echoing thud.
Sensing her chance, she slowly straightened up, occasional gaps and openings between the shelves giving her first a glimpse of a belt, then the arrow tip of a tie, followed by the buttons of his jacket and finally the starched whiteness of his collar and the soft pallor of his throat. Through a narrow slit between two boxes.
There. She could see his face, or rather the outline of it, the overhead neon tube having blinked off yet again. Holding her breath, she waited until, with a clinking noise, the light stuttered on again, the image strobing briefly across her retina until it finally settled.
It was Gallo.
She instinctively snatched her head back, but the sudden blur of movement must have caught his eye because he called out angrily.
There was no time to think. No time to do anything. Except run. Run to the door, throw the bolts back, tumble through it, stumble up the steps and stagger out into the street, gasping with shock.
The world on its head.
TWENTY-SEVEN
J. Edgar Hoover Building,FBI headquarters, Washington DC 18th March-10.47 a.m.
Tom had found Jennifer’s password taped to the underside of the stapler. No great mystery there. It was always the same in these large organisations. Obsessed by security, IT insisted on people using ‘strong’ passwords that had to be changed every five minutes, and then claimed to be surprised when people chose to write them down. What else did they expect when most people struggled to remember their wedding anniversary, let alone a randomly assigned and ever-changing tencharacter alphanumeric code. The government was the worst offender of all.
He typed the password in and hit the enter key. Almost immediately the screen went blue. Then it sounded a long, strident beep. Finally it flashed up an ominously bland error message.
The phone started to ring. Tom checked the display and saw that it was Stokes, presumably tipped off by some clever piece of software that someone was trying to access Jennifer’s account. The Bureau was clearly more nimble and joined up than Tom had given them credit for earlier.
Shoving the file under his jacket, he leapt across to the door and, gingerly lifting the blind, looked outside. To his relief, everything seemed normal, the people working in the open-plan team room on the other side of the corridor still gazing into their screens or talking on the phone. Checking that no one was coming, he slipped out of the office and headed back towards the stairs and swiped the door open.
Almost immediately he jumped back, the stairwell thundering with the sound of heavy footsteps and urgent shouts that he knew instinctively were heading towards him. He glanced around, looking for somewhere to hide and realising that he had only moments to find it. But before he could move, he felt a heavy hand grip his shoulder. He spun round. It was Ortiz, his chest heaving, eyes staring.
‘This way,’ he wheezed, urging him towards an open office. ‘Quickly.’
Tom hesitated for a fraction of a second, but the lack of a better option quickly made up his mind for him. Following him inside, Tom watched as Ortiz shut the door behind him and let the blinds drop with a fizz of nylon through his fingers.
‘Can you really find them?’ he panted, peering through a narrow crack as a group of armed men, led by Stokes, charged past them towards Jennifer’s office.
‘What?’ Tom asked, not sure he’d heard right.
‘Jennifer’s killers? Can you find them?’ Ortiz repeated, spinning round to face him, his face glistening, the half-hidden tattoo on his neck pulsing as if it was alive.
‘I can find them.’ Tom nodded. ‘If I can get out of here, I can find them.’
Ortiz stared at him unblinkingly, as if trying to look for the trap that might be lurking behind Tom’s eyes.
‘Where are you going to go?’
‘It’s probably better you don’t know.’
‘What will you do?’
‘Whatever I have to,’ Tom reassured him in a cold voice. ‘What you can’t. What Jennifer deserves.’
Ortiz nodded slowly and gave a deep sigh, Tom’s words seeming to calm him.
‘Good.’ He stepped forward and pressed his card into Tom’s hand, pulling him closer until their faces were only inches apart. ‘Just call me when it’s done.’
Releasing his grip, Ortiz reached out and with a jerk of his wrist, flicked the fire alarm switch. The siren’s shrill cry split the air.
‘Go,’ he muttered, his eyes dropping to the floor. ‘Get outside with everyone else before I change my mind.’
With a nod, Tom sprinted back towards the stairwell, the siren bouncing deliriously off the walls. Taking the steps two at a time, he raced down towards the ground floor, doors above and below him crashing open as people streamed on to the staircase, their excited voices suggesting that they knew this wasn’t a drill.
As he cleared the first-floor landing, however, he was forced to slow to a walk, the crowd backing up ahead of him. Peering over their heads, he saw that a line of security guards was quickly checking everyone’s ID before allowing them to leave the building. Had Stokes tipped them off, guessing that he might be using the alarm as cover? Either way, Tom had to do something and do something quickly, before the tide of people behind him swept him into the guards’ waiting arms.
Waiting until he was almost at the bottom of the penultimate flight of stairs, Tom deliberately tripped the man ahead of him and, with a sharp shove, sent him crashing into the wall opposite. He smacked into it with a sickening crunch, a deep gash opening up in his forehead, the blood streaming down his face.
‘Let me through,’ Tom called, hauling the dazed man to his feet and throwing his arm around his shoulder. ‘Let me through.’
‘Get out the way,’ somebody above him called.
‘Get back,’ someone else echoed. ‘Man down.’
Seeing Tom staggering towards them, one of the guards stepped forward and supported the injured man on the other side. Together they lifted him along the narrow path that had miraculously opened through the middle of the crowd, people grimacing in sympathy at the unnatural angle of the man’s nose.
‘He needs a doctor,’ Tom called urgently. ‘He’s losing a lot of blood.’
‘This way, sir.’
The line of guards parted to let them through, another officer escorting them clear as he radioed for a medic. Reaching a safe distance, they sat the still groggy man down on the sidewalk, an ambulance announcing its arrival moments later by unnecessarily laying down three feet of rubber as it stopped. The paramedics jumped out, threw a foil blanket around the man’s shoulders and pressed a wet compress against his nose to stem the flow. Tom stepped back, leaving the two guards to crowd round with words of advice and encouragement. Then, seeing that no one was watching, he turned and walked away.
Standing at a seventh-storey window, FBI Director Green watched Tom disappear down D Street with a smile. Smartly dressed with a crisp parting in his brown hair, plump cheeks and perfectly capped teeth, he was engaged in a running battle with his weight, the various scarred notches on his belt showing the yo-yo fluctuations of his waistline.
He knew Kirk well enough to guess that he’d find a way out of that room and that, when he did, he’d head straight for Browne’s safe. That’s why he’d ordered her swipe card not to be cancelled. That’s why he’d briefed the operator to let him know if anyone called asking for directions to her office.
The truth was that Kirk was her best chance now. While the Bureau was holding its collective dick worrying about who was going to get blamed for one of its most promising young agents getting killed, Kirk would be out there making things happen. Browne had trusted Kirk with her life many times before now. It seemed only right to trust him with her death too.
