The Wreckage: A Thriller (54 page)

Spat on it. Tried to tear it into pieces. She would change her mind, he reasoned. She knows her place.

There’s a three-ton truck in front of him that has slowed right down and another in the left lane, side by side like the drivers are talking to each other. Taj indicates to overtake, but another truck cuts him off. Slows down.

What are these tossers doing, he thinks. He looks in the rear mirrors. The road is clear. The nearest cars are a hundred yards behind. That’s odd, he thinks. Then he notices the opposite carriageway is empty. Deserted.

“Something’s wrong,” he says.

“What?” asks Rafiq.

“The traffic.”

“Just go round these guys.”

“I can’t get past.”

“Hit the horn.” Rafiq turns and looks through the rear window. “Where has everyone gone?”

“They’re on to us.”

“What do you mean?” says Syd. “I can’t see anyone.”

“They’re fucking on to us!”

“Settle down,” says Rafiq. “Maybe there’s an accident.”

The three trucks in front have slowed almost to a halt. A fourth passes on the verge, squeezing against the safety rail. They al have rol er doors at the back. Taj nudges the brakes and stops thirty yards from the nearest truck. Then they notice the police cars on the other carriageway. A military chopper is overhead.

“Go back!” says Rafiq. “Reverse.”

Taj struggles with the gears. Where’s reverse? There it is. Pedal down. The rol er doors have rattled up. A dozen men in black body armor are crouched in firing positions. Taj spins the wheel, sending the van into a slide. It’s facing in the opposite direction, driving the wrong way. Ahead, a row of police cars. Lights flashing. Armed men behind the open doors. Guns drawn.

“Ram them!” says Rafiq.

“They’ve got guns.”

“Go back!” says Syd, wiping the fogged windows, looking for some means of escape.

“We’re fucked!” says Taj.

“We got the guns,” says Syd. “We can shoot our way out.”

“They’re going to kil us.”

“I’m not going to prison,” says Rafiq. “You heard what the Courier said. A week is going to feel like a lifetime.” Taj has stopped the van a hundred yards away from the police cars.

“You want to run, you run,” says Taj. “I’ve had enough.”

“We made a pact,” says Syd.

“We’re not the three musketeers.”

Taj opens the door. Steps out. Holds his hands above his head. Walks slowly down the middle lane, watching his shadow in the beams of the headlights. Rain pours down his face, into his eyes and mouth. He can’t hear Syd and Rafiq arguing any more.

In the next instant he’s flying. Fal ing. The explosion blows out the window of the van and covers every surface in a film of pink. Bal bearings punch through the seats and the thinner metal in the roof, letting the rain pour in.

Glass showers across the tarmac, landing in his hair and on the back of his neck. Fragments of metal have torn his coat, but he can’t feel any pain. Lying on the motorway, eyes closed, arms spread like a crucifix, he sucks in the oily water like a breath and feels the residual heat of the day warm against his cheek.

Ruiz’s life doesn’t flash before his eyes in a conventional or chronological sense. Events run backwards like in that movie where Brad Pitt is born as an old man and grows younger every year. Al of Ruiz’s accumulated knowledge is disappearing, along with his anger and weariness. Things are being unlearned. Discoveries are being undiscovered. Painful memories are being wiped clean.

Eventual y al his grey hairs and fine lines are fil ed in and he’s a young man again, dancing with Laura at the twilight bal in Hertfordshire. The clock keeps rol ing backwards. Soon she’l be a stranger, who could pass him on the street with no recol ection of the life they’re going to share or the children they are going to raise, but for the moment they keep dancing.

These are his final conscious thoughts before the pressure wave of the explosion buckles the door of the container and blows him backwards, slamming his head against the far wal . His eardrums are bleeding. He cannot hear the paramedics shouting for bandages and plasma, or feel the needle sliding into his arm or the mask covering his face.

Someone is getting blankets to keep him warm.

“Any head injuries?”

“That’s negative. Christ, look at his hands!”

“You look after the girl.”

Ruiz can’t feel anything; instead he’s floating on a cloud of opiates, stil imagining himself as a young man, spinning Laura across the dance floor, her head beneath his chin, her soft hair against his lips.

“Ready?”

“Yeah.”

“One, two, three.”

“Watch the IV lines. Watch the IV lines.”

“I got it.”

“Bag a couple of times.”

“OK.”

Laura smiles at him. She’s standing near the entrance, waiting for the buses to take guests back to London. She points and summons him with her finger. Ruiz looks over his shoulder to make sure.

“What’s your name?”

“Vincent.”

“I’m Laura. This is my phone number. If you don’t cal me within two days, Vincent, you lose your chance. I’m a good girl. I don’t sleep with men on the first date or the second or the third. You have to woo me, but I’m worth the effort.”

Then she kisses him on the cheek and she’s gone.

36

LONDON

Awake now. Eyelids fluttering. Ruiz turns his head. Orange dials come into focus on a machine near the bed and a green blip of light slides across a liquid crystal window.

A nurse says something to him. She’s mouthing words.

“I need to make a cal ,” says Ruiz.

She shakes her head.

“If I don’t cal Laura she won’t go out with me.”

The nurse mouths a question. “Who’s Laura?”

She presses the button above his head. “We were very worried about you.”

“Sorry?”

“Your hands. They’re going to be fine,” she says, stil mouthing words.

Ruiz notices the bandages. They look like white stumps.

He points to his ears. “I can’t hear you. What’s wrong with me?”

“Ruptured eardrums,” she mouths. “You may need surgery.”

“Hol y?”

The nurse laughs. “I thought you wanted Laura. Hol y is down the way.”

“What?”

“Hol y is OK. She’s fine.”

Ruiz tries to get out of bed, but the nurse puts a strong hand on his chest, digging her knuckles into his breastbone.

“They warned me about you. Said you’d be a difficult patient.”

He doesn’t understand.

“Your friends.” She straightens his pil ow. “They’ve been waiting outside al night.”

“Luca?”

“Oh, he’s here. They pul ed a bul et out of his shoulder, but he’s out of surgery.”

Ruiz shakes his head, not understanding.

The nurse uses a pad on the bedside table and writes:

He’s fine. Bullet removed. Recuperating.

The door opens. Joe O’Loughlin is wearing a cravat and looks even more like a professor than usual. He stands beside the bed and the two men communicate wordlessly in a language that only dogs and men can understand. He takes the notepad from the nurse, who tel s them both to behave as she leaves.

Joe writes:
You can’t hear. I can’t speak. We’re like two of the wise monkeys.

“You’re a monkey. I’m a goril a,” says Ruiz, shouting at him. “I want to see Hol y.”

Joe writes:
Can you walk?

“Yeah.”

Joe helps Ruiz to sit and then stand. He’s wearing a hospital gown with ties at the back. Ruiz can’t hold it together with his bandaged hands, so Joe does it for him, clearly not enamored of the task.

“I could get used to you not talking,” says Ruiz, as they shuffle down the corridor. Joe pinches him on the arse, making him jump.

They reach Hol y’s room, which is ful of flowers and get-wel cards. Hol y is sitting on the edge of her bed while a doctor peers into her ears with a torch-like contraption. She’s chewing gum. Looking bored. There are marks on her wrists where the handcuffs tore at her skin.

“How come you get proper pajamas?” says Ruiz. “Your legs are better than mine—you should be wearing a gown.” Her face lights up and she’s on him in a heartbeat, throwing her arms around his shoulders, her legs around his hips.

“This is the not the way a young lady should greet a man of my age and in my condition.”

He doesn’t hear what Hol y says. Maybe she says nothing at al .

37

LONDON

Throughout Monday, Luca sits in the High Court listening to opposing lawyers make grand speeches about press freedom and commercial confidentiality. It has been almost a week since the thwarted terrorist attack and two days since he left hospital with his arm in a sling and the bul et in a smal glass jar that is nestled in his pocket. A souvenir. Proof that he doesn’t always sit on the sidelines.

The
Financial Herald
is trying to overturn the High Court injunction preventing publication. Mersey Fidelity’s lawyers are doing verbal and linguistic somersaults as they argue that commercial privacy should outweigh public interest. The judge is not having a bar of it. The lawyers lodge an immediate appeal. He dismisses it. Luca steps from the court and cal s Daniela with the news.

“We’re going to celebrate.”

“You’re not supposed to be drinking.”

“I’m going to watch you get drunk and then take advantage of you.”

“But you’re an invalid.”

“We’re not going to arm wrestle.”

Daniela laughs and it sounds like music. Luca ends the cal and steps outside, looking for a cab. He has a story to write, but there are stil questions to be answered. Dialing a new number, he listens to the cal being rerouted through different internet servers until Luca’s new best friend answers.

“Capable?”

“Mr. Terracini.”

“Cal me Luca.”

“Thank you, Mr. Terracini.”

“Any news?”

“They’re on the move. A van arrived this morning.”

The address in Cartwright Street is an old bank building with an ornate iron door and arched entrance. A removal van is parked in the narrow side al ey in front of two identical black Pathfinders. What a world these people live in, thinks Luca, as he pays the cab driver. Taking a table across the road, he nurses a coffee and watches boxes and computers being loaded into the van.

Another Pathfinder shows up, this one disgorging a set of beefy passengers in suits and dark glasses. One of the occupants he recognizes. Older. Grey-haired. Giving orders.

Luca waits until he disappears inside. He pays for his coffee and crosses the street, fol owing a removal man into the lift and rising through the floors. The doors open. Boxes are stacked in the corridors. A shredding machine lets out a long whine. Industrialsized. Worm-like mounds of confetti are spil ing from plastic sacks.

Soft footsteps. Somebody yel s at him to stop. He is gripped from behind and pushed into an office where Artie Chalcott and Brendan Sobel are deep in conversation.

Chalcott looks up. His face reddens. Luca notices that his eyes are very smal . Perhaps they are the standard size and his head is overly large. Maybe they shrink when he’s angry.

“You got a nerve, coming here.”

“I just want to ask you a few questions.”

“Get him out of here.”

“We’re publishing tomorrow,” says Luca. “I’m giving you a chance to comment on the story.”

“No comment.”

Brendan Sobel is walking Luca towards the lift. The journalist yel s over his shoulder. “You can’t cover this one up. You can’t shred it or bury it. It’s going to come out.” Chalcott laughs. “You real y think you can make this one fly—some fatuous conspiracy theory about Iraqi robberies and a British bank? A week from now nobody is going to care.”

“You wil .”

“No, that’s where you’re wrong. I’l have moved on.”

Luca fights at Sobel’s arms. “I’m giving you a chance to explain.”

“Patriots don’t have to explain. It’s pacifists and apologists like you who need to justify what you do.”

“I took a bul et.”

“And you’ve cost the lives of countless people.”

Chalcott is angry now. On his feet, storming down the corridor. For a moment Luca expects a punch.

“You think you’re a fucking hero, Mr. Terracini? You think you’re the people’s champion? I hope you have nightmares about what you’ve done… the deaths you’re going to cause.”

“What deaths? What are you talking about?”

“Why do you think Mohammed Ibrahim was released from prison? Why do you think we let him re-establish the network of accounts?” Luca’s gaze falters and his self-possession deserts him for a moment. “What are you talking about?”

Chalcott finds the question amusing. “How did you begin investigating this story?”

“I fol owed the money.”

“Exactly.”

“I stil don’t understand.”

“My job is to stop the bad shit before it happens—to catch the mad mul ahs and the bomb makers and locate their training camps. Smash the fuckers. Bring them to their knees. But we can’t defeat these people militarily. And we can’t bomb them back to the Dark Ages because they live in caves already. But they’re not cavemen. They’re cleverer than that. They use our own systems against us. Our technology. Our markets. Our banks.