Freefall Read online

  He was struck by the thought that it might be him, that Ash had sensed his growing feelings for her and that he was making her uncomfortable, but as he looked at her, she flashed him a sad smile that seemed devoid of discomfort. Wallace recognized that he wasn’t in the best state of mind, that he might be confusing feelings of safety and familiarity with something more. He resolved not to say anything until their ordeal was over. Only then would he know how he truly felt about the beautiful FBI agent.

  They’d given false names to the building security guard. Wallace had been hunted by the authorities before, first in Afghanistan, after the Marwand massacre, and then when he’d been implicated in the Pendulum killings. His experiences had made him more than a little paranoid. He imagined that being the subject of an Interpol terror alert would have put his photo in the hands of every receptionist, concierge, and security guard in the country, but the man had hardly glanced up from behind his high counter as he’d directed them to the elevators. Security alerts were only as good as the people enforcing them, and even in troubled times, some people suffered from poor attention spans, fallible memory, and a general lack of interest in the world around them.

  “You have no idea how much ass pain you’ve unleashed.”

  Wallace turned to see Pavel Kosinsky enter the lobby, his sharp features twisted in irritation.

  “The guard called up to warn us,” Pavel went on, shooting Todd an angry look.

  “I wasn’t sure if I should tell them,” Todd said guiltily, concern flashing across his youthful face as he realized he’d made a mistake.

  “There’s a nationwide alert out for him,” Pavel announced, pointing at Wallace, who felt an immediate pang of fear, but also perverse relief that the watch list worked. “The cops are on their way. Probably the Feds too.”

  “We need to go,” Ash said flatly.

  “My thoughts exactly,” Pavel agreed. “I’ll drive. We’ll take the stairs.” He began to stride toward a door marked “Emergency Exit,” then registered the surprise on Ash’s face. “What? You must have had a good reason to come here. I’m intrigued.”

  “You’re crazy,” Ash smiled. “Come on,” she said to Wallace. “You heard the Mad Hatter.”

  He followed them into a wide concrete stairwell.

  Pavel skipped down the stairs. “I heard about your brush with death. Harrell had me consult on the program the perp, Charles Haig, was running. Quite clever.”

  “Reeves said it was denial of service attack,” Ash responded, her discomfort showing as she struggled with the pace.

  “No, no. Haig had modified some facial recognition software; he was scanning every publicly available image source for pictures of Max Byrne,” Pavel revealed. “Facebook, Twitter, Instagram—do you have any idea how many images he scanned? Billions. More brute crunching than finesse, but still effective.”

  Ash had told Wallace about finding the photograph of Max Byrne in Charles Haig’s lair. She’d also told him about the pictures of Pendulum’s victims that Haig had obtained from Max’s hideout. Wallace felt queasy thinking of the images, considering the care and preparation that had been put into each murder.

  He was surprised by Ash’s labored breathing and worried whether she should be exerting herself. But there was no sign of any wavering resolve, just her customary determination to succeed.

  “What’s the favor?” Pavel asked, his sneakers lightly kissing each step.

  Wallace guessed Pavel was wealthy, but the black jeans and open-necked white shirt were economically anonymous, and he could have passed for a server in any one of New York’s restaurants.

  “You only come to see me when you want something. Like the worst type of cat.”

  Ash ignored the dig. “I need Byrne’s military record. I’ve put in three requests, but they’ve all been refused. I need someone to hack the Pentagon.”

  “Hack the Pentagon!” Pavel laughed. “You people make everything sound so dramatic.”

  “Can you do it?” Ash asked.

  “Maybe your requests were refused to save embarrassment,” Pavel replied cryptically. “I tried myself, shortly after Pendulum was identified. I was interested to see where he’d acquired his considerable technical expertise. But his records aren’t classified, they’ve been disappeared. Whatever was there before has gone. Now there’s just a name and service number. His file’s been emptied and orphaned. Most strange.”

  “Who could do something like that?” Wallace chimed in.

  “DOD, NSA, CIA: pick your acronym. Or it could have been a hacker.” Pavel smiled at Ash as he emphasized the last word. “But it would have to be a good one. I couldn’t find any markers. No sign of who’d erased the file or that it had ever existed.”

  “We’ve got the name of someone who served alongside Byrne: Mike Rosen,” Ash said. “You think you could check him out?”

  “Sure,” Pavel replied. “But I can’t just mind-meld. I’ll need a computer,” he added with a broad grin.

  Ash looked as though she was about to say something, but she just shook her head and smiled as they continued down the stairs. They raced past the ground floor, into the bowels of the building. Finally, when they reached basement sub-level three, Pavel hurried through a metal fire door and led them into an expansive parking garage.

  “Come on,” he urged, jogging toward the rows of parked vehicles.

  Wallace was struck by the collective value of the surrounding cars, but surmised that few poor people could afford to park in Midtown Manhattan. The underclass that cleaned and lubricated the city relied on public transport.

  They approached an unmarked black Chevrolet Express, its interior shielded by dark privacy glass.

  Pavel unlocked it. “Get in.”

  Ash took the passenger seat while Wallace climbed in the back, surprised to find himself in a cabin that reminded him of the Millennium Falcon. A pair of captains’ chairs were set between two banks of monitors and control panels lining both sides of the vehicle.

  “This is our mobile unit,” Pavel explained, sliding into the driver’s seat and starting the engine.

  Wallace said nothing as the van rolled up the main access ramp, heading for the surface. He imagined a fleet of patrol cars screeching into view in front of them, and guessed that Ash, who was equally tense and silent, had similar concerns. After three steep turns, he saw the light of 50th Street through a chain-link shutter. Pavel drove toward it, touching the brake, slowing the van’s progress to give the sensor time to register its presence. As the shutter rose, Wallace watched the street intently but saw no sign of police, just the steady flow of Manhattan traffic.

  The van lurched as Pavel stepped on the accelerator.

  “Everyone stay calm and there’ll be no problem,” he advised. Wallace followed his gaze to see three blue-and-whites parked by the main entrance. A couple of uniformed police officers stood by the cars, laughing and talking with the easy manner of men discussing sports scores. “We’re going to have to go past them,” Pavel said.

  His heart racing, Wallace had to resist the urge to duck as the Chevy turned east and joined a line of traffic edging slowly toward Seventh Avenue. One of the cops, a tall, heavyset man, seemed to stare directly into the van, but when he adjusted his peaked cap, Wallace realized that the officer had simply been studying his own reflection in the darkened windows.

  The traffic eased, and the van gathered speed. Nobody said anything as they passed the towering glass-and-steel Allianz building which dominated the block, but as they finally reached the intersection with Seventh Avenue, Pavel blew a prolonged whistle.

  “See, I told you, no problem,” he said, swinging the steering wheel right.

  Ash punched him playfully. “We were lucky.”

  “There’s no such thing as luck,” Pavel replied. “Only fate.” He smiled, and the van joined the traffic speeding south.

  39

  “Rosen’s file is orphaned and empty,” Pavel announced, leaning back in the captain’s
chair. “Just like Max Byrne’s. Someone doesn’t want people connecting these guys.”

  They’d crossed the East River on the Williamsburg Bridge and had parked the van on Driggs Avenue. The narrow street cut through McCarren Park, a quiet patch of open space surrounded by low buildings. Wallace couldn’t tell whether Pavel was play-acting the part of a paranoid technology freak, but he’d pointed out that their location gave them clear visibility in all directions, and the mature trees on either side of the park prevented aerial surveillance.

  Pavel had fired up the very expensive, liquid-cooled computers that ran off a bank of hotwired batteries taken out of a Tesla. He’d established an encrypted link to a DOD satellite, using an old operator code, and had hacked into the Department of Defense from within its own system. But his efforts had proved fruitless. He’d found Rosen’s personnel file, but it was empty and had no unit or service markers to tie him to anyone else.

  “We know Byrne was in the Seventy-fifth Rangers,” Ash said.

  “Which unit? When?” Pavel asked. “We’re talking about thousands of people.”

  Wallace was surprised to feel something vibrate in his pocket, and he reached in to find the phone Salamander had given him. As far as he knew, only one person had the number.

  “Should I answer?” he asked.

  Pavel shrugged and Ash nodded.

  He went ahead and took the call.

  “John, it’s Patrick Bailey.” The detective’s voice sounded strained.

  “Let me put you on speaker,” Wallace replied. “It’s Pat Bailey,” he told Ash.

  “Pat, it’s Chris. We’ve got Pavel Kosinsky with us.”

  “No names. No names,” Pavel cautioned. “Don’t you people know anything?”

  “They said you were in Belmarsh,” Wallace observed.

  “I got taken out. Two guys abducted me. Wanted to know your location. They started asking me questions about the case I’m working. The one with the code I sent you.”

  “Pendulum?” Ash asked.

  “I think so,” Bailey replied. “There’s something bigger going on.”

  “Agreed. I found Pendulum’s base. There were two guys there, but the place was booby-trapped,” Ash explained. “They’ve tried to get me twice, which means just knowing about this is dangerous.”

  “We think we’ve got a lead on the code,” Bailey said.

  Wallace thought he heard a groan when Bailey finished speaking, but it might have been a flaw in the connection.

  “We’re working our own angle this end,” Ash revealed. “Is this a good number to reach you?”

  There was a brief pause. “No. It’s a burner. My friends are pretty paranoid.”

  Wallace could guess who those friends were.

  “Good. Paranoid is good,” Pavel chipped in.

  “I’ll call you,” Bailey added. “Be careful.”

  “You too,” Ash advised, and before Wallace could say anything, Bailey had hung up.

  Wallace’s attention was drawn toward a school athletics team practicing on the track to the south of them. He watched the faces of the diligent young athletes running around the blood-red lanes, envying their normality. He wondered when he might be able to return to the real world, and suddenly found himself questioning whether he’d ever be able to. Had his experiences warped him in a way that made a normal life impossible? He thought of the life he might never live and the family he might never have. Everyone had family, right?

  “What about family?” he asked. “Byrne’s parents won’t talk to us about their son’s service, but what about Rosen’s family? Did he have a wife? Parents? Cousins? There will be someone out there who knew his unit, the people he served with. You can’t erase a person’s life.”

  “I’m not sure I like this. Getting out in the real world. Talking to people,” Pavel said mockingly, but he was sitting up and typing on the terminal. “It sounds old-fashioned.”

  “It’s called investigation,” Ash joined in. “Detective work. It’s what we real cops do when you web puppets strike out.”

  Her arms mimicked those of a flailing marionette, and she eyed Pavel, his arms dancing above the keyboard in similar fashion. He suddenly froze.

  “I’m happy to assist you, Agent Ash, but I will not be mocked.” His tone was deadly serious, but he could only maintain it for a moment. “Nah, I’m kidding, mock away. I’ll console myself by crying in a bath full of money and thinking about how little you real cops get paid.”

  “Touché,” Ash observed.

  “Indeed,” Pavel replied, studying the screen. “Not many people know that the Military Postal Service keeps extensive contact details of personnel and their family. I’ve got an inactive record for a Michael Rosen of the Seventy-fifth Rangers, which means he’s been discharged.”

  Wallace peered at the screen and saw that Rosen’s name was part of a long list. Pavel clicked on the entry.

  “The Department of Defense is nothing if not methodical,” he noted. “Most recent operational address is Fort Benning, but there are two personal ones in West Virginia and Kentucky.”

  Ash squeezed into the cabin and patted Pavel on the shoulder. “You did good, Kos.” She smiled at him. “We’re going to need a vehicle.”

  “No chance,” Pavel replied immediately. “No way are you taking my baby.”

  Ash fixed him with an unwavering stare, but he was equally intransigent.

  “I know where we can get a car,” Wallace said. “They probably won’t have anything as fancy as this, but they take cash.”

  40

  The old cop sat in the back seat, moaning every time they hit a pothole. He wasn’t really old, at least no more than Sal, but it was his outlook: he was proper.

  By the book.

  Mind the gap.

  You have twenty seconds to comply.

  Rules made people seem old. They were fine for the sheeple, those who wanted to daydream, chew grass, and get fleeced by the farmers. But Danny had told the rules to go to fuck long ago, and had never looked back. He’d grown up on a council estate in Elephant and Castle, one that had long since been demolished, and he’d never bothered with school. It was a junior pen where young sheeple were trained to be afraid of the bosses, the government, people who told you what to do and robbed you blind for the privilege of being in charge. You make your own way in the world, something Danny often imagined his father might say if he’d been around. He was a legend. A king among men. But he’d been gone for most of Danny’s childhood, serving at Her Majesty’s pleasure. So the only male figures in his life were his mother’s steady stream of damaged boyfriends, losers, drug addicts, drunks, and perverts. None of them had shit-all to say that was worth hearing, so Danny’s true role models flickered at him from the TV his mum had scored from work. Cowboys. Gangsters. Maverick cops. These were the men that shaped Danny’s world. Movie stars. Silver screen heroes. His mum spent her days at the local Cash for Gold, a pimped out pawnbroker’s that traded treasures for dirty notes. But if the sheeple were stupid enough to accept ten quid for a TV or twenty quid for an iPad, they deserved their fleecing.

  Danny had started dealing aged twelve, running weed through school. Couple of greasy Year Five goons, Chris Brown and Billy Kane, thought they’d rip him off, but Danny was no fool. They’d come at him with fists, not realizing he was tooled up, and when he shanked Kane-o in the leg, the two of them backed off sharpish, Kane-o crying like a little girl whose puppy had just died. Most mugs would have gone for the gut, but Danny knew that would’ve been murder, and there was no point killing a fool over a bag of weed. Besides, Kane-o’s limp was a permanent advert against messing with Danny’s business.

  And it was a business. He’d downloaded a bunch of audio books on to his phone—business gurus, biographies of famous criminals, anything that might have a bearing on his operation. He learned more from those stories than he ever did from school. While his school mates were shoplifting from the local offy, Danny was building a distribution net
work, using older guys to take his product on to the street. That’s how he’d come to Sal’s attention, and they’d clicked immediately, each recognizing the other’s sharpness, the shared ambition. The spark, Sal had called it. Some people had it. Most didn’t. Salman Sohota definitely had the spark.

  A few years older and smarter than him, Sal was more polished than anyone Danny had ever met. He’d come up from the streets, but life had smoothed out his rougher edges, which meant he could easily move from the gutter to the boardroom and not look out of place. Danny never got on with anyone at school, so he didn’t really understand the friendship Sal had with the cop. It seemed fucking risky staying pals with the law, but Bailey—Haybale as Sal called him—seemed cool enough not to ask the wrong questions. Danny had once suggested they try to put him on the payroll, but Sal had refused. They had plenty of police working for them, so it wasn’t a point of principle; Danny guessed that Sal didn’t want to tempt his mate down from his pedestal.

  They were in Frank’s Range Rover, and the old villain was driving them along Victoria Embankment. Danny shifted uncomfortably in his suit. He hadn’t worn the thing since his Uncle Ian’s funeral, but Sal had insisted nobody would take him seriously if he wasn’t in sheeple uniform. Danny caught Sal glancing back from the passenger seat, watching his old friend with rare concern. He looked across at the cop, who’d borrowed some of Sal’s clothes—a crisp tailored gray suit, sky blue shirt, and a pair of black Derbies. He was tough, Danny had to give him that. Apart from a little swelling on Bailey’s face, and the splint holding his left hand together, there was no outward sign of the man’s injuries. The way Doctor Death had been talking—contusion, hemorrhage, fracture, laceration—there’s no way he should be upright. And if Sal hadn’t stopped him, the nutter had planned to handle the day’s business alone. Danny had volunteered. Why not? It sounded like a right laugh, a low-risk cakewalk mugging off some librarian. Sal had talked Bailey into agreeing, but the cop had insisted on coming with them.