The Paper Factory (Michael Berg Book 1) (4 page)

Chapter 10

 
No matter how much iron he pumped, no matter how well defined his pecs werewhen he looked in the mirror
,w
hich was admittedly a lot, Gregor McAllister could never shake the feeling of impending doom whenever he entered a large empty building. It didn’t even need to be that large. When he was a kid, although the oldest of three siblings, he was always the one who insisted to the point of hysterics on having the light kept on in the bedroom at night. He suspected that it was some kind of phobia, although it wasn’t so bad that he couldn’t control it. But he was definitely in the wrong job.

  Ralph
insisted that the handovers took place at night in any one of five randomly rotated, disused buildings scattered around Manhattan. No guns. One buyer, one seller. This particular location on Beekman Street particularly freaked him out. The building had been abandoned and left to rot. The substantial atrium stretched upwards for five floors and at night had the feeling of a subterranean swimming pool, only a minimum of light penetrating from the street outside through the grime and dust caked windows.

 
Gregor approached the building on the same side of the street. He had strapped the cocaine around his waist and across his abdomen. Carrying any kind of holdall at this time of night, it was ten forty-five, may well attract attention. He stopped and turned with his back to the first window that he came to, knowing that it should open easily. When he was sure that there was no one else in view, he pushed himself up onto the low hanging ledge, eased open the window and jumped onto the crumbling mosaic floor below.

 
Immediately Gregor could feel the panic rising. Goose bumps erupting across his arms and legs. Unable to use a torch, he stood stock still for two minutes, listening for other sounds of habitation and accustomizing his eyes to the darkness within.

 
Gradually the panic subsided. He was fifteen minutes early. He always arrived early, the thought of someone else being here before him filling him with dread. Gregor made his way slowly across the two-hundred-square-meter atrium floor to the bottom of the sweeping staircase that would take him to the first floor and climbed. On ascending to the fifth floor, Gregor moved across the inner balcony to a door-less anteroom inset against the wall, on the far side of the atrium from the stairwell, and waited. From here he would be able to see anyone entering the building and crossing the floor below.

 
Eleven o’clock came and went, Gregor becoming more anxious with every moment. After twenty minutes his fear began to turn to anger. Gregor had been a conscientious user of steroids for over five years, impatient to develop a truly magnificent physique, and their frequent use had helped to turn a relatively placid young man into someone whose temper could flare up at the slightest provocation.

 
Having had as much as he could take, Gregor was steeling himself to get up and make his way out of that god-awful place when he heard a sound below. Feet lightly hitting the atrium floor. He could see the dark outline of a slim figure padding across the mosaic tiles and then, when the figure reached the bottom of the stairs, the head turning upwards and round into the dim light.

  “
Zeus,” the figure said.

  “
Aphrodite,” replied Gregor, feeling foolish, at the same time relieved that his contact had arrived at last, but also surprised that the voice addressing him from the bottom of the stairs was female.

 
Two minutes passed while she negotiated her way onto the fifth floor landing and across the balcony.

  “
What took you so long; I’ve been waiting in this shithole for forty-five minutes!” 

  “
Listen, it’s the first time I’ve had to make a pickup in this place, so why don’t you give me a break?” she said flatly, without venom.

  “
Let’s just get this done so we can get the hell out of here. I go first, you wait for ten and then leave,” he said.

  “
Hey, you’re in a real hurry. What’s your problem, afraid of the dark?” she said, mild amusement in her tone.

 
Gregor had by now removed his three-quarter-length duffel coat and, although fuming at her mocking of him, bit his tongue, unwinding the package from his torso. He didn’t notice the paraphernalia that she had started to remove from her handbag until she placed it on a small wooden table in the corner of the room.

 
The sound of a test tube hitting a glass beaker made him look up.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” his anger growing again against this cocky, arrogant bitch.

  “
You don’t think I’m going to hand over a bag full of money without testing this stuff, do you? My customers pay for the best and I give them the best. I’m not gonna palm them off with powder that’s been cut until it wouldn’t get a friggin’ dog high.”

  “
That’s not the deal; we only deliver the best stuff. We screw you over and you never deal with us again. It’s always worked that way before. Keeps things simple and quick. Give me the fucking money and I give you the blow, I leave and you follow.” His nails were digging into the palms of his hands as he spoke, his knuckles white with tension.

  “
No way, José, I ain’t paying two hundred fifty k for baking powder.”
  Gregor began to smell a setup. This wasn’t right. He had to get out. Now. He began to tie the bundle across his waist when she made a grab for it.

  “
What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” she said, as he swung the back of his hand across her right eye and cheekbone with all his formidable strength. Panic and fear had gripped him now. All he wanted to do was get out. To get away from this crazy bitch, whoever she was. Her hand let go of the bundle, but when she followed through with a very hard kick between his legs, so did his and as he doubled over in agony, ten kilos of the finest in Bolivian cocaine fell twenty-five meters and burst across the atrium floor, like snow falling from a rooftop in January, hitting the ground with a gratuitous thump.

  “
Scared of the dark, and women, you pathetic fuckin’ freak. I guess you got some sweeping up to do,” she said, smirking.

 
Gregor finally hit the line. Panic, anger and fear combined together to create a Neanderthal rage. He placed a strong hand around her throat and began to squeeze the life from her. He didn’t even feel the pummeling she was giving his ribs with her sharp fists, his leg positioned to block anymore blows below the belt. Her eyes began to bulge, but in his enraged mind he wanted to break her in two.

  “
Not so fucking smart now, you fucking smart-assed bitch,” he hissed as he lifted her by her neck over the edge of the balcony.

  He
looked into her bulging eyes once more, capillaries zigzagging furiously. As her bloodied eyes silently screamed for mercy, he opened his hand and grinned as her once agile body hammered onto the mosaic floor below.

Chapter 11

  Ralph Kennedy was not a happy man. That fucking retard Gregor had just blown a quarter of a million dollar deal and Ralph could do nothing about it. It was his own fault. Gregor was a fucking idiot. An incompetent silver spooner who had fucked up his life more times than Ted Kennedy. It should have been an easy score, ten kilos of good “powder” to a long time contact of Ralph’s who supplied half of Beirsdorf Klein.

 
Ralph kept himself distant from the nuts and bolts of the operation. His old ivy school buddies who had joined the ranks of the great and the good, not to mention the rich, who populated the Wall Street investment banks, had provided him with an ever hungry supply of cocaine addicted, cash rich fools. He had started by supplying them directly, as he had done at Yale, but soon realized that to mitigate risk it made a lot more sense to use middlemen.

 
He kicked back in his Clifton easy chair and took in the view of the ocean before him. The throbbing beat of Jay-Z interrupted him.

  “
Yes.”

  “
It’s Mark. The meeting went well. The new business line will become operational within a few weeks. Our new friends are delighted with the service offering and want to begin distribution immediately.”

  “
Good news, Mark, thank fuck not everyone I do business with is a moron,” Ralph snapped.

  “
What do you mean?” said Mark

  “
I mean that Gregor screwed up big time and we need to ensure that the idiot doesn’t deliver for us again. Arrange to pay him off and make sure he knows that we won’t be at all pleased if he opens his mouth.”

  “
Okay, I’ll speak to him. Anything else?”

  “
Nothing I can discuss in detail over the phone, but why don’t you let him tell you himself. I’m sure he’ll be more than happy to lie low for a while.”

  “
Okay, I’ll be in touch,” said Mark.

 
Ralph, his mood lifting at the thought of the possibilities opening up to him, lifted himself easily out of the chair and made his way over to the Jacuzzi.

  All he had to do was make sure
that Gregor’s sheer fucking stupid, steroid fuelled bout of lunacy didn’t rock the boat. No one wanted to buy from someone who pulled the trigger on their own dealers.

Chapter 12

  His eyes snapped shut. But not because he couldn’t bear the sight of the grubby cracks in the ceiling’s paintwork or the bare lightbulb poised a couple of meters above his head. He turned to the chair beside the bed and squinted at the clock. Two in the afternoon. His head ached, the damage from the previous night beginning to fully kick in.

 
Without warning, his stomach heaved. Michael jumped from the bed to race for the washbasin in the corner. He cried out in pain as he trod heavily with the sole of his foot onto broken glass. Despite this, he managed to make it to the washbasin in time, as the contents of his stomach sprayed uncontrollably from his mouth.

 
The booze had worked well. Too well. He removed splinters of glass from his foot, did his best to clean the gash and patch it up. He’d been under for more than eight hours. A well-worn sock doubled as a bandage. As he carried the broken pieces of glass to the dustbin in the corner, he caught sight of two empty bottles of wine and an equally empty half liter of vodka lying horizontally on the floor beside the bed. Alongside them, the three-day-old headline in the Times, crumpled, wine-soaked, but still legible. “INNOVEST FOUNDER LEAPS TO DEATH FROM LONDON BRIDGE.” He stumbled over them, lay down, body exhausted, mind going into overdrive.

  The cracked and grimy ceiling belonged to a cramped thirty pound a night room in a hostel close to Paddington Station.
A month after his own very personal descent into hell, he had started to fall into the trap of seducing his mind into unconsciousness with alcohol.

 
He gazed at the bulb burning brightly above him. It had worked too well. The booze. He had two choices. End up like his former friend and drink himself out into the street, most likely onto a coroner’s slab. Or find the man who had done this to him.

---

  It didn’t happen right away. It took more time. Eventually Michael’s desire for revenge overcame his desperation to drink, to forget, to sleep. He would find the man. Track him down. Make him pay. This thought, this thought alone, gave Michael the strength to pull himself from a very dark place.

Chapter 13

  Konstantin Rykov took the steps two at a time as he ascended the stairs from the basement parking area to the ground floor of the building. His large, muscled frame and broad shoulders barely able to fit the stairway without him turning sideways. Striding across the high ceilinged baroque hallway, he opened the left hand of the two wooden double doors and entered what Rivello referred to as the day room.

 
Jay Rivello sat at an expertly fashioned mahogany antique on the far side of the room. French windows framed the Lake. The Lake filled the horizon. Cold, deep, dark, and for the moment, still.

  He turned to face
Rykov.

  “
Where the hell have you been?” Rivello’s lips tightened in barely restrained irritation.

  “
Dmitri needed help to understand. He tried to run. I stopped him.” 

  “Oh fuck. You idiot. Y
ou killed him, didn’t you?” veins stood out on Rivello’s neck.

  “
I cut him. He’ll do the girl.”

  “You cut what?
How much?”

  “
Ten thousand for the finger. Five thousand for the girl.”

  “
When’s our friend’s next visit to fantasyland?” Rivello asked.

  “
Two weeks. Eighteenth April. Alone.”

  “
Good timing. Does Dmitri know what will happen if he screws up?”
  “He knows,” replied Rykov.

  “
Good. Now leave. I have things to do.”

  Rivello
swung round, lifted the phone and dialed.

  “
Augustus Goodfriend,” the voice full of confidence and power.

  “
So, will she be there?”

  “
Oh, it’s you,” Goodfriend’s voice losing some of its natural bravado. “Yes, Jay, I received confirmation this morning. She’ll arrive the evening before the conference. I will greet her officially in my suite. Kennedy will make the keynote speech, attend for two days and depart on the evening of the second day.”

  “
I don’t care about any of that, Augustus,” Rivello said. “I want to meet her, one to one. Straight after the conference. In Washington, but I need a private audience. I need your assurance that you can deliver.”

  “Yes, of course I can
deliver. This is the last time, though. Tell me why meeting Elisabeth Kennedy is so important to you.”

  “Listen,
my friend, you’re in no position to start dictating to me. If you don’t arrange the meeting, your career is dead. Shortly after that you will be too. Understand?”

  “
Yes, Jay. I. I understand.” Rivello could hear what little backbone that Augustus had snap in the echo of his voice.

  Rivello reached for the
humidor and pulled a Robusto from the cedar box. He stretched back as he lit the cigar, crossed his feet on top of the desk. He would soon pull off the largest fraud in history. And no one would know that it had ever happened.