Seen And Not Seen (The Veil Book 1) (3 page)

THE POLITICIAN

Curbside, Landelle watches Garr’s town car pull away before turning to an expectant Robert.

“Hey, Debs, can I borrow your phone for a sec?”

Without thinking, Landelle hands it over. Robert takes it and tosses it onto the road where it is crushed by a passing truck.

“Jesus, Bob!”

Robert’s attention turns to Toor, “Hopefully you know better.” She does—and with good reason. Robert’s paranoia is not unfounded when it comes to electronic surveillance. But they are still far from safe.

“We need to get off the streets,” she says to Landelle, and to Robert, “You and I need to talk.” But Toor can see that his attention and gaze are elsewhere. She snaps her fingers about his head, “Wake up! Have you any idea how much stuff I have been signing off on? And God only knows I don’t know what half of it is for.”

Robert remains distant, “You’re doing a great job, Shaz.”

“That’s the point! I’m not supposed to be. You are.” His gaze is unwavering. She follows it to a magnificent, slender skyscraper. “What? No, no, no—you can’t go there.”

Distant sirens echo around the city, snapping Robert back into reality with a bitterness about him. “I’ll deal with them later.” He looks around to get his bearings, before marching off.

“Bob! Where are you going?” Toor exchanges an exasperated glance with Landelle as they both take off after him.

* * *

They are at a news kiosk, Robert rummaging through his pockets to retrieve a crumpled twenty dollar bill. As he hands it to the clerk a headline on a digital newspaper changes, catching his eye—‘Cantor seen in Manhattan.’ The clerk hands him a phone card. He takes it and turns away quickly. Toor and Landelle look about nervously.

“We have minutes at best,” says Landelle, a few passers by giving Robert a second glance as he wanders over to a beat-up public phone. Landelle is indignant, “Oh, great. You toss my phone and use a public one. Langley will trace the call.” Robert examines the phone, finding a serial number. Seemingly satisfied he starts tapping options on its screen.

“Not from this phone, they won’t,” he says. It’s a basic phone, but has a video option. He shoves the phone card into a slot, selects ‘Request Video,’ ‘Caller Message,’ taps out a series of digits and hits ‘Place Call.’ The screen flashes ‘Message’ to which Robert responds, “Robert Cantor.”

Toor sticks her head in as close as she can to get his attention, “Who could you possibly be calling at a time like this?”

Senator Blake’s face appears—at an angle indicating he is on a mobile device. A sarcastic shake of his head, “Up to your old tricks again I see, Mr. Cantor. How much did you pay for this number?”

“So I take a few days off and you set the F.B.I. on me?”

“You brought this on yourself. But hey, why don’t we all get together on the Hill—”

“You can take your committee and, to use the American vernacular, shove it up your ass. Seems to me the world needs a reminder of what this is all about. And you know what? I’m going to give it one.”

“Gonna getcha with that subpoena sooner or later.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” And with that Robert ends the call.

Landelle is beside herself, confronting Robert, “What the hell are you doing?” She can see he is now transformed, energized with a fully rebuilt confidence. Perhaps a little too energized for her liking.

“I am me. And I am going to go on being me.”

She can only balk back at him, “That’s the problem. You
aren’t
you.”

Robert’s attention flicks to Toor, “We all set?”

Landelle queries them both, “Set? Set for what?”

“You’ll never get a slot out of Newark. Even if we make it there,” says Toor.

“Have a little faith, Shaz.”

“For the millionth time, stop calling me Shaz. I hate that name. It’s Sharanjit. Sharan. Jit.”

But Robert is already on the move.

* * *

He arrives at the corner of a side street where it exits onto Park Avenue. His eyes find something in the distance—the Pan Am building as was, now home to the resurrected airline once again, sporting that famous logo as if nothing had happened all those decades ago. A Yellow Cab stops at a nearby junction. The taxi driver, having spied Robert, leans out of his window, jabbing his finger at him, “Hey, Bobby! You need to sort yourself out! End this!” As the cab pulls away people stop and stare at Robert. Nearby a giant billboard changes its image to promote an upcoming investigative journalism program on a media channel—a picture of Robert and Senator Blake—‘The Afrika Project. Where will it all end?’

THE EMERALD CITY

Her name is Apio, one of the few facts they have dared extract from her directly, as if her surroundings were not traumatic enough in Lucius’s mind. He still boggles at the idea that such a facility exists in the city. High-end biological containment. But Felton had a point—she didn’t seem the least bit bothered by any of it. Felton had finally given the all-clear and Lucius could now engage with her, though she had to remain in the containment room.

For now he was leafing through the pencil drawings found scattered about her in the General Assembly Hall. There were one hundred sixty-nine in all, each covered by a pattern of neatly drawn lines that snaked across the page, no two alike. Seemingly Apio had drawn them, so Lucius had given her some crayons to see if she would draw some more. It worked, but what she was drawing now was a normal child-like drawing—a curved sky line with green plants underneath and beneath the apex of the sky line a bright yellow sun. Lucius thought it might be a desert island.
Is that where she’s been?

The nurse observes his interest in the drawing. “What are you drawing, Apio?” she asks, in French; it’s the only language Apio knows.

“The Emerald City,” she replies.

Lucius knows a little French also. “The Emerald City?” He fans out the stack of pencil drawings. “Ask her about these.”

“Do you known what these pretty patterns are, Apio?”

Apio is clearly shy about this, averting her gaze away from the nurse, “A puzzle.”

“Was it given to you?” the nurse asks.

“I had to learn to draw it.”

This startles the two of them, but with only a quick glance for Lucius from the nurse. She doesn’t want to spook the child, so casually continues.

“Who was it that taught you?”

“They didn’t say.”

Lucius exchanges another furtive glance of concern with the nurse. Returning his gaze to the fanned-out drawings he spots something. He draws two sheets like cards from a deck. Their patterns line up along one edge. He starts spreading all the sheets out on the floor.

“I know, let’s play a game,” the nurse says to Apio, taking two cloth dolls from a toy box. Apio’s eyes track the dolls warily. “You can show me how you learnt the puzzle with these puppets,” the nurse says.

Lucius shuffles sheets around looking for more matches, but none are immediately evident. He slumps with exasperation. He looks up at the observation widow where Felton is standing.

Felton’s voice comes over the intercom, “It’ll be a clue to something we need to worry about. Keep trying.”

Lucius resumes his shuffling.

COOKED GOOSE

Robert sweeps into the grand lobby of the Pan Am building with Toor and Landelle in tow, striding confidently to the reception desk. Smartly dressed people going about their business stop, stare, and gasp; they are quicker to recognize him here.

At the reception desk security guards bristle, squaring up to a possible situation as Robert sidles up. He slaps both palms down on the countertop so as to address the tense receptionist in very direct manner, tempered with a crocodile smile.

“My name is Robert Cantor. This is my aide-de-camp, Sharanjit Toor, and this is Special Agent Deborah Landelle of the British Secret Service. We’re here to see Raymond Fellowes, president of Pan American Airways.”

The receptionist knows who Robert is. Everyone does. And she knows that he probably has every right to be here and that Mr. Fellowes will see him. But the moment, her relative youth, and everything else that is going on, do not make for a good mix.

“I’m afraid Mr. Fellowes…”

A polite smile, a tappity-tap on the countertop and Robert is away, heading toward the security gate. Landelle has a slow shake of her head for the uncertain security guards—don’t even think it—as they pass through unhindered.

* * *

Robert is full tilt as he marches toward the double doors to Fellowes’s office, pushing them open in a single motion without breaking stride. Within, a man rises from a large desk in an Art Deco office. Raymond Fellowes, a dapper chief executive.

“Hey, Ray!”

Fellowes signals a silent ‘OK’ to his fraught secretary before turning his attention to the manic Robert. “I take it you are in the ascendancy?”

Robert plops down in a comfortable chair before the desk. Fellowes reseats himself, cautiously eying Toor and Landelle as they flank Robert.

Fellowes returns his gaze to Robert, with a Cheshire Cat grin. “The State Department’s having kittens and the word is Blake’s got something on you. Your goose is cooked, my friend.”

“Ray. Need a favor.”

* * *

F.B.I. Agent Prior smells promotion. Sure, the Director had teams all over Manhattan, but he was the first to get here. And it was a solid lead.

The Supreme Court had ruled years ago on the legislative process of serving a subpoena in this digital age, after many challenges in the lower courts. They had also clarified the right not to be served and thus it was that Robert Cantor had eluded them all this time. All Prior had to do was to present Cantor the simple sheaf of papers which he had at the ready in a black folio. Cantor didn’t even have to actually take them provided there were witnesses—the posse dutifully following the young, arrogant agent as he marches to the reception desk of the Pan Am lobby.

Prior slaps a notice down on the countertop, “This is a standing warrant to enter any building in the Metropolitan area.” The receptionist isn’t the least bit surprised, given her previous encounter of the morning, and waves him on with an air of resigned ambivalence—it’s going to be a long day.

The agents sweep through the security gate, the security guards equally compliant.

* * *

Fellowes clambers of his chair to scramble around the side of his desk, confronting Robert directly. “Are you out of your goddamned mind?”

“It’s not illegal,” Robert says.

Fellowes leans right in, “I don’t care! I’m not doing it!”

“I resurrected Pan Am and gave it to you. I can take it away again.”

That Robert could do that is of no surprise to Fellowes, but that he actually would still manages to take him aback. Seeing the shock on his friend’s face, Robert backs off, shifting uneasily in his seat—pleading is not his style.

“Ray… this thing. They mean to take me down. I need to fight it.”

Fellowes lowers his head with a sigh.

* * *

With the elevator doors barely half open, Prior wastes no time in exiting onto the executive floor, making his way down the corridor to Fellowes’s office, past his alarmed secretary and through the Art Deco double doors, folio at the ready.

The room is empty save for a despondent Fellowes, perched on the edge of his desk. Prior’s manifest frustration is quickly replaced by wide-eyed realization as his bewildered posse catch up with him. “Roof!”

* * *

The helideck that made the Pan Am building so iconic still serves the purpose for which it was designed, albeit updated for the twenty-first century. A shuttle VTOL sits at the far end—a Vertical Take-Off and Landing craft, like a helicopter, but without the rotor blades—its vertical thrusters silent.

Toor exits onto the helideck, racing toward the VTOL. A confused Landelle is right behind her, followed by Robert. As Toor and Landelle run on Robert comes to an abrupt halt, turning to fix his gaze on the slender skyscraper that dominates the New York skyline. The sight mesmerizes him.

Toor rushes past the VTOL’s uncertain pilot, now receiving some instruction on his headset. Without breaking a beat she climbs aboard through the open side hatch, scrambling forward to the flight deck and into the pilot’s seat. In one single motion she pulls the seat harness down and across her and sets about starting the engines, brusquely and confidently.

An incredulous Landelle appears right behind her, “Sharanjit! What are you doing?” The engines wind up to speed. “You can fly one of these things?”

“All good P.A.s can, Debs. Where’s Bob?”

Landelle launches herself back to the hatch. Robert is some distance away staring at the slender tower. “Bob!!”

The F.B.I. burst out onto the roof. Robert snaps to, but Prior has already spied him, “Cantor!”

A brief moment of eye contact before Robert lunges into a run. Prior follows suit, folio in hand. It’s a ten second sprint with both men giving it everything, the VTOL engines now screaming at full pitch.

Robert leaps up at the hatch without breaking stride, grabbing a hand hold just as the VTOL lifts away. He turns to see Prior toss the folio at the hatch—the thrust throws it back in the agent’s face, the folio opening up and the papers scattering in the downdraft.

Toor peels across the city as Robert makes his way to the flight deck and clambers into the co-pilot’s seat. Landelle, mouth agape, looks first at Toor then at a grinning Robert.

“We manufacture these, you know,” he says.