13
NEW YORK
Chalcott is sitting in a business-class seat on the tarmac at JFK, sipping a glass of complimentary champagne. He’s not a happy flyer; hates the rigmarole of security screening, boarding queues and pre-flight safety demonstrations. The only benefit of flying long haul is being forty thousand feet above sea level and out of communication.
Not yet. His mobile is vibrating. London.
“Talk quickly,” he tells Sobel.
“They found North’s car.”
“What about North?”
“Traces of blood but no body.”
“You think he’s dead?”
“We have to consider the possibility.”
Chalcott scoops peanuts into his fist and inhales them between sentences. A stewardess leans over him.
“Excuse me, sir, but all electronic devices must be turned off for take-off.”
Chalcott waves her away. “What about Terracini?”
“He’s being monitored.”
“Has anything else changed?”
“We’re still looking for the girl.”
“Are you a religious man, Brendan?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Maybe you should say a prayer.”
He hangs up. Turns off his phone. Closes his eyes. In seven hours he’ll be in London and he can sort out this mess. So far he’s given his superiors a minimalist rendering of the situation. Two lessons he’s learned from twenty years with the Agency—refuse to recognize anything is amiss and keep your answers short.
Ibrahim is cleaning up. He’s hired himself an assassin, but this hasn’t changed the game. Every side has men who kill for a cause, but it’s easier dealing with a hired gun than a teenager with a hard-on for heavenly virgins and a vest packed full of explosives.
Money or God—some motives are easier to understand.
14
LONDON
The Financial Herald has floor-to-ceiling glass doors and a marbled lobby fringed with indoor gardens. A lone security guard sits behind a brightly lit island counter. Gooding waves his ID card in front of a scanner and signs Luca into the register before handing him a visitor’s pass.
A lift rises above the foyer until the security guard is only a bald spot five floors below. Gooding scans his ID again to enter the newsroom. Lights trigger as they weave between cluttered desks and colored partitions that are pinned with newspaper clippings, cartoons and calendars. At the far end of the newsroom a subs desk is pooled in light and half a dozen men sit behind oversized computer screens. Most have hunched shoulders, midnight tans and the tics and twitches of ex-smokers.
Nearby the night news editor is poring over copies of the first editions, seeing what stories their rivals are running. What did they miss? Who scooped whom? It’s too late now to make any major changes. Only a big breaking event would warrant stopping the presses and dropping in a new front page.
Luca’s father had been a sub-editor on a paper in Chicago back in the hot-metal days when the printing presses would shake the entire building like a distant earthquake. Every line of type was cast in molten metal—an alloy of lead, antimony and tin—before being wedged into metal galleys on stone tables.
Luca was seven years old when he was first taken down on to “the stone.” The setters were rough-looking men in ink-stained overalls with paper hats folded from newsprint. His father would lean over the galleys, subbing the raised lead type, reading stories back to front and upside down faster than most people read normally. He cut paragraphs, trimmed sentences, added fillers and corrected mistakes.
New technology put paid to the setters and linotype machines. Now it is all done by computers in sterile, temperature-controlled rooms without the screaming machines and clanking metal.
Gooding’s desk is protected by partitions that block everything except the view from his window across the rooftops. Luca had pressed him for access to the newspaper’s archives and library. Initially, Gooding had hesitated, which puzzled Luca. Something about the journalist’s lugubrious face had registered too little when they were talking about the missing banker. Daniela had been awake to the deficit, catching the subtle change in Gooding’s tone.
“He’s not telling you everything,” she whispered to Luca as he hailed her a cab. “Be careful.” Then she had peppered his face with kisses. “I think I’m in love with you.”
“I wouldn’t recommend that.”
“Why?”
“I’m a fully paid-up pessimist.”
“I thought journalists were supposed to be idealists.”
“We start off as idealists and then we become pragmatists and finally pessimists. You can join the club. We have vacancies.”
She had laughed and he closed the cab door, giving directions to the driver.
Sitting at the computer screen, Luca waits for Gooding to type in a password.
“So where did you and Daniela meet?”
“At a hotel in Baghdad.”
“What were the first words you said to her?”
“Why?”
“I’m interested in first words. I collect them. If you remember the first words I figure you must think someone is special.”
“What were the first words you said to Lucy?”
“Pass the salt.”
Gooding laughs drunkenly, his eyes shining. Then he taps the keyboard lightly with his fingertips. A password. The archive opens. He steps back and lets Luca put in the parameters of the search, looking for links between Mersey Fidelity and Iraq. The screen refreshes. The first article is from The Economist: fifteen foreign banks had applied for a license to operate in Iraq since the relaxing of the banking laws in 2004. Five licenses had been granted—one of them to Mersey Fidelity—but none of the banks had opened local branches.
Next he searches for articles on Mohammed Ibrahim. There is a reference to his arrest in 2003, just prior to the capture of Saddam Hussein, but no mention of his accidental release from Abu Ghraib. Luca finds a black-and-white photograph taken at a military parade in Baghdad in the mid-nineties. There are three men in military uniform standing behind Saddam Hussein. The caption indicates the man on the far right is Ibrahim. He has a round face, the ubiquitous moustache and is wearing a beret at a jaunty angle.
The photo library has a dozen pictures of Yahya Maluk taken at society events: a polo tournament at Cowdray Park, a fundraiser for Great Ormond Street Hospital, the Opera at Covent Garden. Luca prints out one of the images and calls up information on Richard North, reading the various accounts of his disappearance and looking at a vodcast of a media statement made by his wife.
North’s career trajectory had been a steep curve—from public school and a third-class degree, to marrying the chairman’s daughter and heading the compliance department at Mersey Fidelity.
A new window opens on screen, headed, “News Alert.” A breaking story from Associated Press:
The search for missing banker Richard North took a new twist last night when his car was discovered in the River Lea in Hackney, East London. Police were last night examining the BMW for clues to the banker’s whereabouts. Police divers are expected to search the river at first light.
Luca looks up from the screen. Keith Gooding is dozing with his feet on the desk and his chair tilted back. Luca throws a balled-up piece of paper.
“What?”
“They just pulled Richard North’s car out of the river.”
A nerve twitches in Gooding’s jaw and something passes across his eyes that Luca can’t read. It’s the same reaction he saw at the wine bar. Gooding leans back in his chair and stares vexedly at the ceiling.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
Gooding contemplates a lie. Something sways him.
“About a month ago I called Richard North. I thought he might be a source for the book but he said he wasn’t interested. Then out of the blue, nine days ago I got a call from him. It was a Friday afternoon. He was in North London. Upset. Rambling. Saying we had to
meet. I was in the middle of the afternoon news conference. We were putting the pages together for Saturday’s edition. I told him that I’d call him back, but he said it wasn’t safe to use his mobile and he wouldn’t come to the office.
“I gave him the name of a bar in Kensington High Street and told him that I’d try to meet him there by ten. I couldn’t make any promises. We were doing a special report on the last US combat troops being pulled out of Iraq.”
“Did you go to the bar?”
Gooding shakes his head. “I didn’t get away from the office until midnight. I had no way of contacting him. I figured he’d call me back. I didn’t think… you know. I phoned his office the following Monday, but he hadn’t shown up. Then his wife reported him missing.”
Gooding falls silent, glancing at Luca from the corner of his eye. Each time he blinks his eyelashes rest for an instant on his cheeks.
“Did you call the police?” asks Luca.
“What would I tell them?”
“What about his wife?”
“I left a message on her answering machine. She’s the daughter of the former chairman, Alistair Bach. Nobody can get close to her.”
“You didn’t want to get involved?”
“That’s unfair.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry.”
Luca tries to think it through. Richard North’s job was to investigate suspicious transactions and approve new accounts at Mersey Fidelity. If the bank was involved in laundering illegal funds, he should have known about it.
“We need someone at the bank who’ll talk.”
“Good luck with that.”
“North must have had a secretary.”
“Why would she speak to us?”
“Her boss is missing. His car has just been found. She’ll be worried or scared or angry. It can go a lot of different ways.”
“I’ll get you a name and address.”
15
LONDON
The only access to this stretch of the river is via a strip of waste ground behind a row of factories that are crumbling from neglect. The padlocked gates have been opened and two police cars block the entrance.
“Jesus wept,” says Campbell Smith as TV cameras and photographers surround his car. Questions are shouted through the closed windows. Bodies are jostled aside. Bleached of color by the bright lights, Campbell’s face looks like a white balloon bobbing on his shoulders, ready to drift loose and float into the night.
“Who leaked this?” he barks. “I want to know. And get someone down here from the media unit.”
White spots float behind Ruiz’s closed lids as he shields his face from the flashguns. The car pulls up next to an old railway line, the silver ribbons disappearing into the darkness.
Above the factories and warehouses, the Olympic stadium is a white exoskeleton rising in concentric circles like a giant spaceship descending from the night sky. The River Lea ripples in the breeze, black as ink in the shadows. Spotlights have been set up on gantries and a portable generator provides a droning soundtrack. The only other noise comes from a news chopper flying above them, aiming a spotlight on to a floating dredger moored in the center of the river.
“I want them out of here!” bellows Campbell. “This is a fucking crime scene, not a reality show.”
A security guard is waiting on the edge of the light. Dressed in heavy boots, Levi’s and a company shirt, he stands with his legs spread like a man who enjoys being the center of attention. A tattooed serpent curls along his forearm and around his wrist.
“Dredger came through today,” he tells Campbell. “I thought the car was going to be an old wreck, until they lifted it out of the water. Looks like a brand-new Beemer. Fucked now.
“You can see the tire tracks across the way,” he motions to the far bank. “The fence is down. Tree fell on it. Council never bothered sending out a work crew.”
“Jesus, what’s that smell?” asks Campbell, wadding his handkerchief and holding it over his nose.
“The Deepham Sewage Works is north of here,” says the security guard. “Pumps out a quarter of a million cubic meters of treated sewage every day.”
“Is that why they’re dredging?” asks Ruiz.
“That’s the theory. This whole area is being done up for the Olympics. Dredging the river, re-vegetation, new towpaths… They don’t want any of them IOC dignitaries coming here and having to smell London’s shit.”
Two police divers are standing on the deck of the dredger, peering into the water. Neither looks keen to get wet. They’ll wait till morning when the sediment has settled.
Gerard Noonan is already at work lifting aluminum boxes from the van. “Whatever happened to Sunday being a day of rest?” he says.
“I didn’t take you for a religious man,” says Ruiz.
“Oh, yeah, I do my praying on my sofa watching Match of the Day.”
“Who are you praying for?”
“Birmingham City.”
“And you still think there’s a God?”
The BMW is on the towpath. The roof crushed. Mud on the wheels and bumpers, a fine layer of silt covering the bodywork. Ruiz follows Noonan. Leaning through an open car door, he notices the keys in the ignition and the automatic shift in drive. The windows were left open so that it would sink more quickly.
Something moves near his knee. He leaps backwards and lets out an expletive. Noonan reaches into the car and pulls out an eel that twists and squirms in his hands, black as sump oil.
“Didn’t you ever catch eels as a kid?”
“When I was a kid they came in jelly with mashed potato.”
The eel splashes into the river, leaving no trace on the surface.
Campbell has finished talking to the security guard. “What have you got?” he asks Noonan.
“Traces of blood in the boot—enough to be worried.”
Ruiz walks along the tracks until he reaches an overhead bridge. Crossing the river, he follows a cyclone fence separating a freight yard from the water. The muddy hinterland is littered with drums, broken palettes, dumped tires and a crippled shopping trolley. Bits of broken glass glint in the dirt.
A black woman is watching him from the doorway of a flat-fronted terrace, one of the few left in the street. This area of London was hit hard during the Blitz and bombed terraces were like broken teeth, filled with something concrete and ugly.
Ruiz wishes her good evening.
“When are they gonna turn off them generators?” she demands.
“I can’t tell you that,” he replies.
“I know what they found. I saw it go in there.”
The woman is in her fifties, with a pink dressing gown cinched tight around her waist. Hair trapped in a net.
“What’s your name, ma’am?”
“Mrs. Abigail Westin.”
“What did you see, Mrs. Westin?”
“I saw them fellas push a car into the river.”
“What did they look like?”
“Pakis or Indians—can’t tell the difference, me.”
“When was this?”
“Early hours. I don’t sleep so good, me. I was in the bathroom. I heard them boys arguing. One of them was saying how it was such a waste, ditching a motor like that. Like he wanted to keep it.”
“How many voices?”
“Two.”
“Would you recognize them again?”
“Their voices maybe. I didn’t get such a good look at their faces.”
Ruiz tells Mrs. Westin that the police will want to interview her and wishes her good night.
“It’ll be a good night when I can sleep till dawn,” she says, switching off the outside light.
Ruiz turns back to the river where the BMW is a broken silhouette against the spotlights, like a sea monster dragged from the depths in a fisherman’s net. A flat-bed truck has arrived to take it away to a police impound. The driver is slinging cables beneath the chassis.
Retracing his steps across the bridge, Ruiz pa
sses on the information to Campbell and asks if he can go now.
“That thing we talked about earlier. Do you think they followed me out here?”
The commander glances at the gates. “They’re like shit on your shoes.”
The BMW has been winched on to the truck. The driver has grey mutton-chop sideburns and hair growing from his nostrils.
“I need a ride,” says Ruiz.
“Do I know you?”
“I used to be on the job. Vincent Ruiz.”
“Thought you looked familiar.” He waves a clipboard. “Climb on board.”
Minutes later, the truck is rocking over the railway lines, springs groaning. At the main gate Ruiz slides sideways on the seat, below the level of the dashboard.
“Who you trying to avoid?”
“I’m just camera shy.”
They travel in silence for another mile.
“I remember you,” says the driver.
“Have we met?”
“Name’s Dave,” he takes one hand off the wheel to shake. “My wife’s younger brother used to be a boxer, beautiful to watch, fists like bricks. He detached a retina just before the Sydney Olympics. Crying shame. Got a job as a bouncer in Acton. One night he threw a drunk out. The guy came back with a gun and tried to shoot my brother-in-law but he shot a girl instead. Innocent bystander. Almost killed her. Remember the case?”
Ruiz nods.
“Anyway, this girl gets out of hospital and decides to sue the nightclub and sue my brother-in-law. You sorted that out for us. Made her see sense. I appreciate that.”
“How is your wife?” asks Ruiz.
“She left me for a dog breeder.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I got a Pekingese in the divorce settlement.”
Fifteen minutes later the truck drops him at West Ham Station and Ruiz catches a tube to Earls Court. He goes to a twenty-four-hour convenience store and buys a toothbrush, toothpaste and mouthwash. He passes a nightclub. A drunken girl dances on the pavement clutching a miniature bottle of champagne. She’s wearing a tiny black dress and high heels, impervious to the cold or the hungry stares of passing men.
The Wreckage: A Thriller Page 33
