Spy Who Jumped Off the Screen : A Novel (9781101565766) (40 page)

Chapter Forty-nine

Ty was not sure
how much longer he could hold on as the rope burned the skin at the bases of his fingers and on his palms, tearing the flesh as it filed toward his metacarpal bones. His shoulder, too, felt the strain, so with a sudden surge he released his grip and regained one an inch or so higher, just above one of the hasty bowlines he had tied. When he had succeeded in this maneuver and caught his breath, he looked at Isabella, who was clinging desperately to her rope. “If nothing else,” he assured her, “this gives new meaning to the phrase ‘hanging by a thread.'”

“Shut up, Ty,” she said. “I know you auditioned for the part, but you are
not
James Bond.”

“They wanted someone grittier.”

“How little they knew!”

“And you're wrong. I didn't audition. I don't anymore.”

“A fine point,” Isabella told him.

“Agreed,” he replied. “It might help if you changed hands.”

“Thanks for the advice. I'm sure it would also end the pain if I fell.”

“Not now, stop it,” Ty said. “Those kinds of thoughts are verboten.”

“Are they?” Isabella asked. “Verboten to whom?”

“People who are literally holding on for dear life.”

“Only literally?” Isabella replied. “Not metaphorically?”

Ty shook his head. “They're exempt.”

At that moment the BlackBerry in his pocket rang.

“Aren't you going to take that?” she asked. “It might be your president.”

“He'll call back,” Ty said. “They always do.”

Above them smoke billowed from the open emplacement. Flames, too, were more visible, approaching the wall with accelerating speed. They both understood that it was only a matter of time before those flames would burn through the ropes upon which their lives depended.

“And why shouldn't he?” Isabella bantered. “I mean, it's never wise to be seen to be
too
available.”

Ty hesitated. Soon enough he made out the loudening grind of an industrial motor. Isabella heard it as well but dared not look down. When Ty did, he saw a giraffelike piece of equipment with an unfamiliar Japanese name painted on its torso lumbering across the
cementerio
and up the rough incline.

“What is it?” Isabella asked.

“The cavalry,” Ty told her.

“In a chopper?”

He shook his head. “They couldn't get in close enough in a chopper to do anything but get a better view of our demise. Hold on, it's almost over.”

“
What
is almost over? This nightmare or our lives?”

“This nightmare, with any luck,” Ty said. “Oliver's a good director. He's going to save us in the nick of time.”

“With what?” Isabella asked. “A hook and ladder?”

“Hardly,” Ty said.

“Some sort of cherry-picker?”

“You've been spoiled. Here it comes right now. He's going to let it down between us. Nice and easy, that's the way. Sweet, Ollie!”

“It is a hook,” Isabella said.

“First class was booked. Grab onto it tightly with both hands, one fist above the other, just as if you were on a merry-go-round. Seat yourself on the hook as though it were a horse, and definitely
not
sidesaddle. I'll come behind you.”

Without replying, Isabella moved as Ty had instructed, her posture stiff as they were lowered. His hands next to hers on the cool iron hook, his chest against her back, his shoulders wrapping hers, he could feel her rapid heartbeat at last begin to slow as fear subsided.

Once they were safe beside the old
cementerio,
Oliver gave them each a towel and water. There was no time for a change of clothes or rest.

“The Royal Navy just happened to have a piece of equipment like that on hand?” Ty asked incredulously. “That was convenient.”

Oliver smiled. “It doesn't exactly belong to the Royal Navy,” he admitted.

“Then whose is it?”

“I don't know.”

“You stole it?”

“I think ‘borrowed' is a much nicer word. I do intend to give it back. Anyway, it was the nearest salvation available.”

“You can count on us as character witnesses, Ollie,” Isabella promised. She leaned toward him and kissed him on the cheek, then put both hands on Ty's shoulders and kissed his lips.

“Thanks. I'm sure you'll be very convincing,” Oliver told her.

“We will be,” Isabella said. “I'm a damsel in distress, and Ty's an action hero, after all.”

“What have we missed?” Ty asked.

“You mean, apart from a call from the President of the United States?”

“So it really was him,” Ty said, reaching for his BlackBerry. “Good for Daphne. I should return his call.”

Oliver raised his hand in caution. “I'd give it another minute or two.”

“Why?” Ty protested. “I'm all right.”

“I know you are,” Oliver said, “but Bingo should be calling in any second now, and I think you might want to know what he's come up with—”

“Or hasn't.”

“Or hasn't—before you go all the way to the top. A bloke can only ascend Everest so many times.”

Ty smiled. “That's good advice,” he said. “I'll take it. Where's Philip, incidentally?”

“Still keeping an eagle eye on whatever he's keeping an eagle eye on, still under surveillance.”

“Which gives him a nice alibi,” Ty concluded. “No doubt he'll say that whoever killed Ian torched his office. He'll probably claim to feel more threatened than anyone. There's a pretty good chance he'll be believed.”

Oliver's BlackBerry rang. “Bingo,” he said, raising his hand in mini triumph, “I'm going to put you on speaker, is that okay?”

“Where are you?” Bingo asked.

“With Ty and Isabella,” Oliver explained.

“But
where
are you with Ty and Isabella?” Bingo pressed. “There seems to be a lot of noise in the background.”

“Sorry about that,” Oliver said. “We decided to go for a picnic. We can hear you fine. Can you hear us?”

“Well enough, if there's no other choice,” Bingo admitted petulantly.

“That's good, because I want them to hear what you have to say. Start where we left off.”

“Well, there's good news and bad news,” Bingo began.

“Let's have the bad news first,” Ty said.

“No,” Bingo told him, “because there's so much more of it. The good news boils down to this: That laptop does not appear to have been involved in any wire transfers of the kind we've been looking at. And it's not otherwise connected in any way to anything on our radar. It is registered to a company with an alphabet name, doubtless one of Santal's, rather than to any individual. Who may have had use of it, I can't possibly say. In fact, what we've come up with, in a short time but with a shitload of our resources deployed, suggests that it was used primarily, if not entirely, for personal expenses and records and the like. These weren't always small, but none was sufficiently large to set anyone's jaw dropping.”

“Define ‘large,'” Oliver said.

Bingo laughed. “That's difficult to say when we're talking about a man like Santal. I don't know, perhaps one million euros?”

“If there were no transfers,” Ty inquired, “were there any charges that were otherwise worth noting?”

“Give me an example,” Bingo said.

“Whores,” Ty said.

Isabella's expression maddened.

“None,” Bingo replied, “excepting a transfer to a numbered account in Liechtenstein two days ago.”

“Don't jerk me around, Bingo—those firewalls are your field of dreams, and you know it. You already have a name to go with the account. The time's come to pull it out of the hat.”

“The bank is called Höchsmann. Where places like it are concerned, I possess no magical powers.”

“And why is that?” asked Ty.

Bingo chuckled. “Very little is known about it other than that it exists. It's one of a very high-end and discreet breed we are beginning to encounter more and more often, especially in upmarket financial institutions, which conduct and record their business entirely offline. They've fled the perils of the twenty-first century by retreating to the early twentieth, in some cases the nineteenth.”

“How much are we talking about?” Oliver inquired.

“One million, eight hundred sixty-seven thousand, three hundred fifty-seven euros,” Bingo replied.

Ty mulled over the number in his mind. “So we have no idea who received the money or what it was being paid for. For all we know, in fact, Santal could have been sending it to himself or to Frost, or vice versa
.
”

“All things are possible. It is not an account that has previously shown up in our surveillance of Philip Frost, however. There
was
one notation next to it in the ledger.”

“Keep us in suspense,” Ty said. “We've got all the time in the world.”

“PDP,” Bingo said. “That was the notation.”

“Oh, splendid,” Ty said. “That's really helpful.”

“It sounds like a designer drug,” Oliver said.

“Or, more likely, they're someone's initials.”

“That's probably right,” Isabella said, “
or
the
PD
could stand for
‘puerto deportivo.'
”

Both men studied her. “What makes you say that?”

“Only that it was the abbreviation Ian always used in his itineraries. A
puerto deportivo
is a Spanish port.”

“Or a marina,” Ty added, “of which there must be hundreds in Spain alone, not to mention in former Spanish colonies.”

“I'd bet on Spain,” Oliver suggested.

“So would I, but I wonder what the final
P
stands for. There's probably only one way to find out for sure.”

“And that would be?”

“Hold on. Let's hear the rest of what Bingo has to say.”

“There's not much,” Bingo replied. “That particular trail ends there. The other transfers we've been following are still proceeding, including the skimming operation in Vienna. That one, in fact, seems particularly efficient. Moneys park there for a few hours and then, abracadabra, they disappear offline, not necessarily to another bank. Wherever they go, the effect is the same as at Höchsmann. These firms are a hacker's worst nightmare. I mean, in today's world if something's not virtual, it's not real.”

“You said two days ago,” Ty repeated, then looked at Oliver. “You have Luke Claussen's number on your phone, don't you?”

“I should,” Oliver said. “Yeah, here it is.”

“Call him,” Ty said. “Just in case, Bingo, can you or one of your team also check every port authority between Naples and here to see if the
Wayfarer
may have made an unscheduled stop two days ago?”

“Do you want to give me odds?” Oliver asked.

“I can't count that high,” said Ty.

“I've got Luke Claussen on the phone,” Oliver said a few seconds later.

“Good. Ask him.”

Oliver nodded. Into his phone he said, “Is it possible that the
Wayfarer
made an unscheduled stop in the past week?”

“
Un
scheduled?” Luke Claussen repeated. “The
Wayfarer
is the one ship whose itinerary I do know pretty well by heart, but as for an unscheduled stop, honestly, I don't know the answer offhand. I can certainly find it out. Do you want to hold on, or should I call you back?”

“Happy to hold on,” Oliver told him.

While they waited for confirmation from Luke or Bingo, Ty said, “We know the warheads went off, then back on again in Naples. We also know that the financial arrangements for their sale are going ahead. Philip appears to be awaiting them on Gib, but why would he be so obvious about it? What if they
aren't
here and that
isn't
Philip your guys have been watching? If there does turn out to have been an unscheduled stop, the warheads will almost surely have gone ashore there, been placed on other transport, then been brought to somewhere not too far away from here until the transfer is ready to be made.”

“The Med's a big place,” Isabella said. “What makes you so sure they are near here?”

“When was the last time anyone had a good, unmistakable look at Philip?” Ty asked. “Not in his car but up close.”

Oliver considered the question. “When he went into Santal's office this morning, I suppose.”

“That would have been shortly after he left us on
Surpass,
” Ty said. “The man we had breakfast with was definitely Philip. So was the man who entered his office. But the man who exited it, then got into his car and has since been touring the harbor staring hither and yon, has to be a ringer.”

“We could run facial recognition,” Oliver suggested.

“Too late for that,” Ty said. “Better to have the local authorities pick him up on some pretext.”

“You still haven't answered my question,” Isabella said.

“Why are the warheads nearby? Because Philip's nearby,” Ty replied, “and he wouldn't risk crossing any border with the gems he stole from
Surpass.”

“There you go with another leap. How do you know he took them? If you remember, we escaped with our lives on the submarine. We didn't go back to Vanilla, much less to the vault.”

Ty smiled. “Do you really believe he would have left them behind?”

“Well, it's certainly possible,” Isabella said. “Don't forget, he hadn't seen those pictures of us yet.”

“But Philip harbored suspicions—about me, at any rate. If he hadn't, he wouldn't have sent in those unconvincing goons. And because he harbored them, he would have taken precautions. You can't tell me he's not a man who believes, first and foremost, in precautions.”