The Manhattan Puzzle (18 page)

He could make out the lights of the building opposite but almost nothing distinct could be seen because of the snowflakes now.

‘I still can’t work out why Arap called you a traitor when you met him outside Jerusalem.’ He turned to stare at her. She looked even thinner naked.

She turned on her side snaking her long leg along the edge of the sofa. She knew he was watching her. The blue tattoo of a snake that coiled around her thigh, where a garter might have been, seemed to move as she did, under the soft light from the giant lamps that sat on marble-topped tables at each end of the sofa.

‘Did you tell him about the report on the Summer Palace in Beijing?’ she said, softly.

He turned, as he tucked his pale blue shirt into his black trousers. ‘No, and I didn’t send him the report about Nuremberg either.’ He sat near her, stroking her ankle. There were scars there, but her skin was shiny, her foot long and athletic.

‘I know you want to get going,’ he said. ‘But we cannot make our next move until our visitor arrives.’

He stroked her calf. ‘You have confirmed with the lab that they are ready for the DNA sample?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘The doctor is waiting for me to arrive.’

‘He doesn’t know the pastor by name?’

‘No, just who he worked for.’

Lord Bidoner stood.

‘We are near the end.’

There was a soft clicking noise from his phone.

She picked it up from the floor, stood and handed it to him.

Then she started stretching, as if she was on her way to a run.

He spoke as he watched her.

‘Do not injure him,’ he said.

He closed the line.

‘Your friend is not being cooperative.’

‘He will do anything I want when I bring the fire to him. No one ever resists it,’ she said. She kept stretching.

‘You are right. And you enjoy doing that, don’t you?’

She looked at him and smiled.

The carpet in the press conference room was an opulent wall-to-wall Persian with swirling fronds in forty shades of red and brown. The room looked even more over-the-top than Isabel had remembered it. The far end had a raised area, with a row of chairs behind a long table with a red and gold front. It looked like an altar. There were ten lines of straight-backed blood-red chairs with gold piping around their edges in front of the altar. There was nobody sitting behind it.

One wall of the room was a giant window. Drifts of snowflakes swirled outside, tumbling against the glass. It was coming down thicker now. She hesitated near the door. Mrs Vaughann was at the front of the room sitting down. Maybe she shouldn’t attract her attention until Sean came in or it became clear he wasn’t coming. She might warn him. She didn’t want Sean to run away if he heard she was here.

But she wasn’t going to hide either.

Maybe she’d just wave at Mrs Vaughann if she recognised her. If it upset anyone that she’d come, what the hell did she care? They hadn’t bothered telling her he’d flown to New York. And she had made it clear to a lot of people at the bank that she was looking for him.

She spotted Laura. She was sitting on her own two rows back from the pack of corporate journalists. She was talking into her phone, using it as a dictation machine it looked like. She grinned at Isabel as she sat beside her, then put her phone down.

‘You okay, honey?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Did you see who’s here?’ said Laura. She jabbed a finger towards the front row, towards Mrs Vaughann. Isabel took a deep breath and looked to the front. Was Mrs Vaughann better known than she’d thought?

‘You know Mrs Vaughann?’

Laura looked at her as if she was a dummy. ‘You can bet your boots on that. She’s just about the biggest charity supporter in New York City. Her picture is forever in the papers. There’s not many publicly acceptable Fifth Avenue philanthropists left after the last few years. She has big connections in the Treasury Department in Washington too. Some people say that’s how her husband got his job.’

She noticed Laura’s skin. It was flawless.

Isabel leaned towards her, spoke softly. ‘I overheard her on the phone saying something about the National Guard being outside. Do you think they’re expecting trouble?’

‘Honey, there was a riot in this city last weekend. Didn’t you hear about it?’

She shook her head.

An older man with thick white hair sat down beside Mrs Vaughann. The two of them began talking animatedly.

‘My God, is it hot in here, or is it just me?’

‘It’s hot.’ Laura opened her jacket to reveal a purple skin-tight jumper underneath.

Isabel looked at her watch. It was six thirty. She glanced around. Any moment now she might see Sean. It felt as if something in her muscles, her arms, her neck, was wound up tight, like a spring aching to loosen itself.

Stay calm.

She turned her head, scanning the room. Timmy was sitting two rows behind her. He grinned at her. She blanked him. A blast of corporate music blared out. Two big, sixty-inch LCD screens on tripods to their left and right burst into life. She’d hardly noticed them up until this.

Then they were watching one of those flashy corporate videos. It had drum and base music, and helicopter views of Manhattan, London and Shanghai at night. Glass towers gleamed like stacks of crystals. Images of bridges, hospitals, wind farms, ultra-fast trains fled by. This was the world that high finance was building.

Then the images changed. Pictures of families, churches, temples, replaced the towers. The face of the bank’s CEO, Fred Pilman, came into view with a halo of other faces around him. Fred looked good, square jawed, determined. He wore his light Bahamas’ tan as if he was proud that BXH still had its own corporate jet waiting to take its titans anywhere they wanted, and to points south whenever they needed a break in the sun.

‘Welcome to BXH. America’s international bank for the twenty-first century,’ Fred’s voice boomed from the speakers.

‘Soon to be owned by China,’ whispered Laura in her ear.

Isabel’s hands were in fists in her lap. She turned again, glanced all the way around. Any moment now the doors at the back of the room would open and she would see Sean.

Then the video screen went blank. It looked as if something had gone wrong. This wasn’t like BXH. They waited. They waited some more. Then a slamming noise echoed through the room.

And, as if they were all connected by wires, everyone in the room turned their heads towards the door they’d come in through.

Striding towards them was a giant of a man. He must have been twenty stone, at least. He was well over six feet tall too. In his arms, folded over his stomach, he was carrying a thick yellow pad. His black suit was rumpled, as if he’d been working in it forever. His skin was as white as dough and had a similar consistency.

He was one of those creatures who live in the bowels of some offices, who don’t get out to see the sun much. As he strode towards the top of the room, he was clearly enjoying every step, he didn’t look to the left or right. By the time he’d reached the table and had sat at a seat in the centre, a buzz of voices, like a hive coming to life, had sprung up from the rows of journalists.

‘My name is Adam Bruckhaus Jr,’ he said loudly, over the noise. Did this guy even need a microphone?

The noise level went down a notch.

‘I represent Hardman, Weiss and Bruckhaus.’ His accent was old-style gravelly New York. He sounded like the kind of guy who ate petitioners, three at a time, on the steps of the courthouse for breakfast.

The buzz in the room went up another ten notches. It sounded as if the hive was under attack.

Laura nudged her, hard.

‘Holy cow!’ she said.

It took only a few more words from Adam for Isabel to work out what Laura meant.

‘I am the lead insolvency consultant for our firm.’ His brow furrowed, as if he was trying to show everyone how difficult his position was. He placed his hands slowly on the table, spacing them wide in front of him. It looked as if he had, by that gesture, taken possession of it, and everything else in the building beneath him.

‘I have the unfortunate duty to announce that BXH will be filing a Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition before midnight tonight.’ He looked at his watch. ‘A little over five hours from now. All of BXH’s retail and business clients will, you’ll be glad to know, receive their deposits back under the appropriate Federal deposit guarantee schemes.’

‘Mr Bruckhaus,’ ‘Mr Bruckhaus,’ ‘Mr Bruckhaus,’ voices called out.

‘I will not be taking any questions at this time.’

‘What about the merger?’

‘What about a Federal bailout? They did it for AIG?’

Mr Bruckhaus stood, pushed his chair back, and headed for the door. A posse of journalists followed him. Others gathered in small groups, gesticulating. Isabel just stared.

Laura stamped her foot.

‘I bet some of their top staff are bringing forward their bonuses right at this stinking moment. They won’t be the ones to lose out. The regular staff will. Thousands of families won’t be sleeping tonight. Did you see Mrs Vaughann?’

She hadn’t. She looked around. She was nowhere to be seen.

‘She followed Mr Shithaus out.’ Laura shook her head.

‘Bruckhaus,’ Isabel corrected.

‘Whatever.’ Laura shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut.

‘Now BXH can get sold off in a stupid fire sale. And God only knows what that’ll mean for this city. This is a total fucking wipeout. Have they any idea how many people, how many small businesses BXH supports in this town?’

‘Don’t forget London,’ said Isabel. ‘There are 10,000 BXH employees in the London office.’ She thought about the offices in Canary Wharf, all the people she knew at the bank.

And what about herself? Did this explain why Sean hadn’t come home, because BXH was about to go out of business with a very large bang? She felt light, as if air had filled every cell of her body.

‘Why the hell are they announcing this now?’ Laura looked pale, bemused.

Isabel shrugged. The skin on her face felt tight.

‘God only knows what’s happened to Sean.’

Laura looked at her sympathetically. Suddenly, Isabel remembered that their main bank account was at BXH. This was crazy. She remembered Sean fretting about it. He’d promised her he’d do something about it. But he’d never told her he had.

If BXH went bankrupt would her ATM cards still work? She could almost understand why Sean might be afraid to come home.

But where was he?

‘What a mess,’ she said.

‘A lot of people are gonna get fucked if they pull the plug on BXH. Someone’s gonna step in, honey. They have to. There’s gotta be frantic rescue efforts going on down there.’ She pointed at the floors below them.

And then she walked, as if in a trance, towards the doors.

Isabel followed. She looked back, as they exited, for a final glimpse of the room. There were only a few people left, tapping at their phones or deep in animated conversations. There were no security guards trying to move them on either. It looked as if a party had ended abruptly. There was a crowd of people standing around the elevators. One door was painted gold. All the other elevators had silver doors. One of the guards who’d checked them into the press conference – what a joke all that security seemed now – was standing near the elevators, presumably to make sure they all left the building the right way and didn’t take souvenirs.

Then the gold elevator door opened.

It was packed full of men in black suits. They looked as if they’d been squashed into it like salary men on a Tokyo subway train at rush hour.

The guard stepped forward, blocking anyone from approaching the elevator. As the doors closed Isabel felt something reach inside her chest and brush her heart.

Sean was in the elevator!

The large white clock in the monitoring room in Whitehall in central London showed the time as 12:08 a.m. Henry Mowlam was at his desk. Only half of the twenty desks in the room were occupied.

He’d always loved the excitement of being called in to monitor late night operations, but what he didn’t enjoy was the often cruel realities that people had to face when terrorists or rogue elements began implementing their self-serving plans.

This was the third time he had monitored a situation involving Isabel and Sean Ryan. He felt a personal involvement now, which was definitely not a good thing, given the reality of what Isabel, in particular, might be facing.

He closed the emergency notification system on his main computer screen. The message he had just sent would wake officials in the Bank of England, the Cabinet Office and the Treasury. A conference call would be held in twenty minutes.

The officials he’d notified were all middle-ranking grades, but each of them had the authority to institute emergency procedures in their area of responsibility.

The emergency measures that would be required to ensure BXH’s UK arm was able to open on Monday would be the main item for discussion. Henry would represent the Security Services on the call.

He probably wouldn’t mention the disappearance of Rose Suchard or the fact that the Ryan’s son was also missing. But he would mention the murder that was connected with BXH and he would inform them that it was one of the connected incidents he was investigating. The involvement of Sean Ryan with the murder had still not been proven a hundred per cent, but his subsequent disappearance and the disappearance of his son gave cause for real concern. The case against Sean Ryan was strong and almost irrefutable now.

Whether any of that had anything to do with BXH’s announcement was another matter entirely. However, the murder, and the subsequent headlines, certainly hadn’t helped their image.

He looked at his second screen, the one on the left of his desk, and scrolled through his secure email system. There was still no message from the Manhattan FBI officer he had been put in touch with. The man was likely to be busy, they always seemed to be in the FBI office in the downtown Federal Plaza building, but he would be letting his UK colleagues down badly if he failed to respond to this request.