Now was the time to call in that favour.
The vine-laced webbing sheathing the building shifted alarmingly every time Marc moved his weight, and he had to get himself into a kind of sway-drop-grab rhythm to scramble down to the floor below. The task wasn’t helped by the water gushing over the ledge above his head. Doing it more by feel than sight, he faced the wall rather than risking a look down.
Hand over hand, he moved closer to the gaping windows Hite must have opened using some other subroutine in the building’s complex matrix of automated systems. Another of the robot window-washer rigs hung nearby, and Marc realised the man had found the same kind of entry point that he had exploited on the upper levels.
His boots touched the edge of the glass panel and it creaked. Marc took a breath and let himself drop the last bit of distance, trying his damnedest to pretend that if he slipped or missed, the fall wouldn’t be a few seconds of cursing himself and then a red mess on the pavement.
Marc tucked his legs in and slid through the open window, shaking off the moment of ice-cold fear with a gasp. Lucy came after him a moment later. Behind her, water sluiced down the window frames, drooling through the open gap and pooling on the expensive carpet.
Lucy recovered, panning around with her pistol. This floor was another sparsely decorated one, mostly conference rooms and open-plan meeting spaces. ‘I don’t see him,’ she said quietly. ‘Where did he go?’
‘I’ve had enough pissing about,’ Marc told her. ‘Let’s ask.’ He found one of the building’s ubiquitous smart-intercoms and tapped it into life with Wehmeyer’s signet ring. ‘Hey, uh, Sigma.’
‘Hello,’ replied the computer. ‘How can I help? Please be advised that this building is currently experiencing some technical issues, so automated options may be limited.’
‘Can you locate an employee for me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Charles Hite,’ Lucy demanded, stepping up to the panel.
A light blinked on the display. ‘Mr Hite is currently on Parking Level B-1.’
‘Sub-basement . . .’ said Lucy. ‘Shit, he’s going for a vehicle!’ She took a step back toward the window. ‘We’re gonna lose him!’
‘No.’ Marc shook his head, pulling his tablet computer from the pocket on his tactical vest. ‘We can still get this guy.’ He tapped out a string of commands on the screen, and a set of doors on the nearest elevator bank hissed open, revealing an empty space beyond. The walls of the concrete shaft were wet and glistening with floodwater cascading from the floor above.
‘You wanna do what, fast-rope down there?’ Lucy made a face.
‘No,’ he repeated. Marc queued up another command and a metallic platform extended out of a hidden alcove in the shaft, snapping into place like a closing lid. ‘Maintenance rig,’ he explained, stepping over the gap and on to the open-sided unit. The decking was a metal mesh grid, and looking down he could see right through it, all the way into the black pit of the sub-basement far below.
Lucy followed him on to the platform and it shuddered under their combined weight. Anticipating what would come next, she grabbed a safety rail painted in yellow-and-black hazard stripes. ‘How quick is this thing?’
‘Fast enough,’ Marc replied, crouching by the platform’s automated controls. ‘As soon as I bypass the safety limiters.’ He took a breath, stripping through the warning code, running a brute-force hack. ‘Hold on.’
Then the decking dropped like a stone and they fell with it, the rush of hot and stale air inside the shaft buffeting them, sparks flashing from the gear wheels as the platform shook like it might break apart at any second.
*
Hite hobbled across the underground garage to his smoke-grey Audi TT roadster and wrenched open the door, dropping hard into the driver’s seat. Down here, the fire alarms were still hooting, the strobes still flashing, the lights and the noise beating at him.
He thumbed the starter and reversed out in a screech of tires. The main exit on to Bridge Street would be shuttered, but he knew that the secondary discreet exit on the other side of the basement would answer the command from his signet ring, and let him out through a concealed passage to Pitt Street. From there it would be a matter of getting clear of downtown Sydney as fast as possible.
Hite allowed himself a sly grin. By the time the emergency services had gone through the building and things had calmed down, he would be back at his house in Vaucluse, picking up the rest of his gear. There was something freeing about the thought of it. All the contingencies were in place. Maybe it was better this way, pulling the trigger now instead of later.
He pressed the speed-dial button on the burner phone and waited, bringing the car around in a half-circle. Madrigal answered on the first ring, that familiar digitally masked, barely human voice in his ear. ‘Hello, Dart. Still alive?’
‘I’m on my way out,’ he said quickly. ‘And I’m calling in my marker. I have my departure planned, but I need help to execute it!’
‘I asked you to deal with Rubicon. This is making me think you didn’t do that.’
‘I trapped them inside the building,’ he retorted, dismissing her words. ‘They’re not going anywhere . . .’ Hite’s voice faltered as he accelerated past the elevator bank on the far side of the underground car park, and saw two figures come sprinting out into the red glow of the alarm strobes. ‘Aw, shit!’
‘Is there a problem?’ Madrigal’s tone was frustratingly calm.
Hite jammed the burner phone between his shoulder and his ear so he could put both hands on the Audi’s steering wheel, and slewed toward the two Rubicon agents, hoping to clip one of them on his way out.
They split apart, diving away in different directions, and he missed them, instead coming around in a skidding turn to aim the car in the direction of a curved exit ramp.
‘You’ve let me down, Dart,’ Madrigal purred. ‘And now you want my help?’
‘Yes!’ Hite stood on the accelerator and the Audi jolted forward. From the corner of his eye, he saw the woman aiming a gun, saw it jerk twice as she fired. But the windscreen didn’t break, the expanding stun-shot rounds only cracking the glass as they deflected off it. ‘You owe me!’ he shouted.
‘I do,’ Madrigal admitted. ‘Look at the phone.’
Hite pulled it from his ear and held it up in front of him as the Audi bumped up the ramp. ‘What—?’
‘So long,’ said Madrigal. An instant later, the battery inside the modified burner phone released a powerful high-ampere discharge through the device’s metal frame, triggered by the end of the call.
Every muscle in Hite’s body contracted at once and his heart seized in his chest. Unable to release his grip on the phone, draw his foot off the gas pedal or shift the steering wheel, he drove the roadster into the wall of the exit ramp with such velocity that the rear half of the car left the ground and slammed back down again.
*
Gasoline trickled down the ramp from the car’s ruptured tank as Lucy jogged up to the creaking, steaming wreck. A horrible stench of burned hair and scorched fabric wafted out of the vehicle where the driver’s side door had deformed and fallen open.
Charles Hite lay back in his seat, the airbag uselessly deployed across his agonised, frozen features. His eyes were a mess of blown capillaries, and blood streamed from his nostrils.
‘The fucker’s dead,’ she pronounced.
Marc hissed through his teeth. ‘So much for getting some human intel.’
‘Help me get the door,’ said Lucy, and together they forced it further open. Hite’s body lolled out of the seat, only held in placed by his seatbelt, and his hand fell off his lap. Blackened and bruised with more burst blood vessels and the after-effect of violent muscle damage, it gripped a grimy, scorched object.
Marc leaned back. ‘Wasn’t the impact that did him in. Looks like he was volted.’
Lucy pulled open Hite’s fingers and peeled the cooked remains of a burner phone from his palm, sticky fluid and
melted skin coming with it.
She tossed it to Marc, and his sickened look deepened. ‘What is this . . .?’
Lucy quickly went through Hite’s jacket, finding another cell phone. She noticed an odd pattern of searing on the dead man’s chest, visible through his T-shirt. Looking closer, she hooked out a chain with her finger. A blackened brass key dangled on the end of it. ‘He kept this close,’ Lucy said, thinking aloud. ‘Safe.’ On an impulse, she jerked the chain and tore it off the corpse.
Marc looked over her shoulder. ‘Could be from a strongbox. That’s pretty crude tech for a guy like him, though.’
‘Could be that’s the point,’ she noted. ‘If the enemy expects crude, go technical. If they expect technical, go crude.’
‘Where does it fit, though?’ Marc looked away.
Up at the end of the exit ramp, firefighters were coming into sight, calling out to attract the attention of anyone still trapped inside the building.
‘That’s the question. Hite wanted to protect this,’ Lucy replied. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here.’
ELEVEN
Erik rapped on the rusted steel of a girder to announce himself, and Madrigal stirred awake on a collapsible pallet in the middle of the derelict office. She blinked at him, for a moment chastely pulling the sleeping bag up to cover her bare chest. When she realised he was alone, she let it fall away and swung her feet out and on to the dusty floor.
‘So,’ she said, ‘it’s time?’
‘The trucks are outside,’ Erik explained, as she stood up and crossed to a pile of clothes on a folding chair. ‘The last of our equipment is being loaded. Andre says the jet will be fully fuelled by the time we reach the cargo terminal.’
‘Mmm.’ She paused, watching him. He said nothing, allowing his gaze to slip off her naked skin. She wanted to draw a reaction from him, but he saw no reason to provide one. After a moment, Madrigal began to dress. ‘Then we’re ready. I don’t want to leave anything behind.’ Her tone shifted toward commanding. ‘Make sure everyone double-checks the building before we go. Nothing can remain to trace us.’
‘It’s been done.’
‘Do it again,’ she ordered, then more lightly. ‘Please.’ An implied dismissal lurked in the word, but when Erik didn’t leave, she gave him a hard look. ‘Was there something else?’
‘What are we going to do with Song?’
Madrigal shrugged on a surplus Bundeswehr uniform shirt and buttoned it up. ‘Her name is Kara now.’
‘I don’t care what she calls herself,’ Erik retorted, heat showing through. ‘I don’t trust her. We need to get rid of her.’
‘Like we did with poor Lex?’ Madrigal looked away, her gaze finding the nylon bag Andre had brought up the previous day. Inside was the dead man’s laptop, his personal effects, and a flash drive containing gigabytes of data on their current operation. She seemed to consider it, then dismiss what it represented. ‘A shameful waste of potential. And if we do the same with Kara . . .’ She paused. ‘No. We can make use of her.’
He took a step closer, his jaw stiffening. ‘Did it occur to you that she may be making use of you?’
‘Don’t ever talk to me like I am stupid,’ Madrigal said coldly. ‘I know exactly what I am doing.’
‘Then explain it to me,’ he demanded. ‘We don’t keep things from each other. That is how I have helped you maintain control of the group. But now this, now her . . . You’re acting out of character and it concerns me.’
She smiled without humour. ‘How arrogant of you to think you know me that well, Erik.’ She shook her head, the smile fading.
He folded his arms across his chest. ‘I will state a fact that you do not want to acknowledge. You have a blind spot where that woman is concerned. When she left, you should have dealt with it, yes, as we did with Lex. If I had been here then, I would have insisted. But you let her abandon the group. You let her go because you hoped one day she would come back.’
‘Song – Kara – she abandoned me.’ Madrigal continued to dress, reaching for her leather jacket. ‘How I deal with that is my concern.’
‘No.’ Erik glanced back toward the door, to be sure no one was listening in on their conversation. ‘You want to believe she has returned to the fold, because that pleases you. You like to be right. So you ignore everything else.’
She eyed him. ‘You are making a lot of assumptions about me, Erik. Be careful.’ Madrigal walked toward him. ‘You’re in a position of trust because you are competent. Don’t give me cause to doubt that.’
‘Do you hear yourself?’ he shot back. ‘That was almost a threat.’ He advanced toward her, closing the gap between them. Erik stood a good head taller than the woman, and he used that height to deliberately impose on her personal space. ‘If it were anyone else, what would you say? This is too convenient. Days away from our most ambitious operation, days after Lex was dealt with, and she appears out of nowhere. With a gift of information. And you believe in it without question—’
Madrigal’s hand came up in a blur and slapped him hard across the face. ‘You really do not know me at all, do you?’ She turned and stalked away from him, gathering up her gear for the departure. ‘Don’t second-guess me, Erik. Of course I am suspicious. Of course I am being careful. I’m not a fool.’
He wanted to say more, but held his tongue. He tasted blood in his mouth from a fresh cut on his lip.
‘Kara ran away because she was immature. She believed we were on the wrong side,’ Madrigal went on, ‘but now she understands the truth I told her back then, that there are no sides. There’s only us and them. These people, this Rubicon group. They’re pulling at the edges of our operation, interfering. But the intelligence Kara gave me is bearing out. You’ve seen it yourself. The man in Malta we caught on the drone’s camera. She named him. She’s already proving of use.’
Erik remained silent. Off the lead Kara had given them, Ghost5 had drawn a sketch of the Englishman from data scoured from several military and security databases. Marc Dane was former Royal Navy, recruited into Britain’s MI6 external spy agency for undisclosed operations, but the intelligence on him was frustratingly disjointed. Two years previously, an Interpol arrest warrant had been issued in his name, only to be rescinded less than a week later with no explanation. The CIA had him on a watch list. And if Kara was to be believed, he was now in the employ of a private military contractor whose agents were in the process of tracking Ghost5.
‘Your problem, Erik, is that you see everything in such binary terms.’ Madrigal’s tone softened. ‘You miss the opportunity that blossoms in the subtle shades of grey. Everything Kara has said so far has proven correct. And if we use this information instead of reacting to it, we can make Rubicon work for us.’
‘So far,’ he echoed. ‘She knew this man, yes? And then she betrays him, for what? For you?’
Madrigal paused, her back to him as she folded up the sleeping pallet. ‘She came back because of Lex’s death. She wants to know who was responsible.’
‘And what happens when she finds out?’
‘I won’t let that happen.’ She picked up her bag, and walked back across the room. ‘I won’t be disappointed again.’
Erik gathered up the pallet and followed her into the corridor, down the creaking metallic stairs. Pressing the point would only anger Madrigal further. Instead, he changed tack. ‘You said we should leave no clues. What about Dart?’
‘He’s dead, or were you not paying attention?’
‘We need to make sure he didn’t leave anything behind that could implicate us,’ Erik insisted. ‘Rubicon were clever enough to find him. They’ll be looking for his connections to us.’
Madrigal nodded. ‘That’s already in hand. I’ve reached out to our partners. They’re going to deal with it.’
At the foot of the stairs, some of the group had gathered, waiting for the word to proceed. Erik saw Pyne and Kara halt in mid-conversation as they approached. Kara’s gaze crossed his, and sh
e didn’t hold it.
‘It’s time to move on,’ Madrigal said brightly, addressing the group. She put a hand on Kara’s shoulder and smiled. ‘All of us.’
*
‘I really don’t think this is a good idea,’ Marc said quietly, rocking on his heels as the elevator rose.
‘We don’t get a vote,’ Lucy replied, out the side of her mouth. She was back in her more usual outfit this morning, an ensemble of lightweight cargo trousers and a black bolero jacket over a teal blouse, and somehow she wore it with the same kind of dash that she’d shown in the ten-grand dress from the night before.
Marc hunched forward in his khaki field jacket and jeans, patently aware of the Samoan security guard’s searing gaze boring into him from across the lift car. He looked up and met the man’s eyes directly. A nasty gash below the guard’s hairline had been taped up, and his seething expression made it clear exactly what he wanted to do to Dane, if the two of them had been alone.
‘How’s the head?’ Marc asked.
‘Fine,’ growled the guard. ‘Yours?’
Marc involuntarily touched the fresh bruise on his face and winced a little. ‘Terrific.’ He looked away, through the glass walls of the lift as climbed toward the upper levels of the Horizon Integral building. In the daytime, the greened tower stood out among the plain concrete and steel of its neighbours. Splashes of emerald colour flashed past them on each floor they passed, and here and there Marc spotted work crews in high-visibility vests already engaged in cleaning up the mess caused by the flooding of the forest atrium.
‘Relax,’ Lucy went on. ‘We’re not gonna walk out of here in cuffs.’
‘Don’t count on it,’ said the Samoan.
The elevator reached its destination and the door pinged open. Waiting for them in the reception area was the young Aborigine woman, wearing a professional smile completely devoid of warmth. ‘Hello again,’ she said to Lucy. Her gaze shifted to Marc and she looked him up and down. ‘I see your associate chose to enter the building by more conventional means today.’
Ghost: Page 21
