by Sara Forbes
His glittering blue eyes seem to hold a spark of something lighter now, amusement perhaps, though I could be imagining it.
"From what you're saying, Ms. Wilkes, I simply need the services of a good janitor. I can call Mr. Peters back, I suppose. As for humidifiers and any other equipment, they can be set to operate on timers and thermostats." He holds up his latest brand of phone. "You maybe be familiar with the internet of things?"
"Yes, I've heard of that," I snap. "But there's always a human element to running a building. And Mr. Peters only likes to work with us."
"Is that a fact?"
"It is. Call him and see."
"I shall. And I'm sure the outcome of that conversation will be that his services are all I require for now." He flashes me a quick, disingenuous smile to let me know the conversation is over.
I slap my hand against the door. "What happens when all your employees arrive? Who's going to clean their kitchens properly? Their toilets?"
"I'll worry about that when the time comes."
"So, it's just you for now?"
"It's just me for now." His voice has turned cold. My instincts are yelling at me to back off now but I fight them hard.
I laugh nervously. "Can I ask you what business you're in?"
"I'm not inclined to disclose that."
"Huh. Are you some kind of hacker? Government spy? A day trader?"
"Time's up, Ms. Wilkes." Frowning, he adjusts the gold clock-face of his Jaeger le Coultre watch or whatever the hell luxury brand it is. It catches a ray of sunlight and zaps me in the left eye.
Dismay courses through me. He's right. I've had my five minutes. And he can't be reasoned with.
I struggle to find my voice through my wounded pride. "Good day, Mr. Harwood," I say sharply, backing off.
I'm going to have to handle this another way. Less win-win and more brute force. But it's for his own good. He'll soon see.
4
EGAN
OF ALL THE PEOPLE I dreaded might come snooping around, I didn't expect a pair of cleaners. I suppose I should be glad it's not M16 or worse, our friends in Moscow, the FSB. Paul already cleared CleaningBees last night. "Just a regular, struggling, two-person cleaning business," he told me. "Nothing interesting there." So they fall into the category of harmless annoyances.
From my second-floor vantage point, I observe Jess Wilkes as she makes her way to her car—a scrappy looking red Honda Civic. I guess her battered car bugs her because it's an anomaly. Everything else about her is neat and polished, from her glossy dark brown hair and accurate makeup to her ironed shirt and buffed shoes. Her naturally curvy figure is reined in by her choice of well-cut clothes, nothing flashy, nothing revealed, but still very much there. I sense she's a perfectionist, and someone I'd employ as a cleaner in a heartbeat. I wouldn't have to keep explaining to her why I need things in order.
It's a shame to see her go. She fought hard—I like that in a woman.
I call the janitor, Larry Peters, so that we can pin down a time for a face-to-face appointment. After a meandering conversation about West Ham's recent dismal performance in the soccer league, which I hasten to cut short, Larry Peters agrees to come over right away for "a chat". From his voice, I'm imagining a doddering old man dressed in a cardigan and work trousers. As some of the issues are hands-on, I can't hold the meeting over the phone. The old man has to come here.
I go upstairs after the call to where Natasha is sleeping. I shake her shoulder gently until her eyes open. She sits up fully, blinking at me in the harsh halogen light.
"Natasha, I have a meeting with the janitor in half an hour. We can't let him know you're here. You've got to stay really quiet and stick to this room only, please. Give me your promise that you'll be quiet as a mouse."
"Okay."
"Good girl. Whatever you do, don't move chairs around or open any drawers. If you need to sneeze, or cough, then muffle it. I don't know...with a pillow or something."
She nods. "It's okay, Egan, I have practice."
"I know you do," I say softly. "This will all be over soon and you'll be at the safe house with a new identity. Just bear with me while I get through this...administration period."
She nods.
My heart thumps for her. She's in a bracingly foreign country and this ugly office is her first impression of life outside Russia. It's not a welcoming one...sterile rooms, malfunctioning air-conditioning and heating, hard furniture, computers everywhere. I must buy some pretty furnishings for her little cell. Or something that could cheer her up, whenever I find out what that might be. I discarded her phone which she's still sore about. I gave it to Paul to make sure nobody would be able to track it. He probably had to destroy it.
"I'll come back up straight after this meeting and get you some breakfast." She didn't eat last night either and she must be starving.
She slumps back sulkily. "Who was the lady?"
"What lady?"
"The woman that was here."
"The cleaning woman. Don't worry about her."
"I'm not worried." She tilts her pencil-thin eyebrows at me. "Can I at least meet her?"
"No, Natasha, no you can't. You can't meet anyone. Not her, not janitor. Nobody else will come in here apart from my guys. Unless you actually want to let the world know you're here and you'll be slammed in a maximum-security prison in the motherland before you can say Gorky Park. Is that what you want?"
She folds her arms crossly.
How do you talk to a twenty-one year old whose fiancé has been brutally murdered by the very system supposed to protect her?
"At least I'd know what I was dealing with," she says.
I can't blame her, but I can't tell her anything more concrete as I don't know it myself. The intermediary group looking into securing the safe house are themselves so secret they won't even send progress reports back to me. "We'll tell you when it's time," is what their rep—a Mr. Kline—said. That's not a whole lot of customer service from an organization I'm paying five million pounds to.
It's one thing to want to change the world and to uphold lofty ideas. But when that means a sulky stranger invading your life, your private sphere, it's a whole different story. When I made the decision last Christmas to follow this new path, I thought I'd have months, maybe even a year, to prepare my first project, to get training, to garner contacts, but Sergei's death happened suddenly and I had to act fast. Life really does happen when you're busy making plans.
What if she suffers from trauma because of my bungling? What if anything happens to her? But now that I've started this, I have to see it through.
She sighs. "Am I in danger? Are you sure they can't trace me here?"
"No—the only way they could have was if you'd had your phone. This will all be resolved as long as neither of us screws up here. Do I make myself clear? Do you think we can work together, hm?"
She shrinks back. "Yes, Egan. I'm sorry... I'm sorry. Tears spring to her eyes and then she ducks her head.
I just stand there, looming over her with my hands behind my back. I didn't think I was being harsh. "Natasha, Natasha, don't cry."
"I'm not," she says through tears.
Sean's mocking words float back to me. You have no idea what you've let yourself in for.
The Irishman is right. I'm not cut out for this. Until now, all I've done is corporation management. Put me on a board of high-functioning executives and I'm a tiger that can achieve the impossible. Ask me to lead a disparate group of Bitcoin investors. No problem. But a distraught young woman? There, I'm useless.
I go to my own desk one floor down and bury my head in market analysis.
***
It's five minutes later when a call comes in. I'm expecting Mr. Peters, the janitor, but it turns out to be the elusive intermediaries.
"Mr. Kline?" I say. I'm sure that's not his real name, but it's the one I was given and it's the only information I have on the mystery man whose job it is to find a safe house for Natasha somewhe
re in England but far away from London. I'm naturally curious about the guy.
"Yes, Mr. Harwood," comes the accented voice with a dash of Eastern Europe but also New York, if I'm not mistaken. "Concerning your guest...yes, yes, yes. I contacted the hotel we agreed on and they have a room available according to your specifications. Your guest is very welcome to come to stay. We expect she will check in soon."
I clench my fist in victory. "Can you be more specific?" I ask. "I mean on the timescale?"
"No, Mr. Harwood, I cannot," he says. "There are many tourists in the area."
"Well, I'm grateful to you. My guest is quite eager to check in. And I know that finding a hotel in a safe, clean area isn't something you can rush."
He chuckles. "Indeed not."
By "many tourists" he means Russian intelligence agencies. "A room available" is the necessary security clearance to have her in witness protection. And there's a whole bunch of other codes that probably wouldn't withstand scrutiny if anyone did happen to listen in on our call.
Kline's organization isn't strictly above board but then again, once you move deep enough into the private security industry, you'll be hard pressed to find ones that are squeaky clean. I just need him to be competent.
"Please await further details which will be sent on paper by courier," he says in his peculiar drawl.
"Very well," I say and click off the call.
I call Paul. "Code green, letting you know first. I'll tell the others."
His silence is gratifying. I am gloating a little, I suppose.
"Just in the nick of time," he says. "Uh...we have some action in Syria now too. Am anti-government activist in trouble. Sean's setting up something."
"What?" I say. Why am I only the second to know about this? I recover quickly enough to say, "Send me the details. But we're focusing on Natasha, okay? Let's close this one off properly before we go biting off more than we can chew."
I click off the conversation and dash upstairs to Natasha.
"Good news," I tell her. "Kline's talked to the safe house. Once they're ready with security you can go there."
She nods solemnly.
I slump down beside her on the floor. Of course, she's depressed. Sergei's dead. This is her second night here in an empty office building with only me, a man she only knows by hearsay, for company.
Images of my friend's smiling face, his unruly black hair and his infectious, gap-toothed smile come swirling back and I squeeze my eyes shut to block them out. Sergei was an ace reporter, indomitable, eloquent, brave. He was one of that rare breed—a truth seeker, hell-bent on exposing the corruption of his mother state. But he enjoyed his life too—with his rakish good looks, he never lacked female attention. His long emails to me read like thriller novels a lot of the time. He had an infectious sense of humor and was very popular with the ladies, always boasting. Until he met Natasha and went silent on the subject of women. They must have had something special going.
The last forty-eight hours have been so crazy I haven't had time to dwell on his death and what his last hours must have been like. It's too painful to go there. But she has. Natasha doesn't have anything to distract her as she sits here alone in this window-less room.
Sergei and I met in fresher's week in college. He was a year above me, studying international relations, and we took an instant shine to each other. He was already high profile in the student's union, running their publications. We became firm friends. We traveled through Italy together on motorbikes during one semester break.
I think back to 2011, and the wild evening in the pub the day before he moved to Russia as a foreign correspondent for the BBC. That's when I should have stopped him. Of course, at the time we all envied him going off and starting a career he loved doing.
I squeeze her shoulder which is mostly skin and bone under the fabric of her sweater. "Natasha," I say softly. "This is a very positive thing. The safe house can provide you with much better security than I ever could, and work on providing you a new life undercover here in Britain. A new start."
She twists to look at me with dark, tragic eyes." Of course."
"Things are going to get more bearable from now on, Natasha. I promise."
She nods again.
"Will you be okay here while I talk to the janitor? He'll be here any second?"
"Sure," she mumbles.
***
When it's time for my meeting with the janitor, I wander down the stairwell. After a quick video linkup with the other Bitcoin Billionaires telling them of the progress with Mr. Kline, I feel a renewed sense of purpose and pride.
Now to deal with the janitor. I was right about Peters being an elderly, doddering sort of man. But his face is still lively, with intelligent, pale-blue eyes. We sit in a corner in the ground floor hallway at Peters' request rather than taking a "stuffy meeting room" upstairs. Fine by me—the further we stay away from Natasha, the better.
"I need the thermostats set to a pleasant room temperature on the third floor," I tell him. "Sometimes it's too hot and sometimes too cold."
Larry Peters props his ankle on his knee and grins amiably at me. "We can set 'em for you, no problem."
"We?" I ask.
"Oh, Jess always does it."
"Jess?"
"The cleaner."
"But," —I shoot him a stern look— "you can handle it yourself, can't you?"
"Arrrrrh, I can."
"The security locks on the outside will need to be re-programmed, too."
He nods.
"Does anyone know the codes apart from yourself?"
"Jess does." He smiles. "I'll get her to change them."
"No," I say firmly. "I'm paying you to do it."
His forehead creases in lines of dismay. "But she's a good girl, Sir. She knows all the tricks, and don't worry, you can trust that lass with your life. I couldn't do my job without her. Wouldn't dream of it, no, no. She'll be round on Tuesday to give the place a good clean over, and we can sort out everything then."
"She won't."
He blinks. "What day then?"
"No day. I haven't hired her."
He takes his leg down. "You fired Jess?"
"I didn't fire anyone," I say calmly. "She wasn't employed to begin with."
"Oh, good Lord," Larry fingers his collar. "But why? What have you got against Jess?"
"Nothing at all. I have...my own cleaning company."
"Which one?"
"It doesn't matter," I say. How many people are going to ask me about this?
"Ah." He nods knowingly. "Times are hard. But Jess'd cut you a deal. She's good like that."
Like her, he thinks I've hired someone off the books to save money.
"So, would you kindly sort these matters out now?" I say. "The locks and the thermostats?"
"Right now?" His gaze jumps around the room, refusing to engage with mine.
"Yes, Mr. Peters, Right now, if you please."
He swallows visibly, his gnarled old hands clutching his collar tighter as if he wants to strangle himself. "Yes, of course. Of course." He opens his mouth to say something and then changes his mind. He rubs his whiskery face.
He rises slowly, gives me a series of nods, and ambles toward the cabinets which house the control boxes. After several moments of muttering to himself and stroking his chin, he fiddles with some buttons, punching the air in exasperation when something doesn't do what it's supposed to. From where I'm standing, it all seems like an elaborate charade. Then, crouched over, he pulls out his phone from a pocket in his vest.
"Don't tell me," I say, "You don't know how?"
He shakes his head. "I have to call Jess," he mumbles.
I squeeze my temples. "There's no other way?"
His dismal shake of the head indicates there isn't.
"Fine." I exhale. "Give me her number. I'll do it myself later."
Why do I so clearly picture a pair of dark-lashed, green eyes sparkling in victory as I type in her number into my cont
act list?
5
JESS
TELLING MARTHA NEXT MORNING that I failed to win a contract with Egan Harwood is tough to do because for all our pretense of being equal partners, the underlying assumption is that I am the boss, the capable one of the two of us.
The flash of fear in her eyes twists my gut.
"He just didn't want to even think about it. Like a brick wall," I explain. "I'm sorry I didn't believe you when you told me first."
"No, Jess. You had to see and hear for yourself to believe."
"I still can't quite believe him." I heave out a long breath. "What an attitude!"
"But good-looking, right?"
"Yes, he's got those perfect features that scream 'punch me'."
She snorts. "I'm surprised you didn't."
"I was tempted."
We're wheeling our cleaning trolleys side by side down the main atrium of St. John's hospital, for the most part being ignored by visitors and outpatients alike, so we're free to conduct our business briefing in private.
Every Tuesday and Thursday we clean at the hospital which is beginning to look like our only regular source of income. Luckily, we get extra pay here—danger money we call it—because some wards have highly contaminated environments where we have to wear masks and use special disposable gloves when we disinfect the beds so as to avoid contracting a contagious disease.
We're outside the HIV ward, pulling on our blue gloves, squeezing the tight latex over our knuckles. My mind is working at a hundred miles an hour trying to find a solution.
"When we're done, I'm going to go up and ask that new hospital staff chief if we can do more cleaning around here," I say. "It's the only way."
"But I thought you wanted to diversify," Martha says.
I shrug. "We don't have that luxury. We need more income now."
She nods sadly. "Yeah."
Martha doesn't love the hospital gig. It's too far from her house—ten tube stops and a bus ride. And she has memories of her mom and dad dying in this very hospital. But we have no other choice.