Die Twice Page 12

  “Quick,” I said. “The grabber. Get the frequency.”

  “I’m on it,” Fothergill said. “Wait a minute. There’s no reading. Nothing’s showing. We’ll have to wait till it closes again.”

  The door slowly cranked its way up to the top of the frame. Nothing else happened for a moment, then a car rolled through the opening. A dark blue Cadillac. It would be too much to swallow for that to be a coincidence, but I checked the license plate anyway. Then there was no doubt. It was the one Fothergill had been following after it left the Commissariat, yesterday. Which was a relief. It meant we were on the right track, after all.

  “I’m trying again,” Fothergill said, as the door reversed its direction. “No. There’s no signal. I’m not picking up a thing.”

  I got a better look at the Cadillac as it turned and passed in front of me. There were three people inside it. The guy who’d done all the talking at the club was driving. The woman who’d strip-searched me was sitting in the front, next to him. And a guy I’d never seen before was lounging lazily around in the back.

  “They can’t have been using a remote, after all,” Fothergill said. “It must have been a regular switch. Someone must have opened it from the inside. And closed it again.”

  I didn’t reply.

  “Problem is, what do we do now?” Fothergill said.

  I stayed silent.

  “Maybe it’s time for a change of plan,” Fothergill said. “I think we should head back to Chicago after all. There’s still plenty of time.”

  “For what?” I said.

  “Taking them at the Commissariat. Your rendezvous isn’t until four fifteen.”

  “I told you. I don’t want to take them, anywhere. Not yet, anyway. There’ll be time for that, later.”

  “But if we could catch one of them, think of the leverage it would give us over London. They’d have to send a team, then. Quick results are good news, remember, and that’s just what you need right now.”

  I didn’t respond.

  “David, we need to rethink,” he said. “To adapt. To view this as an advantage, not a setback. ’Cause now, we know for sure where the key players are going to be. And when. Surprise would be on our side. And the environment there is favorable to us. It’s a far more viable option than staying here and banging our heads against the wall.”

  “No,” I said, after a moment’s thought. “I’m going to find a way into the place. I need to see inside.”

  “But how?” he said. “You were right. Those roll-ups were the best option. Maybe if we at least wait, those guys will use a remote on their way back in. We could trying grabbing the frequency again then.”

  “No. That would be too late. I need time to look around. Properly. Without them being there.”

  “I don’t see how that’s possible, David. We’re out of options. Face it. This was a good idea, but it just hasn’t panned out. We should head back to the city.”

  “Rubbish,” I said, slipping the car back into gear. “There are always options. And I’m going to put one into play right now.”

  “Whoa, wait,” he said. “What is it? What are you going to do?”

  “Something you suggested yourself,” I said. “Or a version of it, anyway.”

  The high-tech solution had failed, but I wasn’t too concerned. I knew it wouldn’t be hard to find something to replace it with. In the end, it took less than four minutes. One minute to drive to the warehouses. One second to open my door. Another second to scoop up a brick from the dozens that lay abandoned in the gutter. And two minutes to retrace my steps, call Fothergill, and tell him to keep his eyes peeled. I figured that if he was still there, he might as well be useful and watch my back.

  I pulled the car up onto the sidewalk and parked nice and close in front of the green door. Then I tried the handle, just in case, but predictably the place was locked. I looked across at the factories. Fothergill was there, behind the wheel of the Ford, fiddling with his phone as usual. He saw me and nodded. No one else was watching. So I took out my Beretta with my right hand. Gripped the brick with my left. And swung it into the wooden surface. Hard. Two inches above the lock. End-on, to concentrate the force. The frame gave way, splitting all the way from top to bottom. The loose piece fell back into the corridor, bounced off the wall, and I dived clean through the gap before it had time to hit the floor.

  The corridor ran the full width of the building. Four doors led off the stretch to the right. All were closed, and the passage ended with a blank, whitewashed brick wall. The stretch to the left was identical, except it ended with a double door. It was gray metal. A flight of stone steps stretched up straight ahead of me. A single light flickered at the top. I went up, two at a time. Turned left at the top. And stopped in front of a double doorway. I listened. There was no sound from inside, so I smashed my foot into the join between the two doors. I tossed the brick through the gap they left and dodged to the side. I heard a crash as it landed, but there was no other reaction. I waited another moment, then stepped into the room, gun raised. The space was large. Twenty feet by forty. And it was deserted. There was no furniture, but five sleeping bags were lying on the floor. Four were lined up together at the left-hand side of the room, parallel with the wall. The other was on its own on the right, facing the opposite way. Each had a black leather carryall sitting tidily at its foot. I unzipped the nearest one but it was just full of clothes—two pairs of jeans, a hoodie, and some underwear—so I closed it, picked up my brick, and moved on.

  The other upstairs room was the same size. It was also vacant. There was no furniture here, either, but one item standing in the far corner told me what the place was used for. It was a chemical toilet. It looked ridiculous on its own in such a wide, empty space, but I don’t suppose the guys from the Cadillac would mind too much. I’d seen plenty of temporary billets with much more spartan facilities over the years.

  The derelict theme continued downstairs. I checked all eight rooms carefully, one at a time, and there was no sign of any of them having been used recently. Not by humans, anyway. Rodents and spiders were a different story. I avoided the worst of the webs and the droppings and finished my sweep at the far end of the left-hand corridor, next to the metal doors. Which told me that if there was anything to find, it had to be on the other side. I tested the handle. It was locked, so I lifted the brick and brought it down just hard enough to break the mechanism. Even with a minimum of force the sound still echoed alarmingly, so I crouched down low, grabbed the handle and eased the door open four inches. Thirty seconds passed without any unwelcome attention. I waited another thirty, then opened the door wider and darted through to the other side.

  The space I entered stank of oil and burned carbon, and was much colder and brighter than I’d expected. The polluted air was being stirred up by giant fans and the whole place was flooded with harsh, artificial light. It was coming from a forest of heavy-duty lanterns. They were hanging on chains from metal beams near the high, corrugated ceiling. There were four rows of maybe twenty-five. All of them were switched on, and their efficiency was boosted by polished steel reflectors. Their main purpose would be to illuminate the dozens of industrial machines that were bolted in place all across the floor. I could see hydraulic presses. Radial drills. Bench grinders. All sorts of equipment I’d noticed in the machine shops on battleships, and plenty of other kinds I didn’t recognize. The larger machines seemed to be concentrated at the far side, near a concrete loading dock. I moved across to take a closer look and spotted the entrance to a narrow office at the back of the raised area. I also saw the front fender of a vehicle, half concealed behind a turret lathe. It was another Cadillac, dark blue, just like the one I’d seen leave through the corresponding roll-up door. Wooden crates were lined up at the edge of the platform behind it. They were five-foot cubes, and there were five of them. At first I thought they were identical.

  Then I saw one of them move.

  TEN

  Don’t mock the afflicted, my
parents always used to say.

  That’s kind advice. I’ve always tried my best to follow it. But there have been occasions when that’s been pretty hard to do. I remember one of them very clearly. It was in my third week of training. A group of us had completed an exercise early, so we’d stopped at a café on the way back to base. We were sitting, drinking coffee, minding our own business, when a twenty-something businessman came bustling into the place. He had a shiny Armani suit, a mop of curly blond hair, and a walk that told you he had a more than healthy regard for himself. He picked a large round table in the nearest corner and plonked himself down with a newspaper. At first we assumed he was waiting for some colleagues, but after a few minutes it became clear he was there on his own.

  I couldn’t help watching him out of the corner of my eye, and soon saw he was fiddling with something underneath the table. It was a cell phone. A huge one, since this was back when even the most modern kind were the size of bricks. He poked at the buttons for a few moments, then went back to reading the paper. Until the peace was disturbed a minute or so later by a raucous electronic squeaking. The guy made a show of sighing, throwing down the paper, and whipping a radio pager out of a cradle on his belt. He studied its little screen, then produced the phone and embarked on a suspiciously one-sided conversation.

  Ten minutes later, the whole cycle repeated itself.

  The woman to my right nudged me with her elbow.

  “He’s doing that himself,” she said. “He’s calling his own pager, then pretending to talk to someone.”

  She was right. And faced with that degree of idiocy, it was hard not to be unkind about the guy. The jokes about him were still going strong a quarter of an hour later, when two policemen arrived. They walked straight up to him. Picked him up under the arms. And carried him outside, kicking, screaming, and showering electronic gadgets in his wake.

  Back at base that evening we found out what had happened. Later in the program, pagers were due to be issued to everyone on our course. Officially they were to send urgent updates about changes to our briefs or exercises. In reality, though, they served two other purposes.

  To give us practice in using gadgets discreetly, at a time when such things were a novelty. That’s where the guy in the café fell down. A tout for the instructors in the town had mistaken him for one of us, and the police had been dispatched to make an example of him.

  And to teach us that with access to up-to-date information, any given situation can be flipped on its head at a moment’s notice.

  For better. Or for worse.

  The crate had been secured with a padlock, but that didn’t concern me. I still had my brick. One sharp blow was all it took to remove the whole assembly. I kicked the pieces of wood and broken metal away, eased the side panel back a couple of inches, and peered through the gap. There was enough light for me to make out the outline of a person. A man. He looked about my age. And he was naked. A ball gag had been shoved in his mouth. His wrists were bound with rope and attached to a hook at the center of the crate’s roof. His forearms were caked with dried blood. I couldn’t see his ankles. He was kneeling awkwardly and seemed to be slumping over to one side. That would partly be due to the confined space, I guessed. And partly to relieve the pressure on the grimy bandage that covered the right-hand side of his abdomen.

  I leaned inside and went to work again with the brick. It was hard to get the angle, but after a couple of minutes the hook was sufficiently bent for me to release the rope. The guy slumped farther into the corner, suddenly missing the support it had given him. He sprawled there for a moment, looking at me suspiciously. Then he pitched himself forward and with a little help managed to struggle to his feet.

  “McIntyre,” I said. “I’d like to say it was a pleasure. But that would be a lie.”

  The guy was in a seriously sorry state. Far worse than when I’d seen him at the apartment he’d been hiding in. He rocked slightly as he stood, unable to hold himself completely still. His naked body was streaked with more blood, and in the brighter light I could see bumps and bruises showing through the layer of grime that covered his skin. The guy obviously hadn’t been treated well. Far from it. But even so, I couldn’t summon much sympathy. In my book, you choose to sleep with the dogs, you wake up with the fleas. And you don’t complain about it afterward.

  “Hold out your hands,” I said.

  McIntyre shifted his weight to his other foot and braced himself against the crate. Then he leaned away from me and started to tug at the ball gag.

  “Forget it,” I said. “It won’t come off. There’s a little padlock at the back.”

  He continued to struggle.

  “I’ll find something to remove it with in a minute,” I said. “Unless you want me to use the brick again?”

  He stopped pulling, but his fingers remained hooked through the leather straps.

  “The gag’ll have to wait,” I said. “But those ropes—they should be easy enough.”

  He lowered his arms, turned to face me, and for a moment I thought I could see an almost friendly look in his eyes. Then his focus snapped away to something behind my head. I spun around and saw what had caught his attention. It was two guys. They were charging through the office door, straight toward us. Both were holding guns. The lead guy raised his to shoulder height and fired twice, without stopping, which was just a waste of ammunition. The bullets rattled harmlessly off some machinery, way behind me. He never had any chance of hitting us but I pushed McIntyre back into the crate anyway, drew my Beretta, and jumped down off the dock. The second guy split away, trying to circle around to the left. I moved right, into the cover of a screw press, and looked out from the far side. I could see the first guy, still on the platform. He was closing in on McIntyre’s position. Moving slowly. And leaving his legs exposed, which gave me a dilemma. It was unlikely I’d get a clearer shot, but I didn’t want to kill him or leave him to bleed out. Not yet, anyway. I needed the chance to ask him about the missing gas. The guy stopped and stood still, almost begging for a bullet. I resisted. Then I heard a sound to my left. Something mechanized. It was the door, starting to roll itself up. I knew the game could have been changing completely right there, so that made the decision for me. I put a round in the guy’s left leg, just below the knee. He went down, and I heard his gun clatter away across the concrete. Then I shifted myself around the base of the machine so I could catch a glimpse through the door. Nothing new was visible. No vehicles were coming in. No one was approaching on foot. Then I heard a car door slam. From inside the building. A car engine started. It was the Cadillac. Someone was leaving the place, not entering. I stepped out from my cover to get a better look. The car’s rear tires started to squeal. They kicked up smoke as it surged forward. I couldn’t see anyone in the driver’s seat—he must have been lying sideways—but it had to be the the second guy from the office. He was the only person I’d seen heading that way. He must have been planning to run, rather than ambush me. I put two rounds through the back window, but the car didn’t slow down. I lowered my aim and went for the bodywork. I hit it four times, but still without effect. I didn’t have the angle for the tires, so I jumped back up onto the dock. The first guy had crawled a couple of yards toward his gun. I kicked it away and put two more rounds through the roof of the Cadillac before it disappeared through the exit. That was as much as I could realistically do. There was no way I was going to catch up with a speeding car on my own, so I left the problem to Fothergill and turned to check on McIntyre.

  I pulled back the side panel, looked inside, and found nothing but empty space. The crate was bare. McIntyre had gone. I turned to see if he’d somehow fallen off the platform when a bullet crashed through the woodwork, six inches in front of me. I hit the deck, unscathed, but severely bothered by something. The bullet had come from the wrong direction. There was no way the remaining guy could have fired it. Even if he could have retrieved his gun, he was in completely the wrong place. I wriggled back to check, just in
case, and saw he had moved. But only marginally. He was still ten feet away from the Browning. So, someone else had to be loose in the main part of the machine shop. I crawled around the rear of the crate and slithered to the edge of the dock. Immediately my eyes picked up movement. A figure was darting between the machines. A man. He was coming in my direction. Quickly. Zigzagging across the open spaces. That wasn’t a bad idea, in itself. But it would have worked out better for him if he hadn’t left the same interval between each move. An even four seconds, every time. Like a target at a beginners’ training course. So the next time he disappeared into some cover, I knelt up and raised my Beretta. I counted to four. The guy appeared, right on schedule. I lined up on his sternum and fired, twice. He crumpled and fell backward. It took a couple of seconds for the ripple of dust to settle around the body, but when it cleared I could finally make out his face.

  And it was not what I’d expected to see.

  The man I’d just shot was the second guy from the office. Which meant that someone else had escaped in the Cadillac. And I suddenly had a good idea who that would have been. I pulled out my phone and punched in Fothergill’s number.

  “Where are you?” I said, as soon as he answered.

  “Don’t know,” he said. “Let’s see. I’ve got burned out cars to my left. Desolate wasteland to my right. Is that any help?”

  “What’s in front of you?”