The Paper Factory (Michael Berg Book 1) (17 page)

Chapter 53

  She gasped for air. Had no idea how long she’d been under, eyes heavy, mind fuzzy. She needed to pull her head away from the stinking cloth, perhaps hessian, that was sticking to her face, digging into her skin, restricting her breathing. Tereza tried to slide her hand up to her face but found that both were bound together at her waist. She couldn’t move either of them. Despite being wrapped tightly in some form of rug or blanket, she was cold, very cold. It was pitch black. She then picked up on the noise surrounding her, and the sensation of movement. She was in a car. No, too smooth. Too cold. The noise a constant drone. An airplane. So cold. The cargo hold of an airplane.
  God, she wished she hadn’t woken up. The thin material wrapped around her doing little to keep her warm. She struggled to breathe the thin air through the stinking material that stretched across her mouth. What if they didn’t care if she lived or died? Was their plan was to dump her at sea? No evidence. She shivered at the thought of plunging thousands of feet, then slamming into the freezing cold water an instant before death.

  “
Let me out,” she shouted at the top of her voice. “Aaahhhhhhhhhhh,” she screamed three times until her throat hurt. She gagged on the bitter taste of vomit as it spurted into the back of her mouth.

 
A chink of light appeared to her right. It grew. A hatch being opened. Not far away. A silhouette grew larger. Crawling on all fours. She swiveled her head to try and take in as much as possible while the light continued to penetrate the room. The hold wasn’t large, perhaps five square meters. A meter and a half high. A sharp pain in her arm. Before she could struggle against it, the pain was gone, a warm, deeply relaxing sensation flowed through her body. Her body melting. She wondered how she could have felt so uncomfortable before … dreaming … maybe …

Chapter 54

  Before his eyes had opened, his ears picked up the sounds of human activity in close proximity. Raised voices, footsteps echoing on a hard floor, the sound of banging, steel against tin, like a school canteen. He opened his eyes. Even then it took a few seconds for him to fully recall the events of the day before.

 
As Michael tried to orientate himself, there was a loud screeching noise as the slab grey door at the far end of the room squealed open. He turned away from the constable’s face and uniformed outline as the light from outside the windowless room blazed into his eyes.

  “
Berg. Visitor. Follow me.”

 
Michael was led into an interview room. Compact, grey, dull. He sat facing the closed door, avoiding the eyes of the policeman standing in the corner of the room.

  Goodfriend was dead. Tereza was missing. He had been arrested and charged with suspicion of committing murder, breaking and entering and half a dozen lesser crimes that he could barely remember. Michael had already explained that it was highly unlikely that he would have been able to lift, under duress, a struggling man that weighed at least twenty stones one inch into the air, never mind tie a belt round his neck and hang him from a towel rail.

 
He thought back to his interview with the detectives the day before. Not the most open-minded people he had ever met.

  “Mr. Berg, if you’ll forgive me for being presumptuous, you illegally entered a building with the help of a female accomplice, since disappeared, burst into the private office of the bank’s chairman against the wishes of his assistant and moments later are found standing beside the man’s corpse with broken glass littering the floor. You don’t seem to believe that we have some grounds for suspicion?” the detective shifted in his seat, pulled back his shoulders and cupped his hands behind his head. As he did so, he aimed a wide, cocky, sarcastic grin at Michael and turned to his colleague.

“What do you think, Detective Constable Grossart? Does Mr. Berg here have grounds to be concerned that we may find his protestations a little dubious?”

  “
Well, Detective Sergeant Blunt, Mr. Berg seems to be in a bit of a tricky situation. Perhaps he might tell us why he chose to break into the offices of Beirsdorf Klein in the first place. Mr. Berg?”

  “
I needed to see Augustus Goodfriend. I was in a hurry.”

  “
Too much of a hurry to wait for five minutes at the reception desk?”

  “
Yes.”

  “
I don’t understand,” said the detective sergeant, “he didn’t want to see you?”

 
Berg glared across the scarred Formica table top at the two men. One around the same age as Michael, early to mid-forties, the more senior of the two. His sarcastic, pompous tone was beginning to get to Michael. He assumed that it was part of the technique to rile him into losing his temper, get him to give away too much in a fit of anger.

 
The detective sergeant had spent most of the interview with his elbows on the tabletop, chin clasped on his hands, looking directly into Michael’s eyes, attempting to intimidate him. It was working. Particularly as each time the man opened his mouth, the garlic that had presumably accompanied his lunch wafted straight into Michael’s face.

 
The detective sergeant was surprisingly well dressed, resembling a banker more than a copper, with short tidy hair and a tall, lean physique. The junior detective was much the same. Same manner, smartish clothing, although a bit heavier on the frame. Michael assumed they were more used to dealing with the misdeeds of banking and city types than the average detective. London’s banking center was dead after eight in the evening.

  “
He wouldn’t have seen me. I didn’t have time to make an appointment. It was an urgent banking matter. We needed to meet face to face.”

  “
Had you met Mr. Goodfriend before?” asked junior again.

  “
Yes, several times.”

  “
Why, and when?”

  “
He wanted to invest in my company.”

  “
And did he?” said Detective Blunt.

  “
No, I didn’t need him to.”

  “
And now you did?” Blunt raised his eyebrows and smiled.

  “
No. I told you, I needed to speak to him about a sensitive banking matter.”

  “
Oh, come now, Mr. Berg. This police station is in the middle of the square mile. You think we don’t know who you are? We policeman are capable of reading newspapers, Mr. Berg.”

  “
I’ll tell you what I think, sir,” Grossart said, his gaze not wavering from Michael’s, “Mr. Berg’s business goes up in smoke. He tries to rescue it and contacts Mr. Goodfriend, who offered to invest in the company previously. Mr. Goodfriend now wants nothing more to do with the proposition, but our Mr. Berg here decides he has to try and persuade him one more time. Mr. Goodfriend is having none of it; Berg gets a bit upset and kills him. Deliberately or accidentally. In any case, either Berg knocks Goodfriend out cold then hangs him or kills him first and then strings him up to make it look like an accident.”

  “Oh for G
od’s sake, you can’t be serious. I was in the room for five minutes before the police arrived. I’d have had to have been a miracle worker to go from an investment proposition to murdering him and hanging him by his own belt in the space of five minutes.”

  “
What do you suggest we believe?” said Grossart. “That you just happened to break into the bank and gatecrash Goodfriend’s office exactly at the moment when he decided to top himself?”

  “
Yes, because that’s exactly what happened.”

  “
Mr. Berg, in a few minutes one of our constables will come and get you and take you back to your cell. You should think very carefully about what exactly happened this afternoon. Meanwhile, we need to have a few words with your accomplice, since her story and yours seem to differ.”

  “Michael, what on earth are you doing in here?”

 
The understated, soft-spoken tone and the genuine concern in the man’s voice pulled Michael back to the present.

 
As he snapped from the previous day’s reality, back to the dreariness of this morning’s, his eyes focused on a familiar face. Harry Tobin. A partner with a firm of solicitors that BOS had used in the past. Michael had met him on a number of occasions, although Harry was the criminal lawyer in the partnership and he’d had no need for Harry’s services in the past. Until now.

  “
It’s a long story, Harry. But thanks for coming, I really appreciate it.”

  “
Have they charged you with anything?”

  “
Not so far, I’ve tried to cooperate, but I don’t think they believe what I’ve been telling them. They’re getting a bit fed up.”

  “
Well, now they need to let you go. They can’t hold you for more than twenty-four hours without charging you. I’ll speak to the detective sergeant, not a bad fellow when you get to know him. Bark worse than bite, that sort of thing.”

 
Harry left the room and came back ten minutes later.

  “
What a lucky chap you are, Michael. They are absolutely dying to charge you with the murder of Augustus, but have absolutely no evidence whatsoever. They wanted to hold you on remand until tomorrow for breaking and entering. You’d have been appearing in court tomorrow morning at ten a.m.”

  “
And?”

  “
I managed to persuade old Blunty that he’d look pretty foolish in front of a judge trying to convince him that jumping over a turnstile amounted to breaking into a bank. Particularly when it’s clear that the good detective sergeant is grasping at straws to find something that will stick while he scrabbles around trying to find evidence of a murder that was obviously a suicide.”

 
Michael was relieved. He needed to go after Rivello, but what about Tereza?

  “
Harry, please try and get Tereza Vass out too. Speak to Blunt, it’s important.”

  “
Okay, Michael, but if I were you I would go to the desk sergeant, fetch your belongings and wait for me outside before they change their minds.”

 
Although early morning, it was quite warm already, but Michael felt a light chill in the air that signaled autumn wasn’t too far away.

  “
She’s not here.”

 
Michael turned to face Harry. “What do mean she’s not here? She was there last night.”

  “
No she wasn’t. If that’s what they told you, then that’s what they wanted you to believe. Almost certainly to rattle you. They were too late to catch her after she ran from the building. She vanished into thin air. They’re looking at the security cameras in the area to see if they can track her movements. Call her. You have your phone back, don’t you?”

 
Michael took the small pay as you go mobile with him, pulled out his wallet and a small scrap of hotel note paper. He punched her number into the phone. Nothing. The number rang out. Tereza didn’t have a message service.

Chapter 55

  “What the hell does Kennedy think she’s up to? I’ve had half a dozen calls to this office in the last two hours. A couple of Delaney’s Senate friends, some woman from the
Wall Street Journal
and the CEOs of Citi, BOA and Morgan Stanley.”

Edgar Lindstrom felt as
uneasy as the president looked.

 
Lindstrom sat on the Oval Office couch, the president paced backwards and forwards across the floor.

  “
Listen, Edgar, Elisabeth was vetted thoroughly before getting the job. Even I interviewed her personally, knowing what was at stake. She looked into my eyes and told me that under no circumstances would she endanger our financial system. What the hell happened with Delaney? He’s an arrogant, ill-mannered son of a bitch, but surely he couldn’t be stupid enough to piss off the lady who was about to write him a fifty-billion-dollar check to save his ass.”

  “Mr. President,” replied Lindstrom, “
I’ve become pretty good at reading people in my forty odd years. I know one thing for sure. Elisabeth Kennedy knew what she was going to do before she walked into the room. No question about it. She had no intention of saving Beirsdorf Klein.”

  “
Can’t we push it through anyway? You’re the treasury secretary, for Christ’s sake. I have executive authority if the need arises. We can force the Reserve to guarantee the funds to Beirsdorf’s.”

  “
No way,” said Lindstrom, “Congress needs to push it through.”

The
president took a seat at right angles to his treasury secretary.

  “
How long to get Congress approval?” Gilmore said.

  “
Two weeks. Minimum.”

  “
How much time do we have?”

  “
Before Beirsdorf Klein hits the rails? Two days, tops,” said Lindstrom.

  “
Any other bright ideas?”

  “
I can return the calls of those bankers who were so desperate to talk to you earlier. We can check out their appetite for picking up Beirsdorf’s in the bargain basement.”

  “
Do that.” President Gilmore, now standing at his desk, lifted the telephone. “Elisabeth Kennedy, I want her here within an hour. Send a driver if you have to. No excuses.” Gilmore slammed down the phone, momentarily forgetting that Juan Gonzalez’s ear was probably still attached to the other end.

Chapter 56

  She swept the lipstick from her dry lips with a small square of tissue paper for the third time. This time, however, she replaced the lid on the small tube and slipped it back into her handbag. Even this last task had proved difficult, her fingers shaking so much that she almost hurled the damn thing across the car.

 
Outwardly during her meeting with Lindstrom and Delaney, Elisabeth was sure she had played the part of the ball busting ice queen perfectly. Immovable, unshakeable and resolute to the point of fanatical. Behind the mask, she’d been on the edge of falling apart. While Delaney’s impetuosity and crudeness had made the role playing easier, the twin pressures of knowing that her son was in great danger and that she was betraying her own principles, at the expense of others, was pulling her apart.

 
Lying to men like Edgar Lindstrom, whom she had known and greatly respected for years, was almost too great a scar for her soul to bear. What made it even harder for Elisabeth to rationalize her current path, was that she was betraying almost every professional and personal measure of integrity that defined her as a person. For someone who had proven that he had none.

  D
espite her shock and revulsion at the immorality of Ralph’s hidden existence, she had not been able to unwind the emotional and biological ties that had entwined them since his birth. The cold, undeniable logic of saving Beirsdorf Klein for the greater good of the country, at the cost of killing her own son, was something she wouldn’t contemplate. If Ralph had hidden himself well, something he seemed to have an aptitude for, then she would be able to tell the president the truth in the knowledge that Ralph was safe.

 
Her mobile rang, interrupting her thoughts. She was minutes from the White House. She hit answer anyway.

  “
How are you, Elisabeth? I’ve missed you in the few days since our wonderful lunch. I thought you might be missing me.”

 
At first she didn’t recognize the speaker. The signal was poor. Her jaw clenched and her hand tightened its grip on the phone as the mid-Atlantic drawl became clearer. The man who wasn’t Stephen Riblaw.

  “
What do you want?” she said as calmly as she could, attempting to project an unflustered evenness in her tone.

  “
Wherever you are, Elisabeth, sit back, relax, empty your beautiful head, and listen to the music.”

 
There was a pause during which Elisabeth was tempted to cancel the call. She stayed on the line, a few moments later wishing that she hadn’t. There was a short sharp scream. And another. A man’s tortured voice, pleading. Screaming, but this time not sharp, not short. She could barely listen. This final scream would not stop. Ralph. She held the phone to her ear unable to cast it aside.

 
The screaming stopped, with it Elisabeth’s heart. Her chest tightened, a burning pain centering itself above her diaphragm. Elisabeth tried to control her breathing, tried to keep the panic attack at bay.
  “Christ, no, what are you doing to him? Why are you doing this? Ralph, Ralph can you hear me? Where are you?”

  “
Mum, please, I’ll do anything, please get them to stop. Give them anything. Help me, please help me.”

  “
Ralph, where are you? Ralph? Ralph?”

  “
Hello, again, Elisabeth. Not a word. I was disappointed in your actions following our last meeting. No, in fact, insulted. You thought I would let Ralphy boy walk out of his apartment and into the sunset leaving you to save the world? naïve, Elisabeth, naive.”

  “
Listen to me, you piece of filth, you …”

  “
Not another word, I said, or I’ll put your son on again. The reason we’re talking is to let you know the stakes are higher. If the bank still exists in its current form on Monday, your son dies. Slowly. You do what needs to be done and he might come home with his bits and pieces intact. Most of them anyway. Don’t cross me again. There will be no other warnings. You’re a professional woman, Elisabeth, just do your job.”

 
The call was cut just as the limo drew up at the rear entrance to the White House. Elisabeth didn’t wait for the driver. She thrust open the door, pushed her head and shoulders through the doorway and vomited. In the back of her mind she thanked God that she’d only had a light breakfast. Even still, in the absence of any real stomach contents, she gasped as the gagging reflex in her esophagus continued to kick in. When she recovered, she sat up to see the driver’s eyes observing her with some concern in the mirror.
  “I’m really very sorry, I don’t know what just came over me,” she said, forcing herself to breathe evenly.

 
The driver, who’d pretty much seen anything that could happen in the back of a limo, said, “Not a problem, Mrs. Kennedy. You’d be amazed to know how many people get this kinda nervous just before a meeting with the president.”

  “
Thank you,” said Elisabeth and, climbing from the car, made her way over to the security gate. Elisabeth Kennedy was about to endure the most difficult hour of her adult life.