Vertigo

by Wesley Cross

  He stopped typing and looked up at her.

  “It’s good. Short and sweet and makes a point that we’re not playing any games.”

  He clicked the Send button and watched the message disappear.

  “I guess we check it tomorrow around six or seven to see if they replied.”

  A new message appeared on top of Andrew’s email list.

  He glanced at Audrey and clicked on the link. There was only one line of text.

  I’ll be there.

  44

  November 2007

  New York

  After a few days of staying in the basement, ignoring Chen’s and Hiroko’s protests, Eugene moved them to the main floor of the house. The place, which Eugene kept impeccably clean and tastefully furnished, had an unmistakable Spartan aura of a bachelor pad complete with a few shelves of comic books and a full-size Captain America shield prominently displayed on the kitchen wall.

  “I’m perfectly fine upstairs,” he said. “My office is there, and I like the bathroom there better anyway. At least here you don’t have to share the same bedroom. What is this, a dorm?”

  “But the dining room—”

  “I never eat in the dining room by myself anyway, only with guests, so it makes no difference whatsoever.”

  “We’re not going to stay for too long,” Chen insisted. “Well, at least I’m not planning on sticking around. You guys can figure out for yourselves, I guess.”

  Eugene threw Hiroko an awkward glance and headed toward the stairs. “I have to work for a couple of hours, so I’ll be upstairs if you need me. Sushi night later?”

  “As long as it comes with beer,” Hiroko said. “Who are you stealing from—sorry, teaching about vulnerabilities today?”

  “I actually have a day job,” Eugene said as he started up the stairs. “The IRS doesn’t like people with large incomes who don’t work anywhere, don’t you know?”

  They were finishing dinner when Eugene’s computer pinged, notifying them of the email.

  “I started to lose hope,” Chen said, as she looked at the screen of the laptop. “He wants to meet. Christ, he wants to meet. We’re finally getting somewhere.”

  She typed a reply and hit Send.

  “Hang on,” Eugene said. He got up, walked to a drawer, and came back with a compact Sony camera. He squatted on the floor between the women, stuck out his hand with the camera to get everyone in the frame and fired away.

  “Nice,” Hiroko said. “The victory pic. A bit premature, but hey.”

  “The guy’s not taking it lightly,” Chen said. “That fifteen-minute window is going to be tight depending on where he decides to hold the meeting. I guess he’s afraid it might be a trap.”

  “Can you blame him? He got a letter, completely out of the blue, that claims there’s a bigger conspiracy than Watergate. I’m actually surprised that they haven’t somehow tracked us down already. Disappointed, even.”

  “I’m most definitely not disappointed.” Hiroko laughed. “I have zero desire to be spending the next twenty years in the CIA’s basement. Beer, anyone?”

  “Sure,” Eugene said. “Sushi always makes me thirsty.”

  “Helen?”

  “I’m good, thanks.”

  She watched Hiroko come back from the kitchen with two open bottles of beer, but instead of sitting back at the table, she put one beer in front of Eugene and remained standing, leaning on his shoulder for support.

  “Would you be able to track him tomorrow?”

  “At the beginning, for sure.” Eugene took a sip of beer and leaned back. “He lives on a nice block in SoHo, and there’s a bunch of CCTV cameras there. But once he’s out of his neighborhood? All bets are off. Then we’ll have to play it by ear.”

  “You can do it,” Hiroko said and flicked him on his ear. “You have good ears.”

  “I need to get some stuff from the basement,” Chen said and got up. “Do you mind if I borrow your laptop for an hour or so? I need to figure out some way to get to my money.”

  “Of course.”

  She picked up the laptop, put sneakers on, and grabbed a key for the basement, eager to escape. Hiroko and Eugene were giving out not-so-subtle clues all evening, and now, when business was taken care of, she didn’t want to stick around and ruin the moment. Besides, she actually needed to figure out the way to get to her money. Eugene was a generous host who stocked his fridge with the food they liked and even let them use his credit card to shop for clothes, but Chen had no intention of overstaying her welcome. With the brewing romance between Hiroko and Eugene, she was the third wheel.

  She plugged the laptop into an outlet and took a corner of the foldable sofa. There were a few numbered accounts that she kept for cases like this: two in the Cayman Islands, one in Mauritius, and one in Luxemburg. None had an amount of money she could use to retire—she still kept the majority of her savings in a regular bank in the United States. She never meant the foreign accounts to be her last resort, but designed them as a crutch she could use if something was off.

  Considering the circumstances, she wished it was the other way around. The Cayman accounts were the smallest, but at least they were connected to an empty shell entity in the state of Delaware.

  Bringing the money from them to the US still wouldn’t be an easy affair, but it would be faster, and once the money was here, she could reach out to some of the shadier parts of the hacking community and ask them to program a bank card and then fill it with cash. It was tempting to try to do that trick with her local bank account, but she figured that the risk of it being monitored was too high.

  A sound of creaking furniture came from upstairs, and a moment later, there it was—the rhythmic squeaking, accompanied by Hiroko’s moans.

  “Jeez, man,” Chen said out loud. “Why are your walls so thin? I need some music.”

  She opened a new tab and launched YouTube, wishing she had some earphones, as the squeaking and moaning upstairs intensified.

  “Come to me, Soulja Boy,” she said as she pulled the video on the screen.

  There was a crash upstairs, as if something heavy slammed on the floor, and then a woman shrieked.

  “Damn it, girl,” Chen said. “Eugene’s gonna have to buy a new bed.”

  She was about to turn on the music when another sound that came from above made her jump—a gunshot and then four more in quick succession.

  Chen struggled to her feet, knocking the laptop on the floor in the process, and dashed to the door. Another gunshot came from upstairs, and then a few seconds later, one more.

  She stopped in her tracks. The terrifying truth of what just happened couldn’t have been more obvious. If there was any hope after the initial salvo, the last two shots took care of that. They were like a period at the end of a deliberate sentence. She couldn’t help her friends anymore. The only thing she would accomplish by getting out of the basement would be getting herself killed as well.

  Chen locked the door, stepped back, and frantically looked around. There were no obvious places to hide in this small studio. She’d be found in seconds. She ran to the kitchen and threw open the cupboard. The space inside was tight and filled with cleaning supplies and random junk. A roll of large black plastic bags was sitting on top of a small plastic basket.

  “Shit.”

  There was a clank of the metal gate that led to the small foyer in the basement and then the doorknob of the inner door rattled as someone tried it from the outside. A second later, a heavy thud shook the door and then another one.

  Chen looked at the roll of garbage bags, pulled one out, and then frantically swept the items from the bottom of the cupboard into it. She ran back to the living space, trying not to make any noise, and stuffed the garbage bag behind the couch. Then she grabbed the laptop, turned off the light, and rushed back into the kitchen, praying that whoever the hell was outside that door didn’t see the light go off.

  The entrance door gave as she crawled into the tight space under the s
ink, cutting her elbow on something sharp in the process, and closed the cupboard doors.

  The light came on, and Chen held her breath as someone walked around the apartment. The corner of the laptop was cutting into her ribs, and her neck and back were on fire from an impossibly uncomfortable position. The door to the bathroom squeaked, and then a few moments later the footsteps headed out and away.

  She breathed a sigh of relief, ready to get out of the claustrophobic place, but before she started to move, the front door squealed again, and the footsteps came back. There was another sound, too—of a sloshing liquid. Then came the unmistakable stench of gasoline.

  45

  November 2007

  New York

  Cooper woke up when the plane was making its final approach to JFK International Airport. The clouds were sitting low above the ground, and by the time the aircraft emerged through the shapeless gray, Cooper could see the markings on the tarmac. A moment later, she felt a light bump when the landing gear touched the ground. The tone of the engine’s rumble changed as the pilot had deployed the reverse thrust and Cooper watched the flaps and spoilers on the wing open up to slow the plane down.

  There was a round of applause—something Cooper had always found amusing. After all, nobody clapped on Greyhound buses when they pulled in to their final destinations. She reckoned that chances of dying on those were significantly higher than while flying a technological marvel of a modern commercial jet.

  Cooper waited in her seat while the airplane taxied to the terminal and came to a full stop and then unbuckled her belt. Her only belongings were crammed in a carry-on bag that was stuffed in the overhead bin. One of the first lessons she’d learned in her career was travel light: you can always buy something you need, but you can never buy more time.

  She stood up and reached for the latch of the bin and then cried out in pain. Her shoulders, injured from the daring leap in Punta Cana, were aggravated after a three-hour sleep in an uncomfortable economy seat. While bruises that had most colors of the rainbow and covered her shoulders and upper arms were invisible under the sweater, the sharp stabbing pain that came every time she tried to extend her arms was harder to hide.

  “You need some help there, dear?” an older woman from the seat across the aisle asked and nudged a man next to her with an elbow. “C’mon, Rob, help her.”

  “Oh, thank you.” Cooper moved aside to let the man get to her bin. “Pulled my shoulders while snorkeling.”

  “You gotta be careful.” The man smiled as he brought her bag down. “All those bumps and bruises come back to haunt you when you get to our age.”

  “Speak for yourself, old fool.” The old woman gave Cooper a wink. “I’m still a fresh rose, and it’s more important to have fun than to be careful. Your body will hurt anyway, but at least you’ll have something to remember.”

  Cooper disembarked the plane and was waiting in the customs’ line, wedged between a family with two young boys chasing each other around their parents’ suitcase and a grumpy-looking man in a business suit, when her phone vibrated. The number was blocked, and she hesitated for a moment deciding whether she should take the call, but then clicked it open.

  “Hello?”

  “Miss Cooper.” The man’s voice was crisp, and his consonants rolled with a characteristic New York accent. “First, I’d like to apologize for the rather unfortunate incident during your vacation. There was some miscommunication on a high level, and I’d like to make it up to you.”

  Cooper stayed silent for a few moments as she watched the two boys chase each other. The incident in Punta Cana didn’t exactly put her in a trusting mood, but the list of her options was getting increasingly smaller.

  “That would take some serious effort,” she finally said. “I’m not in the business of working for people who don’t know where their loyalties lie.”

  “I understand that, and I’m prepared to take steps that would persuade you without a doubt that we’re on the same team.”

  “Go on.”

  “First, I’ve sent you a payment, double your current rate. You can check it when we get off the phone. I want you to consider that money as part of my apology for the Punta Cana fiasco.”

  “Money that I can’t control?”

  “Not at all,” the man continued. “That money’s already clean. I’m sure you have the means to transfer it out before our meeting.”

  “Our meeting? I’m afraid I’m not going anywhere. The last meeting in the hotel left a rather bad taste in my mouth.”

  “I thought you might say that. That’s why I’d like to extend an olive branch. Meet me in my own office. That should give you some sense of safety. No games. Strictly business.”

  “I’ll think about it. Where are you located?”

  “The Upper East Side, across the street from the Sherry Netherland Hotel.” The man gave her the address. “Come to the front desk—they’ll let you up. See you in, say, two hours?”

  “Fine,” Cooper looked at her watch, “but two hours is going to be tight. I can be there at five o’clock. Who should I ask for?”

  “Alexander Engel,” the man said, and then the line went dead.

  Cooper put the phone in her back pocket and let out a long breath. There was no doubt in her mind that this was one of those seismic events that could change her life. Unless you were a low-life scum working as a hitman for a drug lord, you never got to meet your employer. Ever. Everything was done in the shadows through third-party intermediaries and dead drops, encrypted communications and numbered accounts.

  Still. Engel was playing coy, of course, implying that because he told her who he was and the fact that she was meeting him at his office provided her with any type of a security blanket for the long-term. If push came to shove—his call would be impossible to trace, he and his staff would deny that he invited her to his office to see him, and claim that she gained access under false pretenses. After all, Cooper was a nobody and Engel was a celebrity, and many people had tried to meet him in person.

  But she had to take the meeting, nonetheless. The call was indicative of a power struggle, and at least one of the parties wanted to use her services, that much was clear. That gave her leverage. If she was the one who could tip the balance for Engel, she could use him as well. And maybe, just maybe, she could get something out of him she couldn’t get any other way.

  The taxi let Cooper off at the Grand Army Plaza, north of the Sherry Netherland Hotel, at four thirty. She stopped at a food cart to get herself a hot dog and a bottle of water and then walked to the Pulitzer Fountain across the street from the address Engel had given to her.

  From here, the building presented an imposing and intimidating sight. Originally known as the General Motors building, with workers of the auto giant taking up over half of the office space, it later went through a series of acquisitions that culminated in the outright purchase by Guardian Manufacturing in 2004. A thirty-foot bronze statue of a winged angel working a forge had been erected in front of it a year later. Now, the sculpture and the building’s square fifty-story bulk dominated the neighborhood and served as a symbol of Guardian’s success.

  Cooper watched the area around the statue for some time, but nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary. At five, she walked across the street, entered the building, and walked to the visitor’s desk.

  “I’m here to see Alexander Engel. The name’s Jill Cooper.”

  “Welcome, Ms. Cooper.” The guard gave her a pleasant smile. “Mr. Engel is expecting you. There’s an elevator to your right that will take you all the way up to the top floor. Mr. Engel’s personal assistant will meet you there.”

  The elevator carried Cooper fast enough for her ears to pop halfway through the ride. She was moving her jaw, this way and that, trying to get rid of the sensation as the elevator slowed down to a stop and the doors slid open into a massive open floor. Rows of cubicles with walls just high enough to reach the top of computer screens filled the area from wall to wall
and Cooper instinctively scanned the space, looking for Exit signs.

  “Hello, Ms. Cooper.” A young woman walked to her and extended a hand. “Mr. Engel has been expecting you. Please follow me.”

  As she followed the assistant through the office maze, Cooper couldn’t help but feel exposed. She could see the black domes of CCTV cameras sticking out from a suspended ceiling at regular intervals. Some of the workers were casting curious glances at her, too, and no doubt some of them might remember her face if ever questioned by the authorities or any other interested party. Perhaps coming here was a mistake after all.

  Finally, they reached the end of the open space, and the assistant opened the heavy mahogany doors for her, letting Cooper go ahead. She stepped into a reception room with another set of doors on the other side.

  “Go ahead.” The woman smiled. “Mr. Engel will see you now.”

  “Thank you.”

  Cooper walked past the assistant, turned the bronze doorknob, shaped like a head of a wolf, and entered the office.

  The man in a bespoke three-piece suit sitting behind the desk looked shorter than Cooper had expected. She’d seen a few of his pictures in fashion magazines and it seemed to her now that the photographers used a wide-angle lens to make him appear taller than he really was.

  “Ms. Cooper,” he said, standing up and walking around the desk to greet her.

  His fingers were slender and his frame slim, but his handshake was warm and firm.

  “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.” He pointed at the leather sofa by the wall. “Please, sit. Make yourself at home.”

  46

  November 2007

  New York

  Audrey Hunt arrived at the Sunshine Diner at a quarter to nine and took a booth in the back of the dining room facing the front door. The place was located in Hell’s Kitchen, in the northwest corner of the area Andrew had described to the mysterious contact. She ordered a cup of coffee and toast and settled into the faux-leather seat.