The Rhythm Section--A Stephanie Patrick Thriller

by Mark Burnell

  ‘There is no Petra Reuter, Marc.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  Petra milked the moment, taking her time, allowing his confusion to feed upon itself. ‘How would you say it? Petra Reuter is a flag of convenience. A ghost. She doesn’t exist.’

  ‘But you’re here!’ he protested.

  ‘I know. But you don’t know who I am.’

  When he next spoke, the aggression of defiance was replaced by caution and curiosity. ‘Who are you working for?’

  ‘I’m working for myself.’

  He shook his head slowly. ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘I never thought you would. But it’s true.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I’m a whore. That’s who I am, Marc. A cheap whore. Actually, not so cheap any more, but a whore all the same.’

  She could see that Serra supposed she was being cryptic. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Despite all your reservations about me, you thought we had something good together, didn’t you? That we made a good team. You at forty-four and me at twenty-three.’

  ‘Twenty-three?’

  ‘And what was this based on? Sex. That’s what. We never had anything in common but you liked the look of me and the idea of me. You liked the fact that I was dangerous. It made me more exciting. But more than all these things, you liked the sex, didn’t you? Even better, you saw that I liked the sex. You liked the way that I’d do anything you wanted, you liked the way you tamed me.’

  ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘No.’ She waved an admonishing finger at him. ‘I know men like you. You bring a woman to orgasm and you think that a little part of her is for ever yours. But it never happened, Marc. There was no orgasm. There was no cry of pleasure. It was all faked.’

  ‘Bullshit!’

  She laughed but there was no humour in it. ‘How typical, how arrogant. How you. You can’t believe it, can you? You think you’re so good and now this? I don’t blame you for being shocked. In fact, I’d be astonished if a man with your ego reacted in any other way. But the truth is this: I was a prostitute, Marc. Day in, day out, I faked it for people like you. And every time I did, I learned a little more. I’m a professional. Deceit is my only practical qualification.’

  ‘You’re lying.’

  ‘For once, I’m not. You’re nothing to me. You were just work.’

  She had hoped there might be catharsis in the truth, but there wasn’t; it merely fuelled her hatred. Her grip on the blade was tighter than ever. She closed her eyes and pictured herself driving it into his chest.

  Keep it together.

  She took a deep breath, which she let out gradually. Then she went through to the reception room and returned with Serra’s lap-top, which she set upon the bed. She drew up a list of the data files but didn’t notice any obvious difference; there was virtually no data stored on the unit.

  It was back to business. ‘Do you want to tell me what FAT/3 is?’

  Silence.

  ‘It looks to me as though you keep your data elsewhere. On a disk, maybe. Or do you down-load it to somewhere secure? No, I don’t think so. Phone-lines are vulnerable. I imagine you’d prefer a disk or a ZIP drive. Now, I wonder where I’d find such a thing. In your clothes, perhaps?’

  Petra sorted through every garment Serra had brought with him, searching pockets and slicing linings apart, but she found nothing. Then she checked every other item that belonged to him before conducting a thorough search of the bedroom, bathroom and reception room.

  Eventually, she returned to Serra himself. ‘What’s the data stored on?’

  He shook his head. Her anger was under control, but only just. She could feel it simmering beneath the surface. She ran the tip of the blade down Serra’s right thigh towards the knee-cap. ‘I’m not going to ask you politely next time.’

  Growing paler by the second, he shook his head again.

  Boyd had once told Petra that the most important element of physical terror was not the act itself but in persuading the victim that you had the will to see it through.

  Petra leaned close to Serra and whispered. ‘If you scream, I’ll kill you.’

  She thrust the blade through the skin and soft tissue until it crunched against gritty bone inside the knee. Serra squealed, his teeth clamping down on his tongue, his body jolting as though the chair was electric. Eyes wide open, he tossed his head from side to side, the veins bulging in his neck. The beads of sweat that had formed on his forehead began to run. Petra reversed the blade with a slow twist, compounding his agony. Having been utterly drained of colour, the effort of stifling a scream had left his face beetroot. Tears blurred his vision.

  Petra felt nothing. No pleasure, no disgust, just the numbness she was so used to. Slowly, very slowly, she steered the bloody blade towards Serra’s right eye, halting the steel tip an inch from the pupil. When she spoke, her voice was soft and slow, little more than a murmur. ‘What is the information on?’

  His resistance was broken. ‘A disk,’ he wailed. His voice quivered, his pretence at courage crushed. ‘It’s on a disk.’

  The speed at which he offered up the answer disturbed her. ‘Where is it?’

  ‘I don’t have it.’

  ‘Who has it?’

  ‘Basit.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘I swear it’s the truth!’

  Reza Mohammed, she thought. ‘And where is he?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Petra moved the tip closer to the soft centre of the eyeball. Serra screeched. ‘I swear to God! I don’t know!’

  ‘I thought you’d organized the Sons of Sabah.’

  ‘They made individual arrangements. It was safer that way.’ The words were coming out in an undignified rush now. ‘So that if anyone was caught they would not be in a position to betray the others. Including me.’

  ‘Crap.’

  ‘It’s true. I promise you! I was the one who arranged the training and the schedule. But the other details were left to them. I don’t even know which country Basit is in. I don’t know his real name or the name on the passport he’s using.’

  ‘But at twelve-fifteen tomorrow he’ll be on BA283 bound for Los Angeles?’

  ‘Yes.’

  * * *

  I circle Serra, checking that his hands are still tightly bound. An hour has passed. I have gone through the files on the computer and questioned him but, in truth, there is little of substance in them. I know there is a fourteen-letter password—LESFILSDUSABAH—to activate or deactivate the encrypted material on the disk but since the password is so obvious, I am assuming that the un-encrypted material may still be incomprehensible. Serra is exhausted. His head lolls to one side. I peer through the window. The sky is beginning to darken.

  My rage is spent. Earlier, I could have killed Marc Serra in a blind fury. That would have been easy. This is going to be much harder. I have to kill him anyway. There is no alternative. I cannot leave him alive in this hotel room. He will escape and raise the alarm and the consequences of that are too chaotic to calculate. And I cannot leave him to Magenta House because they will find out from him as much as he knows and that means that Alexander will be in a position to ruin everything, and I cannot let that happen.

  Serra’s throat is badly swollen and bruised. When he talks it’s hard to understand what he’s saying. ‘Who are you, Petra?’

  I get to my feet, leaving the knife on the bed where he can see it. ‘My name is Stephanie Patrick.’

  ‘Who are you working for?’

  ‘I’ve told you. Myself.’

  ‘Why?’

  What a question. It hurts just to consider the possible answers. My parents, Sarah, David, Keith Proctor—they are the first five reasons to spring to mind. I think of the pain I have caused Christopher and I think of the way my life disintegrated in the aftermath of the tragedy.

  I look into his bleary eyes. ‘Most of my family were on the North Eastern flight. I�
��m doing this for them and for an architect from Uniondale, New York called Martin Douglas.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘He was the passenger in seat 49C. The passenger in my seat.’

  Serra looks astonished and then mortified, as though he cannot believe that all this trouble has its roots in something so trivial. ‘It’s personal?’

  ‘Increasingly,’ I reply. ‘And when I see Reza Mohammed, I’m going to get the disk and then I’m going to kill him.’

  ‘Who?’

  Interesting. ‘Reza Mohammed,’ I say. There is still no reaction. Perhaps Serra is a good actor, perhaps he is for real. It makes no difference to me. ‘Basit,’ I tell him. ‘Basit’s real name is Reza Mohammed.’ Or is it Mustafa Sela? ‘He was the one who placed the bomb on the aircraft at JFK.’

  Serra nods a little. ‘It won’t matter.’

  I walk behind him and remove the lampshade from the brass lamp on the table by the window. ‘What won’t matter?’

  ‘Killing Basit.’

  I pull the plug from the socket. ‘Well, in that case, all the more reason to do it.’

  ‘If that flight fails to leave tomorrow, nearly four thousand people will die.’

  Something occurs within me when he tells me this. It’s in his eyes as he turns to look at me. It’s in his voice as the words take to the air. I try to ignore what I am feeling and step out of his line of vision. My grip tightens on the lamp. ‘What?’

  ‘Four thousand people will die.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter how. You can’t stop it. I can’t stop it.’

  ‘You’re lying.’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not. Only time will tell.’

  And if Marc Serra lives, Alexander will learn of the hijack and the flight will never leave. Serra does not know it but he’s condemned himself. Either way, he loses. I swing the lamp and hit him over the back of the head, knocking him unconscious. Then I go to the bed and pick up the switch-blade.

  * * *

  Petra stepped out of the shower and dried herself with a large, white hotel towel. She dressed quickly, gathering her own things and then sorting through Serra’s to see which she would take with her. On the computer, the folder that had contained the files FAT, FAT/1, FAT/2 and FAT/3 was called FDS/12. Fils Du Sabah/12. There were ten hijackers, originally. Now there were eight. There had been an invoice from a firm of west London electricians among Serra’s papers in Paris, she remembered. FAT/3 had appeared in the date-box. There had been twelve items on the list. And somewhere else—she couldn’t quite remember where—she had seen another reference to FAT/3. That had also contained twelve mixtures of letters and numbers. She grabbed Serra’s mobile phone, switched off his computer, placed it in its padded carrying-case and reached for her coat.

  28

  Petra stepped into the rain on Jermyn Street. She found a pay-phone on Church Place and called the Adelphi Travel number, where she was greeted by the recorded message that ran twenty-four hours a day. She relayed the identification routine that she had used the day before and, within a minute, she was speaking to Alexander.

  ‘The Clarendon on Jermyn Street. Room nine. It’s a mess.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘One.’

  ‘Anyone I know?’

  ‘Serra.’

  The silence was as predictable as it was long. ‘Serra?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What happened?’

  The question annoyed her. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, he cut his throat while shaving. Does it matter what happened? He’s dead. I can’t explain it right now. There isn’t time.’ Lying to Alexander had always been easy. Sometimes, even pleasurable.

  ‘Are you under observation?’

  ‘I’m not sure, but I don’t think it’s safe for me to come in. Everything’s going to proceed even though Serra’s dead so I need to stay clean. If I can, I’ll call you tomorrow.’

  ‘Fine. But if there’s a problem, don’t bother with protocol.’

  She made her second call from a different pay-phone.

  * * *

  A cab took her to George Street and Dr Brian Rutherford greeted her personally. ‘Mrs Morgan’s already gone home,’ he explained. ‘And you only just managed to catch me in time.’

  ‘So I see. That’s a very fancy outfit you’re wearing.’

  Rutherford was dressed in black tie. ‘I’ve got to go to a dinner at Grosvenor House.’

  ‘I’m sorry to have held you up.’

  ‘Don’t be. You’ve done me a favour. It’s one of those corporate things. A pharmaceutical firm trying to sweet-talk us into their products.’

  He led her through to his surgery and shed his jacket. Beneath sharp white lights, he cleaned and disinfected the cut before stitching it and applying a dressing. As he was washing his hands, he said to her, ‘You know, you should take better care of yourself, Stephanie. I don’t know how you accumulate these little injuries—and I don’t want to know—but you’re collecting too many, too young.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I’d hate to think that one day you might get seriously hurt.’

  Petra pulled on her T-shirt. ‘I’ll bear that in mind. And thanks for your concern.’

  ‘At your age, you think you’ll live for ever. But when you get to my age, you’ll realize just how short for ever can be.’

  Petra couldn’t help herself and smiled. ‘What is this? Any wound requiring five stitches or more and you get pearls of wisdom for free?’

  There was a sadness in his gaze. ‘If it’s for free, you should take it, don’t you think?’

  ‘Maybe. By the way, I was wondering if you could lend me some paper, an envelope and a pen?’

  ‘I expect I could manage that.’

  ‘I also need a torch.’

  ‘A torch?’

  ‘You know. Hand-held, runs on batteries, emits light from one end.’

  Rutherford nodded and began to rummage through one of the drawers in his desk. ‘I like you, Stephanie. You’re a nice girl. But that doesn’t mean I want to keep seeing you here. Think about it.’

  From Rutherford’s surgery, she walked to Bond Street Underground, took the Jubilee Line to Green Park, changed on to the Victoria Line and got off at Victoria. From there, she walked to the corner of Wilton Road and Longmoore Street. On a cold, damp evening Gallagher & Sons was an oasis of cosy warmth. She remembered the place now; the wooden panels and the mustard yellow paint, the mirror on the wall, Cyril Bradfield sitting beneath it nursing a pint of Guinness. She stopped in front of his table.

  ‘Can I buy you a drink?’

  He looked up at her. ‘What are you doing in here?’

  ‘I needed to see you.’

  ‘You’ve got my number. You could’ve called.’

  ‘I couldn’t wait.’ She glanced at his glass which was two-thirds empty. ‘Another one?’

  ‘Shouldn’t we…?’

  ‘It’s not that type of business.’

  ‘In that case, why not?’

  This was the first occasion she had been in contact with Bradfield since collecting the last of the three identities he had prepared for her. The first was lodged with a branch of ABN-AMRO in Amsterdam, the second was in a safe deposit box in Paris. The third was in London. By the time Petra returned to the table with a freshly poured pint of Guinness, Bradfield had rolled himself another perfect, thin cigarette despite having three bandaged fingers on his right hand and two on his left.

  ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘Acid burns. An occasional occupational hazard, I’m afraid.’

  Petra took a sip from her Coke and then passed Bradfield the envelope she had taken from Rutherford. He looked uncomfortable accepting it. Another occupational hazard of his particular profession, she supposed.

  ‘What’s this?’ he asked, lowering his voice, even though there was no one within earshot.

  ‘Instructions.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Everything’s wr
itten down. There’s a telephone number in there and a series of words and phrases. It explains how to make contact and what to say.’

  ‘Make contact with…?’

  ‘Never you mind. The voice on the other end of the phone. You just follow those instructions and everything will be all right.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Tomorrow. Maybe.’

  ‘Maybe?’

  ‘From midday onwards, keep your radio on, or the TV. Listen to the news.’

  ‘What am I listening for?’

  ‘An aircraft hijack. A flight out of Heathrow.’

  Bradfield sucked on his cigarette and whatever he was thinking, he chose to remain silent.

  Petra leaned forward. ‘You only open the envelope if the hijack goes ahead. If you don’t hear anything after twenty-four hours, burn it without opening it. Is that clear?’

  He nodded and then took his first sip from the pint of Guinness. ‘What I’d like to know is why you think you can trust me.’

  ‘Because the first time I came to you, you saw straight through me. You told me I shouldn’t carry a gun unless I was prepared to use it. Do you remember?’

  He nodded slowly. ‘I do.’

  ‘Despite that, you didn’t kick me out.’

  ‘And that’s your reason for trusting me now, is it?’

  ‘Partly.’

  ‘And the other part?’

  ‘You know the other part.’

  * * *

  Brewer Street. She promised herself this was the very last time and then wondered how many times she had made exactly the same vow. The rain had eased off to a persistent drizzle. She walked past the door which was closed but, she was sure, not locked. It never used to be. A gentle nudge would reveal the dark hall she knew too well. She looked up at the windows on the floors above, their light blocked out by drawn curtains, and then moved on.

  Two minutes later, she was on the fire-escape at the rear of the building next to the one in which she used to work. The iron ladder felt as unsafe as ever, dust crumbling from the brick to which it was attached. She reached the top and checked the superfluous padlock; the bolt still had nowhere to slide to. One heave of the shoulder forced the door open. Once she was inside and had closed it behind her, she turned on the plastic torch that Rutherford had found for her. The beam was feeble but sufficient. She cast it over the attic.