The Double Eagle (34 page)
Authors: James Twining
11:34
A.M.
T
he banging from the cell resonated down the corridor. At first the guard, the shorter, squatter one of the two men that had accompanied Van Simson, ignored it, burying his nose deeper into the newspaper. But as the incessant bone-jarring crashing of metal upon metal grew louder and louder, he threw increasingly angry glances toward the cell.
Finally, a renewed barrage caught him unawares and made him spill his coffee down his front, the scalding liquid soaking into his black combat trousers. He swore, swung his feet down off his narrow desk, threw the paper down on his seat, and stomped toward the cell.
The crashing abruptly stopped and the guard smiled, loosening his new IMI Barak combat handgun from his underarm holster. He had been around long enough to know when people were trying to be cute. But that was fine. If they wanted to play games, he’d show them a good time. He knew how to party.
He turned a key in the lock and as it clicked open he kicked the cell door open with the heel of his foot. The heavy steel door flew back on its hinges and slammed into the wall with a shuddering crash. That would take care of anyone hiding behind the door. He wasn’t falling for that old trick.
The lightbulb had been unscrewed and he flicked on the small under-barrel flashlight on his Barak. Through the open doorway, the beam picked out the cage that only minutes before he had helped fix onto the prisoner’s head. It had been placed in the middle of the room. He ran the flashlight around the rest of the cell. It was eerily quiet after the incessant banging. And it was also empty.
Or was it?
In the far corner, barely visible even in the bright beam of his flashlight, he saw that the doors of the iron maiden were ajar. Not much, but perhaps enough to allow someone to hide very carefully inside without being impaled. Smiling at his perceptiveness, he crept toward the large metallic object, his finger on the trigger.
“Come out!” he shouted from only a few feet away. But the iron maiden stayed silent.
“Come out! I know you’re in there.”
Nothing.
He cursed and leaned forward, placing his left hand on one door and the barrel of his gun on the other, before throwing them open in a quick movement
It was empty.
Crouching in the corner, Tom pushed back as hard as he could, driving his legs against the stone wall. The iron maiden teetered onto its front edge and then crashed to the floor, the spikes on its open doors impaling the guard underneath it and snapping his back like a twig.
12:02
P.M.
T
om snatched up the guard’s gun and swallowed hard at the sight of his bloody and twisted face. It wasn’t the first time that he’d had to kill someone, but that never made it any easier.
He slipped out of the room and along the vaulted corridor, past dark rooms piled high with the debris of Van Simson’s life. Crates of wine, neatly catalogued archive boxes full of paper and files, sporting equipment arranged in specially constructed steel racks.
The gun’s rubberized grip felt like raw meat in Tom’s sweaty hands, wet and slippery. He paused at the foot of a narrow stone staircase to catch his breath and wipe his palms against his trousers. Tom didn’t really have a plan and he knew that was dangerous. He also knew that he was angry and upset and that that could make him careless. But despite all that, he knew that he owed it to Harry and Jennifer to get to Van Simpson. He owed it to himself. At that moment, that single desire informed his every movement, his every decision.
Tom edged open the door at the top of the stairs to reveal a limestone-floored corridor. The sound of approaching footsteps, metal-tipped heels rhythmically clipping the stone floor, forced him to pull it shut, leaving only a tiny sliver of light that cut into the darkness and cast a thin white line down the middle of Tom’s face.
The footsteps grew louder and then carried on past. Through the crack Tom recognized Rolfe, the albino who had frisked him and Jennifer at the entrance gate on their previous visit. Jennifer. Gone. He bit his lip, shook her image from his mind again. He couldn’t think about that now.
He eased the door open and crept up behind Rolfe, who had paused in front of the door at the end of the corridor to locate something in his pocket. He brought the butt of his gun crashing down on the base of his neck and the man fell grunting to the floor. It took another blow, though, Tom’s gun slapping into his temple, before he rolled over onto his side, unconscious.
He dragged Rolfe’s body back to the staircase and pushed him down the first few steps. Then, stepping back into the corridor and shutting the door behind him, he walked along it until he emerged into the familiar surroundings of the huge ground-floor entrance hall. Ahead of him, he knew, was the elevator; the one sure way up to Van Simson’s office and down to the vault.
He tried to force the elevator doors open, but he could only push them a few inches apart before they sprang shut with a violent metallic crash. Looking around him, Tom noticed a thin bronze sculpture nestling in the shadows next to the staircase. He grabbed it, a determined look on his face. Jamming the sculpture between the two elevator doors, he pried them apart as it slipped into the gap. Gradually, the doors slid further and further open, until—when they were about a foot apart—they gave up their struggle and retracted noiselessly into the wall.
Tom placed the bronze on the floor, stepped forward, and looked up and then down the elevator shaft. The top of the cabin reflected dully in the gloom beneath him. A plan formed in his mind—he would surprise Van Simson when he returned to the elevator by leaping on him through the access hatch.
Reaching into the darkness, Tom grabbed the steel cable that ran down from the elevator motor somewhere in the roof to the top of the elevator. Locking the greasy cable between his legs and arms, he slid down it, landing gently on the elevator roof.
He crouched and listened. A strange noise seemed to be emanating from underneath him, a rhythmical mechanical clunking, as if a machine had been programmed into some monotonous, repetitive cycle. Tom cautiously lifted the edge of the hatch. There was blood all over the elevator wall.
Opening the hatch fully, Tom recognized the wiry guard who had just accompanied Van Simson to the cell, slumped in the corner, a single gunshot wound to his head. The elevator doors were opening and shutting again and again on his outstretched legs.
Tom swung down into the elevator and stepped over the body. He peeked into the brightly lit concrete corridor that led down to the vault. It was empty. But the steel gate had been raised and beyond it he could see that the vault door was wide open. Tom crept along the corridor, keeping to the wall, gripping the Barak with both hands. The video cameras gazed blindly at him, their lenses smashed.
The vault was as he remembered it, a black rubberized floor meandering, maze-like, between twenty or so display cases, a shallow trench flanking the base of each wall. Over the top of the display cases he could see Van Simson hunched over the desk that dominated the small raised platform at the rear of the room. Tom dropped to his knees and picked his way through the cases, careful to always keep at least one between himself and the platform so that he could not be seen.
Eventually, only one case separated him from Van Simson. It was now or never. Taking a deep breath and checking that the safety was off, Tom spun out from the side of the case and aimed the gun at Van Simson’s head.
“Don’t move, Darius.”
Van Simson barely reacted, slowly raising his eyes to Tom’s.
“I hope you didn’t kill Rolfe.” He seemed distracted, sad, even. “He’s a good boy. Very capable.”
“Where are the coins?” Tom demanded, stepping up onto the platform, Van Simson still firmly within his sights.
“The coins? Here. Take them.” Van Simson slapped the same slim metallic case he’d snatched in Istanbul down onto the table. A muffled echo. “You think you’ve won? You’ve won nothing. We’ve all lost.”
“No, you’ve lost.” Tom reached forward to pick the case up. “And as you said before, I’m not sure you’ve left me many options.” He raised his gun as his fingers closed around the case, Jennifer’s image flooding his mind now. He owed her what he was about to do.
But a familiar voice rang out before he could pull the trigger.
“Not so fast, Thomas.”
12:26
P.M.
T
he voice tore into Tom like a blunt blade. He swiveled around. A figure stepped out of the shadows and advanced into the light, his Glock 19, his gloved hand, then his outstretched arm slowly coming into view.
“Harry?” Tom croaked as the light finally fell on the man’s face.
“Put the gun down would you, there’s a good chap,” said Renwick. It was hard to believe this was the same, slightly dishevelled man that Tom had hugged good-bye just a few days ago. He looked immaculate in a dark blue suit, crisp white shirt, and bright blue Hermès tie. His hair was neatly cropped, his face smooth and pink, his eyes burning with a strange intensity that Tom had not seen before. Only the squat gold signet ring remained of the man Tom had known for years.
Tom lowered his gun and, trancelike, gazed at it as if he couldn’t work out how it had come to be in his hand in the first place. He went to put it on the table, but Renwick’s voice snapped out.
“Don’t be an idiot, Thomas! On the floor. Kick it toward me.” There was no hint of warmth or kindness in Renwick’s voice. Instead it drilled into Tom, familiar and yet foreign at the same time.
Tom bent down, placed the gun on the floor, and kicked it over to him. Renwick adjusted his grip on his own gun and kept it firmly pointed at Tom as he stooped to pick it up and then slipped it into his pocket.
“Harry? I don’t understand. How? Why?”
Renwick laughed.
“There’s the American in you. Always so keen to understand
why.
To find a reason. To blame some childhood trauma or unloving sibling. Well, it’s not that easy. You’re not meant to bloody understand people like me, just accept them.”
“But I thought you were dead.” Tom was almost whispering now, his head spinning.
“Why? Because some incompetent policeman found a body in my house? Because Agent Browne says she saw me die? All she saw was two blanks get fired and me go down. By the time she came to, I’d swapped the bodies.”
“Who with?”
“A nobody. Someone who was no longer important to me. Someone who did me a greater service by dying than he ever did when he was alive. After that, it was a simple matter of changing the dental records. How else were they going to identify a burned corpse? They fell for it, of course, as I knew they would. The police are so wonderfully predictable. I’m surprised
you
did, though, given that you employed a similar trick a few years ago when escaping your CIA masters.”
“You know about that?”
“Oh, there’s not much I don’t know about you, Thomas.”
“I’m only here because of you. To get the people who killed you.”
“How wonderfully loyal of you. I’m almost touched.”
“Who the hell
are
you?” asked Tom, repelled and yet fascinated by Renwick’s dispassionate tone.
“Can’t you guess?”
There was a long silence.
“Cassius,” Tom breathed. “You’re Cassius.”
Renwick smiled.
“Some people call me that.”
“After all this time, it’s you.” Tom took a step toward Renwick, who raised his gun and narrowed his eyes.
“Be careful, Thomas,” he said gently. “Be very careful.”
“It was all you, wasn’t it?” Tom’s brain was struggling to reorder the past few days’ events in his mind. “You had the coins stolen. Then you got me to do that job in New York so that I’d be in the U.S. at the same time.”
Renwick shrugged.
“I had simply planned to tip off the police but you kindly obliged by dropping a hair at the scene for the police to find. An uncharacteristic oversight. In any event, it all worked out rather well in the end, although at one stage I was concerned that you were taking rather too long to steal the first egg.”
“And then, what? You lost the coins. Steiner stole them from you and gave one to Ranieri to sell.”
Renwick’s face darkened.
“A minor inconvenience. Those responsible paid the price for their interference. Their mistake was to try and sell them back to one of my people.”
“So you got four coins back off Steiner and then bumped into me at Sotheby’s and invited me to dinner with Agent Browne, who just handed over the one coin you didn’t have.”
Renwick gave a short laugh.
“It was rather amusing. The coin showing up in my house, of all places. I’d been thinking about killing Harry Renwick off for a while. He was becoming rather depressing. It was too good an opportunity to miss.” There was no feeling in Renwick’s voice as he spoke, just a sense of relentless, ruthless efficiency.
“But I have to admit you impressed me, Thomas. Even I, who have followed your career so closely over the years, was surprised by your ability to wriggle out of trouble. First you slip out from under the murder charges that I had pinned on you in London. Then you somehow convinced Agent Browne that you had nothing to do with the Fort Knox robbery. Finally, you even escaped from the museum in Amsterdam after I had generously instructed my sniper not to hurt you but just to make sure you got caught.”
“You should have had him kill me when you had the chance.”
“Of course, I considered it. But you know a live suspect is so much more satisfying for the police than a dead one. It stops them having to look for his killers. It closes the circle. The British, the Americans, they would all have believed that they had their man. And in any case, I’m not a complete monster. I owed you that much, at least.”
“And him?” Tom nodded toward Van Simson, who had remained silent during the entire exchange, his face slack and gray.
“Darius?” Renwick’s voice rose again as he glanced at Van Simson. “He should have stuck to bribing politicians and murdering his business rivals. By the way, I don’t know what he told you, but Agent Browne’s very much alive. I’m so glad. She seemed a charming young lady.”
Tom’s heart jumped and his eyes pressed shut momentarily. She was alive. That was one thing, at least.
“But you, Thomas, unlike Darius here, have a choice. It’s not too late. Not yet.”
“What do you mean?”
Renwick took a step toward him, his hand outstretched. “You could join me. You’d be amazed at what we could accomplish together. As a team. As a family. We’d be unstoppable.” For the first time since Renwick had appeared, Tom detected just a hint of pleading in Renwick’s voice, sensed an unspoken need in his eyes.
Tom laughed.
“You really are mad. You took away the only real family I had left when you killed Harry Renwick. And now you offer it back at the point of a gun? I have no idea who you are anymore.”
“Then you’re about to find out.”
Renwick reached into his pocket, took out the gun that Tom had kicked over to him, aimed it at Van Simson’s chest, and fired.
