He let it go to voicemail.
He did the same with a second call from the Chief. Then with one from Naomi.
Giordano stared at the wall, idly tracing a fine crack in the plaster from its source. He too had calls to make. Plenty of them. Ordinarily a decisive man, he didn’t in this case know where to start.
The phone sounded again, the vibration nearly sending it off the desk.
He didn’t recognise the number.
Giordano picked up the phone and hit the green button. He listened.
‘Raymond Giordano.’ A man’s voice. Accented, though he couldn’t tell with what.
‘Who are you?’
‘My name is Darius Pope. Does the surname ring any bells?’
And it all made sense, like a kaleidoscopic picture shifting into focus.
Giordano waited still. The voice — the accent was English — said, ‘Tell nobody of this conversation. Be in the Board Room annex of the Holtzmann Solar head office, in the Loomis Building in Manhattan, at ten o’clock this morning. Make sure you’re there alone.’
Giordano opened his mouth to speak, and it was as if his indrawn breath prompted the man to interrupt: ‘Just so that you’re aware of what will happen if you don’t follow my instructions to the letter.’
He paused, as if to make sure he had Giordano’s full attention.
‘I have your daughter.’
Thirty-Eight
Manhattan, New York City
Tuesday 21 May, 7.35 am
Kendrick’s footfalls echoed off the bare walls in a rhythm that started to grate on Purkiss. He was standing at the large, tall window facing eastwards, watching the red sun emerge above the distant Jersey horizon.
‘Would you stop that,’ he said.
Kendrick glared. ‘You pace.’
‘I pace. I don’t prowl.’
He could see Kendrick was getting the urge, which he usually did at this stage of an operation: the craving for chemical stimulation. Normally Purkiss looked the other way, but this time he wouldn’t. There was no question of Kendrick’s stalking the early morning New York streets, looking for a fix.
‘How long’s she been?’ said Kendrick.
‘An hour.’
Berg had dropped them back at the abandoned office they’d used earlier when they’d been in the city the previous afternoon. She’d gone on to her headquarters to meet her boss and debrief.
They had debated it feverishly on the hundred-mile journey back to the city. This time they’d taken one car, Nakamura’s Taurus. The local cops had arrived within minutes of Pope’s disappearance, and Berg had taken control, giving them a brief summary and leaving them to convert the area into a crime scene and to take the two men Berg had arrested, Druze and Laymon, into custody. She’d liaised with the local FBI office in Philadelphia and arranged for them to escort the two men back to Manhattan for questioning. Apart from their names, which the men had acknowledged when Kendrick had found their drivers’ licences on them, they’d refused to speak without legal representation. A check on their licences confirmed they were both CIA.
Purkiss and Berg both agreed that New York was Pope’s likely destination. He’d appeared to be heading there before. It was possible, of course, that he intended to travel beyond the city and further north, but they had no way of knowing this. Pope had taken one of the cars belonging to the CIA men, but although
The debate was over how much to report in and how much to withhold. Berg had been in favour of making a full disclosure, of telling her superiors everything she knew, including about Purkiss’s involvement.
‘This is too big for us,’ she said. ‘Multiple CIA agents operating illegally, a British spook running amuck, killing and kidnapping… it needs the whole Bureau behind it.’
‘They’ll sideline you,’ said Purkiss.
‘No they won’t.’
‘They certainly will. You’ll be deemed unfit to proceed further. You’ve fired your weapon multiple times, you’ve almost been killed just as often. You watched your partner being crushed to death.’
She jerked her head round angrily, making the Taurus swerve. ‘Hey. No need to rub it in.’
‘I’m just trying to make a point. I know how organisations work. Yours, mine… they’re all the same. You’ll be thanked for bringing this serious matter to the bosses’ attention, they may even pardon you for going renegade earlier. But they’ll want to take it away from you and run it themselves.’
From the back seat Kendrick said, ‘Like the bloody Army.’
Berg said, ‘What do you suggest?’
‘How much slack will your boss cut you? If you tell him you’ve got an informant, i.e. me, but can’t reveal my name without jeopardising the operation?’
She rocked her head. ‘Maybe.’
‘Then that’s the line you take. Tell him about Crosby, about Holtzmann Solar and the Caliban operation, about everything that’s happened. Tell him there’s an Englishman named Pope who’s kidnapped the Ramirez woman, though you don’t know why, which is the truth. Leave out the fact that Pope’s a British intelligence agent, that his father was one too, that Kendrick or I are involved.’
‘It’ll come out in the end.’
‘But it can’t come out now. If your Bureau learns there’s a British agent operating in a situation like this it’ll have repercussions that don’t bear thinking about. It’ll scupper our job, hinder us from finding Pope. Yes, eventually my role will become apparent, but it won’t matter so much if we’ve managed to stop Pope by then.’
She drove in silence for a full minute, her thoughts visibly churning. Then: ‘All right. I must be out of my mind.’
*
Kendrick said, ‘Should’ve worked them over.’
‘What?’ Purkiss turned from the window.
‘Those two CIA pillocks. Back at the petrol station. We should’ve made them tell us what they knew. The coppers would have been none the wiser.’
‘Berg wouldn’t have allowed it.’
‘But you agree with me. You know I’m right, Purkiss.’
Purkiss turned away again. It was clear, now, that the CIA faction, the one that included the men who’d tailed him in Hamburg as well as the ones who’d shot up Crosby’s place and now the ones from the service station, didn’t want the Ramirez woman dead. If they had, Pope wouldn’t have been able to use her as a shield the way he had; they would have simply gunned her down along with Pope. That meant Ramirez was important enough for both Pope and the CIA faction to want to keep her alive.
And yes, Kendrick was right. The men they’d captured would have been able to tell them why. It was a theoretical point now, nothing more; they were in FBI custody and would lawyer up, as the Americans put it. The truth would come out, but probably too late to be of much practical use.
Ignoring what he’d said to Kendrick, Purkiss began to pace. He ran through what he knew.
Pope was here as a result of something his father had been involved in, something that had led to his father’s death, accidentally or otherwise. An illegal drug trial.
The trial was being conducted with the active collaboration of a black ops cell within the CIA, and under its auspices.
Pope had taken a woman captive and was taking pains to keep her alive.
At the same time a CIA black ops cell was trying to retrieve her.
Ramirez was key. And not only did Purkiss not know why, he’d also let her slip through his fingers. He’d let her be taken, just as he’d let Abby be taken, the second time permanently. And Claire…
He stopped, clenched his fists so that his nails bit deep half moons into his palms, and counted backwards. When the anger had subsided he applied himself once more to the problem.
Ramirez, who’d been a child of ten or eleven at the time of the Caliban operation, was connected with it. That meant she either held crucial knowledge about the project — highly unlikely — or she had some personal connection to somebody involved in it.