Ruiz’s life doesn’t flash before his eyes in a conventional or chronological sense. Events run backwards like in that movie where Brad Pitt is born as an old man and grows younger every year. All of Ruiz’s accumulated knowledge is disappearing, along with his anger and weariness. Things are being unlearned. Discoveries are being undiscovered. Painful memories are being wiped clean.
Eventually all his grey hairs and fine lines are filled in and he’s a young man again, dancing with Laura at the twilight ball in Hertfordshire. The clock keeps rolling backwards. Soon she’ll be a stranger, who could pass him on the street with no recollection of the life they’re going to share or the children they are going to raise, but for the moment they keep dancing.
These are his final conscious thoughts before the pressure wave of the explosion buckles the door of the container and blows him backwards, slamming his head against the far wall. His eardrums are bleeding. He cannot hear the paramedics shouting for bandages and plasma, or feel the needle sliding into his arm or the mask covering his face.
Someone is getting blankets to keep him warm.
“Any head injuries?”
“That’s negative. Christ, look at his hands!”
“You look after the girl.”
Ruiz can’t feel anything; instead he’s floating on a cloud of opiates, still imagining himself as a young man, spinning Laura across the dance floor, her head beneath his chin, her soft hair against his lips.
“Ready?”
“Yeah.”
“One, two, three.”
“Watch the IV lines. Watch the IV lines.”
“I got it.”
“Bag a couple of times.”
“OK.”
Laura smiles at him. She’s standing near the entrance, waiting for the buses to take guests back to London. She points and summons him with her finger. Ruiz looks over his shoulder to make sure.
“What’s your name?”
“Vincent.”
“I’m Laura. This is my phone number. If you don’t call me within two days, Vincent, you lose your chance. I’m a good girl. I don’t sleep with men on the first date or the second or the third. You have to woo me, but I’m worth the effort.”
Then she kisses him on the cheek and she’s gone.
36
LONDON
Awake now. Eyelids fluttering. Ruiz turns his head. Orange dials come into focus on a machine near the bed and a green blip of light slides across a liquid crystal window.
A nurse says something to him. She’s mouthing words.
“I need to make a call,” says Ruiz.
She shakes her head.
“If I don’t call Laura she won’t go out with me.”
The nurse mouths a question. “Who’s Laura?”
She presses the button above his head. “We were very worried about you.”
“Sorry?”
“Your hands. They’re going to be fine,” she says, still mouthing words.
Ruiz notices the bandages. They look like white stumps.
He points to his ears. “I can’t hear you. What’s wrong with me?”
“Ruptured eardrums,” she mouths. “You may need surgery.”
“Holly?”
The nurse laughs. “I thought you wanted Laura. Holly is down the way.”
“What?”
“Holly is OK. She’s fine.”
Ruiz tries to get out of bed, but the nurse puts a strong hand on his chest, digging her knuckles into his breastbone.
“They warned me about you. Said you’d be a difficult patient.”
He doesn’t understand.
“Your friends.” She straightens his pillow. “They’ve been waiting outside all night.”
“Luca?”
“Oh, he’s here. They pulled a bullet out of his shoulder, but he’s out of surgery.”
Ruiz shakes his head, not understanding.
The nurse uses a pad on the bedside table and writes:
He’s fine. Bullet removed. Recuperating.
The door opens. Joe O’Loughlin is wearing a cravat and looks even more like a professor than usual. He stands beside the bed and the two men communicate wordlessly in a language that only dogs and men can understand. He takes the notepad from the nurse, who tells them both to behave as she leaves.
Joe writes: You can’t hear. I can’t speak. We’re like two of the wise monkeys.
“You’re a monkey. I’m a gorilla,” says Ruiz, shouting at him. “I want to see Holly.”
Joe writes: Can you walk?
“Yeah.”
Joe helps Ruiz to sit and then stand. He’s wearing a hospital gown with ties at the back. Ruiz can’t hold it together with his bandaged hands, so Joe does it for him, clearly not enamored of the task.
“I could get used to you not talking,” says Ruiz, as they shuffle down the corridor. Joe pinches him on the arse, making him jump.
They reach Holly’s room, which is full of flowers and get-well cards. Holly is sitting on the edge of her bed while a doctor peers into her ears with a torch-like contraption. She’s chewing gum. Looking bored. There are marks on her wrists where the handcuffs tore at her skin.
“How come you get proper pajamas?” says Ruiz. “Your legs are better than mine—you should be wearing a gown.”
Her face lights up and she’s on him in a heartbeat, throwing her arms around his shoulders, her legs around his hips.
“This is the not the way a young lady should greet a man of my age and in my condition.”
He doesn’t hear what Holly says. Maybe she says nothing at all.
37
LONDON
Throughout Monday, Luca sits in the High Court listening to opposing lawyers make grand speeches about press freedom and commercial confidentiality. It has been almost a week since the thwarted terrorist attack and two days since he left hospital with his arm in a sling and the bullet in a small glass jar that is nestled in his pocket. A souvenir. Proof that he doesn’t always sit on the sidelines.
The Financial Herald is trying to overturn the High Court injunction preventing publication. Mersey Fidelity’s lawyers are doing verbal and linguistic somersaults as they argue that commercial privacy should outweigh public interest. The judge is not having a bar of it. The lawyers lodge an immediate appeal. He dismisses it. Luca steps from the court and calls Daniela with the news.
“We’re going to celebrate.”
“You’re not supposed to be drinking.”
“I’m going to watch you get drunk and then take advantage of you.”
“But you’re an invalid.”
“We’re not going to arm wrestle.”
Daniela laughs and it sounds like music. Luca ends the call and steps outside, looking for a cab. He has a story to write, but there are still questions to be answered. Dialing a new number, he listens to the call being rerouted through different internet servers until Luca’s new best friend answers.
“Capable?”
“Mr. Terracini.”
“Call me Luca.”
“Thank you, Mr. Terracini.”
“Any news?”
“They’re on the move. A van arrived this morning.”
The address in Cartwright Street is an old bank building with an ornate iron door and arched entrance. A removal van is parked in the narrow side alley in front of two identical black Pathfinders. What a world these people live in, thinks Luca, as he pays the cab driver. Taking a table across the road, he nurses a coffee and watches boxes and computers being loaded into the van.
Another Pathfinder shows up, this one disgorging a set of beefy passengers in suits and dark glasses. One of the occupants he recognizes. Older. Grey-haired. Giving orders.
Luca waits until he disappears inside. He pays for his coffee and crosses the street, following a removal man into the lift and rising through the floors. The doors open. Boxes are stacked in the corridors. A shredding machine lets out a long whine. Industrialsized. Worm-like mounds of confetti are spilling
from plastic sacks.
Soft footsteps. Somebody yells at him to stop. He is gripped from behind and pushed into an office where Artie Chalcott and Brendan Sobel are deep in conversation.
Chalcott looks up. His face reddens. Luca notices that his eyes are very small. Perhaps they are the standard size and his head is overly large. Maybe they shrink when he’s angry.
“You got a nerve, coming here.”
“I just want to ask you a few questions.”
“Get him out of here.”
“We’re publishing tomorrow,” says Luca. “I’m giving you a chance to comment on the story.”
“No comment.”
Brendan Sobel is walking Luca towards the lift. The journalist yells over his shoulder. “You can’t cover this one up. You can’t shred it or bury it. It’s going to come out.”
Chalcott laughs. “You really think you can make this one fly—some fatuous conspiracy theory about Iraqi robberies and a British bank? A week from now nobody is going to care.”
“You will.”
“No, that’s where you’re wrong. I’ll have moved on.”
Luca fights at Sobel’s arms. “I’m giving you a chance to explain.”
“Patriots don’t have to explain. It’s pacifists and apologists like you who need to justify what you do.”
“I took a bullet.”
“And you’ve cost the lives of countless people.”
Chalcott is angry now. On his feet, storming down the corridor. For a moment Luca expects a punch.
“You think you’re a fucking hero, Mr. Terracini? You think you’re the people’s champion? I hope you have nightmares about what you’ve done… the deaths you’re going to cause.”
“What deaths? What are you talking about?”
“Why do you think Mohammed Ibrahim was released from prison? Why do you think we let him re-establish the network of accounts?”
Luca’s gaze falters and his self-possession deserts him for a moment. “What are you talking about?”
Chalcott finds the question amusing. “How did you begin investigating this story?”
“I followed the money.”
“Exactly.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“My job is to stop the bad shit before it happens—to catch the mad mullahs and the bomb makers and locate their training camps. Smash the fuckers. Bring them to their knees. But we can’t defeat these people militarily. And we can’t bomb them back to the Dark Ages because they live in caves already. But they’re not cavemen. They’re cleverer than that. They use our own systems against us. Our technology. Our markets. Our banks.
“People make the mistake of thinking this is an ideological battle. It’s not about religion or faith, it’s about power. It’s about politics. It’s about control. We set this up, Mr. Terracini. I set this up. Mersey Fidelity has been breaking the law for years, laundering money through ghost accounts. All I did was introduce a new client.”
“Ibrahim.”
“And then I followed the money—just like you. Ironic, isn’t it? But while you were looking for a headline, I was looking for terror cells and training camps and secret hideouts.”
The last statement is spat out like he’s swallowed an insect.
“Where is Mohammed Ibrahim?” asks Luca.
“We’ve taken his toys away. He’s out of the race.”
“They were going to blow up a nightclub.”
Chalcott waves his hand dismissively. “A few dozen lives to save thousands.”
“You think the end justifies the means.”
“I think it should be a factor.”
“Who chooses?”
“Pardon?”
“Who makes that choice?”
“People like me. Because people like you don’t have the stomach for it.”
Chalcott signals to Sobel and the lift doors slide open.
“Enjoy your fifteen minutes, Mr. Terracini. I hope it was worth it.”
38
LONDON
It has been six weeks since Ruiz left hospital. His hands have healed, adding to his scars, and his hearing is almost fully returned, apart from a persistent buzzing in his ears that sounds like a bee trapped behind glass. It’s no more annoying than his second wife, he tells people, not entirely joking.
The story about Mersey Fidelity is almost old news but Luca Terracini is still bathing in the glory—he’s been profiled in the Sunday supplements and interviewed on morning TV. He and Daniela were photographed on a weekend break in Paris—the globetrotting foreign correspondent and the glamorous US auditor who uncovered the biggest financial scandal since the meltdown.
Ruiz stayed out of the spotlight, barely mentioned in reports of the terrorist blast that closed the M1 for twelve hours on 1 September. Two of the bombers died when cornered by officers from the anti-terrorism branch. A third, Taj Iqbal, unemployed of Luton, is in Belmarsh Prison, London, awaiting trial. The Daily Mail published a photograph of his wife and baby son arriving at the prison. She wore a Muslim veil and didn’t talk to reporters. Something in her eyes reminded Ruiz of the moment he first met Elizabeth North, her emotions held in check, defenses raised, a child to protect.
Elizabeth has visited him three times, once in hospital and twice at home. She brings Rowan and Claudia and soon his living room is covered with toys and tinkling with the sound of children’s TV shows.
“Mitchell jumped before he was pushed,” she says. “There’s been a boardroom reshuffle and half the directors have gone.”
“Any news of Maluk?”
“They think he’s in Syria or Egypt.”
Elizabeth unbuttons her blouse to feed Claudia, her breast swollen and pale, lined with the faintest of blue veins. Ruiz looks at the feeding infant, her tiny mouth pressed hard against the nipple, eyes closed in concentration.
“What about the bank?” he asks.
“I had a man come to see me: Douglas Evans.”
“I’ve met him.”
“Doesn’t he remind you of someone out of a le Carré novel?” Elizabeth does his accent. “Confidence is the key. As much as I would like to see those responsible punished for this abomination. Publicly flogged. Humiliated. There are greater issues to consider. Three years ago our banking system suffered a heart attack. It has been on life support ever since. Nobody wants to turn off that life support system.”
Elizabeth laughs and Rowan looks up from the floor. “What’s so funny, Mummy?”
“People who talk with posh accents,” she says, smiling at him and continuing. “They say they’re going to prosecute executives, but nobody has been charged. Mitchell has hired a QC. We haven’t spoken. He’s cut himself off from the family.”
“I’m sorry.”
Elizabeth starts cleaning up the mess, putting lids on Tupperware containers and packing her changing bag. “That girl—the one who went home with North.”
“Holly Knight?”
“How is she?”
“She’s good. She got a call back for a play and she’s looking for part-time work.”
Elizabeth nods. “If you see her…” She hesitates. “Tell her I don’t blame her for anything and I’m sorry about what happened.”
“If you hang around she’ll be home soon.”
“She’s staying here?”
“Yes.”
“Are you two…?”
“Christ no, but I need a lock on my bedroom door.”
Elizabeth shakes her head. Her pram is packed and Claudia strapped inside. Rowan rides on a platform at the back, standing between the handles. They’re going to walk over Hammersmith Bridge and along the river to Barnes.
Pausing at the front gate, she turns. “About Holly,” she says. “Is she any good with children?”
After she’s gone, Ruiz tidies the sitting room, sweeping up crumbs and straightening pillows. Among the “get well” cards on the mantelpiece he comes across one from Capable Jones. Unsigned. Capable is paranoid about people forging hi
s signature. The message is typed and printed, wishing him a speedy recovery, with a postscript tacked on to the end:
That nanny you wanted to find. Do you still want her address?
Ruiz puts on his jacket and goes out, walking the river path where autumn is decorating the trees before winter strips them bare. He doesn’t have the Mercedes anymore and will do without a car for a while. He doesn’t need one in London, where every business seems to deliver, even the off licenses.
Polina Dulsanya lives on the fourth floor of a block of flats in Fulham, just off the high street. Ruiz climbs the stairs slowly, his body still depleted. Knocks on the door.
A woman answers, barely out of her teens, with a gymnast’s body and dark bobbed hair. She’s wearing jeans and a short T-shirt that barely covers her torso. Flesh is the new season’s color.
“Can I help you?” she asks with a confused smile, pronouncing the English words perfectly. She sounds Russian or maybe Polish.
“Can I come in?”
“Why?”
“I want to talk to you about Richard North.”
“Vincent, how did you get through the gates?”
“Your wife let me in.”
Alistair Bach shakes his head. “Sometimes I wonder why I installed a security system. People buzz and Jacinta just opens the gate. She’s far too trusting.”
He’s pruning rose bushes at the rear of the property, where the northern sun hits the stone wall and reflects the heat back on to the flowerbeds.
“It was your bank.”
“Pardon?”
“Mersey Fidelity—you built it.”
“Oh, I can’t take all the credit.”
“And it was your scheme. You set up the ghost accounts and recruited Richard North to carry on your work.”
Bach’s shoulders tighten beneath his cotton shirt. For a moment Ruiz braces for a confrontation, but the older man gazes at the secateurs in his hand and seems to reach a different decision.
The Wreckage: A Thriller Page 42
