Freefall Read online

  The vaulted lobby was a blend of cream marble and dark wood. Brown columns supported the high ceiling, and cream couches and chairs were artfully arranged in carefully coordinated groups. The large space was packed, mainly with business people, although there was at least one family, the chaotic behavior of the three children and the strained voice of their mother standing out against the calm murmurs of the suited professionals. Wallace walked quickly toward the elevators and found a couple of payphones. He called Ash, but the number rang and went to voicemail. He tried again, and got the same result. There was a bank of computers just off the lobby, where people were checking emails and surfing the Net. Wallace pulled up a chair by an unused machine and agreed to Marriott’s terms and conditions before logging into his email, where he immediately found a message from Christine Ash, telling him to contact Deon Reeves.

  He re-read the short text, wondering whether he could trust that the email really was from Ash. There was no identifying marker, no signal that only they would know, and she hadn’t even signed it. Maybe she was in a rush, or in danger. It was possible that she’d been compromised, that the Bureau had become aware of their contact and this was a trap. He tried to find the line between caution and paranoia. If the Bureau knew they’d spoken, Ash would be watched. They wouldn’t risk putting Wallace on edge by suggesting he trust a complete stranger. He decided he didn’t have a choice. Alone in New York, the target of an international manhunt, he had to call Reeves. But that didn’t mean he had to trust him, and, as Wallace logged off and returned to the payphones, he resolved to be extremely careful.

  Deon Reeves stood on the corner of 147th Street and looked up Seventh Avenue at the six NYPD forensics officers who were working in three teams. The first was examining the body of Louis Egan, who’d been shot on the sidewalk, the second working around the shredded Buick and the body of Taye Gatlin, who’d been killed in the car, and the third checking the body of a man killed in a white Honda. Seventh Avenue had been closed and police officers were taking statements from those who’d witnessed the firefight. The lead detective was a gray-haired guy called Saul Oriol, who wore a crisply pressed suit and exuded care and confidence. Reeves didn’t know him, but he seemed thorough. He was busy coordinating the search for a silver BMW that had been spotted leaving the scene. Multiple witnesses said they saw a woman flee the Buick and escape the shooters in the BMW, and Reeves hoped they were right, because it meant that Ash might still be alive and free. He was about to approach Oriol to see what he could do to help when his phone rang. The screen displayed a New York City number he didn’t recognize.

  “Deon, it’s me,” Ash said. She sounded breathless and nervy and Reeves could hear heavy traffic in the background.

  “Chris?” he asked incredulously, ducking beneath the police cordon and walking up the access ramp of the neighboring brownstone. He didn’t want anyone overhearing their conversation. “Are you OK?”

  “I think so,” Ash replied.

  “Where are you?”

  “I can’t come in,” Ash said. “I trust you, Deon, but the Bureau or the USM is compromised. Maybe both.”

  “We’ll—” Reeves began, but Ash cut him off.

  “I can’t come in, Deon. I need you to pass on a message. I’m hoping you’re going to get a call from someone looking for me. If you do, I want you to tell him that I’ll meet him at the penthouse suite.”

  “Chris, please—”

  “The penthouse suite. You got that?” Ash pressed.

  “Yeah, I got it,” Reeves said. “You be careful, and if you need anything, you call me. I’ve got your back.”

  “I know,” Ash said sadly.

  Reeves pocketed his phone and stood quietly for a moment as he considered whether to share knowledge of the call with Saul Oriol, Harrell, or anyone else at the Bureau. His eyes were drawn to the photographer who was cataloging the crime scene, and as he watched her moving around, intently focused on capturing an accurate record of the mayhem, he realized he couldn’t fault Ash’s logic. Someone had given her up or their protocols had been compromised. Either way, she was right not to trust the system. Resolving to keep their conversation secret, he walked down the access ramp and slipped beneath the cordon.

  “Detective Oriol,” he called out, “what can we do to help? Finding Agent Ash and the men responsible is our top priority. The Bureau will give you whatever you need.”

  Reeves was sifting through witness statements with Detective Oriol when his phone rang again, and another unfamiliar New York number flashed on screen. He stepped away from Oriol to take the call.

  “I’m looking for Christine Ash,” a man said, his voice unfamiliar, his English accent unmistakable. “She told me to call you.”

  Reeves thought about quizzing the caller, but he suspected he already knew the man’s identity, and having it confirmed would only put him in a difficult position. “She gave me a message. She says you should meet her at the penthouse suite.”

  “Thanks.” The line went dead.

  Reeves shook his head. He hoped Ash knew what she was doing.

  Wallace replaced the receiver and scanned the lobby. Reeves hadn’t stalled for the time to run a trace, and the message sounded genuine. The world was full of penthouse suites, but there was only one that meant anything to Wallace and Ash. It seemed unlikely this was a trap. He headed for the cabs that waited in a rank outside the hotel, eager to reach Manhattan.

  34

  Bailey lay in the darkness, his throat raw, his eyes burning. He was too numb to cry, too near breaking point to do anything other than pray for it all to end. His head felt light, almost detached from his battered body, and his mind drifted, floating over times past, peering down at his memories as though his life belonged to someone else. He saw a cocky boy playing footie on a warm summer’s day, a gaggle of friends pounding the tarmac between the semis that flanked Gracefield Gardens, collecting the ball and giving drivers a bit of London lip whenever a passing car interrupted their game. That same boy with Salamander, the two of them using sharp, narrow straws to pierce the film lids of plastic juice cups as they sat in the park and gave voice to their dreams, certain they could conquer the world through sheer optimism. The boy’s grandmother comforting him, the smell of her lavender perfume soothing away his humiliation as he recounted the trauma of being bullied on his way home. A girl, her name almost forgotten, a date at the cinema, his first kiss, pretending he was a man of the world. His heart broken the very next day when he saw her, his girl, across the playground, her arms around someone else. That same boy, now grown, bitten by reality, choosing a path that took him into darkness, alienating him from his friends, making it difficult to find love. The boy trapped inside the body of an adult, huddled in the ever encroaching darkness, his knees pulled closer with every new investigation, hands over his face as though trying to blot out the horrors faced by the man he’d become. The boy mutilated by a shooting at the hands of a masked killer. Death’s bony fingers tearing shreds out of him, trying to take him entirely. The disfigured boy now a trembling wreck inside the body of a man who pretended he could handle what life had thrown at him. What had he done to that boy? What had he done to himself?

  Of all the moments that rose unbidden in the darkness, of all the faces, one stayed with him. His grandmother, her cheeks so full and round, her skin so smooth, her eyes so warm, glowing with love. She seemed so real that Bailey tried to reach out a hand to touch her, but his arms were bound, so he could only watch as she smiled.

  “Whiners aren’t winners,” she said softly.

  And then she was gone.

  Bailey wanted to cry out, but his throat was so swollen that he couldn’t swallow to give himself voice. He wanted to go with her, to feel her embrace, smell her perfume, taste her food, to return to a time when life had been nothing but smiles. But even in his tormented confusion, Bailey knew she wasn’t really there. She’d died years ago, swallowed by cancer, smiling even as it ate away at her. She was gone. T
here would be no easy escape. He was faced with a simple choice: tell his tormentor what he wanted to know and hope for a quick death, or continue to resist the worsening torture and hold out until the pain became utterly unbearable.

  Escape.

  The word eased into his mind so gently, Bailey was convinced his grandmother had whispered it in his ear. His concept of time had been lost to flashes of blinding light, raging noise, and savage torment, and in the terrifying darkness, his mind had been overwhelmed by fear and self-pity. Unlike his anxiety attacks, which came without cause, he’d been forced inside his mind as part of a calculated strategy designed to wear him down. Robbing the subject of any sense of reality was a key element of torture, and he suddenly grew angry with himself for falling into the role of victim so easily.

  He forced himself to focus on his senses, to try to gauge the world around him. He knew he was lying on a bunk, his arms, legs, and torso restrained. The room was soundless, cut off from the world, the only noise the blood pulsing through his ears. The darkness was deep and impenetrable, and no matter how hard he looked, he could see nothing but black. He twisted his fingers toward the straps that bound his wrists and felt hard leather cuffs—the sort one would find in a secure psychiatric ward. Bailey knew from experience that few restraints could resist a determined captive. YouTube was littered with videos that demonstrated how to escape from handcuffs, cable ties, ropes, tape, and even psychiatric straps. He recalled one of his Hendon instructors saying that restraints only worked when combined with supervision, and wondered how long it had been since he’d last seen his tormentor. If he was caught trying to escape he had no doubt he’d be punished, but could it be worse than anything he’d already faced?

  There was no art to escaping straps; it required brute force and determination. The hard leather cuff was secured to the wrist, set at a gauge too narrow for the palm, but few people knew just how pliable the hand was, how the bones could twist, contort, and snap when needed.

  Bailey took a deep breath and pulled his left arm down, straining with all the strength he could muster. The pain was intense but he’d endured far worse at the hands of his torturer, and the prospect of further suffering spurred him on. The cuff bit into the heel of his palm, but Bailey ignored the stabbing agony, telling himself that flesh and bone were malleable, that force could reshape them. He swallowed the pain and used it to fuel the engine of angry frustration that motivated him. Sweat sprung from every pore as his broken body came alive with effort and finally, as he bit his tongue in an attempt to distract himself from his harrowing task, he felt a crunch in his palm, and a shooting sensation raced down his arm into his very core. He ignored it, and continued pulling his slippery hand into the cuff. Excruciating agony scaled down to intense pain as Bailey’s fingers slid through the hard leather and his hand flopped free. Ignore it, he told himself, as sweat poured down his face.

  He forced his left hand down to his chest and searched for the buckle of the strap that bound his torso. His fingers felt strangely disconnected and disobedient. Tingling and numb, they didn’t want to do his bidding, and instead seemed intent on lying limply at the end of his damaged hand. Bailey couldn’t indulge them, and knew that if his tormentor returned to find one arm free he’d make sure it could never be used again. He concentrated and forced his way past the pain. His fingers touched metal, and traced the outline of the loose end of the strap. Forcing it through the buckle took real willpower, and as the moments passed, Bailey grew ever more fearful that his tormentor would return before he was ready, flooding the room with light, noise, and pain. But the room stayed dark, and he freed himself from his second restraint, then quickly rolled on to his side and felt for the cuff that bound his right arm.

  Hope surged, smothering pain and sending electrifying adrenaline coursing through his body. His twisted, swollen fingers worked as quickly as they could and finally unbuckled the cuff, freeing his undamaged right hand. Bailey froze, his ears straining, convinced he’d heard a muffled sound somewhere outside the room. Greeted with silence, he realized there was nothing to be gained from being caught mid-escape, and quickly found and undid the restraints binding his feet. Having been unable to see anything but blinding white light or pitch darkness, he had no idea of the layout of the room. He rolled off the bed and his feet touched rough, cold concrete. As he stood upright and his body supported its own weight, he was almost overwhelmed by pain. His abdomen had been battered by countless punches, his groin, legs, arms, and chest likewise, and all joined a swelling chorus that urged him to lie down, to give them respite. But Bailey knew that he couldn’t, and he forced himself into the darkness, moving slowly, his right arm outstretched, his left hanging limply beside him. After a few carefully taken steps, he felt a cool wall, and started to move along it.

  Light!

  Blazing, blinding light filled the room, and Bailey turned to see the man in the Pendulum mask standing beside an open door, staring at the empty restraints as though in shock. Bailey’s eyes acclimatized and he took in the two HMI lights angled toward his “bed,” which was actually an emergency room gurney, pushed against the bare concrete wall furthest from the red metal door—the only exit. Loudspeakers were suspended from each corner of the room, and were now blaring thrash metal at a painful volume. Beyond the lights, set flush against the wall opposite him, was a metal cart covered with workman’s tools and surgical instruments, which would doubtless be used to take the torture to a new level.

  The man in the doorway surged forward, his expression hidden behind the emotionless Pendulum mask, his sneakers driving into the concrete floor, propelling his stocky body across the twelve-feet-square room. Bailey knew that in his current condition, he wasn’t strong enough to fight such a powerful opponent. He concentrated on the timing of his move. His assailant was within arm’s reach when Bailey sidestepped to the left and grabbed the man’s right shoulder, pulling him forward and off-balance, sending him crashing into the concrete wall. The collision bought him the time he needed to cross the room and grab a claw hammer from the cart. His tormentor lunged for him, and Bailey turned and swung with his right arm, watching as the hammer traveled through the air, arcing toward the masked man’s head. His assailant was a skilled fighter and brought his left arm up to block the blow, and the impact almost knocked the hammer free, but Bailey held on, grasping the handle tightly. As the man drove his shoulder into Bailey’s abdomen, knocking the wind from his lungs, Bailey brought the hammer down and drove the claw deep into his back. His guttural cry could be heard above the thrashing music. Bailey wrenched the claw free and as his tormentor stood, his gloved hands pawing ineffectually at his wounded back, he swung the hammer again and struck his assailant square across the cheek. The masked man spun round and collapsed in a motionless heap.

  Bailey breathed deeply, trying to calm himself. He sensed movement to his right, and turned just in time to see a tall, muscular man rush into the room holding a pistol. Bailey lashed out with the hammer, striking the gun, which fired as it was knocked from the man’s hand. The bullet went wide of Bailey, who pressed forward and swung the hammer once more, hitting the man’s shaved head with a satisfying crunch. The man’s eyes rolled back in his head and his body crumpled beneath him as he fell to the floor.

  Bailey dropped the hammer and grabbed the smoking pistol, a SIG Sauer P228, special forces issue. He checked the magazine, which felt satisfyingly heavy, before clasping the gun awkwardly under one arm and reloading it. Ears pounding with the noise of the music, his body weak with pain, he moved toward the stocky masked man, keeping the pistol raised. His left hand was starting to seize up, so, after checking the doorway, he set the pistol down and quickly removed the man’s mask. The face that stared back at him was unfamiliar. A white male with black hair, a scar bisecting his left eyebrow, and another running across the bottom of his chin. The hammer had left a deep indentation in his cheek which was starting to ooze blood, but the blow hadn’t killed him, and Bailey could see his chest
rising and falling with each labored breath.

  Bailey searched the man’s pockets and confiscated a set of keys, an old Nokia phone, and a wallet. Part of him longed to lash out and make the man suffer as he had, but Bailey knew he’d gain nothing from such violence. He hobbled across the room to the second assailant, whose face was swelling around a deep, mottled bruise. Figuring they were roughly the same size, Bailey stripped the man of his black boots, jeans, white T-shirt, and navy hoodie. He dressed quickly, always keeping the gun within arm’s reach, but no one else came. He left the room and glanced up at the door. There were neither bolts nor a keyhole, and a black transformer box attached to the top corner told him that the lock was electric, but there was no sign of the control switch anywhere nearby. He was uneasy at leaving it unlocked, but there was no choice.

  Closing the door, he set off cautiously down the corridor. A quick search of the hoodie’s pockets revealed another set of keys and a wad of cash. He reached a wooden door at the end of the corridor, its inset picture window covered by foil. There was a small patch where the foil had fallen away, and he peered through it, into an airy warehouse. A large table stood in the center of the otherwise empty space, with two laptops on it, next to his iPhone, wallet, and keys. Bailey couldn’t begin to understand how these men had got his things. He slowly opened the door and kept the pistol raised as he crossed to the table, where he pocketed his wallet, keys, and iPhone before turning his attention to the laptops. One displayed an image of the interior of the torture cell, and his heart skipped when he saw that the shorter of the two, his tormentor, was starting to stir. He couldn’t risk being recaptured and knew he didn’t have the strength to face more pain. He turned for the roll shutters that lay to his left, but before he moved away from the table, something caught his eye. There, on the second laptop, was the code Sylvia Greene had left in her suicide note. The machine was running it through a cracking program, trying to crunch the numbers that had so far resisted all his efforts. In a second window, Bailey saw an email addressed to him from Christine Ash, passing on information she’d had from Pavel Kosinsky, who suggested that the first six numbers in each section of code referred to a date. Bailey glanced at the cracking program again and noticed that it was focused on the second set of six digits in each batch of numbers. His confused mind struggled to make sense of what he saw. Why would these men want Sylvia Greene’s code? What was the connection to Wallace?