Gone Tomorrow

I split the final two hours four separate ways. I moved from supermarket on the corner of Park and 22nd to a Duane Reade drugstore opposite and then to a CVS pharmacy on Park and 3rd. Visible evidence suggested that the nation spent more on hair care than food. Then at twenty-five minutes to ten I stopped shopping and stepped out to the bright new morning and looped around and took a good long careful look at my destination from the mouth of 24th Street, which was a shadowed anonymous canyon between two huge buildings. I saw nothing that worried me. No unexplained cars, no parked vans, no pairs or trios of dressed-down people with wires in their ears.

So at ten o’clock exactly I stepped into Madison Square Park.

I found Theresa Lee and Jacob Mark side by side on a bench near a dog run. They looked rested but nervous, and stressed, each in their own way. Each for their own reasons, presumably. They were two of maybe a hundred people sitting peacefully in the sun. The park was a rectangle of trees and lawns and paths. It was a small oasis, one block wide and three tall, fenced, surrounded by four busy sidewalks. Parks are reasonably good places for a clandestine rendezvous. Most hunters are attracted by moving targets. Most believe that fugitives stay in motion. Three of a hundred people sitting still while the city swirls around them attract less attention than three of a hundred hustling hard down the street.

Not perfect, but an acceptable risk.

I checked all around one last time and sat down next to Lee. She handed me a newspaper. One of the tabloids I had already seen. The HUNT headline. She said, ‘It claims we shot three federal agents.’

‘We shot four,’ I said. ‘Don’t forget the medical guy.’

‘But they make it sound like we used real guns. They make ii sound like the guys died.’

‘They want to sell papers.’

‘We’re in trouble.’

‘We knew that already. We didn’t need a journalist to tell us.’

She said, ‘Docherty came through again. He was texting messages to me all night long, while the phone was off.’

She lifted up off the bench and took a sheaf of paper out of her back pocket. Three sheets of yellowed hotel stationery, folded four ways.

I said, ‘You took notes?’

She said, ‘They were long messages. I didn’t want to keep the phone on, if there were things I needed to review.’

‘So what do we know?’

‘The 17th Precinct checked transportation gateways. Standard procedure, after a major crime. Four men left the country three hours after the likely time of death. Through JFK. The 17th is calling them potential suspects. It’s a plausible scenario.’

I nodded.

‘The 17th Precinct is right,’ I said. ‘Lila Hoth told me so.’

‘You met with her?’

‘She called me.’

‘On what?’

‘Another phone I took from Leonid, He and a pal found me. It didn’t work out exactly how I wanted, but I made some limited contact.’

‘She confessed?’

‘More or less.’

‘So where is she now?’

‘I don’t know exactly. I’m guessing somewhere east of Fifth, south of 59th.’

‘Why?’

‘She used the Four Seasons as a front. Why travel?’

Lee said, ‘There was a burned-out rental car in Queens. The 17th thinks the four guys used it to get out of Manhattan. Then they ditched it and used that elevated train thing to get to the airport.’

I nodded again. ‘Lila said the car they used no longer exists.’

‘But here’s the thing,’ Lee said. ‘The four guys didn’t head back to London or Ukraine or Russia. They were routed through Tajikistan.’

‘Which is where?’

‘Don’t you know?’

‘Those new places confuse me.’

‘Tajikistan is right next to Afghanistan. They share a border. Also with Pakistan.’

‘You can fly direct to Pakistan.’

‘Correct. Therefore either those guys were from Tajikistan, or from Afghanistan itself. Tajikistan is where you go to get into Afghanistan without being too obvious about it. You cross the border in a pick-up truck. Roads are bad, but Kabul is not too far away.’

‘OK.’

‘And here’s the other thing. Homeland Security has a protocol. Some kind of computer algorithm. They can trace groups of people through similar itineraries and linked bookings. Turns it those four guys entered the country three months ago from

Tajikistan, along with some other folks, including two women with passports from Turkmenistan. One was sixty, and the other was twenty-six. They came through immigration together and claimed to be mother and daughter. And Homeland Security is prepared to swear their passports were genuine.’

‘So the Hoths were not Ukrainian. Everything they told us was a lie.’

We all chewed on that for twenty long seconds, in silence. I went through all the stuff Lila had told us and deleted it, item by item.

Like pulling files from a drawer, and leafing through them, and then pitching them in the trash.

I said, ‘We saw their passports at the Four Seasons. They looked Ukrainian to me.’

Lee said, ‘They were phony. Or they would have used them at immigration.’

I said, ‘Lila had blue eyes.’ Lee said, ‘I noticed.’

‘Where exactly is Turkmenistan?’

‘Also next to Afghanistan. A longer border. Afghanistan is surrounded by Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Pakistan, clockwise from the Gulf.’

‘Easier when it was all the Soviet Union.’

‘Unless you lived there.’

‘Are Turkmenistan and Afghanistan ethnically similar?’

‘Probably. All those borders are completely arbitrary. They’re accidents of history. What matters are the tribal divisions. Lines on a map have got nothing to do with it.’

‘Are you an expert?’

‘The NYPD knows more about that region than the CIA. We have to. We’ve got people over there. We’ve got better intelligence than anyone.’

‘Could a person from Afghanistan get a passport from Turkmenistan?’

‘By relocating?’

‘By asking for help and getting it.’

‘From an ethnic sympathizer?’

I nodded. ‘Maybe under the counter.’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘Some Afghan people have bright blue eyes. Especially the women. Some weird genetic strand in the population.’

‘You think the Hoths are from Afghanistan?’

‘They knew a hell of a lot about the conflict with the Soviets. A little dressed up, but they got most of the details right.’

‘Maybe they read books.’

‘No, they got the feelings right. And the atmosphere. Like the ancient greatcoats. Details like that are not widely available. That’s insider information. In public the Red Army made out it was superbly equipped, for obvious reasons. Our propaganda said the same thing about them, for equally obvious reasons. But it wasn’t true. The Red Army was falling apart. A lot of what the Hoths said sounded like first-hand information to me.’

‘So?’

‘Maybe Svetlana really did fight there. But on the other side.’

Lee paused a beat. ‘You think the Hoths are Afghan tribeswomen?’

‘If Svetlana fought there, but not for the Soviets, then they must be.’

Lee paused again. ‘In which case Svetlana was telling the whole story from the other side. Everything was inverted. Including the atrocities.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘She didn’t suffer them. She committed them.’

We all went quiet again, another twenty seconds. I kept my eyes moving all around the park. Look, don’t see, listen, don’t hear. The more you engage, the longer you survive. But nothing jumped out at me. Nothing untoward was happening. People were coming and going, people were taking dogs to the run, a line was forming at a hamburger stand. Early, but every hour of the day or night is lunch time for someone. It depends on when the day starts. Lee was going through her notes. Jacob Mark was staring at the ground, but his gaze was focused somewhere far below the surface. Finally he leaned forward and turned his head and looked at me. I thought: Here it comes. The big question. The bump in the road.