The Manhattan Puzzle

by Laurence O'Bryan

  Her phone buzzed.

  Thank God. Thank God. He’d replied.

  COME TO THE CAR PARK ENTRANCE ON LEXINGTON.

  Almost every part of her filled with hope now, as if she’d been warmed by his message. She could leave all this mayhem behind. If it was him, of course. There had to be a possibility someone was using his phone or his number. She had to be careful.

  She threaded her way through a group heading up Lexington. The crowd outside the bank’s front entrance was going to get a whole lot bigger soon, by the looks of things. She reached the car park entrance as a police cruiser passed, driving slowly. The officers inside were staring out, looking left and right, as if they were looking for recently escaped criminals.

  She looked away.

  Then, crossing Lexington, coming towards her, who should she see, but her friendly bum from the last time she was here.

  Her heart bumped against her rib cage. She took a quick breath. She was nearer the car park entrance, and he was still a hundred yards beyond it, maybe she could avoid him.

  Please gate, open.

  Before he gets here.

  57

  The onyx-black GMC Yukon 4x4 with darkened windows and brand new plates parked with its engine running near the corner of Lexington and 44th had three occupants inside. The man who had spoken, Mr Li, his accent a lilting mix of Hong Kong and Shanghai dialects, tapped the shoulder of the man in the front passenger seat, a younger Chinese man. He repeated what he had said in English.

  ‘Is she near?’ He was clearly agitated.

  The younger man stared at the small silver tablet on his knees. The blinking red dot in the centre of the screen was still showing on the map as being a few hundred yards from them, but it had stopped.

  ‘She’s on the sidewalk, up there.’ The younger man turned and pointed across the street, past the snowplough.

  ‘Move forward,’ barked the older man.

  The driver did as he was asked. All the occupants, the driver, the young man beside him and the older man looked out through the darkened glass of the front window. Now they could see the back of the bum they’d watched earlier. He was near the Lexington Avenue car park entrance of BXH.

  ‘. Once she goes inside go and get him,’ said the older man. ‘I want to talk to him. Tell him I have some money for him, and his friends too, if he can round a few up.’

  The younger Chinese man, an American citizen, in the front, felt for his weapon. He had a black Norinco NP24 pistol in a holster under his armpit. He checked his jacket was loose enough to reach the gun quickly.

  The NP24 was his favourite. Manufactured in high numbers over many years in Chinese state munitions factories, it was the weapon of choice for many overseas divisions of the PLA, elite Chinese police units and senior members of Chinese tongs in New York City.

  The younger man held the smooth pistol grip with his right hand as he pulled the door handle with his left. He knew the older man in the back of the Yukon would not get out, nor would the driver.

  And he knew he was expendable.

  They would drive off if there was any trouble.

  But he knew his duty.

  58

  The car park shutter vibrated. Someone was listening to her prayers.

  With a loud clanking the red steel leaves went up. There was someone standing behind them. She could see their shoes. They were black, highly polished. For a moment she thought it might be Sean.

  Then the shutter came up some more and she saw it was only one of the security guards. He was wearing a black puffy jacket. As she stepped towards him he ducked his head down under the slow moving shutter and looked at her.

  ‘Name?’ he asked. His gaze flickered around suspiciously, as if he thought she might have accomplices hiding nearby who were about to pounce on him.

  ‘Isabel Ryan.’

  ‘Come in, Mrs Ryan.’

  She could have hugged him.

  ‘And you.’ He pointed a black leather-gloved hand at the bum, who was still walking towards them, and about ten feet away now.

  ‘You’ve been told not to hang around here,’ he said. Then he put his hand on his belt, as if he was going to draw his gun.

  ‘Are you okay?’ said the guard, glancing at her. As the shutter finished its journey above their heads with a thud he straightened himself to his full height. Behind him a warm yellow light flowed out.

  He looked uncomfortable, on the edge of his territory, as if he didn’t like leaving the building. When he looked down at her he smiled, but she felt zero warmth coming from him, and the smile vanished as quickly as it had come.

  ‘Is my husband here?’ She looked behind him.

  ‘Follow me. I gotta escort you to the elevator, ma’am. That’s all.’

  As the shutter clanked down behind them they walked down a short ramp. It took them from the winter city above into a seasonless basement checker-boarded with square red-brick pillars. It was cold in the basement, but not freezing, which was surprising given the height of the roof. On the walls there were circular patterns in the brick, darker reds against lighter ones.

  There was a smell of petrol. And there were four black late-model Lincoln town cars parked to one side, like the one Sean had been in earlier.

  In the middle of the basement there was a large circular steel plate set into the painted concrete floor. It could have been a turning circle, or a circular elevator allowing vehicles to be taken down to lower parking levels.

  The whole area looked as if it would be humming with activity during the week. Was this where BXH’s armoured cars were prepared after being loaded with cash boxes from some underground vault?

  As the guard followed a bright yellow path painted onto the floor, her hopes retreated.

  What the hell was going on? Where was Sean?

  The elevator doors were ornate like the ones upstairs, decorated with brass mouldings. She hoped one of them would open as they approached and Sean would appear.

  But he didn’t.

  What looked like the executive elevator, with a golden door, was at the centre of the bank of elevators, as it was up above in the building. The guard pressed the button beside the elevator on the left, the nearest one to them.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asked. ‘Where’s my husband?’

  ‘I have instructions to take you below, ma’am,’ was his reply. Then he continued staring straight ahead.

  The door opened with a ping.

  ‘This way,’ he said.

  She hesitated, then went in. He followed her. None of this felt right. Inside, the elevator was panelled in shiny mahogany.

  She could feel the guard’s presence. He was a giant. For a moment she wished she’d kept up her karate classes after leaving the Foreign Office. She’d thrown plenty of big bruisers, but she felt very rusty.

  ‘Did you see the snow outside?’ she said.

  He didn’t reply. Being friendly was clearly a wasted effort with this guy.

  ‘What’s below?’ She’d been feeling so elated, keen to see Sean, she hadn’t thought about where they might be going.

  He didn’t reply.

  The elevator jerked, rattled, and went on down. She’d read about the basement levels in the BXH building the last time she was here with Sean. They made a big deal about them in one of their brochures. Sean had pointed it out to her.

  A million cubic feet of earth had been excavated to construct the seven underground floors of the building. Apparently that made it the deepest basement in New York when it was constructed in the late 1920s, though this fact was largely unknown, claimed the brochure.

  Even the New York Federal Reserve Bank, built near Wall Street, further down Manhattan Island six years before in a grand Italian palazzo style, which previously had the lowest vaults, had only five basement levels.

  She looked up at the floor indicator above the door. It had seven levels marked with a B. They were descending through them.

  Why were they going down so far?
>
  As they neared the bottom the elevator slowed, then rattled again. It felt old, from a different generation. Its doors pinged loudly as they opened. There was another guard waiting for them outside.

  This guy was even bigger than her talkative friend. He looked like a Kazakh wrestler. His face was all hard angles and tight lips. He had a charmless uninterested expression too, which probably would have taken a jackhammer to loosen. He eyed her from head to toe, then he spoke.

  ‘This way,’ he said. She followed him down a dark red-brick-lined corridor. It was wide enough for six people to walk abreast and had shiny steel doors at regular intervals. The decoration down here wasn’t as elaborate as up above, and the roof was lower, but you could see the whole place had been designed by the same team.

  ‘Wait in here,’ said the guard. He opened a door near the end of the corridor and motioned her in. She went inside.

  She could feel the weight of the floors above them. Maybe it was the red ceiling in the long room, or maybe it was the steel girders that ran from side to side every few feet above her head. Whatever it was, she didn’t like it. Not one bit.

  ‘Okay, where’s my husband?’ She raised her voice.

  She didn’t want to be too aggressive, but she wasn’t going to accept waiting indefinitely down here in this creepy basement, without any idea of what was going on.

  ‘Wait here,’ was the guard’s eloquent reply.

  Then he closed the door. She heard it being locked. What the hell?

  They couldn’t lock her in!

  She banged on the door immediately, pulling at the handle.

  ‘Open this door. Come on. You can’t lock me up,’ she shouted.

  She banged again.

  There was no reply. She kept going. After about two minutes, with her anger rising, she heard a scraping noise. She stepped back. The door opened.

  ‘I am very sorry, Mrs Ryan. That guard shouldn’t have locked this door. I’m afraid some of them take their duties far too seriously.’ The man who’d opened the door extended a hand to her.

  She didn’t take it.

  ‘You can’t do this.’ She pointed at him. ‘You can’t lock people up in a room. That’s kidnapping. Where is my husband?’

  ‘As I said, I am sorry, Mrs Ryan. It was a mistake.’

  He looked like a relic from the last century. He had slicked back silver-grey hair, and was wearing a tight fitting black suit, crisp white shirt and a thin red tie. He walked past her into the room. He looked like someone who hadn’t changed his style since the days when secretaries sat on their bosses’ knees.

  ‘Come in, gentlemen,’ he said, over his shoulder.

  Two men came in after him. They looked like upmarket plain-clothes policemen.

  She followed the grey-haired man to the centre of the room. ‘Where is my husband?’ she said, loudly.

  ‘That’s why we’re here, Mrs Ryan.’ He pointed at a large LCD screen on a narrow table at the far end of the room. In front of it there were four rows of blue plastic chairs. It looked as if the room was normally used for training purposes.

  ‘Take a seat, Mrs Ryan.’ He was clearly used to telling people what to do.

  She stood in front of him, put her index finger to his chest and pressed it hard into his white shirt. An indentation formed.

  ‘Tell me where my husband is. Right now!’

  He simply stepped back, pointing at the seats.

  ‘Please, Mrs Ryan. I will explain everything.’ The other two men sat down. Both of them held themselves rigidly, as if they assumed they were being watched. She felt a chill and looked around. On the nearest wall there were two smoked glass cases high up, by the roof. Each of them about three inches square. They could easily have held security cameras.

  ‘Take a seat, Mrs Ryan.’ Grey hair sounded very sure of himself.

  She sat, though she didn’t want to. She had a cramp in her stomach. What the hell was all this about?

  ‘I apologise for bringing you here under these circumstances. But I think you’ll agree, when you see what I’m about to show you, that we’re a hundred per cent justified in doing this.’ Grey hair reached inside his jacket and pulled out a shiny USB storage device.

  He waved it in the air as if it was a trophy, then he walked towards the LCD screen. He plugged the device into the side of the TV, then pressed a button on the top.

  It sprang to life, flickering briefly. A menu screen appeared. Then the screen flickered again.

  A voice was coming from somewhere behind the camera. The camera was facing a red-brick wall, just like the ones around her.

  ‘This termination interview is taking place Saturday 11 December, at BXH’s headquarters, Lexington Avenue, New York.’ The voice paused. His accent was steel-hard mid-Atlantic.

  Sweat sprung out on Isabel’s forehead.

  ‘This recording is time and date stamped,’ he continued. ‘My name is Paul Vaughann. I am the UK CEO of BXH. This contract termination interview is with a Mr Sean Ryan.’

  Goosebumps formed on her arms. Why was she being shown this? A hand appeared. It moved the camera. Someone was turning it. Red-brick walls flashed by. The room was like this one, only smaller.

  Sean’s face appeared.

  She could feel the blood draining from her face. It was the first time she’d seen him properly in days. His skin was pale, his eyes bulging. He did not look good. She bent forward to see him better.

  She wanted to shout at him, but she didn’t.

  He was sitting on the other side of a table. He looked up at the camera. She said ‘Sean,’ under her breath. The two men sitting in front of her turned and gave her an inquisitive stare.

  Then Sean started talking and they looked away.

  She wished she wasn’t seeing this. But she couldn’t stop watching it. Her hands felt cold. Her skin felt too tight for her body.

  ‘Please state your name, relationship with BXH and the particular circumstances of this interview, Mr Ryan.’ If this was taken earlier, she could have been outside, a few hundred feet away, while this was all happening. No wonder he’d looked weird, preoccupied, when she’d seen him.

  She sucked in her breath. She hadn’t even realised she’d been holding it.

  ‘My name is Sean Ryan. I’m the head of a software project at BXH’s London office. I work on contract for BXH.’ He coughed.

  She wrapped her arms tight around herself. It looked as if he didn’t want to say more.

  ‘Please state the circumstances of this interview, Mr Ryan.’

  Sean looked up. His gaze moved, as if he was looking at different people behind the camera. He did not look happy. His eyes were dead.

  There was a taste of dust in her mouth. Her face felt hot.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’ll say it.’

  He looked at the camera, spoke slowly. ‘I murdered a dancer I met in a club in London the other night.’ He sounded defiant.

  She blinked. There was pressure building inside her.

  It took long seconds for the words to register. Then a whooshing followed in her ears as the meaning became clear. The air felt heavy, hard to breathe. Something was stabbing into her, as if a pin had been rammed into her head. She put her palm to her forehead. It felt as if her whole head might explode. This couldn’t be happening.

  This was a nightmare. It had to be a nightmare. Or a lie.

  59

  The only sound in the panic room was from Alek crying. Xena was standing over him.

  ‘Soon all this will be over, little boy,’ she said. She leaned towards him.

  ‘You will be as free as a bird.’ She straightened, then went to the long wooden table on the right of the bed.

  It was where she kept the handcuffs. Not one of the pairs was small enough to hold the boy, but the black silk cords would be.

  She turned as she heard a noise.

  Lord Bidoner had joined them.

  ‘All is ready?’ he said. He turned the dimmer switch. The lights in the roo
m faded.

  The boy was whimpering. He was curled up under the blanket in the centre of the bed. He had his eyes closed. He opened them for a second. When he saw what Xena was holding he squeezed them shut again. His whimpering became louder. It was mixed with half-stifled sobs now.

  ‘I am ready,’ she said.

  ‘Quarto quattuor invocare unum,’ said Lord Bidoner. He spoke softly, then bowed his head.

  Xena was standing on the far side of the bed. She reached towards Alek and pulled the blanket away from him. He was shivering.

  60

  Sean’s voice echoed in the room. ‘I …’ His eyes were wide. He looked manic, not at all like the Sean Isabel knew so well.

  She stood up, knocking the chair in front of her forward.

  ‘Where is he? I don’t believe any of this crap.’ She waved her hand at the screen. Her voice was loud. But she didn’t care.

  ‘You can’t show this to people. You’ve no right to show this to anyone. What the hell’s going on? Who the hell are you?’ She glared at the two men in front of her. The muscles in her arms and legs were vibrating as if she’d run a marathon.

  Grey hair didn’t say a word. He pressed a button on the remote. Sean’s face stopped moving. His mouth was wide open. You could have cut the atmosphere in the room into toxic chunks.

  The thinner of the two men sitting in front of her said, ‘My name’s Gus Reilly, Mrs Ryan. I’m Assistant DA in the Financial Crimes Unit at the New York District Attorney’s office.’ He shifted a little in his chair.

  ‘I’m here to investigate the circumstances of the collapsed merger between BXH and another party. We received a referral from the SEC regarding suspicious activity at BXH’s London office. Your husband is one of the individuals we’re investigating. I have every right to view this material under a subpoena issued this afternoon by US District Court Judge, Bernard M. Stanton.’ He reached into his jacket, pulled a sheaf of papers out and held them in the air.

  A numbness was spreading through her veins like poison.

  ‘Do you know were my husband is?’