Bill noted the details. ‘Let me get on the phone and see what I can do. Am I still picking you up for dinner at eight?’
‘Of course. Do you think I came to London just to invest in a business? But it’ll only be dinner I’m afraid, I’ve got a few other things on my mind at the minute.’
‘I understand. Don’t worry, Jenny, I’ll try to sort something out before that, and give you a call if I can fix it or if I need any more details. See you later, darling.’ He kissed her and left the office.
Bankers have all kinds of uses that I hadn’t appreciated, Jenny thought. I just hope Coetzee needs that money tomorrow and that we can get it there for him.
She called Emma at home, and gave her an update on Coetzee’s trip and her plan to get Leo freed. ‘I’m sure we’ll have him out of there in a couple of days. You know how efficient Marius is, and how much he loves Leo. Just put your trust in him and it’ll all come right.’
In Durham, Emma put the phone down. Oh God, please let him come to no harm in the meantime. She steeled herself and finished applying her make-up, taking extra care to try to hide the strained, worried lines that had appeared around her eyes. Waterstones customers expected a bright and witty author at book signings, and she needed to sell books.
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
‘I’m seeing Angela with Elodie tonight. We’ll try to get to the truth and persuade her to back off from her accusation.’ Shen Fu Liáng was in Tom Connor’s office, trying to show his concern for Leo’s predicament.
The CEO hardly reacted. He looked tired, his face grey and worry lines creasing his forehead. ‘That’s good, Shen. Do your best, but I don’t expect any miracles. We’ve taken the only decision available, and now we just have to get on with it and finish the job.’
‘You look beat, Tom, you’ve had a lot to deal with. Why don’t you take the rest of the day off and go home to your family? There’s nothing more you can do today, and I can look after the shop while you have a break.’
Connor demurred for a while, then finally agreed to go home to relax and rest up until the next day. ‘Call me if there’s any news, or at least any that I might like to hear.’
Fifteen minutes after Tom’s departure, Shen was still in his office. He had rifled through the files and papers on the desk, looking for anything of interest. The only item that caught his attention was a Post-it note with the scribbled name, General William Chillicott, and a US telephone number. Underneath was written, Call Ed.
Shen went down to his own office, unlocked his desk drawer and took out a mobile phone. He called a number and had a fifteen-minute conversation in Russian, then rang Elodie Delacroix. ‘Connor’s been talking to a US general called Chillicott. I just checked with our people and he’s a big wheel in Homeland Security. Seems like he’s connected somehow with Ed. Can you ask your contacts to find out what the connection is?’
He listened for a moment. ‘I’m not being paranoid, I just want to be on top of the situation, not on the receiving end. I don’t think Ed’s a problem, but we can’t take any chances. Just do as I ask and check him out. I’ll see you at home later, before Angela gets there.’
Shen looked at the calendar on his desk. It was Saturday, July 10th, three weeks until they were safe. Twenty-two days to hold things together and get the design and firmware to Shanghai.
Zurich, Switzerland
‘I hope you’re not calling with more bad news?’ Max Oberhart, Daniel’s father, said.
He summarised the conversations he’d had over the last couple of days. ‘Ed and Sharif are convinced we can make it by the end of the month.’
‘That’s in three weeks. What’s your opinion?’
‘The latest tests have been perfect. Leo’s last patches fixed everything and Ed is a very competent man. All he has to do is write the the clean code and Sharif can get the design finalised. I think they’ll make it.’
‘Unless something else goes wrong. That place is like a hospital, casualties all over.’
‘Shen’s trying to get Leo out of prison, so that would definitely guarantee the job, but we’ll see what happens.’
‘Keep me informed, Daniel. Especially on any further bad news, we’ve got a lot riding on this.’
‘Including over two years of my life. You don’t have to remind me. Bye, Dad.’
THIRTY-ONE
Dubai International Airport, United Arab Emirates
Saturday, 10 July 2017
‘Mr Coetzee?’ Despite Jenny’s description, Ed Muire had taken the precaution of scrawling the South African’s name on a piece of cardboard and holding it up at the arrivals gate. He needn’t have bothered, the man who came over to him fitted the bill perfectly. In Liverpool, he’d have been called a ‘hard man’.
‘Who organised the reception?’ he asked, looking around as if expecting trouble.
‘Jenny Bishop. I spoke to her a couple of hours ago. I’m Ed Muire, a friend of Leo’s at XPC.’
‘I’m surprised she didn’t text me?’
He’s a suspicious guy, thought Ed. ‘She was in a meeting. Probably didn’t have the chance.’
‘Hmm. So what are you supposed to do?’
‘Whatever you tell me to. Jenny said you’ll get Leo out, and that’s good enough for me.’
‘You got a car?’
‘A rented Beamer. It’s in the parking, five minutes away.’
‘OK, let’s go.’ He pulled the overnight bag behind him and refused Ed’s offer to carry his brown leather holdall.
Coetzee said nothing until they got into the car, then, ‘Do you know where Angela lives?’
‘I know the urbanisation, but not the exact address.’
‘Here it is.’ He showed him Jenny’s text on his phone. ‘How far is it?’
‘About thirty minutes’ drive.’
Coetzee looked at the time on the phone. ‘It’s just after seven. OK, we’ll go there now and take a look.’
At the apartment building, Coetzee said, ‘Park over at the side there, away from the entrance but where we can still see it. Stay in the car, she knows you.’ He went to check the postbox names and came back. ‘It’s on the third floor. No problem.’
Ed was beginning to think he was in a TV cop series. The South African had obviously done this before. Probably many times, he thought. ‘What happens now?’ he asked as Coetzee got back in the car.
‘We wait and we observe. Talents that are less and less common in today’s fast-track world, but still essential for survival.’ For the first time, he smiled, and Ed caught a glimpse of the soft side of this hard man.
They sat in the car for a while, watching the building as one or two people came and went, both observing a civilised silence, until Ed finally cracked. ‘How do you know Leo and Jenny Bishop?’ he asked, not expecting much of an answer.
‘He was kidnapped in SA seven years ago, and I was lucky enough to help him get home safe. We’ve kept in touch. He’s a great kid, my wife and daughter know him and they swear on the Bible he would never have done this. It’s some kind of blackmail or extortion, and this woman, Angela da Sousa, is probably just a cog in the mechanism. We have to find out why she did it and convince her to undo it. If we succeed, we’ll right some wrongs, maybe more than we expect.’
Now, Ed was totally confused. The South African had transformed himself from a monosyllabic Schwarzenegger Terminator character into a Gregory Peck Mockingbird righter of wrongs. He was about to seek more background when his mobile rang. It was a US number he didn’t recognise. He showed the caller number to Coetzee. ‘Is it OK to answer?’ he asked, not knowing the protocol for waiting and observing.
‘Go ahead, it could be relevant.’
‘Ed Muire, who’s this please?’ A moment later, he sat up straight, a look of respect and concentration on his face. ‘Yes General, it’s an honour to speak to you sir.’
‘Hi Ed. I’ve been trying to get hold of Leo for a day or two, but I hear he’s been unavoidably detained and T
om Connor suggested I call you. Is that OK with you?’
‘If there’s anything I can do or tell you that might help, just fire away.’
‘Speaker,’ whispered Coetzee. Ed hesitated, then remembering Jenny’s instructions, he pressed the speaker button as Chillicott’s voice rang out again.
‘I’m interested in the Chinese guy, Shen Fu Liáng, who’s working with you at XPC. What do you know about him?’
‘Virtually nothing, I’ve only been here for a month. But I don’t trust the guy, and I can tell you Leo feels the same.’
‘In what way don’t you trust him?’
‘First off, I think he’s a waste of space. He knows virtually nothing about what we’re doing, and I don’t understand why he’s here at all.’
‘What exactly are you doing? Can you give me an idiot’s thirty-second rundown?’
‘Have you heard about ACRE, our new encryption–transmission technology?’
‘Leo told me something about it in California. He said it would be a once-in-a-lifetime breakthrough.’
‘He wasn’t exaggerating, it’s incredible. We’ll be uploading it with some other new software to the billions of Lee-Win processors around the world.’
Ed quickly described the software upgrade programmes. ‘We’ve got three weeks to get it all finished, and I just hope we can do it without Leo. He’s the brains behind the final version of both parts, so if we run into any last-minute problems, we’ll be in deep shit, sorry sir.’
‘So, Leo being in prison could jeopardise the launch?’
‘Maybe not, now. He’s already cracked the most difficult pieces. That’s what I don’t understand. If someone wanted to sabotage the launch, they should have clobbered Leo a week sooner and we’d be in trouble.’
‘And you’ll be using remote hubs around the world? Still sounds scary to me, but I’m no techy. Good luck with it. Anything else about Liáng?’
Ed described the coincidences surrounding Shen, Elodie and Angela, and was starting on his suspicions of his involvement in his friend’s arrest when Chillicott interrupted him.
‘Just wait on, Ed. This woman, Elodie, tell me about her.’
‘Elodie Delacroix. She’s about thirty, Belgian, a real looker. She came here with Shen as his partner when he arrived from Shanghai. But she’s a bit too friendly with Angela, if you get my meaning. They act more like an item together than Shen and her. That whole relationship looks dodgy to me.’
Coetzee was listening quietly, storing up the information in his mind. He drew a question mark in the air and mouthed, ‘Why Shen?’
Ed caught on. ‘What’s your interest in Shen, General?’ he asked.
‘Sorry, Ed, it’s a national security issue, no comment. And I think we’re through here. You’ve been a big help and I want to advise you strongly to keep quiet and don’t let anyone, especially Liáng, know about this call.’
‘Thank you sir, I’ll take your advice. He’s not going to learn anything from me. Goodbye, General.’
The phone went dead. ‘Bloody hell,’ he exclaimed. ‘I suppose you’re used to this kind of cloak and dagger stuff, but I’m not. This sounds like a very big deal, scary stuff.’
‘Quiet, Ed. Look, is that Angela?’ He indicated a woman emerging from the building.
‘That’s her. She’s got a black eye, sure enough, but I bet it wasn’t Leo who did it.’ The Brazilian woman waited for a minute until a taxi drove up. She climbed in and the car drove off towards Jumeirah Beach.
‘Right. See where she goes and text me.’ He shoved a card into his hand. ‘Send it to this phone and come back when I ask you. It could be late, but stay up until I call.’
He climbed out of the car with his holdall and walked across to the entrance, as the BMW screeched away to follow the taxi. Ed was quite enjoying this spice-up of his day, he’d have a lot to tell Lynne when he saw her later. If I see her later, he realised. I may be up very late tonight.
Bur Dubai Police Station, United Arab Emirates
Somehow, Leo had managed to get through the day with no further trouble. They had just eaten the slop that passed for supper and he was chatting with Oskar while doing some muscle stretching against the door of the cell.
‘What are you doing in Dubai in the first place? I don’t buy that “student travel stop off” bullshit. You must have a reason for being here,’ the Pole said.
‘I’m with, well, I was with, a microprocessor company.’
‘You’re a computer scientist?’
‘You know something about computers?’
‘Not a lot. I know how to fake, or let’s say, improve documents. I had a bit of trouble in that department a while ago. It’s too much of a temptation, all that photoshopping technology.’
‘I’ve been hearing a lot about that lately, how dangerous our whole computer and Internet business is. I’m starting to believe it.’
‘Something go wrong at work?’
‘You could say that. It’s complicated, but basically I think it’s because I discovered something that was about to go wrong.’
‘So you got bunged in here to get you out of the way?’
He’s quick on the uptake. Leo nodded, ‘That’s about the size of it.’
‘How did they do it? They set you up?’
‘I’m pretty sure that’s what happened, and it worked. Now I’ve got no access to the facility and it’s only three weeks until it goes bang, whatever it is.’
‘You don’t actually know what’s going to happen?’
‘I was close to finding out, but not close enough.’
‘Sounds like you were too close. You must have had a big job, how many people?’
‘About forty, but only a couple of key guys.’
‘They can’t all be crooked. Must be someone you could get as your eyes in there.’
The guards called ‘Lights out’, and they sat on Oskar’s bunk in the darkness, Leo thinking of what he’d just said. He concentrated on Sharif’s log sheet, seeing it there in front of him, reading the three extra lines of code bombarding cell number S470. He remembered the sector, but he couldn’t bring the remaining ID numbers up in the right sequence. And he knew that if his suspicions were right, neither Sharif’s log sheets nor his own would be available to anyone now, except maybe Shen.
Wait! he remembered. I didn’t print a log after running my tests because I tried to call Sharif and then forgot to do it. And I don’t need a log sheet, the cell number and codes are in my laptop. If Ed can get my computer, it can be retrieved.
Leo slapped the Polish man on the shoulder. ‘Thanks, Oskar. You might have just done something good in your life.’
He laughed. ‘There’s a first time for everything.’
London, England
‘You suspect that Tsunami is this woman in Dubai, Elodie Delacroix?’ Hugh Middleton was mildly astonished. He and Ilona Tymoshenko were listening to General Chillicott. It was Saturday afternoon and they had come into the office to try to catch up on outstanding matters, but the general had managed to find them and interrupt their planning session. Judging from his excited tone, it seemed he’d been converted from scepticism of their theory to total conviction after his talk with Ed Muire.
‘It sounds too good to be true, but if we’re right that Shen Fu Liáng and Tsunami are working together, it makes absolute sense. And it’s the only reasonable explanation for what’s been going on at XPC.’
‘Unfortunately, even if your intuition is correct, it still doesn’t help us find out who is behind all these shenanigans. We must ascertain the true ownership of Lee-Win if we’re to get anywhere at all. The whole reason for Leo Stewart’s imprisonment might become clear and we can take decisive action. But only when we have a clear picture to interpret.’
‘I’d bet folding money this new product launch is the key to this business. Ed told me there’s millions of companies around the world going to be affected by a remote Internet upgrade that Leo designed.’
Midd
leton snapped his fingers. ‘Just a moment, Billy. Your reference to folding money has reinvigorated this failing brain of mine. We must find out which establishment Madame Lee-Win banks with in Macau or wherever. Remember the old maxim, “Follow the money”? If we discover where it went, it may reveal from whence it came.’
‘More lateral thinking, Hugh? Can you get your people to do some research, General?’
‘I wish. Even Homeland Security can’t investigate people’s bank accounts without due cause and a judge’s OK. So long as I’ve got nothing to hang my hat on, I have to sit tight and wait for something to happen.’
‘I understand. Then I’ll see if I can learn something from my sources.’
‘Thanks guys, I gotta go. Let me know as soon as you’ve got something. I have a feeling we don’t have too much time to waste.’
He rang off, and Ilona said, ‘You still haven’t told him of our suspicions about the deaths of Shen Fu Liáng’s family, and that he probably inherited two fortunes.’
‘That’s exactly why, my dear. For the moment, all we have are suspicions, and Chillicott can’t act without definite proof. However, I have a feeling that this treasure chase may throw up more than we expect. I do hope you can find something definitive, I’m becoming quite concerned about the potential collateral damage in this affair.’
Ilona made no comment, but she knew he was talking about Leo Stewart.
THIRTY-TWO
Jumeirah Beach, Dubai
Saturday, 10 July 2017
Angela paid the taxi driver and rang the intercom button in the lobby of Shen’s apartment building. A few moments later Elodie opened the door, pulled her inside and embraced her, kissing her lips and face all over. ‘Chérie, look at the state of you. Mon Dieu, no wonder they believed your story. I’ll put some Arnica on it, come and sit on the couch. Shen, pour a martini for Angela, the poor darling looks like she needs it.’
She went to the bathroom and came back with a jar of cream, smoothed some on. ‘Here, this’ll clear it up. It looks like you did it with a hammer.’ Angela’s nose and cheek were red and inflamed and her eye had turned a violent combination of black, violet and yellow.
The African Diamond Trilogy Box Set Page 131