“Yes, for that part, then we’ll have some background and updates, like with the search upstate.”
“We’re hearing there’s nothing to that,” Brad said. “Something about the veracity of the information, or some confusion.”
“We have people up there reporting. And we’ll add other aspects to the story.”
“Are you good with that, Anita?” Brad asked.
“Tell me what happened in Buffalo on the cop case,” she asked Gannon.
“No one believed my reporting, including some senior police officials who pressured the paper until I was fired.”
“And?”
“I was not wrong.”
Anita nodded thoughtfully.
“You can use what I told you, Jack.”
“Thank you.”
“No names, got that?”
“I got it.”
Back at his desk in the WPA’s headquarters, Gannon typed quickly, assembling the wire service’s main story on the search for the killers in the interstate armored car heist.
“I like your stuff, lead with it. It’s exclusive news,” Lisker had acknowledged. “Everybody and his dog will have the story on the ‘futile search’ upstate.”
It took less than forty-five minutes for him to write the full piece. He sent it to Hal Ford on the desk, Ford gave it a quick edit before putting it out to all WPA subscribers.
Gannon went to the window and massaged the back of his neck.
He was beat.
The sun had set and the horizon had dissolved into a swath of pinks and blues. He looked at the Empire State Building rising from Manhattan’s twinkling lights and reflected on Anita and Brad, who seemed to be suited to married life.
What was that like?
Gannon glanced at the empty desks of people who’d already gone home to their families in New Jersey, Westchester or Long Island. He glanced at the framed photos of their kids, wives and husbands, beaming through the chaos of stylebooks, notes, newspapers and assorted messes.
In the end, family is what mattered.
Gannon had his sister and niece in Arizona, but beyond them he had no one.
Nobody waiting for him.
Nothing to rush home to but an empty apartment.
Empty.
That’s how he felt.
He thought of Katrina for a second.
Then he turned to the skyline and somewhere in the night he saw a face he’d seen earlier that day.
The witness.
What had she endured? What was her story? Who was she? Where was she from? What was her situation? Married? Single? Involved?
In the moment their eyes met at the service center something had connected between them.
A longing?
A deep sense of loneliness?
Give your head a shake.
He was too tired to think straight; crazy to believe that he’d somehow made a spiritual, cosmic bond with the witness.
All right.
But he needed to find her, that much made sense.
Four funerals were coming and he was determined to take the reader into the heart of this story—the whole story.
“Jack!” a news assistant called out. “Call for you.”
He took it on his landline at his desk.
“Gannon.”
“Mr. Gannon, this is Jerry Falco, in Yonkers.”
“Mr. Falco, yes, sorry.”
“I may have what you need. Are you still interested?”
Gannon checked the time.
“Yes. I’m very interested.”
26
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
VIA passenger train number 45 edged the windswept shore of Lake Ontario, swaying gently through the picture-postcard towns and farm fields east of Toronto.
Ivan Felk had an economy-class window seat. Few people were aboard. The aisle seat next to his was empty. So were the seats near him. Yet in the soothing rhythm of the train’s click-clacking, Felk seethed.
The previous night, he’d sent a message to the untraceable account of the insurgents holding his men. In it, Felk had claimed responsibility for the deadly heist outside New York City and sent news reports, all to confirm his team’s actions to secure the ransom by the deadline.
The insurgents responded with a new video.
Felk viewed the images on his laptop: the camera panned over the aftermath of his team’s failed military mission in the region’s frontier city; then to the desecration of the dead; then to the torment of the hostages. The footage then cut to a man before a plain black backdrop, his face concealed in a black scarf with only his eyes showing.
Felk locked onto them.
The insurgent gave readings from the glorious text, his voice traveling through Felk’s earphones. Then he switched to English.
“Heed this message from the New Guardians of the National Revolutionary Movement. We acknowledge your work to collect the fine. We must see your continued atonement for crimes committed by the invading infidels. We must see evidence in America of further work to collect the remainder of the fine. Full payment must be received by the last day of this month, or the infidel spies will be executed.”
The man concluded with another tribute from the holy text; then the footage showed the blade of the executioner’s sword resting on the neck of a hostage: Felk’s brother.
Clay, oh, Jesus, hang on. I’m coming.
Felk snapped his laptop shut, yanked out his earphones.
I’m going to waste these mothers.
He ran his fingertips over his chin.
Calm down. Focus. Focus. Focus.
His mind scanned the operation.
Dillon’s assignment was to ship the movie-prop cash to Kuwait, then join the others in California. They knew the method was a gamble, but it was a risk they had to take.
The team had split up.
Each man was now traveling independently to San Francisco. How they got there was their choice. Supported by their network of friends, they each had counterfeit passports, ID and credit cards and several thousand dollars in cash. They would meet at the hotel in San Francisco by the twelfth, ample time to conduct surveillance, drills, set up the IEDs far in advance of when they needed to launch the mission.
Each soldier knew his job.
Each one was sworn to duty.
Life and death.
We will not fail.
Felk looked through his window to the south.
Somewhere beyond the great, endless lake and its seamless meeting with the sky, he saw himself back in Ohio in the wood-frame house where he and Clay grew up.
It was a little nothing-ass speck of a town at the fringes of Youngstown, in the graveyard of factories, steel mills and the American dream.
Their old man was a Vietnam vet, a U.S. marine who did two tours. He’d survived Khe Sanh and came home with a mangled leg to work at an AljorCor Aluminium plant before it closed. Then he worked the Old River Metal foundry before he was laid off.
He always drank, but by then he drank more.
Sometimes he hit Ivan and Clay, but they forgave him. He was their dad and they knew he had problems. For years they heard him screaming in his sleep at night—heard their mother comforting him.
She used to come home, her hands raw, from her job in the VanRoonSten meatpacking house. After it ceased production, she got a job on the line at the Steel Gryphon power-tool manufacturing operation. But Steel Gryphon was sold and the work went to Mexico. After that, his parents bounced downward to jobs that paid less and less.
One night, when he’d been hitting the sauce pretty good, the old man opened up to Ivan and Clay.
“Your mother will kill me for telling you this, but you’re old enough to hear the goddamn truth,” he said between pulls on his beer. “I won’t tell you the things I seen in the war. You can’t understand unless you were there. But the only time I felt alive was when I was in the shit. I swear to God. And nowadays, I wake up feeling dead, you know?” He pointed his fingers, holding his burning Lucky Strike, at his sons. “Take my advice, boys, enlist. We’re all gonna die. Just depends how—day by day, earning eight-fifty an hour, or serving your country on a field of goddamn glory.”