The Paper Factory (Michael Berg Book 1)

by Norrie Sinclair

  It was difficult to leave, but Tereza knew if they didn’t that she’d be unlikely to see Rivello again. Before she and Michael left, Ralph asked for a pen and something to write on.

  Tereza found one in the desk drawer. Ralph gritted his teeth while he scratched out a number. It took half a minute of verbal crosschecking to make sure the number was correct.

  “My mother, her name’s Elisabeth. Please call her. Tell her where I am. Tell her I’m okay.”

  “Sure, I’ll call her as soon as I get to the airport. Take these.”

  Tereza gave Frank three painkillers that she’d found on a shelf in the kitchen. She held a glass of water to his mouth and put another three on the arm of the couch beside him.

  “The ambulance will be here long before you need these. Keep them anyway.”

  “Thanks. Please call her.”

  “Tereza, hurry, we’ll miss the flight. We need to leave. Now,” Michael said, exasperated.

  “Okay, a moment. Ralph, you’ll be fine. I promise I’ll call her. Good-bye.”

  It was this last conversation with Ralph that Tereza recalled as she dialed the number etched into the slip of paper two hours later from a telephone kiosk at Pulkovo Terminal Two. The automated voice message announced that the number was not in use. She tried again, this time substituting a four for a nine. Ralph’s hand had been shaking and although she had checked the number verbally with him, she wasn’t sure how lucid he had been at the time.

  Chapter 87

  Elisabeth was scared. It was not a feeling she was used to. As a highly logical person, not usually emotionally inclined, she had been trying to work out the exact cause of her fear.

  Her conclusion was that the framework that she not only lived within, but had also helped to create, or at least, at a senior level administrate, had just disintegrated before her eyes. Not only had the security, safety and predictability of the structured, stable world that she lived in just collapsed, but it had turned on its head and now seemed intent on her destruction.

  To her surprise, as she sat on the edge of the rickety double-bed in the down-at-heel motel room, she didn’t feel any better. Her experience to date was that once a problem had been identified, rationalized and put into perspective, the problem became significantly smaller. Not this time. She was still afraid. In fact, her level of discomfort had perceptibly risen. Elisabeth was powerless. It was checkmate. She could wait for them to track her down and kill her. Or she could go out fighting.

  After escaping Grant Douglas, Elisabeth had dumped the Buick in the underground parking lot of the mall at One Liberty Place in the center of the city. It had been a long time since she’d had occasion to visit Philadelphia, however, she was able to recall the location of the main railway station. It had taken her roughly twenty minutes to walk the ten or so blocks down Market Street, over the bridge on to Thirtieth Street and into the main terminal building. She paid for a seat on the Acela Express which had been just about to leave and pulled into Penn Station eighty minutes later. She took the Suburban Overground out to Jackson Heights, near Queens, one of the most populous suburbs of the most heavily populated city in the United States. It hadn’t taken her long to find suitably unremarkable accommodation.

  She’d spent more than twelve hours locked in the motel room. It was six a.m. She’d barely slept. Her cell phone had been turned off ever since Grant had chastised her in the car the previous afternoon. She knew the risk she was taking by turning it on now, but she needed to build a trail of evidence. She also needed help. She pulled the New York Phone Book from the small table beside the bed and shortly afterwards turned on her cell. She’d been about to dial the number for the New York Times when her phone rang. She was going to let the phone ring out when she noticed that the call was international. Zero, zero, seven was the country code for Russia. She hit answer.

  “Yes,” she said, warily.

  “Mrs. Kennedy?”

  A woman’s voice. Good English, with a barely discernible accent.

  “Mrs. Kennedy, Ralph is safe. He’s in the hands of the US consulate in St. Petersburg, Russia. He’s badly sick, but alive.”

  Elisabeth felt a surge of relief flow through her body. Tears filled her eyes. She sat down on the bed while regaining her composure.

  “Who are you? How do you know he’s alive?”

  “I can’t go into detail now. I was with him. They had me too,” said Tereza.

  “How can I get in touch with you?” said Elisabeth.

  “You can’t. But I’ll call you when I get to my destination. Good-bye.”

  Elisabeth dialed the state department, and requested the number for the US consulate in St Petersburg. As soon as she mentioned her name, she was put straight through to the deputy head of Mission.

  Ralph was in a stable condition. He’d been admitted to a private hospital frequented by diplomats, expatriates and wealthy Russians. When she got through to his private room, she didn’t recognize the voice that answered the phone.

  “Could I speak to Ralph Kennedy, please?”

  “Mom … it’s me … Ralph.” His voice barely audible. He had to take a breath before pronouncing each word. She couldn’t believe that the owner of this voice and her ebullient, talkative, outgoing son were the same person.

  “Ralph, listen to me, don’t try to talk. I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear your voice. I was having nightmares imagining what those people must have been putting you through. The embassy people are telling me they’re going to have you shipped out to Walter Reed tomorrow. I’ll be waiting for you.” She told him to rest, that she loved him, when he spoke up.

  “You … news,” was all she could make out.

  “Ralph, don’t talk, rest. I love you. I’ll be waiting for you in Washington.”

  She had no choice now. Ralph was alive. He was free. She needed to be there when he arrived back in Washington. At least her actions now would no longer put him in danger.

  She dialed the number. After several rings, the call was answered.

  “New York Times, good morning.”

  Surprised, Elisabeth said. “It’s early, I was expecting an answering machine.”

  “Well, you know, New York is the city that never sleeps. We’re the newspaper that never sleeps. How can I help?”

  “I’d like to speak to David Roth,” said Elisabeth. Roth was the business editor on the paper. He had interviewed her on a number of occasions in the past. They had a mutual respect for each other, which was just as well as neither gave any quarter, in meeting room or television studio.

  “He won’t be here for at least an hour. You want to leave a message?”

  “Please give me his mobile number. I’ll call him myself.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that. We have a policy. If you tell me who you are I’ll pass on a message to him as soon as he arrives or calls in.”

  Elisabeth didn’t want to disclose her identity to the receptionist, but didn’t see that she had any choice.

  “My name is Elisabeth Kennedy. I’m the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank. I appreciate that you have a policy, but you should also understand that I need to speak to David extremely urgently. I think he would appreciate it very much if you called him right away, gave him my number and asked him to call me back immediately.”

  “Okay, I’ll do what I can. Give me your number.” The receptionist didn’t sound too impressed. Elisabeth assumed that receptionists of well-known newspapers were well acquainted with crackpots calling up claiming to be everyone from Elvis Presley to the president.

  Elisabeth waited five minutes. She was about to call again when her phone rang.

  “Yes.”

  “Elisabeth, is that you?”

  “David, thank you for calling back so quickly. I was beginning to think your receptionist had written me off as a crackpot.”

  David laughed. “Well, in normal circumstances we don’t get too many calls from the chairman of the Fed. I’m afraid that until late
last night, you weren’t high on the average crank callers list of celebrities, past or present.”

  Elisabeth’s stomach churned. “David, what do you mean until last night?”

  There was a moment’s silence on the other end of the line.

  “Elisabeth, where are you?”

  “I can’t disclose that now. Please tell me what you meant, before.”

  “Are you near a television?” he said. “Wherever it is that you are, you haven’t been watching the news.”

  Elisabeth looked across at the set perched on top of a half dresser sitting against the opposite wall.

  “Yes, why?”

  “Turn it on and go to one of the news channels. I’ll call you back in ten minutes.”

  Elisabeth put the phone down on the yellow bedspread that now lay at the foot of the bed. She stood up and walked over to the set and switched it on manually. The remote control was nowhere to be seen.

  NY1 was playing a story about a housing scandal that seemed to involve half the appointed representatives in one of the city’s districts.

  When she tuned into CBS, it was not the news anchor’s face that filled the screen, but her own.

  Chapter 88

  István listened to the check-in clerk standing behind the desk at D8, calling the American Airlines two thirty p.m. flight from La Guardia, New York, to Miami. Rivello and his father had landed one hour earlier in the area reserved for private aircraft and parted company. István sat, deeply in thought, as dozens of cheerful holiday makers crowded round the departure gate.

  He had always felt a great deal of affection for Tereza. Even so, he had underestimated how deeply it would affect him were she to die. Particularly as he had done nothing to prevent her death. He’d never questioned his own loyalty to his son until he’d returned from St. Petersburg earlier in the day to find that Jay had ordered her to be killed. István knew that he was in no position to play the innocent. He had slept with his best friend’s wife and fathered the man’s son whose identity he had then kept secret.

  István had turned a blind eye while he watched his son kill Attila Vass and steal his company. Zsuzsa died as a consequence. Since Tereza’s death, he had felt numb, a deepening gloom wrapped around him, a thick fog which slowed him down and removed any conscious interest in what was going on around him.

  István looked up. The last of the holiday makers was boarding the plane. He got up, took two steps toward the boarding gate, stopped, turned around and slowly, deliberately, made his way to the terminal exit.

  Chapter 89

  Elisabeth was not unfamiliar with occasional appearances on financial news channels. CNBC, for example. It was part of the job. Her experience in the studio did nothing to prepare her for the shock of her headlining the early morning national news as one of the FBI’s most wanted criminals.

  According to the story, her son had been kidnapped. The FBI, fearing that it was part of a plot to destabilize the financial system at a time of crisis by an unscrupulous criminal gang, had then taken Elisabeth into protective custody and had removed her to a safe house for her own protection. Because of the sensitivity of the situation, her old friend Grant Douglas, the bureau’s director, had personally escorted Elisabeth to the safe house. Location was not given.

  Grant Douglas had been found, viciously bludgeoned and close to death the previous evening and was now in an induced coma at a hospital in an undisclosed location. It was feared initially that the criminal gang had located Elisabeth and her protector, beaten him and taken her. It was now believed that Elisabeth had been the one to attack Grant Douglas, and that she had most likely killed her own son who had never been kidnapped in the first place. Elisabeth had been the one who originally called in her son’s disappearance. An interim chairman of the US Federal Reserve Bank would be appointed until a suitably elected replacement could be found.

  It didn’t take Elisabeth long to work out what was going on. It was clear that they wanted her dead. Now her face had been splashed across the morning television news and was no doubt gracing the front pages of many of this morning’s newspapers. It would not be long before they found her.

  Her cell rang. David’s number. She picked up immediately.

  “Have you told them that you’ve spoken to me?”

  “No. If anyone knows how news can be distorted, it’s me. This whole thing sounds crazy. You need to tell me what in God’s name is going on.”

  She told him. It didn’t take long. He was blown away with her story. Particularly when she told him that her son was being flown back to Washington the following day by none other than the US government.

  “Who fed you people this nonsense, David? Where did the story come from?”

  “It first appeared in the Wall Street Journal online edition late yesterday evening. Not the whole story, only the part about your son being kidnapped. We monitored it closely and tried to get verification from our own sources. I’m sure all the other major news outlets did the same. Then around midnight, an update was posted on the Journal’s site with the story about Grant Douglas and the fake kidnapping of your son. At that point everyone let loose. Our sources verified that your son had indeed gone missing and that Grant Douglas was in the hospital suffering from traumatic injuries.”

  Elisabeth knew that Bilderberg had highly placed members in the world of business, including the media industry. What David said did not surprise her.

  “Listen, Elisabeth. For what it’s worth, I believe you. Your story is incredible, but who would ever have heard the name Bob Woodward if he hadn’t taken the call from Deep Throat? You need to get out of there now. They’ll almost certainly be triangulating the signal from your cell phone. Where are you?”

  “Jackson Heights, a motel.”

  “Go,” said David, “go now. Don’t pack. Make your way down to the station on Roosevelt Avenue. I’ll meet you there in half an hour. Disguise yourself. I’ll be bringing someone with me. A captain in New York’s finest. We go back more than ten years.”

  “David, after everything I’ve told you, you can’t possibly bring in the police.”

  “Elisabeth, I understand how frightened you are, but you have to trust someone. If not, you’ll be thrown to the wolves. It doesn’t matter to them that your son will fly back into Dulles tomorrow afternoon. The most important thing to them is that you are taken care of as soon as possible. Then their secret goes to the grave, literally.”

  Elisabeth knew that Roth was right. She relented, agreed to meet him and turned off her cell. She pulled on her coat and lifted the collar up around her neck and put her head down. Then she took the pins from her hair and let it fall past her shoulders. It wouldn’t fool anyone who compared her directly with her photograph, but would have to suffice with the limited time and resources available.

  Elisabeth stepped out of the motel doorway. She turned right onto Roosevelt and began the fifteen-minute walk to the station. After she had gone three blocks, she heard the squealing of tires behind her. She looked back up the street. Two cars had pulled up outside the motel. At least three, maybe four men had jumped from each car, doors hanging open, and were pushing their way through the motel’s entrance.

  Chapter 90

  Four booths down Tereza was waved through.

  “Mr. Berg, why are you visiting the United States?” the well-built young man’s gaze didn’t flicker from Michael’s face.

  Having been to the States on a number of occasions, Michael knew this was normal practice. Yet he felt his breathing tighten, a vein in his neck pulsing.

  “For pleasure. I’m spending a few days in New York and then moving onto Washington.”

  “Where are you staying, sir?” the politeness feigned, part of the training.

  “I’m not sure yet. There are so many good deals at the moment I thought I’d see what I could get last minute.” Michael smiled, the official didn’t return it.

  “Do you have money to stay in a hotel in New York, Mr. Berg?”

&
nbsp; Michael withdrew his wallet and prayed the man wouldn’t ask to see a credit card. He opened the wallet and showed him the hundred dollar bills neatly stacked inside.

  “Well, if I max my cards, I’ve still got this to tide me over.”

  The official looked at Michael, not sure if he was making fun of him or not. Michael stood his ground and stared straight back, raised his eyebrows as though to dare the younger man to haul him off for questioning.

  “Okay, sir, you can go.”

  “Thank you.” Michael walked away from the desk, careful not to display the extraordinary sense of relief that he was feeling.

  They’d landed at Terminal Three. He glanced at the clock at the top of the arrivals board. Six ten. They’d be lucky to make it to the hotel by seven thirty never mind seven o’clock. They’d be travelling into the city during rush hour. It could be nearer eight. Later, if the traffic was bad. He spotted Tereza waiting for him at the exit and strode over to meet her.

  “What happened to you? I was worried,” she said.

  “Just an overenthusiastic immigration official. I’m more worried about how we’re going to get to Wall Street in only forty-five minutes. It’s rush hour. We’ll never make it by taxi and the subway will take at least an hour. That is if we don’t get lost.”

  “We don’t have much choice.”

  “Yes, we do. C’mon, follow me.”

  Tereza sprinted after Michael as he set off running, back into the terminal building.

  Chapter 91

  Manhattan never ceased to fascinate him. Nowhere else put the reality of human existence into truer perspective than Manhattan. Hundreds of thousands of people scurrying along manufactured, cookie cutter streets, scratching whatever living they could, packed into cubicles, horizontally stacked within synthetic tower blocks. At least, Rivello thought, ants aren’t consciously aware of the futility of their own existence.