3 The Braque Connection (29 page)

Nikki had said something that brought even more confusion to the case. If Hawk didn’t enjoy woodwork and he didn’t sell any wood products, what was all that equipment doing in his warehouse? We sorely lacked information on Tall Freddy and Dukwicz, and Francine couldn’t find a trace of the thousand five hundred printers. Added to that was the list of unconnected things bought with Colin’s credit card. Five o’clock was coming closer and I was running out of time to make sense of these disconnected pieces of information.

Chapter TWENTY-THREE

Three
hours later I had gone over the case in my mind three times and still wasn’t any closer to answers. Nikki was still drawing quietly between the two cabinets. Colin was in the team room working with Vinnie and Francine, trying to locate the 3D printers. I didn’t like that I had started to doubt my conclusion that something was going to take place at five o’clock.

There was something in those paintings I had not yet seen. I had no reason to be so convinced of it, and refused to call it a gut feeling. I needed the focus Mozart brought to my mind. It took me a few seconds to find the right track on my computer and another second for Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G minor to fill the viewing room with its dark beginning.

Five bars into the symphony, I remembered Phillip had sent me an email. I opened it to a five-line email informing me that Phillip’s museum contact had brought the handheld x-ray machine. It was in the conference room and had a simple instruction leaflet next to it. The museum contact hadn’t been interested in sacrificing another minute of his weekend to show Phillip how to operate it. Phillip, on the other hand, was too busy with clients to concern himself with it.

Without second thought, I got up and walked to the conference room. Again I switched on only the sunken ceiling lights, reasoning that one did not need a darkened room to see x-ray images.

On the table was a device that looked like a strange video camera. It had a screen that swivelled away from the body of the device just like a video camera. I picked up the leaflet, sat down and started reading. Operating it was surprisingly simple. I touched the machine and thought how far we had come in technology. The leaflet also claimed the benefits of using it in warzones, on site at car accidents and many more places. It even listed statistics on the safety of the radiation exposure. I felt safe.

Following the instructions, I turned the x-ray machine on, changed the settings and aimed it at my hand. I couldn’t help the smile when I saw the bones joining my thumb to the rest of my hand. This technology was amazing. I moved it up to capture my wrist, but stopped there. There wasn’t time to play. I walked to the nearest painting, curious what I would discover.

I aimed the x-ray device at the painting, but was too close. I took a step back and tried again, capturing a section of the bottom left hand corner. This time I saw an x-ray image of the painting on the screen, but that was not what caught my attention. It was the frame. I took another three images of the frame in different places.

I didn’t want to believe what my eyes were seeing. My mouth lost all its moisture and my hands turned cold. I called up the Mozart symphony I had earlier listened to in my viewing room. It was imperative for me to not shut down.

To confirm what I saw, I walked stiffly to the next painting. The strange purchases with the fake credit cards in Colin’s alias name made sense. My incoherent email about a frame of reference made sense. The wood glue, wires, duct tape and seventeen pagers made sense. The underpaintings going to the edges of the frames and preventing us from removing the frames made sense. As did the workshop with all the woodwork equipment in Hawk’s warehouse.

An involuntary whimper escaped when the next painting showed me the same as the previous one. Even to my untrained eye, it was shockingly obvious what I was looking at. With every new image, my muscles became more frozen, my mouth drying. Blackness pushed in from my peripheral view, but stayed there as I focussed harder on the first movement of Mozart’s symphony. With this work Mozart had set a new precedent, first using the accompaniment before introducing the theme. Later it was to become a favourite amongst Romantic composers.

As if from a far distance, I heard Nikki call me, asking me if I was okay. I hadn’t known she was in the conference room with me. I couldn’t answer. It would take me away from Mozart and push me into the black void calling me. I heard her leave the conference room shouting for help. She sounded scared. I wanted to tell her to listen to Mozart. It would make her feel safe.

“Jenny?” Colin’s hand on my arm was warm. I aimed all my attention on that warmth, forced my eyes away from the little screen I was staring at to look at his strong hand on my forearm. His grip was firm, his thumb rubbing gently. “Jenny, are you with me?”

I nodded my head, but my stiff muscles turned it into a jerky movement. “Bombs. They are all bombs.”

“What are all bombs?”

I took a deep breath, looking only at Colin. I knew Vinnie and Francine were also in the conference room, but I couldn’t deal with them right now. The safe familiarity of Colin’s face was a good combination with Mozart. Even if he used a name as a verb. I pointed the x-ray device at a painting and swivelled the screen towards him.

“The woodwork equipment was used to make specialised frames. Those frames are filled with what I suspect to be C4, maybe another explosive. No, it would have to be C4, because of the traces found in the warehouse by the woodwork equipment. Look at the wires and the small electronic device at the bottom of each frame. To me it looks like a pager. I don’t know how it will be set off, but I’m sure they are bombs.”

“Are you saying all the paintings
here
are bombs?” Francine’s tone did not hold its usual sultry, relaxed quality.

I nodded to confirm her repetition of what I had said.

“Motherfucker.” Vinnie ran out of the room after a quick apology to Nikki.

“We have to leave.” Colin got up. “Come on, Jenny. We’re leaving this place right now. Francine, take Nikki and get out of here. We’ll meet you at the cars.”

“Someone has to tell Edward.” I allowed Colin to push me towards the door, thinking that Manny would have the bomb technician’s contact details.

“I’m not leaving without Doc G.” Nikki’s voice was soft, but stubborn.

“Not now, Nikki.” Colin lowered himself a little to be closer to her height. “I’m getting Jenny out of here. You go with Francine. We will not leave you alone. We stick together. Got it?”

Nikki looked at me, fear in her eyes.

“Go with Francine. I’ll be out soon.” Why was this girl connecting with me? On top of everything else, I couldn’t carry that responsibility as well. I was relieved when she nodded once and left with Francine, who was talking on her phone, her tablet tucked under her arm.

“What are you doing?” Colin held his hand out to me. “Let’s go.”

I was walking towards the offices where I knew a few employees were working today. “We need to evacuate the whole building. Maybe even the street. I don’t know the projections of the damage if all those explosives were to be detonated.”

“Vinnie’s gone to tell Phillip. They will take care of the office. Edward will take care of the rest. Come on, Jenny.” The urgency in his voice sent another blast of adrenaline through my body, this time fuelling my muscles. It took us three minutes to take the stairs down and meet Francine and Nikki on the other side of the street, next to Colin’s SUV. We joined them on the far side of the vehicle and Nikki immediately moved to my side, not quite touching me, but very close.

I took a deep, calming breath. “Where’s Vinnie?”

“There.” Colin pointed at the front door of the building. Vinnie was walking towards us with long strides, holding a smartphone ahead of him as if it was leading him. He had a laptop in his other hand.

“Take this.” He shoved the phone in my hands. “The old man wants to talk to you.”

“Put it on speakerphone,” Colin said as Francine moved closer. She took the laptop from Vinnie with a nod. There were too many people surrounding me. I put up my hand holding the phone.

“Please give me some space.”

Nikki moved behind me, her logic amusing. If I couldn’t see her, I wouldn’t feel crowded. I still felt her body heat against my back, but didn’t say anything. Francine and Vinnie took a step back and the tightness around my throat and chest eased. I pressed the speakerphone button on the touchscreen.

“Manny, we’re all here and you’re on speakerphone.”

“What the bloody hell is going on, Doc? Phillip tells me there is a frigging bomb in the office?”

“Make that seventeen bombs, Millard.” Colin leaned a bit closer to the smartphone in my hand. “Hawk used that woodwork equipment to make frames that he filled with C4 and pagers. All the forged paintings in the conference room have them. Jenny saw it on the x-ray images.”

“Holy fucking hell.”

“Nikki is here, Manny.” Francine was overly concerned about the use of strong language in front of Nikki. I would have to ask her about this.

“Where are you?” I asked Manny instead. This was more important.

“On my way back to you. I was in a meeting with the bigwigs. Doc, are you sure about what you saw?”

“Yes.”

“I also saw it, Millard. Those are bombs.”

“Hellfire.” He cleared his throat. “Okay, Edward is on his way. He should be there soon. Doc, I want you get in your car and drive to the bottom of the street.”

“Only me?”

He grunted loudly. “No, take all the criminals with you. And keep this bloody phone close to you in case I need to speak to you again.”

The phone went quiet and I looked up. Colin had the back door open and was gesturing at Nikki to get in. Only when I opened the passenger door and got in did she get into the back. Vinnie got in on one side of her, Francine on the other. They had scarcely closed the doors when Colin drove down the street.

He double-parked next to a white sedan, the SUV still running.

“This doesn’t make sense.” I pulled at the seatbelt across my chest.

“What doesn’t make sense?” Colin shifted in his seat to look at me.

“The bombs explain all those things bought with your credit cards. It’s another way of setting you up. It also explains the workshop in Hawk’s warehouse.”

“But?” Colin asked when I stopped speaking. I needed to think. There was a thread through all this and I needed to find it.

“Those bombs had no guarantee to kill all of us. Manny went to a meeting. What if Colin had gone out again for food, or Vinnie had gone to meet one of his contacts? What if none of us were in the office? That plan is flawed.”

No one spoke. They were giving me the silence I needed to reach into my mind for that elusive piece of information. I closed my eyes and allowed Mozart’s energetic fifth symphony to blast through my mental barriers at full volume.

“The numbers!” I bounced in my seat, pushed my sleeve up my arm and showed it to Colin. “He told me that there was more to the tattoo. That there were layers to uncover.”

“It gave us that website, rousseaus.hin.org.”

I had made the mistake of stopping at that revelation, not looking for another layer of information. Mozart’s symphony had brought it to my consciousness. “If you take the .org away and scramble the letters, it gives us two words: Russian House.”

“No fucking way.”

“Vinnie!” Francine’s reprimand went with a loud slap.

“Sorry, punk.” He didn’t sound contrite.

Colin pulled into the street as the sound of sirens came closer. “Are you saying he is organising all this in the place where it started? Rather poetic.”

“I don’t see poetry in that.” Only psychology. “That was the first place he was faced with me, with us. If still true to his profile, he would have seen that as an unacceptable humiliation and it is the place he would want to right the balance.”

“You should be telling Manny this,” Francine said from the back. She was right. I phoned Manny and put him on speakerphone.

“What’s up, Doc?” Manny answered after the first ring. I didn’t know why Vinnie and Nikki snickered at his greeting.

I told him my discovery. “Do you know who the developer is who bought the Russian House?”

Manny gave a name amidst a lot of swearing.

“This developer was registered two years ago by another company which is one of Hawk’s lesser-known companies,” Francine said. I twisted around and saw her working on her laptop, while Nikki was holding the tablet at an angle for Francine to see.

The tablet trembled in Nikki’s hand. I looked up and saw her face drained of colour. Someone was going to have to give this child guidance through the unorthodox double world her father had lived in. His role as a father had been significantly more benign than any other role he had taken on.

Colin was driving increasingly faster. I turned back to face the front, wanting to be under the full protection of my safety belt and the airbag.

“We’ll be there in about three minutes,” Colin said as he took a corner skilfully, but very fast. I gripped the side of my seat with my free hand.

“I’m five minutes out,” Manny said. “Wait for me. And for the love of Pete, don’t do anything stupid.”