The Eternity Project Read online

  Lopez’s expression didn’t falter as she replied: ‘Didn’t do you much good on Williamsburg Bridge now, did it?’

  ‘What do you want?’ Gladstone growled, his huge fists bunched before him on the table.

  ‘Names,’ Ethan said. ‘Federal prosecutor may be willing to do a deal with you both, provide you reveal who you were working with.’

  Gladstone leaned his big head forward, his shoulders bulging like boulders beneath the jumpsuit.

  ‘Ain’t no stoolie,’ he rumbled at Ethan.

  ‘You’re looking at spending the rest of your life in here,’ Lopez said, keeping her voice reasonable. ‘Forty years.’

  Gladstone’s fearsome expression melted as he smiled at her, his teeth surprisingly white and his eyes sparkling with unexpected life as he replied: ‘Maybe. Maybe not.’

  ‘You won’t get bail,’ Ethan pointed out, ‘ and neither of you will see parole. This is it, fellas. You either cut yourselves a deal or they’ll lock you both down and toss the keys.’

  Gladstone glanced at Earl and the older man slowly shook his head.

  ‘Like the man says, we ain’t turnin’ for nobody.’

  Ethan sat back in his seat thoughtfully. Maybe there wasn’t a brain behind all of this. Maybe it was Earl himself. But then why not try to create a character or finger an enemy for the bank jobs, at least try to get a break?

  Lopez leaned forward on the table, her dark eyes focused on Gladstone’s.

  ‘You ever want to see anybody like me again,’ she purred, ‘you’re gonna have to fold now. No sense in cutting your nose off to spite your face.’

  Gladstone smiled at her. ‘Ain’t my nose I’m thinkin’ of, honey.’

  Lopez smiled back and then sat abruptly upright, cutting off Gladstone’s enjoyment. ‘That’s my point,’ she said. ‘You don’t talk to us now, all you’ll ever be doing is thinkin’ about it, so you might just as well cut it off. You opened fire on cops in the middle of a busy intersection and are up for half a dozen federal crimes. Life’s gonna mean life. If you ever get out of here, it’ll be in a wheelchair.’

  Earl Thomas jabbed a finger at her.

  ‘We ain’t movin’, sweetheart!’ he snapped. ‘So you can save your pretty chatter for all the slack-jawed faggots back on the block.’ He looked her up and down, as though examining a vehicle. ‘Besides, I don’t do Latino.’

  Lopez stood up, placed her hands on the table, and leaned closer to him.

  ‘You won’t be doin’ anything for the next forty years, Earl. You’re over, finished, history, except maybe for the young boys on your block.’

  Earl cracked his cuff chains as he tried to stand, but the chains around his ankles kept him out of reach. He chuckled, his evil little eyes glittering at her.

  ‘Be seein’ you, missy.’

  Ethan stood up and turned away from them both as Lopez spun to join him. The sergeant opened the door and followed them out into the corridor. Ethan waited until the door was shut again before he spoke.

  ‘That didn’t make any sense,’ he said. ‘They’ve got no reason to cover for an accomplice and every reason to try to shorten their sentence.’

  ‘Maybe there isn’t anybody else involved,’ Lopez suggested. ‘Or they don’t know who it is.’

  ‘I figured that,’ Ethan admitted, ‘but these guys should be clutching at any opportunity to get out of this. They’re professional criminals facing life sentences – these people don’t have loyalty to anybody but themselves.’

  Lopez looked at her watch and shrugged.

  ‘Well, they’ll be on their way to the courthouse within the hour for their arraignment. We’d better catch up with Karina and see what happens to them at the court.’

  20

  NEW YORK COUNTY SUPREME COURTHOUSE, NEW YORK CITY

  ‘You sure you’re up for this?’

  Karina Thorne and Tom Ross stood in Foley Square and looked up at the towering edifice of the courthouse, a colonnade of ten fluted granite Corinthian columns looming over the busy street outside. The sky above was crisp and clear, the low afternoon sun flaring brightly between the nearby tower blocks that cast long blue shadows across the streets.

  Tom Ross nodded. ‘I want to see them pay for what they’ve done.’

  Ethan and Lopez stood alongside them, and Ethan did not like what he was seeing. Tom Ross was Karina’s partner, a trained, professional police officer and detective. But right now, he looked as though he was half dead. He was wearing a dark gray suit, neatly pressed, but it seemed to hang off his frame as though he had lost a lot of weight. His hair was roughly brushed into place but still managed to look disheveled, and his eyes were ringed with dark sclera, as though he had not slept in a week.

  ‘They’re going to be in there,’ Karina said to Tom. ‘The two men we caught on the bridge. This is their final chance to cut a deal.’

  Tom nodded again, his sullen gaze fixed on the courthouse.

  ‘I’m ready,’ he said finally.

  Ethan glanced at Lopez but said nothing as they walked across the street and up the steps toward the towering portico. Waiting for them at the top of the steps was the rest of the police team, Donovan at their head. The team fell in behind Karina and Tom as they walked into the cavernous interior and made their way to the main court itself. Ethan looked up as they passed between the columns, and saw words engraved into the stone facade above their heads:

  THE TRUE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE

  IS THE FIRMEST PILLAR OF GOOD

  GOVERNMENT

  He wondered briefly if such noble sentiments extended to the Central Intelligence Agency or any of its paramilitary employees.

  The interior of the courthouse was a massive rotunda with murals and friezes painted onto the walls and the dome high above. They walked through the rotunda and down a corridor to one of many courtrooms, each filled with a paneled bar at one end and matching rows of benches facing it. The far wall bore the motif IN GOD WE TRUST as Ethan, noticed sat down alongside Lopez, the police team sitting in front of them. A small crowd occupied the public gallery, probably families of people injured in the auto wreck on the Williamsburg Bridge.

  The court rose as the judge entered and took his seat. Ethan sat down and looked across the court, as a lawyer stood to address the judge. As he spoke, so Earl Thomas and James Gladstone were led into the courtroom, both cuffed to cops. Every head turned to watch, and Ethan glanced at Tom Ross. He was staring at the two men, laying eyes on them probably for the first time in his life. His fists were clenched in his lap, the knuckles showing white through the skin. Karina sat next to him, and Ethan could sense that she was poised to restrain Tom if he leaped up in anger and tried to reach the two felons.

  The lawyer, a tall, thin man with a hooked nose and fearsomely intelligent gaze, addressed the judge.

  ‘Your honor, before we begin, I would like to request the opportunity to make an announcement on behalf of my clients.’

  The judge, apparently surprised by the lawyer’s request, nodded. ‘Granted.’

  The lawyer glanced at his notes before speaking.

  ‘I would like to apprise you of a deplorable miscarriage of proper procedural justice by the New York Police Department in the arrest and detainment of my clients, that has hereby forced them to plea for charges made against them that are totally false. They have been charged with a federal crime, that of armed robbery of a premises insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and also a capital crime, that of causing the automobile wreck on the Williamsburg Bridge that claimed the lives of seven people. I am here to contend that in both cases the charges are false and, in fact, orchestrated by detectives eager to secure convictions, with both of my clients innocent of involvement in the heist in question and, in fact, the victims of two professional criminals who escaped arrest on the day.’

  A few of the police team rolled their eyes and Karina leaned in close to Ethan and Lopez.

  ‘We see this all the time,’ she said
. ‘They’ll try to say that procedure wasn’t followed so, therefore, the convictions won’t stick, that there is no case to answer and that the judge should dismiss it. If he doesn’t, they’ll apply for bail and then try to delay the trial as long as possible. It won’t work. We dotted every ‘‘i’’ and crossed every ‘‘t’’.’

  Lopez frowned. ‘How did those losers afford a top lawyer and not a state attorney?’

  Karina shrugged but said nothing.

  The judge looked down at the lawyer. ‘Go on.’

  The lawyer raised a sheet of paper in front of the court.

  ‘The written statements as allegedly made by my clients to the police were unsigned, rendering them inadmissible in a court of law.’

  Karina bolted forward in her seat as her jaw dropped.

  ‘Is he serious?’ Lopez asked her.

  They were both drowned out by Donovan, who stood up and pointed at the lawyer. ‘That’s a lie. Both suspects signed their statements. We would not have let them leave the interview room without doing so.’

  The judge glared down at Donovan. ‘Retake your seat, detective, or I’ll have you removed from the court.’

  Donovan, fuming, sat back down, as the lawyer smiled coldly at him before continuing.

  ‘In addition, closed-circuit camera footage of the entire incident reveals upon close inspection that the accused did not fire nor even possess any weapons. Both men contend that they were abducted by two professional thieves who hijacked their vehicle at gunpoint.’

  A ripple of gasps flooded through the public gallery as the lawyer expertly related the sequence of events that had supposedly led up to the two suspects being dragged against their will into a violent crime.

  Ethan looked across at Earl and Gladstone, who were standing next to each other. Both were wearing sombre expressions, their hands clasped before them in a display of subservience, dressed in ill-fitting suits probably hired or bought by the lawyer to give his clients a thin veneer of respectability. Both men made no attempt to look anywhere other than directly at the judge in the courtroom and studiously avoided looking at Ethan and Lopez.

  ‘They’re playing it smooth,’ Lopez whispered.

  ‘They’re smart enough to hit armoured vehicles and banks all the way down the east coast,’ Ethan said, ‘and that makes them smart enough to play a judge and jury as best they can. Clearly, there’s no evidence of them being in the area at the time of the other hits or it would have been presented by now.’

  Lopez frowned.

  ‘Then why, if they were involved from the start, wouldn’t they give up the identities of their accomplices? They’re screwed if they can’t pull this off.’

  The lawyer finished laying down his case as he gestured at the police officers behind him.

  ‘What happened on Williamsburg Bridge was a tragedy, a loss of innocent lives in a deadly pursuit by New York Police Department detectives of highly dangerous, professional criminals. I ask you, your honor, to take a look at my clients and consider what was required of the men responsible for this complex, violent and reprehensible crime, then contrast that with the men you see standing before you today. Both of my clients have prior convictions, neither man is an angel, yet all of their crimes are misdemeanours, not painstakingly planned bank heists. It is understandable that the law-enforcement agencies of this city are desperate to locate and apprehend those responsible for the crimes, but I would caution that a heist of this complexity almost certainly had a plan for my clients’ vehicle to be hijacked, and these two men were purposefully abducted and left to carry the sentence for a crime they did not commit.’

  The lawyer glanced up at the public gallery, before he finished his closing speech.

  ‘In short, your honor, I would ask that you refrain from sentencing these men to trial until further evidence comes to light regarding the heist itself as, I believe that, having reviewed the available footage, my clients have committed no crime at all and that their claims will be validated through further investigation.’

  Lopez shook her head.

  ‘They won’t be able to hold them for long in jail without a trial date, and his case is strong enough that they’ll probably get bail,’ she whispered. ‘Christ, they might even walk out of here as free men.’

  Ethan glanced at Tom Ross, and saw that Karina was now holding his hand. Tom’s jaw was hanging slightly open in disbelief as the judge spoke.

  ‘I concur with your recommendation,’ he said finally. ‘Both of your clients will remain in custody within the jail system. Given the nature of the crimes concerned, I cannot with a clear conscience offer bail at this time until further validation of their claims can be provided. However, I will instruct the New York Police Department that they have a further forty-eight hours to either provide evidence of guilt or release your clients.’

  The judge stood and the court rose in silence.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ Karina said as she turned to Donovan. ‘What the hell’s going on here?’

  Donovan watched as the two suspects were led away, both of their faces shining with delight.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he rumbled. ‘But we’ve got forty-eight hours to figure it out and drag those sons of bitches back into this courtroom for a trial sentence.’

  Glen and Jackson shook their heads in unison as Jackson jabbed a thumb over his shoulder.

  ‘The other two got clean away,’ he complained. ‘Only way we can prove the involvement of those two losers is to catch them.’

  ‘You haven’t got CCTV of them leaving the bridge?’ Ethan asked.

  Donovan shook his head as they filed out of the courtroom and through the rotunda.

  ‘The wreck and smoke damaged or obscured the images from cameras on the bridge,’ he explained. ‘Those on the south side didn’t pick anything up, but the guys we’re chasing are probably smart enough to avoid the cameras. Maybe they got under the bridge somehow, or even had another getaway vehicle waiting in support.’

  ‘They plan ahead,’ Karina explained. ‘The gang has hit banks all down the east coast and nobody’s been caught, except for the two men we’ve got in custody. Whoever the thinkers are behind these heists, they’re smart enough to have planned for blockades around or on the bridge. Switching vehicles would have been an ideal way out.’

  The sky outside was darkening as Ethan and Lopez walked down the steps outside the courthouse. Karina walked alongside Tom Ross, whose features seemed locked into a thousand-yard stare. With his family gone and the men responsible on the verge of walking free, Ethan began to wonder just how long it would be before Tom tried to take his own life again.

  ‘Ethan,’ Lopez whispered beside him.

  Ethan turned to look at Lopez, who was staring out across Foley Square. ‘Opposite side of the street, the boots.’

  Ethan managed not to look across the street straight away, instead cupping his hands and blowing nonchalantly into them against the cold as he made a fuss of looking for a taxi. As he let his gaze sweep the street, he spotted Lopez’s mark.

  A man wearing a gray hoodie that concealed his features. Black jeans and tan leather boots, a black leather bomber jacket. The man was leaning against a streetlight and watching the courthouse, a heavy-looking digital camera held to his face as he snapped images. The brown boots he wore were identical to the ones worn by the person they’d chased out of Hell Gate the previous day.

  ‘You think it’s the same dude?’ Ethan asked.

  ‘Close enough,’ Lopez said. ‘You see him in the gallery inside?’

  Ethan shook his head as Karina spoke to them from behind. ‘I’m taking Tom home, okay? I’ll see you guys later.’

  Both Ethan and Lopez nodded, before Ethan looked down at his partner. ‘Let’s go,’ she said.

  Ethan turned and strode out across the street toward Foley Square.

  21

  Ethan walked not directly toward the photographer, but out to one flank as, across the street, Lopez did the same in a mirro
r-reflection of his movements.

  The chances that the hooded figure was the same person who had been watching them at the warehouse on the docks was remote, but, if it was the same person, then Ethan very badly wanted to know who the hell he was. If the CIA was still on their tail, then they would probably have to flee the city, and Ethan wasn’t quite ready to do that yet after what they had learned from Major Greene.

  Ethan turned slightly as he moved behind the photographer, maybe twenty yards away on their right. Through the crowds, he saw Lopez mirroring his movements, starting to close in on their target.

  And then, quite suddenly, the mark bolted.

  The man leaped away from the post and launched into a full-blown sprint, dashing across the street away from Ethan and Lopez. Ethan raced in pursuit, headed south toward City Hall Park. Ethan saw the figure tuck his camera away into his jacket as he ran and then suddenly break away with a terrific burst of speed.

  ‘He’s headed for the park!’ Lopez shouted.

  Ethan dodged between startled pedestrians as he dashed down Park Row toward City Hall Park. The runner switched direction and dashed across Chambers Street, through the fully flowing traffic, a sea of flashing headlights.

  Ethan sprinted hard as he watched the lithe figure vault across the hood of a taxi that screeched to a halt as angry voices bellowed. Ethan dashed around the taxi and through a flock of tourists that scattered out of his way.

  He caught sight of Lopez running to his right, cutting into the park to intercept their quarry should he try to hide in the trees. Ethan could see the Brooklyn Bridge City Hall and other major buildings tucked away within the park as he ran.

  The fleeing figure cut hard right and dashed down a pathway that led between the trees, the City Hall and the Tweed Courthouse, the low light and growing shadows concealing his movements. Lopez dashed out just in front of Ethan, agile but not quite fast enough to catch the fleeing figure ahead of them. Whoever it was, he was in supreme physical condition and with a long enough stride to outpace even Lopez.