‘We know where Gault is and we have the building under surveillance. But Manhattan is not where I would have chosen to catch this guy. It’s too damn crowded. You get in an exchange of firepower - I don’t care how good you are - and someone’s going to get hit. Someone else is going to die. A woman, a man, a child who just happens to walk out at the wrong time.’

‘I understand,’ I said. ‘I’m not disagreeing with you. Is Gault in the apartment now? And what about Carrie?’

Wesley said, ‘Neither has been sighted, and we have no reason to suspect Carrie travels with him.’

‘He hasn’t used my charge card to buy her plane tickets,’ I considered. ‘That much I can tell.’

‘We do know Gault was in the apartment as recently as eight o’clock this evening,’ Wesley said.

‘That’s when he got on the line and Lucy trapped him.’

‘She trapped him?’ I looked at both men, ‘She trapped him from here and now she’s gone? Did she get deployed with HRT?’

I had a bizarre image of Lucy in black boots and fatigues being loaded on a plane at Andrews Air Force Base. I imagined her with a group of supremely fit helicopter pilots, snipers and experts in explosives, and my incredulity grew.

Wesley met my eyes. ‘She’s been in New York for the past couple of days. She’s working on the Transit Police computer. She got the hit in New York.’

‘Why not work here where CAIN is located?’ I wanted to know, because I did not want Lucy in New York. I did not want her in the same state where Temple Gault was.

‘Transit’s got an extremely sophisticated system,’ he said.

Marino spoke. ‘It’s got things we don’t have, Doc.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like a computerized map of the entire subway system.’ Marino leaned closer to me, forearms resting on his knees. He understood what I was feeling. I could see it in his eyes. ‘We think that’s how Gault’s been getting around.’

Wesley explained, ‘We think Carrie Grethen somehow got Gault into the Transit Police computer, through CAIN. He was able to map out for himself a way to move around the city through the tunnels, so he could get his drugs and commit his crimes.

He has had access to detailed diagrams that include stations, catwalks, tunnels and escape hatches.’

‘What escape hatches?’ I asked.

‘The subway system has emergency exits that lead out of the tunnels, in the event a train should have to stop for some reason down there. Passengers can be routed through an emergency exit that will bring them back above ground. Central Park has a number of them.’