The Alpha Deception (6 page)

“We’ll talk in my office,” Erich Earnst said as they moved behind the counter to the staircase he had just descended.

Blaine followed the older man up the stairs. At the top they had to turn right and directly before them rose a high security steel-and-glass door. Earnst slid an electronic entry card into a slot and the door snapped open.

Obviously in a hurry now, Earnst stepped through and made sure the door caught behind them.

“This way,” he beckoned, and Blaine moved with him down the hall into a beautiful office, furnished in the same colors as the display area downstairs. The old man closed the door and limped to his desk.

“My granddaughter has told me quite a lot about you, Mr. McCracken,” he said. “Please sit down. Excuse me for being so nervous, but I haven’t slept well in a month now.”

Blaine sat down opposite Earnst in one of a pair of red velvet chairs facing the neat desk.

“A month ago,” McCracken noted. “Was that when it started?”

“Yes. The feeling of being watched is well known to me. You develop a sense for such things when you spend years running for your life.”’

“I can understand that. It’s why I’m here.”

“The others didn’t believe. The police …
ach.
I tell them and they listen, but they think I’m crazy.”

McCracken leaned forward. “Mr. Earnst, you said you were being watched. Does that mean followed as well?”

“No. I don’t go anywhere, so there would be no reason to follow me. I come here and I go home. Nothing else. I’m watched all day long. Nights sometimes, too.”

“And it started one month ago.”

“Yes.”

“Does anything else about that time stand out in your mind?”

Earnst didn’t have to think. “No. The robbery had happened two weeks earlier.”

“T.C. didn’t mention anything about a robbery.”

“I’m not sure I mentioned it to her. There was nothing worth worrying her about. Only a few items were taken.”

“Specifically?”

“Ruby-red crystals sent to me by a supplier in Greece.”

“Rubies?”

“Only in color. I’d never seen anything like them. I thought they might be quite valuable and agreed to take them on consignment.” The old man’s stare turned distant. “Strange crystals they were, jagged and irregular. Unfinished. There was only one customer who showed any interest in them at all. Why is this important?”

“I’m not sure yet. Tell me about this customer.”

Earnst pushed himself up from the chair and limped behind his desk where he extracted an appointment book from the top drawer. Flipping through it, he quickly came upon the day in question.

“Lydia Brandywine made me show her all five of the crystals. Said she was searching for something exotic and totally different. I showed her plenty of gems that afternoon, I remember now, but the crystals were the only items that interested her. She made an appointment to choose a setting but the crystals were stolen a few days later.”

“
Just
the crystals?”

“Because of their potential as one-of-a-kinds, I kept them in a separate place.” The old man shook his head. “My security was antiquated. The door we passed through was added after the robbery. My first, you know, in all these years.”

“And ten days or so after that you started feeling you were being watched.”

“Yes.”

“I’ll need Lydia Brandywine’s address.”

Earnst jotted it down in a large scrawl and handed it over. “Why bother?” he wanted to know.

“Because I don’t believe in coincidence. I want to follow these crystals and see where they lead, so I’ll speak with Mrs. Brandywine. If I get nowhere, I’ll start over somewhere else.”

That set Earnst thinking as he sat back down. “It’s strange.”

“What is?”

“The man who supplied me with the crystals requested their return shortly after the robbery. He sounded quite agitated, even frightened, when I told him they had been stolen.”

“Tell me about him.”

“He’s a Greek named Kapo Stadipopolis. He’s a prime dealer in artifacts and gems sometimes obtained through shady means. All merchants depend on the black market from time to time, including me.”

“That’s not the issue here, Mr. Earnst. Your safety is.”

“Stadipopolis has a shop in Athens, on Monastiraki Square. He’s good at what he does, seldom makes a mistake. But he claimed he shipped me the crystals by accident. Said he needed them back desperately.”

“In your mind, what were they worth?”

“Whatever the market would bear for one-of-a-kind items. Believe me when I tell you, Mr. McCracken, that I had never seen anything quite like them before. A woman like Lydia Brandywine, well, there’s no telling how high she might have gone for something no one else had.”

“She was no stranger to you then.”

“Hardly. All the merchants know her. She is always in search of the unusual.”

“So the crystals were worth stealing.”

“Even more so because they were untraceable. Once remade and refined into stones for setting, they wouldn’t even resemble what I obtained from Greece.” Earnst looked impatient. “I still don’t see what this has to do with my being watched.”

“T.C. also said you felt your life was in danger.”

“An old man’s exaggeration.”

“Really?”

“I’m … not sure.” He hesitated, groping for the words to express what he felt. “I can feel them out there waiting; for what, I don’t know. A few times I walk to work, and I see faces I shouldn’t recognize but do. My apartment building has a new doorman—all of a sudden. The guard service sends a new man to watch the—”

The intercom on Earnst’s desk buzzed. “Yes?” the old man said into it.

“Mr. Obermeyer’s man is here with the delivery, sir,” a clerk’s voice came back.

“Hmmmmm, early. Send him up.” Then, to McCracken as he started for the door, “Forgive the interruption.”

But Blaine reached out and restrained him by the arm, his mind working in another direction. “The fact that he was early bothered you… .”

“Yes, but—”

“It’s not the routine. How early, damnit, how early?”

“An hour, perhaps two.”

“And who would check his papers?”

“The guard at the main entrance, of course.”

“The one your security service replaced,” McCracken said softly, recalling the man’s difficulty in finding the button beneath his desk.

Earnst nodded slowly, fear filling his eyes as he realized the same thing McCracken already had.

“What do we do? What do we do? They’ve come! Oh God, they’ve finally come!”

“They’ve done us a favor, Mr. Earnst, because they don’t know I’m here, and even if they did they couldn’t know who I am. What’s the procedure?”

“A clerk will escort the delivery man to the security door.”

“And then?”

“I open it and let them in.”

“Follow the procedure.”

“But—”

“Trust me, Mr. Earnst. I’ll be right behind you all the way. But we’ve got to move now. Quickly!”

McCracken crouched low as soon as he was back in the corridor, and moved quickly to the security door so he couldn’t be seen through the window two-thirds of the way up. When the old man was five yards away from the door, a face appeared against the glass.

“My clerk,” Earnst said to McCracken who was now poised low against the wall adjacent to the door, so that when it opened it would obscure him.

Blaine motioned him to open the door, whispering, “Move toward me quick as you can when it gives.”

Earnst punched a coded sequence into a keypad. The door snapped open and began to move inward.

The rest unfolded too fast for the old man’s eyes to follow, but McCracken grasped it all. The clerk’s frame shoved against the door and through it into the hallway with a large man behind him. There was a
fssssssst
and the clerk went down. Blaine noted the strange-looking pistol in the man’s hand and sprang into action.

The man was going for Earnst, bringing the pistol up again, never seeing McCracken until he was upon him. Blaine used the man’s weapon against him, turned it back into his gut and jammed the trigger. A second
fsssssssst
split the air and the man stiffened immediately.

“My God,” muttered a trembling Earnst.

“Just tranquilizers,” McCracken explained, jamming the strange pistol into his pocket and sealing the door again. “Whoever it is must have wanted you alive.” He grabbed the old man and led him back down the corridor. “But now we’ve changed the rules on them, which might change their plans. They still want you and there’ll be more of them, the guard downstairs for instance. Is there another way out of the building from this level?”

Earnst nodded fearfully. “My private elevator connects with a common exit for mine and four other stores.”

“Fine. Your office first and then we’ll make use of it.”

They reached Earnst’s office. Blaine eased the old man inside and steered him toward a display case set against the wall. It was filled with small, unfinished diamonds.

“Grab as many of those as you can.”

“What?”

“T.C. sent me here to keep you safe and alive and that’s what I plan on doing.”

The old man moved to the case and drained a measure of its contents into a small black jewelry box. “But the diamonds, why?”

“Insurance,” Blaine replied and led the way back into the corridor, eyes peeled toward the security door. “They want you alive. We can make that work for us.”

The elevator was located at the opposite end of the hallway from the door. Earnst could barely fit his security key in the special slot to activate it. McCracken helped him and eased the old man in first.

Blaine drew his gun and had moved ahead to shield Earnst by the time the doors slid open again. The lobby before them was empty. McCracken wasted no time, grasping the old man gently once more.

“Let’s go.”

Blaine led him forward toward a set of glass doors which opened out onto 47th. He held the gun low by his hip, partially hidden by his sports jacket. Earnst gripped the jewelry box with both hands to his chest as he moved behind Blaine out the door and into the street.

“Stay by my side,” McCracken whispered and swung right, walking east.

West 47th was a snarl of pedestrians and vehicles. With the city clogged by the lunchtime rush, packs of humanity squeezed past each other, spilling into the street to merge with the gridlocked traffic. Horns blared. Tires went through a series of crazed stops and starts.

Blaine led Earnst on, moving with
the
flow of the crowd. A chill crept up his spine, warning him to beware of adversaries closing in even now, searching them out—but from where?

Up ahead the reason for the traffic tie-up became clear. A moving truck had wedged itself into an impossible position across the street. The slightest acceleration would crumple a car on one side of it or the other. Several individuals were helping the driver with his delicate maneuvers. Blaine slowed.

“What’s wrong?” Earnst wondered.

“That truck up there, I don’t like it.”

“How can you tell? How can you
know
?”

Blaine’s response was to grasp the old man’s arm at the elbow to urge him to go faster. The gnawing feeling of an attack soon to come was tight in his stomach. Yet from where would it come? Who might the assailants be, if there were any here at all? Everywhere he turned another shoulder brushed his own. Too many to be sure of anything. But as long as they wanted Earnst alive, he—

Through the cool spring air, Blaine caught a sound. It was faint but terrifyingly distinct: the clang of a machine pistol bolt being yanked back followed by a sudden
click.

Alive, damnit, you’re supposed to want him alive!

From tranquilizers to real bullets. Something had changed. The drawing-back of the bolts meant the gunmen had spotted them and were closing even now.

Wait! The crowd! There was a way he could make use of it!

They were halfway to Fifth Avenue now. Just ahead a temporary scaffolding was in place for construction on the upper floors of a building.

“Open your box of diamonds,” McCracken whispered to Earnst.

“What?”

“Just do as I say. And when I tell you, fling the contents up in the air.”

The old man gawked in disbelief. “Are you crazy? Millions of dollars, you’re talking about. Millions!”

“Still not worth your life. There’s no time. They’ve got us. This is our only chance. When the excitement starts, mix with the crowd and disappear. You’ve done it before. You can do it again.”

“The killers will still chase
you.
”

“That’s the idea.”

Somewhere behind him, Blaine felt footsteps pushing forward. Their pursuers were about to strike.

“Now!” McCracken ordered.

The old man lowered his eyes and hesitated. McCracken was about to knock the diamonds upward himself when Earnst flung the contents of the jewelry box back over his shoulder.

The diamonds flew into the air, shimmering in the noon sun. The entire street seemed to come to a halt; the gems cascaded down, as if from heaven. Then the chaos set in.

Men and women clawed past each other. Some lunged into the street or toward the sidewalk in pursuit of the slightest glimmer. Others dove around or through bodies for stones far smaller than a pinky fingernail. All was bedlam, screams, shouts of anger, threats. Bodies piled atop each other. Stronger men peeled them aside to clear a path for their arms.

Blaine helped Earnst move to the edge of the chaos and then took off against the flow, smacking into people rushing back toward the frenzy. He gazed to his rear and the sight stunned him.

Four men in the black garments, beards, wavy side curls, and homburgs of Hasidim had yanked machine pistols from beneath their overcoats. The Hasidim were fixtures on this street, but not normally with guns in their hands. Their first bursts split the air in Blaine’s direction. Bodies collapsed with bloody punctures dotting their flesh. The screams intensified.

Blaine gnashed his teeth at the carnage. His strategy had exposed the gunmen all right, but now several people were dead as a result of it. He continued to run, blending with the crowd rushing from the gunfire and colliding with pedestrians who had stopped to gaze back toward the excitement. He sped under the scaffolding and past another delicatessen, heading for the street comer.