The Trade (26 page)

"Yes sir,” Jay answered. Jay's voice had
taken on the tired tone of a worn down battery operated toy that
could not keep going and going any longer. Jay scheduled the
meeting to grudging acceptances. His team was more interested in
sleep than congratulations. Jay went back to his office to catch a
cat nap.

Jay's alarm watch snapped him out of his
fitful sleep. His head rose slowly off his desk. "Where am I?" Jay
asked. Unwillingly his senses sluggishly returned.

"Missy, make sure everyone's in the
conference room by 1:25, we don't want to keep Mr. MacKenzie
waiting.”

"Yes Jay,” she replied. "Your mother called
while you were... in conference just now,” she said. "I didn't want
to disturb you.”

"Thanks Missy.”

Jay picked up the phone to return his
mother's call.

"Hi mom,” Jay said.

"Hi baby. You sound tired.”

"I am.”

"You should get some rest.”

"I will.”

"Good.”

"What did you want Mom?" Jay asked
brusquely.

The clipped nature of his words was
exhaustion not anger, but his mother didn't know that, she heard
anger.

"Well I just called to ask you about the coup
in Panama, do you think we'll have to send soldiers? Should your
father and I sell that Central American Mutual Fund you
recommended?" she asked all at once.

"The coup WHERE?" Jay shouted.

"Panama,” his mother said. "I guess about a
thousand people are dead already.”

"I'll call you back mom,” Jay said as he hung
up the phone.

"He knows,” Warren Fishky, the agent
monitoring Jay's line shouted. Fishky and his helper jumped up and
headed for Jay Calloway's office. They had murder on their minds.
One man pulled a cellular phone from his pocket and dialed Angus’
emergency beeper number. Silent alarms were sounded at several high
security locations throughout the building.

"Holy shit,” Jay said, his eyes wide open,
his heart pounding. Jay got up from his desk and felt a violent
urge to throw up.

"A coup?" he asked himself. "This is not
good, this is not good.” He quickly returned to his desk to call
Rick. His phone was now dead. Jay dashed out of his office to
Missy's desk. He saw her punching buttons one after the other with
a puzzled look on her face.

"My phones just went dead,” she said to Jay.
He decided it was time to get the hell out of Dodge.

Don’t do it
, he heard Tonia's voice
echo from the morning. Jay felt an abrupt rush of panic start to
swim up and engulf him. He felt like he was responsible for the
coup and the deaths and someone was on their way right now to
arrest him. He headed towards the bank of elevators on his floor
and stopped just short of the elevator lobby, trying to catch his
breath. A set of frosted glass double doors separated him from the
lobby. As his hands reached out to push open the doors he heard the
ding of an arriving elevator.

Angus MacKenzie and three men got out. One
man took up position by the elevators, he looked like he meant to
keep anyone from coming or going. Angus and the other two started
towards the doors. For an instant the face of one of the men
registered in Jay's brain. He couldn't remember where he'd seen him
before but he suddenly didn't feel like finding out.

Jay Calloway turned quickly away from the
doors and took several running steps back towards his office. Just
as he heard the doors swing on their bearings he turned a corner
and was out of sight. He ducked into the fire escape stairway in
the short hallway and pulled the heavy steel door shut behind him.
Jay fought the urge to press his nose against the safety glass
panel to watch Angus.

Angus MacKenzie and the two dangerous looking
men walked past the fire escape to Missy's station. She looked up
in surprise. She knew Angus was coming to talk to them, but still
his physical appearance, like that of most people in power to those
not in power was startling.

"Is everyone in the meeting?" Angus asked
her.

"Yes. They're all in the conference room,”
Missy stammered out.

"Why don't you join us?" Angus said. “You’re
part of this team too.”

"The phones sir,” she answered.

"The phones can wait,” he said.

"Okay,” she agreed. Missy got up and led
Angus and the two men toward the assembled team in the conference
room. She went in and sat down. She didn't notice Angus peel off
from the group. Missy saw the larger of the two men reach inside
his briefcase and do something to what looked like a block of
plasticine. One of the two men stationed himself at the door of the
conference room. The man with the briefcase went in and put his
package in the middle of the table.

"Mr. MacKenzie will be with us in just a
minute,” he said to the group. "He just got beeped. He'll only be a
second.” After fifteen seconds the man stood up. "I’m sorry to keep
you waiting. I'll go check on him. Let him know you are all ready,”
he excused himself. The large ugly man left the room, pulling the
door shut behind him. Those inside did not hear his partner click
the lock into place. The two men moved quickly down the hall and
moved into position around the corner where Angus MacKenzie awaited
them.

"Ready?" Angus MacKenzie asked from where he
was crouched.

"Ready,” the briefcase man answered.

"Were they all there?" Angus asked.

"Yeah yeah,” the large man answered. He was
starting to sweat in anticipation.

"Do it,” Angus ordered.

From his position in the fire escape Jay
could just make out the outline of the small radio transmitter the
large dark man pulled from his jacket pocket. He saw the beefy hand
extend a tiny antenna and saw the thick thumb press on a flashing
red light. "Hail Mary,” Jay started.

Inside the conference room, two pounds of
plastic explosive detonated in a deafening roar of thunder and
blinding flash of light. The building shook with the power of the
explosion. Jay felt the concrete floor reverberate beneath his
feet. Smoke and dust and billowed down the hallway. Angus MacKenzie
and the two men headed towards where the conference room used to
be. Jay saw Angus stop to pick up a piece of broken glass. Angus
gashed the glass against the side of his forehead, and once on the
top of his head. Blood flowed freely from both cuts. Jay didn't
wait one second longer to try to figure out what was going on.

"Holy shit,” Jay said as he started racing
down the stairs, hoping to escape before Angus and his hit men
realized they'd missed him.
What were they doing? Why did they
kill everyone?
Jay asked himself, not sure that he wanted to
know the answer.
All I do know is that Angus MacKenzie and three
goons just killed all my friends, and they meant to kill me
too!

Jay reached the ground floor but stopped
before pushing through. He had no idea where the door opened to.
And, a large red warning sign announced that opening the door would
trigger an alarm. Jay went up five floors then stopped to try to
let himself back in the building. He held his security card to the
door. It remained locked.

"Shit,” Jay said to himself. His head
swiveled back and forth, he saw no place to hide. "Trapped.”

He started back up the stairs and after two
floors tried again. The lock yielded. Jay ducked out of the fire
escape into a vacant hallway. No staring looks questioned his
sudden sweaty appearance from the off-limits stairwell.

How am I going to get out of here?
Jay
thought.
They probably have the stairs and lobby blocked
.
Jay leaned back against the wall and felt something sharp dig into
his back.

"Damn,” he muttered. He turned around and saw
that the fire alarm was what had dinged him. "The fire alarm! Jay
gasped.
Why isn't the alarm going off?
he wondered. In an
instant he flicked out his hand, pulled the lever out of its
protective red housing and activated the alarm. A loud
whoop-whooping sound peeled through the floor. Jay went back into
the fire escape stairway and started back down. After another two
floors there were other people responding to the alarm heading down
with him.

Soon the fire escape stairway was overflowing
with crowds of hurrying workers. Jay went with the human flow all
the way to street level and out of the building. He kept his head
down and just kept on going.

One hundred, two hundred, three
hundred
, Jay counted his steps as he walked away from the World
Financial Center.
When I get to four hundred I'll look
, he
bargained with himself. Finally he calmed his reeling thoughts and
dared a look back.

Smoke and ash were drifting out of a large
hole on the 20th floor where his office and conference room used to
be. Jay gawked for a time then returned his gaze to the street.

No-one seems to be following me
.

Jay started to walk farther away from the
building, away from his apartment, heading uptown. Tonia's voice
and then Rick's voice came to him in his head.

"Oh my God,” Jay thought, "You were right
Rick. Everything you said was right.” Jay kept his back to the
smoke filled scene behind him and walked further north. He soon
heard the wail of sirens heading down the West Side Highway toward
the calamity.

"Maybe I ought to get out of sight,” Jay
said, realizing that he was a lone walker on the edge of the
highway by the Hudson River parking lots. "Sixth Avenue has more
people.”

Jay made his way east, into the guts of lower
Manhattan where the swells of sweaty humanity could make him
instantly anonymous.

I need time to think. I need to get some
sleep
. As is so often the case, the extraordinary rush of
adrenalin produced by peril was followed closely by an overwhelming
need to sleep. Jay's 60 straight hours of work with only 2 hours of
sleep in his office had left him near exhaustion. The
nerve-wracking escape had been the last straw. Still he wandered
further uptown on Sixth Avenue, disappearing into the midtown
crowds, the sirens fading well behind him.

Don’t do it Jay
, he heard Tonia say in
the back of his mind.
Don’t do it
. Jay stopped dead in his
tracks.

"She knew,” he realized all at once. "She
knew!"

She tried to warn me, but she knew. How
much did she know?
Jay's mind started to wander as the intense
weariness and trauma asserted themselves in full force.

Did she know they meant to kill me too?

Betrayal.

Crushing, brutal betrayal.

Tormenting bitter sadness clutched Jay
Calloway. He came to a complete stop. “My love has betrayed me. It
was all a lie,” he heard himself whimper, the melodrama lost in his
fatigue. Big salt-filled tears began to splash down his face. His
eyes blurred and his nose began to run. Jay broke the grasp of
gravity and launched himself into a consumptive, purgative run. He
could barely see through his tear soaked eyes. He began bumping
into people as he careened through the crowd.

"Watch where you’re GOING.”

"Hey ASSHOLE.”

Jay barely heard their protests.

"It was all a lie. She never loved me,” he
sobbed. "It's not fair. What about me? It's not fair,” he
whimpered.

Jay stumbled and fell to his knees gasping
for air.

"It's not fair,” he repeated over and over.
The midday crowd surged around him. He crawled on his hands and
knees on the sidewalk. "It's not fair,” he repeated.

"I know it ain't fair.”

"What?" Jay asked.

"Ain't none of it fair,” the street person
said. Jay looked through his watery, bloodshot eyes at an
incredibly old and haggard bag lady. She motioned for him to share
her piece of cardboard in a little alcove in front of the building
she was using as refuge.

"Ain't nuttin' fair 'bout it,” she said. Jay
looked at her again. In the middle of his deepest misery the hand
of human kindness had been extended by one of life's apparently
lowliest creatures.

"Thank you,” Jay said.

"What happened to you?" she asked. "You lose
your woman? Your man?"

"My friends,” Jay started. "There was a
terrible accident just now.” He couldn't bring himself to say
murder though he knew that was what it had been.

"There, there,” she soothed like the
grandmother she might have been. "Have a nip of this and get a
nap,” she said. "Nip and nap, nip and nap. It's the only way we
hold on,” she said.

Jay looked around for the others of "we" but
saw no-one else. He crawled closer to the building and the
indescribable stench of the old lady. He took the offered bottle.
He nipped and handed it back. He curled up on her cardboard, his
nose becoming quickly used to her smell. In another two minutes he
was sound asleep. It was 1:45 pm at the corner of Sixth Avenue and
West Fourth Street. If awake and reasoning, his conscious mind
might have told Jay Calloway that he'd hit rock bottom. But it
would have been wrong.

Chapter

"What do you mean we're missing one?” Angus
MacKenzie bellowed.

"Fourteen bodies plus two on vacation makes
sixteen. We're missing one.”

"Who?" Angus demanded.

"It's awfully difficult to tell,” the large
shadowy man who'd planted the bomb said. A self-satisfied look of
admiration at the extent of human carnage he'd created crossed his
murderous face.

"Find out! Angus snapped.

"That's going to have to wait for the Medical
Examiner and dental records and all that shit,” the dark killer
said.

"Smarten up asshole,” Angus snapped back. “Go
to everyone's house or apartment and wait for them. Get a tap on
their lines, their parent's lines, etc. etc... This is the CTSG
group. It should already be in place. Do I have to think of
everything for you Neanderthals?"