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So here she is, wearing the party dress her mentor had specified, waiting for the A Train to take her to Manhattan. The trip should take an hour.
Should.
But this is America and the trains, and the trash, and the jostling, noisy, dirty, and filthy people…all part of a greedy, grasping empire. When the taxi had dropped her at the station, a small part of her wondered if she could go through with her task, knowing there was a very good chance the people she would ride in with this morning would shortly be dead—all because of her.
From a small compartment at the top of her carry-on luggage, she takes out the programmed cell phone Rashad gave her in Paris, pushes Dial, and raises it to her ear.
It rings once.
“Mike,” comes the strong male voice.
“It’s Nadia,” she says. “I’m at the subway station in Queens.”
“Excellent,” Mike says. “I will be waiting for you at the southern end of the park.”
His voice is confident, and she blurts out, “These trains…they may be late. Just so you are aware.”
Mike laughs. “I know American trains. No worries. You are worth waiting for. I will see you soon.”
He disconnects the call and Nadia stows the phone, knowing she will use it only once more.
That voice, that man.
Even from this short conversation, she feels the same shared sense of justice and mission.
Nadia stands a bit straighter among these workers, crabby children, and homeless, and she feels no guilt at all.
When Mike Patel started work at One World Trade Center nearly a year ago, he had been concerned that his skin color, his accent, would cause him increased surveillance attention from the NYPD and the American intelligence services. But save for a few awkward glances and half-heard insults and jokes here and there, the people he has met have generally left him alone. He performs his work quietly, efficiently, and ahead of schedule, which means his supervision is practically nonexistent.
He is in a men’s restroom on the sixth floor of One World Trade Center, changing out of his work clothes into a simple pair of Levi’s blue jeans and a white T-shirt, preparing to absent himself from his day’s work to ensure that most of the people he has met here over the months will soon die an agonizing death, choking on their own fluids.
He fastens the jeans.
They should have paid closer attention to him.
Freddie Farrady is strolling the streets around the base of One World Trade Center, remembering the conversation he had last night with his MI5 supervisor.
Patel is up to something,he had said.He left work and went to a railway yard in New Jersey.
And?
And that’s out of character,he had said.He’s never skipped work like that—not ever.
Did you see if he met anyone?
No,he had said.
Did he do anything illegal in New Jersey?
I bloody well couldn’t tell, now could I?he had said.He was behind a tall fence in a secure railway yard.
Then maybe he has a part-time job over there. Just keep watching.
Yeah,Freddie thinks, stretching his legs once more, conducting a roving surveillance of the four entrances and exits at One World Trade Center. He walks west along Fulton Street, goes up the busy corridor of West Street, east along the relative quiet of Vesey Street, then takes Greenwich Street back to Fulton.
Wash, rinse, repeat,he thinks. On what passes for a normal day—except for that jaunt into New Jersey—Patel goes to work in the morning and leaves in the late afternoon.
Staying outside all day is a waste of time. What he should do is talk to Patel’s coworkers, to his fellow tenants at his apartment building in Queens. But Portia Grayson of MI5 will have none of it.
