by AD Davies
“Adam. What’s going on? Where’s Harry?”
“I’m still in France. Is Harry not there?”
“It’s one a.m. and he never came back from his swimming. He’s usually home by eight. He isn’t answering his phone.”
I lowered the Samsung. I could hear Jayne calling my name from the earpiece. The rain had stopped completely now. The helicopter engine no longer whined. Boots shuffled. Clothes rubbed together. But it was Jayne’s crackled plea of, “Talk to me, Adam!” that fired the images to life.
Jayne and Harry, standing beside me at my mother’s funeral.
Jayne, at my first PI office, bringing me coffee, water, and Alka-Seltzer.
Harry, introducing me to fine single malt.
Jayne, insisting I remove my shirt in the office so she could iron it properly.
“It was not me,” Fanuco said, his head still bowed. “Curtis Benson took action when he discovered your phone was not working.”
He couldn’t get hold of me. Add that to my smuggling Lily out of the country…
Fanuco added, “I am sorry for your friend. But all I care about is the information stolen from Mr. Benson.”
“It can hurt you.” My grip tightened around the phone. “The pen drive.”
“Yes.”
Bertrand made grab for his phone. I pulled it away and raised it shakily to my ear.
Harry, making crude innuendos about his love life.
Jayne, cracking more subtle sex jokes.
Harry, face-to-face with Sleazy Stu, telling him to leave me alone.
They went on and on. I mopped my forehead, images of the past blurring with possible futures—
Me, at a graveside next to Jayne as they bury her husband.
Me, telling Jayne it was my fault, all my fault.
“Jayne?” I said.
“I’m still here.”
“Curtis Benson took him.”
She went silent on the other end. I was aware of eyes on me. Not all of the dozen men and women in uniform would speak English, but they all knew something was wrong. Gardien Bertrand, who had been willing to risk my life a short time ago, watched me with an expression that showed he did have some semblance of a heart after all.
“Lovey?” Jayne said.
I turned from Bertrand and strode toward Fanuco, my feet sinking a couple of centimeters with each measured step. I said, “Yeah.”
With a shake in her voice, she asked, “What have you done?”
“I don’t know.”
“You rescued that young girl. The stripper.” Her tone was calmer, but I could tell it was taking real effort. “They took Harry instead.”
“Yes,” I said.
“You will listen to their instructions, Adam. You will do everything they say. Everything.”
“Yes, of course.”
“I mean it. Do not deviate, do not go off on some flight of fancy or try to improvise. You’ll get him back for me.”
“I will.” I steadied my own tone to match hers. “I’ll do whatever I have to.” I hung up.
Fanuco raised his head at last. “Report in.” He reeled off a phone number. Bertrand tried to stop him, but I held up one hand, the phone at arm’s length. Two GIPN guys hurried my way, hands on the butts of their guns, but I dialed the number before they reached me. Bertrand gave the approaching officers a look that stopped them.
Benson answered. “You in a lot a’ trouble.”
“I’m doing what you asked,” I said. “I still have five more days.”
“You gonna get my burglar girl an’ her dumbass no-mark of a boyfriend back here—”
“This isn’t about revenge.” I switched the phone to my other hand. “I know you want me to bring them to you so you can extract the information about what they’d done with the pen drive. Right?” Pause. Silence. “Am I right?”
He theatrically sucked his teeth on the other end. “You want the old bastard back unharmed? You bring everything to me.”
“You only need the encrypted drive.”
“I need what I tell you I need, you arrogant prick. You thought my leverage over your ass was gone soon as you got the stripper hid, but now the deal is the same as before. You bring those two to me, and the Gruffalo lives. You don’t, I kill him. I hunt you down and I rip you apart, and I will find that whore you took from me and I’ll feed her to biggest, baddest sadistic mommy’s boy I can find. And I know a lot of sadistic mommy’s boys. A lot.”
I forced my breathing to regulate. My injuries seemed so superficial now. I said, “I will bring you the drives and whatever money is left. You’re welcome to do what you want to Gareth Delingpole, but I will not endanger Sarah. That is the deal. The drive for Harry. Anything else is gravy.”
“Gravy, huh?” He was silent for a moment. “I hate gravy. But you want your lady? You want a pass on the retard? Then you gotta earn that pass. One last thing you gotta do.”
“Name it,” I said.
“My buddy you got there. Vila Fanuco? Free him.”
“I can’t! He’s in handcuffs—”
“I wanna hear from him in thirty minutes or I cut the old bastard’s thumbs off.” Benson hung up.
Fanuco nodded like he expected that. “Good deal?”
I handed the phone back to Bertrand.
“More problems for you?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“I am sorry, but I must take you for interrogation. You are not yet under arrest but I must cuff you. Precaution.”
The medics hefted Umbrella Man, now strapped to the stretcher, and dashed toward their chopper.
I was sure Benson would carry out his threat to mutilate a man who literally meant more to me than my own life. To stop it, all I had to do was get Fanuco past a dozen highly-trained GIPN officers.
Bertrand took my arm and dangled the cuffs toward me.
“Wait.” I shook him off and threw myself on one of the graves. “I have to find her.” I pawed desperately at the mud. “I can’t go home without knowing. She’s dead, I know she’s dead.”
Two GIPN officers grabbed my arms, one saying, “Non, non, c’est evidence.”
Bertrand gave firm orders and they relinquished me, and I threw myself on the mound again, scraping handful after handful, digging deeper and deeper. Bertrand placed one hand on my back, his cuffs dangling from the other. He said, “Mr. Park, I do not want to hurt you. But if I cannot bind your wrists I will order my men to do it.”
I barely noticed the medevac unit taking off. I kept on going, broken finger screaming at me to stop. “She’s in one of these graves. She’s under this dirt.”
“If your girl is here we will find her. I promise.”
My hand scraped something hard and smooth, and soon I was looking at a brown-stained face, not a skeleton, but a person, skin leathery and taut over their skull, chewed in places.
“Look!” I cried. “It’s her!”
Bertrand finally lost patience. He took me by the shoulders and heaved me to my feet. I spun, grabbed his cuffs, and attached one bracelet to his wrist, the other to mine. I snatched his gun from its holster and dragged his cuffed hand across his body away from the weapon. Every cop drew a firearm, but I was already moving us up against the police helicopter. I gave the pilot a “don’t do it” look and he raised his hands to say “take it easy.”
Bertrand said, “What are you doing, you fool?”
“No one’s called me a fool before,” I said. “I can tick that off my bucket list. Keep them back.”
I had no idea where I learned to be so glib in such a position. Occasions like an Aussie biker gang descending upon the quiet bar in which I was enjoying a cool glass of VB and trying to tempt a local farmer’s girl into inappropriate relations—sure, glib is fine. But not where I could go to jail or die in a slow-motion hail of bullets.
That’s right, I was actually picturing my death in slo-mo. How screwed up is that?
Fanuco struggled to his feet, hands still cuffed behind him
. “A new mission?”
“Get in,” I told him.
I helped him into the helicopter with my gun-hand—“Careful with that,” he said—and then struggled inside with Bertrand. The gardien de la paix resisted minimally, and as the engines whined to life again the cops outside ran back and forth, torn between securing their prisoners and aiding one of their own.
The rotor reached its optimum speed and we lifted off, and swept over trees, over fields and other holes like the one hiding dozens of bodies. I rummaged in Bertrand’s pocket, found his handcuff key, and freed Fanuco, who put on a headset and gave the pilot orders in French. The helicopter banked sharply, the nose dipped, and we sped toward a blanket of lights that I took to be the metropolitan city of Paris.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The chopper touched down on a helipad atop a building at least fifty stories high, from which I could see the Eiffel Tower illuminated about a mile away. I backed out, keeping Bertrand wrapped up in his own arm so he couldn’t make a move on the gun, and as I awaited instructions from Fanuco, who was cuffing the pilot to the skids, I noted other landmarks—the Musée d’Orsay, the glittering Seine—and concluded we were south of the river. I couldn’t name a structure with a heli-pad in Paris, but apparently Fanuco was able to land on a fifty-story building with next to no warning.
Battered by the downdraft, he ushered me and Bertrand to a doorway held by a man in overalls to whom Fanuco handed a wad of damp cash. In French, I heard him say, “More later,” and we pushed inside onto a metal staircase that wound down past machines, clunking and whirring—an elevator pulley and cable. Bertrand remained compliant throughout. We hurried out of the maintenance area into a plush, blue-carpeted corridor and left a trail of filth in our wake. The mud and grime from the quarry would probably get some cleaner fired tomorrow.
Fanuco called the elevator.
Bertrand said, “What do you plan to do, Monsieur Park?”
I watched the numbers illuminate in turn. We were on the fifty-seventh floor.
I said, “I don’t know.”
“You will go to jail here,” Bertrand said. “No doubt.”
“I’m sorry. But someone I care for is … has been taken…”
“In exchange for freeing me?” Fanuco said. “How sweet.”
“I have to finish the job,” I told him. “Freeing you was just a clause he seemed to enjoy.”
“So you would have let Gardien Bertrand take me?”
The doors opened. “Of course.” I followed him in.
He smiled that lizard-grin of his. “So what will you have me do with him? My old pal Pierre?”
“Let him go as soon as we’re clear.”
“Let him go, yes. Yes.” He thought about it, a pantomime pause. “Or … we kill him. Only he saw us close up. Apart from the man who checked your good health and the pilot, and they can be bought or … otherwise persuaded.”
Bertrand watched him constantly.
Fanuco gripped Bertrand by the jaw and pursed his lips into a comedy-kiss. “If it were the other way around? Me and you alone? What would you do, Pierre?”
“Kill you,” Bertrand said, although the words were distorted.
Fanuco let go. “Mr. Park, you show excellent instincts for this. You could be a valuable asset.”
“No thanks,” I said. “I’m already going to jail. I hope it isn’t for nothing.”
“Oh, it won’t be for nothing, I promise you that.”
Fanuco had pressed for the fourth floor, and we came out into a corridor with no carpet. Decorators’ ladders and tarpaulins lay along the walls. Inside the end room, we were greeted by a wall of pane-glass windows looking out over the city. A mere four floors up, and we could still see the Eiffel Tower illuminated a mile north. This room was also bare but for girders and an array of building tools and machinery.
Fanuco relieved me of the gun and said, “Uncuff yourself.”
I obeyed. I rubbed my own wrist as it came free, but left one bracelet on Bertrand’s.
Fanuco aimed the weapon at him. “I kill you here, I get away. Easy.”
“Someone will find you,” Bertrand said.
“You gambled your career, did you not?”
Bertrand averted his eyes.
“When I escape,” Fanuco said. “Sorry, when we escape, Mr. Park and I, you will be retired. On a reduced pension, perhaps?”
Bertrand nodded.
Fanuco took a couple of steps back. “It was never personal. That man, his family, they happened when I was an angry person. Emotionally unstable. My country had just come out of a war. My skills were no longer required.”
“Skills?” The word spat in contempt from Bertrand’s mouth. “You murdered your competitors and took their business.”
“I murdered my bosses too,” he said with the air of a teacher correcting a student. “But I am not that person any more. I regret loss of life. I kill now only when it is necessary. Sammy LeHavre was correct when he said I take too many chances. But it was the Vietnamese who taught me that. Their discipline, their tactics.”
“This is why you wear a new face now? Why we have heard little from you for a year or more?”
“Partly. Yes.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
Fanuco said, “Why am I telling him this, Mr. Park?”
I took Bertrand’s cuffed wrist and attached it to a sturdy-looking pipe. Fanuco lowered the gun but kept his distance.
I said, “He wants you to understand why he’s letting you live.”
“Indeed, Adam,” Fanuco said. “You may even live yourself.”
Bertrand looked us both up and down. “You two seem friendly.”
“I need him,” I said. “That’s all.” I placed Bertrand’s mobile well out of reach. “Leave it on. They’re tracking it already. Or the chopper.”
I moved for the door, but Fanuco had one last thing to tell Bertrand. “If you wish to have a small chance of saving your career, be at your finest monument at sunrise. If your people have freed you by then.”
I didn’t care what Fanuco was talking about. We didn’t speak as the elevator descended to the ground floor, or when we exited the lobby with no guards. We passed CCTV cameras whose red lights did not glow or blink and glided straight into a waiting limousine. Fanuco talked on the phone in an Eastern-European language of which I had no knowledge, while the city zipped by outside. If Bertrand’s threats were achievable, I’d be living here for many years to come, albeit in far less luxury than a stretch limousine.
We soon merged with the night-time traffic, and the city swallowed us up.
Chapter Twenty-Five
It was about three a.m., and the tabacs and bars were still open. Old people still sat inside, younger more wrapped-up folk sipping alfresco beer and liqueurs. Laughter. Arm-waving discussion and debate. Kissing, hand-holding, eye-gazing. If they knew what had passed them by, would they be so calm, so serene?
“Bosnia,” I said. “You’re from Bosnia.”
He cracked a window and street noises filled the car. Even a passing argument outside an XXX club made its way through the glass.
“Yes,” Fanuco finally said. “A year before I lost my wife and daughters, my mother and father were killed. I was away, training with British and American Special Forces.”
“Special Forces,” I said. Coincidences happen from time-to-time, but this meant something. “You know a short-arse with a bad temper, hangs out with Benson? Good with his fists.”
“I have met many people. Our paths may have crossed.”
The limo veered sharply off the road and down a steep incline into a parking garage. A barrier swung up and we advanced past high-value cars and 4x4s all gleaming in the fluorescent light, until we reached a service elevator. We both exited the limo, entered the elevator, and the doors closed.
He said, “You wish to find the girl. I want you to trace the pen-drive. I have something here that will aid you greatly in this.”
“Gian
g?” I said.
“Giang?”
“Yes. The man you murdered back there, that gang master. He asked if that was how I found him.”
“Giang … I do not know what that is. I have heard it mentioned, I think. A place, a route, a person, I do not know. It may be one reason the authorities have made many arrests recently.”
“And the reason I’m being employed to do your work for you.” I thought back to Agent Frank telling me to stay out of his business. I said, “The data stick is too valuable to risk getting into the right hands. Co-operation between organizations.”
The elevator hummed.
I said, “You think Giang is the source? The Vietnamese using whatever it is to eliminate competition?”
“It is not connected to us. The Vietnamese have their own losses. We have a leak, or several leaks. But yes, this is why you are looking for our data. If you are caught, you only mention the girl. Understand?”
We stepped out into a corridor adorned with flowers and solid oak furnishings. Fanuco turned a corner and swept toward a dreadlocked black man dressed in a grey Armani suit. He could’ve been a stock broker but for the sub-machinegun across his chest.
With Mr. Dreadlocks now accompanying us, we came to a lobby of sorts. A reception. A well-dressed young woman awaited orders behind a low, half-moon-shaped desk, overtly antique, as if it belonged to a lost age, or even a museum.
The receptionist said, “Bonsoir,” to Mr. Dreadlocks, nodded—virtually bowed—to Fanuco, then went back to smiling sweetly at nothing. I didn’t merit a greeting of any kind. Or perhaps my appearance put her off: caked in mud and sweat, hobbling with exhaustion, cradling a deformed left hand. Which, by the way, had begun to jab into my wrist.
A click released double oak doors. I entered the room after Fanuco, Mr. Dreadlocks a couple of steps behind me.
Fanuco held my good hand tenderly, and led me through into the suite. “Mr. Park … Adam … I cannot ever be accused of being a man of my word. Lying is the staple of any successful businessman. But in this case…”
A chandelier hung in what I assumed was the living room. An open door revealed a bathroom with terracotta tiles and stone-effect bath. We passed through into a dim bedroom boasting a four-poster bed, on which lay a scruffy pile of thick white bathrobes. I was so exhausted I thought I might drop on my arse, so the strange hand-holding gesture was actually welcome.