The Tin Man (30 page)

“That won’t be necessary,”
Buchanan assured him with a steely glare.

After Jim finally fucked off back to The Pillory,
Buchanan waited, taking cover behind a big blue dumpster, killing time by smoking and hitting on his flask, which was getting distressingly low. After about an hour, he limped up the alley to the liquor store, scored a half-pint, and refilled. He wanted to be numb enough not to think about what they might be doing to Thea, but not so numb that he would be of no use to her should the opportunity present itself. Returning to the alley, reasonably certain he hadn’t been sighted, he continued waiting.

Just as the sky began to
gloam, he saw headlights coming down the alley. He heard the sputtering engine before the front-end came into view. The car moved slowly, pulling in behind the twins’ sedan. He drew his Glock, keeping down. It felt like forever before he heard the door open. Ever so gingerly, he stole a peek around the side.

There wasn’t much light
—only a single fixture over the stairs illuminating the whole area—and the man had his back to him. All he could see was that “Zeus” did indeed have dark hair and wore a black trench. Just as the man reached the top of the basement stairs, he stopped for no apparent reason and glanced toward the dumpster. The description Jim had given him was dead accurate, right down to the cold eyes. Heart jolting, Buchanan ducked out of sight, then sat back on his haunches, puzzling.

W
ho was this guy? Was he the killer? What did he want with Thea? And how was he connected to the takeover scheme? He considered banging on the door of the club and asking him outright, but quickly dismissed the notion. He was of little enough use to Thea out here. In there, with Zeus and his twin thugs, he’d have zero chance of getting her out alive. Or getting out alive himself, for that matter.

Staying out of sight until he was sure
Zeus had gone inside, he crept over to the roadster to have a better look. Apart from the left-hand steering column, it was a perfect replica of the silver Aston-Martin DB5 used in the original James Bond movies.

He peered through
the driver-side window. The interior was impeccable. Not so much as a straw wrapper anywhere in sight. He tried the door, not surprised to find it locked. He thought about jacking the mechanism—vintage cars were easy enough to break into—until he saw the red flashing light on the dash. He stepped away, giving up the idea. He walked around to the boot to have a look at the license plate, hoping he’d be able to memorize it quickly. He didn’t have a pen or the best recall anymore. He laughed to himself when he saw the plate read AGNT 007. That, even he could remember.

Fear quickened Thea’s pulse when she heard a door open and close. Looking in the direction of the sound, she saw a man—tall, well built, and donning a classic tuxedo and black eye-mask. James Bond meets Zorro. What the fuck? A chill crawled up her spine when, through the eyeholes, she spied pupils of blue ice studying her.

“I’m a fan of your
work,” he told her in a proper English accent. “And your grandfather’s.”

Rage heated her chest at the mention of her grandfather
. Where was he? What had this freak done to him? And for that matter, what was he planning to do to her? He stepped closer, making her whole body clench. She glanced around with rising dread. There were doors leading to other rooms. Closed doors. Was her grandfather behind one of them? And what horrors might await behind the others?

“I understand you have the recording,” he
said, his voice cool. “You will turn it over now or suffer the consequences.”

Consequences?
Thea gulped, noting again the doghouse, birdcage, and stretching rack. She began to sweat as scenes of torture and bondage from
A Clockwork Orange
flickered behind her eyes like a strobe light. She tried to scream at the tuxedoed man, to demand answers, but all that got past the ball-gag were muffled animal sounds.

“Mr. Wint, please uncuff her.” The tuxedoed man addressed the command to one the freaky, perfume-reeking twins. “Then, please remove the gag. And everything she has on.” Thea shuddered as he shifted his eyes to the other twin. “And Mr. Kidd, please cue the music and fetch me my tool belt.”

* * * *

Now back in the Toyota, Buchanan weighed his options. He needed to help her, obviously, needed to get her the hell out of there, but how? He couldn’t just break down the door, couldn’t even call the police or the FBI. Hadn’t Connolly said The Babylon Group’s tentacles touched everything—even the regulatory and law enforcement agencies? He shook his head. Bloody hell. What was he going to do? He needed help—Lapdog’s help. But he wasn’t going to get it, was he?

Buchanan
felt desperate, disheartened, and helpless. The only option left was to break the story on his own. Meaning he’d have to do it via
The Voice
. Not that doing so was such a big deal. Sure,
The News
had more in the way of impact and influence, but his site was nothing to sneeze at. First, though, he needed to ditch the car and find a place he could set up the laptop. It was his only hope.

Consulting the map, he decided to drive toward Georgetown University. Wherever there was a campus, there was bound to be a coffee house or internet café
of some sort offering free Wi-Fi as a draw for the students.

He drove across town and, when within a few blocks of the university,
he started keeping an eye peeled for signs. Spying something at last—a wee bookshop-coffee bar combo near the campus—he parked in an out-of-the-way spot, wiped the car of prints, and grabbed Thea’s briefcase out of the boot.

Hobbling through the
glass door, he scanned the place, which was noisy and packed with students. Some sat quietly, reading or working on computers, whilst others talked and laughed in small groups. His eyes sought an empty table, but found none. He stood there, watching and waiting, hoping somebody would leave. The recording, still in his coat pocket, felt as dangerous as a vial of deadly virus.

Someone got up. A
lanky blonde in a tie-dyed t-shirt who’d been reading something that looked erudite and existential. A closer look at the cover revealed it was
Fear and Trembling
by Soren Kierkegaard.

Of course it bloody was, he thought
, rolling his eyes.

Hurrying toward the table, he pulled out
a chair and sat quickly. It was still warm with the girl’s body heat. He set up the laptop, connected to the network, and called up the Google screen. Moving his cursor to the search window, he typed:
Robert Sterling, Olympus Enterprises.

Nothing relevant.
Just a static web page offering the company’s mission statement—a fat load of public relations bollocks as far as he could tell. There was, however, a phone number at the bottom of the page. Having nothing with which to write it down, he copied it, called up a word file, and pasted it into the blank document.

Next, he searched for
The Babylon Group. Seeing there was a link to Wikipedia, he clicked through.

The Babylon Group, also known simply as Babylon, is the Arab world’s largest media and entertainment company. It is owned by the Saudi Prince Azi Zahhak and a group of investors, only one of which is known: Milo Osbourne, the CEO of Golden Age Media, who holds a 10 percent share. Babylon is a major pan-Arab media conglomerate, which includes newspapers, film production companies, magazines, television and radio networks, publishing houses, and record companies—many of them based in the United States and Great Britain.

Buchanan scratched his head. How the devil was he going to get through to Azi Zahhak? Still, he at least had to try, didn’t he?

Clicking back to the search results, he scrolled through several pages before he found a home page for the company. He
looked around the site for a few minutes, but found no phone number. He then called international directory assistance. There was no listing for either Babylon or Azi Zahhak.

Shite
, he’d hit a dead end there. For now, at least.

Not ready to give up, he
checked the time on the monitor. It was almost half seven. Three-thirty in the morning in London. He punched in the number for Olympus, got a recording, and left a message for Robert Sterling.

That left him with just one
more source: Milo Osbourne. He looked up the number for Golden Age Media’s corporate offices and placed the call. After several transfers, he was connected to Osbourne’s executive assistant—a cold fish named Gina Metcalf who informed him that Osbourne was on his way to London.

“I’ll see that he gets the message,
though,” she added.

“I need to speak with him tonight, if possible
,” he told her emphatically.

“I understand, Mr.
Buchanan. And I will do what I can.”

Heaving a frustrated sigh,
he hung up, sat back, laced his fingers behind his head, and stretched his shoulders, which were stiff from so much time behind the wheel. If Osbourne called him back, would he have enough to file the story? He didn’t think so. All he had otherwise was Connolly’s interview.

He sat there
for a long while, thinking hard, but the only thing he came up with was trying Lapdog again. Logging on to
The Voice
, he clicked to the comments page.

Posted by Editor

Thea
is in Tartarus.

He doubted it would do much good, but what the hell? He couldn’t just sit there like a chump while they did God knew what to the woman he loved. He felt a pang. Hang on. Did he love her? He shook his head, feeling more wretched than before. He did love her, didn’t he? Seems his mum had been right all along. He did feel differently now that he’d met the right woman. Unfortunately, that woman was now in the hands of a sadistic sociopath. And there didn’t seem to be much he could do about it.

* * * *

As Thea floated up to the surface of awareness, her head began to pound. She opened her eyes, taking a moment to clear the haze that had settled over her brain. Where was she? What happened? Wherever she was, it was as dark as a cave. And stuffy. So stuffy she could hardly breathe. She realized then that she was lying on her side and—oh, shit—she was naked. The surface beneath her was cold and hard. Her wrists were bound behind her back. And there was something covering her face.

S
he struggled to get her legs under her so she could sit up. The movement detonated an explosion inside her cranium. She stilled, breathing hard, praying the pain would subside. From somewhere, she heard the click of a latch, then the groaning of hinges. Her breath caught as footsteps came toward her. She began to tremble.

“Who are you?” she cried out.

“I will ask the questions, Pussy.”

It was the voice of the tuxedoed man.

She wasn’t all that familiar with the movies, but she assumed his addressing her as “Pussy” was a reference to some Bond girl femme fatale.
“Ask away, freak show,” she challenged.

“Where is the recording?”
he demanded, clearly unamused by her nickname.

“What have you done with my grandfather?” she
demanded in return.

Something struck her thigh.
It hurt enough to make her grunt, but she was determined not to cry out.

“
No questions from you,” he said hotly. “Only answers. Where is that recording? I know you retrieved it from that bank in Philadelphia. So don’t even think about handing me a line.”

S
he felt something pressing on her neck. Was it his shoe? He stepped down as if he was driving a car and she was the gas pedal. She coughed and hacked, fighting for breath. She tried to roll, tried to dig in her toes, to scoot away, but to no avail. The need for air grew more urgent by the second. She could feel the pressure building in her face. Horrible gurgling sounds rose from her throat.

“The recording, Pussy?”

As he eased off, she coughed and gasped.

H
e laughed like machine-gun fire.

“Bite me,” she spat, still
fighting for breath.

He laughed again
, closer now.

She flinched when she felt his hands slide under her. Before she knew what was happening, she was rolling onto her back. His weight came down on her legs. Finger
nails raked her from breasts to pubic hair.

“You know, Pussy,” he whispered
, making her jump, “you’re much too nice a girl to be mixed up in all this.”

H
e was kneading her breasts. His fingers found her nipples, pinching hard enough to bring tears to her eyes. She gritted her teeth, whimpering a little. She needed to pee. Urgently.

“It’s even better with the clamps,” he said, making her shudder. “Or
the wire cutters. Snip, snip. Snip, snip.” He cackled devilishly, obviously pleased with himself. “Of course, I could always do to you what Wayne Adam Ford did to his victims.” He paused, as if for emphasis. “Are you familiar with Wayne Adam Ford, Pussy?”