Gone Tomorrow

been chemically assisted. I had a clip on my finger. It had a wire. The wire must have been connected to a nurses’ station. The clip must have detected some kind of an altered heartbeat pattern, because about a minute after I woke up a whole bunch of people came in. A doctor, a nurse, then Jacob Mark, then Theresa Lee, then Springfield, then Sansom. The doctor was a woman and the nurse was a man.
    The doctor fussed around for a minute, checking charts and staring at monitors. Then she picked up my wrist and checked my pulse, which seemed a little superfluous with all the high technology at her disposal. Then in answer to questions I hadn’t asked, she told me I was in Bellevue Hospital and that my condition was very satisfactory. Her ER people had cleaned the wound and sutured it and filled me full of antibiotics and tetanus injections and given me three units of blood. She told me to avoid heavy lifting for a month. Then she left. The nurse went with her.
    I looked at Theresa Lee and asked, “What happened to me?”
    “You don’t remember?”
    “Of course I remember. But what’s the official version?”
    “You were found on the street in the East Village. Unexplained knife wound. Happens all the time. They ran a tox screen and found traces of barbiturate. They put you down as a dope deal gone bad.”
    “Did they tell the cops?”
    “I am the cops.”
    “How did I get to the East Village?”
    “You didn’t. We brought you straight here.”
    “We?”
    “Me and Mr. Springfield.”
    “How did you find me?”
    “We triangulated the cell phone. Which led us to the general area. The exact address was Mr. Springfield’s idea.”
    Springfield said, “A certain mujahideen leader told us all about doubling back to abandoned hideouts twenty-five years ago.”
    I asked, “Is there going to be any comeback?”
    John Sansom said, “No.”
    Simple as that.
    I said, “Are you sure? There are nine corpses in that house.”
    “The DoD guys are there right now. They’ll issue a loud no comment. With a knowing smirk. Designed to make everyone give them the credit.”
    “Suppose the wind changes direction? That happens from time to time. As you know.”
    “As a crime scene, it’s a mess.”
    “I left blood there.”
    “There’s a lot of blood there. It’s an old building. If anyone runs tests they’ll come up with rat DNA, mostly.”
    “There’s blood on my clothes.”
    Theresa Lee said, “The hospital burned your clothes.”
    “Why?”
    “Biohazard.”
    “They were brand-new.”
    “They were soaked with blood. No one takes a risk with blood anymore.”
    “Right-hand fingerprints,” I said. “Inside the window handles and on the trapdoor.”
    “Old building,” Sansom said. “It will be torn down and redeveloped before the wind changes.”
    “Shell cases,” I said.
    Springfield said, “Standard DoD issue. I’m sure they’re delighted. They’ll probably leak one to the media.”
    “Are they still looking for me?”
    “They can’t. It would confuse the narrative.”
    “Turf wars,” I said.
    “Which they just won, apparently.”
    I nodded.
    Sansom asked, “Where is the memory stick?”
    I looked at Jacob Mark. “You OK?”
    He said, “Not really.”
    I said, “You’re going to have to hear some stuff.”
    He said, “OK.”
    I hauled myself into a sitting position. Didn’t hurt at all. I guessed I was full of painkiller. I pulled my knees up and tented the sheet and moved the hem of my paper gown and took a peek at the cut. Couldn’t see it. I was wrapped with bandages from my hips to my ribcage.
    Sansom said, “You told us you could get us within fifteen feet.”
    I shook my head. “Not anymore. Time has moved on. We’re going to have to do it by dead reckoning.”
    “Great. You were bullshitting all along. You don’t know where it is.”
    “We know the general shape of it,” I said. “They planned for the best part of three months and then executed during the final week. They coerced Susan by using Peter as leverage. She drove up from Annandale, got stuck in a four-hour traffic jam, say from nine in the evening until one in the morning, and then she arrived in Manhattan just before two in the morning. I assume we know exactly when she came out of the Holland Tunnel. So what we have to do is work backward and figure out exactly where her car was jammed up at midnight.”
    “How does that help us?”
    “Because at midnight she threw the memory stick out her car