by Des Ekin
Hunter shrugged wearily. He felt that Mary Smith was misleading him – if he was caught, he could go to jail for a long time. It might have been the effect of the painkillers, but he felt so spaced out, he just didn’t care what happened to him any more.
‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘We don’t have much time.’
RUSH hour had engulfed central Copenhagen, and the tide of traffic was slowed down by a light scattering of snow. Still, the famous Danish discipline made even rush-hour driving civilised, and they made it to the airport in less than half an hour.
‘Give me your luggage,’ Sauvage instructed as they abandoned the Jaguar in a car park.
Emma handed over her suitcase, but Charley kept a tight grip on her holdall and stared at him suspiciously. ‘Why?’
‘Because this gentleman here’ – Sauvage gestured to the Embassy official – ‘will be able to stow them in the Diplomatic Bag. No check-in. No security hassle. We’ll be able to walk straight through to the jet.’
‘Oh, right. Yeah. Sure.’
Emma noticed the hesitation and smiled. She imagined Charley’s embarrassment at the discovery of a consignment of stolen hotel goods – towels, bathrobes, God knows what else.
‘Okay.’ The Bear grabbed the bag from her and handed it over to the Embassy man. ‘Now, it’s nearly seven. Let’s get moving as fast as we can.’
The Embassy man’s diplomatic status ensured that they were given special treatment at the airport, and the few checks they had to endure were perfunctory and friendly. By ten past seven, they were aboard the Government jet and waiting for takeoff.
‘At last,’ said Charley, as she flopped heavily into the seat beside Emma. ‘Now I can relax.’
‘What do you mean?’ Emma didn’t understand. It was 7.10, the flight took two hours, and the deadline was at nine. The last thing she herself felt like doing was relaxing.
Charley glanced around quickly before whispering her reply into Emma’s ear. ‘Because,’ she said, ‘I’ve got half a gram of pure heroin stashed in that bag.’
MARY Smith parked her Golf GTi two streets away from Joseph Valentia’s Dublin apartment.
‘It’s that block over there,’ she said, gesturing between the buildings to a six-storey complex faced in sandstone. On the top floor, a couple of palm trees peeked out over the high wall of a roof garden. ‘Valentia has the top floor. The penthouse apartment.’
‘And how the hell do you expect me to get up there?’
‘Up the fire escape. It’s normally locked, but we’ve arranged for it to be left open. And you won’t need a key to the apartment itself.’ She pointed to a floor plan. ‘Our experts have arranged a computer fault at the security company that operates the alarm system. In exactly five minutes’ time’ – she squinted at her watch in the darkness – ‘the alarms will stop functioning and the electronic bolts on the main doors will freeze in the open position. All you need to do is turn the handle and walk in. The fault will last exactly thirty minutes. And by that time, hopefully, you’ll be free and clear.’
‘Sounds too good to be true.’
‘It’s perfect, Hunter. Even you couldn’t screw it up. And Valentia won’t finish his meeting until at least seven-thirty, so you shouldn’t be interrupted.’
‘Okay. Where does he keep the laptop?’
‘In his bedroom wardrobe. But we don’t want you to steal it, understood? Just look up the relevant dates on his computer diary, copy them on to this floppy disk, and get out of there.’
‘I must be crazy to agree to this.’ Hunter got out of the car and looked up towards the top apartment. It seemed a long way up, and the fire escape was just an open steel stairway. ‘I suppose this isn’t the best time to tell you that I’ve always been terrified of heights?’
‘Break a leg, Hunter,’ Mary whispered.
IAN Arthur was sitting in a hired Citroën outside the offices of the European Fishing Confederation in Molesworth Street. He was reading a copy of the Irish Independent and, unusually for such situations, he was really reading it. His role was to monitor Valentia’s movements after his arrival at the meeting, and he didn’t expect to have anything further to report until at least 7.30.
Manchester United were still doing well, he noted approvingly. If they could just do something about that weak defence, they could be in with a chance to …
He sat bolt upright, on the alert again. A group had just emerged from the building – three men in suits, a woman in a navy overcoat. He remembered them. They’d arrived for the same meeting just fifteen minutes earlier.
‘Bloody waste of time,’ one of the men was saying. ‘Brussels couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery these days.’
‘Well, if Yves doesn’t turn up, there’s damn-all we can do about it,’ said the woman. ‘Fancy a drink?’
‘Is the Pope a Catholic?’
Their voices faded into the night. Ian Arthur stiffened as a lone figure followed them down the steps of the building and climbed into a waiting limousine.
‘Christ,’ he muttered, casting his paper aside. His hands were damp with sweat as he flicked the switch on his communications radio.
‘Yeah,’ said Mary Smith. She sounded bored.
‘It’s Tango One. He’s left. He’s on his way back.’
‘Repeat?’
‘Valentia. He’s on his way home,’ Ian Arthur hissed, abandoning the code. They both knew the system was safe from interception. ‘The meeting ended early. Where’s Hotel One?’
‘Just gone into the apartment.’
‘Oh, Christ.’ Arthur imagined Valentia flinging open the door and catching Hunter in the act of burgling his laptop. ‘Any way of letting him know?’
‘No. We deliberately didn’t give him a radio or a phone. Didn’t want anything to link him with us.’
‘Can we stall Tango One on the way home?’ Arthur’s voice was desperate. ‘Police roadblock or something?’
‘No.’ Mary Smith’s voice was firm. ‘We’re under strict instructions not to involve Uniform. How long until he gets back?’
‘No time at all. Five mins, ten at the most. I’ll follow him at a distance. Let’s hope he takes his time.’
At that moment, as though reading Arthur’s mind, the driver of Valentia’s limousine dropped the clutch and roared off down Molesworth Street, accelerating hard in the direction of his apartment.
THE government jet bumped and shuddered as it hit a belt of turbulence over the North Sea. Emma’s gorge rose as the aircraft plummeted in free-fall before clawing back its fragile grip on the thin atmosphere.
‘Wow! Barf-bag time,’ said Charley. Her face looked even more jaundiced than it had in the Christiania hovel.
‘You’ve gone very pale,’ said Emma with concern. ‘Anything wrong?’
Charley shook her head and smiled wryly. ‘Nothing that a good jab wouldn’t cure.’
Emma touched her arm supportively. ‘It won’t be long now.’
‘You said two hours, Doc. It’ll be at least three before I get another turn-on.’
‘I know. I didn’t reckon on the delay in take-off.’ Emma checked her watch. ‘At this rate, it’ll be at least nine-thirty before we arrive in Dublin Airport.’
Finding the thought too depressing, she decided to change the subject. ‘Do you want to talk about it? Your addiction, I mean? You never know, I may be able to help. That’s what I do, after all.’
Charley fell silent.
‘It’s okay if you don’t want to.’
‘I had my first turn-on after I lost the baby,’ Charley said at last. ‘Somebody gave me some heroin to smoke, said it would ease the pain. And, wow, was he right.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Emma squeezed her arm supportively. ‘Miscarriage?’
‘No, Doc. It wasn’t a miscarriage.’
Emma didn’t press her.
‘I guess I was feeling real low at the time,’ Charley continued. ‘I felt I’d failed in pretty much everything I’d tried to do. My father
was a very demanding man, Doctor. He insisted on the highest standards in everything. He wanted me to be a lawyer, but I just didn’t have what it takes, up here.’ She gestured at her forehead. ‘He didn’t appreciate that. He thought I was just being lazy. I had to have a breakdown at college before it dawned on him that I really couldn’t do it.’
‘And how did he react when you dropped out?’
‘Cold, withdrawn. He kept repeating how he’d pulled himself up by his own bootstraps, started with nothing and made himself a millionaire. If he could do it, I could too. But if I wanted to stay down there in the gutter, that was my problem.’
The plane executed another hundred-metre plunge.
‘What made it worse was that I didn’t share his views on religion,’ said Charley. ‘Especially when it came to sex. As far as he was concerned, there were only three kinds of women – virgins, dutiful wives and whores. After six months at law school, I’d left my virginity well behind me and I’d no intention of getting married, so there was only one category left.’
‘Whore? Did he call you that?’
‘That, and worse. Well, I gotta admit, Doc, that I went into overreaction mode. I had loads of lovers. They were standing in line. But then I slowed down, steadied up, got myself back on to an even keel. I found something I really liked doing – something I was good at. Acting.’
‘You certainly put on a convincing performance to me,’ said Emma drily.
‘Thanks,’ said Charley, taking the compliment at face value. ‘I joined an off-off-Broadway theatre group and we had a run of successes. I even got a mention in the New York Times. For the first time in my life, I felt I’d got my shit together. I met a man I really loved, and we settled down together in a little apartment in TriBeCa, and when I got myself pregnant, we both went out and celebrated.’
‘Who was the man?’
‘Richard. Another actor. Gentle black dude, with the funniest laugh and the warmest brown eyes you’ve ever seen.’
‘And what happened to Richard? After you lost the baby?’
Charley’s face turned even paler. She looked away, out through the window at the lights of the Low Countries passing far below.
‘Excuse me, Doctor,’ she said, unbuckling her seat-belt. ‘I’ve got to visit the bathroom.’
HUNTER tried to keep his eyes glued to the sandstone wall of the apartment building as he climbed the open steel stairs of the fire escape. There was no proper safety rail, and at several points he experienced the familiar, ridiculous urge of the acrophobic to fling himself outwards into space. That was why he didn’t glance downwards. He kept staring at the wall, studying interesting cracks and shapes, counting the metal stairs one by one and marking each completed storey as a personal victory.
Four storeys, five storeys. Penthouse level. A black wrought-iron gate blocked the way into the roof garden.
He pressed it cautiously. As Mary Smith had predicted, the electronic bolts were jammed in the open position. The door swung smoothly open.
Hunter walked swiftly across the wooden decking of the roof garden, past its potted palms and honeysuckled trellises, to the patio door leading into the sitting-room.
He tested it warily. Again, a turn of the handle was all he needed to gain entry.
Valentia’s apartment was expensively furnished in Scandinavian style. Maple floors, blond wood, state-of-the-art electronics. A huge portrait on the wall paid tribute to a man he immediately recognised as Andrew Valentia.
Wasting no time in the living-room, Hunter went straight through to the bedroom. The place was in darkness, and he was reluctant to turn on a light. Feeling his way around the room, he finally located the wardrobe. He swung open the door, groped around inside, and was immediately rewarded by the distinctive feel of a moulded plastic handle.
Just switch it on and copy the relevant dates from the diary …
Heart pounding, he placed the laptop on the bed and opened the lid. A touch on the switch, and the LCD screen lit up. Within a few seconds, the computer was ready to reveal its hidden secrets.
Hunter double-clicked on the machine’s hard drive, where the entire contents of the computer were stored. It opened a window to display everything that was inside.
He stared at the screen in sheer disbelief.
There was nothing there.
Apart from the system folders that kept the computer working, the hard drive had nothing stored on it at all.
No diary. No notes. Not even a word-processing programme. It was as empty as it had been on the day it had left the factory.
‘HE’S arrived!’ Ian Arthur hissed. ‘Valentia’s back at the apartment!’
‘Okay, okay. I see him.’ Over the radio, Mary Smith’s voice sounded desperately worried.
‘What are you going to do?’ Arthur watched in frustration as the limo disappeared into the car park beneath the apartment. ‘You can’t just leave him there to get caught!’
‘Nothing I can do.’ Her voice turned hard. ‘There was always the risk. He knew that.’
‘Phone him! Phone him in the apartment!’
‘Then my mobile number will show up on Caller ID. Think before you make bloody stupid suggestions like that.’
‘It won’t show up if you request secrecy,’ Arthur said.
‘No, but it can still be traced by the phone company. Let’s keep a cool head here.’
The apartment’s lift could be seen from outside. Ian Arthur was forced to watch powerlessly as the distinctive figure of Joseph Valentia climbed into the lift cabin, pressed a button, and began to ascend.
‘One, two, three, four, five,’ he said. ‘Sixth storey. Christ. He’s there.’
HUNTER’S heart leaped into his throat as he heard the front door open. He slammed down the laptop’s lid and searched frantically around for an escape route. His breath came in gasps of panic as he waited for the flung-open door, the blaze of light, the shout of accusation. But nothing happened.
Instead, he heard Valentia’s voice from the sitting-room.
‘Hello? … Yes, Joseph Valentia here. There seems to be a problem with my security system … Oh, right. A general cock-up, is it? You’re sure it’s not just my apartment? … Fine … Okay, okay. Don’t blind me with science. Just fix the damn thing.’
The phone slammed down.
After standing motionless for what seemed like an age, Hunter heard the sound of a hissing shower and the gurgle of waste water through a pipe. Valentia was showering in his bathroom.
After that, he would want to dress. That would mean opening his wardrobe. And noticing the missing laptop …
But at least the shower would give Hunter a few precious minutes’ grace. With infinite caution he opened the bedroom door a few inches and peered through.
A long hallway lay between him and freedom. But halfway down that hallway, a door lay wide open. The steam drifting out told Hunter that this was Valentia’s bathroom.
Could he get past before Valentia finished his shower? No, it was much too risky – he’d been in there for three or four minutes already. But it was even more dangerous to stay where he was …
Still carrying the laptop, Hunter emerged from the bedroom and crept slowly down the hall. Almost immediately, the shower stopped hissing. He dived quickly into a side alcove, then discovered that its heavy curtains concealed a French window leading on to a sunshine balcony.
He drew aside the curtains to check the layout. The balcony jutted out from the main building and was surrounded by decorative wrought iron. To the left side, and several feet above balcony level, was the high trellis fence of the roof garden.
He glanced around, exploring his limited options. He couldn’t risk going back into the hallway. There was only one way out, even though the very thought of it made him come out in a cold sweat.
The window catch opened smoothly. Ensuring that the curtains remained fully drawn as he passed through, Hunter stepped out into the night and closed the glass door behind him.
&
nbsp; ‘HE’S outside,’ said Ian Arthur. ‘He’s climbing over the edge of the bloody balcony.’
‘I know. I’m not blind.’ Mary Smith took a deep breath. ‘And, what’s worse, he’s got the damn laptop in his hand. If anything happens to him, we can cover it. But the computer? That’s what I’m worried about.’
‘He’s going to try to climb the fence into the roof garden,’ Arthur said. ‘Is he crazy? It’s only light trellis. It’ll never take his weight.’
‘That’s his problem. Five minutes more and we’re out of here.’
‘Request permission to go up there,’ said Arthur. ‘I’m going to help to get him over.’
‘Permission denied. Do you understand?’ snapped Smith. ‘You will not risk going up there and betraying our involvement in this operation. That is an order, Arthur. Do you copy?’
There was no reply.
‘I said, do you copy?’
Ian Arthur gritted his teeth. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I understand.’
HUNTER took a slow, deep breath and tried to forget about the sheer drop beneath him as he checked angles, measured distances.
Yes, it just might work.
It would have to work.
He tossed the laptop ahead of him. It sailed over the trellis fence and hit the earth with a muffled thud.
Now. Step off the edge of the balcony and upwards, on to the fence …
He hesitated, suddenly aware of the lights of the city streets far below him.
It’s just a step. One short step. On the count of three …
He counted one. He counted two. Then his nerve failed him.
Why was he kidding himself? He’d never have the nerve to step over that yawning gap.
Yes, he would. He could do it. He had to do it.
Try again, Hunter. On the count of three.
One …
Two …
Three!
With a grunt of effort, he stepped out from the balcony and grabbed on to the fence. Ignoring the pain in his aching limbs, he began slowly hauling himself upwards, inch by inch, towards safety.