Silent Night - By Tom Barber Page 0,46
face after all.’
There was a pause. Gunnar looked at him curiously and leaned back, the chair creaking from the weight.
‘What’s all this about? What did they do?’
Archer didn’t reply.
‘I caught the news,’ Gunnar said. ‘The reports from Macy’s and the Seaport. Did they have something to do with that?’
‘You’re going to play innocent?’
Gunnar grinned. ‘When you get a warrant you can tear my place upside down Detective. You can check my phone and see who I’ve been interacting with. I’ve got absolutely no idea what they’ve been up to and there’s no way you can pin anything on me that says otherwise.’
He paused.
‘But I’m guessing it had something to do with those bombs around Midtown. Right?’
Archer maintained eye contact with the man. He decided to reveal part of his hand.
‘Correct. They planted them.’
‘But they didn’t contain explosives?’
‘No. A lethal virus instead.’
‘A virus?’
‘Bleeker stole five vials of it from a lab on the Upper West Side last night. Do you have any idea how he’d know about something like that?’
‘You’re the police. You figure it out.’
‘Motive?’
‘If I had to guess, I’d say racial.’
No shit, Archer thought.
‘But these bombs were left in Midtown and Lower Manhattan,’ he said.
‘So?’
‘If this was racially motivated, surely they’d go after Washington Heights or the Bronx? Spanish Harlem? Areas dominated by black or Hispanic communities?’
‘There're plenty of non-Aryans in Midtown. And people like myself can’t just stroll up into those neighbourhoods you mentioned Detective.’
‘But they would kill hundreds of others. White men, like you. Surely that goes completely against your ideology?’
‘Hey, I agree. It’s not something I would ever do. I spend my life adhering to those beliefs.’ He looked at Archer. ‘Look, they must have had their reasons. Don’t assume that those reasons were intelligent. Bleeker was as thick as pig shit. God only knows how this virus you’re talking about fell into his lap. And given his stupidity, it’s almost a guarantee that he would use it in the wrong way.’
Archer clocked Gunnar’s facial expression and body language. His geniality was fading. The conversation was just about done.
Archer rose, taking back the photographs and sliding them into the folder. ‘We’re going to check out these names you’ve given us.’
‘OK.’
‘Get comfortable. This could take a while.’
‘See you soon,’ Gunnar said with a grin. ‘And please think about my offer. You’d be surprised who some of our members are.’
At that moment, eight miles to the west, three men were sitting in a line on stools in a bar in Hoboken. The place was called Texas/Arizona, a stone’s throw from the PATH train that led under the Hudson River and into the east side of Manhattan. The trio had been wandering around the neighbourhood looking for a place with warm heating and cold beer and had stumbled upon the bar, pleasantly surprised by the name. The joint was starting to get busy, lots of fans in football gear coming in for the NFL games that were already kicking off around the country, but the three men weren’t interested. They were dressed all in black with shaved heads and were sitting with a beer in front of each of them. They completely ignored the people gathering around them. They were hardly blending in and were taking up three of the best seats in the house but no one was prepared to confront them about it.
In front of the men, one of the bartenders ended a phone call then grabbed a remote and flicked the television above the bar from an ESPN pre-game show to the news channel. Drinking from their beers, the trio watched in silence. There were several headlines rolling on the screen. It seemed like some crazy stuff had gone down in Manhattan that morning just the other side of the Hudson. There'd been some kind of bomb threat at Macy’s and a chemical accident by the South Street Seaport that had killed almost sixty people.
As the three skinheads watched the television, the one in the middle whistled.
‘Holy shit.’
The man to his right nodded in agreement. The guy on the left drained his beer and rose from his stool. The man beside him turned.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Smoke.’
The man walked to the door, heading out of the front of the bar. He pulled a pack of Marlboro from the pocket of his jacket and slid one into his mouth, sparking the end. Tucking the lighter and pack back in his pocket, he took a draw and examined the area around him, blowing out the smoke. Traffic was coming