‘Why?’
‘You’re not there to handle the distribution. I’ve gotten a Night Road team to go to Houston to transport the bombs to a new location.’
‘Where are you taking the bombs?’ Snow asked.
‘That’s need to know. You’re about to go on a job where you could be captured.’
‘No traps,’ Snow said after a moment. ‘Take good care of my babies.’
‘You’re running this show,’ Mouser said, ‘but it’s your fault we’re in the hole we’re in.’
‘Your continued failure to capture Luke is our hole,’ Henry said, ‘but I’ve gotten you some more muscle.’
Sweet Bird was not a man who enjoyed waiting for other people, but impatience got you killed these days. Mr Shawcross had offered him enough arms to eliminate every rival gang in Queens and New Jersey. The Albanians, the leftover Italians, the mean Russians and the Asian tongs. He couldn’t say no to such a deal. Even if the risk was high. His grandmother, who never lived to see him become a leading kingpin and had hoped he would become a physician, had drilled that lesson into his head, by soft cajole and hard belt: take your opportunities, don’t waste them.
So when Shawcross called him early that morning, he’d listened to the delicious sound of a rare chance to make a powerful friend.
I may need you to assault a building.
A building? You’re kidding me.
I don’t like the sound of hesitation.
Ain’t hesitating, I’m listening. You probably don’t like the sound of some idiot leaping before he looks.
You do this, you’ll be one of the most powerful men in New York by the end of the day. I have a lot of work for you. Mr Shawcross’s voice had carried a low gleam over the phone. And Mr Shawcross always delivered. In the past two months he’d sent Sweet Bird real nice Belgian rifles to use, trained his men, helped them take down rival drug lords and a bothersome DA. Given him army-quality grenades to eliminate a couple of informants, right in their cars, no need to bother with unreliable handmade pipe bombs. And, from the Night Road website, handed him a couple of small insurance agencies that sold cheap policies, made it easy to shine and polish and legitimize the cocaine money.
He was waiting for Shawcross’s two people at a back room at one of the agencies, a few blocks from Greenwich Village. He waited with five of his regular guys, one who was Sweet Bird’s cousin, a violent gangster wannabe Luke had found two months before on a board discussing urban warfare, the others hardened street fighters. He watched as they double-checked their weapons. He had one of the nice Belgian rifles and he ran his hands over the cool, fine metal. He had modified a raincoat so he could carry the rifle in it unseen. In the background CNN played, talking about the spate of attacks across America, a rapid rising of violence that was undercutting Americans’ confidence to simply go about their lives.
Two minutes later there was a knock on the door, and he opened it to find a lean, muscled guy with a crew cut and a pretty but scowling woman who had a scary mop of white hair. They gave the right password.
‘Mouser. Snow. Pleased to make your acquaintance. I ain’t never met anyone from Night Road face to face.’
‘You understand the plan as presented?’ Mouser said. ‘And you understand I’m in charge.’
‘It’s not rocket science,’ Sweet Bird said. ‘Let’s go get it done.’
They left, in two cars. Mouser drove. Snow said, ‘Did you tell that guy you want Luke Dantry dead if he’s there?’
‘No,’ Mouser said. ‘You and I will handle it. I don’t trust anyone else.’
‘He’s Night Road, he’s okay.’
‘Nobody’s okay. I thought Henry was. He’s distracted by his affection for his stepson. It’s become a problem. If Luke’s at this building – he stops being a problem for us.’
39
‘You don’t know about the fifty million dollars,’ Luke said. ‘You have to be kidding.’
Drummond measured his expression, looking for a sign of bluff. ‘No, I don’t.’ His head tilted slightly, as though listening to the soft hiss of the air conditioner. He flicked his glance at the kitchen corner, for the barest of moments. If Luke had not been watching him so closely for his reaction, he wouldn’t have noticed. Luke glanced at the corner as well. He saw a pinpoint hole in the ceiling. A camera, maybe.
He had the sudden sense they were being watched. Maybe his imagination. But the past few days had taught him to trust his instincts.
‘A man as desperate as Eric would have mentioned every asset to win his safety.’ Luke put his gaze back on Drummond’s face. ‘He wouldn’t forget to mention fifty million.’
‘Offering us information on the Night Road would have won him ample protection. He didn’t have to mention money.’ For the first time Drummond looked shaken. ‘We were working on IDing him from the airport garage video and the speeding ticket video. He contacted me.’
‘Wait – how did Eric know how to find you?’
‘That was a mystery. But he knew Quicksilver was more than a risk company. He wanted protection and he gave me enough info on Night Road for me to know it was legit. I hadn’t even met him face to face yet.’
Luke realized Drummond had no reason to lie. ‘Then Eric was going to keep the money for himself. You pick his brain, you hide him away where the Night Road can’t kill him, and then he vanishes, with fifty million stashed away and waiting for him, and neither the Night Road nor Quicksilver gets the cash. You’re too busy waging war against each other to care what he does.’ It was a simple but brilliant plan.
‘Where is this money?’ Drummond said.
‘I thought you said it didn’t matter.’
‘Money is lifeblood for terrorism. Where is it, Luke? We’ve got to secure that money before the Night Road uses it.’
‘Tell me who Quicksilver is and I’ll give you the fifty million.’
Drummond paused, as though holding in his anger, and then Luke saw it: a minuscule earpiece in Drummond’s ear. ‘Okay,’ Drummond said. ‘You give me the location of the money and I’ll answer your questions.’
‘I go first.’ Luke watched the corner of the kitchen where Drummond had seemed to pause. ‘Are we being watched? Or listened to?’
‘Does it matter?’ Which to Luke meant yes.
He took a deep breath and then asked again: ‘I want to know what the connection is between you and my stepfather and my dad. Why do you have a Saint Michael medal like mine?’
Drummond tented fingers under his chin, frowned.
‘That connection is the key to why I was targeted. You’re on one side of this fight, Henry on another, and you’re both part of my father’s past.’
Drummond was silent for ten long seconds. ‘Seeing you brings back a lot of memories. I carried you once on my shoulders. I remember when you were a small kid, I saw you a few times at your parents’ house. There were three of us at the beginning. Me. Your stepfather. And your father.’
The words unnerved Luke. His father had led an entirely secret life, and the foundation of what Luke had always believed about his dad seemed to shift under his feet. A wave of dizziness hit him and passed. ‘The beginning, you said. Beginning of this Book Club?’
‘Book Club was a joke name, because it was mostly professors and writers, but it stuck. The State Department recruited your stepdad, then your dad. And your father found several others, including me. To work with a secret group, unofficial, to approach and solve the world’s problems in new and fresh ways. What do you do if there’s a foreign leader who becomes an enemy? You can’t assassinate him, that’s always a temporary solution. But maybe, the Book Club would say, we find an unsuspected way to erode the guy’s power among his base. Perhaps involving subtle economic changes that hurt his biggest backers, or political pressure that he doesn’t see as coming from the West. It’s more effective than assassination. But it takes imagination, and then some muscle and well-applied arm-twisting to make the situation happen. That’s just an example. The professors were the thinkers; me and Clifford, and sometimes the professors, carried out the missions. We had a few successes. Sometimes subtlety is greater than force.’ He gestured at the photos. ‘We had a few failures. Subtlety doesn’t always work.’