Halfway through my first month in the navy there was a fire.
It was at our training barracks. We had to move out for two weeks while they repaired the place. The nearest available alternative was a university residence hall. It was in the middle of the holidays, so most of the campus was deserted. There was just us, plus the last dregs of students on the floor above. They’d stayed on for some kind of summer school.
The students didn’t seem very dedicated. They were more interested in partying than studying. Always playing loud music. Drinking. Running around, making noise, annoying everyone. Well, annoying me, anyway. I remember one night water started to drip through my ceiling. I went to investigate. Turned out someone had taken a garbage can from the kitchen, filled it under the tap, and leaned it against my upstairs neighbor’s door. They knocked, he opened, and finished with twelve gallons of soaking garbage around his ankles.
I remember thinking it was pretty stupid, at the time. Funny how your perspective can change, though, later in life.
Taylor had no need for his bodyguards once we’d reached our agreement, so they walked out of the apartment at the same time as me. It was strangely disconcerting because the two guys looked almost identical. One appeared from the bedroom corridor, then another, as if I were seeing double. I guessed the pair would be in their late twenties. Both were around six two, with broad shoulders and the kind of muscles in their arms you get from working outdoors, not visiting the gym. Their skin was deeply tanned. Blond stubble bristled on the top of their heads. They had the same kind of clothes as the guy we’d seen at Tungsten yesterday, minus the name patches. Both had Australian accents. One carried a canvas utility bag slung over his right shoulder, and neither showed any awkwardness about standing and talking with someone they’d been ready to kill ten minutes before.
“Need a ride?” the guy with the bag said as Taylor’s door closed behind us.
“Please,” I said. “Just a couple of blocks. Saves me finding a cab. Only thing is, I don’t get on too well with elevators. Any chance we could take the stairs?”
“Twenty-one floors?”
“Come on. It is down, all the way. And I’ll even carry your bag.”
The guy sighed and looked back at his twin.
“OK,” he said, finally. “We’ll walk. But don’t touch my stuff.”
The door to the stairs was to our right, next to the third elevator. I was nearest so I moved across and gave it a push. It opened more easily than I’d expected. The self-closer was broken. That was a piece of luck. It meant I could bring the timetable forward a little. I didn’t want Taylor leaving before I could get back and see him again.
“After you,” I said, moving aside to let the guy with the bag go first. I stepped through immediately after him and took hold of the handle on the other side. I paused. Then I heaved the door back toward its frame, twisting my body and shifting my weight like a hammer thrower.
My timing was just right. The steel skin of the heavy fire door crushed the second guy’s nose like it was made of paper and only slowed down when it connected with his jaw. The impact sent him staggering backward and he went down in a sprawling heap like he’d fallen twenty feet off a building and landed on his face.
The guy with the bag heard the thud. He stopped, four feet in front of me, right at the top of the stairs. He started to turn. I waited until he was facing me. Then I launched myself forward, swinging my back leg up and driving the ball of my foot into the base of his rib cage like a battering ram. He fell back, gasping for air, hopelessly off balance. His arms were flailing, desperate for anything to grab onto. His right hand glanced off the smooth wall. His left grazed the metal banister rail, scrabbling for grip, but he just couldn’t hang on. Both arms ended up stretched out behind him. That was just as well. They took some of the sting out of his fall. But even so, the back of his head caught the sharp edges of four, five, six bare concrete steps before he came to rest.
I followed him down, retrieved his bag, and checked inside. There were three things. A clear, heavy-gauge plastic sheet, folded into a square. A black body bag, standard U.S. Army issue, rolled up. And a metal case containing a syringe. It was filled with some kind of clear liquid. I put the syringe case in my pocket, replaced everything else, and slung the bag over my shoulder. Then I took hold of the guy’s hands, swung him over the same shoulder, and carried him up to the landing.
Next I went to check on the second guy. He’d rolled onto his front and was trying to drag himself across the carpet toward Taylor’s apartment, groaning softly each time he moved. He wasn’t aware I’d come back, so I let him get within touching distance of the wall before rolling him onto his side and slamming the heel of my hand into his temple. That put an end to his crawling, so I eased him into a sitting position and shuffled him over until his head and shoulders were against Taylor’s door and his backside was twelve inches out from its lower edge. Then I fetched the bag guy. I lugged his unconscious body through the lobby and lowered it down onto the second guy’s lap. They ended up back against chest, like one was sitting on the other’s knee. The bag guy’s head lolled sideways, so I had to roll it around onto the second guy’s shoulder. His oozing blood left a blotchy stain on the white surface of the door, but I wasn’t too worried. I was going to give Taylor more to think about than smudged paint.
I took the syringe out of its case, stepped to the side, and reached across to the doorbell. It was set into the center of the door, above Taylor’s printed name card and below the lens of a security peephole. I kept my finger on the button for a full two seconds. The sound was harsh and mechanical, like the old-fashioned windup kind. Not what I’d expected at all. There was silence for ten seconds. Then a light pair of feet started down the spiral stairs. They came nearer, scurrying across the metal floor like a couple of mice. And stopped.
“Who’s there?” Taylor said.
“Your cleaners,” I said. “They forgot to do upstairs. Thought they better come back.”
Taylor opened the door. That was a mistake. The bodies fell backward, deflecting off his legs as gravity pulled them to the floor. I heard a sharp intake of breath, and two near simultaneous thumps as their skulls hit the checkered tile. I gave Taylor a couple of moments to register what had happened. Then I stepped into view.
“I don’t know what your boy had in here,” I said, holding up the syringe. “But if you don’t want it pumped straight in your heart, get down on the ground. Hands behind your head. Lace your fingers. Do not look at me. Do not move.”
Taylor hit the floor as if his legs had been swept from under him. I put the syringe back in its case, slipped it into my pocket, and stepped in through the doorway. The bodies were in the way so I hauled them to the side and shut the door. I made sure it had latched, then felt in my pocket for the sheaf of cable ties I’d taken from Lesley’s. I isolated four. My fingers worked them free. I used two to bind the identical guys’ wrists. The other two secured them to the frame of the spiral staircase. Then I turned back to face their whimpering boss.
“Good, so far,” I said. “Now, on your feet.”
“Where are we going?” he said.
“Upstairs.”
“Why?”
“There’s nothing to see down here. And we need somewhere private. We have something to talk about.”
Taylor went up the staircase ahead of me, hesitantly, one hand on the rail. I kept my distance, just in case, but he didn’t try anything. He just labored his way to the top, took a couple more steps, and then waited for instructions. I directed him to the dining end of the room and put him on the violet chair. That was in the middle of the long side, with its back to the sofas. I sat opposite, on the yellow chair, giving him only me and the blank white wall to look at.
“Take a minute to think,” I said. “You’ve made some mistakes, this morning. Serious mistakes. So now you have to choose. Either you put them right, or you pay the price. And it’s only fair to warn you. The price is going to be high.”
“How do I put them right?” he said.
“Tell me the truth.”
“I did.”
I took out the wad of photos, pulled out the one showing the organ containers in the truck, and put it down on the table.
“So why did you choke when you saw this, the first time?” I said.
“I didn’t choke. I just took a second to recognize it,” he said.
“I’m going to ask you one more question. Before Tungsten, were you in the army?”
“Yes.”
“Special Forces?”
“No.”
“Airborne?”
“No.”
“Infantry?”
“No. Why?”
“Because I’m getting the feeling you weren’t much of a fighting soldier. Not much combat experience. Is that fair?”
“Modern armies stand or fall on their staffwork. Don’t belittle it.”
“I’m not. I’m just thinking, you saw those guys downstairs? The one guy’s face? The back of the other guy’s skull? Now look at these.”
I held up my palms, then the back of my hands.
“If I can do that to those guys, on my own, without getting a single scratch, what’s going to happen to you if you don’t give me what I want?”
Taylor stared down at the tabletop. But the only thing on it was his reflection, and that didn’t offer much comfort.
“So, here’s your choice. Talk to me about this,” I said, tapping the photograph. “Or end up in this.”
I undid the canvas satchel and took out the body bag. I held it up so he got a good look, then gripped one end and flicked the roll toward him so it unraveled across the width of the table. The final eighteen inches cascaded off the far side and dangled down onto his lap.
“Your buddies brought it for me,” I said. “But it looks more like your size.”
Taylor sat in silence, mesmerized by the strip of black rubber as if it were a giant tentacle about to grab hold of him. Then he snapped his eyes away, shoveled the end back onto the table, and reached across for the photo.
“They were organs, going for transplant,” he said. “But we weren’t bringing them in.”
“Who was?” I said.
“Nobody. We were bringing them out.”
“Out? Where to? The U.S.?”
“Obviously.”
“So back in your office. You talked about being a principled operator. Giving back to the people. But behind it all, you’re just a bunch of organ smugglers.”
“Don’t lay your tabloid-headline morals on me. Yes, we make money. Yes, what we do is technically illegal. But, hey, what we do saves lives, and that’s good enough from where I’m sitting.”
“Save lives? Wake up, Taylor. You steal people’s organs.”
“We don’t steal them.”
“You buy them then. Who from? How much? What happens if they say no?”
“We don’t buy them.”
“So what do you do? Make them?”
“You’ve got no idea what state that country’s in. Bizarre as it sounds, there are spare organs literally lying at the side of the street. Back here, people are dying because there aren’t enough. So we put the two together. No one loses. Innocent Americans win.”
“What do they win? Someone else’s body parts? Who had no choice about donating?”
“They get to stay alive. And I’m not apologizing for that to anyone.”
“These spare organs. They’re not still encased inside people’s bodies, by any chance?”
“You’re an asshole. This is how it works. We don’t just protect that hospital. We provide surgeons and doctors. Pro bono. Patrols scoop up the victims. Our guys save as many as they can.”
“And the rest you tear apart? Carve up for spare parts?”
“You’ve got to be realistic. You can’t save them all.”
“So, the unlucky ones. You just help yourselves to their innards. Like vultures.”
“What would you do? Leave the organs to rot? Do you know what life on dialysis is like? And that doesn’t always work, anyway. Ten thousand Americans die every year from kidney failure as it is.”
“How do you get them back here? The organs.”
“By plane.”
“What about customs?”
“We’re licensed government contractors. They’re our planes. No one looks twice.”
“Once they’re here, how do you sell them? On eBay?”
“We don’t just sell them. It’s like I said. We do this to save lives. We only work with our own patients. We do the diagnosis, the treatment, the convalescence. Our approach is completely holistic.”
“Don’t the hospitals blow the whistle? Or do you bribe them to look the other way when you wheel in your crates of meat?”
“We don’t use hospitals. We have our own facilities.”
“What kind of facilities?”
“Private clinics.”
“Private. Pandering to line-jumpers.”
“No. Mothers. Fathers. Normal people who just want to stay alive and see their kids grow up. The regular channels let them down, because the fact is-and this is truly sad-the system can’t deliver. It’s inadequate. So they turn to us. And for every one we help, a space is freed up on the list for somebody else. Everybody wins. There is literally no downside.”
“How many clinics are we talking about?”
“Five.”
“In New York?”
“One is. Around the corner, on Sixty-sixth Street. It was our first.”
“And the others?”
“Boston.”
“All of them?”
“No. One in Chicago. And Washington. And Miami.”
“All dedicated to saving lives.”
“Yes. If you ask me, it’s the only good thing to come out of the whole war.”
“So why do the FBI have five ex-Tungsten guys in their morgue?”
“You should talk to James Mansell about that. The asshole. He was new to the hospital detail. Strayed somewhere he shouldn’t have. We didn’t know how much he’d seen. Obviously we couldn’t take the chance.”
“So you canned the whole team. Clinically excised them. Brought them home, paid them off, sent them on their way.”
“Right.”
“Then how did five of them end up on the slab?”
“That’s Mansell’s fault again. He sent us a copy of this picture. Wanted more money. A lot more.”
“One guy tried it on, and you wiped out the whole team. That’s a pretty holistic approach, I guess.”
“It wasn’t my call. I wouldn’t have done it that way.”
“No. You’d have just killed Mansell. Or had him killed.”
“If it was necessary. As a last resort.”
“You’re like a saint, in comparison. So, who made the call?”
Taylor didn’t answer.
“Don’t go shy on me now,” I said. “I’m in no mood to compromise.”
“OK,” he said, “but this is hard for me. Because the Tungsten you see today, it’s not the way I set it up. Things have changed.”
“In what way?”
“I have new partners, is the easiest way to say it.”
“Since when?”
“Three months ago.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know their real names. Iraqis.”
“You employ large men with automatic weapons. Why let anyone muscle in?”
“It’s not that simple. They found out what we were doing. We thought they’d try and shut us down. It’s happened a couple of times before. And you’re right. We’re well placed to deal with that. But these guys were different. They didn’t want us to stop shipping organs. They wanted us to ship more. And they were ready to help.”
“And you let them.”
Taylor shrugged.
“They’re well connected, locally. Tripled the supply of suitable donors. Even sent their own surgeons over here, to pick up the slack. We’re averaging one transplant per day, per clinic, since they came on board. Mainly kidneys. Some livers. Now we’re talking about diversifying. Into corneas, that sort of thing. All in all, it’s ninety percent good.”
“And the other ten?”
“Day to day isn’t an issue. It’s how they deal with problems that sucks. They overreact. Have different ideas about what you can and can’t do.”
“I know all about that. So who are they?”
“I told you. I don’t know their names.”
“Where can I find them? The bosses. Back in Iraq?”
“No. They’re here. They work out of the clinic on Sixty-sixth Street.”
“Hamad’s one of theirs?”
“Yes. Their fixer. He came over a month after they did. Most of the wild stuff is up to him.”
“And you stood back and let him get on with it.”
“What could I do? I’ve had my concerns from day one. But the other directors…”
“Head down, mouth shut, take the money.”
“Exactly. Why kill the golden goose? And be honest-would you have done it differently?”
“Oh, yes,” I said. “Pretty much all of it.”