Lisa Black - Takeover

“I think that’s a reasonable assumption. Can a robot really deliver the cash?”

“Not to the lobby. They won’t fit on a passenger elevator. They’re designed to use the freight elevators at the back of the building, and they don’t go to the lobby.”

“I wonder if he knows that,” Cavanaugh said.

“But I suppose it could install the pallet in the passenger elevator and send it to the ground floor. I’m not really sure-it’s never happened.”

Theresa spoke. “He knows about the robots but not that there’s eight million piled downstairs to be shredded instead of four. It’s possible these two guys don’t have anything to do with Mark Lud-low’s murder.”

“That’s true.” Cavanaugh wiped the phone receiver down with a disposable alcohol swab as he talked. “Or maybe they couldn’t carry eight million. Wouldn’t that take up a football field or so?”

“In ones,” Kessler said. He spoke firmly and calmly once on a familiar subject. “If they took only the hundreds, four million dollars in hundreds would weigh about eighty pounds and fill six hundred forty-three cubic inches, or four good-size briefcases. Between the two of them, they could carry it out. Or they could make more than one trip.”

“They’d have to let go of the hostages.” Frank fingered his water bottle as if he regretted using it as an ashtray. “They couldn’t keep a gun on them and carry all that at the same time.”

Theresa found it hard to take her eyes off the TV screen. “That looks like a duffel bag on the floor. They could fill that up, sling it across their backs, and still be hands-free. Or they could make the hostages help them carry it.”

Cavanaugh murmured, “That’s another good point. We keep forgetting they have a ready supply of labor in there with them.”

Theresa thought of something else. “What if Ludlow was their inside man? That’s why there’s no signs of coercion on his body- he gave them the information freely. Then they decided to cut him out.”

“Leaving them short one getaway driver. But Ludlow’s only been here a month. Not much time to hook up with a team.”

“He’d be an unlikely suspect for that very reason, and a month’s long enough to get the layout.”

Kessler stirred. “Mark Ludlow came with an excellent recommendation and has-had-worked for the Federal Reserve for a long time. At least ten years, I think.”

“I’m sure he did,” Cavanaugh soothed. “Why did he want to move here from sunny Atlanta?”

“I don’t know. The weather, maybe. It can get miserable there in the summertime.”

“Do me a favor-most of the employees should have been evacuated to the Hampton Inn. Would you call whoever recruited Ludlow and the Human Resources person who coordinated his hire and get them over here? Maybe they’ll know how Ludlow came to transfer here, and why, and something about his wife.”

“Certainly.”

A new voice sounded. “What’s going on here?”

Theresa turned from the window. The bigwigs had arrived.

At the head stood a towering man with gray hair and a matching mustache. Despite appearing a little too paunchy and florid to be an FBI agent, he introduced himself as the special agent in charge of the Cleveland office, and the two young men Theresa had seen earlier flanked him like a pair of groomsmen. “My name’s Torello. You’re Cavanaugh?”

“That would be me. I just spoke with the hostage taker named Lucas. He wants four million and his car back. In an hour.”

“He called you?”

“We’re on a first-name basis already,” Cavanaugh said, which of course didn’t answer the question.

In the three steps it took Torello to reach the reading table, Theresa could see his mind churning as he analyzed Cavanaugh’s actions, motives, and results, accepted same, and moved on. This did not surprise her-one didn’t make it to the top FBI slot in a large city without possessing both sense and self-control. “Laura Reisling will get here from D.C. in an hour and a half. She can be secondary.”

Cavanaugh spoke with every appearance of sincerity. “It will be great to see her again.”

SAIC Torello did not sit but kept the psychological advantage of looming over the upstarts at the table while the rest of his party filtered in. Theresa recognized Viancourt, the assistant chief of police, who took a seat next to a graying man in fatigues. This man’s name tag read MULVANEY.

She remained by the wall, close enough to the window to grab a peek through the telescope but not close enough to be warned away from the opening should the robbers emerge shooting. She tried to make herself invisible and glanced over at the librarian, Ms. Elliott, who had retreated into the rows of texts in order to do the same. Or perhaps they’d simply been pushed back by a mushroom cloud of testosterone.

The diplomatic Jason opened the discussion with a refreshingly nonjurisdictional question. “What about the secretary of state’s visit? I know we’re several blocks away, but what if this is some sort of diversion? We get every cop in the city over here, it might put holes in the security at the convention center.”

Assistant Chief Viancourt shook his head. “No, the plan for the secretary of state will stay intact. There’s Secret Service coming in, too, to fill out the ranks.”

“Still, the timing is suspicious,” Cavanaugh pointed out. “Any available cops not working the luncheon will be working that Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction concert tonight, so if this thing goes on, our resources are going to get stretched pretty thin. Maybe one or both should be canceled, or at least change the venue for the State luncheon.”

“Are you nuts?” Viancourt began to flush at the very idea. “ Cancel? Cleveland needs this exposure, needs to show the rest of the country that we’re still a major city. Our star began to fade shortly after the paint dried on Jacobs Field, and by now it’s in an all-out spiral. Canceling is not an option. Besides,” he added, “it’s too late now. The secretary’s going to land any minute, and-”

“Okay,” Torello broke in smoothly. “We’ll keep our security detail informed of what’s happening here, and they can make their own decisions. Surely these two don’t have any sort of direct assault planned, since they couldn’t affect the convention center from a block and a half away unless they set off a nuclear bomb. Let’s talk about his demands. You, sir-you’re the Fed president?”

“Vice president,” Kessler told him. “The president is in Washington at a Federal Open Market Committee meeting. The presidents of all twelve Reserve banks are there, plus the board of governors,” he added morosely. “They only meet eight times a year, and it had to be today. I don’t-”

Cavanaugh interrupted. “Are you willing to give them four million dollars?”

“It’s not mine!” Kessler protested at first, then hedged: “Can you guarantee we’ll get it back?”

Receiving no response from Cavanaugh, he appealed to Torello, who said, “No.”

Mulvaney, the man in fatigues, announced without heat, “We don’t deal with terrorists.”

“No, we don’t deal with terrorists,” Cavanaugh clarified. “But we’ll negotiate with anyone. At least I will. We want them to take the money and leave the hostages. It’s only money. It’s not worth lives.”

Maybe I could like Chris Cavanaugh, Theresa thought, even if it’s his own reputation he’s really trying to protect.

“And if they will, then our situation goes from being a complicated standoff to the relatively simple pursuit of an armed felon. The problem is,” he went on, “that the money is usually the stalling point. I can put people off for hours over the difficulties in raising a large amount of cash. But in this case the money is right there and he knows it. Mr. Kessler, you said those robots aren’t designed to use the lobby elevators?”