Tom looked at her afresh. She was in deep, risking her life, putting up with everything Stutz and Lederer threw at her for the Bureau. He bet her paymasters had never imagined, when they had instigated the War on Terror, that they would be tracking the likes of Stutz.
She put up a hand as if to wipe out the previous thought. ‘Wait, roll back. You talked about Rolt, the Invicta guy?’
Tom nodded.
‘Rolt was here a month back. He met with Stutz at his penthouse. That’s not usual — he takes work there sometimes but doesn’t do meetings there. He had me bring up a package, and when I went in he had this purple folder open, stuff spread all over the table. They looked like résumés, mug shots on them. The men with beards, women with headscarves. Never saw Stutz with anything like that before or since. Anyhow I’d come in without knocking and he went apeshit. I didn’t get near enough to see names or anything but I saw letters on the corners of some of them: SAR.’
‘Syrian Arab Republic.’
‘And we know he’s not hiring them — doesn’t even want them here. So why’s he looking at their details?’
‘What was the Bureau’s interest in him, originally?’
She gave him a withering look.
‘Okay, hand me over to the authorities, if you want, but I guarantee you, no one wants a fuss right now. They’ll most probably ship me back to the UK and pretend it never happened.’
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘Before Nine/Eleven, Stutz was in the oil business, supplying infrastructure and personnel to the high-risk fields: Iraq, Libya, Azerbaijan, Nigeria. With the Iraq invasion in 2003, he teamed up with the CIA to supply contractors. As the war dragged on, the demand for all kinds of off-book operatives increased. Congress got interested in how much public money was flowing to these private contractors, but they were protected with all kinds of National Security provisions that meant there was a whole bunch of stuff they didn’t need to declare. Langley and the Pentagon closed ranks to protect Stutz, which pissed off the Bureau.’
‘Have you managed to get anything?’
‘Some numbers. Bank details. Raw data from transactions. Something to feed Carter, my contact agent in DC, so he can follow up the financial leads while I keep working on getting closer to Stutz.’
‘And Skip?’
‘Don’t even go there, okay? The guy’s a class A pervert.’
‘Sounds like you got the assignment from hell.’
She stiffened again. ‘Why should I even trust you?’
‘Remember “Mutually Assured Destruction”? We both know what he’d do if he found out about either of us. And we both have enough on each other to give him cause to want to do that. So we have an incentive not to blow each other’s cover. Where is Stutz now?’
‘In DC. He doesn’t get back before midnight. He drives himself from the airport and at that time there’s no traffic. The building has a parking garage in the basement. He has his own elevator, which bypasses the offices and so forth. Just goes straight up. I sometimes go in there to pick up stuff so it’s not unusual for the guards to see my pick-up. So far I’ve never been in alone but my company pass gets me into the garage. And I’ve memorized the elevator and door codes.’
‘Any other way up or down?’
‘The emergency stairs, but it’s forty-five floors. Access is through the bedroom. The door doesn’t open from the outside, though, so it’s exit only.’
‘Can you get me in?’
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.