Free Parallel Lies by Ridley Pearson Page B

spoke with a thick brogue. “Wanking Internet, I’m telling you. God’s good and gracious gift to his Christian Soldiers. Pass information in an instant, trade stocks, check the bank, and no fucking FBI listening in.” He turned and faced his guest, his freckles and carrottop hair making him look younger than his thirty years. But the coldness in his vivid green eyes left little doubt that he’d seen many horrors.
    “The FBI will be listening in one of these days,” Alvarez warned.
    McClaren typed the last few characters and clicked the mouse. “You’re new, so I’ll tell you this, but only once. You checked out or you wouldn’t be here. Doesn’t matter, mate:don’t
ever
come here, don’t
ever
attempt to make contact with me without calling your friend. I’ll kill you if you do.”
    “I’m prepared to make payment,” Alvarez said, his throat dry. He was intimidated, even afraid. He had no idea what was in this room, but he had a feeling it was a powder keg.
    “Was just checking the accounts.” McClaren nodded toward the computer. “Have a seat.”
    “Are we all set then?” Alvarez inquired.
    McClaren indicated a small gray box. He handed it to Alvarez, who nearly dropped it.
    McClaren nodded. “Nervous?”
    “Uncomfortable,” Alvarez admitted. “Explosives are new to me.”
    “Mine are safe. Nothing to worry about.”
    Nonetheless, Alvarez felt no safer. This wasn’t his world. He’d been a science teacher, a father. Bomb makers? He wanted out of there.
    McClaren stood and indicated his seat. Alvarez sat down, spent a minute at the keyboard, and electronically transferred the remainder of the money due.
    “We wait for the e-mail,” McClaren said. Confirmation could take anywhere from five minutes to an hour or more. He glanced down at his socks. He wanted his boots back.
    Alvarez studied the small polished aluminum box. It was about the size of a cigarette pack. “It’s enough explosive to break that steel pin I described?” Alvarez questioned. This was the only time his plans included explosives.
    “The pin you described is most commonly used in high-speed train couplers, ehh, Laddie? Not bank-vault hinge pins, as you wanted me to believe.” His information stunned Alvarez: he had figured out the purpose of the explosive. McClaren warned, “If they catch you, they’ll ask you where you got it, and I could care less what you tell them as longas I’m not mentioned. If I am mentioned, Laddie, a box this same size will be shoved up your ass and detonated.”
    The e-mail notification chime rang on the computer. McClaren leaned over the keyboard and liked what he saw.
    Alvarez slipped the box into his front pocket. McClaren caught this out of the corner of his eye. “You be careful of those switches. First the toggle, then five seconds, then the button. You’ll have ten minutes exactly, from the time you push the button. You can’t stop it. And if that magnetic connection is broken, she’ll blow as well.”
    “Got it,” Alvarez declared.
    “Get out of here.”
    Alvarez wanted his boots back. He wanted away from there. McClaren would take his own head off someday—a bad wire, a missed switch.
    Ten minutes later he was walking the streets of New York, a box of undetectable explosives in his pocket. He had work to do on the computer board he was assembling, and he needed the final details of the bullet train test run. He intended one last derailment as a diversion before the bullet train. There was much to do.
    If he threw those two switches, the box in his pocket would blow, taking his own life, along with a couple dozen pedestrians.
    New York. What a city.

CHAPTER 8
    Riding a bicycle uptown on Madison Avenue in December, Alvarez both sweated and shivered as he kept his eye on the cell phone antenna on the black Town Car he was following. He pedaled hard at times, managing to stay within a half block of the car, grateful for New York’s bumper-to-bumper evening traffic. The fact that