The Rhythm Section--A Stephanie Patrick Thriller

by Mark Burnell

  A voice called out to her. ‘Close the door, then turn left and come down to the end.’

  The drawing-room windows offered a stunning view of Central Park, which was the only stylish thing she could see. Parquet flooring, white leather sofas, Picassos on the wall and gold everywhere; the room was reverential, a monument to tastelessness.

  Leon Giler was wearing a plain white shirt. He’d removed his tie and rolled up his sleeves, revealing powerful forearms carpeted with thick black hair. He held a tumbler in his left hand, ice cubes clinking in amber liquid, his Cartier watch clinking against a chunky gold bracelet.

  ‘I’m Eva,’ Petra said.

  ‘Where the fuck’s Madeleine?’

  ‘She’s got the flu.’

  ‘The woman at Premier never said anything about that.’

  ‘She didn’t know until she called Madeleine. Then Madeleine called me.’

  ‘You a friend of hers?’

  ‘We help each other out from time to time.’

  ‘What kind of fucking accent is that?’

  Good question, thought Petra. ‘Swedish.’

  He raised both eyebrows and Petra knew that she was right, that she could list the tedious preconceptions in his mind. ‘So you’re Swedish, huh?’

  She nodded. Giler’s eyes scraped over her and then he sniffed dismissively.

  ‘Is there a problem?’ Petra asked.

  ‘Yeah, there’s a fucking problem.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Forty fucking inches. That’s what. You’re not forty inches. No fucking way. You’re what? Thirty-six max, right?’

  Petra was unfazed. ‘At least they’re natural.’

  Giler seemed neither amused nor impressed. ‘I told her—the woman at Premier—that I wanted forty inches minimum. Forty inches, blonde and good with her mouth.’

  Feeling dead inside, Petra tried to look flirtatious. ‘Well, two out of three ain’t bad. But maybe you don’t want me. Perhaps I should leave.’

  Giler took a long sip from his glass while he thought about it. ‘I don’t know. Do you do all the same stuff that Madeleine does?’

  ‘We don’t compare lists. Like what?’

  ‘I get to fuck her any way I want. And she lets me slap her around some.’

  Not an unusual request, in Stephanie’s experience, Petra recalled. Especially among businessmen who spent all day surrounded by suits in sterile offices. It wasn’t enough to order people around via memoranda. To feel truly powerful, they had to be abusive to someone and what better way was there than by humiliating them physically? Yet it amazed Petra that these people never understood that they were the ones who were humiliated. They never behaved in the same way with the people who really mattered in their lives. They didn’t treat their porcelain wives like that, only anonymous professionals who were paid to squeal when slapped but who felt nothing.

  ‘You got a problem with that?’ Giler asked.

  Say what you like, you’ll be dead in five minutes. She smiled. ‘No, I don’t have a problem with that.’

  ‘Then let me see what you got.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Yeah, of course here. What, there ain’t enough fucking room for you?’

  The rough talk was predictable. Too much time spent in the company of CEOs and on the boards of charitable foundations had left Giler with a surplus of frustration in need of release. This was his way. Petra was familiar with it. The coarse language and general aggression were a precursor to the pinches and slaps that were themselves a precursor to the clenched fist.

  ‘I need to go to the bathroom first.’

  ‘You can go later.’

  Petra tensed. ‘I need to go now.’

  Giler scowled at her and then grumbled, ‘Down the hall, turn left, go through the octagonal room and it’s the second door on the right.’

  His minor capitulation proved what she already knew. She was in charge. Men like Giler never saw that, which was just as well for women like her.

  She locked herself into the bathroom and shrugged off the black ankle-length overcoat. She emptied the contents of the handbag on to the inevitable slab of marble into which the basins were sunk. Her fingers found the tag at the bottom and lifted the black panel to reveal a small hidden compartment. It wasn’t large enough to conceal a gun but it was large enough for a double-edged blade and a stainless steel handle. She fastened the two pieces of metal together and checked they were secure. Then she replaced the panel and all the contents of the bag except for the canister, which she inserted into the inhaler. It was an ingenious piece of invention by Magenta House. The canister could be loaded with any gas or spray, turning the life-saving device into a weapon that could be taken through any conventional security check.

  Petra then stripped naked before stepping back into her high heels and pulling on the overcoat. She slipped the knife into the right pocket. The blade sliced through the lining but the metal guard kept the handle in the pocket itself. The inhaler went into her left pocket.

  It was going to be easy, she told herself. A man like Giler would probably enjoy the sight of her entering the room in nothing but high heels and an open overcoat. He’d like the glimpses of flesh beneath the material as she moved. And this would distract him until she was close enough to ensure she could fire the CS gas out of the inhaler and into his face. Blinded and gasping, he’d be vulnerable to the blows that would send him helpless to the floor. At that point, Petra would take out the knife, kick off her shoes and shed the coat. When the work was bloody, it was an advantage to be naked; she’d need the coat when she left the building so she didn’t want it stained. The first cut would be to the throat, taken from behind Giler, her left arm securing the head while her right went to work with the blade. She’d remember to cut deeply, as Boyd had shown her, drawing her arm away, being sure to sever the wind-pipe and the vocal cords. The second cut, which would merely quicken his death, would start in the upper thigh and go up through the groin and into the hip flexor, severing the femoral artery. Once he was dead, Petra would find a shower and clean the blood from her skin, before getting dressed and walking out.

  * * *

  I walk down the corridor and I am aware of the air on my naked skin. My hands are in my coat pockets. The left one feels the inhaler, the right one clutches the steel handle of the knife. The cross-hatch grip is coarse against my palm. I walk into the octagonal room that I have to pass through but I stop. I look around and see myself reflected in the darkened mirrors that form the walls. From the side, from the back, from the front, I see how extraordinary I look: overcoat, high heels, skin. I am a prostitute again, back where I started. It doesn’t feel that peculiar to me which upsets me. And then something snaps inside me. The pretence ends.

  Since I agreed to kill Giler, the question has been gnawing away at me: can I really see it through? I have ignored it. My training has prepared me for this and I have somehow convinced myself that this act is a necessary evil that will permit me to move forwards in my quest for justice. What incredible nonsense. I look at my reflected identical sisters and I see the lie in every one of them. Proctor was a brave man who paid for his bravery with his life but I know that he would never have paid this price for justice. Repellent as Giler is, I cannot kill him in order to find out who killed my family. This isn’t my world. It belongs to somebody else.

  The thing that truly astonishes me is that I’ve come this far. Here I am, naked in New York, ready to gut my victim like a fish. Why didn’t I stop this at the start? Some part of me must have known all along that I wouldn’t be able to do this. Brazil was different. Ferreira was self-defence. Marin was not self-defence, but he was certainly ‘heat of the moment’. Did I ever seriously believe I could graduate to ‘cold blood’? Perhaps I just never thought it would come to this, that the situation would miraculously change somehow and that I wouldn’t be forced to see it through.

  I think of myself as I was when I was in Brewer Street. And I look at myself in the mirror
s and see that I haven’t come very far at all. I see that I could be back there very soon and very easily.

  Leon Giler is safe from me and this failure of mine sets me free.

  * * *

  Fourteen hours later, Petra was back in London. She got off the District Line at Embankment, just a couple of minutes’ walk from Magenta House. Since leaving Leon Giler’s apartment, she’d expected somebody—anybody—to intervene at any moment. Even while she was dressing in the bathroom, she’d half-expected Giler to shout at her, telling her to hurry up. Once dressed, she’d slipped out of the flat silently and called the lift. The seconds elongated as she waited for it. In the entrance hall, Randall had looked surprised to see her again so soon and she’d pre-empted his question by pulling a mournful smile and saying, ‘Not enough silicone.’ He’d seemed to understand. Outside, she’d turned left, not right as Wilson had instructed her, and had then broken into a run. She lost the wig before returning to her suite at the Lowell, where she’d hurriedly gathered her things before checking out and catching a cab for JFK. Still no one came for her. At the airport, she was early for the check-in and feared that the wait would allow somebody to catch up with her. But they didn’t. Once she was airborne, this fear began to recede and was replaced by a sense of euphoria. Her mind was too wired to allow her any sleep on the brief overnight flight. There were too many possibilities to consider, one of which was to simply disappear. In the end, however, she discarded this option. She decided she needed to confront Alexander face to face, to show him that his threats no longer scared her, to show him she was serious, to show him that if he didn’t leave her alone she could bite back.

  Now, just a short walk away, she felt the thrill of imminent release. She was exhausted but that only seemed to add to the slightly giddy sensation that her euphoria had provoked in her.

  She used the Lower Robert Street entrance, punching her personalized code into the key-pad. The lock released and she pushed it open. She took the stairs and then marched down the corridor to Alexander’s office. Margaret was startled to see her.

  ‘Stephanie. What are you doing here? You can’t go in there–’

  Petra threw open the door. The office was empty. She stepped back outside. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Downstairs. The conference room.’

  Alexander was smoking. He sat at the far end of the oval table. There were no papers in front of him, just an ashtray and a remote control for the bank of nine televisions to his right. But they were switched off. There was no image on the large screen behind him. The lights were half-dimmed.

  Petra had planned to march in and say her piece before he got a chance to say a word. But the environment unsettled her. She looked around, half-expecting someone to materialize behind her. But there was no one.

  Alexander said, ‘Why don’t you close the door?’

  ‘Because I’m not staying.’

  He shrugged. ‘Frankly, I’m surprised you bothered coming here at all. No one else thought you’d show up but I had a sneaking suspicion that you might.’

  ‘I wanted you to hear this directly from me.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’

  Not wanting their conversation—or rather, her threats—to be overheard, Petra closed the door and then moved closer to the table. ‘I assume you’ve heard what happened. I imagine Wilson’s been in contact.’

  ‘He has. And it seems congratulations are in order.’

  Petra frowned. ‘For what?’

  Alexander took a long draw from his cigarette and exhaled slowly, blue strands of smoke forming a dancing veil in front of his face. ‘A brutal job well done.’

  He picked up the remote control and, with a casual flick of the wrist, pointed the device at the bank of nine TV monitors to his right. His eyes never strayed from Petra. The screens flickered to life but only one of them produced an image. The others turned blue.

  Alexander muted the sound. The CNN logo appeared in a corner of the screen. Behind it, firemen and paramedics were moving in and out of smoking wreckage. Stunned civilians wandered aimlessly among abandoned vehicles, their blank faces picked out by the flashing lights of the emergency services’ vehicles. The TV cut away to a helicopter shot. There was a bridge beneath the camera. Plumes of black smoke were rising from its centre. As the helicopter banked and turned for another approach, the skyscrapers of Manhattan came into view. Then a ‘Breaking News’ caption occupied the screen and was followed by a concise headline: FIVE DEAD IN QUEENSBORO BRIDGE BOMB BLAST.

  Petra turned to Alexander. ‘I don’t understand. What is this?’

  ‘Can’t you guess?’

  ‘A bomb on the Queensboro Bridge? No.’

  ‘What you’re watching was recorded last night. This is what’s happening now.’

  Alexander pressed a button and another of the TV screens came to life. He released the sound. It was still CNN. This time, there were two news-anchors behind a desk in a studio in Atlanta. The woman spoke, her power-suited thinness severe on the eye, while the male mannequin to her left looked appropriately sombre.

  ‘The FBI has joined the New York Police Department in the search for those responsible for the Queensboro Bridge bomb yesterday evening, which killed media tycoon Leon Giler and three of his five children. Giler’s driver and bodyguard, former Cleveland Browns offensive lineman Ken Randall was also killed by the blast, which caused a multivehicle crash on the bridge, leaving thirteen people injured. Four of them are thought to be in a serious condition. Speaking earlier on CNN, Captain Richard Ross of the New York Police Department said it was a miracle that only five people had been killed.’

  The TV showed Ross shouting into the microphone to make himself heard over the sirens and the close thud of helicopter blades. ‘We coulda easily had twenty or thirty dead people out here.’

  Alexander muted the sound again, which was not something he had to do to Petra; for a while, she was too stunned to speak.

  ‘What did you expect?’ he asked her. ‘That we’d just let this opportunity go? That we’d allow you to walk away and jeopardize everything?’

  He picked up his Rothmans from the ashtray.

  ‘How?’ she whispered.

  ‘The same way we did Grigory Ismailov. A car-bomb activated by a mercury tilt-switch. In this instance, combined with a timer.’

  ‘Wilson?’

  Alexander nodded. ‘He suspected you might not be able to see it through so we devised a back-up plan, just in case.’

  Andrew Wilson in his bad suit with his bad teeth. She had an image of his home in Surrey, of his plain wife and their three awkward children, of curtains that clashed with the sofa, of a family eating roast beef for Sunday lunch.

  Petra’s eyes were still drawn to the images on the screens. ‘Three children…’

  ‘I know.’

  She turned to Alexander, aware of the bitterness that was starting to rise within her. ‘What do you mean you know?’

  ‘I mean they weren’t supposed to be in the vehicle. Giler’s wife was in New York with all five children. Giler was going out to the mansion on Long Island to see his mother. On the spur of the moment, he decided to take the three eldest children with him. We didn’t even know about it until after it had happened.’

  ‘And that’s your excuse?’

  ‘I’m not making an excuse. I’m telling you what happened. It was tragic timing. Bombs are messy. They suck the innocent in, so now we have five dead, not one.’

  ‘Bastard.’

  ‘Don’t lay the blame at my feet.’ Alexander’s pale watery eyes were entirely without compassion. ‘If you’d done your job, Giler would still be dead, but the three children would be alive. Think about it.’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘Say what you like, it’s the truth and you know it.’

  Petra struggled to keep her anger bottled. ‘I quit.’

  Alexander rolled an inch of ash into the ashtray. ‘You know you can’t do that.’

  ‘Oh, I see
. You think your threats will keep me in line? Try it. See what happens. I don’t care, I’ll live with the risk. Maybe I’ll even use some of that wonderful training you’ve given me against you. You can’t threaten me. Not any more.’

  ‘This isn’t a golf club. You can’t just resign because you don’t want to play any more. You are Petra Reuter.’

  ‘When I walk out of that door, you’ll never see me again.’

  Alexander looked up to meet her gaze fully. ‘Like I said, bombs are so messy. Innocent people die, families are blown apart. You of all people should know that. After all, it’s already happened to you once.’

  That stung. Petra found it hard to understand how Alexander could be so callous yet sound so casual and look so calm. ‘You really are a work of art.’

  ‘It can happen again,’ he said.

  Petra felt the energy drain out of her. ‘What?’

  ‘Your brother. His wife. Their three children.’

  It took her several seconds to absorb the threat completely. ‘Not even you would stoop that low.’

  Alexander extinguished his cigarette. ‘You don’t think so? You should watch more TV.’

  20

  Soaked to the skin as she was, the cold gnawed at her bones. Petra thumped a clenched fist against the sturdy wooden door several times. Again, there was no answer. She moved to the window on the right. She wiped frozen fingertips across the glass and peered through a crack in the curtains. The lamp on the table behind the armchair was on, casting a dull glow over the room, which appeared empty. The wash of light was the first hint of warmth she had encountered in hours. She began to tap on the window and tried to call out but the muscles in her jaw were stiff from the cold. The rain continued to pelt her back and the wind swallowed the feeble tapping of her knuckles on the glass.

  She became aware of the presence behind her before she actually heard the crunch of boots on stone. Slowly, Petra turned around. She immediately recognized the pistol that was being pointed at her: a SIG-Sauer P210–6.