Right from the start we knew Navy Intelligence was training us for one thing. Infiltration. The ability to worm your way into a close-knit group, extract secret information, get word back to your own side, and get out again in one piece. So it came as no surprise to find that they’d set up one of the other recruits to spy on us. Especially after all the other tricks they’d pulled. Although, to be honest, she gave herself away pretty cheaply. The type of questions she asked. The places she was spotted. The way she tried to buddy up to you for a few days, before moving on to someone else.
After three weeks an emergency announcement was made. A security breach had been uncovered, it said. We were all summoned to the briefing room, that same morning. I remember everyone sidling past the chief instructor, not making eye contact but feeling smug, confident they were in the clear. And how that feeling changed when everybody was handed a file. It was thick. It gave details of everything that had been leaked. Only it hadn’t come from the person we’d all suspected. The real culprit turned out to be the quietest guy on the course. The one we’d all talked to, trying to bolster his confidence and save him from getting thrown out.
At first I thought the moral would be the usual “trust no one.” But the real point soon became clear. That people will only talk voluntarily if they don’t perceive a threat. Tongues will only wag when people believe they’re in a position of strength.
Even if, in reality, they’re not.
You could see the surprise creep across both agents’ faces when we reached the elevators and Taylor hit the UP button. They fought it back, and gave nothing more away for thirty seconds. Then surprise turned to confusion when the doors opened and Taylor stepped inside.
“Don’t play poker, do you?” he said, as the Tungsten guys herded the agents in behind him. “What did you expect? Down?”
He hit the button for the fourteenth floor.
“But don’t worry,” he said. “Your backup buddies won’t be hanging around long. Any minute now they’re going hear about my car getting spotted on the FDR. They’ll go after it. Chase shadows the rest of the night. Last place they’ll look for you is right here, in the same building.”
The elevator doors opened and Taylor led the way down the corridor. He stopped halfway along. Two of his guys took the agents into 1410. Taylor slipped his satchel off his shoulder and let himself into 1412. That left me alone with the two guys who had done the shooting. The silencers were gone and their. 38s were safely holstered. It was a tempting moment. But Taylor’s confidence was sky-high, and I wanted to keep it that way. I checked my watch. It was 2:34. No time to cover any ground twice.
The guy who’d done the rabbit impression was the first to move. He produced a key and opened the door to 1414. A light flickered on from inside the room. The other guy took my elbow and guided me through, in front of him. He steered me past the thin wooden closet and kept shoving until we reached the foot of the double bed. The rabbit guy was standing on the other side, looking around at the furniture. Then he took hold of a dressing-table chair, picked it up, and thoroughly checked it over.
“An elephant couldn’t break it,” he said. “Bring him.”
I sat down on the chair. Between them the two guys bound my wrists and ankles to its metal frame. They used four of the cable ties they’d taken from me, downstairs. Each one checked the other’s work, pulling all the ties a couple of clicks tighter. They dumped the rest of my possessions-the gun I’d inherited from Lesley’s guy, one last cable tie, my wallet, ID, room key, and key to Tanya’s apartment-on the dressing table. Then they perched on the bed behind me.
I couldn’t help wondering if Tanya was tied up somewhere, as well. Attached to a chair, like me. Or still strapped to one of Lesley’s trolleys…
“Is there a kettle in here?” I said. “I could really use a coffee.”
No one answered.
A picture of Lesley’s shiny wooden box crept into my mind. I could almost hear her voice. All her talk of volts and amps…
“Room service?” I said. “Maybe a snack, while we’re waiting?”
Neither of the guys replied. They seemed happy to just sit in silence. I couldn’t see my watch, but ten or eleven minutes must have crawled past without any activity. I stared at the wall and tried to fend off all the images that kept forming in my head. Then I heard a light knocking sound. It was coming from a door in the side wall, between the closet and dressing table. The rabbit guy jumped to his feet and opened it. A man stepped through. His hair was combed back and he was wearing a black suit with wide chalk pinstripes, like a Chicago gangster. It took me a moment to recognize who it was.
“Taylor?” I said. “What the hell have you got on?”
He came over and stood next to me.
“You struck me as a smart guy when we talked before,” he said. “So I’ll level with you. I’m looking for a little bonus. Some information.”
“Information only I have?”
“No. Several people have it. But you could save me the trouble.”
“I could save you some trouble. My lifelong ambition. And if I give you this information, I go free?”
“No. You die. In this room. In around thirty minutes’ time.”
“Well, then, it may just be me, but I’m not really seeing much of an incentive.”
Taylor went back into his room and reappeared ten seconds later carrying an old-fashioned doctor’s case. The brown leather was worn into holes where it folded and the metal clasp at the top clearly didn’t work anymore. Taylor laid it down on the dressing table and levered it open. He took out a glass vial full of a clear, colorless liquid and placed it next to the bag. Then he pulled out a brass syringe. It was huge. He curled two fingers around the curved flanges on the side of its wide body, slipped his thumb into the loop at the end of the plunger, and held it out at arm’s length.
“Trying to compensate for something?” I said.
“Bigger than average, I know,” he said. “It’s European. An antique. It came from some old veterinarian, over there. Holds eighty milliliters. More than you really need for humans. But when I go to work with this baby, you don’t need to worry about air bubbles. Because you know what I’ll be injecting.”
He tapped the needle against the top of the vial.
“Is that the stuff you implanted in your patients?”
Taylor nodded.
“Then you can’t use it on me,” I said.
“Oh?” he said. “Why not?”
“You’d end up with 321 victims. One too many. Ruin the symbolism. Everyone would laugh at you.”
Taylor smiled.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “My guys will sit you in the bath, first. Your blood will just trickle away down the drain like watered-down cranberry juice. No one will know. Except you, obviously. If you force us down that road.”
I didn’t reply.
“We don’t have to go that way,” he said. “You could be sensible.”
I took a moment to glance up at Taylor. I could feel the time slipping away from me. I wanted to move on him. Find out what he knew. But I could see it was too soon. He wasn’t ready for the close. I only had one chance. I couldn’t afford to blow it. And I still needed a way to free myself from the chair.
“I never really did well with sensible,” I said.
“Maybe I can change you mind.”
“You can try. But I have to warn you. It wouldn’t be the first time. And it’s never worked before.”
Taylor put the syringe down on the dressing table. Then he stretched across, picked up my gun, checked it was loaded, and placed it carefully on the other side of the vial.
“There,” he said. “Have a look at your choices.”
He reached down to my left wrist and unfastened my watch.
“He can’t escape?” he said.
“No,” the rabbit guy said.
“The ties. They’re tight enough?”
“They are.”
“The chair. He can’t break it?”
“No.”
Taylor added the watch to the collection of items in front of me, laying it down so that one of the straps was touching the syringe and the other was nestling against the barrel of the gun.
“We’re going next door, now,” he said, picking up his bag. “There’s something we need to do. It’ll take us ten minutes. That’ll give you time, on your own. To think. Then you can tell me how you’d like your life to end.”