Die Twice (31 page)

“I see. So, if you don’t mind me asking, why are a bunch—does three count as a bunch? Anyway, why are South Africans in Chicago trying to poison people?”

“ ’Cause we work for whoever pays us the most. A bit like you.”

“And your employers would be?”

“Even if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you. But I don’t know. And I don’t care. All I want is the money.”

“Excellent. I admire a man of principle. In fact, a woman once told me that principles in a man are sexy. Very sexy, were her actual words. She was exceptionally beautiful. And exceptionally smart. I never knew her to be wrong. About anything.”

“Stop bullshitting me. Who do you really work for? You’re some kind of government agent, right?”

“No. I have issues with rigid authority structures. I’m strictly freelance.”

“Oh, so no one knows you’re here?”

“Sorry, did I say freelance? I meant to say yes, I am a government agent. Lots of people know I’m here. Including twenty-five of my most violent colleagues who are outside right now, desperate for an excuse to storm the place.”

The guy lifted his gun and pointed it at my face.

“You’re an idiot,” he said. “It’s time to say good night.”

“I could do that,” I said. “And I will. In due course. But in the meantime, just one thing. The guy who’s selling the gas to you. What’s his name?”

“Do you not get it? You’re about to die. The guy’s name doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me. I’m curious, like a cat.”

The guy didn’t respond.

“Come on,” I said. “You’re already measuring my life expectancy in seconds. What harm can it do?”

“He’s called Tony McIntyre,” he said, rolling his eyes. “And he’s English, like you.”

“Oh, Tony. I know him, as it happens. He’s Scottish, actually. And out of interest, I think telling me his name could do quite a lot of harm. To you, anyway.”

“You’re in no position to make threats.”

“I’m not threatening. I’m just telling you. He doesn’t look at all happy, right now. And he seemed fine a moment ago. So I’m thinking, has anything else happened that could have changed his mood so fast? Aside from you blurting out his name?”

“Who are you talking about?”

“Tony Mac. Look at the expression on his face.”

The guy didn’t react.

“He came in about two minutes after we did,” I said. “That’s why I stepped over here. To draw you away from him.”

He didn’t speak, but the muzzle of the Walther betrayed a slight tremble in his hand.

“The thing is, I’m working with Tony,” I said. “I’m his loyalty consultant. When he’s not sure if he can trust someone, he calls on me. I come in and run a few little tests. How do you think I knew you’d be here?”

Concern was starting to creep into the corner of his eyes.

“We call this Creating a Moment of Truth,” I said. “Tony always watches and listens when I’m doing one. That way, he sees and hears everything for himself. The results can’t be faked. He’s not relying on someone else’s interpretation. And he’s not left with any worries about false reporting. But right now, I’d say he has major worries about you.”

The guy’s eyes started to flick to the side. Then his whole head began to twitch. The tendons in his neck joined in. And finally, he
couldn’t take any more. He turned around to look. Not all the way. And not for very long. But long enough and far enough for what I needed.

Striking someone’s brachial plexus in just the right way to knock him out sounds easy, but in reality it’s one of the hardest things I had to learn. Go in too high, and the person hardly notices you’ve touched him. It’s the same story if you hit too low. Most of the time a fist or a foot or a knee or an elbow is a much more reliable option. But our instructors insisted that we keep trying. They wouldn’t let us move on from the technique until we’d mastered it. All of them were adamant there’d be times when the results would justify the effort. And, as usual, they were right.

I retrieved my phone and Beretta, then hitched the guy’s unconscious body over my right shoulder and carried him across to the curtains that divided the space. I couldn’t find a join, so in the end I just dumped him back on the floor, lifted up the bottom edge, and rolled him underneath. I followed, and could finally see what all the fuss was about with the glass pods. Only to me, they looked more like giant transparent drawers with open ends. There were three of them, spaced out evenly along the wall. Each one looked capable of holding maybe twelve people in comfort at a time. Two had been retracted, leaving only the right-hand one protruding into fresh air. I moved closer, and saw the source of the problem the engineers had been struggling with. It had to do with the rails in the ceiling that supported the box, and allowed it to slide in and out. Or more specifically, the hydraulic motors that provided the power for that to happen. All three rails had been removed and above them someone had begun to strip down the associated pipes and wires. Most of them had been left dangling, but I could see an empty space in the center of the resulting clump of spaghetti. That’s
where the part that was being made in Stuttgart would have to be plugged in, I guessed. And then I presumed they’d repeat the procedure with the other two pods.

I retrieved the guy’s body, carried it into the right-hand box and laid it facedown on the glass floor, pressed up against the outside wall. He was still out, but when consciousness returned and he opened his eyes, he was going to be looking straight down into the darkness. All that separated him from the sidewalk was three thin layers of laminated glass. And a quarter of a mile of empty air.

I wanted him to get full value for the view, so I went over to where the overhead rails had been piled up and dragged one back into the box. It was heavy. Close up it was more like a small girder, and it wasn’t easy to lift one end up and position it on the small of the guy’s back. I took a moment to catch my breath, then fetched the second one. That pinned his shoulders. The third, his legs. And with him secured, I sat down to think. I’d let him bring me upstairs because I wanted to know what was inside his head. This would give me the leverage to find out. Only now, there was something else bothering me. Something he’d just said didn’t ring true. I couldn’t put my finger on what. Not yet. But I had the feeling I wouldn’t be able to tie up all the loose ends until I did.

The guy came around with a start. His head jerked back away from the glass floor and when his body didn’t follow he began jerking and twisting and struggling to wriggle out from under the metal rails. I let him thrash around in vain for thirty seconds or so, then stepped up to the entrance to the box.

“Good news,” I said. “I’ve figured out what’s wrong with these things.”

He stopped struggling quite so violently and turned his head to face me, but didn’t speak.

“It’s the mechanism that keeps the boxes from falling right out of the side of the building,” I said. “It’s broken. The whole thing could just plummet at any second. It’s really unstable. I hope the famous Chicago wind doesn’t pick up anytime soon. It’s a shame you can’t get out, really.”

He stopped moving altogether this time, but didn’t break his silence.

“How far can you move your neck?” I said. “Can you see those little buttons up there?”

He didn’t answer.

“There’s a green one,” I said. “But I’m not interested in that at all. It makes the box move back inside. I’m thinking more about the red one. ’Cause if I press that, you, and the box, well . . . Let’s just say you’d be the first man to try out a glass parachute. And probably the last.”

He swallowed loudly, but didn’t manage any words.

“It’s a good thing the street is closed, down below here,” I said. “I’d feel awfully guilty if you pulverized any pedestrians, walking by.”

“OK,” he said, after another moment. “Enough. You win. What do you want?”

“A little information. Starting with some background.”

“I can give you that. Just get these things off my back.”

“Questions first, I think. You’re planning on murdering what, several thousand people? Why?”

“I told you. Dollars and cents.”

“There has to be more to it than that.”

“For the people who are paying, maybe. But not for me.”

“Who is paying you?”

“That’s a stupid question. You know it doesn’t work that way. Someone wants a job done. They hire me to do it. Anonymously, through two or three blinds. Afterward, you see their face on TV or
the Internet or wherever, claiming responsibility. Sick and cowardly of them, maybe, but it pays the bills.”

“OK. Why are they doing it? Did they tell you that much?”

“Yeah, funnily enough. I made it clear I have no moral scruples whatsoever. That’s why people hire me. But these guys still wanted me to think they were righteous.”

“How, if you weren’t in contact?”

“They sent me a load of crap through some intermediaries. And they have vision, I grant them that. The New York guys, in ’01—they demolished the Twin Towers. So now, there’s nothing left to see. These guys, though, they want this building left intact. What did they call it? A fourteen-hundred-foot-high coffin. A lasting monument to the immorality of Western culture, standing empty and unusable. Something like that. whatever.”

“How would the building be unusable? Spektra gas isn’t radioactive. It doesn’t seep into the fabric of the place. There shouldn’t be any long-term effects.”

“That’s true. But it’s not the point. You’re being too literal. These guys are more like poets. They’re thinking about how the whole deal will go down. Starting with every single person in the place being dead. And everyone in the country knowing about it. Hell, they won’t even need the TV cameras. People will be tweeting about it while it’s still happening. They’ll be posting videos of their co-workers twitching and dying. I guarantee it.”

I didn’t reply. I was too busy thinking about how much I hate Twitter.

“Then the emergency crews will come,” he said. “At first they’ll stand off, not knowing what to do. Then they’ll suit up and charge in. And die, ’cause regular respirators are no good against Spektra. So there’ll be delays, waiting for the military. More delays, waiting for body bags, ’cause there won’t be enough. So when the bodies do
finally come out, they’ll be starting to rot and decompose. Are you getting the picture?”

I didn’t answer.

“So you see what I mean?” he said. “These guys are like the artists of international terrorism. And after the scene they create, do you think anyone will ever want to work in the building again? Would you?”

I bit my tongue.

“So the building won’t be used,” he said. “And it’ll cost too much to pull it down. So there you go. It’ll be like a statue. A sculpture. Call it what you like.”

“And you have no problem with that?” I said.

“No. None. It’s what I do for a living.”

I stood and looked at him.

“Can you move these metal bars now, please?” he said.

“No,” I said. “When’s all this supposed to happen?”

“Soon, I guess. There’s no fixed time or date. Or if there is, they haven’t told me. I’m supposed to let them know when everything’s ready. Then they’ll give me the signal.”

“When will it be ready?”

“Later tonight.”

“The empty valve, downstairs? You need another canister?”

“Right.”

“Where are you getting it from?”

“It’s being brought right here, to me.”

“Room service?”

“My supplier.”

“McIntyre?”

“Right. Normally I meet him somewhere neutral. But tonight, we traded favors. Doorstep delivery, for garbage disposal.”

“Garbage, meaning me?”

“Right. Normally he’d take care of you himself, but he’s had a couple of bumps and bruises lately. He didn’t want to do it, in the circumstances. And I’m beginning to see why.”

“What time is he coming?”

“I’ll let him know when you’re out of the way. Then we’ll fix a time.”

“How do you contact him?”

“I use this amazing new device called the phone.”

“You have his number?”

“Of course.”

“OK. Good. Go ahead and call him now. Tell him to be here at eight o’clock.”

“You’ll have to get these things off me. I can’t reach my phone.”

“I’ll take care of you after you make the call. You reach the phone, or you stay where you are. Your choice.”

The guy made a play of straining to get his hand into his pocket, but thirty seconds later he’d produced the phone.

“Wait,” I said. “Call up his number. Let me see it.”

He prodded a couple of buttons, then passed me the handset. The phone book entry was under McIntyre, and the number matched the one that had sent me the texts just over twenty-four hours ago.

“OK,” I said. “That’s fine. Make the call. Only tell him nine o’clock, instead.”

The guy did as I told him. He only needed six words. The call took less than ten seconds. A relieved smile spread across his face when he hung up the phone. And faded again when he saw the gun that was now in my hand.

“Remind me of something,” I said. “Your advice, earlier. Did you tell me to say good morning? Or good night?”

“Good night,” he said.

“And remember how I told you I was going to do that? Well, I always keep my word. I’m going to say it to you, first, since it was your idea. And then to your friends, downstairs. I wouldn’t want them to miss out.”

There’s one word in navy intelligence that no one likes to speak out loud. Traitor.

No one makes jokes on the subject. No one gossips about it. And on the rare occasion that one is unmasked, no one talks about it. The only exception that I ever encountered was a guy in Bermuda. His nerves were still a little shot because he’d just exposed someone he’d worked with for twenty-two years. I hadn’t been in the service for twenty-two weeks at that point, so the whole affair made a big impression on me. I sat in a bar on the south side of the island and listened intently as he talked me through what had happened. How he’d first been alerted to his friend’s guilt. How he’d double-and triple-checked to make sure there was no mistake. How he’d considered handing the case off to internal security. And how he’d finally hunted the guy down and shot him in the head, leaving his guns in their holsters as an enduring badge of shame.