Security guards patrolled the empty corridors at ten-minute intervals. To stay ahead of the patrols, she and Nick had to time their work perfectly. In and out in thirty minutes, four minutes per floor.
As Nick approached the door, the security guard blocked their way, FREDERICK emblazoned above his jacket pocket. A fringe of silver hair rimmed his bald pate. He had the flushed and bloated face of an inveterate schnapps drinker. He wanted to know where Hans and Roger were.
“Off today,” Harper told him. “Roger, on holiday. En vacances. Hans, en congé de maladie.” Out sick.
After a moment’s hesitation, Frederick leaned in and examined both their IDs, gave them a challenging look, then grumbled something and slipped back to his guard post inside the front door.
Nick rolled the document drum across the lobby and onto an elevator with Harper following close. Behind the security desk were three younger guards engaged in a spirited conversation. As the elevator doors slid shut, she saw Frederick pick up a desk phone and punch in a number, his focus squarely on her face.
“Up, up, and away,” Nick said.
They rode to the top floor, where the executive suites of the president and four VPs were located. Lester Albion’s computer was her first goal. Before them, the carpeted hallway was silent, the after-hours lights dimmed. A two-man security team rounded the far corner and passed them, nodding as they went by.
Located at the far end of the hallway, a blue plastic bin held the confidential papers designated for shredding. As they’d drilled, Nick headed that way, and Harper waited till the guards boarded the elevators and the doors shut, then turned back to the presidential suite, her heart accelerating.
The outer door of the office was unlocked, the heavy double doors to Albion’s office stood ajar. She pushed them open, entered, unzipped her fanny pack, arrayed her tools on Albion’s blotter. A glint of light caught her eye, and she looked up to see Ben Westfield smiling from the far wall. An Albion advertisement from so far back in time that Westfield’s face was baby smooth, yet his eyes already blazed with the manly vitality that would define his career.
Harper got to work. She tipped the iMac backward and settled it onto the desk and began to pry loose the glass. Working smoothly, her practice sessions with Sal still fresh. Minutes later she was snipping the last of the connecting wires from the hard drive when the voice called out.
“Arrêtez!”
Harper’s hands froze. She looked up.
Frederick stood in the doorway. He’d drawn his sidearm, but it was still aimed at the floor. Behind him stood a stocky guard with red hair and yellow-tinted glasses. His handgun was still holstered.
“Who are you, what are you doing?”
This was one of the worst-case scenarios she and Nick had rehearsed, but for several seconds the words they’d scripted snagged in her throat.
“I was instructed that Mr. Albion wanted to recycle his hard drive. It’s part of our regular service.”
“No, this is untrue. I telephoned Kintana and spoke with Julia, the dispatcher. Roger and Hans indeed reported for work this afternoon. You are a fraud. You will raise your hands and come with me. Police will be called.”
A sheen of sweat had appeared on Frederick’s forehead. Dread quivered in his eyes as if he’d never drawn his weapon or confronted an intruder. A safe, uneventful career thrown into turmoil.
“Come around from behind the desk. Keep your hands aloft.”
Harper set down the pliers and stripped off the surgical gloves and let them drop on the desk.
“There’s been a mistake,” she said. “Julia misinformed you. Herbert and I are the official replacements. You must call the Kintana offices again and this time ask to speak to my supervisor, Margaret Bauer.” Buying time with a lie.
He stiffened and a flash of worry crossed his eyes. The possibility that Frederick might have mistakenly accosted two honorable workers and would now suffer a public humiliation deepened the flush in his face.
Behind the two guards, Nick edged through the office door. In his right hand he held a black leather sap—a last minute gift from Sal. Take it, take it, I’ve seen how these things go wrong, crazy shit flying in from nowhere.
Nick raised the blackjack above his shoulder, eased forward.
She managed to keep her face empty as Nick took another step, cocked his arm, drew a breath, and nailed the chunky guard on the edge of his skull. The man gasped, plowed into Frederick’s backside.
Frederick lost his balance, heaved toward her, and his shooting hand came up and his pistol discharged, an earsplitting blast, the slug tearing a ragged groove across the desktop, spraying splinters and debris into Harper’s face, missing her arm by inches.
Nick stepped in and clubbed Frederick, hit him again and again until the big man’s legs buckled and he wilted to the floor. Nick stooped over the man and continued to pound with the blackjack, sickening thuds.
She shouted for him to stop, but he struck the man twice more before she rounded the desk and seized his arm and shook loose the sap.
Nick was panting, his face pale. He looked at her with bewildered eyes.
She kneeled, rolled Frederick onto his back, and felt his throat for a pulse. Faint and slow but still ticking.
Nick hobbled across the room and dropped into a leather chair.
“Is he . . . is he okay?”
“Barely.”
The other guard stirred.
She dug through the fanny pack, found the flex-cuffs Sal had insisted they take along. She zipped them tight around the guard’s wrists and ankles. Nick was slumped in the chair.
“I thought he shot you,” Nick said. “I thought you were hurt. Isn’t that what you wanted, to put him away? Isn’t that how we do things now?”
She stared into his eyes, trying to see beyond the blur of rage.
“Need to move,” she said. “That shot, somebody had to hear it.”
She cuffed Frederick. Felt again for his pulse. Still faint and slow.
Rolling the collection bin, Nick followed her to the elevator. Inside the car, he settled against the opposite wall, keeping his distance.
“I fucked up,” he said, eyes down. “I’m sorry.”
“We’re okay. We skip the other floors, I grab Naff’s hard drive and go.”
“We could leave now,” he said. “Just walk out. Why risk it?”
Fourth floor, third.
“You go to the van. Roll the bin back, don’t talk to the guards, don’t even look their way, just put the bin inside like everything’s normal, then warm up the engine. Five minutes. If I’m even a second longer, you leave.”
“We can’t separate. I won’t do that.”
She held out Albion’s hard drive. Nick shook his head.
“Take it, Nick. Go back to the truck and wait. Five minutes, no more than that. Promise me.”
The elevator door opened in the lobby, and Nick took the hard drive from her, slipped it into a jacket pocket, and rolled the stainless steel bin across the lobby.
One of the guards rose and called out for him to halt.
“Go on, Nick,” Harper said. “I’ll take care of this.”
Nick continued to the door and pushed through it onto the sidewalk. It was dark outside, snow coming thicker. A layer of it building on the street.
The guard, a stocky man with a bushy mustache, was hurrying after Nick, but she intercepted him at the door.
“We straightened everything out with Frederick. He spoke to the wrong party at Kintana and received bad information.”
“Where is he? He doesn’t answer his radio.”
“He and his partner found a tray of leftover tarts and are having a snack.”
“What floor?”
“Five,” Harper said.
The young guard gave her a long, suspicious once-over.
“You wait here,” he said. “Don’t go anywhere.”
“I have a schedule, other businesses to attend to.”
�
�You will do as I say and wait exactly here.”
He pointed at a spot on the floor and marched to the elevator, and Harper stood in place until the doors closed, then she trotted down the corridor to Adrian Naff’s office in the security suite.
Naff’s name was etched on the double glass doors. Lights off, door unlocked. Oddly trusting, though she supposed there was little of value to pilfer in a food conglomerate’s headquarters. Computer hardware, office supplies, but not much else to entice a thief.
As she’d done in Albion’s office, she arrayed the tools, tipped the computer onto its back, and set to work. Moving fast but with a measured focus. When she lifted off the monitor glass and was looking for a place to rest it, she saw the book.
It lay facedown on the left side of Naff’s desk. Deena’s piercing eyes were staring up at her, and Harper’s own face in a smaller frame below Deena’s. It was the back jacket of The Last Bloom.
She swung around, half expecting to see Naff standing in the doorway. An icy wave of prickles passed across her shoulders. No one was there. The corridor quiet, only the hush of the big building swelling around her.
So Albion’s chief of security had Harper in his sights, already making a study of her. Just as she was making a study of him.
She drew a long breath and got back to work, digging through the strata of Naff’s computer until she’d reached the hard drive. Checked her watch. It had taken only four minutes. Hustle out the front doors and still make her deadline with Nick. She snipped the last of the wires, disconnected the two remaining cables, and drew out the unit, the size of a deck of cards.
She stripped off the gloves, tucked away her tools, slipped the hard drive in her jumpsuit pocket, and headed back to the lobby. As she rounded the last corner, she halted and drew back.
The guard who’d questioned her earlier was talking to a man in jeans and a black turtleneck. Topcoat over his arm. His profile was all she could see, but it was all she needed.
She’d studied a dozen different versions of him in the passport photos Sal had uncovered. Dark eyes, strong chin, wearing his jet-black hair swept back. Resembling the version of Adrian Naff she’d seen in the hostage video. A bit frayed at the edges, but tough, a cool-headed pro.
The guard’s gaze strayed from his boss’s face, and before Harper could draw back, he’d caught sight of her and was motioning in her direction, pointing, then beckoning her to join them.
She came forward, Naff’s hard drive suddenly heavy in her pocket.
The men watched her silently.
When Naff spoke to her, it was in English.
“Austin tells me you and your partner are subbing for Hans and Roger today.”
“Correct.”
Adrian Naff regarded her with frank, unguarded curiosity. In that instant, she caught a whiff of melancholy in his eyes, a dreamy faraway look that revealed more about his character than he probably intended. A man whose work did not have his full attention.
He leaned toward her and read the ID pinned to her uniform. She cut a look to her watch. Six minutes had passed. If Nick had followed her directions, he was well away.
“As you see, my name is Sarah Ann Pearson,” Harper said.
Naff didn’t seem to recognize her. Maybe the uniform was throwing him off or her long hair tucked under her cap. That book-jacket photograph on his office desk was a couple of years out-of-date, a soft-focus flattering shot in full makeup, not at all how she looked tonight, her face grown gaunt and pale.
“You’re American?”
“My father, yes, but I am Swiss.”
“I believe I’ve seen you before.”
“It’s possible, I suppose, but I would have remembered you.”
“Oh, really? And why is that? Am I so memorable?”
The guard was looking back and forth between them with uncertainty. Was this flirtatious or something else entirely? Harper wasn’t sure herself.
“Your smile,” Harper said. “It’s rather unique.”
“How so?”
“As if you practice before a mirror to fine-tune its authenticity.”
By slow degrees, the grin vanished, and as his eyes cooled, she thought she saw in them a first spark of recognition.
“And you found everything in good order tonight?” Naff asked as if buying another moment while he rummaged his memory.
“Everything was fine, sir. Now I must be going. Many more documents to dispose of this evening.”
His eyes roamed her face with a sharpening focus, on the threshold of calling her out.
“Good evening, gentlemen.”
She made it to the door. Reflected in the glass, she saw Naff marching in her direction. She pushed through and stepped onto the snowy sidewalk.
The van was gone. Nick had obeyed. She glanced up Bahnhofstrasse, then back the other direction. No sign of him. At a fast clip she headed south, back toward the Widder.
Behind her, Naff called out for her to stop.
She kept walking, the hard drive tapping against her thigh.
Two more steps, he was beside her, his shoulder brushing hers.
“That took a lot of nerve, McDaniel.”
“I have nerve to spare.” She kept her stride steady.
“What were you looking for, if I might ask?”
“Just getting the lay of the land.”
“I’d like to hear how you pulled it off, those uniforms, the rest of it. Let’s go back to my office and we’ll chat.”
He took a light grip on her upper arm, but she shrugged it off.
“I have a previous engagement. Sorry.”
“You’re a cool customer, aren’t you?”
“Touch me again and find out.”
A half block ahead, the Kintana van rounded the corner and came coasting down the snowy street toward her.
“You know, I have orders to remove you from the playing field. Permanently.”
“Whose orders?”
“You have any idea why someone would want you killed? Because I don’t follow orders I don’t understand.”
“Can’t help you,” she said.
“Does questioning orders make me a bad soldier?”
“In this case, I believe you’re making the right call.”
“Well, you would think that, wouldn’t you?”
“My ride’s here. I’ll be in touch.”
“I’m counting on it.”
The van pulled up, door slid open, and she climbed aboard.
She slammed it behind her, and as the van pulled away, she watched Adrian Naff lope alongside, calling out to Harper to stop, get out, she was in danger.
The van accelerated down Bahnhofstrasse, leaving Naff behind.
She looked over at Nick. But he wasn’t at the wheel. Nick was lying on his back on the rear floor, duct tape wrapping his wrists and ankles, more duct tape over his mouth. A gash on his forehead, his eyes wild. He was thrashing against his restraints. Hans and Roger were gone.
At the wheel, Spider smiled at her.
“I always had a special fondness,” he said, “for a woman in uniform.”
TWENTY-NINE
Mid-March, Zurich, Switzerland
Larissa Bixel marched into Lester Albion’s office red-faced and winded as though she might have sprinted from the elevator. Helmut Mullen followed in her wake, his hair unruffled, his tight smile in place.
“Well, we’re all here,” Adrian said and turned to Albion.
It was one in the morning. Half an hour earlier, when Adrian phoned Bixel to tell her she was wanted in Lester Albion’s office immediately, all she’d said was “This better be good.”
“Oh, it is,” he said. “And bring your boy Helmut.”
Albion didn’t look up at the new arrivals. He was studying the screen on the laptop Adrian had set up. Scrolling through dozens of his recent e-mails and files, everything Adrian rescued from the backup system, checking to see if any corporate secrets might’ve been stolen.
“I believe w
e’re okay,” Albion said to Naff. “I don’t think we’ve been severely compromised. A few financial specifics about the Marburg transaction I’d rather not be made public, but they’d only be minor embarrassments. Other than that, I see no problem with what was taken. Certainly no top secrets, not that we have any of those.”
“What’s going on?” Bixel said.
“Shall I fill them in?” Adrian asked.
Albion waggled his hand, get on with it. He had on a rumpled white shirt and beltless trousers, and his eyes were still puffy from sleep. With a finger, he traced the scar that ran the length of his desktop. On his face was a wistful, distracted look, as if he were bidding farewell to a dear friend.
Behind Bixel, Albion’s young daughter peeked through the open door and asked if it was time to go yet.
“Not yet, sugar, just a few minutes.” When she’d gone back to the waiting room, Albion apologized for the interruption. His wife was away, and he couldn’t leave the child unattended.
Adrian swiveled the laptop around and brought up the videos. He’d spliced the three security clips together to show Albion the extent of the incursion. He tilted back the screen, and Bixel and Helmut stepped close to the edge of the desk to watch.
A woman and a man about her age, both dressed in the uniforms of Kintana Destruction Services, entered the building, passing a few feet in front of the security desk, then stepped into the lobby elevator.
Cut to Albion’s office, where the same woman entered and set about methodically excavating Albion’s computer, eventually extracting his hard drive. A few moments later, Frederick Perse, a veteran Albion guard, appeared in the doorway, his gun drawn, and confronted the woman. Frederick was backed up by a younger guard Adrian didn’t know well. Enter the woman’s male accomplice, sneaking in behind them, raising a sap and striking the younger guard. Bumped from behind, Frederick fired his weapon, the slug grazing the desktop inches from the woman’s arm.
“Stop the video,” Bixel said.
Adrian pressed “Pause.”
“Who is this person and what is she after?”
When They Come for You Page 17