He’d used the January trip to obtain — with moderate difficulty — Giordano’s cell phone number. He had done this through that most ancient of the spy’s tactics, namely the honey trap. One of Giordano’s aides, an up-and-coming junior staffer named Naomi Johnson, had proved hard to pin down but less difficult to win over. He hadn’t discussed politics or work or anything with her; had simply obtained her own cell phone by sleight of hand at an opportune moment and found the required number listed as RAG, Giordano’s initials.
Pope’s second visit to the US, the April trip, had been concerned with the practicalities of the final stage in his operation. He’d obtained a staff member’s ID pass to the Holtzmann Solar offices in the Loomis building and had committed to memory the details before returning it to the unsuspecting staffer. Those details he later used back in his SIS base in Amsterdam to produce a forged pass. Also while in the US on the second trip, he’d rented the apartment across from the Loomis building. The floor plan of the Holtzmann Solar headquarters wasn’t that hard to come by, and he’d identified the room directly across from his apartment, namely the Board Room Annex.
A journey upstate had obtained for Pope the light truck, and some shopping around had procured the necessary materials for the bomb: a urea nitrate main charge with nitroglycerine as a booster explosive and several tanks of bottled hydrogen to enhance the effect of the blast. The entire bomb weighed just under a tonne. He’d left the truck in the public car lot near Gramercy Park and made sure he’d paid enough to last until his return this time.
And here he was, in the end phase. He was at the vantage point he’d decided on, with the woman, Giordano’s daughter, at his side, waiting for Giordano to make an appearance in the adjacent building.
He’d made it. Somewhere, Pope believed, his father had taken note.
Forty-Three
9.45 am
The gridlock had shut down on the streets as suddenly as a trap springing shut.
Berg punched buttons on the radio, trying to get a clearer signal. Eventually one broke through.
…Credible threat of a bomb in the Loomis Building. Evacuation of the building and the surrounding blocks underway. All units to regard as a priority.
‘Car bomb,’ said Purkiss. ‘The light truck Pope rented. It’ll be in the basement.’
‘Yeah,’ said Berg. ‘Jesus.’ She picked up her phone, dialled, spoke rapidly and concisely, then rang off. ‘At least now they know what to look for.’
Through the windscreen Purkiss watched people stepping out on to the streets, gazing off in the direction the police vehicles appeared to be heading, disregarding the traffic which wasn’t moving anyway.
‘Out,’ said Purkiss.
Berg hesitated, then climbed out to join Purkiss and Kendrick. The road was blocked as far ahead as they could see. The crowds on the streets and the pavements were catching the mood already, becoming a herd united in rising wonder and panic.
‘Lead the way,’ said Purkiss.
They moved rapidly, weaving their way through the throng, the three of them abreast. Berg said, ‘I’m trying to figure this… Pope’s in the building? Going to take it down, him and the Ramirez woman included?’
‘Possibly,’ said Purkiss.
‘You’re not convinced?’
‘I don’t know.’ They were, Purkiss guessed, a few blocks from their destination. Uniformed police were corralling the crowds away and deploying tape and barriers across the streets. ‘There’s a loose end. And that loose end’s Giordano.’
‘How so?’
‘Pope wants revenge on Giordano and he’s going to kill his daughter to achieve that. I think we can assume that’s correct. But is he really going to stop there? Is Giordano’s daughter’s death really punishment enough? Look at the vengeance Pope’s exacting on Holtzmann Solar. Bringing their entire headquarters down, literally. It doesn’t make sense that he’d allow Giordano to escape relatively unscathed.’
‘You think Giordano’s in the building with him?’
‘I think he might be.’
Berg took out her phone and punched buttons as they strode.
‘Yeah. I need to know if a Raymond Giordano is on record as having entered the Loomis Building in the last twenty-four hours. Yes, I know it’s being evacuated.’
She pressed the phone against her ear and covered the other one. In a moment she said, ‘Okay. Thanks.’ She looked at Purkiss. ‘He was signed in at nine fifteen. Twenty minutes ago.’
*
The Loomis Building looked a new construction to Purkiss, a soaring blue-and-silver tower with a wedding-cake base and a sharp narrowing to a long, spire-like neck. The stream of people emerging from the front was just on the right side of becoming an uncontrollable torrent. Purkiss couldn’t remember having seen so many police officers in one place before.
To the left of the building stood a more uniformly slender apartment block, the one in which Pope had rented a property. Its entrance too was spilling bodies. Helicopters were chattering overhead, spiralling like slow moths around a flame. On the ground the inevitable television crews were trying to tunnel their way in.
The police line was ebbing outwards, forcing the crowds ever further back, and Purkiss and the other two were forced along with the masses. Purkiss struggled to keep his footing while hanging on to the thought that was tugging for his attention.
The apartment Pope rented. Why in this particular building? It had the advantage of proximity, so that Pope would have had a convenient base from which to set up the bomb plot… but why not take one even a few streets away?
And then he had it.
*
Purkiss spotted Berg a few heads away, Kendrick even further. He called across to Berg and she pushed her way through the jostling bodies until she reached him.
In her ear, over the noise, he shouted: ‘How would one get back into the building?’
She frowned as though she’d misheard. ‘Back in? No chance. There’ll be a cordon all around that you’d never cross. It’d have to be with the bomb squad, if anything.’ She shook her head. ‘Anyhow, are you nuts? Why’d you want to get in there? It’s a thirty-floor building.You’d never find Pope and the girl in time.’
‘I’m not going in there,’ Purkiss yelled back. ‘You and Kendrick are.’
Forty-Four
9.30 am
Giordano was aware of a strange peace, as though he was in an impenetrable capsule cocooned from a world that was coming to an end around him.
After Pope’s call he’d stepped out of the elevator as soon as the doors opened, even though it wasn’t the floor he wanted. The bustle in the corridors was that of a normal working day in the headquarters of a global company, not the barely contained hysteria of crowds seeking an exit. He had time to hide.
He found that old standby, a restroom, shut himself in one of the cubicles and sat on the lid of the toilet with his feet propped up so that they weren’t visible under the door.
Ten minutes later the first alarm sounded.
*
He gave it half an hour, as long as he dared while still leaving time for possible delays up to the eighteenth floor, and at nine forty-eight found himself in the plush, airconditioned surroundings of the Board Room Annex. Some annex, he thought. It was twice the size of the most of the boardrooms he’d been in.
Faintly, as if through many fathoms of water, he heard a cacophony. The glazing on the windows all but shut out the sound.
Giordano kept away from the window and sat in one of the seats around the enormous conference table, alone, to wait.
*
His guilt about Nina was cold and twisted and fossilised, but his betrayal of Naomi was raw as a wound in his conscience. She’d watched his back, had bent and even broken the rules for him on more than one occasion. Yes, she was ambitious, and it certainly wouldn’t hurt her career prospects to have a mentor of his seniority and reputation (though how that was going change now, he thought with bitter mirth). But her loyalty was based on more than just political calculation.