Free Parallel Lies by Ridley Pearson Page A

freight trains. The news reported them like clockwork, attributing them to maintenance problems or driver error.
    But the biggest prize of all was yet to come. And for this, he hungered.

    It seemed out of context to be meeting an Irishman in Chinatown, but then again, this was New York. Alvarez climbed out of the Bleeker street subway station carrying the duffel bag, which he knew would be a problem. He, and it, would be thoroughly searched. He’d been warned that Randy McClaren and his Irish hooligans took no chances. Precaution had kept them alive this long.
    McClaren built bombs. Alvarez’s deposit had been wired weeks earlier; the remainder of the fee had to be transmitted once Alvarez had the device in hand. The joys of the Internet.
    Taking precautions to ensure he wasn’t followed, Alvarez walked eight blocks into the heart of Chinatown and located the address he’d received by placing a phone call from Grand Central. He climbed four flights, pain and fatigue weighing him down. He was met in the hallway by one of McClaren’ssoldiers—a kid of eighteen or nineteen with already lifeless eyes. The delivery of the explosive—postponed twice by McClaren’s people for “security reasons”—was critical to Alvarez’s plans. His heart beat wildly as he approached the top of the stairs. McClaren’s expertise was undetectable explosives—no dog could sniff them, no machine sense them—essential to Alvarez and well worth the exorbitant price. With this small bomb, he’d have the final piece to derail Northern Union’s prized F-A-S-T Track bullet train, a passenger train. He hoped that just the threat of that derailment would prove enough to finally win the truth, as well as a public apology from the company’s CEO, William Goheen. Eighteen months of hard work was about to pay off. McClaren’s explosives were crucial to his task.
    He had been right to worry about the duffel bag. McClaren’s child-goons forced Alvarez to leave it out in the hall under the watchful eye of the skinny kid who’d met him at the door. In the first room off the hall he saw the guys standing guard with their guns right out in the open—mean-looking weapons.
    One of the guards ran a wand over him like the ones at airports and then forced him to empty his pockets and remove his boots, which had steel shanks in them. Alvarez walked in stocking feet.
    This first room was a pigsty: chipped paint, a bare bulb, and steel-reinforced windows, this latter feature an obvious recent modification, and one that loaned the room the look of a jail. Scattered on the floor were pizza boxes with cigarette butts, beer bottles, and scores of empty Coke cans. The place smelled sour. He saw no TV and only upside-down plastic milk crates for chairs. Alvarez was hustled to a door, upon which was written in spray paint: TURN YOUR CELL PHONE OFF NOW! NO CELL PHONES OR PAGERS BEYOND THIS DOOR!

    When Alvarez entered, McClaren was typing at one of three computers, his head down, his shoulders arched.
    The room looked like an electronics lab, or a computer repair shop. Large sheets of brown Peg-Board occupied two of the walls, supporting wires of every description. The air smelled of solder and cigarettes, acrid and bitter. A trio of wooden doors placed on top of file cabinets held the computers and created a U-shaped office area for McClaren, directly in front of Alvarez. To his left, behind the computer where McClaren sat, a cluttered workbench filled the corner.
    The thugs pulled the door shut. Alvarez heard himself be locked in. He took notice of two pipe bombs rigged on the inside of this door. Alvarez felt out of his element. The only sound came from a very small TV that ran CNN.A black rubber mat, with a wire running to the wall, fronted the workbench.
    Randy McClaren had blown off the last three fingers of his left hand as a teenager in the IRA, and yet he was able to work his thumb and index finger so that he typed with dexterity. He did not look up. He