‘A guy like this could also have just hacked himself into the accreditation lists,’ Larry suggested. ‘But either way, he’d still need to give them an address to send the laminate out to, which would be on AFFMA’s files.’
‘He’s bound to have used a false name,’ Brisko said. ‘And no doubt a box number for the address, or some empty place he rents.’
‘Plus,’ added Steel gloomily, ‘if he could hack his name on to the list, he could sure hack it off again after he received the ID.’
‘He couldn’t use a false photograph, though,’ said Kennedy.
‘What?’
‘You have to supply two passport-size shots. One’s for going on the laminate, the other one goes on file somewhere. He could hack his name off a computer, ay, but he couldnae disappear the second pic, and the name and details he supplied will be attached to it in a filing cabinet somewhere.’
‘I’ll get on to Paul Silver at AFFMA, if he didn’t get blown up this morning,’ Larry said, getting to his feet. ‘Got his mobile number in my Rolodex.’
‘You can’t,’ Witherson told him. ‘He’s on the boat. At least, he was meant to be. I spoke to him yesterday before my press conference. Call AFFMA HQ in Century City. That’s where the files’ll be.’
‘Okay, but I also need someone in the know to go through them and eliminate everyone they know to be legit.’
‘There’ll be people at AFFMA who can do that,’ Witherson assured him.
The senior FBI bloke, Brisko, was running a hand through his thinning hair, holding a notebook in the other. He was recapping the various investigative lines the police and the Feds were pursuing, trying to make it sound likely that a couple of them would soon intersect at the location they needed. He wasn’t glib or removed, Steff had to give him that; he wasn’t offering complacent reassurance, though he was definitely trying to encourage a wee bit of hope. But basically this was the ‘we’re doing everything we can, fingers crossed, time will tell, all bases covered’ routine. Any second now he was going to say ‘smoke ’em if you got ’em’.
Except, not all the bases were covered. There was something no one had covered, something nobody was talking about, and the longer nobody talked about it, the louder not talking about it got. Steff wanted to say something, but didn’t know whether he should pre-empt Maddy. It wasn’t likely it had slipped her mind. She looked across at him from her chair, less than three feet away, like he was the only friend she had in the world. Why couldn’t wonderful women ever look at him that way when they weren’t in fear of death?
Then she reached a hand over and took gentle hold of his T-shirt sleeve, just pinching at the material, a light pressure on his arm. He realised he had just become a human security blanket. It had never been a vocation of his, but for her he’d make a career of it.
She spoke, holding on to him for support, comfort, reassurance or whatever. ‘I appreciate that you’re all being very polite and sensitive right now, and will continue to be very polite and sensitive until the last possible moment,’ she said, ‘but there is something kind of important that we have to discuss.’
‘What’s that, Miss Witherson?’ Brisko asked in his sincerest ‘I’m listening’ voice, probably wanting to jump out the window because, like everybody else in the room, he already knew the answer.
‘Well, I realise that you’re doing all you can, and that you’ve got all this manpower and technology and expertise at your disposal, but what you don’t have is a lead, and what else you don’t have is time. Now I know you don’t want to think about this but believe me, I have to think about this.’ She swallowed. ‘What happens fifteen, sixteen hours from now if you’ve still got nothing? Because let’s not pretend we don’t know the eventualities here, Agent Brisko. And let’s not pretend that you – or your boss on the end of that phone – don’t have a timetable for how you’re going to play this thing, with a specified point of no return at which you are authorised or required to address the zero option. When is that, exactly? When are you officially required to start talking about trading my life for eighty-eight others? One hour before dawn? Two?’
‘Miss Witherson,’ Steel said, trying to help out his boss, an obvious admission that she had hit the spot, ‘it is not going to come to that.’
‘Oh bullshit. Yeah, sure, you guys might pull the goddamn rabbit out of the hat, but I don’t think I’d like to hear the odds, and neither would the people on that boat. Even if you do find him, how are you planning to stop him? You think you can talk him out of it? Because let’s face the truth here, this guy will press the button. If he doesn’t get what he’s asking for, or if he thinks you’re trying to screw him, he will press the goddamn button. Might even be rigged up so that if you kill him the bomb goes off anyway.’
‘If we find him – and we will find him,’ Steel said, convincing no one, ‘we can stop the clock. We’ve got trained negotiators standing by for whenever we can establish a dialogue.’
‘He’s taken steps to avoid establishing a dialogue,’ she countered. ‘He’s set up a codeword so that if he has to say more, you’ll know it’s him, but it’s still one way. He doesn’t want to negotiate. He knows negotiators are just there to buy time and psych out how far you can push him, estimate whether he’s got the balls to execute his threat. Well he’s got the balls, and this guy isn’t looking for money, or the release of comrades-in-arms, or any of the other shit you’re used to dealing with.
‘Look at the codeword: Matthew chapter twenty-one, verses twelve to sixteen. It’s Christ throwing the money-changers out of the temple. It’s the bit where Jesus kicks ass, where he loses patience with the sinners and resorts to violence and rage. This guy wants to teach the world a lesson: he wants an ultimate act of repentance from what he sees as the ultimate sinner. Otherwise the whole class gets punished. So you guys can go play detective if you want, but before the night’s through, it’s me who’s gonna have to come up with an answer.’
She stood up, lifting her bag from the floor in front of her.
‘Where are you going?’ Bannon enquired.
The G-men didn’t look like they could meet her eyes, far less ask her anything. Only the big cop, Freeman, had given the impression of genuinely appreciating what she was going through.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But this is gonna be a shitty enough day without me spending it in a police station. I was supposed to be taking Stephen here to lunch. Maybe I’ll do that. And don’t worry, I’ll stay in touch.’
She slapped a card down on Bannon’s desk with her mobile phone number on it, then walked to the door and gripped the handle.
‘You coming?’ she asked.
Steff was no longer quite sure what planet he was on today. The only place that felt remotely familiar was a close gravitational orbit around Maddy, and he feared if he was removed from her company for too long he’d just fall to pieces. Thousands of miles from home, blown up, alienated and pissed off, she was the only anchor he had to the reality of what was going on – whatever the fuck was going on.
‘Excuse me gentlemen,’ he told them, and followed her out the door.
‘I’ll check it out,’ Larry said, in response to the six eyes that had fixed themselves rather helplessly upon him.
He found the pair of them standing near the exit leading through the corridor to the front desk, or (Hostile) Reception as the precinct smartasses called it. Their progress was being obstructed by Arguello, looking almost as beat as they did, the diminutive Pedro standing up admirably in the face of Witherson’s distressed determination and Kennedy’s distressing height. All three of them looked plaintively at Larry as he approached, each believing his intercession would assist them.
‘More good news, huh?’ Larry asked. ‘What is it now?’
‘Reporters,’ Arguello explained. ‘Dozens of them. They know she’s . . . They know Miss Witherson’s here. At least they think she’s here. Gleason’s out bullshitting them at the front desk, but they ain’t buying it. The
re’s more vans pulling up every minute, man. They must have sussed that the cops had Miss Witherson when the new message went out. Look.’
Arguello pointed to a nearby TV screen, on which Larry could see the outside of the building, but it wasn’t closed circuit – it was network news. A patrolio came through the swing doors in front of him and for the moment they were open Larry could hear the babble of voices echoing down the hallway.
Full-on media siege. He’d always known this would be among today’s trials, but that didn’t make it any easier when it happened. Larry felt sure the Bible would have been a role-model short had Job been faced with suffering an infestation of these assholes:
And verily Job didst freak, and didst smite his tormentor most terribly, yea, threatening even to lodge his microphone in his fundament.
Witherson’s eyes were red. She was a brave lady, but she was fast running out of juice.
‘She cannae stay here, Sergeant,’ Kennedy said. It was his first presumption to speak on her behalf, which Larry figured was significant, like he’d switched on the siren. ‘Her head’s nippin’. She needs some space.’
‘Where can you go?’ Larry asked. ‘Miss Witherson’s place will have even more of these lice crawling around it.’
‘His place,’ Witherson said tiredly. ‘He’s at the Armada in West Hollywood. Nobody knows who he is and nobody knows he’s with me.’
‘They’ll follow you out of here, man,’ Arguello warned. ‘They got choppers and everything.’
‘Christ.’ She put her hand to her forehead, her eyes filling up.
Another two patrolios came through the doors, Carver and Chase, bemoaning the chaos they’d found on their doorstep. Larry watched them turn and walk towards the locker rooms.
‘The Armada, yeah?’ Larry asked. Witherson looked up, nodding. ‘Okay, follow me.’
‘Where we going?’
‘Bilbo Baggins’s place. Gonna ask for a loan of his ring.’
Lisa Chase’s uniform was maybe just a little big for Witherson, which prompted Carver to chide his partner about cutting down on the Twinkies, but what the hell, she wasn’t looking to pass parade inspection.
‘Don’t listen to him,’ Witherson told Chase gratefully, slipping on shades and pulling the peak of the hat down. ‘If I actually had tits it’d be a perfect fit.’
Kennedy was more of a problem. They did eventually find a uniform close to his elongated dimensions, but no amount of pins could restrain his conspicuously non-regulation mane of hair under the hat. He didn’t walk right either. It was hard to pinpoint just what exactly he was doing wrong, but as soon as he took two steps it was obvious from any distance that he was not a cop but a guy badly disguised in a cop’s uniform.
There was only one way around it. Larry made him put his own clothes back on and slapped some cuffs on his wrists. Then Witherson and Carver led their ‘prisoner’ out back to a patrol car and drove up the station-house ramp through the gauntlet of cameras and microphones, all of which turned away when they saw who was – or more importantly who wasn’t – in the back seat.
Larry watched the car head off towards Santa Monica Boulevard, glancing at a TV screen for reassurance that the girl’s escape had gone undetected, then sat down at his desk and swallowed back two headache tablets with a lukewarm styrofoam cup of coffee.
He looked at his watch and realised that its objective sense of time was thoroughly out of synch with his own. It seemed like days had passed since he woke up this morning, yet it was barely two in the afternoon.
Christ knew how Madeleine Witherson felt.
The sun wasn’t due to set for several hours, but her longest, darkest night had already begun.
thirteen
Paul Silver liked to think he was not normally neurotic. He was normally Jewish, however, which was probably why he so much hated getting all hyper and paranoid. The business he worked in traded prosperously in stereotypes, which had always made him agitatedly self-conscious about behaving like one. Even when he was feeling neurotic, he tried his best to keep it below the surface, concentrate on his breathing, think carefully about whatever he was going to say, and not burble on like a speed-freak reading James Joyce. This was because everyone else was allowed the occasional bout of public fluster: people just thought, Golly, he’s got enough on his plate today. But if you were Jewish and you lost it one time, they all thought, Typical neurotic Jew.
In a way, Woody Allen had pissed in the water tank they all had to drink from. Paul often wished the little jerk had sent off to the Charles Atlas ad in his Superman comics as a kid. If he had a time machine he’d go back and bribe every girl in Woody’s neighbourhood to blow him carnivorously throughout his teen years. All right, the world probably wouldn’t get Sleeper later on, but you had to balance these things out.
Unfortunately, it was the Woody the world did get that formed Paul’s self-image any time he felt under pressure. And not just any incarnation either: it was the damned animated version from Annie Hall that he saw, exaggeratedly diminutive and helpless-looking. Why couldn’t Lenny Bruce have lived longer and become an acclaimed auteur? That’s what Paul wanted to know. Cool, streetwise, in control, turning the accusatory neurosis outwards at the world instead of inwards at himself.
Most of the time, Paul was a real calm guy. That was what had got him where he was. He could put people at ease, he could deal with logistics, he could negotiate, he could juggle responsibilities. You couldn’t survive in the independent sector otherwise. Working for small production and sales outfits like Line Arts, ImageTech and KinoKraft, you had to do a dozen jobs at once to bring in a movie under its already minuscule budget. He knew that if you were paying close attention to Killer Instincts III you could spot the film’s producer (one P Silver) in four different cannon-fodder villain roles, getting repeatedly killed by the hero, Nuke Powers, in a variety of bad wigs. But then if you were paying close attention to Killer Instincts III,you probably weren’t the type to notice these things.
When he got the post with AFFMA, it was on the strength of his reputation for, quite simply, handling it. He was younger than the previous incumbents, and had a lot less experience within AFFMA’s organisation, in terms of how they liked to run things, but everybody was confident because Paul Silver ‘could handle it’. And handle it he had, right throughout all the preparation, organisation, administration and build-up. Compared to some of the logistical miracles he’d had to pull off in the past, his first eight months at AFFMA was a breeze. The event itself was a far huger affair than any production he had ever co-ordinated, but it was still a much smoother ride, and he didn’t once have to fall screaming into a vat of slime wearing a blood-spattered space-lizard costume.
However, the nearer it had drawn to the commencement of the market, the more he began to fear that Woody would be running the office. It was as though he had been concentrating so hard on scaling the cliff that he’d failed to notice how high it was until he reached the summit, and instead of experiencing a feeling of achievement, he was suffering a woozy vertigo.
And there was something else too. It was irrational to the point of embarrassment, but he had what he could only describe, in the hackneyed words of the shitty scripts he was used to working with, as ‘a bad feeling about this’. Maybe it was just what they were calling 1999 Syndrome, seeping silently and undetected into the subconscious, but whatever it was, it sure wasn’t comfortable.
He was pretty good at hiding it when he moved in familiar circles. Talking to AFFMA’s CEO, Brad Getzen, or to execs from the attending companies, he slipped so easily into leisurely confidence that he could almost convince himself he had nothing to fret about. But people on the outside could see Woody three blocks away. That cop twigged how anxious he was straight off; so did Nunez, although she seemed to find it funny, which worked as reassurance through mild humiliation.
Sergeant Freeman seemed to relish the threat of chaos presented by the Jesus-freaks across the street, with their protests
and hoax bomb warnings. It was like the big cop was telling him to enjoy the ride, trying to make him fast-forward to the bar-room where he’d look back and laugh about what a crazy time the ’99 market was. And though something inside was resisting it manfully, it was starting to work: Paul was beginning to tell himself that if Freeman and Nunez weren’t worried, it wasn’t because he was the only one smart enough to anticipate trouble, nor that he was the only one who’d be firing off resumés in a month’s time.
Nonetheless, something was resisting it. Woody would not pack up and go home to New York, and the twisted feeling in his gut warned him that he feared the little jerk would yet get to say ‘I told you so’.
So on his mid-market day off, his time to relax and have a few drinks aboard Moonstar’s hospitality charter, when the captain and a hollow-faced Linus Veltman asked everyone to sit down and remain calm then announced there was a bomb on the boat, Paul’s curious first reaction was a feeling of eye-rolling vindication. It was like finally being told the answer to a stupid but exasperating riddle – Ah! So that’swhat it was. There was almost an element of relief about it. After so long desperately trying to hold it together, he could now comfortably go nuts along with everybody else.
Stephen was right about her being safe at the Armada. Okay, cop outfit or not she’d felt conspicuously female on the way up to the room, but in the bigger picture absolutely nobody was going to think of looking for her in the place anyway. It was perfect – the only drawback was that she couldn’t hide there past dawn. One way or the other.
Stephen held open the door for her but without any hint of ostentatious chivalry. He wasn’t trying to be her saviour or her guardian or even her advocate, all of which she was grateful for because she had enough on her plate without attempting to salve someone else’s conscience by making them feel useful. Nonetheless, there was still a part of her that could have used just a little bit more of an idea where she stood with this guy. He’d saved her life, so it was safe to assume he held her in higher regard than some in this town, but beyond that it was difficult to discern. Ironically, saving someone’s life isn’t necessarily personal.
Not the End of the World Page 27