The Paper Factory (Michael Berg Book 1)

by Norrie Sinclair

  “Is he dead?”

  As István said those words, a low moaning noise penetrated the closed bathroom door. His father moved forward purposefully, toward the sound. Jay stood his ground easily against the older man and gently pushed him backwards against the door.

  “Jay, don’t. This has to stop. You’ll take yourself down and everything else with you. He’s too powerful. By killing him, you’ll unleash forces on us that we can’t escape. They won’t want us spilling our guts in some jail somewhere. We’ll vanish.”

  István tried to push past him again. Rivello held his father against the door by the throat. The old fool was going to ruin everything.

  Rivello erupted. “Get out. Get out now. Go to the apartment. I’ll be there, later.”

  “Jay, if I leave now there’s only one place I’m going and that’s downstairs to call the police.” István turned and reached for the door handle.

  Rivello had no choice. Before István had time to pull the door open, Rivello cupped his left hand over his father’s mouth, lifted the knife, until now concealed by his right hand, and forcefully dragged the blade across his father’s throat. István struggled for a brief moment as he realized what was happening to him, but as the blood pumped from the wound and his heart began to fail, István dropped.

  Jay let him, his father’s heavy body hitting the light beige carpet on his back with a heavy thump, eyes wide in disbelief and shock, blood pumping furiously from the scarlet gash across his thick neck. His father’s mouth opened and shut rapidly, like the pulsing gasp of a fish removed from water. Rivello couldn’t tell if István was trying to say something to him or if he was observing the spasms that sudden death brings. In any case, the movement ceased a few seconds later, his father’s mouth and eyes blank and unmoving.

  Rivello waited until the blood ceased to flow and then squatted down beside him, careful to avoid the blood pooling on the carpet. The knife switched hands. Rivello put his right hand onto István’s face, fingers spread across the forehead, palm over the nose and mouth. He closed his own eyes. Whatever it was that made human beings care for each other he did not know it. Could not feel it. No connection, no sadness, no sense of loss or sorrow. His father had endangered everything he’d worked towards for over twenty years. Killing him had been logical. He made his way to the bathroom, stooped, turned the water back on.

  Rivello dried off the edge of the bath and sat down. This was the moment he had savored time and time again. Sometimes even in his dreams this scenario had flickered through his mind, only with a significantly younger cast. He observed the old man, slumped, head down, prevented from tumbling forward by the duct tape running across his chest.

  Hardcastle, almost eighty years old, looked frail and vulnerable as he slept. Rivello knew that the old man’s demeanor was misleading, that he was as aggressive, domineering and manipulative as ever. He scooped some cold bath water up into both of his hands and flung it into Sir James Hardcastle’s face. It took three attempts to rouse him. The man spluttered to his senses, opened his eyes and at first couldn’t work out why he was unable to move. He noted the bindings across his forearms and glanced upwards.

  “Who the hell do you think you are?”

  “You know who I am,” Rivello gave his manufactured grin, “but don’t take too much time working it out. You don’t have a great deal of that left.”

  Sir James paused until a spark of recognition flitted across his eyes.

  “You pathetic fool. Let me go this instant. You really want to spend the rest of your life in jail for something that happened twenty years ago?”

  The old man was still smart, thought Rivello. He knows exactly why he’s here.

  “You destroyed my career, you old bastard. You made sure that no bank worthy of the name would give me a job. You tried to ruin my life. Now I’m ending yours.”

  “You weren’t a blameless victim. You raped an intern at knifepoint. You told her that if she went to the police that you’d slice her into pieces. You thought we were going to keep you around after that? The police weren’t able to press charges, but we weren’t going to hang around and wait for a psychopath like you to do it again.”

  “Youthful high spirits, Hardcastle. You’ll soon wish that you’d been a bit more open-minded. Before all that, you need to know something.”

  Rivello leant over to bring his face within only a few centimeters of Hardcastle’s. He did not observe fear on the old man’s face, more likely contempt.

  “I broke your bank. Bankrupted it. Your obese nephew leant me a hand. Until he opted out, of course. I took Kennedy’s son. I’m the reason your little club is about to be exposed for what it is.”

  Hardcastle’s face was crimson. He kicked out. Rivello expected this and moved himself quickly out of range, but not before Hardcastle spat into his face.

  “That’s the last thing you’ll ever do.”

  Rivello drew his arm back and slapped the old man hard across the right side of his face. He crossed to the back of the chair and lifted it, carried it to the edge of the bath, now full with water. “Quid pro quo, you old bastard,” Rivello said.

  To his credit, the old man didn’t plead for his life. “I hope you rot in hell, you piece of filth,” were Sir James Hardcastle’s last words as he dropped face first into a half meter of cold water.

  Rivello held the chair in place, the rear legs sticking out of the water at a slight angle. The abrupt silence adding the required solemnity to the moment. Hardcastle put on a good show. It was at least a minute before his head stopped bouncing around, the bubbles becoming infrequent and then ceasing completely. He hadn’t expected the old man to beg for his life, but was disappointed nonetheless.

  Chapter 98

  Michael had barely drawn his eyes from the hotel entrance in over an hour. Tereza the same. He’d not slept well on the plane and found it difficult to keep his eyes open. His subconscious picked up on something that jerked his mind out of its fugue state. Something didn’t add up, but he wasn’t sure what it was that had happened. He replayed what he’d just seen in his own mind. Someone had trotted down the steps in front of the hotel. A man, on his own, walking quickly and sporting some kind of hat. Michael’s eyes followed in the direction that the man had taken. There he was, on the corner of the block hailing a cab. Tweed cap and jacket, light-colored trousers and carrying a brown leather holdall. It struck him then. The clothes didn’t fit. The man’s gait was all wrong. The outfit was for an older man. Also, the trousers were at least an inch too short and the sleeves of the jacket likewise. Even the cloth cap at a second glance sat on the head rather than encompassing it.

  A taxi pulled up to the sidewalk. The man in the ill-fitting suit turned to get in and Michael got a full, although momentary, glimpse of his face. Rivello.

  “Driver. Over there, on the corner to the right of the hotel. The yellow cab pulling into the street. Follow it now.”

  “Hey, listen, buddy,” the driver’s Brooklyn accent, in his indignation, more pronounced, “I shoulda’ been home an hour ago and you been watching too many films. I wanna settle up and call it a day.”

  “Look,” said Michael, “the meter’s at a hundred dollars which means I owe you two hundred. You follow that cab and take us to wherever it goes, I’ll make it five hundred.”

  Rivello’s yellow cab had already taken the first right off Broad Street and was almost out of sight.

  “Okay, Okay, you make it hard for a guy to say no. Hope I don’t live to regret it.”

  “Michael, what about István? He’s still inside,” Tereza said.

  They’d both noticed him enter the hotel behind Rivello. Michael didn’t need to think for long.

  “We need to stay on Rivello. István can wait. Driver, let’s go.”

  The driver accelerated out into the traffic onto Broad Street, the displeasure of the other drivers he’d just cut off evident in the cacophony of horns erupting around them. Fortunately the lights were with them and they took a
right down the same street Rivello had disappeared, no more than thirty seconds before.

  “I’m glad you were on your toes,” said Tereza, “I hadn’t noticed him leave.”

  Michael swung round to face her.

  “He’d changed his clothes. Disguised himself. I’m not sure why. I just hope we don’t lose him now. It may be that he’s going to the same address that his Bloomberg account is registered to. It’s not far from here.”

  “What do we do when we catch him?” Tereza said.

  “I want to see him spending a long time in jail,” said Michael. “I don’t know if the Russian authorities could or would prosecute him for what he’s done there, but I’m sure we have enough evidence to have him arrested here under suspicion of fraud, kidnapping and murder.”

  Tereza stayed silent.

  “We need to make sure he doesn’t leave the country. When he stops moving, we’ll call the police.”

  She nodded, but he wasn’t convinced. She was distant, thoughts elsewhere. Michael decided he had other things to worry about and turned to the driver.

  “Have you got the cab?”

  “Sure, buddy, thirty yards ahead of us. Piece of pie.”

  Chapter 99

  The little girl was the happiest she’d been for quite some time. She had rarely seen her father in the past few weeks and she couldn’t remember the last time they’d had a chance to play. She ran around the room, from one piece of furniture to another searching for him, dark, almond-shaped eyes seeking to find him in improbable places.

  The fact that he had been in his mid-forties when he’d become a father for the first time didn’t register at all with her. It didn’t occur to her that he was now, at forty-nine, greying at the temples and well into middle-age. To the little girl he was the center of her world.

  Her father, surprised as he was to have the responsibility of fatherhood thrust upon him from out of the blue, had adapted quickly to the changing circumstances and was amazed that someone so small could have such a profound impact on his life. At four years old, her adoration of him had become obvious and was, of course, mutual. He only regretted that his job meant that these days they rarely got a chance to spend time with each other. In fact, it was only during the time spent with his daughter that he felt truly content, relaxed and removed from the unrelenting pressure of his chosen profession.

  He’d spent the past hour, since eight thirty, alternately carrying her on his back around the sitting room and playing hide and seek amongst the various pieces of furniture scattered around the spacious room. There was a knock on the door. From the couch he was at that moment hiding behind, he noticed her face shaping itself into a pout, acknowledging the likely end of playtime. He got up and brushed imaginary dust from the knees of his trousers.

  “What is it?” President Gilmore shouted across the room, brittleness apparent in his voice.

  Juan Gonzalez opened the door.

  “Mr. President, Ron Bailey just called in. He’s a few minutes from here and he needs to speak to you. He says it’s urgent.”

  Gilmore sighed. The fallout from the financial crisis was gaining momentum. He’d had to make an address to the nation only days before to reassure the American people that he had a firm hand on the tiller, when in reality no one had a firm hand on anything.

  Then there was all the insane nonsense of the Elisabeth Kennedy affair and the Bilderberg Group. He had no idea how it had all snowballed into the mess it had become. All he was certain of was that the world was on a knife-edge and he was expected to stop it from falling off. He had no idea if the measures they planned to take, to flood the economy with money, would work at all, never mind on time.

  He was uneasy about Bilderberg. Should anything go wrong, he was too close to avoid the fallout. To have both the deputy director of the CIA and his own chief of staff on the Steering Committee, he now viewed as a major folly.

  “Okay, princess, Uncle Juan’s going to take you to see Mommy.” He lifted her, the pout now threatening to turn into something altogether more unpleasant.

  Juan was already at the president’s side and gathered her in his arms, already making appropriate cooing noises in an attempt to distract her. Ian Gilmore sighed and felt a stab of guilt as she was carried from the room, wailing and waving her arms toward him, seeking rescue.

  “Sorry to interrupt your time with your daughter, Mr. President,” Ron Bailey entered as Gonzalez left, “but this can’t wait. We have a complication.”

  “We’re in private, Ron. None of this Mr. President stuff. Okay. You’d be amazed at how tired I’m getting of hearing those two words. Close the door and take a seat.”

  Bailey sat facing Gilmore on one of two cream cotton Queen Anne couches, the president at right angles to him in a similarly elegant armchair.

  “Okay, Ron, what the hell’s happened now?”

  Bailey hesitated, not taken aback by the president’s manner, but choosing his words carefully.

  “We left the meeting at eight thirty. Hardcastle was pissed and, at the end, had to beat a decision out of them. That idiot Delaney was off his rocks, completely hammered. Made an ass of himself and lost his vote. The vote, incidentally, was to follow through with the liquidation process. The trouble is, we’re no closer to finding Kennedy than we were twenty-four hours ago. At one point, we were only minutes from securing her. She simply vanished into thin air.”

  “That’s very interesting news, Ron, but I already knew that Delaney was an asshole. Couldn’t you have called me, or are you here for some other reason?”

  Bailey shifted his slight frame and began to visibly flush around the neck. Gilmore and Bailey went back years. Gilmore knew the signs.

  “What else?”

  Bailey hesitated again, then thought better of it.

  “Hardcastle’s dead.”

  It was Gilmore’s turn to be speechless.

  “What do you mean he’s dead? Of what?”

  “He drowned. The bath, in his suite, in the Old Hemmingway. Someone bound him to a chair, filled the bath with water, pushed him in head first. Probably held the chair down on top of him to make sure the job got done properly. The only thing we know for certain is that the killer isn’t the man we found on the inside of the door lying in a pool of his own blood.”

  Gilmore forced himself to stand and walked to the end of the bookcase that stretched floor to ceiling across one side of the room. He opened a miniature rectangular door set into the wood. He poured a healthy double measure of quality bourbon into both glasses and returned to his chair.

  “This could be the end, Ron. I think we both know that. The key thing here is that the presidency survives.”

  “Douglas Speak is taking care of it, Ian. His people will make it look like a suicide. The body by the door will disappear. The clean-up boys are already in there taking care of the blood and gore. We’ll fix it.”

  “You’re kidding yourself, Ron. This thing is escalating out of control. We don’t know what’s going on. The chairman of the most influential and powerful political organization in the world has just been ritually killed in his hotel bathroom. Another corpse lies in the room next door. Dammit, Ron, there are bodies everywhere. Besides, the story you guys concocted to justify the Elisabeth Kennedy manhunt is just about to fall apart. Her son’s being delivered to Walter Reed tomorrow. Reports of his untimely death at his mother’s hands clearly exaggerated. We can’t even find Kennedy, for Christ’s sake. She’s probably e-mailing her story to the world as we speak.”

  Gilmore had worked himself into a state of extreme agitation, his hands now formed into fists, his heart racing. He forced himself to ease into the back of his chair. He took a few deep breaths.

  “Did we kill Hardcastle?” said Bailey.

  The president didn’t hesitate. “To the contrary, he’ll be a great loss. He’s been pushing our agenda in Europe for years. Our original concern that he’d show bias against us in favor of the French or Germans was naive. We’d for
gotten one thing. You can always count on the British to stick the boot into the rest of Europe.”

  Gilmore thought for a moment, inhaled deeply. “It looks like we’ll have to play this out. But I want you out of Bilderberg now. Resign immediately. You’re too close to the action and you’re too close to me. This is the last time we talk about Bilderberg. Speak stays in. We need someone whom we can trust controlling things. If the shit hits the fan and this all comes out, Douglas Speak is the fall guy. There’s no one out there who doesn’t believe that the CIA isn’t capable of anything anyway. We’ll make sure some heads roll and cut their budget next year to keep Congress happy. We may still get lucky, Kennedy may crawl out from somewhere before shooting her mouth off. But my money’s on this whole thing blowing sky high. I want to make sure that we don’t become collateral damage when it does.”

  Chapter 100

  It was close to eleven p.m. as the cab skirted the Plaza. Michael had fond memories of sitting in the hotel’s Oak Bar on a crisp January afternoon, a few years earlier, tucking into the finest Rueben sandwich he’d ever tasted. The taxi veered to the left and then took a right along Central Park West. The Trump Tower passed to his left. Michael had a good idea now that they were heading for the same address that he’d found on Rivello’s computer.

  The Park was vast. Five minutes later they were not even halfway to the north side. Michael asked the driver to hold back so that they weren’t forced to pull up to Rivello’s car at the lights. Two more minutes and Rivello’s cab made a sweeping u-turn and stopped on the corner of West Seventy-Third and Central Park West.

  “Drive for another two blocks, then come back,” Michael instructed the driver. “As soon as we get out, you’re done.”

  When they stopped at the corner of West Seventy-Third, Michael paid the driver and he and Tereza got out.

  Apartment buildings, not many more than ten stories high, lined both sides of the street. There was little traffic about, a few red taillights shimmering at various intersections along its length. The entrance to number two was twenty meters from where they stood. Michael looked around for a phone box. There was one directly across Central Park West, close to one of the Park’s entrances.