Jeffrey Archer - False Impression

He strolled through to the kitchen, opened a drawer that contained a large carton of duty-free Marlboros, and extracted a packet of twenty. He never smoked. His final act in this agnostic ritual was to place his hand under the drawer and remove a key that was taped to the base. He was now fully equipped.

He double-locked the front door of his apartment and took the stairs down to the basement. He opened the back door and walked up one flight, emerging onto the street.

To any casual passerby, he looked like a man on the way to his squash club. Leapman had never played a game of squash in his life. He walked one block before hailing a yellow cab. The routine never varied. He gave the driver an address that didn’t have a squash club within five miles. He sat in the back of the cab, relieved to find the driver wasn’t talkative because he needed to concentrate. Today, he would make one change from his normal routine, a change he’d been planning for the past ten years. This would be the last time he carried out this particular chore for Fenston, a man who had taken advantage of him every day for the last decade. Not today. Never again. He glanced out of the cab window. He made this journey once, sometimes twice a year, when he would deposit large sums of cash at NYRC, always within days of Krantz completing one of her assignments. During that time, Leapman had deposited over five million dollars into box 13 at the guesthouse on Lincoln Street, and he knew it would always be a one-way journey — until she made a mistake.

When he’d read in the Times that Krantz had been captured after being shot in the shoulder — he would have preferred that she’d been killed — he knew this must be his one chance. What Fenston would describe as a window of opportunity. After all, Krantz was the only person who knew how much cash was in that box, while he remained the only other person with a key.

“Where is it exactly?” asked the driver.

Leapman looked out of the window. “A couple more blocks,” he said, “and then you can drop me on the corner.” Leapman took the squash racket out of the bag and placed it on the backseat.

“Twenty-three dollars,” the driver mumbled, as he came to a halt outside a liquor store.

Leapman passed three tens through the grille. “I’ll be back in five minutes. If you’re still around, you’ll get another fifty.”

“I’ll be around,” came back the immediate reply.

Leapman grabbed the empty gym bag and stepped out of the cab, leaving the squash racket on the backseat. He crossed the road, pleased to find that the sidewalk was crowded with locals out shopping. One of the reasons he always chose a Sunday afternoon. He would never risk such an outing at night. In Queens, they’d be happy to mug him for an empty bag.

Leapman quickened his pace until he reached number 61. He stopped for a moment to check that no one was taking any interest in him. Why would they? He descended the steps toward the NYRC sign and pushed open a door that was never locked.

The caretaker looked up from his sedentary position and, when he saw who it was, nodded — the most energetic thing he’d done all day — then turned his attention back to the racing page. Leapman placed the packet of Marlboros on the counter, knowing they would disappear before he turned around. Every man has his price.

He peered into the gloom of a corridor lit only by a naked forty-watt bulb. He sometimes wondered if he was the only person who advanced beyond the counter.

Despite the darkness of the corridor, he knew exactly where her box was located. Not that you could read the number on the door — like everything else, it had faded over the years. He looked back up the corridor; one of his cigarettes was already glowing in the darkness.

He took the key out of his tracksuit pocket, placed it in the lock, turned it, and pulled open the door. He unzipped the bag before looking back in the direction of the old man. No interest. It took him less than a minute to empty the contents of the box, fill the bag, and zip it back up.

Leapman closed the door and locked it for the last time. He picked up the bag, momentarily surprised by how heavy it was, and walked back down the corridor. He placed the key on the counter. “I won’t be needing it again,” he told the old man, who didn’t allow this sudden break in routine to distract him from his study of the odds for the four o’clock at Belmont. He’d been fifty feet from a racing certainty for the past twelve years and hadn’t even checked the odds.

Leapman walked out of the door, climbed back up the steps and into the light of Lincoln Street. At the top of the steps, he once again glanced up and down the road. He felt safe. He began to walk quickly down the street, gripping the handle of the bag tightly, relieved to see the cab was still waiting for him on the corner.

He had covered about twenty yards when, out of nowhere, he was surrounded by a dozen men dressed in jeans and blue-nylon windbreakers, FBI printed in bold yellow letters on their backs. They came running toward him from every direction. A moment later, two cars entered Lincoln, one from each end — despite its being a one-way street — and came to a screeching halt in a semicircle around the suspect. This time passersby did stop to stare at the tracksuited man carrying a sports bag. The taxi sped away, minus fifty dollars, plus one squash racket.

“Read him his rights,” said Joe, as another officer clamped Leapman’s arms firmly behind his back and handcuffed him, while a third relieved him of his gym bag.

“You have the right to remain silent...,” which Leapman did.

Once his Miranda rights had been recited to him — not for the first time — Leapman was led off to one of the cars and unceremoniously dumped in the back, where Agent Delaney was waiting for him.

Anna was at the Whitney Museum, standing in front of a Rauschenberg canvas entitled Satellite , when her cell phone vibrated in her jacket pocket. She glanced at the screen to see that Stalker was trying to contact her.

“Hey,” said Anna.

“I was wrong.”

“Wrong about what?” asked Anna.

“It was more than two million.”

The clock on a nearby church struck four times.

Krantz heard one of the guards say, “We’re off for our supper. We’ll be back in about twenty minutes.” The chain smoker coughed but didn’t respond. Krantz lay still in her bed until she could no longer hear their departing footsteps. She pressed the buzzer by the side of her bed and a key turned in the lock immediately. Krantz didn’t have to guess which one of them would be standing in the doorway, eager to accompany her to the washroom.

“Where’s your mate?” Krantz asked.

“He’s having a drag,” said the guard. “Don’t worry, I’ll see that he gets his share.”

She rubbed her eyes, climbed slowly out of bed, and joined him in the corridor. Another guard was lolling in a chair, half asleep, at the other end of the corridor. The smoker and the philanderer were nowhere to be seen.

The guard held on to her elbow as he led her quickly down the passage. He accompanied her into the bathroom, but remained outside while she disappeared into the cubicle. Krantz sat on the toilet, extracted the condom, peeled off two more twenty-dollar bills, folded them, and hid them in the palm of her right hand. She then slowly pushed the condom back into a place even the least squeamish guards didn’t care to search.

Once she’d pulled the chain, her guard unlocked the door. He smiled in anticipation as she walked back out into the corridor. The guard seated at the far end didn’t stir, and her personal minder seemed as pleased as she was to discover that there was no one else around.