The Wreckage: A Thriller (38 page)

“No.”

“Is that what she told you?”

“Yes.”

“I want to meet her.”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

“I want to meet her.”

Ruiz isn’t an expert on human behavior like the professor, but Elizabeth is a woman on the edge of reason. Humiliated. Betrayed. Abandoned. He makes her sit, waits for the tension to leave her shoulders.

“What did your husband do for the bank?”

“He was a compliance officer.”

“Did he ever bring files home, documents, sensitive material?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Why?”

He speaks softly. “The boyfriend I mentioned—he was tortured and murdered five days after the robbery.”

Elizabeth’s eyes are like black marbles. “My husband isn’t a kil er.”

“I’m not suggesting—”

“What are you suggesting?”

“I think the people who kil ed Zac Osborne were looking for something that your husband had with him.”

“A notebook.”

Ruiz stops and studies her almost scientifical y. Elizabeth crosses the room and picks up the phone. “You have to tel the police. You have to tel them.” Ruiz takes the receiver from her hand. “First tel me about the notebook.”

Elizabeth shakes her head, caught between wanting to unburden herself and remembering the intruder’s last words. In the same breath she rediscovers her doubts. Why should she trust this man? How does he know about the notebook?

Elizabeth backs away. “Did he send you? Did he tel you about the notebook?”

“Who are you talking about?”

“Why are you here?”

“I’m trying to help someone.”

“That girl!”

“Not just her.”

“Get out! Get out or I’l cal the police!”

Elizabeth is screaming at him, fighting at his arms. Ruiz takes her punches on his chest, waiting until she runs down like the spring of an alarm clock. He sits her on the sofa where she grows smal er and more distant, hiding behind a fringe of hair. For a long time nothing is said. Breathless and a little dazed, Elizabeth feels embarrassed by her outburst.

Exhausted.

Ruiz continues. “How long had the private detective been fol owing your husband?”

“About a week. He made notes and took photographs.”

“Can I see them?”

Elizabeth wraps her arms around her chest as if holding someone. “I don’t have the photographs anymore.”

“Where are they?”

She rocks back and forth, her voice flat. “A man broke into the house last night. He had a gun. He took them.”

“Did you cal the police?”

“No.”

Stil she rocks, empty inside. Disconnected. Once the world had seemed so rich to her, a colorful place. Now al she sees is the poverty of things. She can stil taste the metal of the gun in her mouth and feel his hands on her skin.

Ruiz speaks to her calmly, getting her to repeat the story again. Each sentence takes time to form, as if she’s dictating a letter. She tel s him about hiring Colin Hackett—first to fol ow her husband and then to find him.

“Tel me about these photographs.”

“They were of North and the woman.”

“Hol y Knight.”

“Is that her name? I didn’t know. She looked very young… and pretty. Why did she choose North? She could have had anyone. Why didn’t she choose someone else?”

“I don’t know.”

Elizabeth tel s him about North’s meeting in Maida Vale with Yahya Maluk and a second man. She describes going to the house in Mayfair, where Maluk denied having met North at The Warrington.

Rowan appears in the doorway. He’s peering through the dark holes of his Spiderman mask.

“Is you a policeman?” he asks.

“I used to be.”

“Why did you stop?”

“I retired.”

“Why did you get tired?”

Ruiz smiles. “I decided to give someone else a turn at being detective.”

“You were sharing?”

“That’s right.”

Rowan sticks his finger through an eyehole, scratching an itch.

“Are you getting a rash again?” asks Elizabeth. “You should take off that mask for a while.”

Rowan shakes his head. “Spiderman never shows his face.”

“Can’t you be Peter Parker today?”

His head shakes again.

“Come on, my little Spider hero—I have some cream upstairs.”

“Superpower cream?”

“Good for defeating rashes.”

Ruiz watches them go and can hear their echoing conversations from a bathroom at the top of the stairs. Moving through the house, he examines the door and window locks, noticing the movement sensors blinking from an upper corner of each ceiling. The alarm was turned off last night. The shattered window had broken the connection. The intruder planned this careful y, watching the house, waiting for Elizabeth and Rowan to be alone. No sign of forced entry. Elizabeth would have locked the doors. Whoever broke into the house could wel have had a key.

Ruiz walks into the back garden where the sun shines in a glitter of green. He passes the rose bushes and an old rain barrel beneath a downpipe. In a soggy patch of ground near the paling fence he notices a set of footprints. They are deeper where someone jumped and then paused to stamp them down, smearing mud with his soft shoes. There is also mud on top of the fence. On the far side, beyond a thicket of shrubs and trees, he notices a flash of silver from the railway line.

Returning to the house, he finds Elizabeth upstairs. Rowan is playing with Lego blocks, building cities for Spiderman to protect. She cups her pregnancy in both hands.

“Who has keys to the house?” he asks.

“North. Polina. Me.”

“Polina?”

“Our nanny, but she resigned yesterday.” Elizabeth’s mind starts to wander. “I don’t know what I’m going to do now. She used to look after my brother’s children and Mitchel passed her on to me.”

“Where is Polina’s key?”

“She left it on the mantelpiece.”

Ruiz ponders the timeline. If Elizabeth is right, the only key not in the house belongs to Richard North.

“I found something else this morning,” she says, leading him across the landing.

The folder and sheets of paper are stil scattered on the floor of Rowan’s room where she threw them. Crouching clumsily, she tries to col ect the pages.

“There was an envelope under Rowan’s mattress. My name was on the front.”

“It was hidden?”

“He must have known I’d find it—either me or Polina.”

Ruiz is reading the handwritten pages. Numbers but no account names. The right-hand column must be amounts, thousands or tens of thousands, unless there are zeroes missing.

“Why would he leave this for you?”

Elizabeth shakes her head.

“I was going to cal Bridget Lindop, North’s secretary at the bank. I talked to her last week. She was anxious. Secretive. North told her a terrible thing had happened and it was his fault. He thought the auditors would find out.”

“Have you mentioned this to anyone else?”

“Only my brother.”

Ruiz notices the name and phone number written inside the folder. He goes to the study to use the phone, punching the digits. Speakerphone.

Hel o, you’ve reached Keith Gooding at the
Financial Herald.
I’m not available at present, but leave a name, number and short message and I’l get back to you.

Ruiz replaces the receiver in the cradle.

“That’s the man who left a message,” says Elizabeth.

“When?”

“It was on the answering machine after North went missing. He said something about rearranging their meeting.”

“You didn’t cal him back.”

“I was told not to talk to journalists.” She’s gnawing at her bottom lip, leaving a crimson mark. “We have to cal the police. We have to tel them about the girl and the notebook.”

“OK, but first I want to talk to the private detective.”

4

WASHINGTON

Chalcott is walking uphil on a treadmil with sweat dripping from his nose. He can see an aerobics class through the glass windows of the gym, a young blonde wearing a black leotard and loose vest. She pauses and drinks from a water bottle, her throat moving rhythmical y. If only he were twenty years younger, he thinks. Ten would do.

Upping the speed, he begins running, his waistline shifting beneath his T-shirt, bouncing with each stride. He’s concerned about London. Years of planning and mil ions of dol ars are in jeopardy. It was supposed to be a career-defining operation. Pul it off and Arthur Chalcott would be talked about in the same breath as legendary spymasters like Al en Dul es, Miles Copeland and even Markus Wolf. Not household names, but what spies ever are?

September 11 had caught them bare-assed, pants around their ankles. The Cold War had been fought and won, but they didn’t see the next one coming. First they were blamed for supplying bad information; then for not finding Osama bin Laden or predicting the insurgencies. Of course we fucking predicted them, he thinks. Stevie fucking Wonder could have predicted it, but Cheney and the hawks weren’t listening.

For almost a decade the Agency had been scrambling to catch up, while the government prosecuted two wars and spent bil ions on homeland security. Every success had been short-lived. It was like playing a game of Whac-a-Mole with the “mole” being a skinny, ragged man living in the caves of Tora Bora—the world’s most famous phantom, holed up in a mountain complex built with CIA money back when America was fighting the communists instead of the terrorists.

Chalcott’s phone is buzzing. Slowing the treadmil , he hooks a wireless earpiece over the pink shel of his ear. Recognizes Sobel’s number.

“The police have issued a warrant for Richard North. They think he might have left the country. They’re checking airport car parks and passenger manifests.”

“What about the girl?”

“We’re doing everything we can.”

“That’s
so
reassuring.”

Sobel doesn’t let the sarcasm distract him. “We think she’s with a psychologist—a friend of the ex-cop.”

“Where is Ruiz now?”

“He’s talking to the banker’s wife.”

“You’re fol owing him?”

“Of course.”

Sobel has another piece of news. Hesitates in the tel ing.

“We may have an ID for the guy who kil ed Hol y Knight’s boyfriend. MI6 identified a suspect coming through Heathrow a fortnight ago. He was travel ing on a Moroccan passport.

Facial recognition software has linked him to the suicide of a Lebanese politician in Athens six years ago. He’s also been tied to the death of the Egyptian industrialist Ashraf Marwan in London in 2007. Marwan was suspected of being an Israeli spy. Fel off his balcony. Fifth floor. Ground broke his fal .”

“This guy got a name?”

“Four or five of them. Cal s himself the Courier.”

“Drol . What have we got on him?”

“A grainy CCTV picture from Athens six years ago.”

“Last known location?”

“Mombasa in April.”

“Don’t you love the fucking Africans? We give them an extra twenty-five bil ion in aid and they repay us by harboring every low-life scumbag terrorist they can fit through the door.” Chalcott presses the cool down button. The incline on the treadmil begins to flatten out. His calves are burning and sweat has stretched the col ar of his T-shirt. Toweling down, he keeps talking.

“Listen to me, Brendan, things want to start getting better real soon. I just heard from Jennings. Luca Terracini didn’t catch a flight to New York. He’s in Istanbul and he’s just used his credit card to buy two tickets to London.”

“Two tickets?”

“He’s with the woman from the UN.”

“Why is he coming here?”

“Yesterday he briefed a freelance journalist in Damascus, who has since been knocking on doors, asking questions about Yahya Maluk and Ibrahim.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Put Terracini on a plane to the US.”

“This is England. I can’t just extradite people.”

“I don’t give a fuck how you do it, Brendan. Plant drugs on him or kiddie porn or whatever other dirty little tricks they taught you in spy school. If this guy gets close to Ibrahim he’l blow this operation.” Chalcott sits in the locker room, splaying his legs. “I got people here shitting themselves about this. And it costs a lot of money to get people to shit themselves these days.”

“I’l take care of Terracini. He can be my problem.”

“Your
other
problem,” says Chalcott. “One solitary fucking girl—you had her on a plate and missed her. Now she’s hiding somewhere and running rings around you. I cannot fucking believe…”

“Can I just say… we’ve had some—”

“Don’t say bad luck, Brendan. You’re starting to whine like a Limey. Make this right. No loose ends.”

5

LONDON

Luca and Daniela have a long walk to Heathrow immigration and a longer queue. They go to the counter together. A Sikh man wearing a bright blue turban flicks through Luca’s passport, looking at the many stamps.

“Where have you come from today?”

“Istanbul.”

“And before that?”

“Iraq.”

“What was in Iraq?”

“Oil. Sand. Terrorists.”

“Are you making a joke about terrorism, sir?”

“I never joke about terrorism.”

The immigration officer holds the information page over a scanner then waits. He picks up a phone and presses a button before placing it down again. Then he tucks Luca’s passport under his keyboard and begins processing Daniela. He stamps her passport and hands it back to her.

“Enjoy your stay in the United Kingdom.” Then he turns to Luca. “Please step to one side, Mr. Terracini.”

“What’s wrong?”

“The computer has flagged your name. I’m sure it’s nothing.”

Luca glances at Daniela. Over her shoulder he can see three armed airport police officers making their way quickly along the rows of immigration desks.

“Pick up the bags. I shouldn’t be long.”

“I want to stay with you.”

“I need someone on the other side. Cal Keith Gooding.”

As he embraces her, he slips his notebook into her shoulder bag.

The police officers have arrived and Luca is escorted past the queues of hol ow-eyed travelers to an interview room furnished with a table and three plastic chairs. The white wal s seem to blur the corners and the only sound is the hum of the air conditioning.