Simultaneously with a sinuous move, he pulled his knife and struck it at the fallen man’s chest.
The Watcher desperately blocked his knife arm with his left, the two men straining, sweat and blood dripping off Scheafer and painting the fallen man’s face.
The Watcher kicked up with his legs to dislodge Scheafer, but the 5Clubs leader held firm, his weight an immovable stone on the supine man’s midriff.
Scheafer hissed, ‘Now you die,’ and put all his body behind his knife hand, his eyes glittering as they bored holes in the Watcher’s eyes staring back through the mask.
The Watcher strained desperately, trying to free his mind from the white heat of the groin pain, trying to compartmentalize his ribs being crushed by Scheafer, felt his left arm give a millimeter, and then another millimeter, and felt Scheafer’s mouth go wide as he scented victory.
He focused on the pain and wrapped it in a ball and made it smaller and smaller and then shaped it into a point and flung it deep inside where life and death began, and lanced the ball of fire within.
The ball exploded, drowning out the pain, and the fire streamed through him, and he sagged back suddenly, his left arm going slack, and Scheafer fell forward on top of him, his knife point piercing the Watcher’s black skin suit.
Scheafer suddenly lost his smile and his eyebrows creased as the knife encountered resistance, the customized body armor underneath the Watcher’s skin suit blunting its cutting.
The Watcher reared forward and head-butted Scheafer.
He followed it with another vicious head butt that split the attacker’s right eyebrow, and blood flowed thickly down Scheafer’s face.
Scheafer howled as the Watcher freed his right arm and struck his eye, another hammer-fist blow crushed his ear, a rapid double blow to his eyes took away his vision, and he fell sideways.
The black-suited man slithered from underneath Scheafer and gripped his knife wrist in steel and twisted and turned it around, breaking the joint, and his free hand clamped on Scheafer’s neck.
He felt the ball of fire flow through him to his extremities, through his shoulders, down his arms and to his hand gripping Scheafer’s knife wrist. The knife reversed deep into Scheafer, all one smooth fluid motion.
The Watcher leaned forward and whispered, ‘I’ve been dead a long time.’
Bwana looked on awestruck — the two figures had been fighting so closely and so rapidly that they hadn’t risked a shot at Scheafer.
He glanced quickly at his companions and saw the same expression on their faces.
When he turned back, the masked man had risen to his feet.
He looked back at them, his eyes dark and expressionless through his mask.
The city peered over his shoulder through the broken window, holding its breath, and time slowed, even the breeze slowed.
The Watcher took a step back toward the gaping hole, his gaze steady on them.
‘Wait, who are…?’ Broker’s words were lost in a loud explosion as the entrance disintegrated, and a NYPD ESU team broke in.
When they looked back, the Watcher had gone, and through the shattered glass, the lights of the city winked at them mockingly.
Chapter 45
‘Who is he?’ they demanded.
It took three days for them to wrap up with the cops and the FBI.
Three days during which they went through the events over and over again with Pizaka, Chang, and Forzini.
Three days during which Isakson turned from arch villain to innocent and then back to traitor.
Director Murphy went through phases of rage and disbelief, with a constant undercurrent of shock.
Isakson was handpicked by him and was his number two. His being a traitor was a bitter pill to swallow.
They made Broker walk through his putting together the jigsaw at the airport and made him go through the chain of events — his satellite phone call to Tony, who’d listened in for as long as the line was open and realized what was transpiring and who then had placed calls to Clare, who in turn had lit a fire under the cops.
Pizaka and Chang pressed hard for Broker to reveal the mysteries of his entrance door, asked him how a simple code could disable all its security and render it into an ordinary New York apartment door and thereby make a forced entry easier.
Broker gave them an in your dreams look.
Isakson had suffered no damage other than heavy bleeding and had been interrogated separately by the FBI and the cops, and he’d mounted a vigorous defense: ‘delusional, vested agenda, revenge’ were words he used frequently.
Broker was stumped when it came to Isakson.
They’d no evidence to support his claim that Isakson was the traitor. Any competent lawyer would laugh out of court his charge against the FBI man.
Floyd Wheat’s apartment had been broken into, and the money found as Isakson had said, but he explained it away saying that he’d investigated the agent once Murphy had told him about Broker’s uncovering him.
Broker could see the doubt creeping in Director Murphy’s eyes on the second day as Isakson hammered the point that they were out to get him for Zeb’s death.
Commissioner Forzini was more receptive, but he, too, needed proof to act.
The hooded man remained a mystery no one could shed light on.
Clare shrugged when Murphy pressed her about his identity, and said she knew no one of that description. She let the steel in her show just once when Pizaka and Chang asked her again.
In the late evening on the second day, a bicycle courier delivered a package addressed to Director Murphy, and two other packages were similarly delivered to Commissioner Forzini and Broker.
Later, they questioned the courier, but the description he gave was so generic that it could’ve fitted several million men in the city.
Each of the packages had a memory stick that contained an audio and a video file. The files filled Murphy with such a raging fury that it was said his office looked like a hurricane had gone through it.
He had a short call with Forzini that ended with, ‘If I could throw the bastard into Gitmo, I would.’
When Broker viewed the file with the others, he shouted, ‘Holy shit.’
The audio file captured everything that had happened in his apartment right from the time Isakson entered it to the ghost’s exit. The video file covered the events till the time the glass wall shattered, the explosion disabling the camera.
The files sealed Isakson’s fate.
They inspected the window carefully, Bwana leaning out dangerously, and even though they knew what to look for, the bugs and cameras took them half an hour to locate; their size and color were such that they blended perfectly in the remaining glass.
When they’d recovered and disabled them, they went to the roof after having worked out how the ghost could’ve planted them.
The scaffolding rig was still in place, and Roger, lying prone on the roof, could just see the broken window far below amidst the smooth glass wall. ‘Son of a bitch,’ he said admiringly. ‘All that security shit you’ve got, and he comes up with such a simple idea,’ he told Broker.
Broker shook his head ruefully. The ghost had won his admiration long back.
The Marshals came and patiently endured the long wait Broker subjected them to as he checked and triple-checked their credentials. The first step to securing new identities for Rocka and the children was taken.
The children started counseling sessions with a reputed psychiatrist, the same one who had helped Rory Balthazar. The family would assume their new identities and new life once the counseling sessions ran their course.