The Coil (51 page)

With César Duchesne beside him, Sir Anthony Brookshire slowed, reading the names on the doors until at last the Alloway Room appeared, the letters engraved on a shiny brass plate. He stroked his jacket, where his Browning was stored in the holster under his armpit, and stopped. He lifted his head, listening. The roar of voices outdoors was coming closer. Somewhere, glass broke.

“I'll wait here,” he announced. “You go in first. Kill all of them. With luck, this blasted riot will cover for it.”

Duchesne's quiet, untroubled expression cracked for a moment. Outrage lashed out, red-hot, scalding. “No.” He turned on his heel and left.

Shocked, Sir Anthony opened his mouth to bellow, order him to stop, come back, do as he was told. But suddenly the door swung open. A solid-looking man in a gray suit and sharp gray eyes stood there.

Behind the man, a voice called, “Come in, Cronus. How did you find us?”

Sir Anthony hesitated. This was not what he planned.

The man in the gray suit lifted an Uzi and pointed it at him. “Now.”

Chest tight with anger, Cronus stalked inside. He recognized the voice. “Damnation, Atlas. Stop this. What in God's name are you thinking? I knew it had to be one of us. Look at the hell you've put the Coil through! Doesn't loyalty mean anything anymore?”

“You haven't answered my question. The engineer in me is curious. Of course I expected you to pin me down eventually. Still, how did you find us?” He gestured with the Beretta from where he sat. His Timex watch showed beneath the sleeve of his cheap dress shirt.

Malko closed the door and turned into the room, the Uzi slowly panning Sir Anthony, Liz, and Simon.

Sir Anthony still glared at Atlas. “Duchesne planted a tracker on Santarosa.”

“Ah, sweet.” Gilmartin nodded approvingly. “I see Duchesne deserted you. I'd always thought he wasn't as good as you claimed. As for how I knew you were here, I used the security cameras, of course. Our meeting is a perfect example of the power of technology. But there's one thing it can't substitute for, and that's intelligence. What you've done is unintelligent, Tony. You can't win every battle, and you've pushed this business with the files much too far. I left all of you alone for five years, except for the occasional but necessary deal that my other resources couldn't bring into line. But I think you'll agree my merger with Tierney Aviation is worth more than a little trouble. After all, we're talking more than forty billion dollars.”

As the tension in the room mounted, Liz alternately watched the standoff between the two men and looked out the French doors, which were about thirty feet to her right, where a group of protesters dashed past, picking up rocks that lined the flower beds and dropping them into backpacks. She glanced at Simon. He had stopped swaying. She helped him to a side chair near the gym bag, which sat on the floor where Malko had left it when ordered to open the door. From where she stood, she could see the handle of a pistol. Perhaps Malko's, now that he had the Glock.

Sir Anthony was saying, “What you mean is that you'll have a monopoly on avionics.”

“I sincerely hope it'll be a monopoly. That's where competition eventually leads, isn't it? A fight to the economic death until only one company—one man—is left standing. Look at the consolidations constantly going on. What other purpose is there? Certainly not competition. Besides, you'll notice the SEC approved my merger. Santarosa and his EU people were acting like terrified nuns, legs crossed before the act.”

Sir Anthony clasped his hands at his back, and his chin jutted forward. His entire posture radiated disapproval. His gaze fell upon the Zip disc. He looked at it longingly.

The construction magnate shook his head. “No, Tony. It's not yours. Don't pretend you're shocked. I could tell last night you'd guessed the blackmailer was one of us. You just hadn't figured out which one.” His lips twisted in disgust. “Climb down from your Olympian throne,
Sir
Anthony, KCB, or whatever the hell knighthood those initials stand for. Do you think money is why
I
do everything? The reason
I
joined the Coil? For God's sakes, such naïveté.” He waved the Beretta. “You're slime, Tony. All of you are slime. I'm not like you. I don't need more wealth, and I never used the files to extort money. My job is to make a
difference,
as my father, my grandfather, and my great-grandfather did.” He paused, his satisfaction evident. He was enjoying the attention, what he perceived as respect. “I won't be just the largest construction company in the world, I'm on the way to being the largest in aeronautics as well. I'll take civilization not just into the jungle and up to the mountaintop but into space, too.
That's
why I did it.”

Sir Anthony said softly, gently, “You needed to make a mark as big as they did. Poor Greg.”

Simon seemed to rouse himself. Liz studied him as he shifted on the chair and looked around alertly. She put her hand on his shoulder and used a finger to draw an arrow pointing at the French doors. He turned slightly, saw the demonstrators, watched them collecting rocks, then looked up at her. She gazed down at the gym bag. He followed her line of sight. She hoped he remembered that she was no longer a reliable shot.

Gilmartin snapped, “I'm making a contribution.”

“Really?” Simon said instantly, proving he was alert enough to follow the conversation. “If your merger made no profit, would you still want it?”

“That's not the point,” Gilmartin said, outraged. “Of course it'll make a handsome profit. Anything of value does.”

Sir Anthony had been watching the agitators for some time, the groups rushing back and forth, collecting rocks. He stalked forward, his cheeks hot, his anger barely under control. The weight of his responsibilities felt very heavy, the crushing failures and disappointments of the search for the files an indictment of his leadership. He thought about the Browning in the holster under his jacket again. Since he had not detected Atlas's lack of moral compass, Atlas would ruin the Coil completely. He could see that clearly now. Atlas would expose the Coil, bring down the authorities, end whatever future good it could offer the world. Only he, Cronus, should have the files. Only he could be trusted with the terrible secrets within. He had guessed this but had not yet been willing to admit it. Now he had no choice.

He accused, “You're not what the Coil's about, Atlas. You've hurt us badly. You've pushed us into behaviors…actions…”

“You mean setting up Sansborough?” Gilmartin said, rising angrily from his chair. “You mean murder? You old hypocrite. No one
made
you do anything! You are what you are and have always been. All of the Coil is! And so is Nautilus. If you were really so altruistic, would you have done any of it? No!
I'm
the honest one. I know the way the world works, and I don't hide behind illusions. You're out of date and out of step. You're—”

Liz squeezed Simon's shoulder. Quickly, he glanced across the long meeting room and out the French doors, saw the maddened faces, the fists swinging back, the rocks hurling. There was a sudden explosion of noise, of glass panes breaking, shattering, singly and simultaneously, cascading and reverberating throughout the wing and into the huge old hotel.

At the same time, rocks and glass crashed into the room, striking the podium and blanketing the far end of the conference table. Fresh air gusted in afterward, cool, smelling of rain. Suddenly, gunshots thundered outdoors, too.

As Greg Gilmartin whirled to look, Sir Anthony smiled coldly to himself, amused that neither Gilmartin nor his man had thought him sufficiently dangerous to search for a weapon. But then, that was Greg. Too arrogant or perhaps too hungry to assess a situation accurately. Definitely not the man his father was. He must be stopped. Permanently.

All of that passed through Cronus's mind in an instant. He yanked the Browning from under his jacket just as Simon dived a hand into his gym bag and Liz sprinted toward Malko. One second later, Gilmartin turned back, realized what was happening, and yanked up the Beretta to aim.

 

Sarah's mind swam, flickering on the edges of consciousness. Nausea and achiness seemed to flow through her veins. Her chin and neck hurt. She forced herself to remember: Malko had kicked her in the chin and knocked her into the water.

Groaning, she opened her eyes. Tried to grasp where she was.

There was a coffee table, a lamp, a couch. Farther off, a door. She was in a hotel room, where Malko had tied her to the chair. But everything was different. The lamp, a chair, and a low table lay on their sides beside the window, under a glittering blanket of glass. Rocks sat on top of the mess. She heard gunshots and shouts. Other pieces of furniture were upright still. She studied the door, saw it was horizontal….

That was it. She was lying on her side, still tied to the chair, a boulder next to her. Now she recalled it all—a howling noise, shouts, bullhorns, the hail of rocks, the explosive shriek as a boulder hurled through the glass door, the shocking impact as she fell. Then emptiness, nothing.

Bitterly, she complimented herself. Very clever. Oh, yes, so clever that she had allowed Malko to fool her with an obvious old trick like hiding directly beneath a window. At least he still wanted her alive, if only for a short time. She pushed away fear and rolled her head to look at more of the room. But her cheek slapped floor tiling, and new pain radiated out. Her mind swam again. It seemed to her the horizontal door opened and feet floated into the room, moving sideways. A man's pants and athletic shoes.

Her chest tightened, and her lungs squeezed with fear. But she kept her voice steady. “Decided to kill me after all, Malko?”

The man said nothing. His legs limped around her.

She tried to twist to look up at the face, but he was too close. She fought pain. Then he was behind her. “Malko?”

 

Gino Malko was behind Sir Anthony and to the side, listening with genuine respect to his employer. He had never had one as rich or as powerful. For Malko, every word of praise from Mr. Gilmartin had been a gold ingot, to be deposited in his inner savings account, security against the cold winds of poverty and chance. Malko saw nothing unusual about old Sir Anthony's movements, and Sansborough was simply an irritation he would deal with in time. Instead, his gaze locked on the real threat—Simon Childs, at the hand coming out of the gym bag with his pistol.

Simon saw that Sir Anthony's grip on his weapon was steady, the gun trained on Gregory Gilmartin. With luck, they would kill each other.

Malko swore and raised the Uzi. Too late.

The gunshots were almost simultaneous, the noise volcanic.

Simon's bullet caught Malko in the heart. Blood erupted, misting the air pink. Malko's Uzi exploded, the bullet bursting into a vase, detonating it like a hand grenade.

At the same time, Sir Anthony's first shot went into Gilmartin's white shirt and the second into his throat.

Gregory Gilmartin toppled forward, his eyes wide, his finger convulsing on the trigger of his gun and sending a single bullet into the expensive carpet. Blood geysered from his wounds.

In the room, there was a second of shock, as if the world had tilted. The three left standing—Liz, Sir Anthony, and Simon—were motionless, as if stillness would make the horror acceptable. The hot stench of blood stained the air, while dust from the shattered window floated gently in layers above the corpses of the two men.

 

Liz moved first, sweeping up the Uzi from Malko's lifeless fingers. She pointed it at the Coil's leader. “Put down your gun, Sir Anthony. Or would you prefer to be called Cronus?”

Sir Anthony blinked. Oddly, he remembered something George Eliot had written. He had read the book—
Adam Bede
—one languid summer in Paris:
Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.
He believed in the future. He had lived his life in that passionate pursuit, and as much as he hated it, he saw clearly everything had led up to this moment. He sensed he had somehow, somewhere made a profound mistake, and that was an admission he could not abide.

Sir Anthony turned swiftly, his finger pulling the trigger.

But Liz had seen the movement and guessed what he intended. She squeezed off a burst. The Uzi's bullets punctured Sir Anthony's firing arm and slashed into his chest. He jerked up to his toes. His gun fired wildly into the ceiling. As plaster dust showered down, coating the room in white, he rotated, his eyes soft with relief. He fell hard to the floor.

As she stared down, an odd silence filled Liz's ears. She felt a sharp stab of failure. And then soaring elation that she was alive. That Simon was alive. She looked at him. He was peering worriedly at her. She smiled, gave a brief nod.

Joy flashed across his face. He threw an arm across her shoulders, pulled her close, and kissed her cheek. She wrapped her arms around him and held him tightly, as if all of life were encapsulated in this moment.

The door opened. Instantly, they released each other and whirled, their weapons raised.

“Sarah!” Liz sighed a long stream of air and lowered the Uzi.

“Thank God!” Simon lowered his pistol.

Sarah walked carefully into the suite, as if she were either weak or injured. She was followed by an older man with a cap on his head. Liz realized she might have seen him around the hotel, one of the many anonymous security people who wore green badges. But as he drew next to Sarah, Liz saw that he limped on his right side. Simon noticed it, too. They exchanged a knowing glance.

Sarah was staring at the carnage. “My God, Liz. What happened?”

“In a minute,” Liz said. Then she looked directly at the man: “Who are you? You've been helping us, haven't you?”

“César Duchesne,” he said simply in a low voice that hinted at a growl. “It was my job, until Brookshire told me to kill you.” His gaze was focused on the green disc on the table. “Is that it?”