Frameshift (28 page)

“Abraham Danielson’s office,” said a woman’s voice.

“May I speak to him, please?”

“Who’s calling?”

“Dr. Pierre Tardivel.”

“One moment.”

Silence.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Tardivel, Mr. Danielson is unable to take your call just now. Would you like to leave a message?”

“Tell him a woman from Poland named Maria Dudek suggested I call him. Give him the message now; I’ll hold on.”

“He’s really quite busy, sir, and—”

“Just give him the message. I’m sure he’ll want to take this call.”

“I really can’t—”

“Do it.”

There was quiet for a moment while the secretary mulled this over.

“Just a sec.”

A click as Pierre was put on hold. Three minutes went by.

Another click.

“Abraham Danielson speaking.”

“Hello, Ivan. Maria Dudek sends her regards.”

“I don’t know what—”

“Meet me in one hour at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.”

“I’m not going anywhere. You’re a crazy person—”

“You can talk to me, or I’ll start talking to other people. I understand the Department of Justice has a special office devoted to exposing war criminals.”

Silence for almost thirty seconds. Then: “If we’re going to talk,” said Danielson, “it will be here, on my turf.”

“But—”

“Take it or leave it.”

Pierre looked over at Avi Meyer, who was listening on an extension phone. Avi held up three fingers.

“I’ll be there at three o’clock,” said Pierre. “Make sure your gate guard knows to let me in.”

“Pierre Tardivel,” said Pierre. He was standing in front of the secretary’s desk in the founder’s outer office on the thirty-seventh floor of the forty-story Condor Building. “Here to see Abraham Danielson.”

The secretary was two decades older than Rosalee, the knockout who worked elsewhere on this floor for CEO Craig Bullen. She was clearly startled by Pierre’s dancing limbs and facial tics, but she quickly recovered her composure. “Have a seat, please. Mr. Danielson will be with you in a few moments.”

Pierre understood that he was being put in his place, that Abraham wanted the upper hand psychologically — you don’t sleep with a psychologist every night for three years without picking up a thing or two.

Still, his palms were sweaty. With the aid of his cane, Pierre made his way slowly over to the lobby couch. Several current magazines were on the glass-topped coffee table, including
Forbes
and
Business Week;
there was also a copy of the yellow-and-black Condor annual report.

Avi Meyer, four other OSI agents, and two officers from the San Francisco Police Department were parked a short distance away, outside the fence around the Condor property. All of them were crowded into a rented van, huddled over the listening equipment.

After a few minutes, the receptionist’s phone rang. She picked up the handset. “Yes, sir? Right away.” She put the phone down, then looked at Pierre. “Mr. Danielson will see you now.”

Pierre struggled to his feet and made his way slowly into the office. It was smaller than Craig Bullen’s — it had no conference table — but the furnishings were equally opulent, although Danielson’s tastes were ironically more modern than those of the much younger Bullen, running to black leather and chrome, with turquoise and pink accents.

“Mr. Tardivel,” said Abraham Danielson, with no warmth in his thin, accented voice. “Now, what’s all this nonsense?”

“I see you recognized the name Maria Dudek,” said Pierre, slowly taking a seat in front of Danielson’s desk.

“That name meant nothing to me.”

“Then why did you agree to see me?”

“You’re a stockholder; I recognize you from that shameful bit of grandstanding you did at our meeting. Still, I always make time for my stockholders.”

“I’ve been here once before,” said Pierre. “Oh, not to this room, but to this floor. I had a meeting a while ago with Craig Bullen. But I had the wrong person then — the puppet instead of the puppeteer.”

“I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“And it’s not just being Ivan Marchenko that I’ve got you on — not that that isn’t bad enough. I know you’re also the leader of the Millennial Reich. You’ve done more than just discriminate against people who have genetic disorders. You’re increasing your bottom line by killing off those who would otherwise represent expensive payouts for you, the single largest stockholder in this company.”

Danielson looked at Pierre, his expression blank. “You’re crazy,” he said at last.

Pierre said nothing. His hands danced.

Danielson spread his arms. “You suffer from Huntington’s chorea, isn’t that right? Huntington’s is a degenerative nervous disorder that has a profound effect on the faculties. Whatever you think you know is doubtless just a product of your disease.”

Pierre frowned. “Is it, now? I’ve been doing a lot of research, looking at unsolved murders in the last few years. A disproportionate number of those who died had genetic disorders, or were waiting for expensive medical treatments. And most of that subset were insured by Condor. And I know you routinely take secret skin-cell samples from new policyholders.

If someone you insured has bad DNA, or applies for an expensive treatment, you have them killed.”

“Come, come, Mr. Tardivel. What you’re proposing is monstrous, and I assure you I am not a monster.”

“No?” said Pierre. “What exactly did you do during World War II?”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but I was a minor Red Army soldier in the Ukraine.”

“Bullshit,” said Pierre. He let the word hang between them for several seconds. “Your real name is Ivan Marchenko. You were trained at Trawniki and then stationed at Treblinka.”

‘“Ivan Marchenko,’” said Danielson, pronouncing each syllable with care. “Again, that’s an unfamiliar name.”

“Is it, now? And I suppose you don’t know the name Ivan Grozny, either.”

“Ivan — Ivan the Terrible that would be, wouldn’t it? Wasn’t he the first czar of Russia?” Danielson’s face was composed.

“Ivan the Terrible was a gas-chamber operator at the Treblinka death camp in Poland where eight hundred and seventy thousand people were killed.”

“That has nothing to do with me.”

“There are eyewitnesses.”

“To events that took place half a century ago? Come now.”

“I can prove both charges against you — the insurance-related murders, and that you are Ivan. The question is, which one do you want to admit to? Do you fancy your chances are better here in a California court, or in Israel in a war-crimes trial?”

“You’re crazy.”

“You’ve said that before.”

“Any good defense attorney could make mincemeat of someone with a brain disorder on the witness stand.”

Pierre shrugged. “Well, if my story doesn’t interest you, I’ll take it to the newspapers. I know Barnaby Lincoln at the
Chronicle
.” He started the slow process of getting out of his chair.

Danielson’s eyes narrowed. “What do you want?”

Pierre lowered himself back down. “Ah, now that’s more like it. What I want, Ivan, is five million dollars — enough to look after my wife and daughter after my Huntington’s disease finally takes me.”

“That’s a lot of money.”

“It will buy my silence.”

“If I’m the monster you believe I am, what makes you think you could possibly get away with blackmailing me? If I’ve killed as many people as you say, surely I’d not stop at killing you?” He paused and then looked directly at Pierre. “Or your wife and child.”

For once, Pierre was glad of his chorea; it masked the fact that he was trembling with fear. “I’ve taken precautions. The information is in the hands of people I trust, both here in the States and in Canada — people you will never find. If anything happens to me or my family, they have instructions to make it public.”

Danielson was quiet for a long time. Finally, he said, “I’m not a man who likes to be cornered.”

Pierre said nothing.

The old man was silent a while longer. Then, finally: “Give me a week to get it ready, and—”

Just then, the door to the office burst open. A husky uniformed security guard entered. Danielson rose to his feet. “What is it?”

“Forgive the interruption, sir, but we’ve detected a transmitter in this room.”

Danielson’s eyes narrowed. “Search him,” he snapped. And then, loudly, as if to make sure it was part of the official record, “I admitted nothing. I merely humored a mentally deficient person.”

The guard grabbed Pierre under the left shoulder, hoisted him from the chair, and began roughly patting down his clothes. In a matter of moments, he found the small radio microphone clipped to the inside of Pierre’s shirt. He tore it loose and held it up for Danielson to see.

Pierre tried to sound brave. “It doesn’t matter. There are seven assorted cops and government agents waiting outside the building to take you in for questioning, and we have two positive IDs of you from Treblinka survivors—”

Danielson thumped his fist on his desktop. At first Pierre thought it was a gesture of frustration, but a small section of the desktop popped up at an angle, revealing a hidden control console within. Danielson tapped a series of buttons, and suddenly a thin metal wall dropped down from the ceiling, slicing right in front of Pierre’s kneecaps. If his feet hadn’t just then been moving backward because of the chorea, they would have been sheared off.

The guard looked dumbfounded — either he hadn’t known about this secret wall or had never expected to see it actually in use. Pierre was agog, too — but Marchenko/Danielson was a multimillionaire fugitive who had been preparing for all eventualities for five decades. Doubtless there was a secret exit in the part of the office he was still in.

“Come along, pal,” said the guard, pocketing the microphone and again grabbing Pierre roughly by the arm. He propelled Pierre out of Danielson’s office, through the astonished secretary’s office, through the antechamber, and out into the elevator lobby. The man stabbed at the elevator call switch, but the little square of plastic didn’t light up. He tried again, then cursed. Marchenko must have shut off the elevators to slow down the OSI agents from getting up here. It would take them a while to climb thirty-seven floors, even if they could get into the building past Marchenko’s security people.

The beefy guard let go of Pierre, who, without his cane, which was still back in Marchenko’s office, promptly crumpled to the ground. The guard looked at him, a sneer of disgust across his face. “Christ, you’re a fucking crip, ain’t you?” he said. He looked at the closed elevator doors again, as if thinking, then back at Pierre. “Suppose you can’t do any harm if I leave you up here.” He headed around the corner. Pierre could hear a door opening and the sound of the big man’s feet slapping against stairs as he headed down, presumably to the lobby to join in defending the building’s entrance.

Pierre was all alone in the elevator lobby. He looked up, though, and could see Marchenko’s secretary through the glass doors of the antechamber and the outer office. She was looking at him, as if unsure what to do. He reached out a hand toward her. She got up, turned her back on him, and disappeared into the inner office. Pierre exhaled. He wished he could just lie there without moving, but his legs were dancing incessantly and his head was bobbing left and right.

The woman reappeared — and she was holding Pierre’s cane! She came out to him and helped him to his feet. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you,” she said, “but no one should treat a person the way they’re treating you.”

Pierre took the cane and leaned on it. “
Merci
, ”he said.

“What’s going on?” she asked. “What happened to Mr. Danielson?”

“Did you know about that emergency wall?”

She shook her head. “I was terrified when I heard it crash down. I thought we were having another quake.”

“There may be men with guns coming into the building,” said Pierre.

“You should get off this floor. Go down a few floors and find someplace to hide.”

She looked at him, overwhelmed by it all. “Are you going to be okay?”

He tried to shrug, but the gesture was lost amid the chorea. “This is as good as I get.” He flapped an arm toward the stairwell. “Go on, get yourself somewhere safe.”

She nodded and disappeared around the corner. Pierre wasn’t sure what to do next. He decided to hobble over to the secretary’s desk. He picked up the phone, but it, too, was dead.

Pierre tried to imagine the scene below, the agents and cops storming in the front door, badges flashing — surely they would have started in upon hearing that the microphone had been discovered. They’d be trying to make their way past guards who might well have drawn their pistols.

Pierre remembered what this building looked like more from when he’d last seen it, at the shareholders’ meeting, than from today. He’d been so nervous preparing for this confrontation that he hadn’t really looked at it as he’d driven in this time. A tall building, all glass and steel, with a helicopter landing on its roof…

Sweet Jesus — a
helicopter
. Marchenko wasn’t working his way down to the ground floor; he’d probably already gone up to the roof, three stories above.

Pierre hobbled around the corner. The door to the stairs was clearly marked, next to the men’s and women’s bathrooms. He pushed it open and felt cold air rushing over him. The interior of the stairwell was naked concrete, with steps painted flat gray. He began slowly, painfully, making his way up the first flight. Each flight covered a half floor — there would be at least six before he reached the roof.

His cane was unnecessary as he pulled himself up using the banister, but he didn’t dare let it go, and so it twirled, Charlie Chaplinesque, as he held it in his free palsied hand.

He could hear faint echoes of footfalls far, far below. Others were using the stairs to try to climb up. But thirty-seven flights — even for a young man, that was a lot of potential energy. He pulled himself higher and higher, turning around now as one flight of stairs gave way to the next. He hoped Avi would also figure out that Marchenko had gone up, not down.