by Adam Hamdy
‘Chief data architect at Facebook,’ he informed Ash as he returned to the search page and continued to scroll for information. ‘He was due to deliver the closing speech at the Chicago International Cyber Security Convention. You think his death is connected?’
‘Like I said, I don’t believe in coincidences,’ Ash replied. ‘You better get ready. We’re heading back to the city to find out who fed me to the wolves.’
She pulled a pair of delicate panties from the pile of clothes beside her bed, and dropped her towel as she pulled them on.
Wallace felt his heart pound at the sight of her toned, naked body and quickly diverted his gaze back to the iPad.
‘Sorry,’ Ash said. ‘I grew up with men, I work with men, I don’t even think about . . . well . . . the differences.’
He looked up to see her fastening a matching bra. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he remarked awkwardly as he stood up. ‘I’ll just get ready.’
Ash smiled as he hurried into the bathroom.
Primetime Enterprises, the production company behind Nightfile, was located on the top floor of a narrow red-brick building on the north side of Twenty-Third Street, half a block west of Fifth Avenue. Wallace had spent the two-and-a-half-hour drive dozing in the back of the cab, dreaming about Ash, fascinated by the carefree ease with which she had displayed her body. He drifted in and out of consciousness, a heavy roll of his head waking him every now and again, as the cab navigated the mid-morning traffic.
‘John,’ Ash nudged him as they arrived. ‘You got any money?’
He woke to find Ash holding a thin sheaf of notes. Stunned by sleep, he nodded and unthreaded his belt, then opened the secret pocket to reveal the money within.
‘How much do you need?’ he asked, his throat hoarse and dry.
‘Two hundred.’
He pulled out two hundred-dollar bills and handed them over.
‘Thanks.’ Ash turned to pay the driver.
Wallace climbed out of the cab and pulled his belt around his waist, as Ash followed him. ‘This the place?’ he asked. ‘How do we get in?’
‘Why don’t you take a moment to come round?’ she suggested.
Wallace sucked in the cold air and tried to shake the heavy, sluggish feeling that was pulling at his mind. After a moment, he felt the last tendrils of sleep release their grasp. ‘OK,’ he told Ash. ‘I’m ready.’
‘You’re an acclaimed photographer,’ Ash said. ‘It’s a news show run by a woman called Kate Baxter. Tell her you’ve got some photos to sell.’
Wallace nodded and put the lie together as they approached the building. To the left of the Thai restaurant on the ground floor was a frosted-glass door that led to the offices above. Wallace found the intercom for Primetime Enterprises and pressed it.
‘Hello?’ came a voice.
‘Hi. My name is John Wallace. I have an appointment to see Kate Baxter.’
There was a pause.
‘I don’t see anything in Kate’s diary,’ the voice responded at last.
‘My agent set it up. I’m over from London.’ Wallace feigned frustration. ‘Don’t tell me he fucked it up. I’ve got some pictures she needs to see.’
There was another pause.
‘Why don’t you come up, Mr Wallace,’ the voice suggested in a far more genial tone. ‘Kate would love to meet you.’
Ash was a little frustrated by Wallace’s lumbering pace as he climbed the fourth and final flight of stairs. She had to remind herself of the ordeal he’d been through; most people would be curled up in a ball somewhere. She smiled as she thought of the look on his face this morning. She’d spent enough time with him to know that he was a decent guy who didn’t pose a threat and figured that the sight of her naked body might give him something more pleasant to think about than the dark memories that plagued him. He’d cried out in his sleep, both in the motel and during the cab back to Manhattan. His screams were so loud that they’d woken her in the early hours, and, during the journey from Connecticut, they’d caused the cab driver to jerk the vehicle to a halt a couple of times. Ash had assuaged the concerns of the driver, telling the man the truth that her fellow passenger had recently lost someone close to him.
When they reached the landing at the top of the stairs, Wallace pulled at one of the wooden double doors, but found they were locked. He peered through the steel mesh covering a small window and waved at a preppy young woman who sat behind a large reception counter. She returned the gesture, before pressing a button to open the door.
‘Mr Wallace?’ she asked as he entered the lobby, which was decorated in typical new media style: bare brick, reclaimed wood and expensive abstract artwork. ‘I’m Sandrine. Kate—’ Sandrine broke off when she recognised Ash. ‘You’re—’
‘Angry,’ Ash interrupted. ‘Don’t bother to tell her I’m here,’ she added as she stormed through the door to the inner office with Wallace trailing behind her. They hurried through an open-plan space, where a dozen young New Yorkers worked at paired desks which stretched back almost the entire length of the building. The office was buzzing with conversations and activity, but apart from a couple of puzzled glances, nobody impeded their progress.
At the end of the open area, Ash saw a petite woman sitting behind a driftwood desk in a glass-walled office. The woman was on the phone and turned to look at Ash and Wallace as they approached. Her expression hardened and Ash knew the call was a warning from the receptionist. Ash didn’t break stride as she opened the office door and stormed in.
‘Kate Baxter?’ she barked.
Kate nodded as she stood. She looked like she was in her late twenties and had long, wildly flowing brown hair, styled like a seventies pop star. Her eyes were rimmed with thick eyeliner which offset her lust-red lipstick. She wore tight black trousers, a black roll-neck, and was barefoot.
‘Special Agent Ash,’ Kate began. She walked round her desk and offered her hand, which remained untouched. ‘We tried to contact you for comment, but we couldn’t reach—’
‘You did a real number on me,’ Ash snapped. ‘My files were sealed under a court order.’ She saw her words have the desired effect; Kate’s face fell. ‘Whoever gave you the information didn’t tell you that,’ Ash guessed. ‘And they probably came to you because they knew this two-bit tabloid operation you run wouldn’t bother doing proper checks.’
‘We—’ Kate tried, but Ash cut her off.
‘Shut up. You’re not here to talk. You’re here to listen. I’ll make you a deal; give me your source and I won’t press charges.’
‘Our sources are—’
‘Cut the bullshit,’ Ash commanded. ‘Give me a name, or I’ll shut you down.’
‘I don’t have a name,’ Kate admitted as she leaned over her desk and grabbed her iPad. ‘Just an email.’
She handed the computer to Ash, who studied the email displayed on screen.
Baxter
Attached is information that proves Special Agent Christine Ash is unfit for duty.
Ash opened the attached file to discover a PDF that contained a collection of court transcripts, police interviews and social service records; her entire childhood laid bare.
Kate eyed Wallace. ‘Don’t you have some connection to the Pendulum case?’ she asked.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘The Bureau’s just confirmed these hangings are part of a serial murder investigation, that the deaths of Bonnie Mann and Zachary Holz are linked to a shooting at a hospital in London. The killer’s preferred method is hanging, so some Californian stringer dubbed him Pendulum,’ Kate informed them. ‘Weren’t you originally a suspect in the London murders?’
‘You’re a fucking vulture,’ Ash sneered, fixing Kate with a hostile stare.
She wilted under Ash’s gaze. ‘I emailed the address a few times, but never got a response,’ she explained awkwardly.
Ash clicked on the ‘from’ field. The sender’s email address was [email protected].
‘I�
��m sending this to myself,’ Ash informed Kate as she forwarded the message to her personal email address. ‘If you ever get another message from this individual, you use my private email to contact me. My address is in your sent folder. Any contact and you let me know, do you understand?’
Kate nodded as Ash returned her iPad.
‘You owe me,’ Ash advised, prompting another nod. ‘Come on,’ she said to Wallace. ‘Let’s go.’
44
The Avenue of the Americas belched a steady stream of traffic north. People crowded the sidewalks, compressed into narrow channels beside towering piles of snow. Wallace had spent the past twenty minutes struggling to keep up with Ash, and his body was wrung out. Aching muscles protested every step, and injuries new and old nagged at him, threatening to bring him down altogether, but he didn’t say a word to Ash. If she felt Wallace was slowing the pace, she might hand him off to some other branch of law enforcement and pursue the killer alone. Wallace couldn’t risk losing the safety of her protection, so he stayed quiet and pushed himself to keep up.
He was glad when Ash stopped suddenly, welcoming the opportunity to catch his breath. They’d just crossed Forty-Seventh Street and had come to a halt outside a diamond dealership. Wallace’s relief turned to dismay when he realised why Ash had frozen: a couple of cops were climbing the steps that led up from Rockefeller Center subway station. Ash grabbed him and pushed him against the green metal railings that surrounded the subway steps. She pulled him close, buried her head in the crook of his neck and pressed his face down into her shoulder. Wallace felt warm air rise from inside her long coat, and smelled sweet jasmine perfume. Relishing the soft touch of Ash’s hair against his cheek, he felt a sudden urge to kiss her smooth neck, but he stayed perfectly still as they played a pair of reconciled lovers huddled for protection against a chill in their relationship. He glanced up and saw the policemen walk past. They were no more than three feet away, but never gave Ash and Wallace a look. Wallace held Ash, savouring human contact and an opportunity to catch his breath, as the cops crossed the street and headed south along Sixth Avenue. When they were a safe distance away, he tapped Ash on the shoulder and she stepped back.
‘Come on,’ she said before continuing uptown.
Wallace followed, pounding out a few rapid steps to draw abreast. ‘Where are we going?’ he asked, keen to re-establish the professional foundation of their relationship.
‘Every now and again, the Bureau uses specialist external contractors,’ she replied. ‘I’m hoping one of them can help us. If he isn’t in jail.’
Kosinsky Data Services was located on the eighteenth floor of a black skyscraper on West Fiftieth Street. Ash and Wallace were buzzed into the airy lobby by a smiling, fresh-faced man with long, curly brown hair.
‘Hello,’ he greeted them with a broad smile. ‘I’m Todd. How can I help you?’
‘Hey, Todd. We’re here to see Pavel Kosinsky,’ Ash replied. ‘Tell him it’s his pretty little nightmare.’
Todd’s smile faltered.
‘He’ll know what it means,’ Ash reassured him.
Todd picked up the phone. ‘Why don’t you take a seat?’
Ash and Wallace crossed the carpeted floor and stood near a trio of rectangular couches which formed a horseshoe.
‘What is this place?’ Wallace asked, gesturing at their plush surroundings. ‘Why did you say he might be in jail?’
‘Kosinsky completed his PhD at Cal Tech at the age of twenty-four. He’s a pain-in-the-ass genius. He hired a bunch of grad students almost as talented as him and started KDS; it’s a digital security agency. Part detection, part protection. They operate in the spaces law enforcement can’t go.’
‘I couldn’t have put it better myself,’ a voice boomed from over Wallace’s shoulder. He turned to see a tall, slim man in his early thirties with angular features and a shock of thick black hair. ‘Except for the pain-in-the-ass part. Hello, my pretty little nightmare.’
‘Pavel Kosinsky, this is William Porter,’ Ash introduced them, as Pavel offered Wallace his hand.
‘Really, Chris?’ Pavel said. ‘Are you really going to try to bullshit me? It’s nice to meet you, Mr Wallace, I’ve read so much about you.’
Wallace saw a flicker of discomfort cross Ash’s face.
‘What? I prefer the British press,’ Pavel explained, ‘so I know he was a murder suspect. Some of us remember the faces we see on the news. What the fuck are you doing here, Chris? Your face is all over the news, too. I saw that programme,’ he continued, his tone becoming serious. ‘They had no business with your past.’
Ash nodded her appreciation. ‘I need your help, Pavel. I need to unlock an email.’
‘The Washington case had better not bite me on the ass,’ Pavel said without looking up. He was hunched over a computer at a desk that stood in the middle of an insulated, windowless room. Wallace and Ash had followed him through the building, past the private offices where two dozen bright young computer scientists worked in quiet seclusion.
‘Who can work open plan?’ Pavel had observed, as he’d led them through security doors guarded by a man in a uniform, who stood alongside a biometric scanner. ‘Machines make mistakes. People make mistakes. But never at the same time.’
Once in the secure area, they had passed a large server room, much like the one where Connie had died. Wallace saw her lying between the machines, and even though he knew it was a painful trick of his vicious memory, he had to look away. He kept his gaze on Ash and Pavel, who led him beyond the server room to the secure terminals, which were isolated in insulated clean rooms.
‘Pavel helped me get inside the Hopeland Family’s operations,’ Ash told Wallace. ‘You’ve got nothing to worry about,’ she assured Pavel.
‘Do you like puzzles?’ Pavel asked, glancing up from the screen.
‘The password?’ Ash guessed.
‘Of course not the password,’ Pavel sighed. ‘I cracked that some time ago. No, these puzzles.’
He turned the computer to reveal the sent items folder of the hacked Gmail account. Wallace could see the email to Kate Baxter, but there were eleven other emails to seven different addresses. Each of the recipient’s addresses was a seemingly random collection of letters and numbers. The preview pane showed that each email contained a twelve-digit number.
‘Look at the dates of these emails,’ Ash said. ‘Each one sent the day before a killing. Look at this one here. It was sent the day before you were attacked,’ she told Wallace, pointing to one of the emails.
‘Can you solve the puzzle?’ Pavel asked.
‘Stop showing off,’ Ash advised him.
‘The numbers are coordinates,’ Pavel revealed.
‘Show me this one,’ Ash instructed, indicating the email sent the day before Wallace was attacked.
Pavel input the coordinates 51°31’54’’, 00°10’57’’ into Google Maps and Hamilton Terrace appeared on screen.
‘That’s my place,’ Wallace declared.
‘Try another one,’ Ash suggested.
Pavel selected the oldest email in the folder and typed the coordinates 41°25’09’’, 73°53’38’’. Indian Brook Road, Garrison flashed on screen.
‘That’s where Kye Walters lived,’ Wallace pointed out.
‘This is a list of his victim’s addresses,’ Ash said. ‘You think they’re instructions?’
Pavel ignored her question. ‘And here’s the most recent email, sent yesterday.’
He extracted the coordinates, 40°45’35’’, 73°57’37’’ and put them into Google. The computer displayed a satellite image of the eastern edge of New York City and the red marker was centred on the Manhattan Regent Hotel.
‘If this is a pattern, someone is going to be murdered there today,’ Ash said.
‘We can catch this guy,’ Wallace said.
Ash nodded thoughtfully. ‘I’m going to need a favour, Kos,’ she said to Pavel.
‘Don’t Kos me,’ he responded, shaking his hea
d and raising his hands fearfully. ‘Don’t drag me into your mess.’
‘Hector won’t listen to me,’ Ash countered. ‘But he’ll listen to you. I don’t care how you say you got the information, but you make sure he puts a team on this.’
‘Can I tell him you put a gun to my head?’ Kos asked with a smile, which fell away when he noted Ash’s steely expression. ‘Just kidding. I’ll tell him we have an algorithm that looks for patterns based on locations. You guys will pretty much believe anything if we use the word algorithm.’
‘Can you monitor this address?’ Ash inquired, ignoring the insult.
Kos nodded. ‘And I’ll have one of my guys check out the IP logs and see if we can pinpoint the sender’s IP address for each of these emails,’ he added. ‘We might get lucky and find his location.’
‘Come on, John,’ Ash said. ‘We need to go.’
‘Where?’ Wallace asked.
‘I want to be certain they get this guy,’ Ash said, turning for the door.
45
‘This intelligence is less than an hour old,’ Hector told the agents assembled in the briefing room. There was Alexis Hale, who had command of seven field agents, and Jake Tanna and his five-man tactical unit. Parker stood near two plain-clothes cops from the Fifth Precinct. ‘Pavel Kosinsky has provided us with information that suggests the Pendulum Killer will strike the Manhattan Regency Hotel sometime today. Special Agent Hale and her team will canvas the hotel. There are two hundred and thirty rooms, and we’ve got to check every single one. Agent Tanna and the tactical unit will set up surveillance on all entrances. We’re to do this quietly. This guy gets a sniff we’re on to him and he’ll vanish. Agent Parker, you get anything from the hotel?’
‘The general manager knows to keep our presence confidential. The hotel is hosting a financial awards ceremony tonight. He offered to cancel it,’ Parker replied.