Tim Stevens - Delivering Caliban

The statuette was freestanding. He lifted and hefted it, then advanced to the nearest window. The ground floor of the block seemed to be like that of a hotel, without apartments but instead taken up with offices and residents’ facilities such as the gym he could see beyond the window.

Purkiss swung the base of the statuette against the window, wielding the object like a hammer rather than like a battering ram. The glass first chipped, then starred, then bulged spongily inwards. He knocked the webbed hole until it was large enough to fit him; then he threw the statue aside and climbed in.

Another noise had started up — a burglar alarm, he assumed — but it was drowned by the steady two-tone note of the fire alarm.

Purkiss ran through the gym into the corridor beyond, turning once and then again and finding himself at a bank of lifts. Pope’s apartment was number 1926, on the nineteenth floor.

He mounted the fire stairs, prepared all the time to encounter somebody coming down but meeting no-one. He supposed many if not most of the people who lived here were wealthy professionals who were out at work.

His phone rang and he slipped it out as he ascended.

It was Berg: ‘We’re in. You?’

‘Yes. Any trouble?’

‘Just a little. I told the cops we were involved in a hostage situation but they had to shut up about it. Then we just ran and got in past the bomb guys. The cops are too busy with crowd control to come after us.’

‘Good.’ He reached a landing and said, ‘I’m on the sixth floor. Fifteen to go.’

‘But the apartment’s on the nineteenth storey.’

‘I’m going two up, directly overhead. One up and he might hear me through the ceiling. Head up to as near as you can get to straight opposite his apartment. The eighteenth to twentieth floor, probably.’

‘Got you.’

*

Purkiss reached the twenty-first floor and paused on the landing, catching his breath. A full-length window gave on to a spectacular view of the skyline. When he felt ready he moved down the passage from door to door, reaching number 2126.

The locks, four of them, took him five minutes. He fumbled at the last one and forced himself to slow down. Beyond, a plush furnished apartment showed signs of having been recently abandoned: magazines were in disarray on the floor and two half-full coffee mugs stood on the table.

At the far end of the living room was a set of glass doors opening on to a balcony. Beyond, he could see the Loomis Building stretching upwards. He unlocked the doors and peered out, the sudden air chill on his face. A helicopter swung past and he ducked back inside.

‘I’m in the apartment two floors up,’ he said into his phone. ‘I’m coming out for a moment.’

When he was confident no choppers were coming he stepped on to the balcony, scanning the building opposite and seeing nothing in any of the windows, before going back in again.

Berg said, ‘Yeah, I saw you. We’re around four flights down, diagonally across to your right.’

‘Stay out of sight,’ said Purkiss. ‘The moment you see anything in Pope’s window let me know.’

He hung back beside the drapes and waited.

*

Berg’s voice was low, but excited so that it sounded like a shout: ‘He’s there. Coming out on the balcony. He’s got Ramirez with him. He’s talking on the phone.’

Purkiss opened the doors of his own balcony once more and emerged, crouching behind the wall. He peered across at the sheer steel-and-glass face of the Loomis building, letting his eyes rove across it, allowing the sensors in the periphery of his vision to detect any movement rather than seeking it out actively.

There. Below him but in a straight line opposite. Two, perhaps three floors down.

A hand pressed against the glass. A bearded face.

‘Berg,’ he said. ‘It’s Giordano.’

Purkiss made his move.

10.00 am

‘Am I going to die?’

She hadn’t moved from her place on the sofa, while Pope had stood, paced, stretched. Normally quite able to keep still for long periods, he was allowing himself the luxury of impatience.

He came back and sat in front of her again.

‘I don’t know.’

It was the truth. The Loomis Building might do what the Twin Towers had done and collapse vertically downwards. Or, it might topple sideways. The bomb he’d constructed was based on the one that had been used in the original terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre in February 1993, when the intention had been to drive the North Tower into its southern neighbour. If that happened, if the Loomis Building hit the apartment block, then yes, both Nina and Pope would die.

It was the luck of the draw. Life was like that. Apart from certain insignificant aspects that were under willed control, most of human existence was governed by randomness.

Nina nodded, as though it was the answer she’d been expecting.

Pope checked his watch. Ten o’clock. Still seated, he dialled Giordano’s number.

‘Yes.’

‘Come over to the window.’ Pope didn’t ask if the man was where he’d told him to be; he took that as a given.

Keeping the phone to his ear, Pope rose and motioned Nina to come with him. She picked up her violin case and followed. Pope drew the drapes, opened the doors and stepped out, pulling her gently along.

He saw, across the gap that yawned between the buildings, Giordano appear at the window, slightly below him, squinting up against the sun.

*

‘Do you understand what’s happening?’

Giordano said, ‘I don’t know precisely what you’ve got planned. I believe I can guess.’

‘Do you understand why it’s happening?’

‘Yes.’

‘You kidnapped and forcibly experimented on people.’

‘Yes.’

‘You killed to protect your secret.’

‘Yes.’

‘You murdered my father, and her mother.’

A beat. Then: ‘Yes.’

Pope reached into his pocket. He said, ‘Can you see what I’m holding?’

There was another pause. The sun glinted off the window and he could no longer see Giordano.

‘Not really.’

‘It’s another phone. When I press the dial button, it will trigger the charge in a bomb in the basement of the building you’re in. You’re going to die, along with that organisation that sponsored you. You won’t know if Nina is going to die as well. I don’t know that.’

‘Why — ’

‘You gambled with people’s lives, Giordano. Now it’s my turn to gamble. But you’ll never know the outcome.’

Silence again. Giordano said: ‘May I speak with her?’

Pope looked down at Nina. She was close enough that she would have heard her father. She nodded. He held the phone to her ear, ducking his head so that it was close.

She said, ‘D — ’ and stopped. Pope thought: she doesn’t know what to call him. Daddy, dad, father. It’s been so long .

He heard Giordano’s voice, scratchy at a distance. ‘Nina. How are you?’

For a moment Pope thought she was going to giggle at the banality of it. She opened her lips to speak, closed them again.

‘I have no right to say this. No right to give you any advice whatsoever. But you have to be strong. Like you have been, just for a little longer. And remember that I love you.’

Pope watched her stare across the divide between the two buildings.

‘Nina, I don’t expect or deserve to hear you say anything in reply. But perhaps you’ll listen. You need to take a step back and consider all of this. Everything that’s happened. Do you understand? Just take a step back.’

Pope caught something in the words, something not quite right. He glanced across, saw movement behind the glinting window. Straightening, he took the phone back.