1. A Chance Collision
A CHANCE COLLISION
JAKOB
Pigeons swarm and flutter, coo and strut.
The pistol is a heavy, cold, unfamiliar presence at the small of my back—I have never much cared for firearms. They are a necessary tool, at times, but I dislike them as a general rule.
They are impersonal. Any idiot with a finger can use a gun; it takes intent, training, and determination to kill someone with a more… shall we say, personal…method.
I reach for my mobile, and for the umpteenth time in the last hour, I am annoyed to remember I do not have it. I curl my hand into a fist and let out a long sigh.
My contact is late.
I scan Central Park again, and see only the expected: couples canoodling on blankets, pairs and trios and quartets of women in Lululemon leggings and Patagonia crossbody slings power-strolling along the path, runners puffing, dogs chasing balls and frisbees, kids shrieking.
While my attention is fixed on a pair of older men walking together without talking, I feel the bench shift as someone sits beside me.
She's the female version of a Gray Man: absolutely forgettable, intentionally so.
Dishwater blond hair in a ponytail, dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a plain T-shirt.
Average features. Neither beautiful nor ugly.
Just…a woman. Middle-aged, maybe, although she could be younger than she appears…
or older. She could be from nearly anywhere there are white people.
Her bag rests on her thighs, a large leather tote, the kind of thing a soccer mom would carry.
She reaches into the bag and produces an insulated lunch bag, unzips it, and withdraws a clementine, which she begins peeling in a single careful spiral.
"Roberto Pugli was last seen on CCTV footage in Rochester, New York." She says this in a low, conversational tone, without looking at me.
"What is he doing there?" I ask.
"Not within the purview," she says, setting the peel aside and popping an orange wedge into her mouth.
"Right. Of course. When was this?"
"Seventeen hours ago."
"Was he alone?"
"Yes."
I sigh, grinding my molars in irritation—with these intelligentsia types, you have to ask very specific questions, and you only receive answers to those specific questions.
"Did you learn anything else about the target that you can share with me?
" I swear, it's like dealing with a djinn from 1001 Nights.
The phrasing of my questions gets me a twitch of her lipstick-free lips—a slight smirk of amusement. "He made several phone calls to a burner phone. I was able to ping the burner off of a tower in Queens." A pause, as she places another wedge in her mouth. "Also, you're being followed."
Fuck. I thought I saw a face more than once. "You're certain?"
"About the calls, the cell tower in Queens, or your rather clumsy tail?"
"Yes."
A snort. "Yes, I'm certain. There were three calls over twenty-four hours, but only one lasted long enough to get a ping.
After that last call, the phone was ditched.
" She eats another wedge. "After I leave, wait ten minutes.
Exit the park, cross the street, and go into the bodega next to the cellular shop.
Buy a burner and some minutes. When you exit, you'll see a man across the street pretending to buy food from the street vendor.
He's short and chunky, has a big bald spot, and he's wearing a black track suit with yellow stripes. "
"And then?"
A shrug. "And then nothing, as far as I'm concerned. We're even—I don't owe you anything anymore, after this. Don't ever contact me again."
She produces a felt-tip pen and writes something on the inside of the orange peel, which she then discards on the ground as she stands and walks away, taking the rest of her clementine with her.
Within seconds, she's gone as abruptly as she appeared. With another annoyed sigh, I retrieve the peel. Stand up and head for a nearby waste bin, glancing at the inside of the peel—she had written down a set of coordinates. How helpful.
I tear away the section with the coordinates, surreptitiously tuck it into the hip pocket of my suit trousers, and discard the rest. I sit on the bench again and make a long, slow production of eating the gyro I purchased from the street vendor on the way here; fifteen or so minutes later, I'm ambling out of the park and across the street to the cellular store, where I buy a mobile and a minutes card.
The cellular device has a GPS app, which is important, as coordinates don't do much good without a way to pinpoint where they lead.
I exit the store, inserting the disposable SIM card. While I'm powering on the phone, I cast a glance across the street: exactly as she indicated, there's a short, stout man in a black tracksuit standing in line near a street vendor. He's pretending to read the menu while watching me.
I shuffle to a waste bin and toss the packaging away while the off-brand device powers up; my tail is next in line, making a big show of counting cash.
I pull up the GPS app and input the coordinates; as I suspected, they're for an address in Rochester.
A random house in the suburbs, it appears.
A safe house, most likely, knowing Pugli.
Why Rochester? There's no answer to that—Pugli is unpredictable, paranoid, and an old hand at these spy games.
To most of the world, Roberto Pugli is an upper-level executive for INTERPOL—a suit whose work is done in a corner office at INTERPOL headquarters in Lyon. To some, he's a master manipulator, an organized crime kingpin too careful to let himself be connected to any of his nefarious dealings.
But to a very, very select few, Roberto Pugli is just his most well-known alias.
You see, before he became Roberto Pugli and climbed the ranks suspiciously fast, he was an analyst and operative for an intelligence agency…
until his predilection for using his position to commit crimes became too obvious.
He vanished, resurfaced years later as Roberto, and continued to be devious, cunning, and cruel…
just with the might of INTERPOL as his smokescreen.
It's an open secret in many intelligence circles that he is a kingpin responsible for a truly shocking amount of awfulness around the world, mostly to do with arms dealing and human trafficking. It's just that he's too damned clever to leave any actionable evidence tying him to anything concrete.
Which is where Nicolae comes in…the man otherwise known as Lash.
But that's for later.
Right now, alarm bells are jangling in my gut. The fact that Pugli is Stateside and in New York is worrisome. After the events in Vegas, I'd have expected him to return to Europe.
If he's still here, it means he intends to personally make sure business is dealt with—said business being me.
More specifically, said business is what I know, and what Lash knows. What we have evidence of. What I personally witnessed several years ago — there are many reasons for my intense secrecy, and fear of Pugli’s retaliation is only one of them, and a minor one at that.
I put Pugli out of my mind for now—he's not going to be at that location by the time I get there, and I have a feeling there are much more pressing matters at hand. Those three calls to a burner, plus the thug tailing me, equal bad things for me.
I'm tempted to call Inez—Sophia, I should say. But then I think about all she's been through, and how she's just now finally found peace. Rafael is dead. She's free. All of my Arrows are free.
I don't call anyone. I know Lash is unlikely to simply let things be—he has even more reason to hate and fear Pugli than I do. Which means he's out there, somewhere, hunting Pugli.
That's good enough for me; Pugli is as good as dead.
But those three calls.
More than likely, he was putting together a hunting party.
The quarry?
Me.
A Yellow Cab squeals to a halt a few feet away, and a portly man in his sixties wearing an expensive suit emerges, phone clamped between ear and shoulder, jabbering angrily into it as he juggles shopping bags, a briefcase, and a paper Starbucks cup.
I slide into the backseat before he can even let go of the door; he gives me an annoyed, puzzled glare before waddling off down the street, still awkwardly juggling all of his belongings.
"Go around the block," I tell the driver, handing him a hundred-dollar bill.
The driver, an old man wearing a Sikh turban, bobbles his head with a soft, "Okehhh, okehhh."
I twist in my seat as he pulls away from the curb—my tail takes a big bite from the gyro he just bought, sees me getting into the cab, and drops the tinfoil-wrapped sandwich into a bin and sprints after me.
For a moment or two, I think I've gotten away.
But he has his phone to his ear, and seconds later—as we're squealing to a halt at the next intersection—a black Suburban halts beside him, and he gets into the front passenger seat.
These bastards.
The light turns green, and we reach the corner. My driver trundles around, and we're stopped by an unloading cube van and oncoming traffic.
"Goddammit," I mutter. "Go, go, go."
"I cannot," The driver says. "Car come."
Oncoming traffic finally clears, and he guns it, the rattling old Impala groaning in protest. We swing around the cube van an instant before the arrival of another clump of oncoming traffic.
“Faster, please," I say.
"Okehh, faster. Yes, okehh."
I glance behind us again—the Suburban is three cars back. We reach the next intersection and turn right again. I pull another hundred out of my pocket and shove it at him. "Get me across the intersection as fast as possible."
He frowns at me in the mirror. "Impossible. I will crash."
"Just go. Into traffic, on the sidewalk, I don't care. Just go."