The Chosen One

57

New York, Monday March 27, 15.35

She said the sequence over to herself once more, repeating it as she had heard it. There was no doubting it. It was NICK4.

Sitting at the gate for a flight to Albuquerque, she checked again that neither Detective Bridge nor any of his men – nor anyone else for that matter – were around. No one that she could see. She would stay here, surrounded by people. It was broad daylight; there were crowds. Surely that would make her safe.

She had been recalling the lecture her sister had given her about storing documents online, rather than on disks or memory sticks that could get lost down the back of the sofa or soaked in coffee. And then she had remembered how even Nick du Caines, in his little masterclass on journalism, had confessed that he had screwed up so often, he now wrote everything online, storing it up there ‘in the ether’.

She played back in her head the sounds she had heard, forcing away the vile images they conjured, as her friend was horribly murdered. Concentrate, Maggie, she told herself fiercely. You have to do this for Nick: he died trying to make contact with you. Be strong and bloody well think it through. There was a message within that message: of that she was now sure. At first she had thought they were no more than desperate howls of pain. But Bridge had been right. There was a reason why Nick, while fighting for his life, had fumbled for his phone and dialled her number. He had to be communicating something. And when Bridge had played the recording for the second time, she had heard it. Each apparent sound of pain Nick had made had been different to the one before. That cry – Ennnn! – was not just an expression of terrible agony, of a man winded by a punch, though it might well be that as well. It was also the letter N. Ayyy was awful to hear but translated into the letter ‘I’. On it had gone until that final desperate noise – Phwaw: clearly the number four. She marvelled at the strength and ingenuity of such a feat and, not for the first time that day, felt glad to have known Nick du Caines.

She flipped open her computer, watching as it latched on to the airport’s wifi signal. A few keystrokes and she was there, at the Googledocs website. She logged in, typing Nick’s name carefully and without spaces: nickducaines. Then the password, constructed from each letter and digit he had cried out: Nick4.

Incorrect name and password.

She tried again, this time spelling Nick’s name in capital letters. Now a new error message appeared.

Incorrect password, insufficient characters.

Damn. Nick’s effort, valiant though it had been, had been in vain. He had not lasted long enough to convey the last few letters.

She stared at the screen. Nick4. What could that mean? What might 4 refer to? Guessing, she typed in Nick4duC.

Incorrect password. You are approaching the maximum number of failed attempts. One more attempt allowed.

She looked around, checking the faces of those nearby: a mother with children, a student listening with eyes closed to an iPod.

Think.

Then she looked at it again – Nick4 – and a teenage memory returned. They had all done it, carving it on park benches and on school desks. She had done it herself once: Maggie4Liam. Was it possible that Nick du Caines had been that soft-hearted? Somehow she wouldn’t have put it past him. She entered the password field and typed Nick4Maggie.

She was about to press enter on this, her last attempt when something stopped her. She could hear Nick’s voice, on the phone or across the table in the bar. Now listen, Mags, when are you finally going to start moving those luscious lips of yours into the shape of a story for my newspaper?

Mags.

Carefully, so as not to hit enter by accident, she retyped so that the new password read simply Nick4Mags.

Without fuss, as if it had been waiting for her, the page transformed itself, offering a list of documents. She was in. Poor, sweet Nick, sending her an adolescent valentine even in his last moments. She had never once taken his interest in her seriously.

At a glance, she could see all his most recent stories, sorted by date. And there at the top, a document entitled New Orleans. She clicked it open, expecting a long, detailed memo, explaining all his findings. Instead there was a single line. Daniel Judd, aviation expert – followed by a phone number.

Maggie pulled out her phone and dialled. After two rings, a voice answered: male, cautious.

‘I’m a friend of Nick du Caines,’ she began. ‘He left a message on my machine just before he died. I think he-’

‘Died? Nick?’

‘I’m sorry, that was very insensitive of me. I thought you might have known. Did you know him well?’

‘Who is this? What happened to Nick?’

Maggie explained the circumstances that had led to her call. There was a long silence and for a panicked moment she thought the man had hung up, but then he said, ‘How can I trust you? How do I know you didn’t kill Nick and now you’re after me?’

Maggie was flummoxed. ‘I don’t know. All I can tell you is that Nick went to very great lengths to let me know how to reach you. He used his dying breaths to leave a message on my answering machine. It was-’

‘All right, get off this line. Call me on a payphone in thirty minutes. Number is-’ There was a shuffling of paper, then he rattled off a number at her.

‘Hold on, hold on.’ Maggie scrabbled one-handed in her bag for a pen. ‘Say that again-’

‘You have thirty minutes. Go buy unregistered, pay-asyou-go phones, as many as you can afford. Call me from one of those. After that, throw it away. Never use any of them twice. And don’t give the number to anyone.’ He repeated the number of the payphone, so quickly she barely had time to scribble it down, and hung up.

Maggie did what she was told, rushing to a cellphone store in Terminal 3. She bought five phones with her now-dwindling cash supply and punched in the payphone number Judd had given her.

He picked up – and spoke – on the second ring. ‘You say he left my number on your answering machine?’

‘No. Nick was smarter than that. A password, then a document.’

‘No one else has seen it?’ The voice sounded harried, feverish.

Maggie looked at the screen, noticing the saved date for the New Orleans document was 10.54pm the previous evening – a few minutes before Nick had been fighting for his life – and that, according to its ‘properties’, it appeared not to have been opened again till now. ‘I don’t think so.’ She needed to get him to talk, before his nerves overcame him. ‘Listen, Mr-’

‘No names on the phone!’

‘Of course, sorry. Listen, it was me who put, er, our mutual friend on to the, um, issue that I think he was discussing with you. I was the one who mentioned it to him. I think he wanted me to know whatever it was you told him.’

‘I’m gonna do this real quick and I’m only gonna say it once. Are we clear?’

‘We’re clear.’

‘After we’re done, you destroy the phone. Clear?’

‘Sure. I understand your anxiety, Mr-’

‘No names! You’re damned right I’m anxious. This is some serious shit you’re wading into here, Missy, I can tell you.’ She heard the sound of traffic rushing past.

‘I know that.’

‘Right then. Once only. At midnight thirty local time on March 22, a jet departed from Lakefront Airport, New Orleans, Louisiana, carrying seven passengers. The number of the aircraft was November-four-eight-zero-eight-Papa. That aircraft is registered to one Premier Air Executive Services, an air operator based in Maryland. Its prior history indicates use by the Company.’

As Maggie suspected, the CIA.

Judd wasn’t done. ‘That was its prior use. Two years ago it shifted ownership. It is now entirely at the service of a single client.’

‘What kind of client?’

‘One time. I will not repeat this, you understand? Premier runs private jets exclusively for AitkenBruce.’

Maggie couldn’t repress her surprise. ‘AitkenBruce? The bank?’

But Judd was in no mood for discussion. He had one more fact to convey. ‘Today Premier submitted another flight plan. They have a Gulfstream 550 jet departing Teterboro, New Jersey for Washington Reagan at nineteen hundred hours. Looking back through the flight history, there’s only one person who makes that journey on that aircraft. And that’s the chairman of the bank.’