‘Shall I get the sandwiches?’ offered Ginette.
‘No,’ said Hanlan. ‘Like the lady asked, we stay ready to go the moment we get her call.’
Enrico Delioci, on his left, took the briefcase from Carver, without speaking, and handed it to Stanley Burcher in the front passenger seat. Burcher immediately opened it and started fingering through the contents. Paolo Brescia, on Carver’s right, rode with his hand casually holding the courtesy loop, gazing out at the passing streets. He said to the driver: ‘The Manhattan would probably be better than the Brooklyn Bridge.’
‘Why pay a toll?’ demanded the driver.
‘Where are we going?’ said Carver, glad his voice was steady. He wasn’t sure if he was physically shaking from the fear pumping through him but hoped he wasn’t. The men between whom he was too closely hemmed would feel it, if he were. They did wear dark suits but not shaded glasses. Like Burcher, they were inconspicuous, walk-by people.
No one replied.
‘I asked where we were going,’ Carver repeated.
‘Somewhere quiet,’ said Burcher, head bowed over the briefcase.
‘Enjoy the ride,’ said Brescia. He had an effeminate lisp.
Burcher turned at last, grimacing his version of a smile. ‘I need to go through it in detail – talk about one thing in particular with you – but it seems OK. I knew we could work together.’ He held up the tape cassette. ‘What’s this?’
‘Something for us to talk about.’ He’d made a mistake, Carver realized. A terrible, terrible mistake. Alice had been right. He couldn’t face them down. But he had to now. The terrible mistake was also his only hope.
The curtain closed on Burcher’s smile. ‘So let’s talk about it.’
‘You’re among friends. We don’t have any secrets,’ said Brescia.
Carver felt too threatened, squashed as he was by even harmless-seeming men in the back of the car. That impression brought the awareness that he was, in fact, physically bigger than any of the other four with whom he was incarcerated. Which didn’t mean anything because he knew what they were capable of: what they had done to Northcote and Janice. He was going to feel threatened – be threatened – wherever he was with them, but he didn’t want them this close – their bodies touching his – when he disclosed their entrapment. ‘This ends your association with my firm, right?’
‘That’s something we need to talk about,’ agreed Burcher. ‘My people are extremely happy the way things are: how they’ve been – and worked – for such a very long time…’ He patted the still-open briefcase, on the car floor at his feet. ‘Even before you showed how well you understood priorities they asked me to tell you they didn’t want things to end: that they saw every advantage for all of us in the arrangement continuing exactly as it’s always been, to everyone’s advantage.’ Except, Burcher thought, the Delioci Family.
‘I made it clear to you that that’s precisely what I did not want. And wouldn’t have.’
Enrico Delioci sniggered a laugh that emerged as a derisive snort. They were crossing the Brooklyn Bridge now, the pale sun dappling them with the shadowed patterns of the suspending superstructure.
Burcher said: ‘John, this is the way it is. The way it’s got to be. Look what George achieved: think about it. Think what you can achieve. All the respect and honour that George attained. More. You’re set up, for a happy, contented life. Forever. People don’t get things made the way you’ve got it made. Enjoy.’
They joined the expressway, made the left exit and almost at once took the turn-off towards the ferry terminal and turned once more into the lattice of narrow streets on the Brooklyn and Queens side of the East River. Once they’ve got you, they never let you go, thought Carver. There wasn’t a definition – words that he could find – to describe how Carver felt. Frightened, certainly: acknowledging, finally, that he was out of his depth with these insignificant but supremely confident people who believed they owned the world. Which, Carver supposed, they did: their world, at their all-embracing level. But strangely – despite the definition and the words he couldn’t find – Carver felt suspended above all those mixed impressions, beyond these people and beyond their danger. Making the tape hadn’t been a terrible mistake. It was going to be his salvation because they couldn’t hurt him – cause him any physical harm – while it existed: it was the connection – the provable link Northcote hadn’t had – with the documentation at that moment lying beyond their grasp in the Citibank safe-deposit vault. ‘We made a deal.’
‘I promised to discuss it with my clients. Which I did. Now I’m telling you their decision,’ lied Burcher.
‘Which isn’t my decision.’
They were in a car-abandoned, boarded-windowed labyrinth of rubbish-strewn alleys and streets, empty of life apart from an occasional scavenging dog or cat. Brescia sighed and said: ‘Why don’t we cut the crap! You’re signed up, John, whether you like it or not. As Stan’s told you, learn to like it.’
Did that mean that Burcher really had given his real name? It made it so much better if he had. ‘And as I’ve told Stan, I don’t like it.’
‘We’re here,’ announced Burcher. ‘We’ll talk about it inside.’
The car made an abrupt left, then a right, and the street into which they emerged was suddenly clean, no longer an urban garbage dump. To their left was a high, chain-link fence sealing off a storage yard for dozens, maybe hundreds, of ship containers. A lot – the majority, as far as Carver could see – were marked with the names of the Mulder, Encomp or Innsflow companies. Beyond them, over the river, Carver could see the snag-toothed skyline of Manhattan. The car threw up a dust plume as it accelerated across the open strip towards warehouses, to which, as they got closer, Carver saw was attached a low office block. The sign on the side read NOXT Inc. Export Specialists. Cars were in tight formation in front but Carver couldn’t see any people working outside. He did, through office windows, when he got out of the car. There was no obvious interest in their arrival. Carver was relieved to be free from the body contact of the men on either side of him. Burcher led. They went in through a door at the side and immediately up a flight of stairs into rooms fitted out as secretarial suites without secretaries or office staff. Burcher continued to lead, into a more expansive set of rooms, with leather furniture and decorative plants. The largest room was dominated by an impressive desk but everything looked sterile and unused, a stage set.
‘Sit down,’ ordered Burcher, contemptuously, not looking at Carver, who did as he was told. Burcher and Delioci went to the desk and unloaded on to it everything from the briefcase. From the top right-hand door of the desk Burcher took two sheets of paper, handing them to the other man, and together they compared every document against their list. Carver couldn’t hear the mumbled conversation. It must have been fifteen minutes before they both straightened, turning at last to Carver. Delioci took the seat behind the desk and Carver wondered if his authority was greater than that of the lawyer.
It was Burcher, though, who did the talking. He said: ‘You did good, John. We’re pleased. Now the few things we’ve got to sort out… get right.’ He made a hand gesture to the papers still lying on the desk before him. ‘They’re complete but there’s something missing, isn’t there?’
‘That’s everything I found, at Litchfield and at George’s apartment, in town. And in his safe deposit at the Chase.’
‘That’s not what I’m talking about,’ said the softly spoken lawyer. ‘I told you my clients discovered there were a lot of attempts to hack into their computers. Some attempts that might have been successful.’
He had to protect Alice! Whatever happened – whatever threats were made – he couldn’t disclose her name. Or her involvement. ‘And I told you I knew nothing about that.’
‘I know what you told me. My clients find that difficult to believe.’
Carver shook his head. ‘I don’t have anything to say to that, beyond what I’ve already told you, that I don’t know anything about it.’
Burcher said: ‘If we’re going to work together, there’s got to be trust between us. If we find you’ve lied, we’re going to be very upset. And we will find out who did it. It’s very important for us that we do.’
Carver no longer had the unreal impression of being suspended in mid-air because of all his conflicting feelings but the fear was stronger now, although not for himself. He hadn’t expected the hacking demand: hadn’t prepared answers, which he accepted he should have done. There was only one answer, if Alice were to be protected. Total denial. Which he’d already made. To repeat it could give the impression that he had some knowledge. ‘I’ve also made it clear that we’re not going to work together.’
There was another sigh from Brescia, who was sitting slightly behind Carver, between him and the door. Burcher said: ‘John, you don’t have a choice. That was made, years ago, by George Northcote. You’ve inherited his firm and you’ve inherited his responsibilities. Which you’ll fulfil. This is the end of the discussion. There’s nothing more to talk about. Except who got into the computer systems.’
