Money Run (18 page)

Ash stepped slowly away from it. The cube suddenly seemed imposing, dangerous. She noticed for the first time that there was a small console attached at the bottom, connected by numerous wires. An alarm system.

“Benjamin,” she said softly. “I think I just found Buckland's $200 million.”

“What? Really? Where? On the rooftop?”

“The gold cube is real gold,” she said.

There was a long silence.

“I'm serious,” Ash said. “The gunman fired a shot into it, and it's not hollow.”

“No way,” Benjamin said. “It's huge! There's no way it could be solid gold. That's impossible.”

Ash scraped some filaments from the edge of the bullet hole, took out the scanner capsule, tipped it so the fake anthrax fell out, and sprinkled the gold in. “I'm sending you some for analysis,” she said.

“No way,” Benjamin said. “No way, no way, no – oh.”

“Oh what?” Ash said.

“It's gold,” Benjamin said. “But it's not just regular cheap-ring gold. It's pure gold. Twenty-four carat. Did you say the whole cube is
solid
?”

“Looks that way,” Ash said. She walked around the cube, measuring it with her gaze. “It's about – 6 metres. It has 6-metre sides. Six by six by six to get the volume. What's it worth?”

There was silence in her headphones.

“What's it worth?”

“Shut up a second,” Benjamin said. “I'm working it out.”

Ash heard him mutter something about gold density, value per kilogram, kilogram per square metre. She took a few steps back to survey the cube again. She looked at her hands.
Now
they were shaking.

“Uh, Ash?” Benjamin sounded scared. “The cube isn't worth $200 million.”

Ash's chest felt tight. “How much is it worth?”

“Ninety-five
billion
, nine hundred and seven million, four hundred and twelve thousand, eight hundred dollars.”

Ash staggered backwards. Her legs turned to jelly and she landed on the ground with a smack. She was dimly aware of a vein of drool as it slid down her chin. Her palms were sweaty. Her eyes were frozen open.

She was looking at the most money she'd ever seen in her life.

Wright stared across the street to the HBS roof. The helicopter was perched there – and he'd seen the girl's silhouette as she'd jumped down, walked around for a bit, stared at the cube, then fallen over backwards. What the hell was she doing? She had a helicopter, anonymity and the cover of darkness. She had the perfect opportunity to escape scot-free…

…and instead, she'd flown less than 100 metres before landing again, in plain sight.

“TRA had better let us into HBS,” the girl in headphones said. “We need that helicopter back.”

“You should have thought of that before you left it unlocked with the keys in it,” Wright muttered.

He looked across to HBS. Ash was standing up. Dusting herself off. Jogging towards the stairwell entrance.

“We were within 20 metres of it,” the girl retorted, “and helicopters, by the way, are not easy to fly. Plus, we were told the building was deserted and in a quarantined area. Not exactly a hotspot for thieves.”

“I'm standing on the roof of Shine Apartments,” the reporter was saying to the camera, “across the street from the HBS building, where there's been a dramatic development. A short time ago witnesses stood transfixed as a car flew off the roof of HBS and crash-landed inside one of the apartments opposite. Only moments ago, a helicopter was hijacked from this very rooftop and flown across the street, landing on HBS. It has been speculated that the culprit may have been the driver of the car, having miraculously survived the crash.”

“A helicopter was hijacked,” Wright thought. Carefully put. Can't have their viewers knowing that it was their helicopter, stolen due to their negligence.

His phone rang. He held it against his ear. “Yeah?”

“Damien,” Belle said. “Fill me in.”

“The driver of the car was a teenage girl,” Wright said. “She wasn't hurt in the crash, but she tried to hide from us – I found her in an apartment bathroom. She told me there's a government assassin inside HBS, hunting Hammond Buckland, and that he's the one who shot at her as she drove off the roof. She refused to explain what she was doing in HBS, why Hammond Buckland's car was on the roof, or how she got his keys. She escaped custody, and made it to the roof. Just my luck, there was a news team up here. They were dumb enough to leave their chopper unlocked. The girl stole it and – this is the weird part – she flew it back across the street to HBS and has just re-entered the building.”

“
That's
the weird part? Right. What's with the fire on the sixteenth floor?”

“Oh, yeah,” Wright said. “That was part of her escape plan. She used it as a distraction.”

“Teenagers,” Belle said. “What do you think of her story?”

“The government assassinating Buckland?” Wright shrugged. “It's unlikely. Ridiculous, even. But this has been an unlikely and ridiculous day, so it almost seems to fit.”

“You got any better theories?”

Wright rubbed his eyes. “No. I need more people to interview. So far all I've had is a brief off-the-record chat with a girl who knows way more than she was willing to tell. I need to get inside HBS. I need to arrest everybody, and talk to them one by one until I can see the whole picture. But TRA won't let me, because they're in it up to their necks too.”

“Now get some filler footage of the helicopter,” the girl in headphones was shouting at the cameraman. “Do it from the north corner, so you can't see our logo on the side.”

The reporter was talking on his phone. “Yeah, a few technical hitches. But the story's getting bigger. Send another team, get them to hover around HBS and wait.”

“You think the terrorist threat is real?” Belle asked.

“Nope,” Wright said. “That'd just be another coincidence to throw onto the pile. It seems far more likely that the government made it up to cover whatever it is they're trying to pull here.”

“Then go inside,” she said. “If there's no exposure risk, go inside HBS and prove it, before the players have a chance to finish their games and disappear.”

“They're armed, Belle. They've threatened to open fire on anyone who approaches the entrance. And they'll do it, too – it'd be suspicious if they didn't, and I've got a dead body to prove that whatever they're fighting over is worth killing for.”

“The girl got inside, didn't she?”

“She had a helicopter,” Wright said. “I don't.”

“You're a policeman. She's not.”

“I can't call in a police chopper to violate quarantine.”

“Sure you can,” Belle said. “You just have to say the magic words.”

“What are—” Wright broke off. She was right. There was a way to do it.

“I'll call you back,” he said.

TRA's power stemmed from anti-terrorism legislation, which declared that when terrorists were suspected to have infiltrated any organization, that organization would be stripped of its authority until the breach was found. TRA was able to take over any organization at all, including businesses, law-enforcement agencies, schools and charities.

But there was a way to use this power against them.

Wright dialled a number in his phone and hit SEND.

A voice answered. Bored-sounding. One of the good, perfectly capable officers forced to stay at the station because of the raised terror-alert level. Wright smiled. He was about to make the officer's day.

“I need a helicopter and an attack team to the rooftop of Shine Apartments right away,” he said.

“Sir, that building is inside the quarantine zone. We don't have jurisdiction, and therefore can't enter without TRA sanction.”

Wright then said the magic words. “TRA has been compromised.”

One more piece of the puzzle had snapped into place. All day, Ash had found it hard to believe that the government would go to so much effort and risk so much for only $2.2 billion. That might seem like a spectacular amount of money to her and Benjamin, but to most governments it was a mere droplet in their bathtub-sized coffers.

But Hammond Buckland had somehow accumulated almost $96 billion, and then hidden it in plain sight. That was enough to get anyone and everyone who knew about it searching. And suddenly Ash felt way out of her depth. It was like being a cheetah chasing a fat gazelle, and then stumbling into a clearing where Tyrannosaurus rexes were attacking a giant Brachiosaurus.

She barely remembered pushing through the stairwell door, running down the first flight of steps, pushing against the wall and sliding to her knees. It was like someone had hit MUTE on her life. Nothing seemed quite real.

“You know what?” Benjamin said in her ear. “That cube is going to be really hard to steal.”

Ash snorted. “You think?”

“I ran the calculations again to get the weight – it should be around 4169 tonnes.”

“Sure won't fit in my handbag,” Ash muttered. “I would've preferred diamonds, or bearer bonds.”

“But there's a bright side,” Benjamin said. “Gold is easier to trade for cash than either of those things. It retains its value well. And because it's a soft metal, you could scrape some out of the cube and put it in the helicopter quite easily. It's worth about $23,000 per kilogram, and the chopper can carry about a tonne. So you could get away with $23 million.”

“And leave ninety-five billion, eight hundred and eighty-four million, four hundred and twelve thousand, eight hundred dollars sitting up there on the roof?” Ash demanded. “Just forget we ever found it?”

“Do you really need it?” Benjamin asked. “What the hell would you spend it on?”

“I—”

“That's why it's up there,” Benjamin continued. “Because Buckland doesn't need it, doesn't want it, and can't get rid of it. It's brought him nothing but trouble, and even if we could take it, it would do the same thing to us!”

Ash thumped her fist against the stairwell wall. “Yeah, but could you live with yourself? Knowing you could've had more money than Bill Gates and J.K. Rowling put together, but you turned it down?”

“With $23 million as the consolation prize?” Benjamin said. “Yeah, I think I could!”

Ash put her head in her hands.

“Don't get greedy,” Benjamin warned. “Remember how thieves get busted.”

They try to take more than they can carry, Ash thought.

“All right,” she said. “I'll find something to carve up the gold with, and then I'll go back and take as much as will fit in the helicopter. Deal?”

“Deal,” Benjamin said.

“Wait. Will they try to shoot me down if I leave in the helicopter? Violating quarantine?”

“I don't think so. They know the anthrax is fake, and it's a fair bet they've sealed Buckland in somewhere, so they know it won't be him in the chopper. From their point of view, the risks of shooting you down outweigh the risks of letting you go.”

Sealed Buckland in. A finger of guilt prodded Ash's heart. She wondered if there was something she could possibly do to save him.

“Don't think about it, Ash,” Benjamin warned, sensing her thoughts. “If it helps, the reason Buckland has $93 billion more than we thought he did is probably because not all his ventures are legal. For one thing, he should have paid half of it in tax. For another, do you remember that ‘string of high-profile robberies of other banks' that Keighley was talking about? I'm now fairly certain that Buckland was behind them. He arranged them to make all the other banks look bad so more customers would choose HBS National, and then kept the loot for himself. Fraud, theft and tax evasion. You don't owe him anything, Ash. Hammond Buckland is a criminal.”

“So are we,” she said.

It was a moot point, of course. She didn't know where Buckland was, or where the people trying to kill him were. There was nothing she could do. Ash sighed. There'd be plenty of time to wrestle with her conscience when she was rich.

She was on the landing of the 25th floor. She figured that floor was as good as any to find something to carve up the gold with. There'd be a break room with a knife in it somewhere. Gold was so soft almost any knife would do. Ash wondered how she would defuse the alarm system.

She pulled open the stairwell door.

There was a woman in a hazard suit on the other side of it, mask off, hood down, holding a Heckler & Koch MP5. She pointed the thick barrel at Ash.

“Don't move,” she said.

Ash dived backwards and tried to pull the door closed. The woman blocked it with her foot and slammed the butt of the gun into Ash's temple. Ash started to fall backwards down the stairs, but the woman grabbed her by the hair and dragged her back to her feet.

“Perhaps you didn't hear me,” the woman said. “Don't move.”

Ash tried to breathe evenly. Her scalp felt like it was being torn from her skull. “Okay,” she said. “Okay.”

The woman smiled. Plastic lips stretched back over hospital-white teeth. She released Ash's hair and gripped her arm instead. “My name is Alex de Totth,” she said. “And I'm going to ask you a few questions.”

Ash stumbled forward as de Totth started walking. She fell to the floor, but de Totth didn't slow down, so she was dragged for a bit before she could scramble back up.

“I'd heard they were recruiting teenagers,” de Totth said. “The theory is that people like me will show mercy to children. The theory is wrong.”

Ash grabbed at de Totth's wrist, trying to pull herself up and dull the pain. De Totth slapped Ash's hands away with the butt of the MP5.

“What you have to remember,” de Totth said, “is that when you were trained for these situations, your teachers had an agenda.”

Trained? Teachers? “What are you—”

De Totth silenced her with a particularly violent tug. “They wanted to keep their secrets. They wanted you not to talk.”

Oh, no. No, no, no.

“Oh god,” Benjamin said. “Ash, run!”

The headphones fell from her ears as she stumbled again.

“So I'm going to give you what your teachers never did,” de Totth continued. “An unbiased assessment of your situation.”

She dropped the MP5 as she reached Keighley's desk. It swung out on a black bungee cord as she reached down and grasped Ash by the throat with one hand and the leg with the other. De Totth lifted her up, dumped her on top of the desk, and caught the gun as it bounced back up.

“You cooperate, you live,” de Totth said. “You don't, you die.” She smiled again. “Simple, right? Here are the specifics.”

Ash tried to roll off the desk, but de Totth smacked her face with a gloved palm and held her down.

“The other government agent,” de Totth said. “I don't know why I was ordered to let him out of the oil vat. I don't know why I'm only permitted to use tranq ammo on him. I also don't know where he is, and that's the information I'm looking for. So I'm going to ask you.”

What the heck is she on about? Ash thought wildly. Oil vat? Tranq ammo? The other agent?

“There are three possible answers you can give me,” de Totth said. “One: you give me his exact location. I'll let you go. I have nothing to lose from that. Two: you refuse to tell me. I'll put the barrel of my gun against the little toe on your right foot and shoot it off. Then I'll ask again, and if I get the same response, I'll choose another toe. Once I run out of toes, I'll start on fingers. Once you have no more fingers, I'll take one of your ears – but only one, because I'm going to keep asking the question and keep shooting body parts, and I need you to be able to hear me. Got it?”

Ash felt sick. Like she'd swallowed cement mix and it was hardening inside her. She wanted to look around for ways out of this, but she couldn't take her eyes off the gun.

“Three: you tell me you don't know where he is, you don't know what I'm talking about – anything like that. If I think you're lying to me, I'll take a toe, finger or ear. But if you say it convincingly enough, and I believe you…”