The Lazarus Trap (26 page)

“That would be my guess.”

“What for?”

“He'll try to access the company system. Break into our own files. See what's up.”

“Can he do that?”

“Maybe.”

“This is not the answer I need to hear.”

“He oversaw installation of the system related to the pension department. People have always liked Val, you know that as well as I do. It's possible our in-house nerds told him about a backdoor.”

“A what?”

“Software engineers often insert hidden entries into their systems. They're called backdoors. Supposedly they can be used for ongoing repairs. Often it's just to show how smart they are. If Val was told about one, he could use it to access our data no matter what firewalls I insert around the standard entry-points.”

“That
cannot
happen.”

“You need to have our IT people cut Hastings off entirely. The computer system needs to be completely disengaged. No interoffice traffic in any guise.”

Don's pause was microseconds long. “Done. Now what are you going to do about the crisis?”

“I'm on it.”

“Hastings is a town, right? There's a lot of places where he can hide in a town.”

Terrance pushed a fist into his gut, trying to still the churning nausea. “I know where he's headed.”

“You're sure?”

“He's had a thing with my sister.”

“If we weren't talking about our collective futures, I'd be laughing out loud.” Don paused a long moment, then, “What I need to know right here, right now, is this. Can you handle what needs handling?”

“And I'm telling you I am on top of this.”

“What if he gets to the bank? Can he access the funds?”

“His, yes. But not ours.”

“You're sure of that? Absolutely certain? I'm asking, you know, on account of my neck is on the chopping block here.”

“You have a set of access codes. I have the other. Yours are in your bank's safety deposit box. Mine are in the microcomputer in my briefcase. Those are the only sets. Nobody else has any connection whatsoever. So that is not the problem here. That is not what we have to be focusing on.”

“Val.”

“If he shows up at the bank, Syntec will inform New York, New York will go ballistic, and we are
dead.
Josef has two men stationed permanently on the island to see that doesn't happen.”

“Who?”

“Our ally over here. Never mind.”

“This the same ally who didn't get him like he was supposed to when he arrived? This is a reason to trust him?”

Terrance cut the connection and stalked back to the car. The rain was so light as to drift in the air, settling on nothing, drenching everything. Josef stood smiling slightly and smoking a cigar. He waved it in Terrance's direction. “Would you care for a panatela?”

“No. Thanks.” He panted from the strain. Don's frantic state had seeped through the phone like a viscous acid. Terrance hated this day. This place. This seedy district of weary houses and rain too disdainful to even fall correctly. People with worn-down faces. Air that smelled of sea and industry and dense hopelessness. Terrance wiped the moisture from his face. “You just better not fail again.”

Wally was leaning on the Bentley's front end. She rolled her eyes at Terrance, shook her head, and slid into the seat. Taking up the position again, eyes front, seeing nothing.

The boss casually rolled his cigar's glowing end around his fingernail. Terrance saw how the repeated act had charred a slender half-moon, staining it like a blooded talon. Josef asked, “Shouldn't there be an ‘or else' after that little statement?”

“I need this job done.”

“Of course you do. But it seems a bit odd, a gentleman like yourself taking such a tone with the only man in England who's able to offer a helping hand.” Loupe gave Terrance a look, his eyes holding nothing at all. Just dead air.

Terrance sensed something behind him, like an unseen furnace door had opened. He knew without turning that the driver had stalked up with a predator's silence, moving in tight. He resisted the urge to glance back. “I need this man to vanish immediately.”

“That's why we're all here together, now, isn't it? To make sure I live up to my part of the bargain.” The man dropped his half-finished cigar to the road, where it sizzled and died, and reached for Terrance's arm. “Shall we continue with our little journey?”

Terrance let Josef steer him around. To his astonishment, the driver was by the car, holding open the door, giving him that same blank mask. Only now there was a different face to the day, as though he could peel away the soft, rich facade and hear a faint scream. At least it was Val's pain he was hearing. He was fairly certain of that.

AN HOUR AFTER RISING WITH THE DAWN, VAL KNEW HIS PLAN WAS futile. Even so, he remained where he was, isolated in his host's home office, listening to the house come alive around him. Gerald was a production engineer working the line at Insignia. Like most engineers, his home computer was hardwired into the company system. Even so, Val did not have a chance to even try his backdoors. The UK computer system had effectively been frozen out.

Sunlight pierced the house with an unfamiliar tone. Val took his empty mug back to the kitchen. Three men sat at the table, their morning chatter silenced by his appearance. The atmosphere was stale as the overcooked coffee. Val poured himself a mug and retreated to the office.

He stood by the side window and sipped at coffee stewed to its bitter dregs. He watched as Audrey's dilapidated Rover pulled up to the curb. Val found himself unable to walk out and greet her. Instead, he touched Audrey's letter through the fabric of his shirt, as he would a talisman.

When the doorbell rang, a burly middle-aged man emerged from the kitchen. He opened the front door and greeted her with, “All right, love?”

“Hello, Bert.” Audrey's voice held to a comfortable burr. “Everyone behaving themselves?”

The big man liked that in the manner of old friends. “Looks like we should be asking you that one.”

Gerald walked down the hall from the kitchen. He gave Val a single glance through the open office doorway, then bussed Audrey on the cheek. Gerald was lean and taut in build, with hair one shade off blond. He had pianist's hands, long and supple and very strong looking. He wore a button-down Oxford shirt of pale blue and had three pens in his breast pocket. Everything about him shouted engineer.

Audrey said quietly, “Thank you, Gerald.”

“Glad to help,” he said, but he cut Val another look that suggested something else.

“Have you discussed things yet?”

“We decided it was best to wait for you.”

“All right.” Audrey finally acknowledged Val, but showed him nothing. “Did you sleep well?”

“Fine, thanks.”

“Perhaps we should get started.”

Val felt Gerald's gaze steady and hard on him as he followed the others into the front parlor. A third man entered through the kitchen. Dillon was younger than the others but bore the same scarred rigidity as Bert. Val stationed himself by the doorway, giving himself an out in case the natives turned hostile.

Gerald's home was a bachelor's sort of place—monochrome carpet, bare walls, functional furniture. A pair of mismatched sofas were permanently reshaped by the bodies lodged there. Pastel drapes framed windows pleading dustily for a good cleaning. Val saw a lot of his own dwelling space in how Gerald lived.

Gerald selected a hard-backed chair by the empty fireplace and asked, “Is it true what they say, that they're closing us down?”

Audrey replied, “I don't have anything definite. But the rumors seem pretty conclusive.”

“What about our pensions?” Evidently Gerald was their appointed spokesman. “Is that true?”

“Yes. I'm afraid it is.”

“Someone has stolen from them?”

Audrey gave Val the resigned expression of one knowing it had to come out. Val said, “Not someone. Terrance d'Arcy.”

Gerald asked Audrey, “Your brother has tapped into our pension fund?”

She nodded at Val, who replied for her, “Not tapped. Drained. Terrance has effectively stolen it all. Or enough so that everything else will go to the company's creditors.”

“What about us?”

“There are always other liens and priority claims on a pension fund. Legally, pension holders are the last in line. They have no secured interest. It's wrong, but that's the way it is.”

“You're telling me that Insignia is going to shut us down and we won't have any pension to tide us over?”

“That pretty much sums it up.”

Audrey nodded at him once more. Val took a very hard breath and added, “I stole from the fund as well.”

Gerald looked at Audrey again. His voice was perplexed. “You've been keeping the torch for a thief?”

“Val isn't a thief.”

“Excuse me, love, but you heard him the same as I.”

“I know what he said.” Audrey met Val with an unwavering gaze. “But Val Haines is not a thief.”

Gerald crossed his arms across his chest. Holding himself back bunched his shoulders and corded the muscles in his neck.

The large man seated on the sofa asked Val, “What'd you do that for, mate?”

“I don't remember.”

Gerald snorted. A quiet puff of sound, there and gone. Like a coiled spring wound tight for far too long.

“I had an accident. I suffer from amnesia. I remember parts now. But not everything. I know I stole from the fund. Maybe it was just to get away. I remember telling someone that. But it doesn't fit. I can't figure out why I'd go against everything just to . . .”

The gazes around the room and the struggle to remember felt like fists squeezing his head. Val knew the reason was there. He could almost fit the pieces together. He pushed at his temples with the palms of both hands, adding to the external force. He lifted his gaze. It wasn't coming. He said, “I'm sorry.”

Gerald snorted again. He jerked his chin at Val. “This is the best we've got?”

“He's our only hope,” Audrey replied.

Gerald kicked at the wall behind him with one heel. Softly. Just releasing a bit of the excess steam.

Bert said from his place on the sofa, “Well, all right, then.”

Gerald wasn't ready to let it go just yet. “What chance do we have of getting back what's owed us?”

“Slim to none.” Val was not going to lie. Not anymore. “But I think we should try.”

“Oh, and it's ‘we' now, is it?”

“Gerald,” Audrey said quietly.

The taut man looked down at his floor and went back to kicking the wall.

Audrey rose and gave Val a fraction of a head motion. The two hard-faced men watched him depart with blank stares. She exited the house by the front door and started down the street. As Val fell into step beside her, Audrey took an intense aim at something on the far horizon. She cupped her elbows with her palms and walked stiffly. Their footsteps formed the only discordant note to a lovely sunlit lane.

The previous evening, Audrey had driven him up the steep lane leading away from the medieval town and the sea. She had driven west about twenty minutes, to where a housing estate sprawled around an aging industrial park. Gerald's unassuming house was made spectacular by its setting. Two dozen modest homes fronted a narrow lane marking the industrial township's outer boundary. Behind the houses stretched an expanse of English myth, a great bowl of highland pasture shining in pristine splendor. Rising in the far distance was a steep-sided hill with veins white as old bones.

“Where are we?”

“The border to the downs.” But Audrey paid no attention to her surroundings. “Your plan failed, didn't it? I can see it in your face.”

Val explained what he had tried to do. “I should have known Terrance would have shut down the company's systems.”

“What can we do?”

“I'm working on that.” He gestured behind him. “They don't want me here.”

“What do you expect? A stranger from head office declares they're about to lose their jobs and that he's stolen from a pension fund that won't pay them a farthing?” She took hold of the fence. “Those are good men, Val.”

“The two guys look like they've had a hard life.”

“Bert and Dillon have both done time, yes. I met them through my work. They're friends now.” She leaned heavily upon the words. “Good men, the both of them.”

“Gerald thinks a lot of you.”

“It seems like the entire town is busy making sure I am fully aware of that. We met in an Alpha course I'm teaching at the church. You've heard of Alpha?”

“I don't—”

“Remember. Of course. How convenient.”

“It's the truth.”

More than the morning light tightened her gaze as she inspected him. “Did you truly believe you could actually leave it all behind?”