Transparency

by Charles Royce

  “See, you know about this building too,” Josh says to Agent Pillsbury.

  She points to her head, makes a clicking noise.

  Josh turns to her head-on. “Look, if you know West like I know West, he’s not the type of guy who would just wait around while his building explodes. He’d have someone else do it, and he’d be far, far away.”

  “He’s not wrong,” Manny adds. “West is a wuss. Common knowledge.”

  Agent Pillsbury gets a phone call. “It’s one of my agents at West’s condo. Excuse me, I’ll be right back.”

  Josh watches her walk to the corner of the room. She’s talking softly with a concerned look on her face.

  “She has a point, you know.” Manny walks to Josh’s side. “We should manually evacuate the towers.”

  “Is there a manual evac plan?” Josh asks.

  DonDon and Manny look at each other with blank expressions.

  “God, people!” Josh exclaims. “It’s a grand opening. Everything is fully open and functional. Tens of thousands are roaming around in the hotel, the shopping mall, the party, even the office towers and condos.”

  “Which is why we don’t need to start a panic,” DonDon says. “I worked 9/11. Panic is real, trust me. Lots of folks got stuck in those towers because they got crunched by the crowds on the way down.”

  “But most of them died because they were stuck in the building.” Manny shifts his gaze from DonDon to Josh. “If they could be evacuated peacefully, we could save everyone.”

  “ArchEngine knows everything, we’re fine,” DonDon says. “Look, if it’ll help calm your fears, the Pillsbury lady said the bomb squad is coming. It looks pretty simple to dismantle. I say one of us should go downstairs and guard it until the bomb squad gets here.”

  “I’ve got the key to that room in Sublevel One.” Manny says. “I can run down there.”

  “Agreed,” Josh says. “I’ll come with you. Let me notify Pillsbury, looks like she’s wrapping up her phone call.”

  “Meanwhile,” Manny begins to talk to the air, “ArchEngine, show me Sublevel One, utility room 3-B.”

  The room with the box comes up right in the center monitor. The room on Sublevel One is dark, untouched. Everything is perfectly still.

  “You even have cameras and sensors throughout the sublevels.” Josh views the box in real life. “It looks just like the simulation. See the box with the wires? The display is dark. Thank God.”

  Agent Pillsbury returns, looks up at the monitor. She breathes a sigh of relief. “Josh, could I see you a moment?”

  The security guards walk away so they can speak in private.

  “What’s up?” Josh asks Pillsbury. “You don’t look too good.”

  “The agent we left behind in West’s lobby says the doorman got an anonymous call that someone had been killed in the condo. They found my second agent in West’s pantry. Bullet wound to the neck.”

  “Jesus,” Josh says.

  “The limo driver,” they say in unison.

  “That bullet was for me,” Josh says.

  “I’m arresting West right now.” Agent Pillsbury starts to walk away.

  “You’ll need a pass. Here, take mine. North Tower. Top floor.”

  “Somebody needs to make sure the box on Sublevel One stays dark,” Agent Pillsbury says. “Guard it with your life until the bomb squad gets here.”

  “We’re on it,” Josh gets out of his chair. He looks at the security guard. “You ready?”

  “I was talking to my agents.” Pillsbury takes her hand off her ear. “You’re all staying right here.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Josh says. “After all this?”

  She turns to the security guards, flashes her FBI credentials. “Fellas, your VIP badges. Let’s have ’em, I need them for my agents. I’m leaving, but I need you to guard this man with your life. I don’t want Josh Harrison out in the open. We have reason to believe that someone is on their way to this building to kill him.”

  “Wait!” Josh says. “If the limo driver is coming here, he might not be coming here for me. Since West chickened out, he might want to follow through with Fallback.”

  Agent Pillsbury grabs her ear, spouts an order to her agents. “I’m heading out with VIP badges. You guys need to get to Sublevel One. Now!”

  C h a p t e r 6 1

  “I’M HERE, SIR.” Billy Donovan speaks on his phone while placing West’s business card back in his wallet. He stomps a cigarette into the fresh grass.

  Billy Donovan stands in front of a door marked UTILITIES, embedded on the side of Élan’s three-tiered stairs. The door has no handle, no means of getting in, only out.

  “It’s over, Billy.” West says. “I couldn’t do it.”

  “The FBI is in the building, sir. So is Josh. I can take care of all of them.”

  Billy shifts the phone to his other ear, waits for an answer, then holds the burner phone up to the sky, hoping he didn’t lose the signal in the strong winds. He ducks into a concrete corner.

  After a few moments, West speaks.

  “It’s over. The assassination. The backup plan. I’m turning myself in.”

  Billy shields his other ear from the howling gusts. “Sir, I’m right here.”

  “You don’t have access.”

  “I can find a way.”

  WEST SEES SOMEONE walking past the glass wall of his office. The woman pulls out her badge, shows it to him.

  The badge reads “FBI Agent Patsy Pillsbury.”

  West covers the mouthpiece of his cellphone and mouths to Agent Pillsbury, “Sorry. Wife.”

  Agent Pillsbury nods, sits down across from him, folds her arms.

  “I’m worried about the kids,” West says into the phone, looks away from Agent Pillsbury.

  “What?” Billy says.

  “They’re not going to make it through all of this.”

  “There will be collateral damage, yes. But you’ll be fine. Once it’s done, the insurance comes through. And I initiated the short sell this morning through the offshore. We’ll be set.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “If it doesn’t work, we move to plan B, we’ll access the Lennox account.”

  “We can’t. We’ve looked. Over and over, we’ve looked. We don’t know how to find what we had.” West covers the mouthpiece, rolls his eyes.

  Agent Pillsbury mimics him, rolls right back.

  “But we know who has the information,” Billy says. “We circle back after all this is over. You call me on this phone, and we’ll activate plan B.”

  West looks at his cell phone, sees Billy’s number, tries to memorize it. He gives up. “No. You’ll be fine. I’m the one who needs saving.”

  Agent Pillsbury nods. West nods back.

  “I’m doing it,” Billy says. “If you’re in prison, we’re both fucked anyway. With Fallback, we have a chance. All the evidence we relocated will be destroyed.”

  “Where’d you put it?”

  “The South Tower, in one of the unfinished condos.”

  “I don’t think divorcing ourselves out of this situation is the most prudent thing to do. Especially like this.”

  “What was that, sir? It’s really hard to hear.”

  “Don’t do it.”

  “What, sir? Sorry, the wind.”

  BILLY DUCKS IN the corner next to the utility door. He tries to shield himself. He hears West one last time.

  “—do it.”

  “Okay, sir.”

  He hangs up, searches his surroundings. After finding a long piece of jagged metal in leftover construction pilings, he rips the sleeve off his hoodie and wraps it around his provisional crowbar. He makes his way to the utility door, trying to steady his walk in the blustering wind.

  C h a p t e r 6 2

  THE WIND CAUSES the glass atrium above Shawn to shake violently. The crowd around him in the silent-auction area silences for a moment. They all look up. After the rattling settles, one of them cheers, then
most start clapping.

  Shawn turns to the man who cheered. It’s Leroy Spitz, his favorite NBA player.

  Shawn walks toward him. Tracy comes forward to meet Shawn.

  “Should we be alarmed?” Tracy asks, points to the ceiling.

  “The wind? Hell no. This entire building was designed by Enrick Goldman. It’ll withstand anything.”

  “Then why’d you come over here to me?”

  “I want a selfie.” Shawn holds out his phone. “With Leroy.”

  “Oh, dear God.” Tracy grabs his phone, then stops. She presses her ear. “Repeat. Please repeat.”

  Shawn watches Tracy as she nods and paces. “Everything okay?”

  “Copy that, we’ll get someone up there right away.” Tracy gives the phone back to Shawn. “Can you do me a huge favor, please? Pamela is with former vice president Maddox on the roof deck. The wind just shut the door and they are locked outside. Can you go open the door for them? I’m gonna run to the control room, check the monitors, make sure everything is okay.”

  “Sure. What about Leroy?”

  “He’s drunk, and he’s over me.” Tracy turns around.

  “I meant the selfie,” Shawn says under his breath.

  “Put your headset on, just press the side when you wanna talk.” Tracy points to her shoulders as she walks away. “Channel four!”

  Shawn takes his headset from his shoulders and places it on his ears. While he turns the channel knob to four, he walks to the elevator.

  C h a p t e r 6 3

  “ANOMALY DETECTED ON Sublevel One, Exterior Door 3-B.”

  “Shit,” Josh says. He sees ArchEngine’s center feed change to a view of the exterior door, now open and clearly dented around the jamb and lock. A hooded man is walking down the hallway. ArchEngine is following him.

  “Shit, shit, shit.” Josh switches headsets and addresses the agents guarding the box on Sublevel One. “Hey, guys, we have a problem.”

  C h a p t e r 6 4

  “PROBLEMS AT HOME?” Agent Pillsbury asks West. At the same time, she hears Josh in her headset, warning her agents.

  “Suspect is approaching Sublevel One. Repeat, suspect has broken in through the exterior door and is heading in your direction. He looks lost, but keep your eyes peeled.”

  “My wife?” West laughs and leans forward, elbows on his desk, face between his wrists. “Lady, I have problems everywhere.”

  “You must be tired.”

  “Exhausted.”

  “We know about the short sell.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your offshore account. We’ve been watching you for years, Mr. West. We know you used the account to buy stock against your own company this morning. Do you know something we don’t, something that could be happening tonight?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Sir, this is your last chance. I need you to be honest with me.” She places a recorder on his desk. “Have you, or anyone you’re associated with, activated Project Fallback?”

  “Where did you hear that word?” West asks.

  “We found the ArchEngine simulation.”

  “I want to talk to my lawyer.”

  “You haven’t been arrested yet. And with the sheer horse pile of evidence we have against you, we could have arrested you months ago.”

  “For what?”

  She looks up in the air, uses her hand to do the Minority Report swath in the air again. “Racketeering, embezzlement, market manipulation, insurance fraud, insider trading, illegal surveillance, kidnapping—would you like me to keep going?”

  “Then arrest me.”

  “Who are you working for?”

  “Me? I own the place.”

  “CAAD owns you. Who are they? Who are these investors and what is their end goal?”

  “I want a deal.”

  “You give me what I want, we might work something out. Right now, my concern is for the thousands of people in this building. The grand opening, the hotel, the restaurant level. You don’t want to do this. Not right now. Not today. I’m going to ask you the question one more time. Has Project Fallback been initiated?”

  “I want a lawyer.”

  “You haven’t been arrested yet. We can talk in circles all night. Tell me, and we can talk about a deal.”

  West stands up, walks to the window, looks to his left at the main building.

  “I built this, you know,” he says. “All of it. Do you know how crazy that sounds? Someone like me. I just had an idea, an opportunity I saw when no one else did. I didn’t know how to make it a reality.”

  “I heard this already. Your interview with Tracy Heiss—”

  “I hired people to do it for me. The best in their fields. People tried to take advantage of me along the way. Usually I could see it. But these investors? These CAAD people? They were different. We want to help, they said. You should be smart with your acquisitions, they said. Before I knew it, I’d lost control. I was in over my head. I mean, way in. I preach transparency, but I lost trust. Trust in my employees, trust in my family, trust in myself. Without trust, what is there?”

  Agent Pillsbury stands up, slams her hands on the desk. “Did you instigate Project Fallback!”

  West turns around. “No! Of course not. I wouldn’t still be here if I did.”

  “What about your limo driver who killed my agent? Who is he, and what is he doing here in the building?”

  “What?”

  C h a p t e r 6 5

  TRACY’S EYES BEGIN to water as she watches the simulation of the building crumbling to the ground. “What the hell?”

  Josh watches Agent Pillsbury on another monitor. She looks toward the camera and points to her headset. He hears her through his earpiece.

  “Everyone, heads up,” Agent Pillsbury says. “West is cooperating, but he won’t divulge the identity of the hooded man on Sublevel One. He says Fallback has not been initiated, repeat, not been initiated. He has no idea why the hooded man is here. But keep on guard, do not let him near that box.”

  Josh walks to Tracy. “West couldn’t follow through with it. Pillsbury just confirmed everything is okay, but this hooded man could be a huge problem.”

  Josh follows the man throughout Sublevel One. The thermal imaging shows a gun with a silencer inside the hooded man’s jacket. The facial recognition is mapping what it can, glitching, searching. The identity notation next to the man reads “UNKNOWN.” The man is close to finding his way to the center room. The two federal agents are standing beside the box, guns drawn.

  “What kind of sick mind would come up with something like this? And why?” Tracy wipes her eyes, still looking at a freeze frame of the building exploding.

  “I think it has something to do with the vice president. We think the weird contraption was created by CAAD, the foreign investors associated with West, the same people who sent this man in a hoodie to attack me last night. They had a plan to kill Roger Maddox tonight, and somehow use me to get to him, distract him. I don’t know. We think the box hooked to the gas lines is their backup plan.”

  “Jesus. Maddox is safe though, right? With Pamela?”

  “ArchEngine, show me Pamela Gunter,” Josh says. The roof-deck feed appears on one of the center monitors. Pamela is standing with the former vice president and his wife, along with the two bodyguards, their clothes flapping in the breeze. He zooms in on Pamela. She has her arms folded, her teeth are chattering. “She looks harmless. I don’t think Pamela knows much. I heard West talking with her on the phone, she’s just supposed to keep Maddox in the building.”

  “So the building would take him out in the explosion?” Tracy asks.

  “Exactly.” Josh zooms out. “They look cold. Are they trapped up there?”

  “Yes, the door to the roof deck won’t open. Pamela asked me to send someone up. I sent Shawn.”

  “ArchEngine, unlock the door to the roof deck,” Josh says.

  “We tried that already,” DonDon s
ays. “We even tried a manual override. It’s unlocked. It must’ve gotten pounded by the wind.”

  “Hey, Tracy, what’s wrong with the vice president’s wife?” Josh zooms in on Mrs. Maddox. She’s holding her knee. “Tracy. Did you hear me?”

  Josh looks at Tracy.

  Tracy points to another monitor, one with the federal agents guarding the box.

  “The hooded man,” Tracy says.

  They both watch the FBI men circling the black box on Sublevel One. A hooded man is entering the room behind the stairwell, pointing a gun.

  “Good God!” Josh presses his ear. “Watch out! Man with a gun! Three o’clock!”

  Josh watches the FBI agent turn to the right while pulling out his gun. The agent fires, hits the hooded man in the arm, just as the second agent falls to the ground with a thud. The other agent ducks behind a large metal pillar. The sound of bullets pinging against the pole bombard the control room.

  Josh turns to the two security guards inside the control room. “Get down there and help them!”

  “Got it,” says one of the security guards. He grabs two guns from a cabinet. “Let’s go.”

  The security guards leave.

  “Aren’t there gas lines down there?” Tracy asks, eyes widening.

  “Holy shit,” Josh says. Before he can say anything to the agents, he hears a familiar voice in his ear.

  “Hold your fire,” Agent Pillsbury says. “Gas lines everywhere down there, people.”

  Josh watches the agent put down his gun.

  The hooded man points and shoots. The agent goes down.

  “No!” Josh screams into his headset. “No, no, no, no.”

  “What’s happening, Josh?” Agent Pillsbury’s voice is quivering.