Die Twice (27 page)

A brass panel with twelve old-fashioned switches was mounted on the wall to the right of the open door. At random, I picked the one in the center of the bottom row. I flicked it up. The room filled with light. It came from behind my left shoulder. And lasted less than one second. That brief moment was all the time I had to absorb an impression of the interior of the room. I remember seeing a bar, running the whole length of the back wall. A mass of round tables—maybe forty of them—pushed together at the far end. A sea of chairs in the space to their left. An expanse of empty, floral-pattern carpet spreading out around me. And in the center of it, two bodies. They were male. Both were wearing White Sox jackets. They were lying a few feet apart, arms and legs twisted at unnatural angles. And each had a bullet hole in the side of his head.

When the light snapped back out the room seemed even darker than it had been before. My night vision was completely shot. But I did hear something this time. The sound of the door slamming shut. And I could smell something, too. A heavy, oily odor laced with a hint of bitter almonds. It was a scent I knew well. Fulminic acid. Its fumes were poisonous, but I wasn’t too worried about that. Because most often when people use it, they have another purpose in mind. Forming part of a detonator.

I stepped to the side and tugged at the handle. It wouldn’t budge. Whoever had just closed the door must have fastened it, as well. Behind me I heard a low crump and the room began to glow a deep, volcanic red. I stepped back and flicked up the other light switches. A whole row at a time. None of them worked. Acrid smoke was starting to reach my nostrils, so I moved left again and tried the other doors, one after the other. They were all locked, but with the top halves being glass I guessed that wouldn’t be too much of a problem. I struck out at an angle and kept moving till my shin
crashed into something wooden. It was a chair. I grabbed it, felt for its neighbor, and retraced my steps. I lined up on the first door I reached. Swung the chair. Felt it make contact. Let go as it crashed through into the corridor in a flurry of jagged shards. Then I picked up the second chair. Used it to clear the remaining glass from the window frame. Prepared to climb out to safety. And flung myself back down to the floor as a bullet ripped into the frame near my head.

I could hear the flames crackling behind me, near where I’d seen the bar. They could only get worse with the extra oxygen that would be sucked in, now that I’d broken the window. That left me with some pretty stark choices. I could burn to death, if I stayed in the room. Get shot, if I tried to leave. Or possibly suffocate, if the oily fumes continued to grow thicker.

None of those options really grabbed me so I decided that since Fothergill’s buddies had shown up anyway, it would be nice for one of them to lend me a hand. I crawled across toward the spot where I remembered them lying and stopped when I came in contact with a body part. It turned out to be a leg. I worked my way up until I reached the face. Then I found the guy was no use because he’d been shot in the right-hand side of the head. I left him in peace and kept on going till I stumbled across his buddy. He’d taken his slug in the left side, so I dragged his body back to the safety of the wall. Then I propped him up and wrestled him out of his baseball jacket. I’d forgotten just how hard dressing corpses can be, so combined with the smoke and rising heat I was breathing pretty hard by the time I’d replaced it with my own.

The person who’d shot at me had been somewhere to my right, so I dragged the body I’d dressed to the far side of the left-hand door. I went back for the remaining chair and used it to break the window. Another bullet hit the woodwork. I dropped the chair and waited for thirty seconds. Then I hauled the body upright and
maneuvered it close to the door. I tipped it forward so that its right hand flopped forward, as if trying to grab hold of the frame, ready to climb through. Another shot rang out. A bullet smashed into the body’s chest. I simulated jerking it back under the impact, but kept him on his feet. Two more rounds hit him, both in the chest, and I decided enough was enough. His last stand had been a glorious one, after all, so I let him slip to the floor for the final time. There was silence from the corridor. A minute passed. The smoke was growing noticeably thicker. My eyes were beginning to water and it was becoming hard not to choke. And then I heard the sound I’d been waiting for. Footsteps. Running away. I risked another thirty seconds in the room. Then I went back to the first window I’d cleared and vaulted through to the other side.

There are many reasons for a person to take action.

Some are positive. They lead to doing things because you actively believe in them. Such as joining the army in 1939, like my father had done. Or in 1914, as his father had done before him.

Others are negative. They lead to things you wouldn’t normally do, simply to avoid alternatives that strike you as worse. Like not wanting to spend time in a hotel room with nothing but certain red-raw memories to keep you company.

An old boss of mine once warned me against the second kind.

But it’s a lesson I still haven’t learned very well.

The first assistant I saw at the Gap store on Michigan Avenue wrinkled her nose when I walked in. Then she dumped the stack of shirts she’d been folding on the nearest table and retreated to the back of the store. Normally I’d have been insulted by that kind of
reaction, but on this occasion I couldn’t really blame her. My clothes and hair stank of smoke. A film of gray soot coated my skin. My jeans were ripped from the broken glass in the door at the Coq d’Or and specks of blood from the White Sox guy had ended up on my shirt. All things considered, I looked and smelled pretty damn unpleasant.

I picked out suitable replacements for my ruined garments, including a new jacket to replace the one I’d loaned to the dead body, and made my way back to my hotel. I went straight up to my room, locked the door behind me, and headed for the bathroom. Taking a long shower is something I usually enjoy, but in this case it wasn’t an option. It was a necessity. I stayed under the cascade of warm, cleansing water for nearly twenty minutes, not moving. Then I pulled on my new outfit and retrieved my phone from the pocket of the discarded jeans. A message on the screen told me that Fothergill had been after me. He’d tried twelve times since I’d been in the bathroom. I guess he must have been anxious to reach me. It was tempting to leave him dangling after he’d ignored my message, earlier, but I had ulterior motives. I was hoping he’d have some interesting news, so I called him right back.

He picked up on the first ring.

“Seems like you’re having communication issues with your people,” I said.

“David?” he said. “Are you OK? What happened?”

“I’m fine. I can’t say the same for your guys, though. Looks like you’ll be needing new rent-a-goons from now on.”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe you can find ones that can follow instructions. And understand simple concepts, like being stood down.”

“They showed up? At the Drake?”

“They did.”

“I don’t understand. I told them not to go. Well, I got a message to them, telling them not to.”

“Well, I guess it never got through.”

“So what happened? I’m hearing that shots were fired. Something about a fire breaking out. I can see smoke from my office window, right now. And fire trucks. The whole north end of Michigan is closed off. People are being evacuated.”

“Someone torched the place.”

“While you were there?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Really? Who?”

“You tell me.”

“It was a deliberate torching? Are you sure?”

“It was a pro job. No doubt about it. They used incendiaries, triggered by a light switch. Not explosives. They wanted the place to burn, not blow up.”

“It was a trap?”

“From the start.”

“But you got out.”

“Evidently.”

“And the guys I sent? Or tried not to send. Lady Luck wasn’t smiling on them, quite so much?”

“She wasn’t smiling on them at all.”

“So what was it that did for them? The fire? The fumes?”

“Neither. They were shot in the head.”

“By the Myenese?”

“I presume so. I don’t know for sure, though. Your guys were dead when I got there.”

“When you got there? Were you late?”

“Me? No. I’m never late.”

“So they were early?”

“They were both. Early, and late. At the same time. Sounds like a riddle.”

“David, this isn’t the time. Didn’t the Myenese say anything? Shed any light on what they did? Or why?”

“No. I never saw them, let alone spoke to them. They just locked me in the bar with the dead guys and tried to incinerate me. And then shot at me. They were persistent. I’ll give them that.”

“So nothing happened to derail things. It wasn’t like you were leading them down the garden path when my guys jumped out and knocked everything out of kilter?”

“No. It was a setup from minute one.”

“Which points to one person.”

“McIntyre.”

“Exactly.”

“Which is why I was calling. I want some news. Good news, preferably.”

Fothergill didn’t respond.

“Any progress on McIntyre’s new contacts?” I said. “Any word from the IT guys?”

“Maybe,” he said. “In fact, yes. We think so. They’ve narrowed the dating site traffic down to a defined range of IP addresses. And with a bit more work, we should be able to pinpoint a specific user.”

“Excellent. How long will that take?”

“David, after what you’ve been through, don’t you think that’s a question for tomorrow?”

“No. I’m asking now.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself. No one would bat an eyelid if you took a few hours to reset.”

“How long will they take?”

He didn’t answer.

“Do I need to come down there and ask them myself?” I said.

“No,” he said. “I’ll find out. But don’t worry. They don’t think it’ll take too much longer.”

“Good. I want to know where to find McIntyre’s new friends. And in the meantime, I want you to set up another meeting with the Myenese.”

“Really? Are you sure?”

“Would I ask, otherwise?”

“The thing is, I think we should focus now, David. Those people are out of the picture. It’s time to let them go.”

“No. We need to keep after them.”

“Why? This is no time for revenge.”

“It’s always time for revenge. Especially since they ruined my favorite jacket. But that’s not the point. Think about it. McIntyre tipped the Myenese off about this afternoon being a bust. Which means they’ve been in contact, in the last few hours. So they might be able to get in touch again.”

“Oh. I hadn’t thought of that.”

“So, we need them back on the hook. That way, if the new buyers don’t lead us anywhere, we may still have a back door into McIntyre.”

“It’ll give us a plan B. Excellent. Or where are we up to now? Probably about plan Z, I should think. But whatever it is, I’ll talk to the IT guys. See if they can get something coded . . . Oh, can you hold on a second?”

The line went silent.

“OK, ” Fothergill said, after two minutes. “I’m back. And we’re in business. We know who Tony’s been messaging with. It’s an architect. Or someone in an architect’s office, anyway. A firm called Pascoe, Kershaw, and Reith.”

“That’s good,” I said. “Where are they?”

“Guess.”

“Where?”

“About three hundred yards from where I’m standing.”

I was beginning to learn that Fothergill was sometimes prone to exaggeration, especially where directions were involved. Pascoe, Kershaw, and Reith’s building was something over half a mile from the consulate, not three hundred yards. That didn’t matter enormously in the great scheme of things, but it did cause me a little inconvenience that afternoon. Because before approaching it, I decided to hit Starbucks one more time. And not just ’cause I was ready for another cappuccino. The main reason was that if you buy four drinks to take out, they give you a cardboard holder to carry them in. And if you approach an elevator hanging on to one of those with both hands, looking like you’re on the verge of spilling a couple of pints of hot liquid all over your neighbors, something magical happens. People’s natural inclination to ask who the hell you are and why you’re poking around their building instantly disappears. And is replaced with a simple, courteous question. Which floor do you want?

Fothergill’s lack of accuracy meant I had to lug the drinks twice as far as I’d expected, but when I arrived at the correct address they did the trick just as beautifully as usual. The architects had the top floor of an anonymous building on Washington and State, not far from the old Marshall Field’s department store. I loitered outside for a moment, observing the steady stream of office workers, before a young woman in a plum-colored suit paused to open the door for me. I followed her inside, glanced up at the list of tenants displayed over the concierge’s desk, and made my way across to join a gaggle of telemarketers who were waiting to head back up to their suite.

No one else asked for the same floor as me, but when the elevator doors opened I realized that wasn’t just a happy coincidence. It
was because the architects’ firm had closed for the day. The lights were off, and the place looked locked down and deserted. Which wasn’t necessarily a problem. It just meant that getting inside would be a different kind of challenge.

I stepped out of the elevator car and into the reception area. A single chair was tucked neatly away behind a pale wooden counter, next to a computer screen and a phone. A blue leather couch was pushed back against the wall to the right, beneath two large black-and-white prints of the Chicago skyline. A pair of frosted glass doors filled the space to the left, with the partners’ names etched vertically in bold, modern letters. There wasn’t much else to see. Except for a digital keypad that was fixed to the frame. And a CCTV camera above my head, keeping watch over everything.

A drop of coffee slopped onto the floor as I flipped the lid off the backup cappuccino I’d bought. It was lucky I wasn’t planning on drinking it. All I needed was the foam. I scooped some out with my fingers, stretched up, and daubed it all over the camera’s lens. It wasn’t an ideal substance—not sticky enough—but I figured it would keep any images sufficiently indistinct as long as I didn’t hang around too long. I’d known people improvise with all kinds of foodstuffs before. Mayonnaise. Peanut butter. Hummus. And while steamed milk may have been a little more unorthodox, necessity is, after all, the mother of invention.