The Wrong Man (29 page)

‘I don’t buy that,’ Bishop said, moving towards the gym area.

Luke snorted and waved an arm at the doorway behind him. ‘Hey, be my guest, man. The numbers don’t lie.’

‘I believe you,’ Bishop said. He was scanning the gym and saw nothing that even remotely resembled a vault. And no hidden
areas. ‘I just don’t accept
the conclusion. You still got all the floor plans on your laptop?’

‘What you take me for?’ Luke said. He took off the backpack, pulled out his laptop and placed it on the unit. He opened a
folder and said, ‘You gonna check every floor?’

‘Just one.’ Bishop came over and looked at the file names. He scrolled to the bottom and double-clicked on
F-39
. The schematic for the floor beneath them opened up and Bishop zoomed in on each room before moving on to the next. ‘There,’
he said, when he found another room with no name and no door symbols. It was located on the south side, directly underneath
their feet.

Luke raised his eyebrows. ‘Huh. For all you know, it could be another love nest in there.’

‘He’s already got one of those,’ Bishop said. ‘Don’t forget we’re in a centrally located Manhattan office building. Up here
is Royse’s private little Xanadu, but every office below is prime real estate with a specific reason for being.’ He tapped
the screen with a knuckle of his index finger. ‘And this one’s too big for an office, especially for one with no windows.’

‘What are you talking about? It’s got to have windows.’

‘Remember that aerial shot of the roof?’ Bishop said. ‘The odd-numbered floors we saw, there were no windows on the south
side. Just white concrete.’

Luke nodded slowly. ‘Okay. Maybe a conference room then.’

Bishop scrolled left and stopped at a large space on
the north side
with the designation
Conf. Hall
. ‘Two on the same floor? I don’t think so.’

‘So how do we get down there and check it out?’

‘The same way Royse does.’

‘Fire stairs?’

Bishop took in their surroundings. ‘I can’t see it. Too much chance of encountering another human being. No, he’d want to
be able to access it
directly from up here, somehow.’

‘And he’s got the kind of money to make it happen,’ Luke said as he also scanned the room.

Bishop’s gaze finished up on the steam room. The only anomaly left.

Luke was looking at it, too. ‘Could be nothing more than what it says on the label,’ he said.

‘Or could be a whole lot more,’ Bishop said.

They walked over and Bishop pulled the door open. ‘This feels magnetic,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t be surprised to find steel underneath.’
He let go and the door slowly began to close. When it clicked shut, he opened it again and stepped inside. Discreetly placed
ceiling lights instantly came on. Luke stood in the doorway while Bishop inspected the control panel affixed
to the wall.

It looked like a blown-up version of one of the early iPod models. Bishop had had one briefly before he gave it away. A small
token of thanks from a grateful client. The top half consisted of an LCD display, while the lower section contained a protruding
steel click wheel with the legend
Temp -/+
next to it. In between was a row of four buttons.
Underneath them were the words
On/Off
,
Timer
,
Display
and
Clean
. Bishop pressed the on button and the display lit up dark blue. He pressed the other buttons, but nothing else happened.
The screen remained blank. Turning the wheel achieved nothing either.

Frowning, Bishop studied the room in more detail and immediately saw what was missing. ‘No way can this be a steam
room. There
are no air vents.’ He turned to Luke and said, ‘When you buy an expensive piece of equipment, you keep hold of the manual,
right?’

Luke shrugged. ‘Sure. Everybody does.’ He paused, then said, ‘So why should the rich be any different?’

‘You called it. Might be something in the library next door to tell us how to work this. Or the
desk outside. It’s worth a
look.’

‘On it,’ Luke said. The door gently closed behind him.

Bishop sighed and turned the wheel anti-clockwise again. Nothing happened.

He turned it clockwise instead. And heard a deep electronic humming coming from under his feet. And then the whole room started
to descend.

Bishop crouched as the floor descended slowly. This wasn’t exactly what he’d expected, but then Royse had always had the power
to surprise. He stayed low as the tiled walls became steel and used the nearest bench for balance. When he’d covered twenty
feet, the bizarre elevator came to a stop.

He was in a stainless
steel room. The wall ahead curved gently inwards like a bubble. A seam ran down the centre from ceiling
to floor. Bishop figured this had to be the vault entrance. Attached to the wall on his left, at chest level, was a forty-inch
LCD display, currently inactive. Illumination was provided by eight fluorescent oval lights mounted in the ceiling. On the
right-hand wall,
he saw another control panel with a small display and a single red button underneath.

Bishop looked up as a steel layer silently extended out from the wall and sealed the room. That couldn’t be good. Reaching
into his pants pocket, he pulled out his cell phone and looked at the display. No bars. Naturally. So now he no longer had
Wilson as a back-up, although
he had a feeling this would have been a new one on the veteran safe-cracker. Bishop checked
the time. 22.08. He just hoped he could still get Luke down here for the next part. He turned and walked towards the panel
on the wall, and the moment his foot came into contact with the steel floor both displays lit up simultaneously.

On the small display screen,
Bishop saw white text appear against the blue background.
Time limit for vault entry currently activated. Time remaining before lockdown: 04.56 . . . 04.55 . . . 04.54 . .
.

Bishop pushed the button, but nothing changed except the numbers.

He ran over to the large LCD screen. This display was set on a white background. At the top, big black digits counted down
the remaining time. Most of the screen was taken up by a colour spectrum wheel, like the one he’d seen at Aleron’s. Underneath
that was a thin bar that graduated from black to white, with every shade of grey in between.
To the right of the wheel were five long blank bars. Ten more smaller blank boxes were lined up across the bottom.

Bishop stared at the thing
as though he were looking at ancient hieroglyphics.

04.41 . . . 04.40 . . . 04.39
. . .

04.38 . . . 04.37 . . . 04.36 . . .

Bishop knew he couldn’t rush this. There’d be a logical system. He just had to relax his mind and take the time to figure
it out.

First, the spectrum wheel. It started with yellow at twelve o’clock before graduating through orange, then red, then magenta
and
various shades of mauve to purple at the six o’clock spot. By seven thirty, that colour had transformed itself into blue,
then cyan, then green and lime before turning into yellow again at the top. The colours were also at their most vibrant along
the outer edge of the circle and steadily grew fainter the nearer they got to the centre, which was white.

Bishop
took off his leather gloves and dropped them on the floor. Then he touched his left index finger against the yellow
section close to the outer edge. Four of the boxes on the right immediately filled with percentages, while the fifth one duplicated
the actual colour he’d touched. No letters to guide him, but these had to be the CMYK values Aleron had told him about. The
first and fourth bars, presumably cyan and black, were at zero per cent, while the second and third – magenta and yellow –
read seven per cent and ninety-six per cent. That made sense. The colour in the fifth bar showed a bright yellow with a hint
of orange coming in. Bishop touched that bar and the first of the ten boxes underneath flashed red briefly before turning
white again.

So the whole thing was clearly a colour combination lock. Find the right percentages, press the sampled colour and hope it
gets accepted. Once you hit ten, you’re in. Bishop figured there was nothing simpler if you had an afternoon to play with.

04.01 . . . 04.00 . . . 03.59 . .
.

Beneath the spectrum was the graduated
grey bar with a small virtual arrow located in the white section. Bishop placed his
finger on the arrow and slid it slowly to the left. As he did so, the entire colour wheel became progressively darker as black
was added to the mix. The centre
changed from white to grey, while other colours such as red morphed into brown, blue became navy blue and so on. Bishop nodded
to himself. That was the contrast setting for the darker hues. He slid it all the way back to white again.

03.49 . . . 03.48 . . . 03.47 . .
.

So, ten colours to find. With the time now remaining, that worked out at just over twenty-two seconds per colour.
How the hell is that even possible?
Bishop knew he had to bring down the odds somehow. He also knew Royse
would have the same time limit when he came down here,
or near enough. Which meant they wouldn’t be colours with complex values. Simple flat colours seemed the obvious bet. The
kind Royse could put his finger on instantly.

03.42 . . . 03.41 . . . 03.40 . .
.

Bishop touched the yellow part of the spectrum and moved his index finger closer to
the edge until the third bar read a hundred
per cent, making sure the first, second and fourth bars remained at zero per cent. He took his finger away and used it to
touch the yellow sample in the fifth bar.

The same box on the bottom left of the screen flashed red again, momentarily. Then, instead of reverting to its original white,
it turned green.
And stayed green.

Bishop smiled. He liked green in these kinds of situations. Green could only signify good things.

He tried the same method with cyan. A hundred per cent cyan, zero per cent everything else. The second box also changed from
white to red to green. He’d just found two colours in twelve seconds. Not bad. Only eight more to go. Maybe it
was
possible to do this, after all.

Why not try for three in a row?
He did the same for magenta and pressed the sample bar containing the pink hue.

The third box flashed red before reverting to white. Not accepted.

03.19 . . . 03.18 . . . 03.17 . .
.

Refusing to lose heart, Bishop simply changed tack. If he could figure out what
the colours represented, he could figure out
the colours. Something meaningful to Royse, probably. Martial arts belts came to mind, but Bishop had read up as much on Royse
as was available and didn’t remember any mention of an interest in karate. Or any other martial arts.

Then it hit him. Colour coded departments.

What else besides the colour
coded floors beneath his feet? Had to
be. Luke had asked him about them only last night. He remembered seeing the yellow and light blue levels in the building years
before, although he had no idea what departments they housed. He knew for a fact there were no pink floors, which explained
magenta’s absence from the combination. Which left what?

What about
green? His old level.

03.01 . . . 03.00 . . . 02.59 . .
.

Bishop moved his finger around the green section until he found a spot where both cyan and yellow bars were at a hundred per
cent, while the other two remained at zero per cent. He touched the fifth bar and was awarded another green box.
Excellent. Now we’re getting somewhere
.

He
thought back to what Aleron had told him on Sunday.
Say you mix a hundred per cent of yellow with fifty per cent magenta. That gives you bright orange. Whack the magenta up to
a hundred and you got warm red
. Bishop had seen both colours on Luke’s plans, so he tried them next. Nice, obvious colours. Each one took him ten seconds
to locate on the display and he finished up with
two more green boxes. Making five in all. Halfway there. He was making good
progress.

02.25 . . . 02.24 . . . 02.23 . .
.

Last night, Luke had mentioned a couple more before asking Bishop what they meant. What had he said?
Floors two to four are purple, five through eight are blue
. Bishop now tried the blue first. He touched the area that offered up
a nice, deep blue before it turned into navy and read
the values. A hundred per cent cyan, forty-five per cent magenta and four per cent yellow. Not obvious enough. He got rid
of the yellow and brought the magenta up to fifty per cent. There. He touched the sample bar and got a sixth green box in
return.

02.06 . . . 02.05 . . . 02.04 . .
.

He moved on to purple. Six o’clock. Outer edge. A hundred per cent cyan. A hundred per cent magenta. Zero everything else.
Looks good. Press the colour.

The white box remained white. Wrong purple. Too deep.

He kept the magenta where it was and reduced the cyan down to fifty per cent. The colour in the sample bar became a rich mauve.
This time, when he touched it the seventh box turned green.

01.43 . . . 01.42 . . . 01.41 . .
.

Three left. Foreign Operations next. Thorpe’s department. He hadn’t done those guys yet. Along with Law Enforcement Training
(red), they
were close to the top of the heap at RoyseCorp. Both figuratively and physically. Bishop was probably on one of their floors
right now. So what colour were they? He hadn’t scrolled down enough on the F-39 schematic to notice a coloured bar, although
he’d been told each office up there had its own uniquely crafted pine or rosewood desk. One of the perks. Brown, maybe?

So how come there’s no brown on this wheel?

01.26 . . . 01.25 . . . 01.24 . .
.

Then
he remembered. The contrast bar. First he found that warm red again. A hundred per cent magenta and a hundred per cent
yellow. Then he slid the arrow on the contrast bar across and watched the black come into play, changing the red into brown.
He checked the values for black. Forty-seven per cent. He brought the slider up to fifty per cent. An easy-to-remember number.
There.

He pressed the sample bar.

The seven green boxes became eight.

01.01 . . . 01.00 . . . 00.59 . .
.

Bishop took a deep breath. Just two more to go. And a whole minute in which to do it. Easy. Except he had no idea what came
next. He looked down at the colour wheel and tried to recall which departments were left. He’d told Luke
there were nine when
he’d been here before.
Unless they added more while you were away
, he’d replied.

Forget about that
, Bishop thought.
What colour was next? Think
.

He stared at the steel vault entrance in front of him and went through them in his mind. Accounting. They were purple. Close
Protection were green. Legal were orange. Training
were red. Recruitment were . . . what?

Bishop frowned.
That
was the missing department. So what colour was that section? And then he smiled. The answer was right in front of him. What
was stainless steel without the shine?

Grey.

Keeping the slider arrow at fifty per cent black, Bishop reduced everything else to zero per cent and
pressed the sample bar.
The ninth box flashed red. Then turned green.

00.21 . . . 00.20 . . . 00.19 . .
.

Bishop was sure the numbers were speeding up. No way did that take forty seconds.
What was left?
There were no more departments and
he couldn’t see the lobby being part of the equation. Which meant the tenth colour would be personal to Royse. Which
left
the penthouse.

00.14 . . . 00.13 . . . 00.12 . .
.

His mind turned to
Guernica
upstairs and he wondered how you could get any work done with that thing in your line of vision. Maybe all the white around
it balanced things out. He thought of balance. Yin and yang. Black and white.

00.09 . . . 00.08 . . . 00.07
. . .

It had to be black or white. One or the other. That whole
Guernica
wall upstairs was black. So was the map wall. Most of the furniture, too. But the overriding décor was white. So Bishop slid
the slider arrow on the gradient bar all the way to the right. To its original position.

00.03
.

The centre of the wheel was white again. Just
as it was when he started. Bishop touched it with his forefinger.

00.02
.

His glance shifted to the colour value bars on the right. Everything was at zero per cent. The fifth bar was white. Bishop
touched it with the same finger.

00.01
.

The tenth and final box flashed red.