Authors: Jason Dean
‘One more for luck,’ Aleron said.
Bishop looked straight at a reflex camera that was attached to a tripod in Aleron’s basement. He kept his expression neutral.
Not happy, not angry, just eyes open, mouth closed.
After the shutter clicked, Aleron opened the side of the camera and extracted a small memory card.
He went over and reached
under the desk to turn something on before inserting the card into his Power Mac. Laid-back music started playing and Bishop
immediately recognized Joe Zawinul on keyboards and John McLaughlin’s delicate guitar. It was one of his favourite pieces
of music and it felt good hearing it out loud again. He couldn’t see any speakers and figured they
must have been hidden somewhere.
Maybe in the walls. Three years out of the world and the miracles of technology had already left him behind.
They were in Aleron’s subterranean workshop in a modest house in downtown Brooklyn, five minutes’ walk from the park. A few
people they’d passed on the way had greeted Aleron warmly and looked right through Bishop like
he didn’t exist. Which suited
Bishop just fine. If it kept happening he might end up finding his prey sooner than he’d anticipated.
The room was filled with a wide variety of industrial printers, as well as an impressive stockpile of printer toner, fuse
boxes, paper samples of every weight and colour, and assorted accessories that only a specialist would
recognize. Bishop guessed
Aleron needed them for his extracurricular work and was impressed by the man’s dedication to his skill.
On the wall facing him, a large plasma TV with muted sound was tuned to a twenty-four-hour news channel. He recognized the
US Attorney General being interviewed about something or other. There weren’t any accompanying mugshots
of Bishop, so he could
only assume that whatever they were talking about was unrealated to him. Although that might change very soon.
‘Always put this on when I’m down here,’ Aleron said. ‘Helps me work.’
Bishop turned and saw Aleron’s head swaying to the sparse sounds coming from the speakers.
Bishop nodded. ‘It helped me sleep
inside, too.’
Aleron stopped typing and looked at him.
‘
In a Silent Way
,’ Bishop said. ‘Miles Davis. This second side, in particular.’
‘They let you have iPods in there, man?’
‘Never needed one,’ Bishop said and tapped a finger against his temple. ‘Shorter’s soprano comes in in about four seconds.’
It was actually five
seconds before the sax laid its sound over the other instruments like a spoonful of syrup, and Bishop
could have listened to it for ever. Aleron smiled and turned back to his work. Bishop moved beside him, watching. It was always
interesting to see a professional at work and Aleron clearly knew what he was doing.
Aleron said, ‘Working on your new Social Security
card at the moment. You got to realize I can supply you with all the essentials,
but none of it will stand up to thorough investigation. You won’t be on any database under the name I’m giving you. This is
just a cosmetic fix, like a toupee for a leukaemia patient.’
‘Most toupees I’ve seen looked like toupees,’ Bishop said, ‘and I’ve worked in California.’
Aleron laughed. ‘Okay. Bad example, but you know what I mean.’
‘So what’s my new name?’
‘Eric Allbright. You like?’ He passed a pen over his shoulder. ‘Here, I’ll need a signature sample. Two L’s in Allbright,
by the way.’
Bishop used a pad at Aleron’s side to sign the new alias in his own handwriting. Then he pointed at the
circular colour spectrum
currently taking up most of Falstaff’s screen. ‘Last time I saw something like that was at grade school,’ he said.
‘You never hear of CMYK values?’ Aleron asked and Bishop shrugged. ‘Printing in any magazine or newspaper is made up of just
four colours mixed together. It’s all about illusion. All the colours you see on a page are
made up of cyan, magenta, yellow
or black. Say you mix a hundred per cent of yellow with fifty per cent magenta. That gives you bright orange. Whack the magenta
up to a hundred and you got warm red, you follow? That’s CMYK, man. All roads lead from those four bad boys.’
Bishop nodded. The concept made sense and he knew better than most that very little
is as it seems on the surface. ‘So what’s
the K stand for?’ he asked.
‘Key plate. Been that way longer than you or I been on this earth. See here?’ On the computer, Aleron zoomed in on the lettering
at the top of Bishop’s new ID card. ‘I managed to get the government templates but only in keyline black and white. They’re
real protective about their
colour values, so I’ve recreated them so they’ll come out my printer looking like the real deal.
The navy blue in the lettering here’ – he pressed the cursor and brought up a window listing the four colours with an empty
box next to each – ‘I make up by using twenty-seven per cent black, hundred per cent cyan, fifty per cent magenta and three
per cent yellow.’
Bishop leaned over Aleron’s shoulder and watched, fascinated, as the colours changed according to the percentage of the CMYK
colours.
‘Hey, man, have a heart,’ Aleron said.
‘What?’
‘The air conditioning in here’s good, but not
that
good. Know what I’m saying?’
‘I can take a hint, if that’s what you mean,’
Bishop said, smiling as he scratched the back of his head. ‘Just tell me where.’
Falstaff turned back to the monitor. ‘Top floor. Last on the right.’
Towelling himself off from the shower, Bishop studied the ugly kaleidoscope of purple, red, brown and grey that covered his
midsection.
Christ, what a mess
. And if it looked that bad on the outside, he could only imagine what his insides resembled. But bruising came before healing,
and besides, there wasn’t much he could do about it.
The Three Bears’ visit already felt distant to him, despite its being only seventeen hours ago. He checked Cook’s watch and
was surprised to see it was 10.40 already. He needed to get moving. The longer he stayed still, the easier it would be to
find him. Plus he had leads he wanted to follow. Places to revisit. Certain people to see.
In the basement, Aleron was standing in front of the TV with the sound up and his arms crossed. ‘Eric Allbright, you’re a
star,’ he said.
Bishop went to stand next to him. An artificially pretty brunette reporter was standing outside Greenacres’ main entrance.
The yellow strip at the bottom of the screen said she was Melanie Murray, followed by the word
live
. Behind her, Bishop could see a police barricade.
‘A source inside Greenacres has told us it was actually the infirmary physician, Dr Brendan Cook, whom the guards found in
James Bishop’s bed, heavily sedated and handcuffed to the railing. It appears this was the man we caught on film earlier as
he was being transported to police headquarters for a statement.’
The screen suddenly changed to jerky, hand-held footage and showed two uniforms and a long-haired man approaching a black-and-white.
All three noticed the camera at the same time and the scene froze, zooming in on Cook’s startled face. Bishop smiled at the
image. The doc looked as though he’d been caught flashing.
‘We also expect to bring
you an interview with Deputy Marshal Angela Delaney, who’s been assigned the task of recapturing
Bishop and is currently inside the prison with her team taking statements.’ As Melanie spoke, the picture changed to Bishop’s
three-year-old mugshot,
with his hair longer and five days’ worth of stubble on his face. That was something. At least he looked a little different
now.
Melanie continued, ‘To recap, we can confirm Bishop escaped from Greenacres Prison here in Ulster County some time before
dawn in the rear of a delivery truck headed for the Bronx. As yet, we don’t know exactly where he exited the vehicle but we
should be able to give you more soon. We’ve also been informed that in addition to the US Marshals Department,
every law enforcement
agency in the country is now on high alert and it is only a matter of time before . . .’
The picture switched to two men and two women in the distance walking towards a plain, unmarked Chevrolet. Melanie called
out, ‘Deputy Delaney. Deputy. Can you give a statement regarding the escape and your estimation of Bishop’s chances?’
Bishop saw one of the women say something to one of the men, who nodded and got behind the wheel. The camera quickly zoomed
in on the woman as she looked up briefly before opening the front passenger door. He figured this must be Delaney. Attractive
in a stern way, she looked to be a couple of years either side of forty with blond hair hidden under a black cap. Clearly,
she wasn’t about to grant Melanie any interviews right now. She slid in while the other two got in the back. Then the vehicle
moved towards the police barriers to the left of the picture. A uniform let them through and the camera tracked the vehicle
until it was gone.
Bishop let Melanie’s babble wash over him and thought hard. He’d stayed here too
long already, and now that his picture was
out there he needed to consider his next move carefully. He had two immediate tasks in mind. Both held their share of risks,
so it was just a matter of prioritizing one over the other.
‘This stuff won’t be ready until early evening,’ Aleron said, interrupting his calculations.
Bishop took the hint and
rose to leave. ‘Just give me a time and a price.’
Aleron thought for a moment. ‘Come back around five. A grand should do it.’
‘A grand?’ asked Bishop as he began climbing the basement stairs. He’d expected it to be a lot more.
‘Miles fans get a special discount,’ Aleron said, following close behind. ‘I don’t meet many these days.’
At the front door, Bishop paused on the outer step and turned round. ‘You know, I expected a bunch of questions about the
murders.’
Aleron shrugged. ‘In my line, I’ve learned it’s best not to pry.’
‘Thanks. For the shower.’ Bishop turned and began walking away.
‘No, thank
you
,’ Aleron said and shut the door.
Sitting in a cubicle facing the exit of the inappropriately named Cyber Paradise, Bishop sipped lukewarm tea and casually
rechecked his dozen or so fellow surfers. Whoever named the place had only got it half right. There was no arguing the ‘cyber’
part, but ‘paradise’ was probably taking things a little too far.
The internet café was located eight blocks from Aleron’s place and took up part of the second floor of a Laundromat. Only
one way in, so Bishop was sitting at a workstation to the side of the door, next to the room’s only window. Just in case he
needed an alternative exit. Everyone there was totally absorbed in his or her own world, and for the past thirty minutes no
one
else had come in.
Bishop checked his screen and finished filling in his fake details for a new email account. He then visited the
Post
website and browsed until he found a grainy snapshot of Sam Chaney. He still had the same angular features, but his face
had filled out and his brown hair was longer and brushed forward. The photo had been taken as he was leaving a
controversial
lap-dancing club called Heroines in Lower Manhattan, which had opened two years before and specialized in pretty young things
dressed in skimpy, spandex superhero costumes. If only briefly. According to the
Post
, Chaney was the majority owner of the club and his own best customer. He had resigned from RoyseCorp a couple of months after
Bishop’s trial and
used an insurance payout to launch a major business in the heart of Manhattan.
Sam Chaney. Living the dream. But then, women had always been his obsession.
A month or so after Chaney, Chris Tennison had also decided to leave RoyseCorp to start up his own web-based business, along
with a cute name to go with it. Eyetech Associates. He now specialized
in the supply of state-of-the-art surveillance equipment
to international clients. Business had been good enough after the first year to move
his operation from his house in Guttenberg, New Jersey to an office suite on West 20th Street, currently employing a staff
of nine.
Martin Thorpe was still at RoyseCorp, although he was no longer a close protection
officer. One of the injuries sustained
in the Brennan raid had resulted in a destroyed nerve in his right elbow and he could no longer fully extend the arm. It didn’t
keep him down for long, though. He currently held a senior position in Foreign Operations at head office. Which was pretty
much as Bishop expected. Thorpe had made no secret of his desire to move on to the
corporate side of things whenever a good
opportunity came up.
Researching the three men felt weird. Like looking at what Bishop’s life might have been in an alternate universe. One where
he hadn’t been locked away for somebody else’s crime. It also felt like turning his back on his own, but he’d been over the
choices. Someone on his team had to have
been involved for the attack to have been pulled off. And that same man had to have
been involved in setting Bishop up.
The internet didn’t really give him much. None of their actions following the murders were really out of character. All three
still lived in New York and none of them seemed unexpectedly rich. But one of them had to be responsible for aiding
the assault
team. And
some
body had jammed his comms and pager.
Bishop sighed. At the moment he was left with his main lead: the photo in Brennan’s office of the guy he’d shot on the stairs.
Find him, find some answers.
Alicia or Philip Brennan would probably know who he was, but Bishop couldn’t see them talking to the man they believed
responsible
for the destruction of their family. So all he really had going for him was the memory of a photo he’d seen once.
Bishop did a search on both King Saleh and Randall Brennan, which scored a big fat zero. The two men were never mentioned
in conjunction with each other. He did an individual search on each man, but the links he got numbered in the
thousands and
would take forever to check. Probably with the same result. He stretched and studied the young guy on the computer next to
him. He was waving at someone through a camera affixed to the top of the screen. Bishop watched, curious, as the man then
pretended to kiss the camera. He guessed the girl, or guy, at the other end appreciated the light-hearted gesture.
Bishop
couldn’t think of anyone he’d blow kisses at via the World Wide Web,
especially in a public place. He’d never been that carefree, even in his youth. But then, maybe he just hadn’t allowed himself
to meet the right woman.
Watching the young guy, Bishop wondered whether he was approaching his search from the wrong angle. Instead of coming at it
from Brennan’s side, maybe he should focus on the basics and go back to the photo on the Wall of Fame. And think about what
was actually in the picture.
He closed his eyes. It had been taken in an aircraft hangar. Possibly on a private airfield in Yajir, as it seemed unlikely
that the king would ever set foot in the main airport. Bishop focused on the
plane. Only a portion of the jet was visible.
It was white, with the turbofan mounted on the rear fuselage. Above that was the T-tail with a logo and some lettering reversed
out of dark blue. One word. Not Arabic. Something western. The logo above it was an arrow in the shape of an S, so the name
must have begun with the same letter.
But what was it?
It
took a couple of minutes as his consciousness focused on the detail, but the name gradually became sharp enough in his
memory to make out.
Supreme
.