Beetner reached across the car and opened the passenger door. “Zach!” he whispered loudly. “Get back here!”
Yates ran back and climbed in.
“What is it?” the cameraman asked.
“That light. It wasn’t on before.”
“Okay. Is this it?”
“Hell if I know, but be ready just in case.”
Yates grabbed his camera from the backseat and aimed it toward the gate.
For a full five minutes nothing happened. Beetner had all but written it off as another meaningless moment in a night full of them, when, without any warning, a small door that was built into the gate opened.
“Get this. Get this,” Beetner said, still doubting whatever was going to happen would be newsworthy.
For another several seconds, nothing more occurred.
Then a foot hesitantly stepped over the threshold.
The man it belonged to emerged a moment later. His thin frame made him look small, but in height, he was probably the same as Beetner, around five foot ten. His face was gaunt and incredibly pale.
He took several tentative steps away from the gate, and looked back. Though the door remained open, no one else emerged. He then looked both ways down the road as if he were unsure where to go.
“Is he why we’re here?” Yates asked.
“I…I don’t know.” Beetner thought for a moment. “Come on. We might as well talk to him.”
As the two men climbed out of the car, the thin man turned to look at them. For a moment he did nothing, then his eyes widened in fear. He twisted back in the other direction and started walking away at a pace Beetner guessed was as fast as he could go.
“Hold on!” Beetner yelled, hoping the man understood English. “We don’t want to hurt you. We just want to ask you a question.”
The man glanced back but kept moving.
Beetner might have given up right then, but there was something about the guy that was familiar. He started jogging, and could hear Yates grunting along behind him.
“Sir, please. We’re not going to hurt you or anything.”
This time there was no response at all.
As he passed the gate, Beetner glanced over at the open doorway. He’d assumed from the way the other man had looked back that there were others with him, but the reporter saw no one on the other side, just a starlit courtyard and a decrepit building beyond.
“Sir,” he called out. “I’m not sure if you can understand me, but we just want to talk. We’re from PCN. The news network?”
At the mention of PCN, the thin man’s steps faltered.
Beetner thought he heard the man say something, but he wasn’t sure. “Sorry. I didn’t catch that,” he said.
“Trick,” the man grunted as he kept walking.
He’d spoken English.
“No, sir. No trick.”
“Trick,” the man repeated. “Not real. Leave me. Leave me.”
Not only had he spoken English, but his accent was American.
“We’re not going to hurt you,” Beetner said. He jogged the final few feet between them and put a hand on the man’s shoulder to stop him. “We just want to-”
The man jerked away, twisting as he did so that he ended up facing the PCN reporter. “Leave me! Leave me!” He stumbled backward a few steps, then whipped around and continued walking away.
Beetner stared after the man, unable to move his feet.
“Oh, shit,” Yates said from behind him.
“You saw that, right? I’m not crazy.”
“I saw,” Yates said, his tone of disbelief matching his colleague’s.
Beetner remained rooted where he was for another second. Finally, he broke free and began chasing after the biggest story he would ever have.
CHAPTER 42
Quinn checked his watch.
They would be cutting it close, but even at eleven p.m., it had been too much to hope that they wouldn’t run into any traffic as they drove into New York City. Their timing had to be perfect, otherwise they risked getting detained and questioned themselves. Something that was out of the question.
“Seven minutes out,” Nate said.
Quinn nodded, and glanced at Daeng. “Let’s get them ready.”
Mygatt, Green, and Olsen sat on the floor of the van, tied and hooded as before. Speakers in back blasted the prerecorded radio station directly at them. Quinn lowered the volume then said, “How’s everyone doing?”
“We did what you asked,” Mygatt said. “Now let us go like you promised.”
“I think I promised to give you to people who wouldn’t necessarily kill you.”
“What does that mean?”
Quinn didn’t respond.
“You will never get away with this,” Green said. “Kidnapping a US dignitary and high-ranking officials and taking us out of the country is going to get you the death penalty, my friend. And I’m not talking from a court. I will personally see to it that you are all tracked down and killed in the most painful possible ways.”
“And you feel you’ll be in the position to do that because…?”
“Let us the fuck out of here!” Green yelled.
“Well, you’re in luck. That’s exactly what we’re going to do,” Quinn said. “Now, boys, we’re going to remove your restraints for a moment, so when it’s your turn, don’t try anything stupid. If you do, we’re going to have to shoot you, and I’m sure you’d rather avoid that. Correct?”
The men uttered their agreement, though Quinn suspected Olsen and Green were thinking this might be the chance to make their move.
They started with Olsen first, having him lie flat on the floor of the van, then cutting loose his hands and ankles. Twice the man’s muscles twitched as if he were preparing to strike out, and twice Quinn rapped the back of Olsen’s head with the barrel of his gun. They stripped him down to his underwear, replaced his clothes with a pair of bright orange coveralls, and restrained his hands and ankles again.
They repeated the procedure with Green and Mygatt, neither man attempting any kind of escape.
“Why did we need to change?” Mygatt said.
Instead of answering, Quinn turned the radio back up and returned to the front, leaving Daeng to watch over them.
“We’re close,” Nate said.
Quinn saw that they were only a few blocks from the exact position they needed to be. He called Peter.
“Almost there.”
Peter took a second before he said, “No calling it off, huh?”
“Not an option.”
“Yeah, I know. Okay, I need three minutes.”
Quinn put a hand over the phone and leaned toward Nate. “Slow down.”
It had been a less-than-interesting news day. The presidential primaries were over, each party’s candidates all but decided. Most of the day had been spent discussing the preparations for the upcoming convention, going over the merits of each candidate, and arguing over who was going to have the best chance in the fall. In other words, the same stuff they’d been hashing over for the last week.
Something was brewing, though. Norm Geller sensed it the moment Patty Vinton, the late-shift news director, had hung up the phone and rushed out of the control room. Geller was the TD, the technical director. His job was to operate the switcher board that cut between studio shots, pretaped segments, and live location feeds, then funneled the final product up to the satellite and onto the air. He’d been doing the job for nearly a decade, so his instincts were pretty honed about these things.
Though he didn’t say anything to anyone, his money was on a political scandal. There had been far too few of them up to this point, and with the conventions not far away, wild accusations were bound to start surfacing. An affair, an illegal campaign contribution, a supporter who was not exactly on the up and up-could be any of those things.
When Patty came back into the room, he wasn’t surprised when she said, “We’re about to get a live feed. And Frank’s in Bay Seven cutting a piece we’ll want to slot in right after.”