Money Run

by Jack Heath

  “You got any better theories?”

  Wright rubbed his eyes. “No. I need more people to interview. So far all I’ve had is a brief off-the-record chat with a girl who knows way more than she was willing to tell. I need to get inside HBS. I need to arrest everybody, and talk to them one by one until I can see the whole picture. But TRA won’t let me, because they’re in it up to their necks too.”

  “Now get some filler footage of the helicopter,” the girl in headphones was shouting at the cameraman. “Do it from the north corner, so you can’t see our logo on the side.”

  The reporter was talking on his phone. “Yeah, a few technical hitches. But the story’s getting bigger. Send another team, get them to hover around HBS and wait.”

  “You think the terrorist threat is real?” Belle asked.

  “Nope,” Wright said. “That’d just be another coincidence to throw onto the pile. It seems far more likely that the government made it up to cover whatever it is they’re trying to pull here.”

  “Then go inside,” she said. “If there’s no exposure risk, go inside HBS and prove it, before the players have a chance to finish their games and disappear.”

  “They’re armed, Belle. They’ve threatened to open fire on anyone who approaches the entrance. And they’ll do it, too – it’d be suspicious if they didn’t, and I’ve got a dead body to prove that whatever they’re fighting over is worth killing for.”

  “The girl got inside, didn’t she?”

  “She had a helicopter,” Wright said. “I don’t.”

  “You’re a policeman. She’s not.”

  “I can’t call in a police chopper to violate quarantine.”

  “Sure you can,” Belle said. “You just have to say the magic words.”

  “What are—” Wright broke off. She was right. There was a way to do it.

  “I’ll call you back,” he said.

  TRA’s power stemmed from anti-terrorism legislation, which declared that when terrorists were suspected to have infiltrated any organization, that organization would be stripped of its authority until the breach was found. TRA was able to take over any organization at all, including businesses, law-enforcement agencies, schools and charities.

  But there was a way to use this power against them.

  Wright dialled a number in his phone and hit SEND.

  A voice answered. Bored-sounding. One of the good, perfectly capable officers forced to stay at the station because of the raised terror-alert level. Wright smiled. He was about to make the officer’s day.

  “I need a helicopter and an attack team to the rooftop of Shine Apartments right away,” he said.

  “Sir, that building is inside the quarantine zone. We don’t have jurisdiction, and therefore can’t enter without TRA sanction.”

  Wright then said the magic words. “TRA has been compromised.”

  One more piece of the puzzle had snapped into place. All day, Ash had found it hard to believe that the government would go to so much effort and risk so much for only $2.2 billion. That might seem like a spectacular amount of money to her and Benjamin, but to most governments it was a mere droplet in their bathtub-sized coffers.

  But Hammond Buckland had somehow accumulated almost $96 billion, and then hidden it in plain sight. That was enough to get anyone and everyone who knew about it searching. And suddenly Ash felt way out of her depth. It was like being a cheetah chasing a fat gazelle, and then stumbling into a clearing where Tyrannosaurus rexes were attacking a giant Brachiosaurus.

  She barely remembered pushing through the stairwell door, running down the first flight of steps, pushing against the wall and sliding to her knees. It was like someone had hit MUTE on her life. Nothing seemed quite real.

  “You know what?” Benjamin said in her ear. “That cube is going to be really hard to steal.”

  Ash snorted. “You think?”

  “I ran the calculations again to get the weight – it should be around 4169 tonnes.”

  “Sure won’t fit in my handbag,” Ash muttered. “I would’ve preferred diamonds, or bearer bonds.”

  “But there’s a bright side,” Benjamin said. “Gold is easier to trade for cash than either of those things. It retains its value well. And because it’s a soft metal, you could scrape some out of the cube and put it in the helicopter quite easily. It’s worth about $23,000 per kilogram, and the chopper can carry about a tonne. So you could get away with $23 million.”

  “And leave ninety-five billion, eight hundred and eighty-four million, four hundred and twelve thousand, eight hundred dollars sitting up there on the roof?” Ash demanded. “Just forget we ever found it?”

  “Do you really need it?” Benjamin asked. “What the hell would you spend it on?”

  “I—”

  “That’s why it’s up there,” Benjamin continued. “Because Buckland doesn’t need it, doesn’t want it, and can’t get rid of it. It’s brought him nothing but trouble, and even if we could take it, it would do the same thing to us!”

  Ash thumped her fist against the stairwell wall. “Yeah, but could you live with yourself? Knowing you could’ve had more money than Bill Gates and J.K. Rowling put together, but you turned it down?”

  “With $23 million as the consolation prize?” Benjamin said. “Yeah, I think I could!”

  Ash put her head in her hands.

  “Don’t get greedy,” Benjamin warned. “Remember how thieves get busted.”

  They try to take more than they can carry, Ash thought.

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll find something to carve up the gold with, and then I’ll go back and take as much as will fit in the helicopter. Deal?”

  “Deal,” Benjamin said.

  “Wait. Will they try to shoot me down if I leave in the helicopter? Violating quarantine?”

  “I don’t think so. They know the anthrax is fake, and it’s a fair bet they’ve sealed Buckland in somewhere, so they know it won’t be him in the chopper. From their point of view, the risks of shooting you down outweigh the risks of letting you go.”

  Sealed Buckland in. A finger of guilt prodded Ash’s heart. She wondered if there was something she could possibly do to save him.

  “Don’t think about it, Ash,” Benjamin warned, sensing her thoughts. “If it helps, the reason Buckland has $93 billion more than we thought he did is probably because not all his ventures are legal. For one thing, he should have paid half of it in tax. For another, do you remember that ‘string of high-profile robberies of other banks’ that Keighley was talking about? I’m now fairly certain that Buckland was behind them. He arranged them to make all the other banks look bad so more customers would choose HBS National, and then kept the loot for himself. Fraud, theft and tax evasion. You don’t owe him anything, Ash. Hammond Buckland is a criminal.”

  “So are we,” she said.

  It was a moot point, of course. She didn’t know where Buckland was, or where the people trying to kill him were. There was nothing she could do. Ash sighed. There’d be plenty of time to wrestle with her conscience when she was rich.

  She was on the landing of the 25th floor. She figured that floor was as good as any to find something to carve up the gold with. There’d be a break room with a knife in it somewhere. Gold was so soft almost any knife would do. Ash wondered how she would defuse the alarm system.

  She pulled open the stairwell door.

  There was a woman in a hazard suit on the other side of it, mask off, hood down, holding a Heckler & Koch MP5. She pointed the thick barrel at Ash.

  “Don’t move,” she said.

  Ash dived backwards and tried to pull the door closed. The woman blocked it with her foot and slammed the butt of the gun into Ash’s temple. Ash started to fall backwards down the stairs, but the woman grabbed her by the hair and dragged her back to her feet.

  “Perhaps you didn’t hear me,” the woman said. “Don’t move.”

  Ash tried to breathe evenly. Her scalp felt like it was being torn from he
r skull. “Okay,” she said. “Okay.”

  The woman smiled. Plastic lips stretched back over hospital-white teeth. She released Ash’s hair and gripped her arm instead. “My name is Alex de Totth,” she said. “And I’m going to ask you a few questions.”

  Ash stumbled forward as de Totth started walking. She fell to the floor, but de Totth didn’t slow down, so she was dragged for a bit before she could scramble back up.

  “I’d heard they were recruiting teenagers,” de Totth said. “The theory is that people like me will show mercy to children. The theory is wrong.”

  Ash grabbed at de Totth’s wrist, trying to pull herself up and dull the pain. De Totth slapped Ash’s hands away with the butt of the MP5.

  “What you have to remember,” de Totth said, “is that when you were trained for these situations, your teachers had an agenda.”

  Trained? Teachers? “What are you—”

  De Totth silenced her with a particularly violent tug. “They wanted to keep their secrets. They wanted you not to talk.”

  Oh, no. No, no, no.

  “Oh god,” Benjamin said. “Ash, run!”

  The headphones fell from her ears as she stumbled again.

  “So I’m going to give you what your teachers never did,” de Totth continued. “An unbiased assessment of your situation.”

  She dropped the MP5 as she reached Keighley’s desk. It swung out on a black bungee cord as she reached down and grasped Ash by the throat with one hand and the leg with the other. De Totth lifted her up, dumped her on top of the desk, and caught the gun as it bounced back up.

  “You cooperate, you live,” de Totth said. “You don’t, you die.” She smiled again. “Simple, right? Here are the specifics.”

  Ash tried to roll off the desk, but de Totth smacked her face with a gloved palm and held her down.

  “The other government agent,” de Totth said. “I don’t know why I was ordered to let him out of the oil vat. I don’t know why I’m only permitted to use tranq ammo on him. I also don’t know where he is, and that’s the information I’m looking for. So I’m going to ask you.”

  What the heck is she on about? Ash thought wildly. Oil vat? Tranq ammo? The other agent?

  “There are three possible answers you can give me,” de Totth said. “One: you give me his exact location. I’ll let you go. I have nothing to lose from that. Two: you refuse to tell me. I’ll put the barrel of my gun against the little toe on your right foot and shoot it off. Then I’ll ask again, and if I get the same response, I’ll choose another toe. Once I run out of toes, I’ll start on fingers. Once you have no more fingers, I’ll take one of your ears – but only one, because I’m going to keep asking the question and keep shooting body parts, and I need you to be able to hear me. Got it?”

  Ash felt sick. Like she’d swallowed cement mix and it was hardening inside her. She wanted to look around for ways out of this, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the gun.

  “Three: you tell me you don’t know where he is, you don’t know what I’m talking about – anything like that. If I think you’re lying to me, I’ll take a toe, finger or ear. But if you say it convincingly enough, and I believe you…”

  “I don’t—” Ash began shakily.

  “…then I’ll kill you,” de Totth continued, “because that means you’re absolutely useless to me.” She ripped off Ash’s shoe and clicked off the safety catch on her gun. “Ready to start?”

  Peachey reached the 25th floor, and eased the stairwell door open. The first thing he saw was a SIG Sauer 9 mm pistol with the safety catch off.

  The second thing he saw was Adam Keighley holding it.

  Peachey’s eyes widened. What the hell was this?

  His first thought was that Keighley worked security for Buckland as well as being a secretary. But that made no sense. Buckland already had security, and besides, security shouted “Halt!” or “Freeze!”. They didn’t just take aim silently, grim concentration on their faces.

  His next guess was that Keighley was an undercover cop. They were tougher than security guards and, as a general rule, a little more relaxed about the rules and etiquette of shooting someone. They could get away with a lot by explaining that they were “only maintaining their cover”.

  This day had been so insane that it seemed anything was possible. Peachey wouldn’t have been surprised if Keighley turned out to be an alien protecting the mother ship concealed in the basement. But it was his third thought that made the most sense to him.

  It had baffled him all day how Buckland had seemed to know he was coming, when Walker had said that the operation had only been planned a few days ago. On the one hand, Buckland couldn’t possibly have improvised his many traps so quickly, but on the other, why would Walker lie about something like that?

  Now Peachey thought he had found a third possibility. He didn’t understand the why of it just yet, but he thought he’d grasped the how.

  Buckland had seen it coming because he had forced it to happen.

  Whatever reason the government had for wanting him killed, he knew about it. So he forced their hand, making sure he knew when the hitter would be coming. The best form of defence is attack. Maybe he had decided to retire or planned a trip overseas or something. Either way, he told no one except his closest, most trusted employees. Knowing that at least one of them was a government agent.

  If Adam Keighley was one of Walker’s men, that would explain how Walker had managed to hack into the CCTV footage. And it would explain how Walker had been able to track Peachey’s movements; he remembered Keighley spraying his – Ford’s – name tag with something to “activate” it. Microdots, most likely, so the government could keep tabs on him. And it would explain how Buckland had managed to stay a step ahead the whole way – he’d been controlling the information that got to Keighley, so Keighley passed on only certain things to Walker, and Walker passed them on to Peachey.

  Keighley being a government agent made perfect sense. After all, he wasn’t pointing the SIG at Peachey. He hadn’t even noticed the lift doors opening, as far as Peachey could tell. He was pointing it down the corridor, at someone Peachey couldn’t see from where he was.

  “Where is the other government agent?” de Totth asked.

  She thinks I’m working for the government, Ash thought. Her mind was racing. That means she doesn’t work for the government herself. She works for Buckland! The TRA aren’t the real TRA, they’re here to protect Buckland!

  “Sorry,” de Totth said. “I should have clarified this. Silence counts as refusing to tell me.” She wrapped her gloved fingers around Ash’s toe, holding it in place.

  “I don’t work for the government!” Ash said. “I’m on your side!”

  “Wrong answer,” de Totth said, pressing the barrel of the gun against Ash’s toe.

  “No! Wait!” Ash said.

  The barrel was cold against her skin. De Totth ignored her.

  “Wait!” she said again. “I’ll help you!”

  De Totth paused. Okay, Ash thought. How do I get out of this?

  “You were right,” Ash said. “I’m a government agent. I don’t know where he is, but—”

  De Totth’s finger tightened on the trigger.

  “But,” Ash said, desperate, “I can contact him.”

  “Tell me how,” de Totth said.

  “My iPod headphones. They’re connected to a phone in my back pocket. He’s on the other end of the line.”

  “You can make him come to get you?”

  Ash took a deep breath. “No, but maybe you can. He outranks me, he’s not supposed to follow my instructions. But if you told him you had captured me and made him believe that I was giving you information, he might show up. To silence me.”

  De Totth examined Ash with inky black eyes. She stood there for what felt like a long time. Ash’s breathing came in ragged gasps.

  “Okay,” de Totth said. “Give me the phone.”

  Ash rolled onto her side so she could reach
her back pocket. She withdrew the phone slowly. I sure hope Benjamin heard all that, she thought. And that he’ll be able to play along.

  Ash held out the phone, but de Totth didn’t take it. She was staring into space, like she was listening carefully, or trying to tell the direction of the wind.

  “Trap,” she growled.

  She started to turn, lifting the MP5 from Ash’s toe and clicking the safety from semi to auto. But she didn’t make it.

  Ash screamed as pink mist puffed out from the back of de Totth’s head. Hot wetness spattered Ash’s face, and she gagged. The bullet kept going, thunking into the wall behind her. Only then did she hear the gunshots from the corridor behind de Totth – she rolled off Keighley’s desk and landed on all fours behind it.

  Crack! Crack! Slugs slammed against the side of the desk but didn’t penetrate. She heard a thud as de Totth’s body hit the ground. The shots kept coming, either because the shooter wanted to be certain that Alex de Totth was really dead, or because he was hoping to hit Ash through the desk.

  Peachey watched as Keighley fired shot after shot down the corridor in quick succession. The guy’s undercover work was obviously much better than his marksmanship.

  The gun clicked empty.

  “Hello,” Peachey said.

  Keighley whirled around, pointing the gun. “You!” he said.

  “Me,” Peachey said. “Did you hit anything, or is it early days? I’d lend you some bullets, but I think I might be fresh out.”

  “I’m doing your job, Peachey,” Keighley hissed. “How about you take over?”

  “You mean after all those shots, Buckland is still alive?”

  Keighley pointed. “That was Alex de Totth, Buckland’s main bodyguard. So now that I’ve done the hard part for you, how about you finally do what we’re paying you to do?”

  Keighley killed de Totth? No way. Peachey stepped out of the lift and stared down the corridor. There she was, in front of a colander-like reception desk, with at least three gunshot wounds, including one just above her left eye. She was dead, all right.

  “Buckland’s in his office,” Keighley said. “Unarmed, and unguarded. Don’t screw up this time.” He stepped into the lift, pushed a button and the doors swept shut.