Dance With the Enemy (30 page)

Logan headed to the stairwell and started his descent. He took the steps as quickly as he could, one hand holding the file, the other holding onto the handrail. His own gun was in his waistband, the other dumped back next to the security guard. There was no need to carry both.

As he approached the third floor, he heard voices and footsteps coming from down below him. Looking over the banister, he saw policemen heading up the stairs. Using the security guard’s key card to unlock the door, he dived back inside on the
third floor. He just had to hope that with the noise they were making, they wouldn’t have heard him.

The corridor here was much the same as it had been on the eighth floor. Rosenberg Associates had occupied the front half of the top floor and he was pretty sure there hadn’t been any other exits within that office area. But there was a good chance there would be one at the back end of the building.

There were no signs of people here, but he drew his gun anyway, out of instinct more than anything. He ran over to the doors to Gresham LLP, put the security guard’s card into the slot and opened the door. There were already lights on in these offices.

As Logan rushed through, he nearly barged into a smartly dressed lady, probably in her forties, coming around a corner, carrying a cup of coffee. She screamed as he narrowly avoided knocking her over.

‘Where’s the exit?!’ he shouted at her.

Her eyes focused in on his gun, which he was holding down at his side. In his adrenaline-fuelled state, face red, eyes bulging, chest heaving, gun drawn, the poor woman must have thought he was a crazed psychopath. She meekly pointed in the direction she had just come from. Without time for explanation or apology, Logan raced off in that direction, leaving the bemused woman dumbstruck.

He exited through another set of security doors and came to a service lift. Beyond that there was another stairwell. He went down the two flights of stairs to the first floor and debated for a second whether to go out there or continue. In the end he kept on going, down to the basement, which he hoped would be a car park.

His luck was in. He was right. It was only a small garage, about fifty or so spaces on a single floor. He ran over to the exit ramp, which was at the back of the building. He slowed his pace and began to walk up it, cautiously, casually, trying his hardest to temper his breathing which was racing from having run down the stairs. He couldn’t see or hear any signs of the police.

When he reached the top he stooped low, underneath the barrier, out onto the busy New York street. Quickly he glanced up and down, and then smiled as realised he was in the clear.

With the file in hand, Logan walked calmly back to his rented Saturn, ignoring the police lights and sirens that were still blaring outside the office block. He got into the car and pulled out into the road, then began to push his way through the ever-busy New York traffic.

When he was a safe distance away, he pulled over to the side of the road, just shy of 110th Street, and began to sift through the file. Within minutes he had a new destination in mind.

His luck really was in. As well as containing various apparently legitimate items related to Carlucci, the file also included two pieces of paper which were of great interest to Logan. The first was a series of what looked like bank account numbers. The second was similar, but it also had a name and address on it. A name and address Logan had not come across before.

Not wanting to waste any time, he plugged the address details straight into the GPS unit which he had rented and hit the road again. He intended to call Mackie on the way to give an update, but before he got the chance to call his boss, his phone chirped.

He got a strange feeling when he saw who was calling him: Grainger.

It had been a fast and furious day – one thing to the next. Waking up this morning in a hotel room in Paris with Grainger seemed a lifetime ago. And then there was the whole question of whether she had been keeping information from him about Carlucci. But since he’d landed in New York just a few hours ago, he’d barely even had a second to think about Grainger.

Looking at his phone now, he felt pretty lousy about that. If he’d meant what he said to her this morning, about her being so important to him, about him needing her, then why had he not even been thinking about her? Missing her?

‘Hi,’ he answered, trying to sound more excited than he really was.

‘Hi, Carl.’

‘I called you this morning,’ he said. ‘Before I left.’

There was a moment’s silence before she answered.

‘Yeah, my phone was dead. Sorry about that. I’m just calling to see how you are.’

He wanted to ask about Carlucci, what she knew and how. But it wasn’t something he wanted to do over the phone. He hated phone calls because there was no way to control a conversation. Not like when you were face to face with someone, looking them in the eyes.

‘Yeah, sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s just been so hectic here.’

‘So you’re making progress then? What have you found?’

It seemed strange having this conversation with her now. Four days ago, when they’d been the dynamic duo, it had been them against the world. But now, she was suspended and was well and truly out of this investigation. She had also been keeping something from him. So as wrong as it felt to now want to keep his cards close to his chest, he wasn’t really sure what would be gained from telling her the discovery about Carlucci and Kennedy.

Perhaps there was some of the old Logan left after all.

‘No, we haven’t found much yet,’ he said, not happy about lying to her, but knowing that it was the best option. ‘We’re just following up on some leads. Not much more to tell than that.’

‘Oh. So the link to Rosenberg didn’t help in the end then?’

Had he told her about Rosenberg? He couldn’t remember.

‘No,’ said Logan. ‘Rosenberg didn’t have anything.’

‘Oh.’

She sounded disappointed. Was it disappointment that he hadn’t found anything, or that he wasn’t telling her anything?

He was torn. On the one hand Grainger had kept information from him, so this was only quid pro quo. But then, he supposed, she had as much riding on this investigation as he did.
She’d gone through a lot on this case too. In a way, with all the help she’d given him, she had a
right
to know what was going on. But it was too late to take back the lie now. One thing he’d learnt a long time ago was that lies could take you forward, but they could never take you back. He’d always hated that saying. You usually only ever thought about it when you knew you were about to come unstuck.

‘And what are the other leads?’ she said.

‘Nothing substantial. Might not be anything,’ he said, cringing as he spoke. ‘Where are you anyway? It must be pretty late there.’

‘Oh, yeah, er, it is pretty late. I’m just in the hotel but couldn’t sleep. Seems kinda funny not to have you here.’

‘Yeah. It is. Look, I should go.’

‘Okay.’

‘It was really good to hear from you. I mean that. You just made my day a whole lot better.’

‘Yeah. You too, Carl. I hope you find what you’re looking for.’

So did he.

As soon as they’d hung up, Logan began to dial in to Mackie. He was greeted by the blaring horn of a large lorry in the adjacent lane as he clumsily drove one-handed, trying to start the call.

When Mackie answered, Logan began to explain what had happened at Rosenberg’s office.

‘I found a name and address and a whole list of what I think are bank account numbers,’ he said.

‘What’s the name?’

‘Greg Dennis. Doesn’t ring any bells to me. And there was nothing else in the file I took with that name on it. But I’m heading to the address now.’

‘Okay. What are the numbers? Read them out to me.’

Logan turned on the overhead light and, without stopping the car or even braking, did his best to read out the numbers to Mackie while keeping straight on the road.

‘Okay. We’ll check out Dennis and these numbers.’

‘The address is in Binghamton town,’ Logan said. ‘It’s in Broome County, New York.’

‘Right. That’ll be enough for us to narrow down our searches on him. We have something for you as well.’

‘What is it?’

‘We have Kennedy’s new identity. He lives in some hick town in Ohio now. His name is William Button.’

‘How did you find it?’

‘Remote access. The same way Blakemore and Selim got it. Modena must have given them a username and password for the system, but these guys then went to town hacking through restricted databases until they found what they were looking for. So it seems Modena mustn’t have known exactly where to find the answer himself. It took quite a bit of effort on the part of Selim and Blakemore to find it. They did a really good job of hiding their tracks too. Must have had some proper techno whizz kid in their ranks. The Americans had no idea the data had been hacked. I don’t think they would ever have known about it if we hadn’t gone looking for it.’

‘They know?’ Logan said, not liking where this was going.

‘It was the quickest way for us to do it.’ Mackie said, almost apologetically. ‘We’ve had help from the DOJ and the US Marshals Service. It’s their witness, after all.’

‘So everything we know is all out in the open now?’ Logan said, angered at the thought that Mackie had turned over their leads before he’d had a chance to finish things off. But also embarrassed because it meant that it would have been plain to Grainger that Logan was lying to her on the call they’d just had – assuming she was still being kept in the loop by the FBI.

‘Kennedy’s their problem,’ Mackie said. ‘This thing is almost over now. It’s not really our territory anymore. This could just as well be handled by the police or Feds or whoever. I’m going to give you a few hours on Dennis, but after that we’re closing it down. The Feds are already taking over on locating and protecting Kennedy, so there’ll be a team arriving at his door any minute to take him somewhere safe.’

Logan felt his stomach clenching, the feeling of failure rising. Mackie never gave jobs away like this.

‘So it’s over?’

Mackie sighed. ‘You’ve done your job, Logan. It’s time to close it down now. But I won’t tell the Feds anything on Dennis until you’ve checked him out.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I want to know if he’s the right man before we hand that information over. If he’s not, and this investigation takes
another turn, then I want us to still be ahead of the curve. If it’s Dennis that’s the last missing link here, the Feds can have him.’

‘But you don’t think it is?’

‘Well, until you told me about the guy just now, it wasn’t a name on anyone’s radar, as far as I know.’

‘So who’s on the radar then?’ Logan quizzed. He had the feeling that Mackie wasn’t telling him the whole story.

‘There isn’t anyone else yet,’ Mackie responded.

Logan wasn’t convinced.

‘You’ve got four hours, Logan,’ Mackie said, and then he hung up.

Logan put the phone down and sighed. It was now all or nothing. He had a hunch that Mackie wasn’t being entirely straight with him. And neither was Grainger.

But he was the one who was moving the investigation forward now. And he was the one who would finish it.

Even though there was no reason to suspect there was any heat on him, Logan resisted the temptation to speed as he travelled down the freeway. There was no need to draw unwanted attention to himself. The town where he was headed, Binghamton, close to the city of the same name, was a picturesque place with less than five thousand inhabitants. Most of the townsfolk were relatively wealthy – either retirees or businessmen and -women who commuted into nearby cities.

It was a long drive, and Logan was travel-weary and hungry by the time he arrived. His arm was aching more and more as the minutes went past. He’d lost his medication somewhere between landing at JFK and all the excitement in Manhattan. His head hurt and his body was weak. He knew that he should rest.

But he was so close that he wasn’t going to stop. He
couldn’t
stop now.

The road he’d been taken to by his GPS was near to the town’s high street and consisted of a row of well-presented terraces. Many of them housed fashionable-looking art and antiques shops on the ground floors. The road seemed to lose its attractiveness, though, the further away from the high street you went. By the time Logan arrived at the address he was looking for, the well-presented terraces were in a more rustic state. Not decrepit, but certainly not as well kept.

The address he was looking for, 257b, was above a grimy-looking
hardware store. From the front, it didn’t appear that anybody was home. There were no lights on in the apartment.

Cautious as ever, Logan continued driving around the block, to look for a back entrance. But there wasn’t one. The back yards of the buildings on this street backed directly onto the yards of the buildings on the parallel street. That provided at least some extra comfort in that there was one less escape route if the apartment’s occupants tried to flee from him.

He completed his circuit of the block and parked up on the opposite side of the street to the hardware store, which had long been closed up for the night and was completely dark inside. The street was quiet, with little traffic about and few pedestrians. It wasn’t late into the night, just approaching ten p.m., but what small town has a thriving nightlife? And for Logan, it was better this way – fewer potential witnesses, and less potential collateral damage.

As he opened his door to get out, Logan’s phone went. Lifting it out of his pocket, he saw that it was Mackie calling.

‘Logan, where are you?’

He sounded rushed, like he had something urgent that he needed to say.

‘I’ve just arrived at Dennis’s address.’

‘Shit. Logan, things aren’t quite how we thought.’

Logan was momentarily distracted by movement off to his right. The apartment door opened and a figure came into view. But it was too dark to make the person out.

As Mackie carried on, Logan was only half listening.

‘Kennedy is gone. No-one has seen him since this morning.’

Logan’s ears perked up a bit. ‘He’s gone? As in, snatched?’

‘Well, more than likely, yeah.’

Logan was still staring over towards the apartment door. The figure began walking towards him, or towards his side of the street at least.

‘Logan, are you even listening to me?’

Logan didn’t respond; he was too busy focusing on the figure.

Was it Dennis?

‘Yeah, I’m listening. Go for it. Something about Kennedy?’

But he wasn’t really listening at all. He was readying himself for action – his free hand creeping towards his Glock handgun.

This could be it.

‘Logan, Dennis is –’

But Logan didn’t hear the end of the sentence. He’d hung up the phone already when the figure, walking over to a car that was parked a few yards up from him, came into view, caught in the glare of a street light.

He could hardly believe his eyes.

It was Grainger.