Julianne came into the kitchen first, followed by the older guy who’d brought my food. His right arm was around her neck, and he was holding an old Army Colt to her left temple. She was standing stiffly, back arched, grimacing. He was smiling. His throat was unguarded. I closed my fingers around the knife blade. It was a good weight for throwing. How much did I want to save this woman? It was unlikely I could stop the guy getting one shot off. But certain I could stop him getting two.
I heard the clatter of heavy feet on wooden stairs. Someone was coming down. They paused in the hallway and then appeared through the arch. It was someone new. He was huge. At least six feet seven. His head was shaved and he had to duck as he came in. He was wearing a smart blue suit with a white shirt and striped tie. It was hard to tell without the hair, but I put him in his late thirties. Apart from his freak size he looked like a businessman stepping out of a meeting to grab a coffee.
“What’s going on, George?” he said. “Where’s Jason and Spencer?”
“Don’t know,” the older guy said. “Found this bitch sneaking around, and him in here playing with the utensils. Haven’t seen the pretty boys.”
“Where are Jason and Spencer?” the tall guy said, looking at me.
“Who?” I said.
“The two guys I sent to fetch you.”
“Oh, them. Downstairs.”
“Dead?” he said, looking at the knife.
“No. Just… resting.”
“George, take the woman back down there. Lock her up, and see what’s going on with those fools.”
The tall guy stepped aside to let George get past with Julianne. Her eyes stayed on me, wide and frightened, as if begging for help.
“Let’s you and me go upstairs,” the tall guy said. “We need to talk.”
I didn’t move. The knife was still in my hand.
“Going to use that?” he said. “Go ahead. I’m not carrying.”
He held his arms out to the sides, as if inviting a search.
I stayed where I was.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go. My boss is upstairs.”
I didn’t reply.
“Come on,” he said. “My boss is waiting. That’s not good.”
“Your boss?” I said.
“Right. Wants to talk to you.”
“You think I’m one day old?”
“What?”
“You think I was born yesterday? You snatch me off the street and lock me in a kennel like a dog because your boss wants to talk?”
“OK, look, I won’t bullshit you. The thing with the kennel-that was wrong. But with everything jumping off at once-journalists sniffing around, FBI all over the place, you suddenly on the loose-we had to move fast. We made some mistakes.”
“Just a few.”
“We know that, now. We should have shown more respect, but we needed you off the street.”
“Why?”
“To keep you out of anyone else’s pocket. We heard some rumors. Needed time to check them out.”
“Rumors? About me?”
“Look, put the knife down. Come upstairs. Hear what we’ve got to say. It’ll make sense. And what’s to worry about, anyway? If we wanted you dead, you’d be on the slab already.”
“I’m not meeting anyone like this,” I said, holding up my hands.
The tall guy came over and very gently took hold of the knife handle. He waited for me to clear my fingers, then severed the tie. It fell to the floor, leaving a narrow red welt around both my wrists.
“Happy now?” he said. “So let’s go.”
He slid the knife back into the block, picked the driver’s Colt up from the countertop, and turned to lead the way. As he walked toward the hallway he slipped the gun into his jacket pocket. It rattled against something metal.
And as sincere as the guy had seemed, I doubt it was his keys.
TWELVE
Several of my previous assignments had been missing from Rosser’s file.
A number of them had taken place in the United States. One was in California. I’d been sent there to infiltrate a cell phone company where we suspected some employees were selling transcripts of sensitive short message service messages. The scheme had been well hidden. It took three months to flush out. I’d felt strange working in the same office for so long, but in the end a little part of me was sorry to leave. Not because of the people, though. Most of them were crooks. It was more about the way you were looked after. There was gym membership. Concert tickets. Discounts at local stores. You don’t even get free parking in the navy.
Another strange thing was the company newsletter. Different departments telling each other what they were doing. That’s a weird concept. The magazine was nicely produced-glossy paper, plenty of photos-but the lack of real news meant they had a lot of ads and bogus articles. One was written by a psychologist. Every month someone gave him pictures of a manager’s office and he revealed all kinds of insights based on how they kept their workspace. Once we learned that the papers strewn all over the desk of the president of Human Resources showed she was a really caring person. The next month we found out that the way the VP of engineering arranged his stationery demonstrated a sound grasp of complex technology. I was certainly convinced.
That psychologist would have loved the large rectangular room the tall guy took me to next, at the end of the landing corridor. It had a white-stained wooden floor, plain white walls, and a white ceiling that sloped sharply to one side. There was a wide window at the far end and double closet doors built into the wall on the left. An L- shaped desk ran along the other wall and stuck out halfway across the room. Behind it was a single chrome and black leather chair. There were no piles of papers or letter trays or pen holders. The only thing anywhere on the desk was a small, white laptop. Its screen was folded down and there was no sign of it being connected to anything. And there was no printer, router, fax, or phone.
The space between the desk and the door was filled with a boardroom-style table. It was made from light wood with rounded corners and beveled edges. The tabletop was polished like glass and I couldn’t see a single mark or scratch or blemish. There was a flap, eight inches by twelve, set into the surface at both ends. They were probably to conceal power outlets. Three chrome and leather chairs were arranged along each side-precisely parallel-and two more were lined up at each end.
A projector sat in the middle of the table with its cable in a neat coil at its side. It was pointing at a screen on the wall next to the door. The other walls were bare, except for a print of Magritte’s Ceci n’est pas une pipe, which hung over the desk. The original is in the L.A. County Museum. I noticed it when I was tailing a couple of suspects on that mobile phone job. I remember liking it. Finding a copy of it here seemed strange.
“Take a seat,” the tall guy said. “Won’t be long.”
I chose the chair in the center on the far side. He took the one nearest the exit. Farther down the corridor a door slammed. Footsteps approached. One set, light but confident, moving fast without rushing. They paused, and then a woman entered the room. The way she strode in made it clear that we were the ones invading her domain, not the other way around.
The woman had ginger hair. Fiery red, not orange. It was cut long at the back and sides to emphasize her long, slender neck and delicate jaw. Her skin was pale and flawless, and her wine-red lipstick brought out a wild green glint in her eyes. Her clothes-jacket, vest-style top, slacks, and pumps-were all black. They looked expensive. From a distance I put her at around thirty-five, but when she came over and took the seat opposite me I guessed she was at least a decade older.
