The Paper Factory (Michael Berg Book 1) (30 page)

Chapter 98
 

 
Michael had barely drawn his eyes from the hotel entrance in over an hour. Tereza the same. He’d not slept well on the plane and found it difficult to keep his eyes open. His subconscious picked up on something that jerked his mind out of its fugue state. Something didn’t add up, but he wasn’t sure what it was that had happened. He replayed what he’d just seen in his own mind. Someone had trotted down the steps in front of the hotel. A man, on his own, walking quickly and sporting some kind of hat. Michael’s eyes followed in the direction that the man had taken. There he was, on the corner of the block hailing a cab. Tweed cap and jacket, light-colored trousers and carrying a brown leather holdall. It struck him then. The clothes didn’t fit. The man’s gait was all wrong. The outfit was for an older man. Also, the trousers were at least an inch too short and the sleeves of the jacket likewise. Even the cloth cap at a second glance sat on the head rather than encompassing it.    

  A taxi pulled up to the sidewalk. The man in the ill-fitting suit turned to get in and Michael got a full, although momentary, glimpse of his face. Rivello.

  “
Driver. Over there, on the corner to the right of the hotel. The yellow cab pulling into the street. Follow it now.”

  “
Hey, listen, buddy,” the driver’s Brooklyn accent, in his indignation, more pronounced, “I shoulda’ been home an hour ago and you been watching too many films. I wanna settle up and call it a day.”

  “
Look,” said Michael, “the meter’s at a hundred dollars which means I owe you two hundred. You follow that cab and take us to wherever it goes, I’ll make it five hundred.”

 
Rivello’s yellow cab had already taken the first right off Broad Street and was almost out of sight.

  “
Okay, Okay, you make it hard for a guy to say no. Hope I don’t live to regret it.”

  “
Michael, what about István? He’s still inside,” Tereza said.

They’d both noticed him enter the
hotel behind Rivello. Michael didn’t need to think for long.

  “
We need to stay on Rivello. István can wait. Driver, let’s go.”

 
The driver accelerated out into the traffic onto Broad Street, the displeasure of the other drivers he’d just cut off evident in the cacophony of horns erupting around them. Fortunately the lights were with them and they took a right down the same street Rivello had disappeared, no more than thirty seconds before.
  “I’m glad you were on your toes,” said Tereza, “I hadn’t noticed him leave.”

 
Michael swung round to face her.

  “
He’d changed his clothes. Disguised himself. I’m not sure why. I just hope we don’t lose him now. It may be that he’s going to the same address that his Bloomberg account is registered to. It’s not far from here.”

  “
What do we do when we catch him?” Tereza said.

  “
I want to see him spending a long time in jail,” said Michael. “I don’t know if the Russian authorities could or would prosecute him for what he’s done there, but I’m sure we have enough evidence to have him arrested here under suspicion of fraud, kidnapping and murder.”

 
Tereza stayed silent.
  “We need to make sure he doesn’t leave the country. When he stops moving, we’ll call the police.”

  She nodded, but
he wasn’t convinced. She was distant, thoughts elsewhere. Michael decided he had other things to worry about and turned to the driver.

  “
Have you got the cab?”
  “Sure, buddy, thirty yards ahead of us. Piece of pie.”

Chapter 99

  The little girl was the happiest she’d been for quite some time. She had rarely seen her father in the past few weeks and she couldn’t remember the last time they’d had a chance to play. She ran around the room, from one piece of furniture to another searching for him, dark, almond-shaped eyes seeking to find him in improbable places.

 
The fact that he had been in his mid-forties when he’d become a father for the first time didn’t register at all with her. It didn’t occur to her that he was now, at forty-nine, greying at the temples and well into middle-age. To the little girl he was the center of her world.

 
Her father, surprised as he was to have the responsibility of fatherhood thrust upon him from out of the blue, had adapted quickly to the changing circumstances and was amazed that someone so small could have such a profound impact on his life. At four years old, her adoration of him had become obvious and was, of course, mutual. He only regretted that his job meant that these days they rarely got a chance to spend time with each other. In fact, it was only during the time spent with his daughter that he felt truly content, relaxed and removed from the unrelenting pressure of his chosen profession.

 
He’d spent the past hour, since eight thirty, alternately carrying her on his back around the sitting room and playing hide and seek amongst the various pieces of furniture scattered around the spacious room. There was a knock on the door. From the couch he was at that moment hiding behind, he noticed her face shaping itself into a pout, acknowledging the likely end of playtime. He got up and brushed imaginary dust from the knees of his trousers.

  “
What is it?” President Gilmore shouted across the room, brittleness apparent in his voice.

 
Juan Gonzalez opened the door.

  “
Mr. President, Ron Bailey just called in. He’s a few minutes from here and he needs to speak to you. He says it’s urgent.”

 
Gilmore sighed. The fallout from the financial crisis was gaining momentum. He’d had to make an address to the nation only days before to reassure the American people that he had a firm hand on the tiller, when in reality no one had a firm hand on anything.  

 
Then there was all the insane nonsense of the Elisabeth Kennedy affair and the Bilderberg Group. He had no idea how it had all snowballed into the mess it had become. All he was certain of was that the world was on a knife-edge and he was expected to stop it from falling off. He had no idea if the measures they planned to take, to flood the economy with money, would work at all, never mind on time.

  He was
uneasy about Bilderberg. Should anything go wrong, he was too close to avoid the fallout. To have both the deputy director of the CIA and his own chief of staff on the Steering Committee, he now viewed as a major folly.

  “
Okay, princess, Uncle Juan’s going to take you to see Mommy.” He lifted her, the pout now threatening to turn into something altogether more unpleasant.

 
Juan was already at the president’s side and gathered her in his arms, already making appropriate cooing noises in an attempt to distract her. Ian Gilmore sighed and felt a stab of guilt as she was carried from the room, wailing and waving her arms toward him, seeking rescue.

  “
Sorry to interrupt your time with your daughter, Mr. President,” Ron Bailey entered as Gonzalez left, “but this can’t wait. We have a complication.”

  “
We’re in private, Ron. None of this Mr. President stuff. Okay. You’d be amazed at how tired I’m getting of hearing those two words. Close the door and take a seat.”

 
Bailey sat facing Gilmore on one of two cream cotton Queen Anne couches, the president at right angles to him in a similarly elegant armchair.

  “
Okay, Ron, what the hell’s happened now?”

 
Bailey hesitated, not taken aback by the president’s manner, but choosing his words carefully.

  “
We left the meeting at eight thirty. Hardcastle was pissed and, at the end, had to beat a decision out of them. That idiot Delaney was off his rocks, completely hammered. Made an ass of himself and lost his vote. The vote, incidentally, was to follow through with the liquidation process. The trouble is, we’re no closer to finding Kennedy than we were twenty-four hours ago. At one point, we were only minutes from securing her. She simply vanished into thin air.”

  “
That’s very interesting news, Ron, but I already knew that Delaney was an asshole. Couldn’t you have called me, or are you here for some other reason?”

 
Bailey shifted his slight frame and began to visibly flush around the neck. Gilmore and Bailey went back years. Gilmore knew the signs.

  “
What else?”

 
Bailey hesitated again, then thought better of it.

  “Hardcastle’
s dead.”

 
It was Gilmore’s turn to be speechless.

“What do you mean he’s dead? Of what?”

  “
He drowned. The bath, in his suite, in the Old Hemmingway. Someone bound him to a chair, filled the bath with water, pushed him in head first. Probably held the chair down on top of him to make sure the job got done properly. The only thing we know for certain is that the killer isn’t the man we found on the inside of the door lying in a pool of his own blood.”

 
Gilmore forced himself to stand and walked to the end of the bookcase that stretched floor to ceiling across one side of the room. He opened a miniature rectangular door set into the wood. He poured a healthy double measure of quality bourbon into both glasses and returned to his chair.

  “
This could be the end, Ron. I think we both know that. The key thing here is that the presidency survives.”

  “
Douglas Speak is taking care of it, Ian. His people will make it look like a suicide. The body by the door will disappear. The clean-up boys are already in there taking care of the blood and gore. We’ll fix it.”

  “
You’re kidding yourself, Ron. This thing is escalating out of control. We don’t know what’s going on. The chairman of the most influential and powerful political organization in the world has just been ritually killed in his hotel bathroom. Another corpse lies in the room next door. Dammit, Ron, there are bodies everywhere. Besides, the story you guys concocted to justify the Elisabeth Kennedy manhunt is just about to fall apart. Her son’s being delivered to Walter Reed tomorrow. Reports of his untimely death at his mother’s hands clearly exaggerated. We can’t even find Kennedy, for Christ’s sake. She’s probably e-mailing her story to the world as we speak.”

 
Gilmore had worked himself into a state of extreme agitation, his hands now formed into fists, his heart racing. He forced himself to ease into the back of his chair. He took a few deep breaths.

  “
Did we kill Hardcastle?” said Bailey.

 
The president didn’t hesitate. “To the contrary, he’ll be a great loss. He’s been pushing our agenda in Europe for years. Our original concern that he’d show bias against us in favor of the French or Germans was naive. We’d forgotten one thing. You can always count on the British to stick the boot into the rest of Europe.”

 
Gilmore thought for a moment, inhaled deeply. “It looks like we’ll have to play this out. But I want you out of Bilderberg now. Resign immediately. You’re too close to the action and you’re too close to me. This is the last time we talk about Bilderberg. Speak stays in. We need someone whom we can trust controlling things. If the shit hits the fan and this all comes out, Douglas Speak is the fall guy. There’s no one out there who doesn’t believe that the CIA isn’t capable of anything anyway. We’ll make sure some heads roll and cut their budget next year to keep Congress happy. We may still get lucky, Kennedy may crawl out from somewhere before shooting her mouth off. But my money’s on this whole thing blowing sky high. I want to make sure that we don’t become collateral damage when it does.”

Chapter 100

 
It was close to eleven p.m. as the cab skirted the Plaza. Michael had fond memories of sitting in the hotel’s Oak Bar on a crisp January afternoon, a few years earlier, tucking into the finest Rueben sandwich he’d ever tasted. The taxi veered to the left and then took a right along Central Park West. The Trump Tower passed to his left. Michael had a good idea now that they were heading for the same address that he’d found on Rivello’s computer.

 
The Park was vast. Five minutes later they were not even halfway to the north side. Michael asked the driver to hold back so that they weren’t forced to pull up to Rivello’s car at the lights. Two more minutes and Rivello’s cab made a sweeping u-turn and stopped on the corner of West Seventy-Third and Central Park West.

  “
Drive for another two blocks, then come back,” Michael instructed the driver. “As soon as we get out, you’re done.”

When they stopped at the corner of West
Seventy-Third, Michael paid the driver and he and Tereza got out.

 
Apartment buildings, not many more than ten stories high, lined both sides of the street. There was little traffic about, a few red taillights shimmering at various intersections along its length. The entrance to number two was twenty meters from where they stood. Michael looked around for a phone box. There was one directly across Central Park West, close to one of the Park’s entrances.

  “W
ait here. There’s a telephone box over there,” he pointed in its direction. “I’ll call the police. Then we wait.”

 
Tereza nodded.

  “
Are you okay?” he asked, troubled by the way she was acting.

  “
I’m sorry, I’m exhausted. I’m amazed that I’m still standing upright. Go to the phone, call the police. I’ll wait here.”

She smiled at him and he immediately felt reassured. The smile was tired, but full of warmth. He crossed to the other side of the street.

Chapter 10
1

  As soon as he entered the apartment, Rivello headed for the bathroom. As he emptied the clothing from Hardcastle’s leather holdall into the bath, his nostrils picked up the metallic coppery scent of blood. His father’s. He knew that by the time the American police had any inkling of who he was, he would be safely back in Eastern Europe. Nevertheless, he still cursed the old man for adding this unforeseen complication. The last thing he needed was trace DNA left lying around.

 
The apartment was not registered under his name. It was owned by a Cayman Island investment company. Yet it added a link he could have done without. He’d burn the clothes. He had already disposed of the knife and informed the pilot that he’d changed his plans. The flight plan would switch from Miami to Moscow Sheremetyevo, flying out of La Guardia at five a.m. He wouldn’t return to Ladoga until he knew what was waiting for him there.

 
Before taking care of the clothes, he walked from the bathroom into the spacious, minimally decorated living room. He’d kept the apartment after leaving Beirsdorf’s, using it as a bolt-hole on his frequent trips to Manhattan. Rivello strolled over to the black, art deco desk facing out onto the Park. He took a seat and fired up the computer. When the screen jumped into life, he input his password and waited. He clicked on the Bloomberg Professional icon, entered a second password and the Bloomberg logo filled the top of the screen.

 
Having read the headlines in the
New York Times
earlier in the day, he expected his portfolio to have gained at least another five billion euros in value. The contagion had spread. This was despite the US president’s announcement that he would put a bill before Congress within days to guarantee funding for the country’s banks. Rivello reckoned he still had at least ten days before he’d need to start closing his positions.

 
At first, he thought that he’d entered the wrong account. There had to be some mistake. A fault with the system. He accessed the trading log, gazed at it in astonishment. That morning, at eleven, while on his way to Pulkovo, someone had accessed his account.

 
When the upper panel of the glass door exploded, it showered the terrace with tiny shards of glass. The computer was only stopped from falling ten floors to the sidewalk by the brick wall enclosure. Rivello grabbed the lip of the desk and overturned it. He lashed out at one of the legs with his foot, not stopping until it lay broken on the floor. There was a hammering on the door.

                              ---

  Tereza waited until Michael had his back turned and was halfway across the junction, desperately dodging traffic, when she made her move. She felt bad about what she was about to do to him. But she had no time for guilt. Her need to avenge her father’s death came before all else. The courts would not satisfy her need for justice. She would die herself in trying, if that’s what it came down to. She would never rest while her step-brother still breathed.

 
Tereza entered the building, crossed the lobby and took the elevator to the tenth floor. The carpeted corridor absorbed all sound as she made her way to apartment 1012.
The solid wooden door was at the end of the corridor. It was at the corner of the building, the apartment facing onto the Park and West Seventy-Third Street. Tereza reached into the outside pocket of her jacket and cupped the blade of the knife in her right hand, handle hidden within the jacket’s cuff.

 
She’d bought the knife earlier, while Michael waited in the taxi outside the Hemingway. She raised her fist and pummeled on the door.

                              ---

  Michael reached the phone booth, stepped inside, dialed 911. After only two rings the phone was answered. His relief turned to disappointment when he was forced to listen to an electronic voice, asking him to hold. As he waited, he turned to check on Tereza. She’d gone. He swept his eyes across the street. She was nowhere to be seen. It hit him. All at once he knew why she had been unresponsive and sullen earlier. She was already in there. The phone spun, dangling by its cord. Michael was already halfway across the street.