The Manhattan Puzzle

by Laurence O'Bryan

  It was a tight squeeze. Isabel was beside Sean at the back. He smiled at her, but it was a broken smile. Adar, Mrs Vaughann and the Chinese guy were all staring at them.

  Sean gripped her hand. She gripped back. It was good to hold him. His warmth ran up her arm.

  The elevator kept going up for a long time. When it opened they were looking into a spectacular glass-walled reception area. It was poorly lit, only a few recessed lights in the ceiling were on. A grey square symbol was etched into the glass wall separating the elevators from the reception.

  ‘Go inside,’ said Adar. He put a card against a screen attached to the wall. It lit up briefly in blue, then a click sounded and a glass door slid open to the right.

  ‘Sure,’ said Sean. He sounded confident again. She wanted to scream at them all, demand that they let her son and friend go, but a voice inside kept telling her to wait for the right moment.

  A minute later they were in a modern meeting room with silver chairs strewn around as if a meeting had broken up in disarray. There was a podium with a blue microphone at the far end. Behind the podium was a big LCD screen.

  One wall of the conference room was all windows. Isabel had no idea what was beyond them, because the grey vertical blinds in front of each window were pulled closed. The light in the room was painfully bright.

  She hugged Sean as if that might stop him leaving her ever again. Then she pushed him away.

  Adar was standing by the door like some military policeman guarding them. Mrs Vaughann and her Chinese friend had disappeared.

  ‘What’s the plan?’ said Isabel, in a low voice as they walked down the room towards the podium.

  He gripped her arm. ‘They think they need me,’ he said. ‘I know this seems crazy, but the whole takeover thing is a cover for something else. They won’t harm any of us. I won’t cooperate if they touch one hair on your body.’ He was trying to reassure her. It wasn’t working.

  Surely, when he’d done what they wanted him to do they would dispose of them both. Of them all.

  ‘What do they want from you?’

  Before he had a chance to answer, the door of the room opened and in came an older Chinese man with Mrs Vaughann.

  The Chinese man took a seat and rested his hands on his knees. He looked like someone’s grandfather, though his hair was still black. His skin was hanging on his face as if he’d recovered from an illness.

  ‘Are you going to introduce us?’ she said.

  The Chinese man’s eyebrows went up. It was clear from Mrs Vaughann’s expression that he was the guy in charge.

  He spoke.

  ‘My name is Li,’ said the Chinese man.

  His willingness to share his name sent a shiver through her. He had to be planning to dispose of them.

  He turned to Sean. ‘Now that your wife is here, Mr Ryan, there is no reason for you not to finish your job for me.’ His tone was firm. He seemed the kind of a man who would sit and watch, without wincing, as thousands died in front of him.

  ‘And you will end up paying half the price you originally offered for BXH.’

  ‘You are wrong, Mr Ryan.’ Li paused. He smiled. ‘We will pay less than that.’

  ‘I’ll do what you want,’ said Sean. ‘Everything you want.’

  Li’s face was expressionless.

  What was Sean doing?

  ‘If you release my wife,’ Sean pointed at her. ‘And my son Alek, and the woman who was with him.’

  Li looked at Sean, as if he was examining a specimen of stupidity. ‘You Westerners, you are all such optimists, aren’t you?’

  ‘Are you going to release them or not? I thought you wanted a big payday.’

  ‘Aaah, you people think it’s all about money.’

  ‘For me this is about my family,’ said Sean. ‘I don’t care about anything else.’

  ‘Come then,’ said Li. He waved at Sean, turned and headed for the door. It was clear he expected Sean to follow.

  ‘Hold on a minute,’ said Isabel. ‘How do you know he will do what you want? You need to bring me too.’

  Li looked at her. There was disdain in his eyes. He took his phone out of his pocket.

  ‘You want to watch what will happen to your boy if your husband doesn’t cooperate?’ He tapped his pocket.

  She walked towards him, anger bubbling inside her. He was standing between her and Adar.

  He stepped back as she came near him.

  ‘Let my son go, you bastard. You’ll get what you want.’ She jabbed her finger towards his chest. He stepped back. He was near Adar now. She followed him.

  ‘My husband isn’t going to tell you anything until you release my son. Do you understand?’

  Li’s hand came up quickly. He gripped her wrist. In a second her arm was twisting and she was falling to her right.

  ‘Never come near me, stupid woman. Maybe I kill you all for that. You and your stupid family. You are nothing to me.’

  She was down on one knee, fear seizing up every cell in her body. Her eyes squeezed tight as tears of frustration made her vision swim.

  81

  Henry Mowlam was still at his desk. He hadn’t pulled an all-night shift in six months, but there was no way he was going home now.

  ‘Have they broken into the building?’ he shouted.

  ‘Yes,’ Major Finch replied.

  She was at the console beside his. She was watching the TV signal from New York. It was showing a live CNN feed from outside BXH. Someone had started throwing cans at the doors of the BXH building thirty minutes before and the security guards had retreated inside. One of the glass doors had shattered. Then the other.

  The make-up of the crowd outside the bank had changed in the past few hours. There were down and outs and people with ski masks, with more arriving. One older vagrant with his fist in the air was urging people on.

  Henry wasn’t able to watch the scene from outside BXH because he was finally watching what was going on inside, and he was also looking up the owners of a building nearby, where Isabel Ryan’s mobile had been traced to.

  The BXH feed, from a camera on the basement stairs, showed a team with a concrete drill attempting to break through a brick wall leading off an underground stairwell.

  The NYPD had figured out that there were levels in the basement of BXH that they were unable to access via the elevators and they’d decided to take the brute force way to open them up.

  The only feedback he’d received about what was going on was when his FBI contact had emailed him details of how to watch events. He’d indicated that the NYPD were determined to catch whoever had murdered their colleague and they weren’t going to leave any level in the BXH building unsearched in their hunt for Sean Ryan.

  On his other screen he was flicking through the floor maps of the building Isabel was in, trying to see which floor she might be on.

  But so far he had come up with nothing,

  ‘They’ve broken through,’ he said, softly.

  Major Finch stood and came behind him. They both watched as a section of brick wall collapsed and two NYPD officers shone torches into the space beyond.

  82

  ‘Let go of her,’ shouted Sean. She could hear him storming towards them. Li took his eye off her.

  Adar shouted. ‘Stay where you are.’

  An explosion ripped through the air. A ripple-like shockwave passed by her. Adar had fired his gun. She could smell the cordite.

  ‘The next one kills your wife,’ shouted Adar.

  She looked around. Sean was standing two feet behind her. His hands were up. Thank God the bullet hadn’t touched either of them. Or had it? She looked down at her body expecting to see blood somewhere. But there wasn’t. She heard a faint whistling sound and a clacking. One of the window blinds was vibrating. It had a small hole in it near one edge.

  ‘We have no more time,’ said Li. ‘You come now, Mr Ryan, or you watch your wife die.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Sean. He was beside Isabel helping her up.


  ‘Nice try. Stay here. I’ll be back for you.’ He leaned close to her ear. ‘If you get a chance, take it.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘No whispering,’ said Adar. He pointed the gun at Sean.

  Sean shrugged. As he left the room he turned and looked at her. It was a look that said I may never see you again.

  ‘Give me your phone,’ said Adar before he left the room.

  She handed it to him.

  ‘Turn out your pockets.’

  She did. She had a few dollars and her credit cards in a small wallet, nothing else. Then she was alone. The door was locked. She checked the room for a phone. There was none. Nor was there anything she could use as a weapon, unless she could swing a chair at him when he came back in.

  Seeing Sean had given her hope, but finding out that these people were holding Alek and Rose had sent her mind spinning and anxiety churning inside her.

  She went to the window that had been broken by the bullet and pulled back the shivering blinds. There was a crack in the glass, a hole the size of a finger. The crack went from a corner of the window to the hole and then on. He’d been lucky the whole thing hadn’t shattered.

  She pulled up the blinds.

  Outside, snow was piling into the glass. A few flakes came in through the bullet hole along with icy air.

  She put her hand near the hole, felt cold air rushing in.

  Maybe this was their chance. If she could attract the attention of someone below, maybe they’d come up to see what was going on.

  She couldn’t let this play out. She had to do something.

  She picked up one of the plastic chairs, carried it over and threw it at the window. It bounced off the glass.

  She examined the glass again. The crack was still there. Nothing had changed. There was a glass water pitcher at the podium. She launched it at the bullet hole. It smashed into pieces.

  For a moment she thought it had done the job, but then she saw it hadn’t. And then she heard a shout from outside the door. Adar would be back any second.

  And God only knew how he’d react to what she’d been doing.

  She picked up a chair, aimed one of the legs at the bullet hole and ran for the window. She assumed she would be able to stop herself if it broke, and swerve to the window frame on the right.

  She was wrong.

  Behind her came a shout.

  Then the chair hit the glass and it shattered. She fell down onto the carpet near the window. The air around her and the glass from the window were being sucked out in front her. A vortex of wind was pulling her towards a jagged hole of glass and blackness.

  She couldn’t stop.

  And then the floor swayed, as if the loss of the window had affected it.

  She spread her hands on the carpet, trying to dig her nails in. A roaring wind filled her ears. She was looking into the mouth of a freezing hell.

  That was when she realised that the BXH building was straight across from her. And lights were on all over it. She could see people working in offices. But not one of them was looking at her.

  ‘Fool,’ shouted Adar behind her.

  A hurricane wind was sucking her inexorably towards the now six-foot-wide jagged hole in the glass. In another second or two she’d be falling towards the concrete of 45th Street.

  She did the only thing she could. She reached towards the jagged edge, and let the sucking momentum take her towards the lip of steel that extended all along the bottom edge of the window.

  As she did, she heard a howling noise and felt something whistling past her head. Another object flew past her. She glanced behind her. Adar was standing still, as if nothing could affect him, but the partition behind him, separating the room from the hall, had a big crack in it.

  Then a section of the partition peeled away under the force of the sucking vortex as the wind outside shifted. And Adar turned just as it hit him. He went down like a felled boxer.

  An alarm was ringing. Then another. She could see down the corridor outside the room. Her hair whipped across her face. The wind was icy. There were swarms of stinging snowflakes in it. The Chinese man, Li, was looking out from a door along the corridor.

  He had a shocked look on his face. She pushed herself back along the carpet, her body tight to it, the wind swirling and sucking, as she crawled towards the corridor. She saw Sean coming towards her. He was bending down, half crouching.

  She reached out for him. Time had slowed. She tried to rise from the carpet, but she was pulled backwards if she did.

  But then the thought of the danger Alek was in made a burst of energy rise up from deep inside her. She pushed herself forward. Sean grabbed her as a great crack sounded around them. She didn’t want to look around, but she couldn’t stop herself. Two sections of the windows, including a large undamaged plate of glass, were being sucked out into the storm. Then a violent swirl of snow, like the maw of a white bear, rushed in.

  They were in the corridor now and the power of the wind had lessened. In front of them the elevator doors opened. Li walked into it, calmly, as if nothing was going on. She felt something in her back. The young Chinese man was behind them.

  ‘Get into the elevator,’ he said. His expression gave nothing away.

  And then her, Li, Sean and the young Chinese man were all inside and the elevator doors were closing, just as some papers flew by heading towards the rip in the wall of the corridor.

  It felt like closing the door on a nightmare.

  She glanced behind her. The young Chinese man’s gun was black, small and deadly looking.

  ‘Maybe it is better if your lovely wife comes with us,’ said Li. ‘I think she might make too much trouble back there.’

  Then the elevator went dark. She reached forward, hoping to take the gun from the Chinese man. She’d been taught how to do it, how to bend a barrel upwards and to the side quickly and force someone to loosen their grip as their fingers bent painfully. But her fingers touched skin, then clutched at thin air.

  And she knew what was going to happen next.

  She pushed her hand out to the left, pushing Sean away from her, while at the same time twisting her own body away to the right.

  The explosion from the gun barrel filled the confined space with a wave of noise and light. She heard Sean grunt. Dread filled her.

  But she had seen him. He was in the corner in front of her. As darkness engulfed them again and the wave of noise echoed, she reached out with her hand and felt it connect. She had a hold on the deadly end. The barrel. It was hot, burning her fingers. But she knew what she had to do.

  She jerked it up and to the right. The man screamed as his fingers were squeezed as if in a vice. That was when she registered the noise beside her. Sean was struggling with Li.

  ‘Stop struggling or I kill your husband,’ said Li.

  A second later the doors of the elevator pinged and opened. She let go of the gun, then stepped back.

  ‘If you do that again I will put holes in both of you,’ Li shouted. He had a similar gun to the other man.

  ‘Come on, let’s go,’ he said.

  ‘Where?’ said Sean.

  Li sighted along the barrel of the gun.

  ‘You will want to come, when you see what we have waiting for you.’ First he pointed it at Sean’s head, then at his chest. He took another few steps back, sighting along the barrel.

  Then the four of them were together on the cold basement platform. There was no evidence of the destruction that was being wrought above them by the hole in the side of the building.

  Sean gripped her shoulder.

  ‘We have to go with him,’ he said.

  ‘What the hell is this all about?’ she said. She kept her eyes on Li.

  ‘All I want to do is find a way to get Alek released,’ said Sean.

  ‘Don’t make trouble, Mrs Ryan,’ said Li. ‘It will be worse for your son if you do. I promise you that. Much worse.’

  83

  Henry Mowlam wat
ched as the blinking light on the street grid of Manhattan disappeared.

  ‘She’s not moving.’

  ‘No kidding, Sherlock.’ Major Finch was standing behind him.

  ‘Do you have the original plans of the BXH building?’

  Finch dropped the print-out onto his desk. ‘I’m sure it’s online somewhere,’ she said.

  ‘No time.’ He peered down at the illustration. ‘These are tunnels that connect the bank to all the nearby buildings.’ He looked at an elevation drawing of the BXH building.

  ‘There are more levels here than the NYPD have been searching.’ The wall they had broken through had led to an empty floor.

  He pointed at the lower levels of the line drawing showing a side-on view of the BXH building.

  ‘This old elevation goes a lot deeper than the new ones. Haven’t they figured out how to get into them yet? I bet Sean Ryan has. That’s exactly the sort of place he’d be hiding out. In secret vaults.’

  ‘Have those rioters given up yet?’ he asked, looking up at Finch.

  ‘The National Guard are there now,’ she said. ‘There’s chatter about them opening fire …’

  84

  Isabel followed Sean and Li back along the platform, along the tunnel and into the BXH building. She stumbled a few times, her head pounding with worry about Alek.

  The grinding noise of a slow-moving train echoed as they made their way back into the post room corridor of the BXH building.

  ‘Where the hell are we going?’ she said, as they waited at the elevators. It seemed a long time since she’d come this way, but it was only a little over forty minutes.

  She was relieved that she’d found Sean, that he was innocent of the murders, but the knowledge that Alek was in danger had undermined everything.

  There were three elevator doors in the small ill-lit corridor. The centre one had a gold painted surround. The other two were silver.

  ‘You can at least tell us which way we’re going,’ she said. ‘Up or down? We’ll find out soon enough.’

  ‘Down,’ said Li. ‘When they built the BXH building it was the last great American extravagance before the Wall Street crash. The vaults are truly unbelievable.’ He turned to Sean. ‘Did you know that?’