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(NEW YORK—JUNE 15, 4:00 P.M.

The inquiries of the Peruvian police would take days. I didn’t have days. My cover was blown. I was screwed if I stayed in this country. I ran them a story that the two characters from Colombia had come into my room with guns and started asking all sorts of questions about the Japanese ambassador, Hector arrived, pushed one out the window and shot the other while taking a mortal wound himself.

The story would work if they wanted it to work. They had uncovered an assassination plot and a local boy was the hero.

I told them I was registered under the United States Witness Protection Program and now I had to fly the coop on the first flight out. They weren’t down with that at all. But they also didn’t want to mess with the FBI.

A signed statement, a videotaped statement, a fake contact address later, and I was all set to go.

It was too late to get a reservation now, but I didn’t need to beg the airlines. I had a perfectly good ticket on the flight to New York. Bridget’s ticket. And from New York I could go anywhere in the world.

It wasn’t exactly the safest thing to do, but it was convenient.

The downside was obvious. Almost certainly she’d find out about the Lima fuckup and she’d quickly organize someone to meet my plane at JFK. They’d have my photo and maybe a threatening look or two but it wouldn’t matter a tuppeny shite because in New York I’d have the good old federales rendezvous with me and I’d disappear once again into the black hole of the WPP. Aye, and this time I’d go the full De Niro. Gain twenty pounds, dye my hair, move to bloody China.

I checked in, boarded the plane, found my seat, relaxed. The movie they were playing was O Brother, Where Art Thou? which I’d already seen, so, there was nothing else for it but to tilt my chair back as far as it would go and try to get in an hour or two of kip. But even in first class that was practically impossible. You don’t come down from a gun battle just like that. I read Peruvian Golfer until it was chow time. A pretty stewardess gave me a dozen options and I picked the eggs and she brought me scrambled ones that tasted almost like eggs. We started chatting and one thing led to another and she gave me her phone number in the Bronx and if it had been Manhattan I might have kept it.

We flew over Panama, the western edge of Cuba, the land of Johnny Reb, and touched down at JFK a few minutes early. As soon as the wheels squealed I called up Dan Connolly in the FBI. He wasn’t at his desk, so I dialed his cell phone and left a message.

“Dan, it’s Michael F., I’m in the shit again. I know it’s a chore but I’m going to need someone to meet me at International Arrivals of the British Airways terminal in JFK. I just touched down. I’ll wait as long as it takes. You can reach me on the cell.”

I hung up, found my U.S. passport, went through immigration, and forgot totally about the coca leaves in my shoulder bag. I panicked that customs was going to pull me over, but it didn’t, and I walked into the arrivals hall. Waited.

Tens of thousands of people. New York City just out through the doors. But there was no way I was leaving the airport without my escort from the feds.

Bridget, if she was smart, would have a couple of guys on me right now. Not that they could do anything in here. She had wasted her chance again. And she nearly had me going there with that cock-and-bull story about the kid. For the more I thought about it, the more I realized it was impossible that Bridget could have an eleven-year-old child. I would have heard, somebody would have told me. I mean, for Christ’s sake, I’d seen her in court when I’d been accusing Darkey’s confederates. She wasn’t in the dock, but I’d spotted her in the public gallery in that black suit of hers, giving me the evil eye. No way she’d just given birth. And besides, Darkey didn’t want kids. He told me and Sunshine that he’d adopt a hardworking Asian boy when he was in his sixties. It was a joke, but I didn’t see Bridget defying him by not taking her birth-control pills.

No way.

I was hungry and bored. I sauntered over to Hudson News and bought the Times, Daily News, and Post, joined the line of carbohydrate lovers at Au Bon Pain. I ordered a big coffee, cheese Danish, sat down, and enjoyed reading the press in English for a change.

Did the Tuesday crossword and scoped the crowd to see if I could spy out Bridget’s men. But the place was far too hectic. Maybe she’d be on the ball, maybe not, it didn’t matter.

Au Bon Pain was getting crowded and a German couple with a baby annexed the free seats at my table. I got up and looked for another hangout.

At the end of the terminal sat one of those fake pubs which seemed as good a location as any for a long wait. I walked to the City Arms, ordered a Sam Adams. My cell phone rang when I’d drunk my beer and was thinking of popping for another.

“Where are you now, Forsythe?” Dan asked. “No hello?”

“Where are you?” “JFK.”

“What are you doing there? You can be acquired at JFK,” Dan said.

“Acquired? Acquired? You wanna watch it, mate. You’re beginning to sound like the FBI manual.”

“Shanghaied, kidnapped, lifted, whatever you want. You were never supposed to come back to New York,” Dan insisted.

I hadn’t been to the city in seven years, not since our days in the FBI field office in Queens.

“I had a ticket, it was first class, seemed a shame not to use it. Besides, I had to get out of Lima. Bridget, God rest her big bum, sent two Colombian assassins to blow my brains out.”

“I read about it on the wire. You handled it in your usual low- key way, didn’t you? You know the story is on CNN.”

“Is it? Well, it can’t be helped,” I said cheerfully.

Dan muttered some inaudible obscenity that involved my mother.

“Michael, like I say, we have talked about New York. You’re not supposed to come here, ever.”

“As if they are going to acquire me in the middle of the most heavily policed airport in the Western Hemisphere. Get real. This isn’t Al Qaeda, these guys need an exit strategy after a hit. Wouldn’t get twenty feet in here.”

“Well, I’m glad you seem ok about it. I’m not. Where exactly are you?”

“I’m in the City Arms in the BA terminal.”

“Can you hang tight for about half an hour? I’ll have a couple of guys come over there and meet you. I can’t get down there in person at the moment. But I’ll see you later today.”

“Ok, do I know the guys?”

“You don’t. Uhm, let me see, ok. They’ll ask you if you think the Jets have a chance next year, to which you’ll reply—”

“I don’t want to talk about the Jets,” I interrupted. “Ask me a baseball question. I can do baseball.”

“You don’t need to know the sport, Michael, you just have to say what I tell you to say.”

“I don’t want to do a question about the goddamn New York Jets. I want to do a baseball question. I know baseball,” I protested.

“Jesus. It doesn’t matter what the sport is.”

“Of course it does, I’m not going to walk up to someone and say ‘So who do you like in the curling world championships? They say the ice is fast this year.’ Right bloody giveaway that would be.”

Dan laughed and then sighed.

“You know, Michael, sometimes I wish you weren’t so good at staying alive. Sometimes, I wish…”

“Better leave that thought unsaid. Joe Namath, he plays for the Jets, right?”

“Thirty years ago.”

“Ok, forget him. They can ask me what I think about the dodgy Yankees pitching rotation. And I’ll say: ‘I don’t think it stacks up against the Sox,’ how about that?”

“Fine, whatever you like. I’ll take care of it.” “Thanks, Dan.”

“All right, hang tight. Sending some people to pull you out of yet another jam.”

“You love me really, I can tell,” I said.

I closed the phone, grinned. What Dan didn’t realize was that if you’ve been fighting for your life a few hours earlier you can afford to be a bit bloody glib.

I got some lunch, a heretical Irish stew that contained peas and sweet corn.

Went to the bog, washed my face, ordered a Bloody Mary, sat with my back to the wall, decided to check out the señoritas. New York was a paradise after four months in Lima. Not that the Peruvian girls weren’t attractive but there it was mere variations on a theme whereas here it was the choral symphony. Coeds, redheads, blondes, business-women, stewardesses, cops, women soldiers, and on the far side of the bar two skanks straight out of a Snoop Dogg video trying to tease a Hasidic man by kissing in front of him. The man, me, and about fifty-two hundred other people trying not to look. Blond hair, long legs, white stilettos, pretty faces. Russian. Touching each other on the ass and toying with each other’s hair. You didn’t get that in Lima either.

“New York City,” I said with appreciation.

Next to the Hasid a goofy-looking character seemed to spot me. He gave a half wave, walked over quickly, and plonked himself down in the seat directly in front of me. It panicked me for a second. Sort of thing I’d do. Have a couple of hookers do a big distraction and send the guy in while my dick was doing the thinking for me.

He didn’t have a scary vibe at all, though, and I relaxed a little as I looked him up and down. He was wearing a grin a decibel or two quieter than his ensemble of Hawaiian shirt, shorts, purple sandals, fanny pack, and bicycle messenger bag. Twenty-five or twenty-six, blond hair, goatee. Reasonably good-looking. He wasn’t carrying a piece and he wasn’t interested in the hussies, which meant he was either a homosexual, or part of their team, or he really wanted to talk to me.

“Hey, you’re in my view,” I said.

“Mr. Forsythe?” he asked in a serious FBI way. “No.”

“Mr. Forsythe, am I glad to see you. You look a little bit different from the photograph. A little bit older.”

“Aye, well, you’re no picnic yourself. You ever hear the expression sartorially challenged?”

His eyes glazed over.

“What are you talking about?” he asked.