Ark Angel

we going?” he demanded.
    “We’ll be there soon,” Shulsky answered.
    “I thought you said we were staying at the airport.”
    “Relax, Alex. We’ll look after you just fine.”
    Alex knew something was going on. There had been nothing wrong with his passport. He was sure of it.
    But there wasn’t anything he could do. He was locked in a car on the other side of the world and he might just as well sit back and—as the Americans would say—be taken for the ride.
    He looked out of the window as they crossed the bridge and turned north, heading past the terrible empty space where the World Trade Center had once stood. He had visited New York a couple of times and had happy memories of the city. Now he was being driven through SoHo, in south Manhattan.
    The car slowed down and he noticed an art gallery with a window full of cartoons, its name printed in gold letters on the glass. They turned into a parking garage. Alex sighed and shook his head. Now he knew exactly where he was.
    In Miami they had called themselves Centurion International Advertising. The gallery here in New York was called Creative Ideas Animation. Two different names but the same three letters.
    CIA.

    The car drove up to the first floor of the garage and stopped. Shulsky got out and opened the door for Alex.
    “This way,” he announced.
    Alex followed him to a bare metal door that could have led into a storage cupboard or perhaps an electric generator room. A keypad was built into the wall and Shulsky entered a seven-digit code. There was a buzz and the door opened. Alex walked through into an empty corridor with a closed-circuit television camera pointing down at him from above and another locked door at the end. It swung open as he approached.
    There was a comfortable reception area on the other side, and, beyond that, open-plan offices filled with phones and computers. Two telephonists sat behind the main desk, and men and women in suits walked along the carpeted corridors. A black man with white hair and a moustache was waiting to greet him. Alex recognized him at once. His name was Joe Byrne. He was the deputy director for operations in the Covert Action section of the Central Intelligence Agency of America.
    “Nice to see you again, Alex,” he said.
    “I’m not so sure,” Alex replied. He remembered how his passport had briefly disappeared into Shulsky’s attaché case. “You swapped my passport,” he said. “The one you showed Drevin was a fake.”
    Joe Byrne nodded. “Come this way. Let me show you to my office. I think it’s time you and I had a little chat.”

THE BIGGEST CRIMINAL IN THE WORLD

    Byrne’s office was identical to the one that Alex had visited in Miami. It had the same ordinary furniture, the same blank walls, the same air-conditioning turned up one notch too high. Only the view was different.
    Alex guessed he probably had something similar in just about every major city in America.
    “You fancy a drink?” Byrne asked as he sat down behind his desk.
    “Some water, thanks.” There were a couple of bottles on a sideboard. Alex helped himself.
    “It’s good to see you again, Alex.” Byrne sounded tired. He looked as if he hadn’t been to bed for a week. “I was never able to thank you for the work you did for us on Skeleton Key.”
    “I was sorry about your agents.”
    “Tom Turner and Belinda Troy. Yeah, it was too bad. I was sorry to lose them. But that wasn’t your fault.
    You did a great job.” Byrne ran his eyes over Alex. “You look in good shape,” he went on. “I was sorry to hear you got hurt in London. I told that boss of yours, Alan Blunt, that it wasn’t a good idea getting a kid involved in this sort of work. Of course, he didn’t listen to me. He never does. In a way, that’s why you’re here now.”
    “Why am I here now?”
    “We had to get you away from Drevin without alerting him to the fact that the CIA was involved,” Byrne explained. “Like you said, we swapped your passport, so now he thinks you’re tied up with customs and immigration. That gives us a chance to have a talk. As a matter of fact, I was rather hoping you might be able to help us.”
    “Forget it, Mr Byrne.” Alex shook his head. “I’d already made up my mind before we landed. I don’t want anything more to do with Drevin. So if you don’t mind putting me on a plane to Washington, I’ll say goodbye.”

    “Washington?” Byrne raised an eyebrow. “It’s funny you should mention that.