The Wrong Man

by Jason Dean

  He turned to the wall behind them. It ran from one side of the building to the other and alongside the door they’d just come through was another to its left. With a keypad. He pointed and said, ‘That’ll lead to Royse’s office area.’

  ‘Same code as outside, you think?’

  Bishop thought about human nature and said, ‘Don’t see why not.’

  He walked over and tried the same numbers. A second later, the door opened inwards. He turned to Luke and said, ‘You check those rooms back there. I’ll see what we’ve got in here.’

  ‘Way ahead of you,’ Luke said.

  Bishop walked down the hallway into a huge office. It looked like something out of Dr Strangelove. Taking up the rear wall a hundred feet away was a huge digital map of the world set on a black background. Bishop saw electronic notations against most of the countries. In front of it was Royse’s enormous, black marble work desk. On it were three widescreen monitors.

  He turned to the wall behind him and understood why Royse had left the central part of the office so bare.

  When Bishop had been stationed at the London Embassy during the early nineties, he and an English girl he’d been dating flew to Spain for a long weekend. On her recommendation, they’d ended up visiting the Queen Sophia Museum in Madrid to check out the recently acquired Picasso masterpiece, Guernica. He remembered standing before the monochrome mural for almost an hour, oblivious of everything but the abstract depictions of suffering in front of him.

  And here it was again, even bigger than before. Maybe twice up. Starting a couple of feet to the right of the hallway, the photographic enlargement went from floor to ceiling and stretched fifty feet across.

  Bishop stepped closer to the photograph until his nose was an inch away. He tapped the wall with a knuckle. Felt solid enough. He stepped back and looked at the wall to the left of the hallway. He knew that behind there was the stairwell from the roof. But what lay behind this? He unfolded the schematic again and looked it over carefully. And then he groaned. He’d been right when he said Royse had long ago blocked off any elevator access to this level. This was where it used to be. Right behind the photograph.

  He turned away and walked towards the map wall. As he got closer, he noticed door-shaped recesses at each end, but no handles. He made for the one on the left, glancing briefly at the desk and a black, futuristic-looking ergonomic chair as he passed by. When he was within five feet of the door, it slid silently to the right and he stepped through without breaking stride. More motion sensors, he guessed.

  He was in the library. More white. No decorations, just a single, oval-shaped black desk in the centre of the room accompanied by three leather easy chairs. Ten-foot-high bookcases lined two walls, along with two steel sliding ladders. The bookcases were full.

  Moving to the windows at his left, he opened his backpack and pulled out an electronic tape measure. He switched it on, pointed it towards the opposite wall, and looked at the figure displayed on the LCD screen. One hundred and eight feet. Hundred and ten once you accounted for the bookshelves.

  Bishop left the room and walked to the other side of the map wall. That door slid open too and Bishop stepped down into the bathroom, spa and gym area.

  No carpet here, only tiles. The bathroom took up half the space and in the centre was a marble-topped unit with shelves for towels and lotions. Behind it was an enormous Jacuzzi. More shelves covered the map wall and Bishop checked over the toilet, bidet, washbasins, step-in shower and larger, closed-off shower. In the far corner by the window was a white marble chamber. He figured that had to be a steam room.

  In the other half of the room was the gym. Through the wide opening Bishop saw various expensive items of fitness equipment.

  He pointed the tape measure through the gap and read the result. Eighty-six feet. Meaning both spaces came up to a hundred and ninety-six feet in total. Bishop added on another three or four feet to cover the exterior walls and reached the building’s total width of two hundred feet. No hidden vault in here. Unless that steam room was more than it pretended to be. He went over and opened the two-inch-thick door. The room was ten by twenty. Two marble benches faced each other and there was a small drain in the centre of the floor. Aside from a control panel set into the wall by the door, that was it.

  Bishop turned as Luke walked through the doorway. He looked even less happy than usual.

  ‘You’re kidding,’ Bishop said.

  Luke shook his head. ‘I wish.’ He held up an electronic tape measure similar to Bishop’s. ‘Every inch covered and they all check out.’

  ‘And the unmarked room?’

  ‘The big man’s home from home. Jumbo bed, bathroom, fully stocked kitchen and a living room bigger than my whole apartment. Might not have had doors before, but it’s got ’em now. Everything a billionaire could possibly need for a night away from the wife.’ Luke sighed and leaned both hands on the towel unit. ‘But no vault.’

  SEVENTY-SIX

  ‘I don’t buy that,’ Bishop said, moving towards the gym area.

  Luke snorted and waved an arm at the doorway behind him. ‘Hey, be my guest, man. The numbers don’t lie.’

  ‘I believe you,’ Bishop said. He was scanning the gym and saw nothing that even remotely resembled a vault. And no hidden areas. ‘I just don’t accept the conclusion. You still got all the floor plans on your laptop?’

  ‘What you take me for?’ Luke said. He took off the backpack, pulled out his laptop and placed it on the unit. He opened a folder and said, ‘You gonna check every floor?’

  ‘Just one.’ Bishop came over and looked at the file names. He scrolled to the bottom and double-clicked on F-39. The schematic for the floor beneath them opened up and Bishop zoomed in on each room before moving on to the next. ‘There,’ he said, when he found another room with no name and no door symbols. It was located on the south side, directly underneath their feet.

  Luke raised his eyebrows. ‘Huh. For all you know, it could be another love nest in there.’

  ‘He’s already got one of those,’ Bishop said. ‘Don’t forget we’re in a centrally located Manhattan office building. Up here is Royse’s private little Xanadu, but every office below is prime real estate with a specific reason for being.’ He tapped the screen with a knuckle of his index finger. ‘And this one’s too big for an office, especially for one with no windows.’

  ‘What are you talking about? It’s got to have windows.’

  ‘Remember that aerial shot of the roof?’ Bishop said. ‘The odd-numbered floors we saw, there were no windows on the south side. Just white concrete.’

  Luke nodded slowly. ‘Okay. Maybe a conference room then.’

  Bishop scrolled left and stopped at a large space on the north side with the designation Conf. Hall. ‘Two on the same floor? I don’t think so.’

  ‘So how do we get down there and check it out?’

  ‘The same way Royse does.’

  ‘Fire stairs?’

  Bishop took in their surroundings. ‘I can’t see it. Too much chance of encountering another human being. No, he’d want to be able to access it directly from up here, somehow.’

  ‘And he’s got the kind of money to make it happen,’ Luke said as he also scanned the room.

  Bishop’s gaze finished up on the steam room. The only anomaly left.

  Luke was looking at it, too. ‘Could be nothing more than what it says on the label,’ he said.

  ‘Or could be a whole lot more,’ Bishop said.

  They walked over and Bishop pulled the door open. ‘This feels magnetic,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t be surprised to find steel underneath.’ He let go and the door slowly began to close. When it clicked shut, he opened it again and stepped inside. Discreetly placed ceiling lights instantly came on. Luke stood in the doorway while Bishop inspected the control panel affixed to the wall.

  It looked like a blown-up version of one of the early iPod models. Bishop had had one briefly before he gave it away. A small token of th
anks from a grateful client. The top half consisted of an LCD display, while the lower section contained a protruding steel click wheel with the legend Temp -/+ next to it. In between was a row of four buttons. Underneath them were the words On/Off, Timer, Display and Clean. Bishop pressed the on button and the display lit up dark blue. He pressed the other buttons, but nothing else happened. The screen remained blank. Turning the wheel achieved nothing either.

  Frowning, Bishop studied the room in more detail and immediately saw what was missing. ‘No way can this be a steam room. There are no air vents.’ He turned to Luke and said, ‘When you buy an expensive piece of equipment, you keep hold of the manual, right?’

  Luke shrugged. ‘Sure. Everybody does.’ He paused, then said, ‘So why should the rich be any different?’

  ‘You called it. Might be something in the library next door to tell us how to work this. Or the desk outside. It’s worth a look.’

  ‘On it,’ Luke said. The door gently closed behind him.

  Bishop sighed and turned the wheel anti-clockwise again. Nothing happened.

  He turned it clockwise instead. And heard a deep electronic humming coming from under his feet. And then the whole room started to descend.

  SEVENTY-SEVEN

  Bishop crouched as the floor descended slowly. This wasn’t exactly what he’d expected, but then Royse had always had the power to surprise. He stayed low as the tiled walls became steel and used the nearest bench for balance. When he’d covered twenty feet, the bizarre elevator came to a stop.

  He was in a stainless steel room. The wall ahead curved gently inwards like a bubble. A seam ran down the centre from ceiling to floor. Bishop figured this had to be the vault entrance. Attached to the wall on his left, at chest level, was a forty-inch LCD display, currently inactive. Illumination was provided by eight fluorescent oval lights mounted in the ceiling. On the right-hand wall, he saw another control panel with a small display and a single red button underneath.

  Bishop looked up as a steel layer silently extended out from the wall and sealed the room. That couldn’t be good. Reaching into his pants pocket, he pulled out his cell phone and looked at the display. No bars. Naturally. So now he no longer had Wilson as a back-up, although he had a feeling this would have been a new one on the veteran safe-cracker. Bishop checked the time. 22.08. He just hoped he could still get Luke down here for the next part. He turned and walked towards the panel on the wall, and the moment his foot came into contact with the steel floor both displays lit up simultaneously.

  On the small display screen, Bishop saw white text appear against the blue background. Time limit for vault entry currently activated. Time remaining before lockdown: 04.56 . . . 04.55 . . . 04.54 . . .

  Bishop pushed the button, but nothing changed except the numbers.

  He ran over to the large LCD screen. This display was set on a white background. At the top, big black digits counted down the remaining time. Most of the screen was taken up by a colour spectrum wheel, like the one he’d seen at Aleron’s. Underneath that was a thin bar that graduated from black to white, with every shade of grey in between. To the right of the wheel were five long blank bars. Ten more smaller blank boxes were lined up across the bottom.

  Bishop stared at the thing as though he were looking at ancient hieroglyphics.

  04.41 . . . 04.40 . . . 04.39 . . .

  SEVENTY-EIGHT

  04.38 . . . 04.37 . . . 04.36 . . .

  Bishop knew he couldn’t rush this. There’d be a logical system. He just had to relax his mind and take the time to figure it out.

  First, the spectrum wheel. It started with yellow at twelve o’clock before graduating through orange, then red, then magenta and various shades of mauve to purple at the six o’clock spot. By seven thirty, that colour had transformed itself into blue, then cyan, then green and lime before turning into yellow again at the top. The colours were also at their most vibrant along the outer edge of the circle and steadily grew fainter the nearer they got to the centre, which was white.

  Bishop took off his leather gloves and dropped them on the floor. Then he touched his left index finger against the yellow section close to the outer edge. Four of the boxes on the right immediately filled with percentages, while the fifth one duplicated the actual colour he’d touched. No letters to guide him, but these had to be the CMYK values Aleron had told him about. The first and fourth bars, presumably cyan and black, were at zero per cent, while the second and third – magenta and yellow – read seven per cent and ninety-six per cent. That made sense. The colour in the fifth bar showed a bright yellow with a hint of orange coming in. Bishop touched that bar and the first of the ten boxes underneath flashed red briefly before turning white again.

  So the whole thing was clearly a colour combination lock. Find the right percentages, press the sampled colour and hope it gets accepted. Once you hit ten, you’re in. Bishop figured there was nothing simpler if you had an afternoon to play with.

  04.01 . . . 04.00 . . . 03.59 . . .

  Beneath the spectrum was the graduated grey bar with a small virtual arrow located in the white section. Bishop placed his finger on the arrow and slid it slowly to the left. As he did so, the entire colour wheel became progressively darker as black was added to the mix. The centre changed from white to grey, while other colours such as red morphed into brown, blue became navy blue and so on. Bishop nodded to himself. That was the contrast setting for the darker hues. He slid it all the way back to white again.

  03.49 . . . 03.48 . . . 03.47 . . .

  So, ten colours to find. With the time now remaining, that worked out at just over twenty-two seconds per colour. How the hell is that even possible? Bishop knew he had to bring down the odds somehow. He also knew Royse would have the same time limit when he came down here, or near enough. Which meant they wouldn’t be colours with complex values. Simple flat colours seemed the obvious bet. The kind Royse could put his finger on instantly.

  03.42 . . . 03.41 . . . 03.40 . . .

  Bishop touched the yellow part of the spectrum and moved his index finger closer to the edge until the third bar read a hundred per cent, making sure the first, second and fourth bars remained at zero per cent. He took his finger away and used it to touch the yellow sample in the fifth bar.

  The same box on the bottom left of the screen flashed red again, momentarily. Then, instead of reverting to its original white, it turned green. And stayed green.

  Bishop smiled. He liked green in these kinds of situations. Green could only signify good things.

  He tried the same method with cyan. A hundred per cent cyan, zero per cent everything else. The second box also changed from white to red to green. He’d just found two colours in twelve seconds. Not bad. Only eight more to go. Maybe it was possible to do this, after all.

  Why not try for three in a row? He did the same for magenta and pressed the sample bar containing the pink hue.

  The third box flashed red before reverting to white. Not accepted.

  03.19 . . . 03.18 . . . 03.17 . . .

  Refusing to lose heart, Bishop simply changed tack. If he could figure out what the colours represented, he could figure out the colours. Something meaningful to Royse, probably. Martial arts belts came to mind, but Bishop had read up as much on Royse as was available and didn’t remember any mention of an interest in karate. Or any other martial arts.

  Then it hit him. Colour coded departments.

  What else besides the colour coded floors beneath his feet? Had to be. Luke had asked him about them only last night. He remembered seeing the yellow and light blue levels in the building years before, although he had no idea what departments they housed. He knew for a fact there were no pink floors, which explained magenta’s absence from the combination. Which left what?

  What about green? His old level.

  03.01 . . . 03.00 . . . 02.59 . . .

  Bishop moved his finger around the green section until he found a spot where both cyan and yellow bars were at a hu
ndred per cent, while the other two remained at zero per cent. He touched the fifth bar and was awarded another green box. Excellent. Now we’re getting somewhere.

  He thought back to what Aleron had told him on Sunday. Say you mix a hundred per cent of yellow with fifty per cent magenta. That gives you bright orange. Whack the magenta up to a hundred and you got warm red. Bishop had seen both colours on Luke’s plans, so he tried them next. Nice, obvious colours. Each one took him ten seconds to locate on the display and he finished up with two more green boxes. Making five in all. Halfway there. He was making good progress.

  02.25 . . . 02.24 . . . 02.23 . . .

  Last night, Luke had mentioned a couple more before asking Bishop what they meant. What had he said? Floors two to four are purple, five through eight are blue. Bishop now tried the blue first. He touched the area that offered up a nice, deep blue before it turned into navy and read the values. A hundred per cent cyan, forty-five per cent magenta and four per cent yellow. Not obvious enough. He got rid of the yellow and brought the magenta up to fifty per cent. There. He touched the sample bar and got a sixth green box in return.

  02.06 . . . 02.05 . . . 02.04 . . .

  He moved on to purple. Six o’clock. Outer edge. A hundred per cent cyan. A hundred per cent magenta. Zero everything else. Looks good. Press the colour.

  The white box remained white. Wrong purple. Too deep.

  He kept the magenta where it was and reduced the cyan down to fifty per cent. The colour in the sample bar became a rich mauve. This time, when he touched it the seventh box turned green.

  01.43 . . . 01.42 . . . 01.41 . . .

  Three left. Foreign Operations next. Thorpe’s department. He hadn’t done those guys yet. Along with Law Enforcement Training (red), they were close to the top of the heap at RoyseCorp. Both figuratively and physically. Bishop was probably on one of their floors right now. So what colour were they? He hadn’t scrolled down enough on the F-39 schematic to notice a coloured bar, although he’d been told each office up there had its own uniquely crafted pine or rosewood desk. One of the perks. Brown, maybe?