If there was one thing that really pissed Hobart off it was the blatant flouting of protocol and the circumvention of government-ordained authority. It was a primary corruption of the system that was unprecedented in the US. If he could do anything to prevent it happening he would do so in a heartbeat, even if it meant taking those responsible to the Senate and exposing them publicly, no matter who they were. This sort of subversion tore into the very principles of governing authority that the country was built on. If Phil was right, and Hobart found him all too convincing, Hobart would get to the bottom of this if it took all the resources he had at his disposal. This was not just a double homicide: it was an invasion of his case and therefore personal. The Bufi-Cano file had just found itself reclassified and at the very top of his list.
Hobart took his cellphone from his pocket, punched in a number and put it to his ear.
The phone rang in an office on the same floor as Hobart’s, two doors along the corridor, and was picked up by his young assistant. ‘Agent Hendrickson,’ he said as he held the phone with his chin and continued tapping the keys of his computer keyboard.
‘It’s Hobart.’
‘Sir,’ Hendrickson said, stopping almost immediately and taking hold of the handset.
‘What are you doing right now?’
‘The Chaves case, sir.’
‘Give it to Mendez or Stefanowitz. I want you on the Bufi-Cano murders.’
‘The Bufi—’ Hendrickson started to say with some surprise. This month’s cases were already outnumbering last month’s with a week to go and only yesterday morning Hobart had told the office to put the Englishwoman murder case on the bottom of the pile and keep putting it there until its hair started falling out.
‘That’s what I said,’ Hobart reiterated. ‘I want you to crawl all over it. You’re looking for anything that doesn’t fit.’
‘Like what, sir?’
‘Well, that’s the thing about something that doesn’t fit, Hendrickson. You’ll know it when you see it.’
‘I’m on it, sir,’ Hendrickson said, but Hobart didn’t hear him. His phone was already closed and dangling in his hand by his side. He looked at Phil, only because the man was staring at him. Hobart’s mind was still racing through the consequences of a government agency being responsible for the killings. At that moment it didn’t matter which one.
‘This is bad, isn’t it?’ Phil said.
Hobart didn’t answer.
‘I mean, this is real bad. This kind of stuff went on all the time in the seventies and eighties, but not now.’
‘I don’t need to tell you not to say anything about this to anyone, do I?’
‘You kidding? I may be an old conspiracy theorist but I’ve watched all the movies and I know what happens to the first guy with the hot info. Tell you the truth, I didn’t sleep a wink last night.’
‘This isn’t a movie, Phil. No one’s coming after you.’
‘What about when the report goes out? I’m supposed to send a copy to New York and another to the pool.’
‘Give me a hard copy. Don’t email it to anyone yet. Label the pool copy confidential then post it onto the site empty.’
‘But that’s going to throw up a flag. These people will be waiting for the report.’
‘Refer all enquiries to my office. And take it easy. It’s past you now. It’s in the system. Okay? Like I said, no one’s coming after you.’
Phil nodded and visibly calmed down. ‘You’re right,’ he said. Hobart was making perfect sense as usual. ‘I guess I got a little wound up when for a while there I was the only person who knew. I’m okay now. What are you going to do?’
‘You’re going to have to forget it and leave it with me, okay?’ Hobart said in a fatherly manner.
‘I’m already there,’ Phil said, allowing a smile of relief to grow on his face. ‘I’ll wait and read about it in the papers.’
‘You do that,’ Hobart said, knowing that it might never get that far. Like any bad news, if it could be kept in-house that was as far as it would go. His only concern about Phil was that the man was in the winter of his career in a business he believed to be corrupt and there was that distant possibility that he might decide to do something that he’d consider heroic while he still had the chance. As Hobart stared at Phil he decided that was probably unfair of him and he patted his old friend on the shoulder.
‘Come on,’ Hobart said. ‘Let’s go back and see this report.’ They headed across the parking lot towards the building while Phil began to explain the various chemical make-ups of different types of plastic explosive and how it affected their performance and dictated their different uses. Hobart tried to listen with some interest but his mind kept flicking to the new problem at hand. This case was now possibly one of the most important he’d handled in recent years.
18
A shiny black stretch limousine slowly pulled off the road and onto an uneven patch of sun-baked mud on the edge of a large bustling construction site. It came to a stop outside a chain-link security fence and a grey Cadillac sedan pulled alongside it. Three dark-skinned Caucasian Neanderthals in expensive suits climbed out of the sedan with muscle-bound slowness and spread out around the limo, checking in all directions, hands hovering close to pistols and sub-machine guns hidden inside their jackets. One of them nodded to the passenger in the front of the limo and he climbed out and opened one of the rear doors.
Skender eased out of the spacious interior, buttoning up the jacket of an immaculate cream suit, the collar of his shirt turned down outside it in a style that would provoke feelings of nostalgia in any who enjoyed the fashions of the 1970s. He walked over the hard ground in his patent-leather shoes and in through the security gate, followed by two of his men. The security guard, a redneck type who had never seen proper military service, saluted Skender and bid him good afternoon as he passed his sentry box. Skender ignored him and walked several yards onto the site before stopping to look up, a smile growing on his craggy face.
‘It’s beautiful,’ he said to his thugs without looking at them, not that he was addressing them in particular but he wanted to say it to someone. ‘I love watching it grow day by day.’
Skender was gaping at a huge new office building near completion, a startling design emulating ancient Egyptian pyramids. Shimmering plates of dark green glass locked into copper-sheathed steel frames covered all four steeply sloping sides from the second floor to the sixteenth. The seventeenth or top floor was also glass but was gold in colour. Two smaller pyramids were located at opposite corners of the site, creating an overall impression like a typical picture postcard of Giza. The ground around the building was paved in Italian marble that continued out several metres from the base of the building, with towering newly planted palms springing from it in places.
To some critics the edifice verged on the kitsch but it was eye-catching nevertheless. Hundreds of workers were busy operating cranes, earth-movers and dumper trucks as the exterior cosmetics – landscaping, lighting and pathways – were well under way. Lorries ferried their loads in and out through the main entrance where kerbstones were being laid in preparation for the tarmac fill that would connect the lavish drive to Washington Boulevard that ran along one side. The site took up an entire block in Culver City, a modern development of Los Angeles a couple of miles from Beverly Hills and occupied by the likes of Sony and MGM studios, fine restaurants and expensive art shops. The business premises were interspersed with middle-class residential buildings.