Fortress (28 page)

It was Alicia’s turn to chip in: ‘For fuck’s sake, Tom. Everyone’s on edge back home and there aren’t any easy strategies. We can’t put tanks on the streets. We’re not the Russians. We need all the support we can get from the US and stuff like this makes them feel we’re not playing the game.’

Tom sighed. ‘Look, you can drive me around all day, if you like, but spare a thought for the poor old British taxpayer footing the gas bill for this barge, not to mention keeping these two in shandy and crisps.’

The boss sighed heavily and rubbed his eyes. It was clear they were on a fishing expedition. They had no real idea why he was there.

‘Look. Just be out of here by tomorrow. All right?’

This was madness, one arm of the secret service trying to employ him, the other trying to expel him. But in fact Tom was hoping to get out of there sooner than that.

‘Fine, whatever. Just let me out.’

The car lurched to a halt. He turned to them. ‘There is one thing. Masjid As-Sabur?’

The patrician frowned. ‘What’s that?’

‘“As-Sabur” is one of Allah’s ninety-nine names. Depending on your interpretation of the translation it means either the “Timeless One” or the “Patient One”. “Masjid”, I’m sure you know, means “mosque”.’

‘So?’

‘Asim Zuabi, imam and Syrian refugee.’

They all looked at him blankly. ‘Check him out. He’s building a big new mosque here. Some of the locals aren’t happy but he’s loaded so he’s bought off the authorities, apparently.’

‘What’s the significance?’

‘Honestly? I have absolutely no idea.’

61

Tom was in the bathroom doing some maintenance on the previous night’s damage when there was a knock at the door.

‘Room service.’

He looked through the peep-hole: Beth, carrying a bottle of champagne and two glasses. He had been looking forward to some time alone and catching up on some much-needed sleep. Besides, he didn’t feel like celebrating; Kyle’s demise and the carnage at the gun shop had left him feeling deeply troubled. But maybe this was a chance to get another angle on Stutz. He reached for a robe. The accumulated damage had left him with a number of welts and angry-looking bruises.

He opened the door and she strode in on those endless legs.

‘Courtesy of Mr Stutz. I believe congratulations are in order!’

She looked different today, less of the efficient PA, more Jack Wills at the Beach. She had on a vest that clung nicely, shorts and trainers, evidently her off-duty kit. He took the bottle from her: Krug, Clos du Mesnil 2000.

‘Mr Stutz says you Brits know your champagne.’

‘Very thoughtful, thanks.’ He glanced down to see that one of the cuts inflicted by Colburn and Co was oozing onto the carpet. He pulled the robe closer round him. ‘Just give me a minute.’

She brandished the bottle. ‘Would you like me to open it?’

‘Go ahead.’

He went back into the bathroom and put on a long-sleeved fleece and trousers to cover the evidence.

‘Where did y’all get to last night?’

He laughed. ‘I’m afraid I don’t remember. We rather overdid it, I’m ashamed to say. I think I might have come off his bike at some point.’

He heard her turn the inside lock on the door. That wasn’t right.

He was only halfway through the doorway when a jolt stung him on the thigh and he went down for the second time in less than an hour.

What was this, Groundhog Day?

He lifted himself up a little and, without even turning, she jabbed her left elbow into his chest, forcing all the air out of it. Then her face followed, like thunder, as if she’d just ripped off her happy mask to reveal the scary android beneath. She smashed the back of her hand across his face. This helped him focus just enough to grab her wrist and pull her down. He didn’t see the foot heading for his left temple until it was too late.

He was on the carpet. His limbs felt like sludge, but he grabbed the foot and twisted it hard. She rotated with it, trying to avoid the crack, and crashed into the side of the minibar. He grabbed her ponytail and pulled her head down. She fought hard with her fists, hammering his face, chest, shoulder – wherever she could land them – twisting all the time like a hooked marlin. With a huge effort of will he forced her off him, but as he did so, she used his momentum to send him smashing into the wall.

He tried to open his eyes. The room was on its side, a blur. He twisted to try to see the right way up, but it was painful. When he recovered a little, he found he was on the floor and she was standing over him, the Glock in one hand, a small black wallet open in the other. He focused on the wallet, in particular the three white letters: FBI.

62

‘What happened to the nice, smiley Beth? The one who doesn’t Taser guys in hotel rooms.’

No sudden moves, he told himself – at least, not until you know if everything’s working.

She glared at him with contempt. ‘What are you – some kind of one-man crime wave?’

He lifted himself an inch. She pushed him back down with her heel. ‘Okay! Okay!’

The muzzle of the suppressor was less than two feet from his face. ‘Believe me, I am more than capable of using this.’

‘I believe you. Can you just move it out of my face?’

‘I’m calling this in, Tom Buckingham – if that’s even your name. You just booked yourself a long-stay cell in Huntsville.’

Tom had never heard of the place but he was pretty sure it didn’t have sun loungers and a pool. He adjusted his sore leg. She raised the weapon again.

The thought flashed through his mind that this was another test, commissioned by Stutz, but the badge and the wallet looked like the real thing, as did the way she handled the weapon.

‘Can I at least straighten up a bit?’

His head was wedged half under the table and his zapped leg was smarting unpleasantly.

‘What do you know about Zuabi?’ She took a half-step back.

‘What’s that?’ Tom tried to straighten his legs.

‘You don’t know? How long did you say you’d been under cover?’

He gave her the heads-up on the mystery mullah.

She listened, saying nothing, which suggested that it was all new to her. Since he had her attention, he went on: ‘What’s in this for Stutz? Seemed to me his thing is sending people like Zuabi back where they came from.’

She sighed, her patience running on empty. ‘Okay, you’re still fucking with me, Tom. You need to get yourself a better scriptwriter.’

‘Syrian refugee builds mega-mosque in downtown Houston. Nazi nutter plans to kill him. Stutz sent me with Kyle. What else could I do? You know the score. Under cover, you get to do all kinds of surprising stuff – like being filmed by Skip, yeah? How does that feel?’ He thought he had crossed a line but she didn’t rise to it. ‘He was testing you. That’s what he does.’

‘Then I guess I passed.’ She sat down on the edge of the bed, keeping the Glock trained on him, not letting down her guard, but at least she was responding. Tom pressed on.

‘MI5 think Invicta is deliberately provoking the unrest in the UK. They put me in to see if I can join up some of the dots. The dots led to here.’

‘And a lot of collateral.’

He shrugged. There was no point debating that. ‘Okay, I showed you mine. How about you show me yours?’

She shook her head in mock-disbelief. ‘Jeez, you Brits are something else.’

‘Well, go on. Why have the FBI got you running around for these creeps?’

‘That’s none of your fucking business.’

‘But maybe what I have is
your
business.’

She shook her head again. It was getting to be a habit. ‘I just don’t get it, what are you trying to do here?’

‘We can help each other.’

Her eyes narrowed.

‘Look, we both know Stutz’s ambition is for Skip to deliver the software equivalent of ethnic cleansing. Rolt’s been talking up something similar in the UK – and he’s getting an audience. There’s evidence he’s been helping the process along – stirring up ethnic hatred. Stutz talked to me about the Invicta hostel bombing like it was preordained. What if it was planned – by them? The FBI could be missing a trick here.’

‘Meaning?’

‘That you and I may have a chance to stop the biggest orchestrated terror initiative since Nine/Eleven.’

She looked at him for several seconds. Tom could almost see the debate going on in her head.
Is this guy for real or some fuckwit?

He noticed the Glock wasn’t pointed at him now. Beneath what was left of the shiny gloss of her cover, he detected the frustrations of her assignment coming to the surface. She looked at him for a long time. When she spoke again, it was through gritted teeth.

‘Stutz is impenetrable. He’s very meticulous, and very secretive. He’s got all the detail in his head. Maybe working with Skip has convinced him that, no matter how many firewalls you put in, nothing is safe. He hardly uses the phone, he doesn’t do email. Everything’s word of mouth. He has people from his security outfit couriering messages all over. And they’re all totally loyal to him, just like Kyle was.’

Tom looked at her afresh. She was in deep, risking her life, putting up with everything Stutz and Lederer threw at her for the Bureau. He bet her paymasters had never imagined, when they had instigated the War on Terror, that they would be tracking the likes of Stutz.

She put up a hand as if to wipe out the previous thought. ‘Wait, roll back. You talked about Rolt, the Invicta guy?’

Tom nodded.

‘Rolt was here a month back. He met with Stutz at his penthouse. That’s not usual – he takes work there sometimes but doesn’t do meetings there. He had me bring up a package, and when I went in he had this purple folder open, stuff spread all over the table. They looked like résumés, mug shots on them. The men with beards, women with headscarves. Never saw Stutz with anything like that before or since. Anyhow I’d come in without knocking and he went apeshit. I didn’t get near enough to see names or anything but I saw letters on the corners of some of them: SAR.’

‘Syrian Arab Republic.’

‘And we know he’s not hiring them – doesn’t even want them here. So why’s he looking at their details?’

‘What was the Bureau’s interest in him, originally?’

She gave him a withering look.

‘Okay, hand me over to the authorities, if you want, but I guarantee you, no one wants a fuss right now. They’ll most probably ship me back to the UK and pretend it never happened.’

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘Before Nine/Eleven, Stutz was in the oil business, supplying infrastructure and personnel to the high-risk fields: Iraq, Libya, Azerbaijan, Nigeria. With the Iraq invasion in 2003, he teamed up with the CIA to supply contractors. As the war dragged on, the demand for all kinds of off-book operatives increased. Congress got interested in how much public money was flowing to these private contractors, but they were protected with all kinds of National Security provisions that meant there was a whole bunch of stuff they didn’t need to declare. Langley and the Pentagon closed ranks to protect Stutz, which pissed off the Bureau.’

‘Have you managed to get anything?’

‘Some numbers. Bank details. Raw data from transactions. Something to feed Carter, my contact agent in DC, so he can follow up the financial leads while I keep working on getting closer to Stutz.’

‘And Skip?’

‘Don’t even go there, okay? The guy’s a class A pervert.’

‘Sounds like you got the assignment from hell.’

She stiffened again. ‘Why should I even trust you?’

‘Remember “Mutually Assured Destruction”? We both know what he’d do if he found out about either of us. And we both have enough on each other to give him cause to want to do that. So we have an incentive not to blow each other’s cover. Where is Stutz now?’

‘In DC. He doesn’t get back before midnight. He drives himself from the airport and at that time there’s no traffic. The building has a parking garage in the basement. He has his own elevator, which bypasses the offices and so forth. Just goes straight up. I sometimes go in there to pick up stuff so it’s not unusual for the guards to see my pick-up. So far I’ve never been in alone but my company pass gets me into the garage. And I’ve memorized the elevator and door codes.’

‘Any other way up or down?’

‘The emergency stairs, but it’s forty-five floors. Access is through the bedroom. The door doesn’t open from the outside, though, so it’s exit only.’

‘Can you get me in?’

63

She left the radio off in the pick-up and they drove in silence.

‘You okay?’

‘Sure.’

Her silence felt unnatural.

‘So why take the assignment?’

‘I didn’t. I mean, I didn’t choose it. I was on probation.’

‘How come?’

‘My previous assignment was a drug bust. I had to get close to some dealers in Miami, be their girlfriend and whatever. And I ended up getting too close to the product. When the case came up, their defence argued my evidence was inadmissible on the grounds I was addicted, and they walked. The FBI doesn’t hold back. It was either this or get out.’

The penthouse was invisible from the street.

‘It’s set back. There’s a deck all around it with trees and stuff. Kinda wasted on a guy who never goes outside.’

She looked wistful for a moment, then turned into a side-street. ‘You need to get under the dash, there’s cameras on the gate. Stay down till we’ve stopped. I’ve learned where the blind spots are. When we leave the truck, you follow my route exactly to the elevator.’

Tom crouched in the footwell. She swiped her card and the barrier to the parking lot flipped up. They dropped down into the underground garage. It was only partially lit.

‘Okay, now come out my side.’

There were a dozen other cars, BMWs and Audis, a black Lincoln SUV, a yellow Lamborghini Huracán and a classic Jaguar E-Type.

‘Any of these his?’

‘Just the Jag. His favourite toy, supposedly, but he never uses it. He also has a blue S Class – he’s out in that now. The Lambo’s one of Skip’s. Think he forgot it’s here.’

They parked next to some Dumpsters and walked to the elevator door. She punched in the number: 5121861.