Run

by Andrew Grant

  “Carolyn was here, sure.” LeBrock fell back into one of the armchairs and gestured for me to take the other. “She was offering a little consolation. As a friend.”

  “What do you need consolation for?” I stayed on my feet. “After the auction? You won huge. You proved everyone wrong, including me. And now you’re going to need another place this size, just to hold all the cash you must have made.”

  “I did win. That’s true. But at what cost?”

  “Are you feeling guilty about something, Roger?”

  “Don’t play with me. You know I didn’t win fair.”

  “You had a tip.”

  “I had the mother of all tips. That’s why we needed those memory sticks back. Oh, Marc, if only you’d given them to Carolyn …”

  “Was it the email record you wanted back? Or the virus, too?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Doesn’t matter. But what about the tip? It came from someone very high up. No offense, Roger, but you don’t have that kind of juice.”

  “None taken. And you’re right. I don’t.” He rubbed his eyes.

  “So who does?”

  “Look, AmeriTel was in deep trouble. You know that, Marc. You saw the numbers. What you didn’t see was how desperate I was. And how stupid. I started putting feelers out. Looking for ways to bring in short-term cash, under the table, to keep us afloat. Then, when I was struggling with the repayments, the guys I borrowed from came up with an amazing offer. A way I could get off the hook without paying them anything. Save the company. And pocket tens of millions at the same time.”

  “Sounds too good to be true.”

  “It was. But by then, I had no choice.”

  “What did you have to do?”

  “Essentially, nothing. Just keep going as if business was usual. Wait for the tip to come through. And revise our auction bid accordingly.”

  If the guys LeBrock had hooked up with understood finance, my guess was they’d have spent the last couple of years buying shares in other telecom companies. The ones that were supposed to win. Then they’d have sold those shares high. Bought AmeriTel’s low, because it was struggling. And when the auction results came out, they’d have hit the mother of all jackpots.

  “How many shareholders got burned, Roger? In other companies? How many people lost their jobs?”

  He shrugged.

  “And you handed someone a dynamite piece of blackmail material.”

  “I handed them more than that, Marc. They own the company now.”

  “Couldn’t you have gotten out before the auction?”

  “I tried to get out. But the price was too steep.”

  “How much did they want?”

  “It wasn’t how much. It was what. I told them I wanted to part ways. Then their top guy came to see me. He’s relatively normal-looking. He seems civilized. I think I know how to deal with him. Until he takes out a little leather folder, like they put menus in at restaurants. He tells me to open it. And inside, it looked a bit like a menu, too. There were two lists. The first was punishments. Killed in car accident. Right arm amputated. Left knee blown out. Run down by bus. Things like that. The second list was names. Mostly AmeriTel employees, but my sister, too. And my mother. He told me if I ever suggested backing out of our deal again, he’d come back and make me pick one from each list. One name. One punishment. Who got what would be on me.”

  “Just scare tactics, surely. What if you refused to pick? How could they make you?”

  “That’s what I thought. I told him I wouldn’t play. And do you know what he did? He picked up my cell phone, hit Redial, and took the first two digits that came up. It was a Nashville number, so one and six. One was car accident. Six was Melanie Walker.”

  “Wait a minute. Melanie Walker was the name of that finance manager who drove her car into a tree, the first week I was at AmeriTel. She died. But her death was an accident.”

  LeBrock shook his head.

  “It was no accident, Marc. The guy ringed Melanie’s name and her fate on those pages. He dated them. Initialed them. I still have them at the office, in my safe. And he told me that if I refused to pick another time—or if I went to the police—he’d use the phone to select three victims. My next choice would be pick one, or have three picked for me. And I couldn’t live with that either way.”

  “I don’t blame you. I couldn’t, either. And I don’t blame you for sharing the burden. But did it have to be Carolyn? Was there no one else you could turn to?”

  “It wasn’t deliberate. I didn’t mean to involve her. But she found the folder. The safe’s lock jammed. The contents were in a drawer while a guy was fixing it. Anyway, she saw what was written in there—including the stuff about Melanie—and she freaked out. She was going to call the police, so I had to tell her the truth. And, Marc? There’s one other thing.”

  “What?”

  “Carolyn’s was one of the names on the list.”

  I slumped into the armchair opposite him, and neither of us spoke for several minutes. I thought back to my first week at the company. Imagined myself getting home, and not finding Carolyn. Assuming she was working late. Hearing tires on the gravel outside, but not seeing her car. Seeing the police instead.

  “I feel sick,” I said.

  “Me, too.”

  “I can’t believe she didn’t tell me.”

  “Don’t blame yourself. I convinced her not to. The more people who knew, the more dangerous it was. For Carolyn, and for the others.”

  “No wonder she was totally stressed.”

  “Right. And when you wouldn’t give her the memory sticks, she just snapped.”

  “If only I’d known. I’d have given them to her in a heartbeat. I’d never have taken them. You should have told me, Roger.”

  “I know that. Now.”

  “My house getting burglarized? The thugs who chased me? Threw firebombs at me? Tried to kill me? Was that all down to you, too?”

  “No. The guy who’s in charge? He gave me one shot to get the data back. Carolyn volunteered. She was certain you’d cooperate, if she was the one who asked. When you refused, it was taken out of our hands.”

  “And Karl Weimann? The fire? That was them?”

  LeBrock nodded. “Karl and Carolyn were friends. And they had this running joke. He was always pretending to pester her about selling him your secrets, but of course, he had them already. It was just an excuse to talk to her. Or take her to lunch.”

  “How could he have them already?”

  “Your online security. It’s a farce. Everyone in the industry knows. You might as well have handed your secrets to him on a plate, he told me. Anyway, the other day he called Carolyn out of the blue. Apparently you’d summoned him to a meeting and offered him a job. Karl wanted to know, if hell was freezing over, why had nobody else told him?”

  “We did meet. I did make the offer, but he turned me down. At first. Then he changed his mind.”

  “Yes. After he talked to Carolyn. She saw the chance to get hold of the second memory stick and return it. She thought those guys would leave you alone, then.”

  “So Weimann’s change of heart was because of Carolyn? She was trying to help me?”

  “That’s right.”

  I think LeBrock continued to speak for a while longer. I vaguely remember seeing his mouth moving. His hands gesticulating. But I mainly remember realizing that everything I’d believed had been wrong. Carolyn hadn’t betrayed me. She’d stayed loyal to me. And even in her darkest hour, when she was in mortal danger, she’d been trying to save me.

  LeBrock had opened AmeriTel’s doors to these maniacs. But Carolyn only worked there because of me. I hadn’t just wrecked her acting career. I’d almost gotten her killed.

  “Did you hear me?” LeBrock was looming over me. “The fire? It convinced Carolyn she couldn’t trust Homeland Security, and—”

  “Is Carolyn OK?”

  “She was half an hour ago.”

/>   “Thank God. But where does that leave us? Her? Me? You? The guys who were threatening you?”

  “Come with me. Let me show you something.”

  I levered myself out of the chair and followed LeBrock around the side of the staircase. The space under it was enclosed, and the wall had been painted to look like a Mondrian, with the metal beams taking the place of the black lines between the fields of color. LeBrock pressed the edge of the largest white panel and stood back, allowing it to open and reveal a little closet with two shelves. The lower one was bare, but on the upper one there were twin piles of money—serious, life-changing piles—and a pair of U.S. passports.

  “Forty million dollars,” he said.

  “In thousand-dollar bills? I didn’t know they still existed.”

  “They do. But they’re rare. Collectors’ items, basically. Shows the kind of people I’m dealing with.”

  “And the passports?”

  “Take a look. See what you think.”

  “Isobel Draper.” I flipped through the pages. “And Daniel Abbot. But there are no pictures. Who are they?”

  “They were going to be Carolyn and me. My guy’s adding her picture on Monday.”

  “You said there was nothing between you. Now you’re running away together under false names with a ton of cash?”

  “Going away. With new names. But not together. Not like that. The money’s nothing. A drop in the ocean, compared to what I made in the auction. And anyway, I’m not going, now. What would be the point?”

  “Staying alive? Hang around here, and those guys will come knocking again. You know they will.”

  “I could run from them, Marc. Sure. But from a ghost? Two ghosts now? How would I do that? So, no. I’m going to stay. I’ve doubled my life insurance. Installed security cameras. Built a safe room—the best money can buy. And if there’s a price to pay on top of that, so be it. I’ve had enough.”

  “Good for you, Roger. Very noble. But what about Carolyn? You can’t condemn her, too.”

  “I’m not. Weimann’s death was the last straw. It convinced her to run. She’s saying some goodbyes, right now. Then she’s meeting me here tomorrow. To get her picture taken. She’s leaving on Monday, when the passport’s done. With her half of the money. All the money, if she wants it.”

  I opened Isobel Draper’s passport again and imagined how it would look with Carolyn’s photograph in the empty space.

  “Was I on Carolyn’s list of goodbyes, Roger?”

  “I don’t know. She didn’t say. But she’ll be here tomorrow, at noon. For maybe half an hour. If you haven’t heard from her, come over. Tell her goodbye yourself.”

  Saturday. Late evening.

  LEBROCK HAD SWORN I COULD DEPEND ON HIS DRIVER, AND I prayed he was right as I asked the guy to stop the car half a mile from the Rotunda Inn and wait while I stepped out to use the phone.

  The first number I dialed was McKenna’s.

  “Marc?” He picked up immediately. “Is that you?”

  “It is. Are you at the hotel?”

  “Which hotel?”

  “The weird round one.”

  “No. Why? Are you?”

  “No. How soon could you be there?”

  “Say, ninety minutes?”

  “That’ll work. I want to meet. I have something for you. Another memory stick. One final copy. My wife had it. I’m hoping that’ll balance the books, after I skipped out on you.”

  “OK.” He paused. “Have you still got your key card? For the room?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. The reservation’s paid for through tomorrow. If you’re there before me, just let yourself in and wait.”

  “Hold on. I have a condition. I need a promise from you, first.”

  “What?”

  “That you’ll come alone. Just you. No tricks. Otherwise the deal’s off. I’ll disappear and you’ll never see me or the memory stick again. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  “I need your absolute guarantee, Agent McKenna. I’m dead serious.”

  “You have it, Marc. See you in ninety.”

  MY NEXT CALL WAS to Peever, and I offered him the same terms. I’d hand over the last remaining memory stick, but only if he met me alone at the Rotunda in ninety minutes. He agreed, too, with no hesitation. And finally I called News 12. I told the duty editor I was a limo dispatcher, and I’d just overheard my boss on the phone. He’d taken a top-secret job to meet a pair of mystery celebrities from England at Valhalla train station, sometime in the next two hours. He’d mentioned the Secret Service. A rendezvous with a private plane at Westchester airport. An official car that had broken down. And two names.

  Catherine. And George.

  Finally I dropped the phone in a little cardboard box I’d taken from the bakery van before leaving LeBrock’s. I gave it to his driver with instructions to deliver it to the guy running the coffee cart at Valhalla station, or to leave it behind the rear wheel if no one was there. And then I set off toward the hotel on foot.

  I MADE IT TO my old room undetected, and was surprised to see my suitcase sitting on the floor. I’d forgotten that’s where I’d left it. My two laptop computers were still inside so I pulled them out, set them at the foot of the bed, turned on the TV, and found the News 12 channel. It was in the middle of a documentary about how Westchester residents had campaigned to save a local arboretum, but after ten minutes the picture changed. The show was replaced by a special news report.

  An outside broadcast.

  I recognized the exterior of Valhalla station, behind the reporter’s head.

  I leaned in closer to the screen, scanning for every detail, but there was no one of interest to be seen. The commentary was banal, and I realized the station was reluctant to make any bold promises on the strength of my call. The guy I’d spoken to mustn’t have swallowed my story the way I’d hoped. My heart sank. How long would the report continue? What if they lost interest, and switched back to their regular programs? Or worse, if the sight of the cameras frightened off my prey?

  Had I made a fatal miscalculation here?

  The reporter filled the airwaves with drivel for another five minutes, then the camera pulled in close for the wrap. And without meaning to, the director did me a huge favor. Because along with his star’s face, the view through the station entrance was also magnified. Just enough for me to make out a pair of familiar figures, lurking nonchalantly near the unmanned coffee cart and pretending to be deep in conversation.

  Peever. And the other agent I’d seen at the supermarket.

  Liars.

  Which just left McKenna to worry about.

  Saturday. Night.

  I COULDN’T BEAR THE RETURN TO REALITY, SO I SWITCHED OFF the TV and lay down to wait.

  My head was immediately filled with thoughts of Carolyn. All the things I wanted to say to her. All the ways I could try to apologize. I dreamed up and discarded dozens of possibilities, and when McKenna knocked on my door thirty minutes later I was still no closer to settling on anything even remotely adequate.

  McKenna’s hair was wet, even though it wasn’t raining, and one of the buttons had fallen off his jacket since I’d last seen him. He nodded to me, then sat on the bed next to the laptops and leaned back until half his face disappeared in the shadow thrown by the room’s single, low-wattage bulb.

  “Talk to me.” He picked at a loose thread from the bedspread. “Where have you been?”

  “I went to find my wife. I was mad at her. I was mad at you, too, if I’m honest. But I found out some stuff that changed things. See, she was being blackmailed. Her, and Roger LeBrock. AmeriTel’s CEO. I convinced her that giving in to these guys was the wrong thing to do. And that if she cooperated with you instead, you’d protect her. She had one more copy of the stick. She’d kept it as insurance. She handed it to me to pass on to you. As a gesture of good faith.”

  A blank expression came over McKenna’s face as if he were running my words through a mental lie dete
ctor.

  “OK. I’ll buy that. If you can produce the stick.”

  “I’ve got it right here. And you can take those computers, too. Carolyn used one—she didn’t remember which, they both look the same—to make the final copy, so it’s probably infected. But I do have one condition.”

  “Another condition?” He pulled at the thread harder, breaking it loose. “What?”

  “I promised Carolyn you’d protect her. I need you to do that.”

  “Consider it done.”

  “No. Really. I mean it. These guys who are blackmailing her? They’re seriously dangerous. Sick. Evil. And their organization has tentacles everywhere. So those fraud experts you mentioned? I want them on the case. I want this to be their top priority. I want you to hand it to their best guy, personally. I don’t just want an email getting sent, and then getting lost in some administrator’s in-box for months.”

  “I’d want nothing less, if it was my wife.” He rolled the thread into a tiny ball and flicked it away. “Get Carolyn to write it down. Make it as specific as possible. I’ll see it doesn’t get ignored. I give you my word. And tell her not to worry. Dealing with guys like that is what we do for a living.”

  “Good enough. And I have something else for you. Do you remember that guy, Agent Peever, you warned me about?”

  “Of course. What about him?”

  “On the way to find Carolyn, I had a little problem. You probably heard about it. You were probably behind it. Anyway, for a while I was hiding out in a supermarket. Peever was there. I overheard him saying it would be easier to put the AmeriTel case to bed if you were out of the way. Permanently. He was talking about avoiding paperwork. It sounded pretty sinister.”

  “Thanks for looking out for me.” He got to his feet and scooped up the two laptops. “But don’t worry about Peever. He won’t be a problem for much longer. Now, is there anything else?”

  I shook my head.

  “Then if I could just have the stick, we can say our goodbyes.” He held out his hand.