Revenge (17 page)

Jimmy raced across the spectacular main hall of Grand Central Station. His trainers squeaked on the oversized tiles. He wished he had time to stop and admire the place with its high, rounded ceiling and the orange glow of the walls, but inside him was a new urgency. The images pounded in his head. Hatred of them drove him on. He was desperate to get rid of them and now he knew exactly how to do it – let them take over. If Miss Bennett wanted to lead him into an NJ7 trap on Roosevelt Island, then that’s where he’d go.

There were people scurrying across the floor – busy, even though it was still the early hours of the morning. Jimmy wove a path between them. At the information desk in the centre of the hall he hardly even slowed down, but reached out and plucked a city centre map from the rack. He glanced at the four-faced golden clock as he passed, but it had stopped.
How would he know when NJ7 were expecting him, he wondered. All he could do was give himself over to his instincts.

He burst into the street. It was eerily quiet. The dampness in the air soaked into the map as he unfolded it. To Jimmy it felt like it was coating his very bones as well. He quickly found Roosevelt Island – a sliver of land wedged between Manhattan and Queens. The shape of it looked like a large submarine about to submerge into the East River.

Straight away, Jimmy worked out how to get to the tramway that would take him over the water on to the island. But there was somewhere else he needed to go first. Instead of heading north to the tramway, he dashed west, along 42nd Street. The wind gusted in his face. He leaned into it, running with his body at an extreme angle to the ground. The map flapped behind him like the tail of a comet. He let it go. He didn’t need it. He knew now that the Manhattan grid would be scored in his visual memory – it was far simpler than the schematics of a museum.

His feet sprang off the pavement, throwing him forwards. The rhythm was frenetic but regular. Every few strides he felt a fog creeping over his brain. It was doubt in himself. It urged him to stop.
Look in your
back pocket. Read the name
. Jimmy tightened his shoulders and increased his pace. He had to keep moving. It was the only way to stop himself crumbling.

In barely a minute he reached Times Square. Any other boy in the world would have slowed down and craned his neck to gawp at the spectacle. Jimmy ignored it. Times Square could wait. He charged into the station and down the steps. There was still money in his jeans. He bought a ticket from the machine, then clattered through the turnstiles and into the maze of tunnels.

For some reason, it was busier below ground than in the street, as if New York disappeared beneath the earth after dark. A drunk bellowed out a song. His voice filled the tunnels, surrounding Jimmy until the rattle of a train drowned it out.

Jimmy kept running, though he wasn’t trying to catch a train.

KNICKERBOCKER – the word called out to Jimmy. Looking at those time-weathered letters, he felt for an instant that stab in the back where he’d been shot by the CIA’s laser-blanks, and that terror when he’d believed it would kill him. He brushed it all aside and leapt up to tweak the grimy white box that unlocked the door.

There was no mystery this time when he barged through into the lobby of the abandoned hotel.

“Colonel Keays!” he shouted into the expanse of darkness. He gathered a deep breath to settle his panting. “Colonel Keays, it’s me, Jimmy Coates. I need your help.”

At first the only response was his own words echoing back to him. Then, “What is it?”

Jimmy looked up to where the voice had come from. In a fuzzy blue haze, he made out Colonel Keays peering down at him from the balcony.

“I need to borrow some equipment,” Jimmy declared.

The Colonel marched down towards him. He was wearing a night-vision headset that made him look like an alien.

“Whatever you need, Jimmy,” he said when he was close. “I can trust you with any of our kit. We’re on the same side now, remember?”

Jimmy hesitated a moment, then brushed off his anxiety.

“It’s not for me,” he announced. “But if I tell you what to do, can you do it?”

Colonel Keays pulled a pen and a black leather notebook from the inside pocket of his uniform.

“Make a shopping list,” he instructed, handing them to Jimmy. “We’ll deliver.”

In minutes, Jimmy was back on the street. Even when his breathing grated in his lungs he didn’t stop running. The city was still now. Jimmy felt like he was moving through a ghost town. Indistinct noises floated down from a few windows high above him, and he could hear the whirr of the street sweepers never far away. But nobody was around.
New York was only a network of shadows and pools of neon light diffracted by the drizzle.

Eventually, Jimmy rounded the corner of 60th Street on to Second Avenue to see the giant concrete construction that dominated the block. It held the terminal for the tramway over to Roosevelt Island. Above Jimmy’s head the building spat out half a dozen super-thick cables – although it had been named a ‘tramway’ by New Yorkers, it was actually what Jimmy would have called a cable car.

That moment, the fat red cabin swung down along the cables to dock in the terminal. On its side, in big white letters, was ‘Roosevelt Island’. Jimmy peered up at it. Through the reflections in its windows, Jimmy made out the silhouette of a single passenger. Who would possibly be travelling across into Manhattan at this time?

Jimmy dashed up the concrete steps, listening to the doors of the cabin sliding open on their ancient runners. A lone set of footsteps emerged. Jimmy reached the top of the stairs. When he saw who it was that had just stepped off the cable car, he thought his heart would stop.

Paduk spun round. His expression reflected the shock in Jimmy. Clearly, NJ7 hadn’t expected Jimmy to arrive so soon. Maybe he wasn’t meant to work out the clues in the images for a few more hours, allowing them to send him closer and closer to insanity the longer the day
drew on. But here he was. And seeing the sculpted bulk of Paduk in the same place confirmed it for him – nothing was waiting for him on the island but a battalion of NJ7 agents. Yet Jimmy knew he had to get to them. He had to end this lethal cat-and-mouse chase or it would carry on forever.

Paduk reached under his suit jacket. Jimmy didn’t wait to see what would emerge. He dived to the floor and rolled forwards. A bullet blasted into the concrete behind where he had been standing. Paduk adjusted his aim, but Jimmy launched himself off the ground. In mid-air, he kicked out with both feet. His first kick connected with Paduk’s gun, which jumped out of his fist and clattered to the floor. Jimmy’s other leg followed, aiming straight for Paduk’s head, but the agent was quick. He raised his arm to block the blow and parried Jimmy over his shoulder.

Jimmy twisted in the air to land on his back, while Paduk lunged forwards to pick up his gun. Jimmy swept his foot across Paduk’s ankles to bring the man down. Then Jimmy dived into the cable car. Without hesitating, he slammed his palm down on the control panel twice. One red button started the doors sliding back together. The second jolted the whole cabin into life. It creaked and wobbled, then shifted awkwardly out of its dock.

Just in time, Paduk thrust out his foot. He jammed it between the doors and the cabin dragged him along the
floor of the terminal. As he moved, he took aim at Jimmy through the cabin windows. Jimmy dropped to the floor and kicked Paduk’s foot away. At last, the doors shut and the tram was out of the dock. It lurched through the air, swinging for a few seconds, then settled. Jimmy was alone in the cabin. NJ7 must have somehow made sure that the usual staff weren’t manning their posts that morning.

He looked back at the dock expecting to see Paduk shrinking into the distance. But nobody was there. That instant, something blasted a hole in the floor of the cabin. A hand burst through and grabbed Jimmy’s ankle. Paduk was hanging off the underside of the cable car.

Felix kicked his father gently in the belly.

“Get up,” he insisted. “Come on!”

Neil Muzbeke groaned and rolled over.

“Come on!” Felix urged, louder. “Get up! Jimmy’s not back.”

His father’s eyes shot open. “Not back?” he asked. “What do you mean, ‘not back’? Where did he go?”

“I shouldn’t have let him go,” Felix replied. “But he said he’d be OK. He went with Dr Higgins.”

“Dr Higgins?” Neil pushed himself to his feet and rubbed his hands over his face. He was suddenly wide awake. “Helen back yet?” Felix shook his head. “This isn’t good.”

Then they both heard a noise from downstairs – a click. They stared at each other. Felix had never felt his blood pumping so hard through his veins. He waited to hear either Jimmy or Jimmy’s mother coming up the stairs. Nothing.

He ran out of the room and down to the front door. Waiting for him on the mat was Jimmy’s notebook. He grabbed it and yanked the door open. The wind wrapped around him and squeezed out all warmth. He stepped out and peered up and down the street. It was deserted.

“Well?” asked Neil Muzbeke, appearing in the doorway with a blanket pulled around his shoulders.

Felix turned round and shrugged.

“Just Jimmy’s notebook,” he said, turning it over in his hands. Then he saw the front cover. He shivered, but it wasn’t from the cold. He ran back into the building and slammed the door behind him.

“Get the others,” he ordered. “We’re leaving.”

“What?” Neil exclaimed. “Calm down.”

“I’ll calm down as soon as we’re out of Chinatown.” Felix held up the notebook in front of his chest. On the front was a message, scrawled in red capital letters, but very shakily, as if somebody had written it with his wrong hand, or it had been written by someone very old – or both. It read:

“THEY KNOW WHERE YOU ARE. GET OUT.”

Jimmy looked down through the hole in the cable car floor. Paduk’s fist squeezed so tightly around his ankle that he lost all feeling in his foot. For a few seconds they stared into each other’s eyes.

A hundred metres beneath Paduk, the street rushed past. Then the tramway took them off the edge of Manhattan, over the surging waves of the East River. In the darkness, it looked like they had gone off the edge of the world.

Paduk’s other hand dangled beside him. In it he held his gun. Slowly, he lifted his arm and took aim at Jimmy’s head. Jimmy’s programming had never reacted so fast. He moved with such power and precision that he didn’t even know what position he was in until he’d already moved on. In a flash, he raised his leg and Paduk with it. Then he slammed his other foot down on Paduk’s forearm.

Jimmy felt the impact of the man’s bone. It didn’t
crack, but Paduk’s grip gave way immediately. He caught the edge of the hole in the floor and started tearing at the metal, to claw his way into the cabin.

Jimmy didn’t wait for him. He jumped up, grabbing the handrail that ran through the carriage. In the middle of the ceiling was a small perspex square – a skylight. Jimmy swung his body upwards and smashed it open with both feet. It snapped off in one piece, flying away with the wind. Jimmy swung up again, this time hooking his legs through the skylight.

The wind whipped round the cabin. It tore at Jimmy’s cheeks. In his chest was a panic struggling to make itself felt above the discipline of his programming.

Paduk pulled the top half of his body through the floor. He was barely two metres away. He steadied himself on his elbows, then took aim. Jimmy hauled himself through the skylight, upside-down, swerving his body out of the way just as Paduk’s bullet ripped into the ceiling. Jimmy thought his ears were going to burst with the power of the shot.

He crouched on top of the carriage. Above his head was the squealing wheel and cable system. To his right he could see the skyscrapers of downtown Manhattan getting smaller and smaller as the tram approached Roosevelt Island. His view was cut into chunks by the rusting scaffold of Queensborough Bridge.

It was less than a second before he had to move again. He heard the click of Paduk’s gun. The man
wasn’t climbing up to get him. It was more straightforward to shoot through the roof.

The first blast tore through just a centimetre from Jimmy’s right foot. A splinter of the metal jumped up and hit him in the face. He turned away instinctively and that’s when he saw it. Straight ahead of them, rising out of the mist, way out past Roosevelt Island and on the other side of the river, were four slim towers, each one painted red at the base, white in the middle and red at the top. Big Allis Power Station.

The muscles in Jimmy’s eyes locked. He couldn’t look away. It was like when two strings on a guitar play the same note and they’re exactly in tune. He had a perfect view of the towers and it set off an involuntary surge of joy in his brain. He couldn’t control it – it was a chemical reaction.

Move
, he heard in his head. It was a tiny voice at first, swamped by the powerful emotion of his mental vision connecting with the world. Then he forced it through his brain’s confusion:
MOVE!

Another shot ripped through the roof. Jimmy jumped backwards just in time. But there was hardly any space left on top of the cable car. In a few seconds Paduk would have shot up the whole thing and Jimmy with it.

Felix quickly roused his mother and Georgie, while Neil Muzbeke collected as many items as he could that he
thought might be useful, including a couple of blankets and some leftover food. When they were all together he shared the rest of the dollars out equally between them.

“What do we do about Helen?” asked Olivia Muzbeke. “She said she’d be back by the morning.” They all looked at each other.

Georgie knew without anybody saying a word that they had to leave. The message on the notebook said it all. There was no time to wait for her mum. They had to get out now.

Felix’s father marched into the bedroom and removed the crate from the broken window.

“She’ll see that from the other end of the street,” he announced. “It should be enough to warn her. Don’t worry.” He took Georgie by the shoulders. “I know she’s coming back and I know she’ll be fine.”

Georgie looked into his big comforting eyes.

“How will we find her again?” she asked.

“We won’t need to.” Neil’s voice was confident and encouraging. “She’ll find us. She’s a top agent and a strong woman. Remember that.”

Georgie didn’t smile and didn’t nod. But she pretended there was a core of strength inside her taking control. “Let’s get out of here,” she urged.

Neil grinned.

“We don’t know where we’re going yet,” Olivia pointed out.

“Show me Jimmy’s pictures,” Georgie ordered. Felix flipped open the notebook to the four towers and the ruin. “This is where we should go.” Georgie paused, then added, “Any idea where it is?”

Felix shrugged at first, but then he dashed for the door.

“Back in a sec,” he yelled. He tumbled down the stairs, limbs flailing everywhere, and burst into the street.

“Felix, wait!” cried Neil Muzbeke. He dropped the batteries he’d found under the sink and ran after his son. Olivia and Georgie quickly followed. When they got downstairs. Felix was hammering on the door to the restaurant beneath the apartments.

His face was pressed up against the glass. There was a light on somewhere in the back of the restaurant, and after a good thirty seconds of Felix hammering, a shadow lumbered towards them across the restaurant floor. The door swung open violently and out flew a tirade of Korean.

Mrs Kai-Ro was not pleased. She hadn’t been asleep – that much was obvious. She was dressed and alert. But her hands were full of pak choi, and there were shouts ringing from the kitchen in the back. They were obviously unloading that morning’s delivery.

“Where’s this?” Felix demanded, opening Jimmy’s notebook up to the right page. The only response was a blank look. “Come on, please? Do you know where this is?”

“Insect?” Mrs Kai-Ro blurted in her thick Korean accent. “Come back later.”

“No, no!” Felix cried. “Where is this?”

“Saying it louder won’t help,” Georgie pointed out. “Didn’t you pick up any Korean when you were hanging out with her?”

“Jimmy would know what to say,” Felix mumbled.

In desperation, he performed a ridiculous mime. He bashed the paper with his finger, then walked around in a circle in the street with his hand shielding his eyes, as if he was very obviously looking for something. Georgie laughed, despite her tension.

“Stop messing about,” sighed Felix’s father. But then at last Mrs Kai-Ro’s expression changed.

“Oh!” she exclaimed with a smile. “You want to go Roosevelt Island?”

“That’s it!” Olivia shouted. “Where’s that?”

“Roosevelt Island!” Mrs Kai-Ro shouted.

“Yeah, like I said,” groaned Georgie. “Louder isn’t clearer!”

Mrs Kai-Ro gave a sprightly spin and disappeared again into the restaurant.

“You offended her,” Felix whispered. “No, wait, maybe she’s getting us some dumplings for the journey.”

Georgie let out an exasperated squeal, but a second later, the old woman had returned with something in her hands. A map of Manhattan.

“Roosevelt Island!” she declared, pointing to the sliver of land in the East River.

“Thank you,” said Felix’s father. Then he turned to Felix and Georgie. “You two wait here.” He took the map from Mrs Kai-Ro’s hands with a smile and a nod of gratitude, and thrust it on Felix. “Your mother and I will fetch all the stuff from upstairs.”

“Be quick,” Felix urged.

“We’ll be two seconds,” was his father’s reply. “Don’t move.”

Neil and Olivia rushed back into the building and up to the apartments.

“Thanks, Mrs Kai-Ro,” said Felix, very slowly and a little too loudly. The Korean woman nodded, clearly unsure of why these people were so grateful to her. But then she looked up and her face changed. Where there had been bewilderment there was now intense fear.

Felix and Georgie spun round to see what she was looking at. Horror tore into their hearts. Round the corner, creeping like a nightmare, came a long black car. It had no number plate. It might have been the contrasting neon lights that flooded the street, but Felix flinched when he thought he saw, just under the front grill, a green stripe.

“Mum!” Felix squeaked. “Dad!” He tried to shout it, but his voice emerged as a throttled whisper.

“Quick,” said Mrs Kai-Ro. “In!” She pulled Felix and
Georgie towards her and clattered the restaurant door shut behind them.

“What do we do?” Felix panted.

Georgie peered through the glass. The car stopped right outside the Star of Manchuria. The inside of the restaurant was dark though, so there was a chance they could hide.

“Do you think they saw us?” Georgie asked.

The car doors opened. Out came two huge men in dark suits. The driver straightened his tie and looked the building up and down. Together they strode straight towards the restaurant door.

“They saw us,” gasped Felix.

“Out back!” Mrs Kai-Ro shouted.

Felix and Georgie swivelled and hurtled across the restaurant, stumbling over the forest of chairs. When they made it to the door of the kitchen, Felix paused and turned back. Mrs Kai-Ro was waving them on, her face a picture of panic. But beyond where she was standing, on the other side of the glass, Felix could see why the two men hadn’t yet burst into the restaurant.

His parents had arrived in the street. Felix ran back towards the front window.

“Felix, come on,” urged Georgie. “What are you doing?”

Felix didn’t even answer. He charged to the door, but froze when his hand touched the handle. He was too late.

However much Neil and Olivia struggled, it was no good. Peeking through the slats in the venetian blind, Felix watched his parents being violently pushed to the pavement, face down. His mother looked up as one of the agents pulled plastic hand ties tight around her wrists. For a second, she was staring straight at Felix, but there was no fear in her eyes. Instead, she gave a tiny shake of her head. The agent would have thought it was from the cold of the ground, but Felix knew what his mother was telling him. He shrank back into the protection of the restaurant’s darkness.

“Let’s go,” Georgie called out behind him.

One of Mrs Kai-Ro’s kitchen workers pointed the way out and towards a truck, loaded with Chinese cabbage. Somebody else started the engine.

The last thing Felix saw before he spun round and ran for his life through the restaurant, through the kitchen, out of the back door and into the back of the truck, was his mother mouthing simple instructions:

“Go. Get to Jimmy!”

The next shot ripped through the roof of the cable car. Jimmy pulled his face back. He could have sworn he felt the bullet grazing the tip of his nose. He looked above him, searching for a way out of Paduk’s shooting gallery. The wheels of the cable car screeched on the cables. If
he tried to catch hold of one, he’d surely get mangled up in the complex pulley system.

So instead he looked down. It was too far to jump. Way too far. And it wasn’t water below them any more. They’d reached the island. The water’s edge was lined with rocks, then it was pure concrete. Jimmy gulped. He had less than a second to decide which way to go – staying on top of the carriage was not an option. Through the immense noise of the wind and the screeching of the cables, Jimmy’s ear picked out the click of Paduk’s gun. The next bullet was in the chamber. The man was picking his spot.

Suddenly, Jimmy saw his chance. Without thinking, he snapped his legs straight, pushing himself forwards off the roof of the cable car and into the air. The screech of the cables vanished. Wind took its place, rushing through Jimmy’s head. He closed his eyes, trusting himself completely to the instinct that had made him jump.

His fall seemed to last forever, as if time didn’t apply any more. He hurtled through the air. The speed of his fall made his whole body go numb as the air blasted into it. A million thoughts whirled round his mind all at once. He let the bad ones fly out as soon as he’d thought them. There was no time to regret this decision. No time to consider what else he could have done. Only time to beg that he’d survive.