Джеффри Дивер - The Final Twist

This scene was unfolding on Russell’s laptop, four split screens. And remotely. The brothers were a block away — in the coffee shop where Shaw had first seen the man with the thigh-length coat, stocking cap and the A’s backpack, the texting customer who had turned out to be his brother.

The grenade had not been a deadly fragmentation model, just a large flash-bang to stun and deafen, similar to the one Russell had used as an alarm on the door to the secure room in the cellar. The projectile had been fired accurately. But what the BlackBridge assault team didn’t know — nor did Russell or Colter Shaw — was that in fitting out the safe house years ago Ashton had installed bullet-deflecting windows. The grenade would have hit the plexiglass at about four hundred feet per second, slow enough so that the device merely bounced off. This bought the brothers a little time, since the tables were turned and the device flashed and banged outside.

Upon learning they were under attack, the Shaw brothers knew they weren’t in any position to engage four heavily armed tac ops. They chose to escape. Shaw shoveled the contents of the courier bag into his backpack, as Russell grabbed their computers.

“Basement,” Russell said, at the same time as Shaw said, “Cellar.”

So his brother had seen the coal bin too. Shaw had recognized right away that it was fake; the house wasn’t more than fifty years old. No urban dwelling of that age had ever used coal for heat.

Ever the survivalist, weren’t you, Ashton?

As they heard footsteps above them, they’d pulled the bin away and slipped into the four-foot-wide tunnel, then pulled the bin back in place behind them.

Never use a safe house that doesn’t have a trapdoor ...

A moment later they’d heard: “Cellar clear” and the thud of footsteps up the stairs.

The brothers had continued through the tunnel for about thirty feet and come to another wooden panel. They’d muscled it aside and, guns ready, stepped into the basement of the Soviet-bloc apartment building across the alley from the safe house. The large, mold-scented room was empty. They left via the service entrance and five minutes later were in the coffee shop, more unwanted food and drink at hand, just any other customers, watching Braxton, Droon and the others.

When Russell had returned to the safe house with the news about the text ordering the hit on the SP family, he’d brought with him surveillance equipment. The four cameras, fitted with sensitive microphones, were in household objects — lamps, a clock, a picture frame. They were wireless but transmitted on the same frequency as Russell’s internet router in the closet in the front hall — so anyone scanning the house for surveillance, as Droon had done, would see only the server transmissions, not the spy cams.

Shaw said he was impressed, and Russell said his group had some people who came up with “clever ideas.”

On the computer screen it was easy to see that Braxton was growing angrier. “We had eyes on them. They were here. How’d they get out?”

“Back window?” one of the male operatives said.

“And then why weren’t any of you in the back?”

No one had an answer for that, and the searching continued.

“Look,” Shaw said.

He was referring to Droon, who was only marginally interested in the cassette player. He punched a button, listened to a few seconds of a tune, then fast-forwarded and did the same several more times. He shut the unit off, shrugged toward Braxton and continued searching the room, leaving the device on the table.

Shaw continued, “They’d have to have audio engineers too, like your group. It means the Sanction’s not electronic.”

“Hmm.”

Droon then took over examining the courier bag. He did so as closely as Shaw and Russell had done. He could see that the lining was cut but he was taking no chances. Maybe he was searching this carefully because it was his nature. Maybe it was self-preservation, so desperate were the minions to please Devereux.

Russell said, “Be helpful if they said what they’re looking for. Help us narrow it down.”

If anyone from BlackBridge mentioned a keyword, it might be possible for the brothers to identify the Endgame Sanction in the stack of material sitting in Shaw’s backpack.

Russell typed. A camera scanned to the left, taking in the blond woman operative. Then to the right.

Shaw then said, “Notice a pattern?”

Russell nodded. “All they want is paperwork. That’s why they don’t care about the cassette. It’s definitely paper, and probably — the way they’re fanning pages — a single sheet.”

After five minutes Droon muttered, “Bastards took it with ’em, don’tcha know?”

Braxton now seemed to accept this possibility. She nodded. “We found it once. We’ll find it again. Devereux brings in ten million a year. And you know what the bonus’ll be when we get it.”

Braxton’s attention turned to the window. The doorbell buzzed and one of the ops walked into the front alcove.

Then, just barely audible through the microphone, came the sounds of a creaking floor as a large man in a black suit stepped into sight. Shaw recognized him. He was Devereux’s Asian American bodyguard and driver. Shaw recalled him from the construction site in the Tenderloin, where the BNG gangbangers had gotten their Johnny Appleseed bags of drugs to plant around the community as part of the UIP program.

The man looked around and, apparently after verifying that it was safe, he eased back into the alcove.

Jonathan Stuart Devereux stepped into the living room.

“You all right?” he asked in his cheery prime minister accent.

Braxton nodded in return.

Devereux sighed. “Your look, I can see your look. Your face. Don’t faces tell us everything? We don’t need words. Words lie, people lie. Faces don’t. It’s not here, is it?”

“We’re on course. We’re moving in.” Braxton added, “We found the courier bag Gahl stole.”

“All those many years ago.”

“It had that tape recorder inside.” She nodded toward the unit.

“But I’m not so very interested in a tape recorder, am I?”

Devereux examined the courier bag, peering inside, pulling it open wide. He paced through the house, gazing around him. Not looking for the Sanction, it seemed, just assessing what kind of lair his enemies had. In the kitchen he opened the refrigerator, plucked out a bottle of water and drank down half of it. He strolled back to the living room, picked up some of the items that the ops had searched. He studied magazines that had been here since Ashton’s time. “My. Look, a cover story about that young, fresh unknown Taylor Swift.” He dropped it. “And Prince Charles.” Then he said, a hint of mocking in his voice, “But you’re on course, you’re moving in.”

Braxton cast a taut glance to Droon.

A red-haired woman, twenty years younger and six inches taller than Devereux, stepped into the front hallway. Was it the same one as in the Rolls earlier? Her skirt and shoes were different. She was in a clinging white dress, hem high, top low. It clearly wasn’t his fifty-six-year-old wife.

Braxton’s glance toward her gave away nothing, but she couldn’t be happy that he’d brought the woman to a professional endeavor. Devereux looked back at her with a grimace and he shooed her off with a wave of his hardworking fingers. She vanished.

The CEO of Banyan Tree walked in a slow circle. At a shelf he picked up some figures and examined them one by one. “This is cute, isn’t it? A cat. Is it a cat? Bit dodgy. Maybe a dog with unfortunate ears. Yes, I think that’s it.”

He set it down and his hands went back to being energetic.

The grenade shooter continued his search, looking up under the furniture, until Braxton waved at him to stop.