Point Blanc

GOING DOWN
BLUE SHADOW
HOOKED
SEARCH AND
REPORT
THE SHOOTING
PARTY
THE TUNNEL
SPECIAL
EDITION
ROOM 13
"MY
NAME IS GRIEF"
THINGS THAT
GO CLICK IN THE NIGHT
SEEING
DOUBLE
DELAYING
TACTICS
HOW TO RULE
THE WORLD
BLACK RUN
AFTER THE
FUNERAL
NIGHT RAID
DEAD RINGER

MICHAEL J. ROSCOE was a careful man.

The car that drove him to work at quarter past seven
each morning was a custom-made Mercedes with reinforced steel plates and
bulletproof windows. His driver, a retired FBI agent, carried a Beretta
subcompact automatic pistol and knew how to use it. There were just five steps
from the point where the car stopped to the entrance of
Roscoe
Tower
on
New York
's

The elevator had white marble walls, a blue carpet, a
silver handrail, and no buttons. Roscoe pressed his hand against a small glass
panel. A sensor read his fingerprints, verified them, and activated the
elevator. The doors slid shut and the elevator rose to the sixtieth floor
without stopping. Nobody else ever used it. Nor did it ever stop at any of the
other floors in the building. At the same time it was traveling up, the
receptionist in the lobby was on the telephone, letting his staff know that
Mr. Roscoe was on his way.

Everyone who worked in Roscoe's private office
had been handpicked and thoroughly vetted. It was impossible to see him without
an appointment. Getting an appointment could take three months.

When you're rich, you have to be careful. There
are cranks, kidnappers, terrorists--the desperate and the dispossessed.
Michael J. Roscoe was the chairman of Roscoe Electronics and the ninth or tenth
richest man in the world--and he was very careful indeed. Ever since his
face had appeared on the front cover of Time magazine ("The Electronics
King"), he knew that he had become a visible target. When in public he
walked quickly, with his head bent. His glasses had been chosen to hide as much
as possible of his round, handsome face. His suits were expensive but
anonymous. If he went to the theater or to dinner, he always arrived at the
last minute, preferring not to hang around. There were dozens of different
security systems in his life, and although they had once annoyed him, he had
allowed them to become routine.

But ask any spy or security agent. Routine is the one
thing that can get you killed. It tells the enemy where you're going and
when you're going to be there. Routine was going to kill Michael J.
Roscoe, and this was the day death had chosen to come calling.

Of course, Roscoe had no idea of this as he stepped
out of the elevator that opened directly into his private office, a huge room
occupying the corner of the building with floor-to-ceiling windows giving views
in two directions: Fifth Avenue to the east, Central Park just a few blocks
south. The two remaining walls contained a door, a low book shelf, and a single
oil painting--a vase of flowers by Vincent van Gogh.

The black glass surface of his desk was equally
uncluttered: a computer, a leather notebook, a telephone, and a framed
photograph of a fourteen-year-old boy. As he took off his jacket and sat down,
Roscoe found himself looking at the picture of the boy. Blond hair, blue eyes,
and freckles. Paul Roscoe looked remarkably like his father had thirty years
ago. Michael Roscoe was now fifty-two and beginning to show his age despite his
year-round tan. His son was almost as tall as he was. The picture had been
taken the summer before, on Long Island. They had spent the day sailing. Then
they'd had a barbecue on the beach. It had been one of the few happy days
they'd ever spent together.

The door opened and his secretary came in. Helen
Bosworth was English. She had left her home and, indeed, her husband to come
and work in New York, and still loved every minute of it. She had been working
in this office for eleven years, and in all that time she had never forgotten a
detail or made a mistake.

"Good morning, Mr. Roscoe," she said.

"Good morning, Helen."

She put a folder on his desk. "The latest
figures from Singapore. Costings on the R- 15 Organizer. You have lunch with
Senator Andrews at half past twelve. I've booked The Ivy."

"Did you remember to call London?" Roscoe
asked.

Helen Bosworth blinked. She never forgot anything, so
why had he asked? "I've spoke to Alan Blunt's office
yesterday afternoon," she said. Afternoon in New York would have been
evening in London. "Mr. Blunt was not available, but I've
arranged a person-to-person call with you this afternoon. We can have it
patched through to your car."

"Thank you, Helen."

"Shall I have your coffee sent in to you?"

"No, thank you, Helen. I won't have coffee
today."

Helen Bosworth left the room, seriously alarmed. No
coffee? What next? Mr. Roscoe had begun his day with a double espresso for
as long as she had known him. Could it be that he was ill? He certainly
hadn't been himself recently--not since Paul had returned home from
that school in the South of France. And this phone call to Alan Blunt in
London! Nobody had ever told her who he was, but she had seen his name once in
a file. He had something to do with military intelligence. MI6. What was
Mr. Roscoe doing, talking to a spy?

Helen Bosworth returned to her office and soothed her
nerves, not with coffee--she couldn't stand the stuff--but with
a refreshing cup of English Breakfast tea. Something very strange was going on,
and she didn't like it. She didn't like it at all.

Meanwhile, sixty floors below, a man had walked into
the lobby area wearing gray overalls with an ID badge attached to his chest.
The badge identified him as Sam Green, maintenance engineer with X-Press
Elevators Inc. He was carrying a briefcase in one hand and a large silver
toolbox in the other. He set them both down in front of the reception desk.

Sam Green was not his real name. His hair--black
and a little greasy--was fake, as were his glasses, mustache, and uneven
teeth. He looked fifty years old, but he was actually closer to thirty. Nobody
knew the man's real name, but in the business that he was in, a name was
the last thing he could afford. He was known merely as "The
Gentleman," and he was one of the highest-paid and most successful
contract killers in the world. He had been given his nickname because he always
sent flowers to the families of his victims.

The lobby guard glanced at him.

"I'm here for the elevator," he
said. He spoke with a Bronx accent even though he had never spent more than a
week there in his life.

"What about it?" the guard asked.
"You people were here last week."

"Yeah. Sure. We found a defective cable on
elevator twelve. It had to be replaced, but we didn't have the parts. So
they sent me back." The Gentleman fished in his pocket and pulled out a
crumpled sheet of paper. "You want to call the head office? I've
got my orders here."

If the guard had called X-Press Elevators Inc., he
would have discovered that they did indeed employ a Sam Green--although he
hadn't shown up for work in two days. This was because the real Sam Green
was at the bottom of the Hudson River with a knife in his back and a
twenty-pound block of concrete attached to his foot. But the guard didn't
make the call. The Gentleman had guessed he wouldn't bother. After all,
the elevators were always breaking down. There were engineers in and out all
the time. What difference would one more make?

The guard jerked a thumb. "Go ahead," he
said.

The Gentleman put away the letter, picked up his
cases, and went over to the elevators. There were a dozen servicing the
skyscraper, plus a thirteenth for Michael J. Roscoe. Elevator number twelve was
at the end. As he went in, a delivery boy with a parcel tried to follow.
"Sorry," The Gentleman said. "Closed for maintenance."
The doors slid shut. He was on his own. He pressed the button for the
sixty-first floor.

He had been given this job only a week before.
He'd had to work fast, killing the real maintenance engineer, taking his
identity, learning the layout of Roscoe Tower, and getting his hands on the
sophisticated piece of equipment he had known he would need. His employers
wanted the multimillionaire eliminated as quickly as possible. More
importantly, it had to look like an accident. For this, The Gentleman had demanded--and
been paid--one hundred thousand dollars. The money was to be paid into a
bank account in Switzerland; half now, half on completion.

The elevator door opened again. The sixty-first floor
was used primarily for maintenance. This was where the water tanks were housed,
as well as the computers that controlled the heat, air-conditioning, security
cameras, and elevators throughout the building. The Gentleman turned off the
elevator, using the manual override key that had once belonged to Sam Green,
then went over to the computers. He knew exactly where they were. In fact, he
could have found them wearing a blindfold. He opened his briefcase. There were
two sections to the case. The lower part was a laptop computer. The upper lid
was fitted with a number of drills and other tools, each of them strapped into
place.

It took him fifteen minutes to cut his way into the
Roscoe Tower mainframe and connect his own laptop to the circuitry inside.
Hacking his way past the Roscoe security systems took a little longer, but at
last it was done. He tapped a command into his keyboard. On the floor below,
Michael J. Roscoe's private elevator did something it had never done
before. It rose one extra floor--to level sixty-one. The door, however,
remained closed. The Gentleman did not need to get in.

Instead, he picked up the briefcase and the silver
toolbox and carried them back into the same elevator he had taken from the
lobby. He turned the override key and pressed the button for the fifty-ninth
floor. Once again, he deactivated the elevator. Then he reached up and pushed.
The top of the elevator was a trapdoor that opened outward. He pushed the
briefcase and the silver box ahead of him, then pulled himself up and climbed
onto the roof of the elevator. He was now standing inside the main shaft of
Roscoe Tower. He was surrounded on four sides by girders and pipes blackened
with oil and dirt. Thick steel cables hung down, some of them humming as they
carried their loads. Looking down, he could see a seemingly endless square
tunnel illuminated only by the chinks of light from the doors that slid open
and shut again as the other elevators arrived at various floors. Somehow the
breeze had made its way in from the street, spinning dust that stung his eyes.
Next to him was a set of elevator doors that, had he opened them, would have
led him straight into Roscoe's office. Above these, over his head and a
few yards to the right, was the underbelly of Roscoe's private elevator.

The toolbox was next to him, on the roof of the
elevator. Carefully, he opened it. The sides of the case were lined with thick
sponge. Inside, in the specialty molded space, was what looked like a
complicated film projector, silver and concave with a thick glass lens. He took
it out, then glanced at his watch. Eight thirty-five A.M. It would take him an
hour to connect the device to the bottom of Roscoe's elevator, and a
little more to ensure that it was working. He had plenty of time.