Mark Burnell - Chameleon

They sat on a rocky lip, their legs dangling over a fifty-foot drop, and ate the remains of their rations. Stephanie glanced across at Boyd, who was chewing a rolled-oat biscuit. He was looking down at his filthy boots and at the air beneath them. He was smiling.

‘What are you thinking about?’

He shook his head. ‘I was just wondering what it must have been like for your parents. Having you as a child, that is.’

‘And you find the idea of that funny?’

‘I find the idea of it terrifying.’

‘Thanks a lot.’

‘Were either of them as strong-willed as you?’

‘Both of them.’

‘Christ.’

‘So was my sister. And one of my brothers.’

‘Must’ve been a lot of noise.’

Stephanie laughed out loud. There had been. All the time. ‘But I was the worst.’

‘You reckon?’

‘I was a nightmare for my parents. Especially when I was a teenager. Too bright for my own good, too headstrong for anyone’s good. I never wanted to be anything like them.’

‘What teenager does?’

‘True. I always tried to disappoint them. And I was pretty successful at it. I was the brightest in my school but I underachieved. I got caught smoking and drinking. I listened to the Clash and the Smiths and hung around with the kind of boys I knew they’d dislike.’ Stephanie gazed at the drop, too. ‘Is there anything in the world more self-centred and pointless than a teenager?’

‘Of course not.’

‘The strange thing is, now my parents are gone, I find I’m envious of them. If I ever got married, I’d want a marriage like theirs. With stand-up rows and unruly children.’

‘And I thought the idea of you as a child was frightening.’

Stephanie turned to him. ‘You can’t see me as a wife? Or a mother?’

He opened his mouth, then checked himself. ‘I was going to say “no” but the truth is, I really don’t know.’

‘I’d want a house like the one I grew up in. I’d want a childhood like the one I grew up in.’

‘Don’t tell me. You’re just an old-fashioned girl at heart.’

She giggled, which was something she rarely did. ‘I know. All that rebellion for all those years and then it turns out there’s a part of me that’s just dying to be a conformist.’

It was a wet Wednesday. The previous evening, Valeria Rauchman had returned from London. When Stephanie came downstairs, she and Boyd were talking in the kitchen. There was a large package on the table.

‘Look what Valeria’s brought us from London.’

‘What is it?’

‘George Salibi.’

The man with the disk. ‘Any news on Marshall’s killer? Or Koba?’

‘Not yet.’

‘What’s the story with Salibi?’

‘The disk is – or will be – in a safe in his penthouse in New York. This is the background material we’ll need.’

They opened the parcel and spread its contents across the table. George Salibi, Lebanese billionaire banker, founder of First Intercontinental, aged sixty-four. A man with a penthouse on Central Park West, a house in London on Wilton Crescent, an enormous residence overlooking the sea at Villefranche-sur-Mer, a one-hundred-metre boat moored at the International Yacht Club at Antibes – named Zara , after his daughter – and a Gulfstream V to ferry him from one property to the next.

Salibi’s wife was an Argentine called Sylvia, daughter of an army general who’d fled to Switzerland in 1975 with twenty million embezzled dollars. Ten years younger than Salibi, Sylvia remained a stunning woman: high cheekbones, large emerald eyes, Sophia Loren’s mouth. She’d been twenty-seven when she married Salibi and it was not hard to see what the stout banker had fallen for. Her beauty was reflected in their children, Felix and Zara. Stephanie returned to a photograph of Sylvia at the time of her engagement. She’d been the same age as Stephanie was now. She’d had poise, sophistication, elegance. She looked entirely at ease with the glittering diamond choker that circled her slender throat. No rough edges, she looked everything that Stephanie wasn’t.

‘Salibi’s a renowned paranoid,’ Boyd said. ‘He has security at all his properties whether he’s there or not. Most of them are ex-Israeli Army, including his personal bodyguard, who’s by his side twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year.’

‘No holidays?’

‘Not for more than three years.’

Boyd handed Stephanie a head-and-shoulders photograph: a stern expression, olive skin and chocolate eyes, black hair cut to stubble, powerful shoulder muscles.

‘A woman?’

Boyd nodded. ‘Ruth Steifel. Ex-Army, then ex-Mossad. Magenta House believe she may also have been seconded to Shabek on at least one occasion. Since she’s worked for Salibi, she hasn’t had a day off.’

‘I wonder what Sylvia says about that.’

After lunch, they examined the architect’s plans for the Central Park West penthouse. In a folder, there were photographs of the building from close and afar. There were three lists of observations and twelve pages of technical notes. It took Boyd and Stephanie an hour to go through the material for the first time.

‘Initial thoughts?’

Stephanie was studying the vertical plans. ‘Initial thoughts … if the disk is up for sale, perhaps it would be easier if Magenta House bought it.’

‘I think it’s going to be out of Alexander’s price range. People like you are very expensive to run.’

‘I had no idea I was such a luxury.’

‘You’re not. You’re an unfortunate necessity.’

Stephanie returned her attention to the plans. ‘I don’t think I can get into the place from below so it’s going to have to be from above.’

‘I agree. But how?’

‘Well, I can’t go up the outside. I’d be seen.’

‘And you can’t go up the inside because it’s secure.’

‘And I can’t drop onto the roof. Not realistically.’ Stephanie looked at the plans again. ‘The lifts …’

‘No. The main lift and the service lift both stop automatically on the floor beneath the penthouse. Every time the doors open, they’re checked by the guards. You wouldn’t even get to the right floor.’

‘Not the actual lifts. The lift-shafts.’

It takes forty-five minutes to reach it. A large ledge of soaking black granite, sodden grass beneath it, grassy tufts and dead trees above it, and above them, a one-hundred-foot granite wall.

I look at Boyd. He grins mischievously. ‘Not that. The ledge.’

Icy water falls from the ledge, a veil made of dozens of streams, some as heavy as a running tap, others needle-thin. The sound of the trickle, gurgle and rush is all we can hear.

‘Look at it. Doesn’t it remind you of something?’

I shrug. ‘Not immediately.’

‘Central Park West. The cornice around the top of the building.’

In my mind, I see the photographs again. Gothic, heavy, monstrous.

‘The cornice above the penthouse is about the same size and angle as this piece of rock. You’re going to have to come down over it.’

‘I’ll be suspended, though …’

‘Yes. But you need to climb down over it, not drop.’

‘Okay.’

‘But before you make a descent here, I want you to try to climb up it.’

I look at the reverse angle. I’ve tackled far worse and Boyd knows it. My mother, who was Swiss, was a climber of some fame when she was young. She made it to the top of Everest at the second attempt and conquered most of Europe’s greatest peaks, with the notable exception of the Eiger, which denied her twice. I’ve inherited her love of climbing and her lack of fear on rock.