‘What hassle?’
‘We’re running out of patience. And you’re missing one important factor.’
‘Which is?’
‘Whatever intellectual gifts you have, they’re hardly likely to be unique. In fact they’re probably fairly ordinary. Which means that if you figured it out, we can figure it out too. Which means your continued existence would become surplus to requirements.’
‘So go ahead,’ I said. ‘Figure it out.’
He raised his gun higher and straighter. It was a Glock 17. Maybe twenty-five ounces fully loaded. By far the lightest service pistol on the market. Made partly from plastic. The guy had short thick arms. He could probably hold the pose indefinitely.
‘Last chance,’ he said.
Across the tracks the young guy got off his bench and walked away. Long inconsistent strides, not entirely in a straight line. He was prepared to waste a two-dollar Metrocard swipe in exchange for a quiet life. He made it to the exit and disappeared from sight.
No witnesses.
Median delay before the next train, maybe six minutes.
I said, ‘I don’t know who you are.’
The guy said, ‘Federal agents.’
‘Prove it.’
The guy kept his gun aimed at my centre mass but nodded over his shoulder at the agent behind him, who stepped out and moved forward into the no-man’s-land between us. He paused there and put his hand in his inside jacket pocket and came back with a leather badge holder. He held it eye-height to me and let it fall open. There were two separate pieces of ID in it. I couldn’t read either one of them. They were too far away, and both of them were behind scratched plastic windows.
I stepped forward.
He stepped forward.
I got within four feet of him and saw a standard Defense Intelligence Agency ID in the upper window of the wallet. It looked genuine and it was in date. In the lower window was some kind of a warrant or commission that stated the holder was to be afforded every assistance because he was acting directly for the President of the United States.
‘Very nice,’ I said. ‘Beats working for a living.’
I stepped back.
He stepped back.
The lead agent said, ‘No different than you were doing, back in the day.’
‘Back in prehistory,’ I said.
‘What is this, an ego thing?’
Median delay before the next train, five minutes.
‘It’s a practical thing,’ I said. ‘If you want something done properly, you do it yourself.’
The guy dropped the angle of his arm below the horizontal. Now he was aiming at my knees.
‘I’ll shoot,’ he said. ‘You don’t think or talk or remember with your legs.’
No witnesses.
If all else fails, start talking.
I asked, ‘Why do you want it?’
‘Want what?’
‘You know what.’
‘National security.’
‘Offence or defence?’
‘Defence, of course. It would ruin our credibility. It would set us back years.’
‘You think?’
‘We know.’
I said, ‘Keep working on those intellectual gifts.’
He aimed his gun more precisely. At my left shin.
He said, ‘I’ll count to three.’
I said, ‘Good luck with that. Tell me if you get stuck along the way.’
He said, ‘One.’
Then: the rails hissed in the track bed next to me. Strange metallic harmonic sounds speeding ahead of a train way back in the tunnel. The harmonics were chased all the way by the push of hot air and a deeper rumbling. A curve in the tunnel wall was lit up by a headlight. Nothing happened for a long second. Then the train rushed into view, moving fast, canted over by the camber of the curve. It rocked and straightened and came on at speed and then the brakes bit down and moaned and shrieked and the train slowed and pulled in right alongside us, all bright shining stainless steel and hot light, hissing, grinding, and groaning.
An uptown R train.
Maybe fifteen cars, each one of them dotted with a small handful of passengers.
Witnesses.
I glanced back at the lead agent. His Glock was back under his coat.
We were at the north end of the platform. The R train uses older cars. Each car has four sets of doors. The lead car was halted right next to us. I was more or less in line with the first set of doors. The DoD guys were closer to sets three and four.
The doors opened, the whole length of the train.
Way down at the back end two people got out. They walked away and were gone.
The doors stayed open.
I turned to face the train.
The DoD guys turned to face the train.
I stepped forward.
They stepped forward.
I stopped.
They stopped.
Choices: I could get on through door one, whereupon they would get on through doors three and four.
We could ride together all night long. Or I could let the train go without me and spend a minimum twenty more minutes trapped with them on the same platform as before.
