Fortress

63

She left the radio off in the pick-up and they drove in silence.

‘You okay?’

‘Sure.’

Her silence felt unnatural.

‘So why take the assignment?’

‘I didn’t. I mean, I didn’t choose it. I was on probation.’

‘How come?’

‘My previous assignment was a drug bust. I had to get close to some dealers in Miami, be their girlfriend and whatever. And I ended up getting too close to the product. When the case came up, their defence argued my evidence was inadmissible on the grounds I was addicted, and they walked. The FBI doesn’t hold back. It was either this or get out.’

The penthouse was invisible from the street.

‘It’s set back. There’s a deck all around it with trees and stuff. Kinda wasted on a guy who never goes outside.’

She looked wistful for a moment, then turned into a side-street. ‘You need to get under the dash, there’s cameras on the gate. Stay down till we’ve stopped. I’ve learned where the blind spots are. When we leave the truck, you follow my route exactly to the elevator.’

Tom crouched in the footwell. She swiped her card and the barrier to the parking lot flipped up. They dropped down into the underground garage. It was only partially lit.

‘Okay, now come out my side.’

There were a dozen other cars, BMWs and Audis, a black Lincoln SUV, a yellow Lamborghini Huracán and a classic Jaguar E-Type.

‘Any of these his?’

‘Just the Jag. His favourite toy, supposedly, but he never uses it. He also has a blue S Class — he’s out in that now. The Lambo’s one of Skip’s. Think he forgot it’s here.’

They parked next to some Dumpsters and walked to the elevator door. She punched in the number: 5121861.

‘Looks familiar.’

‘May twelve, 1861. Wouldn’t mean anything to a Brit.’

‘Start of the Civil War, when the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter.’

‘You know your history.’

‘I know the battles.’

The lift opened and they stepped in. The inside was leather, studded with matching buttons.

‘Like a padded cell.’

‘That’s where I’ll be when this ends.’

‘You and me both.’

‘Well, maybe they’ll let us share.’

The lift stopped. The lobby was deep-pile cream carpet.

‘Let me go in first: I need to put in the code.’

She opened the door. Inside it was pitch dark except for one tiny red light that might have been the TV. She disappeared into the murk. He waited for his eyes to adjust. A dull orange glow from the streets far below filtered through the gaps in the heavy curtains.

They moved down the hall. She had sketched the layout for him: master bedroom to the right, living room and kitchen next door on the left. The doors to the living room and bedroom were opposite each other. The kitchen had two, one onto the hall, the other to the living room. Tom followed her in there. She switched on the light, revealing a wood-floored room with leather sofas arranged round a vast glass and granite coffee-table, a roll-top desk and two walls covered with bookshelves. Above a fake fireplace hung a pair of Civil War Harpers Ferry rifle muskets.

Tom couldn’t help admiring them.

‘The Confederates captured the Harpers Ferry Armory and took the whole shebang, weapons, tools, back to Richmond where these were made.’ She pointed at the letters carved in the stocks. ‘See those initials, AS? These were made for one of his ancestors.’

Tom scanned the room. He tried the drawers in the desk and the lid: all locked. He could have forced them but that would alert Stutz to intruders and quite possibly blow his cover, hers too.

‘Tom.’

She picked up a framed photograph and handed it to him.

It had been taken at the Invicta campus. A group shot: fifteen men. He recognized Philips, Vestey and Jackman. Rolt was at the centre with Stutz, looking faintly awkward in a US Marines APECS parka. He flipped over the clear plastic frame. The date showed it had been taken four months ago.

‘Keep looking. I’ll check the bedroom.’

It was a faint hope that the purple folder of résumés would still be there. Stutz was the last man to leave anything significant lying around but perhaps there might be something tangential that shed a light on his connection with Zuabi, some clue as to how their interests could have converged. He was pondering all this when he heard the lift approaching. It came to a stop.

He switched off the light and stepped back into shadow just as the door opened.

It was Stutz.