Greed, page 25
By now they had also grabbed hold of Fitz.
‘We’re part of Mr Holden’s security team. We’ve caught you breaking and entering and we’ll hold on to you until we can hand you over to the police. Come with us!’
‘We didn’t break—’
‘So where’s the card you used to open the door?’
‘It’s …’ Jan began.
Damn! Jeanne had asked for it back before she left. He was still reeling from the searing pain in his groin.
The men shoved them towards the exit, where two more guards were waiting.
‘Good!’ said Fitz. ‘Because the police will have their work cut out investigating how the notes for Herbert Thompson’s speech and a manuscript on exciting new social, political and economic concepts by Herbert Thompson and a second author came to be in Ted Holden’s safe. Only a few hours after both men died in an alleged accident too. Concepts that may not all be to Ted Holden’s liking.’
Jan dimly heard this whole declaration through the buzzing in his ears, but now fear was mingling with the piercing discomfort in his nether regions.
‘You’ll have plenty of time to explain all of that, I’m sure, though I doubt the police will be very interested in political or economic theories. Especially as the police – even if they did wish or were authorized to search the safe – would find nothing there.’
‘In that case, they can look elsewhere. On Thompson’s and Cantor’s computers, in their notebooks …’
‘Don’t get your hopes up about telling the police any tall tales. You don’t have a shred of proof.’
Fitz and Jan exchanged glances. Jan guessed from Fitz’s expression that his friend was wondering the same thing as he was. Where’s Jeanne?
63
‘What’s going on here?’
On the screen Kreuzer and four members of his staff could be seen talking to a guy in dark clothing. A mountain of a man, clean shaven, with shades.
‘Looks like a security guard,’ said Jörn.
‘That’s what he said he was,’ Kreuzer replied. ‘Wutte and Peel told the waiter they’d seen him fiddling with a gun, so we were forced to check.’
The speeded-up footage showed the group swarming towards the entrance, and the black-clad bear of a man leaving the building.
‘He didn’t show any ID, acted all offended and left.’
‘You let him go?’ asked Jörn.
‘He hadn’t done anything,’ the manager said.
‘And? Was he carrying a weapon?’
‘A pistol. With the safety catch on, in a holster on his belt.’
‘So he may have been someone’s bodyguard,’ Jörn said.
‘We can deal with this later,’ Maya said. ‘But first we need to go to Holden’s suite and back to Dalli’s.’
‘I can’t allow—’
‘I can also come back with a search warrant and a SWAT team,’ Maya interrupted Kreuzer gently. ‘How would your prestigious guests like that?’
Jörn was about to say something, but Maya warned him off with a glare. He was as useless as a guard dog as he was as a mediator.
The hotel manager stared at her aghast. ‘We can’t just …’
‘I repeat: a SWAT team.’
‘How will we explain …?’
‘You’ll think of something.’
‘Come with us,’ Holden’s guard ordered, his gun digging into Fitzroy’s ribs. ‘And I don’t want to hear a squeak out of you!’
‘Where to?’ he asked. ‘I thought you were handing us over to the police.’
‘We will.’ The two henchmen dragged them along the corridor, while their leader stayed behind and made a phone call. Fitzroy couldn’t hear what he was saying.
‘Why aren’t we waiting here?’ Fitzroy asked. There was something fishy about this.
The lift was waiting for them with open doors. The two men bundled Fitzroy and Jan inside and then squeezed in themselves. The lift was designed for ten persons, but the guards were tall and powerfully built, so space was at a premium.
No one said a word. Jan leaned against the wall, his face still white from the lingering after-effects of his bruised groin. Fitzroy stared at the floor indicator over their heads. 2 – 1 – G. The lift passed the ground floor where reception and the exit were located, and continued its journey down into the underworld.
‘The police are waiting in the car park?’ Fitzroy said, alarm in his voice.
‘Would you rather be escorted out through the lobby in your present state?’ the leader asked.
The lift stopped moving and the doors opened.
Jeanne was waiting outside.
‘I’ll need copies of the footage of the two men,’ said Maya on the way up, ‘and of that weird security guy too.’
‘Can we at least handle that part via the official channels?’ the manager asked coolly. They’d left Jörn behind in the CCTV room just in case.
They reached the suite area. Holden’s door was shut.
Kreuzer pressed a button at the side of the door. ‘Room service,’ he said into an invisible microphone. He waited a moment, leaned forward and pressed again. ‘Room service!’
‘There’s no one there,’ Maya said impatiently. ‘Go ahead and open up.’
As if by magic, the double doors slid apart.
‘Very swish,’ she said drily.
The Tiergarten park, the Brandenburg Gate and the entire Berlin skyline were laid out at her feet on the other side of the living room’s panoramic floor-to-ceiling window. The Tiergarten was already black with crowds of people. At least three helicopters were patrolling the sky, and the sound of rotor blades and police sirens was audible even through this top-of-the-range soundproof glass.
Maya heard a hum punctuated by ripping noises off to her right. She hurried across the impressively sized room to a glass door, beyond which lay a large office in which a young man in a dark suit was feeding a pile of documents into a noisy machine. Only now did he notice her presence, and Maya produced her police identity card before he could react.
‘Police!’ she shouted.
The man hesitated and then relaxed. ‘I didn’t hear you,’ he apologized, pointing at the machine.
Maya recognized the headset in his ear, the lean physique and athletic posture, the tell-tale bulge where his jacket concealed a waist holster. Security. She put her card away.
The man tore a few sheets off a stack of stapled papers lying on top of an envelope beside the shredder. Maya could make out some printed text and something that looked like mathematical formulas and statistical diagrams.
‘Is there anyone else here?’
‘The others are at the summit,’ the man explained, continuing his noisy work.
Maya cast a quick glance through the glass doors of the adjoining meeting room. No one there.
‘Sorry for the disturbance,’ Kreuzer said.
‘No problem. You’re only doing your job,’ the man answered, feeding the next sheaf of paper into the shredder.
Jörn watched one of the two operators in The Estate’s video-monitoring room rewind at speed through the scenes of the past few hours. They showed the black-clad guest scurrying backwards from the entrance to be surrounded by Kreuzer and the other three staff members, then the manager and his colleagues disappeared off screen and the man stood there for a long time until he too disappeared out of shot. The time code indicated that he’d waited there for over half an hour.
The operator searched for the preceding footage from the relevant cameras. The man could be seen entering via the front doors, looking around and then taking up his position.
The operator ran through the first sequence once more.
‘Who was the man waiting for?’ Jörn asked rhetorically. ‘Or who was he watching?’
The operator paused the video, started it and stopped it again. The bruiser in dark clothing seemed to be talking quietly to himself, or maybe into his earpiece. Then he focused on something and stared unwaveringly in the same direction for several minutes.
‘What’s he looking at?’ asked Jörn.
‘Maybe the table where Ms Dalli was having coffee with those two men?’ guessed the operator. ‘The direction’s right in any case.’
‘What happened there?’ his colleague asked from his seat in front of his own bank of monitors.
Jörn and the operator turned towards him and saw what he meant. Two screens had gone blank.
‘Where’s that?’ asked the operator next to Jörn.
‘Outside the VIP car park,’ said his colleague, tapping on several different keys to no effect.
‘Well,’ said the man next to Jörn, ‘the system’s been working so well for so long, I guess something had to give at some point.’
‘I’ll wait a bit,’ his colleague said. ‘It’s bound to be back up soon.’ He reached for his phone. ‘I’ll call the valet downstairs to let him know.’
64
‘Oh shit!’ Jan groaned when he saw Jeanne. ‘I should’ve known it was a trap.’
Jeanne didn’t say a word. She was standing on the red carpet leading to the lifts, studying the newcomers with her arms behind her back. In spite of their critical situation, Jan couldn’t help noticing how this position showed off her striking figure to even greater advantage.
‘Keep your mouth shut,’ the security chief snapped.
Hands shoved Fitzroy hard in the back, propelling him out of the elevator and past Jeanne with Jan at his side. The exit into the car park was very plush.
Fitzroy looked back over his shoulder. Beyond their captors, who were the same height as him, he could make out Jeanne’s smaller frame flanked by her companions.
‘Eyes straight ahead,’ the security chief said, underlining his order with a violent blow to Fitz’s ear. Beside him Jan was venting a stream of unintelligible curses.
They reached a peculiar glass enclosure that reminded Fitzroy of the diner on the corner in Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks painting. In front of it was a vehicle lane and a parking space separated from the rest of the car park by a wall. Leading to it were another few yards of red carpet, lined with pots containing head-high palm trees like sad presidential guards in a banana republic. Next to the large glasshouse was a smaller one furnished with a desk, a phone and a computer. It was probably for the valet, but was currently unoccupied. This must be the VIP pick-up point.
There was no police car parked at the end of the red carpet. Instead, two black Mercedes SUVs were waiting there.
‘Where are the police?’ Fitzroy asked, panicking.
‘We’ll drive you there,’ the man explained.
Fitzroy braced himself against the two men pushing him along. ‘No way!’
‘You’re going anyway,’ said the man.
‘No, we won’t,’ said Fitzroy, leaning back with all his weight and using the full leverage of his height. This made no impression on his guards, who shoved him against the glass door, which slid silently aside. Where was the valet?
‘Screaming won’t help you either,’ said the security chief when he saw Fitzroy filling his lungs to shout. ‘No one can hear you down here. And besides …’ He grabbed hold of Fitzroy’s groin and squeezed slightly as a warning.
Fitzroy looked around frantically. Weren’t there any surveillance cameras watching everything and transmitting it to the people in charge of hotel security?
The two henchmen threw open the rear doors of the SUVs, but were startled by the sudden roar of an engine and a squeal of tyres. For a second the headlights of the fast-approaching vehicle bathed the scene in dazzling light, blinding them all. For what seemed like an age, all Fitzroy could see were dancing dots of light in the darkness.
Even before the four-wheel drive had drawn up alongside, shadowy figures leaped out, shouting, ‘On the ground! Don’t touch your weapons!’ as they trained semi-automatics on Holden’s security detail. ‘Get down!’
The men in suits outnumbered their assailants, but their pistols were in the wrong place – stuck in their shoulder holsters. They were well trained but not willing to die, so they did as they were told. Fitzroy sank on to one knee. Having his hands shackled behind his back made any other position difficult or painful.
‘Not you!’ one of the shadows ordered.
Fitzroy’s eyes were getting used to the half-darkness again. Five bull-necked figures in black balaclavas, cargo trousers and shirts were standing in front of him. Fitzroy thought he recognized their silhouettes. He felt sick to the pit of his stomach.
‘Not you either!’ they yelled at Jeanne, who was still standing where she’d been when Fitzroy and Jan stepped out of the lift.
‘Hands behind your backs!’ This was directed at the prostrate security guards.
‘You three, in the car!’ one man instructed Fitzroy, Jan and Jeanne, jabbing them in the ribs with the muzzle of his assault rifle by way of encouragement. Jeanne let out a shriek, to which he responded by yelling ‘Shut up!’ and dealing her an even more violent blow to the side. Jeanne groaned but managed to stifle another howl as she writhed in pain. Fitzroy saw why her hands were still behind her back: they were bound just like his and Jan’s.
In a flash the other masked men had disabled the sprawling security men with cable ties.
At least we’re not the only ones.
‘Get in the boot!’ snarled the man who’d herded them with his gun towards the black Range Rover.
‘It’s too small,’ Jan said.
‘Shut up and get inside!’
‘We won’t all fit.’ A crashing blow with the rifle butt to Jan’s head put an end to his objections. He toppled into the boot and lay there unconscious.
‘Anyone else?’ the man roared.
In the meantime the other four men had finished dealing with Holden’s security team. One of them lifted Jan’s legs in, while the others grabbed Fitzroy and Jeanne by the arm and thrust them into the boot alongside him. They shoved and manhandled them into position and closed two flaps over their heads, blocking out the light, then slammed the tailgate shut.
It was dark and muggy in their tiny prison cell. Fitzroy could neither move nor draw breath. He heard four doors slam and the car started up.
‘Jan,’ hissed Fitzroy. ‘Jan! Are you OK?’
‘Help!’ Jeanne croaked behind him. ‘I can hardly breathe.’
‘Good,’ said a voice from the front. ‘Then hopefully you’ll keep your mouth shut.’
Fitzroy heard her gasping for air. He was doing the same.
‘We’re suffocating back here!’ he shouted.
‘You’re done for one way or the other,’ said the voice. ‘To be honest, you’d be better off dying now than later.’
Now Fitzroy could hear Jeanne breathing as if she were kicking for the line in a two-hundred-metre sprint. She was hyperventilating.
‘Put your mouth against a soft surface,’ he whispered to her. ‘My clothing, for example. Breathe through the fabric.’
Her breathing was muffled now, but it didn’t slow down. The Range Rover stopped, probably at the exit barrier. Jeanne’s breathing grew quieter, then slower and calmer.
The vehicle drove off again.
‘You all right now?’ Fitzroy asked softly.
There was no answer.
‘Jeanne?’
The boot was silent.
65
‘Are you in there, Ms Dalli?’ Maya knocked on the door of Junior Suite 723 for a second time.
No answer.
‘Ms Dalli? OK, open it,’ she said to Kreuzer.
‘I don’t understand why you need to go in there again,’ he complained.
‘Wutte and Peel vanished into the stairwell from the lobby. A few minutes later, Ms Dalli’s card was used to open the door from the stairwell into the exclusive suite area. Dalli may have slipped the two men her key card during their conversation.’
‘And why would she do that?’
‘I’d like to ask her that very question.’
‘But she may also have come down from the floor above, where she’d accessed Mr Holden’s suite only minutes earlier with her extra card.’
‘She came down the stairs in her high heels?’ Maya said sarcastically, adding with an exaggerate groan, ‘Men!’ and then instructing Kreuzer once again to open the door. He reluctantly obeyed.
The suite was empty. Maya checked all the rooms, searching for traces of any recent visits. She found nothing.
She ignored the manager’s triumphant expression as they left the suite.
‘Call your CCTV team. Dalli was planning to go to the summit. Has she left the hotel?’
Kreuzer had abandoned his resistance. He phoned and waited for an answer as they headed towards the lift.
‘Not through the lobby,’ he eventually reported.
‘Via the car park? Do you have cameras down there?’
‘Only outside the VIP area,’ Kreuzer said, rolling his eyes as if explaining something very simple to a dim-witted child.
‘I’d like to see it,’ Maya said.
‘We’ve had a short blackout.’
‘You what?’
‘Jan?’
Jan heard someone breathe his name into his ear. It was dark, and he was lying on his side, cramped and curled up, his hands tied behind his back and hemmed in on all sides, jolted and deafened by the sound of an engine. He was hot, he felt sick, he couldn’t breathe. His pulse was pounding memory back into his skull like a jackhammer.
‘Jan?’
‘Yes?’ he wheezed.
‘Thank God!’ He could feel Fitz’s breath close to his ear. He could feel the whole length of Fitz’s body pressing against his back. They must be lying in the spooning position. ‘Keep quiet.’
Jan had no idea why it was so dark. Fitz’s whispering was almost inaudible over the hum of the engine. No one could really have heard him apart from Jan.
‘What’s going on? Where are we?’
‘Inside that bloody black Range Rover.’
The jackhammer in Jan’s head sent its twin down to torture his entrails.
‘Where’s Jeanne?’
