Money Run

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

PART ONE

Warning Signs

The Interview

Treasure Hunt

Complications

PART TWO

Two Worlds Collide

Pandora's Box

Contingencies

PART THREE

Evasive Manoeuvres

Life After Death

Unmasked

Defiance

Dust

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Ashley Arthur stood in front of the gleaming glass doors and gazed up at the HBS tower. It hadn't been difficult to find. Even if she hadn't spent an hour studying a map of the nearby roads, she would have seen it rising above the peaks of the surrounding buildings when she got off the bus. Although only twenty-five storeys high, the building was on a hilltop, with streets trickling down from all around it. And the Buckland logo, blooming from the roof of the tower, was a familiar part of the city's skyline; a giant yellow cubic sculpture with tapered edges and the company monogram in the top right corner. On sunny days it glittered in the sky; this afternoon it reflected the clouds in dull sepia. But still the building glowed, outshining the apartment building opposite and the KFC next door.

Today was a big day. Ash was pleased. Not exactly happy, or excited – but pleased. She'd worked long and hard to get here, and she was as close to achieving her goal as possible without actually having finished. She knew that was the most satisfying time of any project. Success wasn't hers just yet – but she could see it on the horizon. She could almost taste it.

Her phone rang – two short beeps. The noise sank into the ambience of the street without so much as a ripple, which was why she had picked that ringtone. Other people barely heard it.

Ash glanced at her watch: 4.12 p.m. She was ahead of schedule. She had time to take the call.

She read the caller ID. “Hi, Benjamin,” she said.

“Hi, Double A,” Benjamin said. “Nervous?”

“Have I ever been nervous before?”

“You've never met a billionaire before.”

“I'll be fine,” Ash said. She checked her reflection in the glass doors. Her oak-coloured hair was straight and tucked neatly behind her ears. Her jeans were clean, her blouse was crisp and white. She straightened the collar of her jacket. Her black wedges shone in the pasty daylight. She looked exactly how she should – like a fifteen-year-old with an important interview.

“Well, I'm here if you need me,” Benjamin replied. He sounded a little jealous of her – up until now they'd been equal partners in the project. But today he'd feigned illness and taken the afternoon off school to be her remote support, so while she was meeting the richest man in the city, he would be sitting at home in front of his laptop, with his phone on the charger in case she needed him. He couldn't have come with her. He was observant, quick-thinking and skilled with technology, but he was nervous and awkward around strangers. Confidence was Ash's strength.

“You know me,” Ash said. “I can handle this.”

“I know. I'm not worried.”

“You're always worried,” Ash said. She'd never once seen Benjamin look relaxed. They'd first met the day after her sixth birthday – she had been sneaking into the school canteen after recess, hoping to plunder the leftover birthday cake before the teachers ate it with their lunch. During her search she'd found Benjamin hiding in the cupboard. Even as a five-year-old, he'd looked anxious. His fingers were twitching by his sides, and he was staring at Ash with suspicion. He had apparently formulated the same plan, only better – he had scoped out the location beforehand, located the cake on the bench by the sink, and stolen the
Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
from a classroom, intending to stand on it so he could reach.

The dictionary turned out not to be thick enough, so they stood it on its end and Benjamin held it steady while Ash tried to reach the cake. The plate was too heavy, and she dropped it. Fearing the noise would alert teachers, they both bolted, leaving behind a broken plate, a splattered cake and a ruined dictionary.

“What if he asks you questions about the essay?” Benjamin was saying.

“I've read it,” Ash said. “No big deal.”

A month ago, Narahm School for Girls, Ash's school, had announced a competition for the best economics essay. It would be judged by one of the richest businessmen in the country, and he would present a large cash prize to the winner in person. Ash told Benjamin about it, and he started writing.

They had won. Hammond Buckland had selected Benjamin's essay – “Taxes in a Globalized Nation”, by Ashley Arthur – and now Ash was standing outside the headquarters of Hammond Buckland Solutions, while Benjamin sat in his bedroom in his empty house, wearing his pyjamas, coughing every time he answered the phone just in case it was his mother.

“If they try to take your phone away from you,” Benjamin was saying, “let them. You can tell me what Buckland said later. But just in case they don't, I'll SMS you the new modem number in ten minutes. Call it when you can, then leave the call connected and I'll record the conversation onto my hard drive, okay?”

“We've been through this,” Ash said. But she wasn't annoyed. Benjamin's obsessive reanalysis and repetition of their plans was what made him a good partner. He detected every flaw in any plan. “And by the way, you're a total geek.”

“I know,” Benjamin said. “Good luck, Double A.”

“Don't need it,” Ash said.

“In that case,” Benjamin sounded hopeful now, “maybe I could take you out for a hot chocolate afterwards. To celebrate a job well done.”

Ash watched a couple of women in charcoal suits stride out through the glass doors, talking animatedly. “You wish, Benjamin.”

“You know, I really thought you'd say yes that time.”

Ash smiled. Benjamin had been asking her out on dates regularly since they were twelve. She always turned him down, but he never seemed to mind.

“You didn't just hear me call you a geek?” she said. “Talk to you soon.”

The doors slid aside as Ash stepped forward. Marble and glass loomed within. She took one last look up at the tip of the tower, at the gleaming cube high above. Then she walked inside.

There was an antechamber separating her from the main lobby, with a metal detector and an X-ray machine for bags. Cameras hummed from the corners of the ceiling. Three security guards, two men and a woman, looked at her incuriously.

Ash dumped her handbag on the conveyor belt and walked through the metal detector. It didn't beep. Her bag trundled out of the X-ray machine, and one of the guards started poking at it with what looked like a small vacuum cleaner. Sniffing for explosive residue, Ash knew. Checking that she wasn't going to bomb the place. She held her arms out sideways as the female security guard swept an identical device across her clothes.

“Thank you,” one of the others said as he handed over her bag.

“No problem,” Ash replied.

The main lobby was cleaner than most hospitals. Granite sparkled underfoot, wood panelling glowed under the reception counter, and mirrored glass walls reflected Ash's surprise back at her. She'd expected it to look classy, but for most office buildings classy just meant clean and sparse. This was more like walking into the reception area of a five-star hotel. It smelled of money.

The lifts were depositing a steady trickle of people into the lobby. They drifted past her towards the exit. Ash glanced at her watch – 4.20 p.m. Pretty soon everyone would be gone.

A receptionist with long, silver-painted nails looked up at her as she approached. “Hi,” she said. “Can I help you?”

“My name's Ashley Arthur,” Ash said. “I'm here to see Mr. Buckland.”

The receptionist was already typing in her name by the time Ash had finished speaking. “The top floor, the twenty-fifth,” she said, pointing into the alcove with the lifts. “You're a little early, so you might have to wait a while.” She caught a name tag as a printer spat it out. “Wear this at all times. Security will hassle you otherwise.”

“Sure,” Ashley said, putting it around her neck. “Thanks.”

The receptionist had already turned back to her computer.

Ash's wedges clacked against the granite. The many lift doors gleamed invitingly. She felt like everyone in the foyer was staring at her, like they could tell she didn't belong. She risked a glance. They weren't. Just nerves, she supposed. It was the most important day of her life, so she was entitled to be a little on edge. She pushed the button beside the lift, and watched the numbers scroll down on one of the indicators.

A woman with blood-red curls appeared beside her and pushed the down button. On her way to the basement car park, maybe. There was a ping, and the doors to a lift going up opened. Ash walked in and pushed the button for the twenty-fifth floor. It wasn't the top button; there was one for the roof as well. Ash wondered if someone went up to polish the yellow cube each day.

The doors slid shut. The interior of the lift looked like a miniature version of the lobby – granite floor, mirrored walls and wood panelling around the ceiling. It was so roomy Ash could have done a cartwheel.

As the lift began to ascend, the floor numbers blinked on a screen above her. At floor 6, the lift stopped. A guy with a silk suit and blue-framed glasses entered. He glanced at Ash's name tag but didn't speak to her. At floor 12, a man and two women joined them, muttering among themselves. Floor 13 brought a woman with a handbag designed to look like a slice of watermelon, and on floor 19 a man walked in who smelled faintly bitter, like old sweat, or a coin held in the hand for too long.

At floor 23 they all got out, and Ash travelled the last two floors alone. The lift was smooth and silent.

The doors slid open, and she stepped out of the lift. A redwood-panelled corridor stretched away to either side. There were small paintings hanging on the walls, one every few metres along. Prints, not originals – there for the sake of atmosphere rather than art. Green mountains, vivid fruit bowls, faded lilies.

Ashley had studied a plan of the building, and knew that there were only conference rooms and bathrooms to her left. She turned right, and started walking.

She stared at her hands to check if they were shaking. They weren't. She was about to meet one of the world's wealthiest, smartest businesspeople. But she was still in absolute control.

A curly-haired man was sitting behind a marble counter up ahead. He looked up from his computer, and stood as she approached. “Hi,” he said, sticking out his hand. “I'm Adam. Lovely to meet you, Miss Arthur.”

He was in his mid-twenties, but was only a few centimetres taller than her. She thought she detected a trace of Welsh in his accent. His dark curls bobbed around a noble face. His sleeve slid up his outstretched arm, revealing that his watch-tan was slightly larger than his watch, like he'd bought a new one recently. His name tag read ADAM KEIGHLEY.

“Call me Ash,” she said, shaking Keighley's hand. “Sorry I'm early.”

“No problem. We have some very comfy chairs, and I want to give you some background on Mr. Buckland and HBS before you go in anyway. Come with me.”

Ash followed him down a corridor behind the counter. Looking back at the screen of the computer he'd been working on, she saw an open game of Minesweeper. Apparently it was there for the appearance of professionalism rather than for actual work. His work started now – talking to her.

“First time here?” Keighley asked.

Ash nodded.

“Lots of people have been before and don't realize it,” Keighley said. “This building used to be a hotel. Mr. Buckland bought it, put the HBS cube on the roof, and now people forget it wasn't always our headquarters.”

“Wouldn't it have been cheaper to buy an actual office building?” Ash asked.

“Offices usually rent out individual floors instead of selling the whole building. And Mr. Buckland wanted a certain image for the company: classy and unusual. Prestigious. This way, although employees are paid the same as they would be anywhere else, everyone wants a job here. We always hook the best applicants and, because our employees know their jobs are in high demand, they're more satisfied and they work harder.”

“How many others are there?”

“Other what?”

“HBS buildings like this one.”

Keighley smiled. “None. It's a global organization, but this is the only infrastructure.”

“How long have you been working here?” Ash asked.

Keighley chuckled. “Is it that obvious?”

“That you're new?” Ash said. “Yeah. You still sound like a tour guide rather than an employee.”

“Sorry. I've only been here a few weeks, and I studied hard for the job. Maybe too hard.”

“No, it's fine.” Ash stuck her hands in her pockets. “Give me the whole speech.”

“Really?”

“Sure.”

“Okay.” Keighley clapped his hands together. “Hammond Buckland's first invention was the disposable wall. He knew that restaurants and schools were spending lots of money to fix the vandalism of their toilets, so he started selling thin sheets of clear plastic to stick to the exposed surfaces that could be removed at the end of the day or week.”

Ash nodded. The toilet cubicles at her school were always shielded by them.

“The success of the disposable wall allowed Mr. Buckland to explore some other ideas. The collapsible subwoofer, the flash drive implant, the vacuum welcome mat. He hit the big time when he discovered a use for brewery protein – congealed protein that forms at the bottom of the vats during fermentation of beer. Every brewery in the world was just throwing it away, but Mr. Buckland reasoned that it must be either good for rats, or bad for rats, so if it was good he'd make food pellets, if it was bad he'd make rat poison.”

“So which is it?”

Keighley grinned, showing small teeth. “Good, as it turns out. Rats can eat almost anything. Pet food is a good industry to be in, because the customer isn't the consumer, so the taste doesn't matter.”

“Was that when he started AU?”

Keighley raised his eyebrows. “You've been studying too, I see.”

Ash nodded. “I'm a customer, so I already know that bit of the speech.” AU was a digital banking service which connected to an existing bank account, and added interest in exchange for use of the money while it was in the account. “Although I have one question.”