Gridlock (23 page)

Even in his prone state Sam felt a vague pleasure that at least there was something about him and his plans that this appalling girl did not know.

'Geoffrey wanted his engine to be part of a new way of doing things and that's exactly what it's going to be.'

Sam did not attempt to answer, he was happy to let Deborah keep talking. They would be discovered at some point and, seeing as how they were at the nerve centre of a huge industrial conglomorate in the middle of a working day, he reckoned it would happen sooner rather than later. Deborah knew this too and so she decided to get to the point.

'OK, this is what you have to do now. You have to give me your key to the executive lift and you have to tell me where the plans to my engine are. You can talk now, but only about the key and the engine.'

Sam Turk could scarcely resist a smile.

'Well, the key is right there on the desk,' he answered, indicating a key card which Deborah recognized as the same as the one which her rude companion in the lift had used . . . 'Use it, kid, get the hell out of here, by the time I get loose you'll be long gone. As to the engine, I'm afraid—'

'Let me save us a little time here, Turk, because we're both busy people, right?' said Deborah. 'You're about to tell me that the plans ain't here, that they're somewhere else, which would be good news for you because poor old Miss Paraplegic ain't likely to get the rise on you a second time. Well, I have to tell you that I doubt that those plans are elsewhere, because I can't think of a more logical place for Sam Turk's magical new Global engine to be than in Sam Turk's office at the Global building.' Deborah was, of course, unaware that Sam did not see Geoffrey's plans as the new Global engine at all. 'Now you had better hope I'm right, Mr Turk, because either I get the plans in my hands in the next five minutes or I'm going to kill you,'

'Ah now, come on, kid—' Sam began to protest, but Deborah was not in a listening mood.

'I told you not to speak unless I said,' she hissed. 'One more word, just one, and the negotiations end with a bolt in your neck and I'm outta here. You ain't the only one with a stomach for murder, Turk. Now listen, this is my one chance, OK? My one chance to get back my property and to revenge my friend, right? Well believe me, if I can't do the first I will sure as hell do the second. So bite on this.'

Deborah accompanied this by leaning across her bow and, with the hand that was not holding back the bolt, flinging a scarf over Sam's head. 'Go on, I said bite on it, suck it into your puss and bite it!'

Sam had no choice but to work the scarf into his mouth as best he could without the use of his hands.

'Go on, all of it!' Deborah commanded. 'Get it in your mouth, the whole damn scarf. Do it, bastard.'

Sam sucked in the cloth until it filled his cheeks and he began to gag. He did not mind, he certainly was not going to be able to tell this stupid girl where the plans were with a scarf in his mouth.

'You biting it, Turk?' demanded Deborah. Sam nodded. 'Biting it hard?' Again he nodded. 'Good,' she said and let go of the wire.

The bolt buried itself deep into the fleshy part of Sam's thigh, it was not a terribly serious wound but it was a painful and bloody one. Sam's head swam, he wanted to cry out with the shock and the pain. But of course he could not, now he understood why Deborah had made him stuff the scarf. Deborah drew the shaft of a second arrow back towards her chest.

'You want to know something, Turk?' she said. 'I wish I was in your position, I really do, because you may be hurting in your leg, but at least you can feel something. If that was me, I wouldn't feel a thing. Do you know why that is, you little scheister? You disgrace to the American flag! I'll tell you. My legs can't feel because the brakes on the Global Moritz were of the absolute minimal standard that you people could get away with at the time. Global could have fitted better brakes, but they didn't, and that's why I can't walk, and why I wouldn't feel no arrow in my leg. Now, I shot you, Turk, so that you know how serious I am. It was a hard lesson, but I guessed you have a pretty thick skin, also I am only giving you one warning so I wanted to make it good. The next arrow, you get in the face. OK, this is what happens now. I'm going to pull the cloth out of your mouth, and you ain't going to scream and you ain't going to shout. If you do, in that moment, you're dead, OK, just like my friend, you're dead, and I'm gone. The only sound you are going to make is to tell me where the plans are, and if you even hint that they ain't here, I'll kill you instantly. No further discussion, no negotiations of any kind, if they really ain't here then I lose, but you lose worse. OK, here goes.'

Keeping a firm grip on the shaft of her arrow, Deborah leant forward and, taking hold of a protruding corner of the cloth, gently pulled it out of Sam's mouth. Sam was a gambling man, but he was not foolish or impetuous. He weighed the odds of a situation carefully. In this circumstance he knew that there was a chance that if he called Deborah's bluff she would not kill him, but he could see from the bloody mess on his trousers that there was a real possibility that she would. There was also, of course, the possibility that if he gave in to her demands and gave her the plans, she would still kill him, but he didn't think so. Sam knew that his best bet was to gain more time. Deborah's position of power could not last for ever, the odds would have to change soon, he had to humour her until then.

'In the safe,' he whispered. 'Seven-nine-two-zero-four – twice.'

Very carefully, and keeping the bound Sam in her sights the whole time, Deborah slowly reversed her chair towards the wall with the safe in it. This was a complicated process, she only had one arm for motivation, she required the other to keep tight the bolt which she was training on Sam. This meant that, to avoid simply going around in circles, Deborah was forced to continuously change hands, performing tiny arcs and thus slowly backing away.

Eventually she arrived beneath the safe. Fortunately it was set low in the wall and, reaching up, Deborah was able to shift the dial, her eyes flicking upwards to the dial and back to the prostrate Sam between each number. Click, click, click, seven-nine-two-zero-four-seven-nine-two-zero . . .'

'I got one more number, Turk, if the door of this safe don't swing open, I shoot you immediately,' said Deborah. Sam nodded to show that he understood.

'Four!' The door clicked open and swung forward upon its beautiful German-made hinges. Deborah almost dropped her arrow in relief. She couldn't think what she had been expecting, some sort of booby trap perhaps, but Global Motors was a respectable business, they did not have exploding safes.

Without taking her eyes off Sam, Deborah's hand groped upwards and backwards into the safe. She could feel a sheaf of papers tied up with string. Taking a firm grip on them she dragged them out over her head and down into her lap. Reaching backwards again she discovered a couple of larger rolled-up sheets, these too she awkwardly dragged out. One glance at the top page of the sheet was enough to convince her that she had struck gold,
'Notes on the Principles of Hydrogen-Powered Internal Combustion
by . . .' and the name was crudely Tippexed out. 'Not even his name remains, huh?' said Deborah, wheeling back towards Turk. Sam tensed, why the hell had nobody disturbed them yet? What did he pay these people for? Actually, it was not so strange, it had in fact been less than fifteen minutes since Deborah had first appeared and a combination of Sam's enigmatically forestalled intercom messages to Miss Hodges, plus the sign that Deborah had put on the door, had so far dissuaded everybody from risking Sam's famous wrath by disturbing him. Sam wondered what his chances would be if, bound as he was, he attempted to roll towards Deborah's chair and topple her. Deborah read the fear on his face.

'Don't worry, I ain't going to kill you, 'less you make me,' she assured him. 'Just you nuzzle down to the piece of cloth on the floor there and suck it back into your mouth, OK?'

Sam did as he was instructed as Deborah tortuously rolled her way back towards him, employing the same alternative thrust method that she had used to get to the safe. When her chair again stood in front of Sam, who now cut a pretty pathetic figure, bleeding and sweating and with his checks stuffed with cloth, Deborah produced some heavy-duty insulation tape from her prop tool bag. Fumbling it open with one hand and her teeth, a rather difficult thing to do, she leant forward to Sam for the final time and firmly taped up his mouth.

Finally she relaxed her hold on the arrow.

'I'm going now, Mr Turk,' she said, taking up his lift key from the desk, 'and let me tell you that by tomorrow there will be a copy of my engine in the post to every environmental group in the country. Whoever makes this engine is going to consider the earth first and profit second. I've won, you murdering schmuck.'

But Sam could not hear her, the birds were singing too loudly in his aching brain for Deborah's voice to penetrate, for behind Deborah the door had quietly opened and through it had come the one man who could ignore Sam's 'do not disturb' signs without risking the sack, Deborah's recent lift companion, Bruce Tungsten.

Bruce strode quickly up behind Deborah and grabbed at the anglepoise arm, wrenching one end out of its clip on the arm of Deborah's chair and bending it right back, breaking the hinge on the other arm from which had been launched the first blow against Turk.

'OK, little lady,' said Bruce, grabbing Geoffrey's plans from her lap. 'Keep your hands on the arms of your chair where I can see them, don't you move them now. By the look of things around here you're a mite too resourceful for my liking.' Bruce had a pistol. Even in his state of blissful relief at being rescued in the nick of time by his coconspirator, Sam Turk could not help wondering why Bruce had brought along a pistol.

'Well, well, well, Sam,' said Bruce, jovially, whilst none too gently pulling the tape from his mouth and allowing Sam to spit out the cloth. 'This one's going to be a barrel of laughs to tell the boys down in the locker room. The day ol' Sam Turk got trussed up and seriously wounded by a young girl in a wheelchair.' The girl under question moved her hands slightly, she wanted to spread her knees apart and the only way she could do this was to haul them apart with her hands.

'I said keep your hands exactly still, miss,' said Bruce waving his gun at her. 'My old pal Sam here is a very tough guy indeed, in fact he's one of the meanest men I know, and yet you got the better of him. That makes you a very formidable woman as far as I'm concerned, so just keep yourself real still, OK? Or I shall be forced to tie you up like you did to Sam here.'

'Speaking of which,' grunted Sam, who it must be remembered was still lying bleeding on the floor with his arms and legs pulled backwards and bound behind him. 'For God's sake get me out of this before I bleed to death.'

Bruce ignored Sam's plea, instead he placed a little doll on top of Sam's desk.

'I have to thank you, miss, whoever you are,' he said. 'Personally I was scared to confront old Sam here myself, I was fearful he'd get the better of me. That's why I've spent two and a half hours going to every top man in this building enquiring, hoping that one of them might have a clue as to the whereabouts of our new miracle engine. Of course it wasn't any use, none of our senior management were aware that we even had a new miracle engine. Kind of selfish of you to keep it to yourself, Sam, considering it represents the entire future of our industry.'

'You can't double-cross me, you bastard,' said Sam. But, of course, seeing as how he was saying it whilst trussed up and stuck to the floor with his own blood, it was palpably obvious that Bruce could do just about what he wanted. Sam changed his tack.

'Fifty-five billion bucks, Bruce,' he pleaded. 'You are holding fifty-five billion bucks in your hand, that's what the oil people will pay! You can't throw that kind of bread away just to make cars!'

Deborah could not believe her ears, the duplicity of it astonished her.

'You mean you weren't even going to make it!' she gasped. 'You were going to sell my engine to the oil people so they could put it in the trash!'

'He was, I wasn't, and keep your hands where they are!' said Bruce, noticing that yet again Deborah's hands were straying towards her knees. 'You damned idiot, Sam, did you really think I was going to let the greatest engineering breakthrough in a century just disappear? I'm a car man for God's sake, I make cars. These plans go back with me to the USA, tonight. Lord Almighty, man, do you have no vision at all? No soul? I'd rather be a multimillionaire national hero than a multi-billionaire nobody, schmuck. I'm disappointed in you, Sam. You need something to help you get motivated. Keep my doll, it was good for me . . . Sam Turk,' he said loudly and clapped his hands. The doll began to laugh. It was still laughing when the windows crashed open and three masked figures in combat fatigues, balaclava helmets and carrying machine guns sailed in as if from nowhere. One knocked the pistol from Bruce's grasp, another threw him to the floor, while the third covered the room. Deborah they ignored, and she used the opportunity to haul apart her knees to the sides of her chair.

Along the corridor, in Miss Hodges' office, some of the younger girls wondered whether they should go and investigate what the noise was.

'Absolutely not,' replied Miss Hodges. She had only a few minutes before been instructed specifically by Bruce Tungsten himself, the president of the entire international group, to leave him and Turk absolutely alone.

'Gentlemen from the American Midwest often conduct business by smashing things,' she assured the nervous girls. 'I believe it's hormonal, like stags rutting and parallel walking. They must be left to get on with it or else they might take it out on their wives when they get home.'

Inside Sam's office the balance of power had changed radically again. The chief terrorist was speaking.

'So it looks like you done half our job for us,' he said, nodding towards the prostrate Sam. 'The general wants you alive, which is bad news for you, my friend, let me tell you. I don't know what you done to make him mad, but he's sure mad. You are luckier,' he said, turning to Bruce. 'You we will kill now, and the secretary.' For the first time he acknowledged Deborah. 'It is very convenient of you to be here, Mr Tungsten, we did not expect to see you here at all. We thought we'd have to go to Detroit to kill you. OK, give me the plans and we'll make it quick, huh?'

Bruce's mind was racing, but unfortunately he could not think of anything clever. 'Come on, come on,' said the terrorist. 'I can shoot you then take them if I like, but I don't want to get them all bloody.'

Still Bruce hesitated, his burning passion to get the better of Hirohato urging him to do anything to save those plans, throw them out of the window, try to swallow them, anything. His own life meant nothing, but he had to save the engine and pay Hirohato back for that doll. Then Deborah spoke.

'Just toss the plans over to me, pal,' she said. 'I'm a fellow American, you can trust me.'

'Shut up!' snapped the terrorist. Then, turning back to Bruce, he said, 'Give me the plans.'

'C'mon, bud, you've got nothing to lose,' said Deborah quietly. 'I can get them out, somehow the thing'll get made. Trust me, I got special skills, I can do it, better I have them than him. C'mon.'

Not really knowing why, Bruce turned and tossed the plans to Deborah. She caught them and the terrorist shot Bruce, although fortunately, because the terrorist was also turning to look at Deborah, Bruce was only winged. The other two terrorists were already moving towards Deborah to retrieve the plans. It was then that the whole room received an enormous shock, for a sheet of flame suddenly burst forth from between Deborah's legs, engulfing both men in an inferno, just below the knees. Instantly their trousers were alight and both fell to the floor beating at their burning legs. Deborah revolved her chair. Suddenly she was facing an astonished and terrified terrorist chief. Again fire bounded forth from under her. Now there were three men writhing around beating their legs and searching for a vase of flowers.

'So long,' said Deborah, and wheeling her chair round, she smashed through the door.

Down the corridor Miss Hodges was on the horns of a dilemma.

'It sounds like they're shooting at each other now,' one of the girls had said.

'Must be having an awful row,' another added.

Miss Hodges was inwardly furious, she had never warmed to Sam Turk's manners since the day he had first arrived at Swiss Cottage promising people, for some reason known only to himself, that he intended to kick their bottoms. Fortunately, in Miss Hodges' case, at least he had never carried out this threat but breaking windows and conducting shootouts during office hours was nearly as bad. It was such a terribly poor example to the younger girls.

She pressed the intercom connecting her to Sam's office, but there was no reply. 'Wait here,' she instructed the wide-eyed under secretaries. 'I shall enquire if they require coffee.'

Deborah was waiting by the executive lift when Miss Hodges rushed past her and into Sam's office. There she discovered a scene straight out of Dante's
Inferno.
Both the president of the company and the chief executive of the UK division lay wounded on the floor, one bound, and three militaristic, Middle Eastern-looking gentlemen were writhing about the place desperately trying to put their trousers out.

'Mr Turk!' said Miss Hodges. 'Installing a basketball net and a golf putter in your office is one thing, but sadomasochistic orgies is quite another. I resign.'

'The girl! The girl in the wheelchair,' shouted Turk. 'For Christsake stop her!' Miss Hodges was a highly professional woman and knew full well that Sam was entitled to a month's notice of her departure. She remained therefore his senior personal assistant. Turning on her heels she rushed back into the corridor. The girl in the chair was still there, but she would not be for long. Ping! The executive lift arrived. The girl slipped a keycard into the slot and the doors opened, but not before Miss Hodges had bounded down the corridor and grabbed the handles of Deborah's chair to prevent her rolling into the lift.

It was then that Miss Hodges received the shock of her life, quite literally, for Geoffrey's ghostly hand was still hovering over the woman he loved, and if there is a heaven, still loved. Deborah's hand dropped to a little switch that Geoffrey had installed, and sent the entire contents of the traffic-light battery shooting up poor Miss Hodges' arms. She wasn't standing in a puddle and it wouldn't have been a strong enough charge to do her any harm even if she had. However, it was enough to make her leap backwards in fear and surprise, and at that time Deborah disappeared into the lift and pressed ground floor.