They had left their cell phones in the two cars they had arrived with. The two dog handlers with their dogs and one of the bomb disposal experts went to the cars. The expert phoned Christina. Half an hour later two women and two men, the men in their early fifties and the women in their thirties, arrived and took over. “Remove the floor, tear down the ceiling, leave nothing unturned,” Christine had told them, “and take Dr Röntgen along and x-ray every square inch of the place.” Dr Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen is the name of the man who discovered x-rays towards the end of the 19th century. In honour of this discovery the team had decided to call their mobile x-ray machine Dr Röntgen (although not one team member was able to pronounce the name properly).
“What exactly are we looking for?” one of the forensics asked.
“I don’t have the foggiest idea. Just don’t come back empty-handed.” Christina replied. She had spent nearly half a decade of her teenage years in London. It was probably for this reason that whenever she just as easily could have said ‘I don’t know’, she preferred to say ‘I don’t have the foggiest idea’.
9
The two plain clothed policemen led Nancy and Tony into a small ground floor conference room. On their way to the room Tony noticed that they walked past at least half a dozen security cameras. He realised that whatever is going to happen next, it will most likely mean that he will have to change his identity again.
He has been living as Tony Jackson comfortably for the past four and a half years. The police in several countries, but especially in England, France and in the USA, had pictures of him and various names associated with these pictures in their databases. Most pictures showed little resemblance with the way he looked today. He was a master of disguise.
He didn’t like it the way things developed this time. His face, as he walked through the airport, was his real face. None of the pictures of him in the databases, he was confident of this, showed his actual face. In the past, pictures of him were taken by surveillance cameras when he was in the process of doing a con job, when he had been disguised.
He had no idea why the police was interested in Nancy. However, he knew that he would be by her side. He was still making an effort not to admit to himself that he was in love with this intelligent and beautiful woman and he suspected that Nancy found herself in a similar situation about her feelings for him. They were both free and independent people and they had been free and independent for many years. They loved their lives. Falling in love with somebody was not planned. But, deep inside, he knew that it had happened. Whatever this woman had done, he said to himself, can’t have been worse than my crimes, unless she killed somebody … No. He could not believe that she had killed someone. He was sure that she was not wanted by the police for murder. He knew it in his heart, so to say; besides, Tony reasoned, if she had committed a crime of that nature the police would have put her in handcuffs by now.
The police officer who a few minutes earlier had demonstrated a more polite and articulate approach introduced himself as commissaire Daniel Brice. He didn’t bother to introduce his colleague or the uniformed officer who had also entered the room with the trolley and the suitcases. But it was obvious that he was the boss when he dismissed the uniformed officer simply by pointing to the door combined with a slight nod. His English, apart from an accent, was close to perfect.
“You are calling yourself Nancy Baliva today,” he said looking at Nancy, “that’s a good neutral name. I like it.”
“It is my real name, you know it.”
“Maybe.”
“What maybe?”
“Okay.”
“Tell us why we are here,” Nancy asked. She no longer looked and sounded tense. If she had been in a bookstore and asked for a certain book her voice would have sounded the same.
“You know why you are here.”
“I don’t. Tell me, or we will leave.”
“Many people in Paris paid you a lot of money,” Daniel Brice continued after a short pause.
Nancy did not reply. She kept looking at him with the same questioning look that she had when she asked the first time why they were here.
“Huge amounts of money,” the commissaire added.
Turning to Tony Nancy said, “Let’s go. This gentleman speaks English but he does not seem to understand the meaning of a simple question.”
Tony, without hesitating one second, walked to their two suitcases, took one in each hand and walked towards the door. The other plain clothed policeman stepped into his way and aggressively grabbed him on the shoulder. He was a tall man, like Tony, and looked like someone who had stopped men from walking or running away before. What happened next, happened so fast that later nobody, except Tony, would have been able to describe it.
The officer, who had tried to stop Tony, found himself sitting on the floor. He had difficulty breathing and pressed both his hands over the lower part of his rib cage, over the area where his liver was located. He tried to say something, but couldn’t. His eyes pleaded for help, as if he was afraid of fainting, or something worse. Tony got hold of him underneath his arms and pulled him up, but the man was unable to stand. Tony pulled him towards a chair and placed him on the chair and then pulled a table in front of him so that he could bend forward and rest the upper part of his body on the table.
Turning to the other police officer, who together with Nancy had watched what had happened in astonishment, Tony asked, and by the sound of his voice the question he asked was calm, genuine and polite, “Is it okay if we leave now?”
The man looked at Tony intensely, as if he was trying to remember where he had seen him before or as if he was memorizing every aspects of his face. Tony looked back, quietly, and was surprised by what happened next. He expected the man to say ‘No’, or to pull a gun. But nothing of that kind happened. The man just looked intensely at Tony for a few more seconds, not unfriendly, but rather inquisitively, before he said, “Please, of course, you are both free to leave.”
“Thank you.” Tony opened the door and waited until Nancy had left the room. He took the two suitcases. Before he left, looking towards the second man who was still sitting at the table trying to regain his strength, he said, “A cognac will speed up his recovery.”
“I don’t think we will waste cognac on him.”
“No? I thought you are on his side.”
“I am.”
“Good.”
“Who are you?”
“You know who I am. I am Tony Jackson from New York.” He left the room with the two suitcases and closed the door.
A taxi took them to downtown Paris. Tony and Nancy had not yet spoken about what had happened. They knew both of them had questions; many questions. They had been together for six months and had just discovered that they knew nothing about each other. Well, nothing is not correct. They knew their bodies and what they liked and disliked and how to make each other happy, but they knew nothing about whom they really were.
“Why do you think he let us go?”
“He has nothing against me that he could use in a court of law. He was on a fishing expedition,” Nancy replied.
“He is an intelligent man.”
“Yes, he is intelligent. A stupid man would have attacked you or pulled his gun.”
“I am glad he was not stupid. But you said he was on a fishing expedition. Are there any fish?”
“Oh yes, there are fish.”
“I do like fish,” Tony replied with a smile, “especially if their meat is firm and if they are served in a tasty sauce.”
“You won’t be disappointed.”
For a little while, as their taxi drove along the Champs-Élysées, they didn’t speak. They were holding hands and watching Paris go by. An observer could have thought they were a couple without worries, in love and perhaps visiting Paris for the first time.
“Where did you learn to immobilize a man the way you immobilized that poor policeman?”
“You know I enjoy watching…”
“No, no!” Nancy interrupted him, “don’t tell me you saw it on TV.”
“Well, I didn’t see it on TV. I saw it in a cinema. There is this great movie with Matt Damon; maybe we can get the DVD and watch it tonight. Of course, Matt is a lot faster and better than me.”
Nance smiled.
“Honestly, there is a lot I can still learn from Matt.”
10
Mike’s boss asked, “Why did you communicate with Christina in such a strange manner?” He, Mike and Christina were discussing the discovery of the two bombs in the dead publisher’s factory.
Mike still remembered every word the voice on the phone had said to him when he spontaneously decided to discontinue the phone conversation and cover himself with a blanket to ensure that nobody – especially someone watching him with a hidden camera – would be able to see what he was doing. The last words the man on the phone said were, “You are a remarkable man. You are compassionate, even towards a woman who killed her husband, but you can also be straight to the point to a degree that one might think you are arrogant.” The very moment when Mike had heard these words he knew one thing with certainty and he had a strong gut feeling about something else.
This man knew him. He knew that he had allowed a woman, who had murdered her sadistic husband, to escape. Concurrently with this conclusion Mike realised that this man did not make this statement to compliment him, it was more likely that he was about to blackmail him. The only immediate way to ensure that this could not happen was to discontinue the phone conversation and to make sure that there was no way the man could contact him again, at least for a few hours. Mike covered himself in a blanket. At that moment he did not yet know what he would do next. His first inclination, before he took the blanket from the cupboard, was to arrange for the tech people to find out where the phone call originated. But what then? The man on the phone was not stupid enough to call from his headquarters. Mike decided to listen to himself and the world. He disappeared under the blanket and soon the phone call and the conversation with the man no longer existed in his mind. He listened to the noises coming from various parts of the building, he listened to the traffic from the street, he listened to the singing of a bird – within a matter of seconds he became aware of dozens of sounds and feelings and thoughts. They all melted into one and they were all there was. There was nothing else. For a few minutes this was his entire universe. A very complicated world had became a very simple world which allowed his mind to arrive at conclusions, subconsciously – or perhaps to open up and hear messages – which otherwise would not have found their way through the hustle and bustle of his thoughts.
Suddenly everything became clear. After he had listened to himself and the world, Mike knew: They blew up the dead publisher’s apartment last night, they gave us a warning so that we could evacuate the place. They now need to blow up the factory. The man on the phone not only wanted to let me know that he can blackmail me, he also would have given me a warning if I had stayed on the phone long enough, but he couldn’t give it to me, because I discontinued the phone call and now I am behaving strangely. I am sitting underneath a blanket, he must think I lost my marbles, I unplugged the phone and switched off my regular cell phone. He can’t contact me, unless he enters through the door. He won’t do that. He could warn someone else about the impending explosion. Maybe he will, but not right away. He is surprised by my odd reaction. He will keep watching me, at least for a while. I am sure there are cameras in my office. He can see me. I feel it. I know it. As long as he is occupied with me, maybe the dogs and the bomb disposal people can find and deactivate the bombs, provided that I can get a message out to them without him knowing what the message is all about. Okay. He doesn’t know about my hidden cell phone … however, if I phone Christina directly he may be listening in or read her text messages if he or they have hacked into our system. If I scribble a note and fold it and pass it underneath the door to Christina … this could work …
“Mike! Wake up! Where are your thoughts? I asked you a question?” his boss interrupted his contemplations.
“Just a gut feeling,” Mike replied.
“A gut feeling? What do you mean?”
“I had the feeling that the guy who was talking to me on the phone was not only talking to me, he was also watching me. It was as if a camera was pointing at me. Then I had this sudden certainty that his organization has hacked into our communication systems. Just suddenly, I could feel it, nothing seemed right.”
“You and your gut feelings …”
“Can’t help it boss. But to be on the safe side we should get someone to audit our communication systems, but first of all, we need to check out every square dot of my office.”
“I can arrange that,” Christina replied.
“Where is the money coming from?” the boss asked. “Audits and that kind of stuff cost money.”
“This is what you are good at. I am sure you can find it somewhere.” Christina could talk to the boss like that. He liked her. He was an overweight man, a brilliant administrator with an awkward body, and Christina was one of the few females in the organization who treated him exactly the way she treated everybody else. If Tom Cruise and her boss had entered her office together she would not have discriminated between the two. Looks didn’t matter to her. Mike sometimes wondered whether she was even aware of people’s appearances. She seemed to look into people’s hearts. Mike wasn’t always comfortable with this. More than once she had said to him, ‘You are the only man I can’t quite figure out.’
“Is this good or bad?” Mike had asked.
“Don’t know. Not yet.”
“Make sure I’m the first one to find out when you do?”
“Why?”
“I can’t quite figure out myself.”
“You know I’m fond of you,” Christina added. Although she had been his partner for less than four months, she had told him that she was fond of him more than once and Mike pretended that he had no idea how she meant it. He was a master at analysing and understanding people, but whenever it came to Christina’s You know I am fond of you, he told her that he was at a loss.
“So you keep saying,” he replied, “but if you are fond of me why don’t we make love?”
“As soon as I have won Lotto. Only another year or two, trust me.”
They had discussions about Christina’s Lotto dream. Mike called it a dream, for Christina it was advanced reality. She would win enough money in Lotto, she had told Mike several times, so that they both could quit their jobs, get married and could make love every day, if this was what they desired. As long as they were partners in the police force, it was not a good idea to have sex. Not because of the regulations. Christina would have been just as happy as Mike to ignore the regulations about what police colleagues could and couldn’t do. In her opinion not having sex was simply about staying alive.
“As a detective, once you have sex with someone at work,” she told him, “your focus changes, you are less alert, your mind wanders and before you know it you are dead. There will still be plenty of time for sex once I have my big Lotto win.”
“It will never happen.”
“Don’t worry, it will. Another year, maybe two at the most.”
What Christina didn’t know was that Mike knew that she had already accumulated her Lotto money.
11
Nancy explained, “Some of my contacts are brilliant painters and I sold their paintings to very rich people. These people turned out to be as ungrateful as they are rich. After a while they didn’t want the paintings any longer; they complained and employed so called art experts because they thought they had paid too much … What can I say? One thing led to another, the police were dragged in, reluctantly; police officers aren’t really interested in art. For many of them art is as mysterious as Father Christmas. In the end a few smart lawyers tried to blame me for these rich people’s poor purchasing decisions.”
“Some people just don’t know how to be gratef
ul or how to accept things the way they are,” Tony replied mockingly.
“What could I do?”
“What did you do?”
“I got myself good legal representation.”
“Did you win?”
“Oh yes! My lawyers won on my behalf and on behalf of my business contacts. The lawyers were good, believe me. Expensive, but very good.”
“What happened to the paintings?”
“That’s the sad part. If these rich people had had any good sense they would never have made that hullabaloo about a few paintings. They would have left them hanging on the walls of their living rooms, their offices, their bedrooms and wherever else they kept them and all would be fine. But no! They had to waste a lot of money to prove that the paintings, they said, were fakes. Fakes, for heaven’s sake! I sold them paintings, nothing else; that’s what the contract said. And what’s the result? They still have the paintings, only now, if they turn their paintings around, they can see declarations and government stamps with signatures and references to court decisions … What can I say? Beautiful and famous paintings which once were understood to be Picassos, Dalis, Mirós, El Grecos and even, if I remember correctly, two Gauguins, are now no longer what people once believed they were.”
“Not to talk about the massive decline in value of these paintings.”
Exactly! Their value dropped by as much as 98%. Of course, they haven’t lost any of their beauty, but for some strange reason they have become less valuable.”
“How come these rich people lost the legal battle?”
“The contracts which they signed when they bought the paintings contained a paragraph which stated that the paintings were sold without a guarantee whatsoever and that, even in the event that it turns out that the paintings do not represent what the buyer thought they may represent and, furthermore, even if it turns out that the seller, that was me, was aware of the possibility of such implications, neither the seller nor his associates shall in any way be held responsible or accountable for the buyers perceived misfortune or loss since the buyer has agreed to buy the paintings shown to him and given to him on an as shown and given basis.”
An Almighty Conspiracy – A novel, a thriller, four people doing the unexpected Page 4