Downfall

by Jeff Abbott

  “Let me out!” she screamed. I wish I’d gagged her.

  “Calm down,” I said. “Since you won’t talk, I’m just going to have a little look and see around the house.”

  “You can’t know! You can’t!”

  “Know what, Holly?” I tried to keep my voice calming and smooth. “Know what?”

  “He will kill us, he’ll kill my kids! Please!” Her voice melted into a harsh scream. “He’ll kill the kids, he’ll kill me, he’ll kill you. You can’t hide. Please.”

  “What’s the man’s name?”

  Silence.

  “I can help you. Does this video Diana has, does it expose his crimes? He can’t kill anyone—you, me, her, your kids—if he’s in custody.”

  Her laugh on the other side of the door sounded jagged. “Of course he could. He can do anything. If you are protecting this woman, it’s a death sentence. He doesn’t want her dead, but that won’t apply to you.”

  “Tell me what I want to know and I’ll go,” I said.

  “No,” she groaned, with all the pain of a world ending. “Nooooooo.”

  She fell silent as I left the door and began to search the house.

  20

  Friday, November 5, morning

  ROGER SLEPT—out late disposing of Glenn’s body in the bay—and Belias sat at the kitchen table. His laptop was open, the screen showing an interface to a cellular phone company. Someone in his network had been given access to a service-testing application, and he’d turned that into a way to eavesdrop on specific conversations. He wished he’d had this in the old days back in London and Moscow; life would have been easier. He turned up the volume on the earphones so he could hear the conversation. He was quite sure the FBI would be interested in some of the comments being said in Russian. His Russian was rusty but good enough.

  He heard the words Sam Capra. He’d heard Sam described as the bar’s owner, not just the bartender, on the news this morning. The Rostovs in New York, the family of the dead brothers, knew Sam’s name, too.

  The Russians discussed travel plans for two more minutes, then hung up.

  Belias closed his eyes.

  The Rostovs were coming to kill Sam Capra.

  Even if the two Rostov brothers had been kicked out of New York and banished to the West, they were still family. Vengeance was a blood affair best carried out by relatives. A cousin named Viktor would be dispatched to San Francisco. Belias could monitor the airline reservations databases and see what flights Viktor Rostov would be boarding.

  Belias wondered what Sam would do if he called and said, I’d like for us to be friends. A man named Viktor Rostov is coming to kill you. I can make sure he never hurts you.

  Would Sam want to make a deal with him then? Was safety his price? He had not been so intrigued by a potential recruit since…well, since the project that Janice Keene was even now protecting for him. Sam could be a game changer. He had heard his name and spent the last hour seeing what the Internet could tell him about Sam Capra. It wasn’t much; it was enough to intrigue.

  Sam Capra was the son of Episcopal relief workers who roamed the world. He’d been an English and history double major at Harvard. He’d had an older brother who was one of the unfortunates murdered on video by Islamic extremists in Afghanistan, a do-gooder killed as a political shock statement. Sam Capra’s name was tied to his brother; he’d given a couple of cable news channel interviews about his brother’s death, and then he’d fallen off the media map. Cracking the job placement database at Harvard indicated Sam Capra had taken a job straight out of school for a consulting firm in London called CVX.

  The hairs rose on the back of Belias’s neck when he found CVX no longer existed. The building CVX was housed in was badly damaged in a London bombing blamed on extremists, and apparently the company had gone under.

  A murdered brother? A bombing? What a rich life Sam had led so far for a man in his midtwenties. And now Sam was a bar owner who could take on a former Special Forces soldier and had the cool nerve to come to his victim’s house to find out more about him.

  You are something secret, Sam, Belias thought. CIA, maybe, or NSA or Defense Intelligence. I can smell it on you. But not anymore. They’re done with you, or you’re done with them.

  I could use you.

  Especially since Glenn might have gotten other people to decide the network doesn’t need me anymore. The possibilities almost made Belias dizzy.

  Ten minutes later he got an e-mail ping alerting him that Viktor Rostov was booked on flights from New York to San Francisco, with a connection in Denver.

  Denver.

  Belias reached for his phone.

  21

  Friday, November 5, morning

  I WENT UP THE STAIRS of one of the stone turrets of the house. Passed a bedroom that clearly belonged to Emma—surprisingly pinkish door but walls decorated with posters of champion athletes, all women, from soccer, tennis, and basketball. One large photo was Emma with her dad, a better, more honest picture than the one downstairs. I studied Glenn’s face. Glenn Marchbanks was tall, built solid like a former soldier, salt-and-pepper hair, a strong nose, a jutting jaw. Mr. Business Deal, I thought. Mr. Kidnapper. Mr. Guy Who Was Going to Shoot Me Point-Blank.

  Peter’s room was full of Star Wars toys, as though the floor were the battlefield of the films. A Spider-Man bedspread, a Superman poster. Heroes. There were no pictures of his father in here, and I remembered the pain in Peter’s voice when Emma mentioned the divorce. Of course he’d taken it hard. Every kid does.

  The other rooms were guest rooms. Tidy and empty of any sign of recent use. One in the back corner of the house appeared to be Nana’s. An e-reader and a stack of celebrity magazines lay on her bedside table. One wall was covered with photos of Holly, Emma, and Peter. Holly smiled in every photo, but she still somehow managed to look pained.

  The master bedroom was huge. The large bed was unmade, but clearly only one side had been slept on. There were very few personal possessions out other than yet more photos of the Marchbanks children, their mother’s hands on their shoulders, standing over them like a sentinel. A shield.

  It was as if they had to keep their happiness on constant display. Look at us. Behold a perfect life.

  Not perfect at all. A life out of joint, the pain hidden.

  I checked the bedside tables. On one side table I found a stack of recent hardcover fiction; a bottle of cough medicine; a notebook she used to track her eating, exercise, and sleep. So ordinary.

  The closet was huge and half-empty, and I wondered how long it had been since Glenn Marchbanks moved out. His side of the closet looked forlorn in its vacancy, and I thought it must have been an unpleasant reminder each morning for Holly. Maybe she liked unpleasant reminders. Maybe it was like a hair shirt on her heart.

  I searched through Holly’s closet. I wanted something, anything, that could lead me back to this boss of hers or give me a clue as to why the Marchbanks were being complicit in crimes. It had to be blackmail, some hold that the man in black had on them.

  But blackmail at what level? Holly Marchbanks fought like an experienced operative and so had her ex-husband. Did a blackmailer train his victims? Not likely. Their skills implied continuing work, not a onetime job to win their children’s safety. So where had they learned to fight? What was their past?

  I hurried but was thorough, and in checking one of Holly’s jewelry boxes I found it: a silver necklace with a symbol on it that matched the one I’d seen on Glenn. Maybe Holly and Glenn had these as cute matching jewelry when they were married, but they weren’t married now so why would he wear it?

  And the man in black had worn the same ring, a symbol of spaces and lines.

  I pocketed the necklace.

  I didn’t find anything else of interest until, beneath a bureau that had been awkwardly pushed into a corner—it was on wheels—I groped and found a loose slip of carpet. I wheeled the old bureau out of the way and lifted the carpet along its edge.

/>   Embedded in the concrete was a floor safe. The kind, I thought, that was mostly designed for the really good family jewelry. High-end. I studied it for a moment. The keypad’s keys were white plastic.

  I went to Holly’s bathroom and started digging through her makeup. I found some dark eye shadow. Here’s how you improvise. I carefully and slowly dusted the keypad with the powder. On four of the keys, the powder bonded to the grease left over from a fingerprint. The numbers were two, four, six, and nine. That meant twenty-four possible key combinations.

  Most combinations are chosen to be meaningful and easy to remember. I could just start entering and work my way through the possible twenty-four passwords, but with some safes you enter enough bad combinations, either the keypad shuts down for a period of time or an alarm can sound. I didn’t want that.

  I went back into the bedroom. Searched along the shelves. I knocked down sweaters, shoe boxes, a wedding album with GLENN & HOLLY MARCHBANKS stenciled in gold along the leather front. The wedding date wasn’t a matching combo of the safe’s numbers.

  I walked past the kids’ rooms and back downstairs.

  “Holly,” I said, my mouth close to the pantry door.

  “What?”

  “What’s the combination for the safe?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Come on.”

  “It’s Glenn’s safe. He left it here when he left me. Couldn’t exactly take it with him. I have no idea what’s inside.”

  “I know the four numbers. Just not the order. Now, I can stick your mother in there with you the moment she gets back. I could still be here trying combinations when your kids get home. Might be hard to explain to Emma and Peter.”

  “Glenn kept it. I don’t know the combo.”

  “Holly, stop lying. The numbers are two, four, six, and nine. What’s the correct order?”

  She took a long enough pause where I believed she might be trying to remember. “No.”

  I left her, and she didn’t call out to see if I was listening to her on the other side of the door. I started exploring the house, looking for something that would reveal the meaning of the numbers.

  At the end of one hall was a study. It was simple and masculine, the desk heavy and plain, adorned only with a laptop and a few file folders. The window boasted a spectacular view of the Golden Gate Bridge. The bricked walls were covered with framed magazine articles, often cover stories, featuring photos of Glenn Marchbanks, looking serious and smart in a suit. A few of Peter’s train toys were scattered around the floor; he spent time playing in this room, with photos of his dad watching over him. Glenn’s old study, I guessed, but not repurposed yet by his ex-wife. What did it say about him that he’d left this behind and her that she’d allowed him to leave this tribute to himself?

  Maybe she was still in love with him. They were, after all, still committing crimes together. Bonnie and Clyde from the rich part of town.

  I stopped to scan the articles. And read them with a rising sense of dismay.

  Glenn Marchbanks was a venture capitalist with a respected Silicon Valley firm. He’d been an original investor in three of the biggest technology companies of the past decade. Lauded in the fawning business press as a man savvy enough to see exactly where the next hot tech trend would rise and to back the winning company. That was where I’d heard his name; I must have read it in a business article in the past few years.

  And more pictures of his family. I noticed a photo of Glenn with a Super Bowl–winning quarterback. It was the top photo in an arrangement of them on the wall, and above the picture’s frame, I noticed a series of scars cut into the room’s molding.

  Someone had taken a knife to the wood and slashed eight savage notches into the clean white molding.

  Eight. Eight what? Why would you mar the room? I wondered.

  Like a prisoner chalking his days on the jail wall.

  But no jail was ever this nice, no cage this gilded.

  I sat at the desk. I picked up her cell phone, scanned the numbers. It appeared to be calls to other moms and to stores and her kids’ school. She wouldn’t use her own phone for mischief like last night. There was a paper planner on the desk, a fancy leather Filofax. Electric pink, so I guessed it was Holly’s; she must use this as an office for herself, even though she was surrounded by reminders of her husband’s glories.

  I flipped through her calendar pages. Holly kept a busy schedule supporting her kids’ numerous extracurricular activities, lunching with friends, volunteering that put her close to the powerful not just in San Francisco but the entire West Coast. I went to last night’s entry. Glenn: dinner with Peter was crossed out in a red-inked slash of annoyance. Glenn had plans with his kid that he had canceled. Maybe at the last minute. I went back downstairs; I hit the answering machine.

  “You have no new messages, nine old messages…” the machine intoned.

  “What are you doing?” Holly called through the closed door.

  The messages began to play. A boy calling for Peter, wanting to set up times to play a new video game. A girl calling for Emma to invite her to a movie this weekend. Other moms and friends calling for Holly, someone calling for Holly’s mother, Sharon, to let her know a prescription was filled and ready for pickup. Then the final message, a man’s voice, “Hi, Holly. It’s me. I have to cancel dinner with Peter tonight, and I’m so sorry, but it cannot be avoided. Duty calls. It calls us both. I’m going to need your help and now.” Glenn Marchbanks cleared his throat. “Give him my best and tell him I’m sorry and call me back immediately so we can meet—”

  And then Holly Marchbanks had picked up the phone. The recorder kept going.

  “You cannot cancel on him.”

  “I have to.”

  “No, Glenn.”

  “I. Have. To.” As if the words were going to nudge her, prod her, make her understand.

  “You can’t.”

  “I have to. It’s for Belias. He wants you, too.”

  “What? No.”

  “He needs us both…”

  Then a voice booming, “Mom!” Emma calling for her, panicky about something. Holly’s voice hushed to a whisper. “I’ll call you back.”

  She hung up the phone then. She must have forgotten to erase the message before she called her ex back. Maybe she and Glenn had to move with urgency. Pick up the Russian thug, find and capture Diana.

  I went back to the pantry door again. “Holly?”

  Ten beats of silence. “What?”

  “Who is Belias?”

  Five beats of silence. “I don’t know that name.”

  “Wears black? Has a funky silver ring? I think he’s the man who called me last night. I think he’s the guy who scares you.”

  I heard a low clicking sound, punctuated by the soft knocking of something against the heavy cypress of the pantry door.

  Holly Marchbanks was pounding her head against the door. She wasn’t going to answer me.

  I went back to her pink Filofax planner, to the beginning of the year.

  Two-four-six-nine.

  Two might mean February. Nothing of note in February on the fourth, sixth, or ninth. I jumped to the fourth month, April. April 9. Emma’s birthday: 4-9. I skittered ahead to the sixth month, June, and looked at the remaining number for a date, the second. June 2 was Peter’s birthday: 6-2.

  Emma was older. I would try 4-9-6-2 as a combination.

  I went back upstairs. I punched the Marchbanks children’s birthdays into the keypad, Emma’s first: 4-9-6-2.

  The electronic display gave off a satisfying click. Then a long second beep. Odd.

  The screen read: ENTER SECONDARY CODE IN TEN SECONDS.

  I had a second code to enter. No other numbers on the keypad showed fingerprint traces, so it must be the same four in a different sequence. Or the same sequence, perhaps, because that would be unexpected. Which?

  Five seconds left.

  I reentered the first code in reverse, not knowing what else to do. I’
d have to sort out what was the most likely combination or find a way to force Holly to tell me.

  The screen went blank, then read, DESTRUCT IN PROGRESS.

  I knelt and put my ear against the safe’s door. And jerked my head back. The heavy metal was getting warm.

  I let a few minutes pass. I tested my fingers against the metal. Hot now. I could smell crisping papers, the sour-on-your-tongue sharpness of incinerating plastic.

  I’d heard of fire safes, but this was the opposite: fire burning inside the safe.

  Not at all what I was expecting in this lovely quiet suburban home, the grand dream made real.

  Who were these people?

  I knelt, listening to the answers burn.

  22

  Friday, November 5, morning

  Denver

  THE CELL PHONE RANG, and instead of a name and a number for the caller, the screen showed a symbol.

  Barton Craig glanced up to make sure his office door was closed and answered the phone. Listened, watching the Denver skyline from his corner office. Then he hung up and went out to his assistant’s desk.

  “Please clear my schedule for today,” Barton Craig said.

  His assistant glanced up at him. “Is everything okay?”

  “I need to go deal with one of my kids.”

  “Um, okay. You’ve got a meeting with the marketing team and also a phone conference with a supplier in Korea.”

  “Reschedule for Monday.” And Barton thought, And if I’m dead, then don’t reschedule at all. He went back into his office, and behind the framed painting his children had done for him—a watercolor nightmare he’d insisted on hanging so anyone who came to his company could see how much his family mattered to him—he opened up a safe. Inside he took out an ID and a credit card that were in a name other than his and closed the safe. He walked out of his office and down to the parking garage.

  At his car, he took out a small suitcase he kept packed in case of emergencies. Next to the package in the trunk was an umbrella. He inspected it for one moment and then he put it back in the trunk. He pulled out a small silver chain, holding a charm that had the same symbol that had appeared on his phone. He put on the chain, loosened his tie, slipped it under his shirt. It was like putting on armor for a knight, he thought, or a badge for a cop. It was time to get to work.