by Mark Burnell
'I'm going to take the tape off. Don't shout.'
She ripped it away. There was blood in his mouth. Despite the warning, he cried out. A series of sounds, none of them a word.
Stephanie kept her distance. 'What is it?'
Through gritted teeth he hissed, 'My legs, my back …'
'What about them?'
'Cramp …'
'Cramp?'
'Get these goddamned things off me!'
It's still a trick.
She took a step back, deciding.
'For Christ's sake! Don't just stand there. Do something!'
Stephanie thrust the gun at him. 'Don't try anything. Okay?'
'Okay!'
She tore the tape from the ankles first, then untied the washing line securing his wrists, and stood back. He tried to get up but his legs wouldn't straighten. He pitched forward, hitting the carpet with a wheeze.
Human instinct compelled her to help but Petra was in the way. So instead she watched him wrestle with himself, as he tried to massage blood into anaemic blocks of rigid muscle. When the worst of it had passed, he relaxed and lay still on the carpet. Detached, Stephanie watched his breathing slow.
His eyes were still closed when he muttered, 'At least the other bastards let me move around.'
'What others?'
'Forget it.'
'What others?'
She offered him a banana. 'Here. Eat this.'
'I don't want a banana.'
Half an hour had passed. She'd decided not to bind him immediately. He needed movement. A circulation break. She didn't know – or couldn't remember – whether this was correct. And she didn't care.
They were in the kitchen. She was sorting through the bag of groceries she'd bought; fruit, orange juice, yoghurt, bread, cheese, salami. Newman was sitting on a stool on the other side of the island. Just where she'd ordered him to sit. She'd removed the knife-block and the half-empty bottle of Léoville Las Cases 1985 from his reach. The Smith &Wesson was on the counter behind her.
She set the banana in front of him. 'You should eat it anyway.'
He drank water from a plastic bottle. 'Oh yeah? Why's that?'
'For the potassium.'
'Potassium?'
'Potassium deficiency causes cramp.'
'Trust me, this kind of cramp has nothing to do with lack of potassium.'
'How do you know?'
'A doctor told me.'
She put the fruit in an empty china bowl and left the bread on the counter beside the gas rings. 'I've never seen anyone have a cramp attack like that.'
'Then maybe you should tie people to chairs more often.'
There was a phone on the worktop. The base unit was beside the Belfast sink. There were five messages waiting. Stephanie pressed play.
10:17 – Robert, your cell phone is switched off. Call me. You're late.
A female voice, seductively deep. A smoker, perhaps.
10:59 – nothing.
12:43 – Robert, it's Marie again. Where are you? Are you okay? I'll be here until one, then on my cell. Bye.
17:23 – Good afternoon. This is Jean-Claude Sardé. I would like to meet with you as soon as possible. Your secretary gave me your home number. I hope you don't mind. Could you call me when you have some time? Thank you.
17:34 – nothing.
Stephanie said, 'Who's Marie?'
'My secretary.'
'At Solaris?'
'Yeah.'
'Is it unusual for you to drop out of contact for twenty-four hours?'
'When I'm away, it's normal.'
'But here in Paris?'
'No.'
She took the orange juice, salami, cheese and yoghurt to the end of the island, next to the fridge. 'Then you need to call her. And you'd better think of something good. Who's Jean-Claude Sardé?'
'A business associate. A banker.'
She opened the fridge door. And for a second, as she stooped to put the orange juice carton on a shelf, her back was partially turned to him.
She'd cleared the obvious implements from his reach but had overlooked one. Sliding off the stool, Newman grasped with both hands the absurd chrome pepper grinder he'd been given one Christmas by a lover who hadn't made it to New Year.
He swung it like Babe Ruth. Aiming for the back of the head. Aiming for the cranial homerun.
Most petty crimes were crimes of opportunity. Newman had read that somewhere. Random acts of impulse. Yet even as the opportunity had presented itself, he'd felt caution kick in and had opted against it. But he was already moving, as though some other entity had control of his body. And once started, there was no retreat.
She seemed to fall in slow motion.
She'd turned at the last moment. He wasn't quite sure where he'd caught her. Across the top of the shoulders? Over part of the neck? No matter. He swung again, bringing the grinder down across her back. When he then kicked her it was hard enough to wrench his ankle.
He pushed away from her but didn't head for the front door. Instead, he went for the Smith & Wesson on the other side of the kitchen.
He heard her behind him. Clawing herself to standing, clawing through the pain. He picked up the gun and spun round. She was coming at him, eating up the space between them.
He started to squeeze the trigger. She skidded to a halt, eyes widening. For a second, she considered throwing herself at him. He saw it, she knew it. And then hesitated.
The gun was shaking in Newman's hand. 'Take one more step and I swear to God I'll kill you.'
New York City, 15:37
The construction was simple; two forty-ton haulage containers that merged to form a single mobile operations suite. At the heart of the suite was the operations room itself with a curved command desk on a raised dais towards the rear. That was where John Cabrini sat. In front of him were two additional desks for the other members of the team, Steven Mathis and Helen Ito. Their desks had four retractable monitors each. Cabrini's had six. At the front of the room, the curving wall was lined with a membrane of slither screens, six by four, usable as one composite screen or twenty four individual screens, or any combination between.
The two containers were coated in a special polymer that prevented thermal imaging from detecting human activity within. The colourless skin contained micro sensors that measured external air temperature so that the governing computer could cool or warm the container shells to match their environment perfectly. The containers also emitted a blizzard of impenetrable electronic signals to foil eavesdropping.
Gradually, all the facilities were coming on line, most of them courtesy of the National Security Agency (NSA), Cabrini's former employers. The top right screen at the front of the suite had coverage from the Defense Intelligence Network, the NSA's own version of CNN. It ran a continuously updated news service. Much of the time it rather resembled CNN, without the incessant adverts and self-promotion. But it also provided the viewer with real-time images from spy satellites and transcripts or recordings of intercepted conversations, as well as gossip from the global intelligence community. Of the two active screens on Cabrini's desk, the one on the left was hooked into Intelink, Crypto City's private intranet.
Not far from the small village of Annapolis Junction in Maryland lies a complex of about sixty buildings. They are hidden from public view by screens of woodland, protected by motion detectors, cement barriers, hydraulic anti-truck devices and barbed-wire fences. These buildings – offices, laboratories, factories, storage facilities and living quarters – constitute the home of the world's most technically sophisticated spying organization, the National Security Agency. The complex is known as Crypto City. Within Crypto City exists the most powerful army of computers ever assembled, augmented by some of the finest mathematicians and linguists on the planet.
Intelink is the NSA's own intranet service, although it is also used by other intelligence agencies, particularly those of Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. Operating out of Intelink Central are f
our different services, each with its own security-clearance requirements. John Cabrini had access to all of them, including Intelink-P, a service intended for only the president, the vice-president, the national security adviser and a select handful of officials.
'How are we doing, Steven?'
Mathis looked back at Cabrini. 'Almost there, sir. Still waiting for INTELSAT and Echelon.'
A very poor image of Stephanie formed on the wall in front of them. The next shot also lacked clarity. They might have been different women. Nothing that followed was any clearer, including discarded passport photographs, all tailored to fit a specific look.
Cabrini read through the scrolling biography. 'Reuter, Petra. German national, born Hamburg, an only child. Father was … Reuter, Karl, a cop, moved to Stuttgart in 1959, married in 1963 to … Roll, Rosa, an archivist at the Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, deceased 1985, auto-wreck. Karl died in … 1987. Which seems to be where the trouble starts.'
A campus activist, then a left-wing anarchist. Later, a terrorist. Later still, a paid assassin. A shoot-out in Mechelen in Belgium had left her with her most distinguishing feature: a bullet entry and exit wound on the front and back of the left shoulder. After Belgium, she'd turned up in Brazil with Gustavo Marin, the arms-dealer. Later, there'd been an altercation with another arms-dealer, the flamboyant Russian Maxim Mostovoi. That had occurred in Marrakech. She'd worked in Russia, the United States, all over Europe, and across the Far East. A busy professional woman, then.
When Cabrini was first recruited to the commercial sector, he'd only agreed on the condition that he could bring his two NSA assistants with him. Steven Mathis and Helen Ito, both pre-eminent in their fields, had been encountering personal problems that were undermining their prospects at NSA. Mathis had debts and Helen Ito was under scrutiny after a deep search had revealed past membership of a disorganized socialist student body during her spell at Cambridge University. Although internal security at NSA had ultimately decided that neither Mathis nor Ito represented any immediate risk, they'd both hit the glass ceiling as a consequence. Their careers were going nowhere and they knew it.
Both had served under Cabrini. On one occasion, together. Cabrini had been running an operation in Beijing, eavesdropping on the PSB. The three of them had enjoyed the run of Room 3E099 of OPS 1, the centre of the NSA's global eavesdropping network. Professionally, Mathis and Ito had complemented each other perfectly.
Mathis was a linguist. Fluent in seven languages, he had an encyclopaedic knowledge of other linguists, allowing him to cover the tongues of the globe. Helen Ito's talents were mathematical. She'd been part of a team trying to develop a supercomputer capable of one septillion operations a second.
One septillion. A one with twenty-four noughts after it. In Helen Ito's world, time came not in hours, minutes or seconds but in femtoseconds, one femtosecond being one million billionth of a second.
Although Cabrini was no longer an employee of the NSA, he retained many of the contacts and privileges that he'd enjoyed during those years. There had been a time when that had been a source of contention. Indeed, it had been an issue of legality. These days, however, in an increasingly corporate world, it was no more than a matter of common sense. Now, more than ever, both communities shared common interests, common strategies, common resources.
And common methods.
'What are you going to do?' I ask him. 'Shoot me?'
He knows the response. 'You don't think I would?'
He might. He's more nervous now that he's got the gun than he was before. Emotionally, he's all over the place. I see it in his eyes, in the clumsy way he moves.
We're in the sitting-room because that's where I kept him. He can't think of a better alternative and has assumed that I knew what I was doing.
Blood is trickling from a cut behind my left ear. My neck and shoulder throb.
'You going to call the police?'
'When I'm ready. First, I want answers.'
'You can't do that.'
'Do what?'
'Call the police. They're looking for me.'
'So?'
'They'll kill me.'
'The police don't kill people.'
'You'd like to believe that, wouldn't you?'
I'm sitting on the sofa, which is where he told me to sit. He's pacing. If I made a move now there's a good chance he'd miss me but I stay still.
'Who are you?'
'Claudia Calderon.'
'Bullshit.'
'Then I don't know who I am.'
'Cute.'
He waves the gun at me. I've been scared of being shot before. But never by mistake. Then again, perhaps it won't be a mistake.
'I was set up and I don't know why. I got into your car because I didn't have a choice. Golitsyn and Medvedev were dead when I got to the room. The police were already on their way. Somebody called it in, knowing where I would be.'
'What about Sentier?'
'I was supposed to meet someone there. I went. The bomb went off. I was lucky to escape. That's all I know.'
He considers this for a second. 'You're lying. What about Golitsyn?'
'I never knew him. I went there because I had an introduction.'
'From?'
'Someone I thought I could trust. Turns out I was wrong.'
'And he was dead?'
'Yes.'
'That's convenient.'
'Not from where I'm sitting. Look, I wasn't even supposed to be here. I came to Paris to help a friend. We were due to meet in Passage du Caire and …'
'You're just a normal girl who ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time?'
I don't say anything.
'What friend?' he asks.
'An old family friend.'
'You spoken to him since?'
'No. He's dead. So's his wife.'
He snorts with derision. 'More bodies? You're kidding me.'
I'm not even going to try to counter his justifiable incredulity.
He stares at me scornfully, then says, 'Self-defence.'
'I'm sorry?'
'That's what I'll say. It was self-defence. I was abducted, then broke free, there was a struggle and I got the gun. If what you said is true, they're going to be delighted when they discover the body in my apartment is yours.'
'Trouble is, they'll kill you too.'
'Why? I'm the one person who can verify their version of events.'
'Trust me, that's not a good thing.'
'I'll be giving them what they want. Their bomber. Their killer.'
'You don't believe either of those things.'
'Why not? I know you're a liar.'
'That's not the same.'
He jabs the gun at me. 'You've got balls, I'll give you that. What I've seen of you, you could kill in cold blood, no problem. You've got the look.'
'What look's that?'
'The disengaged look.'
I try something else. 'You're not going to kill me.'
'Why not?'
'The same reason I couldn't kill you.'
'Remind me.'
'We had something.'
He arches an eyebrow. 'At the Lancaster? Don't kid yourself I had something with a woman named Claudia. Remember her?'
'You weren't talking to her. You were talking to me.'
'I'm talking to you now and I don't know who you are.'
'You felt a connection.'
'I don't remember what I felt last night. That was years ago.'
I can't disagree with that.
He steps back from his aggression for a moment. 'Go on, then. Convince me.'
A request, not an order, but from a man still on the edge. He's desperate not to pull the trigger but desperate enough to do it anyway. I need to give him something. I've got to keep this going. I can't let him come to a decision. Not unless it's the right one.
'I used to work for the government.'
'Which government?'
'The British government.'
'Doing wha
t?'
'Undercover work.'
'That sounds like import-export. Could mean anything. What kind of undercover work?'
'Let me go,' I suggest.
He doesn't hide his disbelief. 'Let you go?'
'I'll be doing you a favour. You don't want me around.'
'You're not going anywhere. Not until I get some answers.'
'One: I don't have the answers. Two: even if I did, the chances are you'd be better off without them.'
'If you try to leave, I'll shoot you.'
I rise from the sofa. 'No you won't.'
He thrusts the gun at me menacingly. 'Hold it right there.'
'Go ahead. You'll probably be doing me a favour. You'll certainly be doing someone else a favour.'
'I'm serious.'
Our eyes meet. 'So am I.'
I turn my back on him and begin to walk. There's a little hot spot between my shoulder-blades like a reserved table for diners whose arrival is imminent.
'Last chance.'
He means it. I feel it in his voice and it's a genuine surprise.
I turn back to him. 'Fine. Shoot me. One thing, though: if you're going to fire that gun, you'd better remove the safety first.'
He glances at the Smith & Wesson but can't see one. And by the time he looks back at me, I'm no longer where I was.
She moved like a dust devil, an amorphous blur that danced over the ground without ever seeming to touch it. Until her left foot hit the carpet, just as her right caught him on the left knee.
He buckled and she managed to land two further blows before he hit the floor. Then she stood on his right wrist and his hand splayed. She kicked the Smith & Wesson clear of him. When he tried to push himself up she caught him on the side of the face with a ferocious backhand.
The blow hurt her. And felt good. A sure sign that Petra was back.
No matter how much she despised herself for it, there was pleasure in performance. There always had been. It didn't matter to her that Newman was no kind of adversary; you could only ever deal with what was put in front of you.
But with the pleasure came disgust. How had she been so inept? Again. She shrugged it off. The inquisition could wait.
She retrieved the gun and went back to him. She pressed a foot on to his chest. He groaned. There was blood coming from his nose.
'This is a Smith & Wesson Sigma .40. It has no manual safety-catch. The two automatic safety devices are incorporated in the mechanism. The first is in the trigger, the second is part of the firing pin system. Sorry.'
