“Not since I got the call from Detective Heroe.” Evrette shrugged. “Before that, I suppose the cleaning people the night he was … killed. If anyone else was, I’m afraid I can’t say.”
“Please find out who among the cleaning staff was in here,” she said, fingers flying over the keyboard. “I’d like to interview them.”
Evrette nodded. “Just give me a moment,” he said, and went out.
Out of the corner of her eye, Naomi saw McKinsey standing with his arms crossed. He seemed to want to look everywhere at once.
She spoke to him while she checked the folder tree of Billy’s hard drive. “Peter, are you nervous?”
“I told you I’d have your back.”
“You also told me not to come here. How well do you know Evrette?”
“I’ve never met him before today.”
She glanced up and sensed that he was telling the truth. “Did you tell anyone we were coming here?”
“No.”
For a long moment, they held each other’s gaze. Then Naomi nodded and went back to her work. When she found the folders she wanted, she went through the desk drawers until she found a package of blank DVDs. Placing one in the plastic tray, she copied all the folders and files that looked relevant.
“If there was anything untoward going on,” McKinsey said, “I very much doubt Warren would be stupid enough to keep the files on his hard drive.”
“Sadly, I agree.” She pulled out the loaded DVD and pocketed it. “But it would be foolish to assume anything.”
She methodically went through the drawers, looking for locked sections or false backs, but found nothing of interest. At that point, Evrette returned and handed her a slip of paper with the name, address, and contact number of the cleaning person who was on duty the night Billy was murdered. Naomi thanked him and pocketed the paper.
“Okay,” she said, standing up.
As she headed toward the bank of filing cabinets, Evrette said, “They’re all empty. The files were taken to the vault by the forensic accounting team.”
“Then lead the way,” she said. “But first I need to make a pit stop at the ladies’.”
“Certainly.” Evrette gave her directions.
She wanted to try one more time to speak to Jack. Failing that, she wanted to update him again. But once she got into a stall and rummaged around in her handbag for her cell, she recalled that it was still in its charger in the center console of her car. She’d run it down to zero. Cursing her own stupidity, she returned to Billy Warren’s office and Evrette led them down the hall.
“The forensic team insisted on working on-site. We chose the vault because it’s quiet and out of the way of both our staff and our clients,” Evrette explained as they proceeded down one hallway, then another.
The vault was at the end of a long corridor, the last third of which offered blank walls rather than the usual office doors. The huge round opening beckoned. With its massive hinges and seven-foot-thick hardened steel-and-titanium door opened inward, the entrance looked like a modern-day equivalent to Aladdin’s cave.
As they stepped inside, a cool breeze from the internal air venting system stroked their faces. A table and chairs had been set up in the middle of the vault, but at the moment only one man sat, poring over masses of files and folders.
As Evrette announced them, he put down his pen, stood up, and turned around to face them. A good-looking man in his late thirties, he was impeccably dressed in an expensive, European-cut suit of midnight blue silk, a starched white shirt, and a modish paisley tie. He had thick, dark hair left longer than most people in his trade. His eyes were hooded, dark, and intelligent. He smiled and Naomi felt a curious sensation along her skin when he approached, as if he were giving off some kind of powerful energy.
M. Bob Evrette made the introductions. “Agents Wilde and McKinsey, this is John Pawnhill, the head of the forensic accounting team InterPublic hired.”
* * *
“SO WHAT do you do, if you don’t mind me asking?” the man sitting next to Annika said. When she hesitated, he said hastily, “That’s all right. If you’d rather read, I understand completely.”
She laughed softly. “No, I was getting bored anyway.”
They were wearing their seat belts. The plane, slicing through the night on its way to Rome, had encountered a powerful storm, and they had experienced some unpleasant turbulence before the pilot had taken them up to 43,000 feet. Below them, vicious streaks of lightning flashed in the remote blackness of their time-annihilating flight.
“May I see what you’re reading?”
She handed him the book. He had the face of a Roman senator, aggressive without being arrogant. His tan almost camouflaged the pockmarks on his cheek. The backs of his hands were scarred; they were work hands, which she liked. His gray eyes scanned the book jacket.
“The Copenhagen Interpretation: the Orthodoxy of Quantum Mechanics, or The Wavefunction Collapse.” He glanced at her as he handed back the book. “That’s quite a title. Are you a scientist?”
“A detective, of sorts,” she said with a mischievous smile. “A very specific sort. I’m looking for the Higgs boson.”
“The what?”
“A particle so small it’s virtually beyond human comprehension.” She waved a hand. “It’s complicated and, for a layperson, probably boring.”
“Not to me.” He settled in, apparently content to listen to her as long as she wanted to talk.
“I work for CERN at the LHC,” she said. “Also known as the Large Hadron Collider.”
He tapped a finger against his lip. “I’ve heard about … didn’t your team just break a record once held by Fermilabs?”
“That’s right.” She appeared delighted. “The LHC is in a massive tunnel on the border between France and Switzerland, in a space that’s the coldest in the known universe.”
In time, she could see him becoming infatuated. Not with her, precisely. He was in love with the lie she had spun, the image she had projected on the screen of his mind. It was an art, really, this ability to understand the power of lies, the way a lie—even a small one—had the power to bore its way through anyone’s defenses. Her genius was in making this lie, no matter how small, into a truth that someone could believe in, because believing was the same as falling in love. Someone in the throes of infatuation had no defenses.
This is what she had done with Jack because it was the only way she knew how to live life. But then somewhere in the midst of the Ukraine something had changed. That lie had become a bitter pill, poisoning their relationship. She began to hate herself, and then to hate him for believing her lie. She had wanted, more than anything, for him to pull aside the curtain of her lies, to reveal her as Dorothy revealed the Wizard of Oz.
It was only afterward that she understood why she had defied her grandfather and confessed to Jack. She wanted him to hate her, she wanted to push him as far away from her as possible, and then to see if he would come back. Because if he did she would know that for the first time in her life she had met a man for whom the lies didn’t matter. She would know that he loved her, not the persona she had presented.
The man in the seat beside her—Tim or Tom or Phil—was laughing at something she said. She could read his lust for her in every expression, every gesture he made. He was a wealthy businessman. He owned his own firm, which he was about to take public. The IPO would net him over a billion dollars. He was under the mistaken impression that she would be impressed, but her current persona had no interest in wealth or status. He readily admitted that he’d never met anyone like her.
“If you’ll excuse me.” She unbuckled her seat belt.
A tentative smile played across his lips. “Would you find it offensive if I accompanied you?”
As a gift, she presented him with her softest laugh. “Not at all. What a perfect gentleman you are.”
He unbuckled his seat belt and followed her up the aisle to the toilet. It was nearly 5 A.M. Eastern Dayligh
t Time and everyone in first class was either asleep or absorbed by the electronic flicker of their personal video screens. One of the attendants appeared from the galley and asked if they’d like some fresh-baked sugar cookies. They declined and she vanished the way she had come.
Opening the toilet door, Annika was aware that she didn’t really want to do this, but her body was so conditioned that it was working on its own momentum. She did not stop Tim or Tom or Phil when he stepped into the toilet after her and awkwardly closed the door. Nor did she stop him when his hand groped beneath her skirt, the hem rising up his forearm as he found what he was grasping for.
Through it all, she clung to him. She felt unmoored, as if she weren’t here on this plane, or over dark and troubled water, deeper even than the void in her chest. She was wherever Jack was at this moment. Her mind was filled with him.
She was oblivious to Tim or Tom or Phil’s grunts, his bull-like lunges, the pain cutting across her buttocks as they rhythmically struck the sink edge.
She barely heard herself moaning she was weeping so copiously.
* * *
“HE’S NOT here. The fucker’s not here!”
Thatë was in a state. They were inside what was left of Xhafa’s stronghold. Burned bodies lay everywhere. The stench of roasted flesh was nauseating. Here and there in the corners of what had once been rooms, flames still flickered and danced. Otherwise, all was black ash, but that didn’t stop the kid from kicking every corpse he came across, turning the ones on their stomachs over so he could examine the faces.
“What the fuck? What the fuck?” His equilibrium had shattered at the bitter taste of Pyrrhic victory. They had won everything, but had lost the only prize any of them cared about: Arian Xhafa.
Jack and Alli were examining a laptop computer, twisted out of shape by the explosion and resultant fire, when Thatë began screaming.
“Tell me! Tell me!”
Jack ran over and pulled him away from a badly wounded guerilla. There was spittle on Thatë’s face; he was virtually frothing at the mouth. For his part, the guerilla slid to the floor. His body was a mass of deep burns and his face was bloody and distorted out of all proportion.
Paull tried to hold the kid back, but he just shook the older man away. Jack looked at Alli and she went over and took Thatë by the arm. It was a restraint, the only one he would tolerate at the moment. He gave the guerilla a venomous glare over her shoulder.
Jack squatted beside the guerilla. He could see at a glance that his wounds were mortal. “What’s your name?”
One bloodshot eye stared back at him. “Bek … Bekir.” The other eye was swollen closed, so heavily bruised it looked like a fist.
“Where is Arian Xhafa?”
“He isn’t here.”
Jack sat back on his haunches. He gave Thatë a querying look, but the kid was still livid with rage.
“Give me five minutes with him,” Thatë said.
“The poor bastard doesn’t have five minutes,” Jack told him. “Besides, what can you do to him that hasn’t already been done?” Turning back to Bekir, he said, “Where is Xhafa? Where did he go?”
“In … into the wind.” Bekir’s mouth was red and black, the lips so distorted it was unclear whether even his mother would recognize him. “He left a little while ago.”
“How little?” Jack pressed.
“Twenty minutes, maybe fifteen.”
“Christ, we just missed the fuck,” Paull said.
Bekir started coughing. His condition was clearly declining rapidly.
With time running out, Jack tried another tack. If Bekir couldn’t solve the mystery of where Arian Xhafa went, maybe he could solve another mystery. “Bekir, were you here when the American unit tried its assault?”
Bekir nodded. His eye could not stop rolling in its socket. He must be in terrible pain, Jack thought. But it was too late to do anything to save him.
“For God’s sake help him,” Alli said from over Jack’s shoulder. “Give him water, at least.”
“His lungs are filling,” Jack told her. “He’ll drown in even a tablespoon of water.”
He returned his attention to Bekir. “How did Xhafa defeat the American unit?”
“Fast.” Bekir’s voice was thick with phlegm and blood. “Very fast.”
“Not like with us.”
The one eye stared at him.
“See, this is what I don’t understand.” Jack edged closer. “I know you had sophisticated weaponry, but so did the American unit.”
Bekir’s eye stared at Jack for what seemed a long time. Then his lips moved, as if of their own volition, and the voice came out, hollow as a drum. “The weaponry helped. How could it not? But Xhafa had an edge that meant the Americans’ certain death.”
Jack’s insides went cold. Then he felt Paull leaning closely in.
“And what was that?” Paull said.
Bekir’s lips curled up into a smile, which began another coughing fit that produced a prodigious flow of blood from his mouth. When he calmed somewhat, he spoke. “He knew they were coming. He’s got an American informant.”
“That’s a fucking lie,” Paull said dismissively.
Jack rocked back on his heels. “Bekir, my friend, here’s my problem with what you claim. Even with his newfound money and links to international arms dealers, Xhafa is unlikely to have that kind of political or military connection. Very, very few people do.”
There was a peculiar light in Bekir’s good eye, and Jack knew he was preparing himself to die. During the interview, his breathing had become shallow. Now it was irregular. Blood drooled out of one ruined ear. And yet he was determined to persevere for at least one more moment, at least long enough for him to deliver his farewell message.
“Then whoever is funneling money and arms his way is one of those elite people.”
* * *
JOHN PAWNHILL smiled a magnetic smile that momentarily caused Naomi’s knees to feel as if they’d turned to jelly.
“How may I be of assistance?”
“Agent McKinsey and I are investigating the murder of Billy Warren, a loan analyst at the bank.” For any number of reasons, the torture aspect of Billy’s murder had not yet been made public.
“Yes, I’ve been through some of his work.” Pawnhill gestured. “Very talented young man. Pity he’s no longer with us.”
“We need to see the files that were taken from his office.”
“By all means.” Pawnhill went to the table and, counting out stacks, slid one to a spot in front of an empty chair. “Knock yourself out, Agent Wilde.” He nodded as she sat down. “If you need any deciphering, don’t hesitate to ask.”
“Believe me, I won’t.” She pulled the first folder off the top of the pile and opened it. “Are these in alphabetical order?”
“No,” Pawnhill said. “They’re in chronological order with the latest loan on top.”
The others hung back, but there was no conversation from behind her. She scanned the documents inside the folder, then set it aside and picked up the next on the pile. This process went on for perhaps forty minutes.
Pawnhill pointed. “That particular loan was never consummated. Mr. Warren discovered a problem with the applicant’s financials.”
Naomi ran her finger down the sheet. “Did he often find such problems?”
“No, he didn’t.” This from Evrette. “When it comes to its loan applicants, the bank employs a rigorous vetting process.”
Naomi turned a page. “But sometimes—like here—something slips through the cracks.”
“Well, no system is foolproof,” Evrette admitted. “That’s one of the talents that made Mr. Warren so valuable. He could sniff out even the faintest whiff of an applicant’s shaky finances.”
“What about off-the-books loans?”
“I beg your pardon?”
Evrette came around into her line of vision and she could feel McKinsey take a protective step close behind her.
Naomi gav
e him a steady look. “I think you heard me, Mr. Evrette. Did Billy Warren discover any off-the-books loans that hadn’t been reported?”
“This is preposterous. Of course he didn’t.”
Pawnhill intervened. “Agent Wilde, if I may, had there been any such machinations I and my team would have found them.”
“But—and correct me if I’m wrong—you’re not finished with your forensic audit.”
“Almost,” he said. “But not quite.”
“Hmmm.” She tapped her fingertip against a line on the page. “Then perhaps you can explain to me why this company—Gemini Holdings—showed up in one of Mr. Warren’s case files on his computer.”
“That’s hardly surprising,” Evrette said. “He was just doing his due diligence. The loan was denied.”
“I see.” Naomi nodded. “But what’s curious was that Mr. Warren continued to follow the activities of Gemini Holdings after he recommended that their loan application be turned down.”
“I don’t know what you’re getting at,” Evrette said.
Naomi’s finger swept down the page. “According to the information in Mr. Warren’s electronic file, Gemini never went to another bank.” Her eyes were fixed on Evrette. Sensing that she had struck a nerve, she pressed on. “Not only that, but it seems that Gemini Holdings got their loan money not ten days after they were turned down here.”
Evrette shrugged. “That’s none of my concern.”
“Really?” Her lips pursed in admonishment. “I think Billy Warren discovered that it was very much your concern. I think that’s why he was keeping an eye on Gemini long after their loan was turned down.”
That was when she heard the soft metallic click. As she began to rise from her chair, McKinsey’s firm hand pushed her back down hard. Then the cold metallic press of a gun at the base of her neck.
Behind her, McKinsey pulled the trigger, and she was slammed forward. Immediately, blood spurted, warm and cherry red.
PART THREE
CHERRY BOMB
Two Days Ago
Don’t fall in love, don’t fall in love, she seemed to be trying to say to me.
Blood Trust jm-3 Page 25