goggles they all wore. Nimrod made a note to get himself a pair for the next visit.
“Sir,” the MP said again, his voice low and discreet.
“Yes?” Nimrod wondered how long, exactly, he’d been standing in Battery Park. The Fissure played tricks with your mind, with time.
“She is asking for you.”
Nimrod blinked, then nodded. “Very well.”
“There’s this too, sir.” The MP handed Nimrod a newspaper. It was fresh, the paper crisp and warm between his fingers. Nimrod cast an eye over the headline on the front page above a blurred black and white photo that showed nothing much except something white floating in the air against the background of what looked like Brooklyn at night.
The MP stood back and saluted, then turned and marched away. Nimrod frowned, folded the newspaper into quarters, and followed.
It was best not the keep the Ghost of Gotham waiting.
SIX
The air was still and as cold as a slap in the face as Rad pulled the collar of his trench coat up and the brim of his hat down. The streets were slick with a thin layer of dangerous black ice, the gutters and the corners of buildings piled with a dry, sand-like scattering of snow, the kind you only got when it had been cold a real long time.
And it had been cold a real long time.
Rad sniffed the air and immediately regretted it, the sudden sting of ice like a firecracker exploding in his nostrils. He exhaled into the collar of his coat and dragged his scarf up over his mouth and nose.
The Empire State was freezing up and here he was, venturing into unknown territory in the dead of night on the back of nothing but a weird phone call. Just like old times.
He’d parked his car a few blocks south, where there were at least some people and light, but as he’d walked it had got darker and darker, as if the city was fading away, dying as he went north. Come at night, the mystery caller had said, as it wasn’t safe during the day. It sounded backward, but Rad had kept to the letter of the instructions. He hiked north on foot, through streets a little wider than he was used to, among buildings a little lower than he felt comfortable with.
Rad crossed the deserted street and paused.
He was being followed, but the person doing the following was hardly a professional. The attempt to match his own footsteps to Rad’s was poor.
No problem. Rad thrust his hands into the pockets of his coat. In his left, his fingers curled around the short metal rod taken from the deceased – deactivated? – robot gangster, Cliff. In his right, his fingers curled around the handle of his gun.
Rad kept walking, slowly at first and then speeding up. He broke his step and heard the person behind him pause, so he stopped and turned on his heel, but the street was dark with plenty of shadows for people to hide in. Rad saw nothing, and the night was silent.
Rad mentally counted off the bullets in his gun as he recalled loading it that afternoon. He wondered how accurate it was and over what distance; it really was a small gun designed for point-blank defense, and he hadn’t had much of a chance to test it.
If this was Harlem at night – the safe time to visit – then during the day it must be a virtual no-mans-land.
Rad pulled his collar higher and kept walking. He had somewhere to go, and someone to meet.
Kane Fortuna.
Rad shook his head and kept his eyes on the sidewalk. Kane had returned? Was the caller telling the truth? Rad dared to hope he would see his friend again: Kane Fortuna, the Sentinel’s former star reporter, with a misguided career as the Skyguard cut short by a little trip through the Fissure. That was eighteen months ago, and despite searches on both sides of the dimensional divide in New York and the Empire State, his body had never been found.
Rad had assumed Kane was dead, that if you went into the Fissure on one side and didn’t come out the other, then the universe had chewed you up and that was that. Maybe he’d been too quick to jump to that conclusion, but he really wasn’t sure what else he was supposed to think.
Rad picked up the pace as he thought about his old friend. If Kane was alive and well, Rad was prepared to forgive him the naivety that