DARK ORBIT: The complete series, page 52
Cooper switched his attention to the opposite end of the bridge where the new escorts were gathering. So that meant that, by a quirk of security, the bridge itself was on neutral ground.
Interesting.
The welcoming party on the far side was fronted by a slim figure with a shock of blonde hair. Even from this distance, Cooper could tell that he’d had plenty of work done on his appearance. Hair, face, teeth, the lot. Cooper could only guess at the man’s real age but would guess by the way that he held himself that he was probably in his forties. He had a very easy demeanour and played the role of accommodating host to perfection but there was a steel beneath that smile which told Cooper that it would be wise not to underestimate him. He was clearly very good at his job, charming Sorenson first before complimenting Engels on his footwear. It seemed that Perlman’s money had been well spent.
Only then did he ask Engels to produce his various letters of introduction. Once they’d been opened, he gave them no more than a cursory glance. The hard part had been getting the invitation in the first place and, besides, they were really only interested in Engel’s bank details. The blonde man took out his terminal, anxious to see whether he had the necessary funds to pay the ten-million-dollar entry fee.
Of course, it was all Perlman’s money, none of which he could expect to re-coup even if the robbery proved to be successful. Which only begged the question: how much were the contents of these safety deposit boxes actually worth if he was willing to venture this kind of money up front?
What could be that valuable?
Once the financial transfer had been completed, a young woman stepped forward with the body scanners. She wore one on each hand, working quickly as she checked for any contraband. The main focus of this kind of search was to detect communication devices which might give them an advantage in the game but they were also looking for any weapons they might be carrying. The scanners might have looked flimsy, but Cooper had been assured that they were as accurate as the larger ones used by the space ports.
The young woman began with Engels and he raised his hands in order to accommodate her. Neither one of them was armed. There was no point triggering suspicions so early in the proceedings.
“They’re a good-looking couple, don’t you think?”
Cooper was suddenly tense. He hadn’t realised that he was being watched.
“I wasn’t really looking at the guy,” Cooper said.
“Neither was I,” the woman said.
She was mid-thirties of Southeast Asian heritage. Her dark hair pinned up to reveal an elegant neck. When Cooper turned to look at her he saw a neckline which plunged low enough to reveal her mid-section. Back on the Habitat she would have stood out like a sore thumb but up here she fitted in perfectly.
“Are you here to play backgammon?” he asked, sticking to the agreed wording.
“No, I’m here to play Jacqua. I hear the odds are better.”
He nodded to show that he recognised her. It was a ridiculous charade but he needed to be absolutely clear who he was dealing with.
“Good,” he said. “Now that’s out the way, I believe you have something for me.”
“Indeed I do. But I don’t have it on me. Too many prying eyes. I need to pop to the bathroom, then we can meet in the bar.”
Cooper was instantly suspicious. He’d expected her to hand the codes over straight away. It was bad enough that he’d had to wait until this late in the game to get them. He looked over to the area she’d indicated. There were at least three bars there as far as he could see.
“Okay. Which one?”
“The Tai Pai. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Cooper was suddenly very self-aware. This was the one thing he’d been concerned about: the handover. She was supposedly working for the crewman he and Donnie had spoken to earlier but he would never have put the two of them together. Her job was to supply him with a key to the gun cupboard and the codes to the safety deposit boxes and yet here she was heading off to the powder room.
He didn’t like it. It felt as though he was being double crossed. That her true job had been to flush him out. Perhaps her entering the bathroom was some kind of signal. Not that there was any way of knowing and, besides, if casino security had already identified him, there’d be no point in running.
As Cooper made his way to the bar, a man with a neck thicker than his head moved to cut him off. Cooper, seeing that their paths were about to intersect, stopped and allowed the man to pass. The man raised an eyebrow in acknowledgement and kept on walking.
Cooper took a breath and tried to gather himself.
The pressure was starting to get to him. He was used to knowing who his enemy were and where they might be coming from. All this cloak and dagger nonsense really didn’t agree with him but if he was serious about getting Zhao back then he’d have to go along with it.
Without bothering to check who might be watching he went to the bar and ordered a brandy for himself and a martini for the woman. Then he just had to stand there and wait for her to reappear.
The woman emerged a few minutes later but this time she had a wry smile on her face.
She was halfway over to him when she stopped to check something in her purse.
Immediately, a man stepped up behind her and grabbed her.
But she didn’t struggle. She cast a single accusatory glance over in Cooper’s direction but then, when she saw her own confusion mirrored in him, she simply turned to face the man who was holding her. Within seconds two other people had appeared, a man and a stocky looking woman.
The man took her purse and walked over to someone standing in the shadow of one of the other bars. They placed the purse inside an evidence bag before sealing it.
Then the stocky woman went back and took the Asiatic woman firmly by the elbow. Then she indicated for the other man to release her. She spoke quietly to the woman who seemed overwhelmed by the speed with which things were happening. She nodded once to indicate that she understood what had been said to her and then the small group set off across the room, the man holding the purse bringing up the rear.
They came within ten feet of Cooper, who tried to distract himself by taking a sip from his drink. Only, he picked up the martini glass by mistake. As they passed, the Asian woman looked first at him and then in the direction of the restroom. Like all the others on-board, this was an all-gender restroom.
Cooper forced himself to relax, taking his time to finish the martini before moving on to the brandy. Only then did he activate his ear bud.
“Did you get all that?” he asked.
He had two cameras concealed about his person. One in the cuff of his sleeve and the other on his lapel.
“Yeah, most of it,” Donnie said. “What went wrong at your end?”
Cooper immediately went on the defensive.
“Nothing went wrong at my end. I identified myself as agreed and then she went off to the restroom.”
“Did you say anything to upset her?” Donnie asked.
“No. Nothing. You saw for yourself. She was acting strange right from the start.”
“Did she say why she needed to go to the restroom? We weren’t picking up much of what she was saying.”
“No. She just said she’d meet me back at the bar. That was it. You saw the rest.”
Then he heard Perlman’s voice.
“She checked her purse just before they grabbed her. You think she had the key in there?”
“I don’t know.”
There was a long pause on the other end and then Perlman said, “We can live without the key. But without those codes we’re sunk.
*
“Are you still there?” Perlman asked.
It had been five minutes since Cooper had last heard from him.
“I’m here. What have you got for me?”
“Security footage from the restroom. You need to look at it.”
“What’s on it?”
“Will you just look at it?”
Cooper pulled the glasses from his jacket and put them on.
The footage was from an overhead camera and was very clear. There was a man washing his hands at the sink. He was drying his hands when the Asian woman entered. She shot him a look before going over to the second stall. The man finished drying his hands and then left.
After a brief pause, the woman’s head appeared over the top of the stall, taking a moment to satisfy herself that there was no one about. She must have climbed up on the toilet because next she was stretching her arm up towards the ceiling. She rested her palm against a ceiling tile and froze.
Someone else had just entered the room.
Another woman. Their eyes met briefly and then the Asian woman stepped down from her perch before coming out to meet her. It was clear that they knew one another. They spoke briefly, the newcomer turning twice to indicate something beyond the door.
The Asian woman didn’t say anything, she just nodded. Then the other woman left.
Once she was gone, the Asian woman went back into the stall and climbed back onto the toilet seat. But as her hand reached up towards the ceiling tile, she hesitated. She stood like that for several seconds before seeming to make up her mind.
Then she got down off the toilet, went over to the sinks and splashed water on her face.
Cooper didn’t know who the other woman was, but she’d clearly tipped her off about something.
“You see it yet?” Perlman barked.
“Yeah.”
“What do you think?”
“Tell you in a minute.”
Cooper put down his drink and walked straight over to the restroom. As he pushed open the door, a woman was coming out and he stepped aside to let her through. Once inside, he quickly checked that all the stalls were empty before entering the second one and locking the door.
He took a deep breath to steady his nerves, aware that this could be part of some elaborate trap. Then, with one foot on the toilet, he pushed himself up into the air.
He lifted the ceiling tile with one hand while reaching inside with the other. He checked each side of the square in turn and it was only on the last one that he managed to locate something.
As he dropped back down, he heard the sound of female voices entering. After checking that the door was secure, he eased himself back.
In his ear, Perlman said “Well? Did you find anything?”
Cooper held up a brown envelope in front of his lapel camera.
“What’s in there?” Perlman asked.
“Everything. Key and all the codes. Seems like she had second thoughts.”
“That’s good news for us.”
“So long as she doesn’t talk.”
“Oh, she won’t talk,” Perlman said menacingly. “I’ve already taken care of that.”
*
As Cooper entered the office there was a thick-set sitting man perched on the side of the table. He was eating a burger while watching something on the overhead screens.
He quickly gave Cooper the once-over.
“Staff only in here,” he said, making as if to shoo him away.
Cooper looked round the room. Hanging on the wall nearest to him was a display board with various keys, a torch and what looked like a stun stick. Cooper took the stun stick and turned it on. He was careful to hold it away from his body. He wouldn’t be the first person to accidentally electrocute himself with one of those things.
Then he walked over to where the big man was sitting. He was watching something on the screen.
As Cooper advanced, the man raised a hand to ward him off. “Heay, what did I tell you?”
He didn’t see the stun stick until Cooper lunged at him with it, hitting him in the chest and shunting him across the desk. He was immediately transformed into two hundred pounds of slack meat which slowly slid off the back of the desk and disappeared.
Cooper put the stun stick back where he’d found it. It would take too long to recharge, so he decided to search through the man’s pockets, coming out with a small pistol. Cooper weighed it in his hands.
It wasn’t what he’d been expecting but it would have to do.
Keeping the pistol low, he proceeded into the offices. There was a door either side of the short corridor and another door at the far end. He could hear voices but it wasn’t clear where they were coming from, so he had to go up to each of the doors and listen.
The voices were all coming from the end office and he stood there for rather longer than was comfortable while he tried to ascertain who he was dealing with. From what he could hear, he had to assume there were three of them in there. Sounded like two men and a woman so he had to assume that Mr Blonde was one of them.
He went back into the outer office to see if there were any names around that he could use but there weren’t so he went back and stood in front of the door, holding the pistol behind his back. He used his other hand to knock on the door.
The voices were cut short and the door opened.
It was the blonde man who answered. Up close, Cooper was struck by how gaunt he looked with his hollowed-out cheeks. This caused Cooper to re-consider his earlier estimation of the man’s age. From a distance, he thought he might have been in his forties but now he was convinced that the man was in his sixties.
“What the hell do you want?”
Cooper gestured back the way he’d come. “They’ve got a problem. Some guy says he’s supposed to be in the high stakes game. Says there’s been some big mix up.”
The blonde man disappeared back in the room and Cooper slipped the gun down the back of his trousers. When the man reappeared again, he was holding his jacket.
He didn’t give Cooper a second glance.
“Who did you say this other guy was?”
Cooper didn’t know what else to say but was desperate to deflect the attention from himself. His mind reeled as he tried to come up with a name – any name – that might satisfy him.
“Perlman. Yeah, Perlman. Leastwise, I think that’s what he said.”
The name appeared to have the desired effect.
“Shit, Perlman’s here!”
“Seems so.”
The blonde guy stuck his head back into the room. “Did you hear that? Perlman’s showed up. Finally! You’d best get the word out.”
When he came out of the office, he was all business, checking the cut of his jacket.
“Okay,” he strode ahead. “You’d better take me to him.”
He was so intent on what he was doing that he walked straight past the burly figure that was hidden in the corner but then he was out into the casino proper taking a right turn without a backward glance at Cooper. If he got much further ahead, he feared that he would soon realise that Cooper wasn’t telling the truth, but the longer this went on, the more agitated the man became.
They’d gone a couple of hundred feet before the man stopped to confront Cooper.
“Where did you say he was?”
“This side of the bridge. He seemed very agitated. Said he’d been double crossed.”
“Hah! That’s rich coming from him. And is he still there?”
“I don’t know. They were trying to get him off the main floor, trying to calm him down. But there was some other guy with him. Overweight. Sweaty.”
“Donnie? Donnie’s here?”
“I think so.”
“I can’t believe this. I can’t believe the two of them would have the nerve to show their faces here.”
He paced back and forth, uncertain how to proceed. Then he pulled his sleeve down and spoke into his wrist receiver.
“Hi, could you put me through to Mr Harris, thanks.” There was a pause while he was connected. “Yeah, Doug, Erasmus here. Have you heard? Seems Perlman’s turned up and is trying to get into the main game. I know. I know. But we need to put a cap on this. Yeah, I’m heading there now.”
He motioned for Cooper to follow him as he made his way out into the main casino. Cooper wasn’t sure how this was all going to turn out, but his use of Perlman’s name now seemed inspired. They obviously had a history with one another.
The casino floor was packed with bodies, but Cooper didn’t look at any of them. His attention was focussed on the bridge and luckily there seemed to be only one man guarding it.
“Could I ask, sir,” Cooper said. “Who this Perlman character is? He certainly seems to have created quite a stir.”
Erasmus was too intent on where he was going to even look around.
“He was the manager of the Alhambra back in the day. Larger-than-life character but he was always a little too friendly with some of the wise guys who used to come into the place I don’t know the full story, but it seems he set up a scam whereby he got a group of guys to raid his own casino. By all accounts, they made off with millions. He’d bribed the police as well, guaranteeing that their investigation came up with nothing. They never managed to charge him with anything.”
“So, basically, he got away with it?”
“Yes and no. The owners knew that he was responsible, so they found an excuse to get rid of him, not that he seemed too concerned. He already had links with a whole host of other gambling dens. Ended up fronting a big concern on the Habitat. But it didn’t end happily. Six months later, a massive bomb exploded in one of his night clubs. Six people were killed including his grown-up daughter. He seemed to think the New Orleans people were responsible, but again, nothing was ever proved.”
They’d made it as far as the bridge by this point and Erasmus told him to stay where he was while he went to speak to the team on the other side. While he was waiting, Cooper was struck by a small plain hut which stood off to one side.
“What’s that?” he asked the guard.
The guard pointed to all the electrical conduits which fed into the place. “The technicians have got all their sound equipment stashed in there. Lot of expensive stuff.”
“What do they use it for?”
“They have a New Year’s party night once a month. Ticker tape parade, pyrotechnics, the whole thing,” he pointed to something on the bridge. “See that up there. Biggest party canon you can get.”
Cooper looked to where he was pointing. It looked like a bass drum attached to the handrail.
