Downfall

by Jeff Abbott

  “What does it matter? You won’t have to work with him. You’ll have a very easy job. No more danger.”

  “What job?”

  “I’ll tell you soon enough. But I promise you, Holly, it will be the safest job imaginable for you.”

  His sudden smile made her uneasy. “How could you want to recruit him after he killed Glenn? And after Roger’s death?”

  “I don’t have to explain myself to you…but know that I don’t believe in revenge. It’s messy and expensive.”

  She balled her hands into fists. Then let them go.

  “We’re going to set a trap for him, and I’m going to make him an offer. Now. It may not work. But if it does, he’s mine and you’re free from dangerous work and then we’re all happy, yes?”

  “What about Diana?”

  “He can give her to us. Our problem is Audrey.”

  “Audrey will be expecting Glenn to contact her. Audrey will no doubt freak out when he doesn’t call her tonight or tomorrow.”

  “Then text her,” Belias said. “Pretend that you’re him. You know the kind of words he’d say.”

  Holly rubbed her temples. She felt like she’d aged a decade in a day. “I don’t think I can be that cruel, John.”

  “You can be if you have to be.”

  Holly sat down in the chair. She remembered when they bought their Tiburon house, when she furnished it with the things she liked, possessions she could love, when she and Glenn rose high in society, when the children were accepted at the best schools, and she and Glenn had more money than she could spend in a lifetime…and now her life here felt like an anchor. All that mattered were her children, getting herself out of this disaster so it would never touch them. If she had to vanish—to Canada or New Zealand or South Africa…she could live simply. The kids could, too; it would be a wrenching adjustment. But they could cope. If only he would let her go.

  “I’m grateful you’re still on my side, Holly. I’ve always admired your strength.”

  The tone of his words…she glanced at him, then glanced away. It was hard to think of him as a man, with wants and needs, and not just a presence that guided their lives, like a faraway god. He could not be serious. He could not be…hitting on her, not one minute after talking about recruiting Sam Capra to their cause. An easy job? What, in his bed? She felt ill.

  The laptop beeped.

  “What’s that?” she asked, grateful for the interruption.

  “Another phone call being made to the Rostov chief in New York,” he said. “I’m monitoring and recording his calls…” He moved to turn the volume off. But then he heard a woman’s voice speaking English, and he turned up the volume.

  “Mr. Rostov?”

  “Who is this? How did you get this number?” Rostov’s English was heavily accented.

  “A friend. I am sorry for your recent losses.”

  “Who is this?”

  “I can give you a measure of justice.”

  A pause, then quiet. “Who is this?”

  “The man you want dead. Sam Capra. I can give him to you.”

  “I don’t wish anyone dead.”

  “Surely you do. Sam killed Grigori and Vladimir. He knows who killed Viktor in Denver. I can give you Sam and the people who killed Viktor. For a price.”

  “You should call the police if you know something.” But he didn’t hang up.

  “He’s not just a bartender. Well, he is now, but he used to be hired muscle,” she said. “And he messed with your boys. I can make it so he doesn’t see you coming. For a price. Or I can take him out for you. For a price. Never have to get your hands dirty.”

  “I am respectable businessman. I don’t know what you mean, please leave me alone.”

  “Your phone is secure,” she said. “I got your number off Grigori’s cell. Only a few people have the number. I got it because I was with Sam when he took Grigori’s cell phone and ID. Those were gone from his body, did the police tell you that?”

  Belias could hear the slight suck in of breath from the elder Rostov.

  “But you can call me back on another line if you like.” She fed him a number. She hung up. Five seconds later, Rostov was on another call, furiously speaking in Russian.

  “Sam’s friend isn’t much of a friend.” Belias glanced at Holly. “I think we should share this information with Sam, don’t you?”

  39

  Saturday, November 6, midday

  WE WILL SOON KNOW ENOUGH for the fish to snap at the bait,” Mila said. “The big fish. Now let us see the little fish.” We sat in a car parked a few blocks from Lafayette Park in Pacific Heights. Glenn Marchbanks’s new house was two streets away.

  Mila dialed the phone.

  “Hello, Audrey? You do not know me, but I am a friend of Glenn’s. And I have come across disturbing information about him that might be of interest to you.” A pause. “It concerns your father.”

  She held the phone up so I could hear.

  “What about my father?” Audrey Marchbanks didn’t sound like she’d had a restful, peaceful night.

  “About some business dealings Glenn had that contributed to your father’s downfall in business,” Mila said.

  The shock in her voice was clear. “My dad…I don’t understand. Who are you?”

  “My name is…Lucy,” Mila said with a glance at me. As if she’d just plucked a name out of the ether and decided to use that of my former wife. “Glenn is out of town, yes? Without a convincing explanation?”

  “Yes…” she said slowly.

  “I felt as his wife, as Mr. Standish’s daughter, you should know the man you married.”

  “I…I do know Glenn. Is this some kind of joke?”

  “I will be in Lafayette Park for the next ten minutes. I am blonde and wearing a black turtleneck. I will be sitting on a bench near the children’s playground. Come see me if you want to know the truth.”

  Audrey Standish Marchbanks hung up the phone. We headed to the park.

  Five minutes later, I saw Audrey leave her house, start the hike up the hill toward the park.

  “I feel bad for her,” I said.

  “I do not. Stupidity is not to be celebrated. Are you ready?”

  Yes. I had lockpicks, I had a flash drive loaded with a decryption program.

  I went my way, Mila went hers. I walked right past Audrey. She didn’t even glance at me, her face full of concern and worry and fear.

  40

  Saturday, November 6, midday

  HOLLY?” AUDREY SOUNDED PANICKED.

  “Yes, what?” Holly glanced at Belias.

  “I just got a phone call…from some woman I don’t know, claiming that Glenn was involved in ruining my dad.” Her voice broke. “I want to know where Glenn is right now. You know, don’t you?”

  “Audrey, I don’t. I promise you I don’t know where he is. This woman, who is she?”

  “She said she would meet me in Lafayette Park, and I’m going there right now.”

  “Wait, I can be there in a few minutes. Don’t go to see her without me.” Holly gestured madly at Belias for the car keys. He grabbed a gun, tucked it under his jacket, and they both hurried down the stairs.

  “Wait for me,” Holly pleaded.

  “You know, I don’t think I will,” Audrey said, and she hung up the phone.

  Holly got into her car, Belias in the passenger seat, and she explained to him as she roared north on Valencia toward Pacific Heights. There was little traffic on a Saturday and she blasted through two red lights.

  “This woman…” Belias said. “Did she mention if she had a slight Eastern European accent?”

  “You think it’s the same woman who called the Rostovs?”

  “We’re being played. I think maybe Sam found out more than we thought he did and maybe he’s being played, too.”

  “Kill them.” The ferocity in her voice surprised her. “We have to kill them all or they’ll expose us.” She gripped the wheel.

  “And by all do you i
nclude Audrey?” Belias asked.

  A chill settled along Holly’s spine. “No, you don’t need to hurt her. Audrey knows nothing; she’s not a smart person.”

  “This isn’t up for discussion,” he said. “You park over by Audrey’s house. Wait, and when she comes back, you go inside with her. I’ll call you and tell you what to do. If they’re telling her about the network…”

  “You can’t want me to kill her!”

  “She stole your husband, Holly, and if they tell her about us, she’ll send you to prison. I should think you’d be eager.”

  “I…I won’t.”

  “You and I made an agreement.”

  Holly felt sweat inch down her spine, but her hands felt chilled.

  41

  Saturday, November 6, midday

  GLENN MARCHBANKS HADN’T DOWNSIZED after he left his wife and children. Pacific Heights homes are grand, big for the second most densely populated city in America. The house he’d picked had a gate with a lock (opened in less than thirty seconds) and a rather ornate doorway. A small plaque next to the doorbell informed visitors this home had once been a diplomatic residence for a small European country.

  I opened the door. There was an alarm pad near the front but no warning chime. Which meant Audrey, just walking up to Lafayette Park, hadn’t bothered to set the alarm. Excellent.

  I knew he’d keep any secrets about Belias and the network away from Audrey’s eyes, no matter how incurious her gaze might be.

  I hurried upstairs, found guest rooms for Peter and Emma (decorated too cheerfully with photos of the unsmiling kids and their smiling stepmother, Audrey might have been trying too hard) and a master bedroom. No safe like the one at the Marchbankses’ house in Tiburon. I tried the other door.

  Study, hello.

  Glenn’s desk was a Victorian affair with locks on the drawers and a roll top that locked as well. The view looked out over the hills and the sweep of San Francisco Bay, gray and blue in the bright Saturday sun.

  I pulled a lockpick and worked the top drawer. Fast. If Mila couldn’t keep Audrey in her flytrap and she returned, I’d just have to run, bolt, and hope that my description never crossed the desk of Detective DeSoto.

  Inside was a Glock with an attached silencer and three prepaid phones. And a laptop.

  I powered up the laptop, slipped in a flash drive that would assault the log-in password until it broke.

  While I tried to crack the laptop, I started checking the prepaid phones.

  Nothing on the first two phones. On the third, a text discussion sent to a number with a Las Vegas area code:

  YOU AND I SHOULD TALK ABOUT OUR MUTUAL FUTURE.

  HOW DID YOU GET THIS NUMBER? WHO IS THIS?

  I MADE THE SAME DEAL YOU DID WITH THE SAME DEVIL.

  NO IDEA WHAT YOU MEAN.

  YOU CAN’T BE CALLED LUCKY FOREVER WITH HIM.

  There was no final reply.

  The same deal. I tucked the phone into my jacket. I waited on the laptop. Mila buzzed me to say Audrey was in the park, waiting anxiously for her mysterious caller, alone.

  Ten minutes later, the laptop cracked. I searched the files rapidly. There is an art to scanning a computer and not leaving a trace that you were there. If Glenn Marchbanks was dead, sooner or later this would come out and the police would be here, searching for the truth about his disappearance and demise. There would be media attention. And I had no interest in tying myself to that attention.

  I found the e-mails between him and Rostov, but I already knew about those. I deleted them.

  No list of people in Belias’s network. And no reference to Belias.

  No, if he was planning a rebellion, then there had to be something. Some trace of his actions. He was trying to reach out to a scattered network of the powerful and influential, only united and linked by one man…

  One man. Belias was the hub, much like Mila was for the Round Table.

  What had Belias said in the dark of Diana’s friend’s house: I hack human lives. It was an odd, grandiose boast to make, and it stuck in my mind because at least with Glenn and Holly Marchbanks it seemed true. I did a search for hack.

  The result was a file called HACKERS. A list of hacker names, people who had not been caught by the authorities. CyberPeasant. Dragon44. Venjanz. Newspaper clippings, profiles in technology magazines, speeches at hacker conventions about these unknowns. They were suspected of being responsible for powerful computer worms, destructive viruses, and more. CyberPeasant was dead, thought to be a suicide in Kazakhstan or murdered by someone who’d found out who he was and didn’t like him. Dragon44 and Venjanz—vengeance, was that what it was supposed to sound like?—remained at large. Authorities suspected Dragon44 was based in Russia, given the IP addresses of where he had launched a serious attack against Swiss banking servers.

  Venjanz’s file only listed a name: Vasili Andreivich Borodin.

  I thought again about Belias saying he didn’t like Russians. This was a Russian name.

  Was Belias one of these hackers? If he was, then I was dealing with probably the smartest adversary I’d yet encountered. One with very grand ambitions. Who’d moved from taking control of computers to taking control of people and perhaps more.

  42

  Saturday, November 6, midday

  LAFAYETTE PARK STOOD on the crest of a hill. The “sides” of the park were a gentle rise from the surrounding streets. A playground, a large grove of majestic trees, people giving their dogs a bit of sport on the grass.

  Mila watched Audrey sit down on a bench near the playground, glancing around. Clutching her phone.

  “Sam, are you in?” she said into her own phone.

  “Yes. You’re not with Audrey?”

  “I am making her wait so you have more time. She looks upset. I think she’s about to run.”

  “Then talk to her.”

  Mila hurried up the incline of the hill toward the park. She waved at Audrey; Audrey caught her eye and stopped a few feet away from the bench.

  “Hello, Mrs. Marchbanks,” Mila said. “Thank you for meeting me. I’m sorry I was late. It is so hard to find a parking spot in this city.”

  “Who are you?” Audrey asked.

  Behind Mila, Belias got out of Holly’s car. He watched Mila and Audrey begin to speak, and the car that had let him out pulled away and turned onto Pacific Avenue, heading toward the Marchbankses’ house.

  He knew Audrey Marchbanks; he’d posed as a guest at her wedding, claiming to be a former coworker of Glenn’s, but he’d made sure not to meet Audrey. It had been a rather large affair for a second wedding; the bride had gotten what she wanted. He’d felt sorry for Holly the entire time, who would no doubt hear of the affair’s grandeur, and even worse for Peter and Emma, who looked like they’d rather be anywhere else than feting the woman who’d helped shatter their family. Audrey, from his observations, struck him as not very bright, and he wondered why Glenn had taken such a step down from Holly, who approached perfection.

  The other woman. Petite. And almost as if she sensed danger, she turned as he approached them, a smile wide on his face. He wished he could shoot her in the head. She had been the one that forced him to kill Roger. He hadn’t gotten a clear look at her face in the darkened room, but he was sure it was her.

  “Hello, Audrey.” He nodded at the other woman. “Is this woman bothering you?”

  “Who are you?” Audrey asked.

  “I work with Glenn. Security consultant.” He slipped her a business card; being a security consultant was a steady cover for him. He nodded toward the smaller woman. “This woman has been attempting to blackmail various executives at Vallon Marchbanks. Go home, Audrey, I’ll deal with her.”

  The smaller woman looked like she was about to speak, but instead she smiled. “I would be very careful with this man, Audrey. Don’t be alone with him. He turns on those he’s supposed to help.”

  He felt a tickle of rage at her words. You made me kill Roger, he thought. You made me kill
my first real friend.

  “I’m going to call the police now.” Audrey pulled her phone from her jacket pocket.

  “Do that and you’ll never learn what your husband did to your father,” the woman said.

  Audrey froze.

  “You suspected, didn’t you? That he somehow had a hand in your father’s ruination? Yet you married him. People are so complicated. At least the selfish ones are.” Her voice was a knife.

  “It’s not true, what you’re saying; it’s not true.” Audrey turned and ran away from both of them. The moment she was out of the picture it was as if she had never been in it, the first pawn taken off the chessboard.

  “I bet she doesn’t call the police,” the woman said. “She’s worried about him but she’s more worried she’ll lose her golden life.”

  Belias thought, Her voice. She called the Russians in New York. She’s betraying Sam Capra. And saying she can give me to the Rostovs.

  “I think you’re right.” A ball rolled between them, rescued by a toddler who picked it up and held it close to his chest, blinking up brightly at the two of them. His apologetic mother pulled him out of the narrow gap between them, smiling, cooing, saying she was sorry, he was just so fast.

  Neither spoke until the mother was ten feet away.

  “Nice touch to have the business card handy,” the woman said.

  “What do you want?” Belias said.

  “You, walking away. Leaving Sam alone.”

  “Ah. Me away from him. Not offering him a job.”

  “You killed your last partner. Odd you’d want to offer Sam work.”

  “I didn’t want to kill Roger,” Belias said. “You forced me.”

  “Are you going to try to kill me?” The woman looked almost amused.

  “In a crowded park? No. Plus, I find revenge to be quite overrated. If I kill you, it will be for a better reason.”

  “Then perhaps we walk away from each other, and neither endures further losses. I stay away from Audrey, you stay away from Sam. He has a job.”

  He could not help but smile. He was going to enjoy destroying her. “And you are what? A charity?”