The Consignment (10 page)

CHAPTER 12

By the time I drew up to the Haplon parking lot, I had the bare bones of a plan, but the plan required Rossiter’s absence, so when I saw that his parking bay was empty I was nearly sick with relief. I scooped up my pocket flashlight, and the folder containing the paperwork, and hurried across to the Haplon lobby.

My single desperate idea had come to me as I was standing on my desk at home, reaching into the ceiling cavity for the stolen paperwork. It had seemed feasible at the time, but as I rode up in the elevator to the Haplon third floor, it was much harder to convince myself that the idea was actually going to work. I found Barbara, Rossiter’s secretary, sitting in her usual place outside Rossiter’s door.

“Is Milton around?” I asked, glancing at the door behind her desk.

She told me he’d phoned earlier to say that he’d be back in half an hour. She looked at her watch. “That was nearly half an hour ago. If it’s urgent, I can get him on the cell phone.”

Declining her offer, I made a mental note of the distance between Rossiter’s office door and the hall. Then I walked down the hall, counting off the paces to my office. After locking my door, I drew the blinds, then shed my jacket and tie. My flashlight I slipped into my pocket. Climbing onto my desk, I hauled up my chair, then reached up like I had at home and popped back the ceiling tile with the heel of my hand. I got onto the chair, then straightened, my head and shoulders rising through the opening into the ceiling. When I shone my flashlight into the darkness, my heart sank like a stone. A solid wall of ducting and cables ran right down the length of the ceiling space, effectively blocking any passage to the region immediately above Rossiter’s office.

I studied the layout, then I slid the tile back into place, got down, and put my chair back under my desk. I stood there a moment, hands on hips, and closed my eyes. I tried to picture the layout of the third floor. Gillian’s office. Conference room. Sales office.

Service room, I thought.

Grabbing the stolen paperwork, I unlocked my door and went down the hall, counting my paces again.

Entering the service room, I turned to lock the door behind me, but there was no lock. I made sure the door was closed, then I hit the lights and looked up. A ceiling hatch was directly above me. Deep tiers of shelving rose up the wall, the shelves stacked neatly with stationery, coffee refills for the machine, and farther along, sprays and detergents. It wasn’t perfect, but I didn’t have the luxury of searching out a more secure point of entry. Tucking the folder beneath my shirt, I scaled the shelves, unlatched the hatch, and clambered awkwardly into the roof-space.

It was several degrees warmer up there, and the air was dusty. Crouching on a metal truss, I turned on my flashlight and lowered the hatch cover behind me. Then I pointed the lightbeam in the direction of Rossiter’s office. There were no unpassable obstacles, no ducting or cables, so I took out my white handkerchief and tied it to the steel upright nearest the hatch. Next I gauged the distances I’d paced off down on the third floor. I noted the eighth steel upright, that was the one I estimated was located directly over Rossiter’s office. I placed the base of the flashlight between my teeth and set off in a crouching shuffle along the narrow steel beam. I pressed my hands along the underside of the roof above me as I moved, keeping myself from toppling straight through the ceiling.

During my years of active service, even as far back as my cadetship at West Point, I’d carried out scores of more demanding maneuvers. I’d once slithered on my belly through mud for half a mile before clambering across a single strand of rope that spanned a hundred-foot ravine, all this with a pack and rifle strapped to my back. I’d once stepped out of a chopper a hundred feet above a U.S. destroyer at sea, with nothing to prevent me from hurtling into the pitching ship’s deck but a pair of asbestos gloves, a wet rope, and the jocular advice of my instructor to hang on tight. I’d been involved in firefights in both the Gulf and Mogadishu, where I’d pushed myself to the point of physical collapse, and of course I got to the eighth upright of the Haplon roof-space. But it cost me more time and effort than it should have. When I stopped, I was perspiring and my legs ached. I had to sit down on the beam to stretch and recover. The Fort Benning obstacle course that I’d completed only two years back seemed half a lifetime away.

At last I got up and squatted on the beam. I reached down, prised up the ceiling tile, and peered through the crack. Rossiter’s office was right below me. After studying the office layout a second, I let the tile fall back, pressed it into place, then moved forward another two yards along the beam. This time when I lifted the tile below me, I was directly over Rossiter’s filing cabinet. Leaning down, I turned my ear to the muted noises coming through from the far side of Rossiter’s door. Barbara, I decided. Gassing on the phone.

I lifted the tile and slid it aside. Then bracing one hand on the beam, I gripped the truss near my shoulder, took my weight on my arms, and lowered myself carefully through the opening. When my shoes touched the metal cabinet, I eased the weight off my arms, then I let go of the beam and truss. I crouched, and my head dipped below the ceiling. My whole body was in the office now.

I could hear Barbara talking outside. But she wasn’t on the phone, she was talking to someone at her desk. A male voice. My heart jumped, but the next moment I recognized the voice. Micky Baker. He wasn’t coming in.

Carefully, I climbed down from the filing cabinet to the table, from there to the floor. Outside, the conversation ended, Micky drifted away. Then on the table behind me I noticed a clear black footprint. When I wiped it with my hand, the print smeared. I looked at my palm, it was black. My other palm too. With a feeling of dread, I looked down. Then I lifted my foot. There was a clear black footprint on the floor beneath. Alarmed now, I wiped my hands on my pants and saw the black stuff come off like coal dust. It must have been something they’d painted on the steel beams in the roof-space, paint that had dried and turned to powder. I stopped and made myself stand still. I thought a moment. Then I crouched and unlaced my shoes. Slipping them off, I placed them upside down on the cabinet. Then I wiped my sleeve across the footprints on the table and the cabinet. Once the prints were gone, I got down on my knees and used my other sleeve to wipe away the prints on the floor. Perspiration rolled down my neck into my collar.

At last the prints were gone, and I stood up and pulled the folder from beneath my shirt. Ever so gently, I eased open the second drawer of the cabinet. It slid smoothly, without a sound. After cleaning my right palm on my thigh, I took the papers from the folder, dropped them into the N folder in the cabinet, then closed the drawer.

I crumpled my folder, shoved it in my pocket, and inspected the cabinet for any signs of black dust. There were none. Good, I thought. Then I heard the sharp ping of the elevator outside.

I quickly climbed onto the table and looked down at the floor. No prints.

Outside, Barbara was speaking again. I climbed onto the cabinet, picked up my shoes, and pushed them into the roof-space. Then I heard laughter, unmistakably Rossiter’s, and I reached for the beam and the truss.

A key went into the door, Rossiter shouted “Ned!” and all my muscles seized. But in the next moment I understood. He was shouting for me in his usual way, leaning back and yelling down the hall. Heaving, I dragged myself into the roof-space, got my ass on the beam, then pulled up my legs. As Rossiter worked at the double-locked door with his keys, I heard him tell Barbara to go get some champagne.

“Any preference, Jack?” he said.

I didn’t wait to hear Trevanian’s answer. Sliding the ceiling tile into position, I pressed down the edges, sealing it, then I put on my shoes. I shone my light around the trusses, located my white-handkerchief marker, then I put the flashlight between my teeth again. As Rossiter entered his office below me, I set out on my shuffling return journey to the service room.

I’d opened the ceiling hatch cover a couple of inches before I saw that my troubles weren’t yet over. A secretary and one of the junior marketing guys were leaning against the shelves, shooting the breeze, so I waited a minute. Then two minutes. Until they were done analyzing the previous night’s installment of
The Simpsons,
I was not going anywhere. I was peering through the crack, wondering what to do, when someone opened the service room door.

“Have you guys seen Ned?” Gillian Streiss. When they said they hadn’t, she told them, “Well, if you do, tell him Rossiter’s after him. And by the way, how long’s it take you two to pick up stationery?” She withdrew. Stirred into action, the pair collected some paper, exchanged a few quiet words about Gillian, then left the room.

As soon as they were gone, I clambered down to the shelves, lowering the cover behind me and securing it. When I got to the floor, I grabbed a sheet of paper and cleaned off the soles of my shoes. After trashing the paper, I put my head out, checked that the hall was clear, then walked quickly down to my office, went in, and locked the door.

Ten minutes later, I’d cleaned myself off properly and put on my jacket and tie. I unlocked my door and left it ajar so that someone like Gillian could discover me working at my desk. But it wasn’t Gillian, it was Rossiter who found me. He passed by in the hall, then checked his stride and came back.

“Where the fuck you been?” he asked, coming in. “I’ve got Trevanian and Lagundi here. Come on down to my office, we’re having a drink. They just signed for this order we been sweatin’ on.”

“Signed?”

“Yeah.”

“Signed what?”

“The headline agreement.”

“I haven’t seen any agreement.”

“Well, come on down to my office, you can see it now.” He gave me a direct look. This wasn’t something he expected me to question. Rising, I went around and closed the door. Then I faced him.

“Milton, what the hell is going on with this deal?” He didn’t reply. “I thought this was my order. Then suddenly we’re down on West Forty-seventh, and I’m sitting there pretending like it isn’t total news to me that we’re trading arms for diamonds. Now this.” I gestured to the hall. “They’ve signed an agreement, and I haven’t even seen it.”

“I’m not takin’ any risks with the diamonds. We’ll get our money direct from Greenbaum.”

“That’s not the point. How long’s this agreement been under negotiation?”

“The ink’s still dryin’ on the signatures.”

“Why wasn’t I consulted over it? I’m your marketing manager for chrissake, not the damn office gofer.”

“You’ll get your cut of the bonus.”

“I’m not concerned about the bonus.”

“Offer withdrawn then.” He shot me a smile, came across, and clapped my shoulder. “You wanna stand here mopin’, or you comin’ for a drink?”

I didn’t answer. I turned to my desk.

“You’re just pissed because you weren’t in on it the whole way.”

“I’ve got a right to be pissed, Milton.”

“Listen,” he said, his tone mollifying. “Don’t make a thing about it. It wasn’t just you, Trevanian didn’t want anyone involved, just me. The guy is secrecy crazy. Some bad experience with his last U.S. order. Too many people involved, talking too much. Commerce ended up withholding half the export licenses, he didn’t want a rerun with us.”

“Then what was I doing out at Springfield? And here, down on the range, what was that, just going through the motions?”

“Lagundi had to feel part of it.”

I turned that over. “She never knew it was a done deal?”

He pointed two fingers in warning. “And there’s no reason for anyone to tell her. Her people are getting what they wanted. Everyone’s happy.”

With hindsight, of course, I can see that Rossiter’s explanation did not totally add up, but since I had just broken into his office, replaced the draft agreement, and gotten away with it by the skin of my teeth, my critical faculties weren’t as engaged as they might have been. I was blindsided, too, by Rossiter’s belated admission of me into the inner circle of the deal. He seemed, at last, to be coming clean with me about the whole transaction. As I followed him along to the celebration in his office, I honestly thought that I was starting to get some kind of handle on what had been going on.

In his office, the atmosphere was loose and friendly. Gillian was there, Benny Skalder, the head of Design, and half a dozen other Haplon notables, everyone with a drink in hand. Trevanian and Lagundi were mingling, and Barbara was circulating around the room, refilling glasses with champagne. She gave me a glass, and a moment later I found myself standing by Lagundi. A claret red slacksuit, and a white scarf wound through her high-piled hair.

She congratulated me on winning the order. I nodded and tried to smile. I remarked that maybe the congratulations should be extended to the Nigerian army, who’d gotten some very fine weapons.

“We will see more of you, then,” she said. I raised a brow. “Rossiter told us you will be handling the shipment.”

I nodded again. It was news to me. “Can I ask you where you got that accent, Miss Lagundi?”

“Mission school. My teachers were Irish nuns. You can call me Cecille.”

“Ned,” I said, and her eyes smiled. “The nuns teach you how to shoot, Cecille?” She dropped her eyes and sipped her drink. “I don’t suppose it was them who taught you how to grade diamonds either.”

“I wasn’t expecting to see you there this morning.” She meant the meeting at Greenbaum’s office. “You looked bored.”

“Not my thing.”

“You don’t like diamonds?” When I shrugged, she touched the pendant at her throat. “You like this?”

I glanced down at the stone. Her hand rested on her cleavage. When I raised my eyes, her own dark eyes were smiling at me again.

“I’d have to ask my wife,” I said, then I took a long pull at my champagne. I was like that, head back, glance sliding over Lagundi’s shoulder, when I saw them, four distinct black marks on the ceiling tile directly above Rossiter’s cabinet. Fingermarks. Fingermarks that I must have left when I lifted the tile. The champagne suddenly burned in my throat. My stomach churned. Swallowing hard, I turned aside and set down the glass. Before Lagundi could stop me, I excused myself and angled around her toward the door.