Part 2 A Test #4
Right then, Merritt Garrett got it.
‘. . . who in the dropship scene enthusiastically said, “We’re on an express elevator to Hell!”’ he said.
I turned to the building’s superintendent, Lenny, as he arrived at the elevator’s doors, panting.
‘Sir, I need you to open these doors right now so we can check the underside of the express elevator.’
My watch ticked over to 12:04.
Sixty seconds.
Lenny the superintendent prised open the outer elevator doors an inch, reached up inside the rim of the doorframe and flicked a release switch allowing us to pull the doors fully open with ease.
I leaned cautiously through the doorway and peered down: 94 storeys of empty shaft dropped away from me into shadowy infinity.
Then I turned and looked up.
And saw them.
‘Holy shit . . .’ I breathed.
THE EXPRESS ELEVATOR
They were hanging by their feet from the bottom of the express elevator, upside-down above the abyss-like drop.
A six-year-old boy and his bodyguard.
Their hands were bound behind their backs and they were both gagged with silver duct tape.
Their ankles hung from the elevator’s underside thanks to . . .
. . . gravity boots.
The same hooked ankle sheaths that Aristo King used to hang upside-down to allegedly improve his mental acuity.
A little flourish from our villain, I thought.
The fourteen-foot ceilings of the three-level apartment didn’t help the situation: it meant that the boy and the bodyguard hung well out of our reach, high above us.
When they saw me silhouetted in the doorway of the elevator shaft, they both started shouting soundlessly through their gags and struggling against their bonds.
The boy’s face was streaked with tears.
‘Alexei,’ I said. ‘It’s Alexei, right? Stop wriggling, buddy. If you move too much, you might fall.’
The boy stopped struggling and nodded, whimpering behind his gag.
As for the bodyguard, he was a big burly guy. His eyes were locked on mine, wide with terror.
I frowned.
Something was stuck to their gags.
A white sticker of some kind with—I blinked to be sure—a QR code on it.
They both also had something around their necks.
‘Are they dog collars?’ Audrey said.
‘Yes,’ I said slowly. ‘Only what’s that little box on each collar—’
And then it came again.
The voice.
The same cultured male voice we’d heard earlier from the drone’s speaker.
Only now it came from the small black cube-shaped boxes attached to the dog collars around the boy’s and the bodyguard’s throats: they were speakers.
‘Golly gee, that was exciting. Congratulations, Dr Speedman, you made it in the nick of time. This is Alexei King, aged six, and his bodyguard, Mr Nick Blakeney.’
I said nothing but I thought: He knows it was me who solved the riddle.
He must have cameras in here . . .
He’s watching us . . .
‘Can you hear me?’ I said.
‘Yes.’
‘What do you want now? I completed your challenge in time.’
All the other private detectives, FBI people and NYPD cops were piling down the stairs behind my little group.
Special Agent Hooper and his boss, Longmuir, shoved up beside me in the doorway at the edge of the shaft, the other three detectives close behind.
The voice chuckled.
‘Well, now I want you to pay. Mr King makes approximately $20 million a day in interest on his bitcoin holdings alone. I want Mr King’s assistant, Ms Kimura, to send me a single day’s worth of that interest—$20 million in bitcoin—using the QR code attached to Mr Blakeney’s mouth gag.
‘Do it within sixty seconds or I drop Mr Blakeney ninety-four floors to his death. After that, we will negotiate for the boy’s life.
‘If you try to remove him or Mr Blakeney from their positions, I drop them both.
‘Your time starts . . . now.’
I turned to Special Agent Hooper and Director Longmuir who both spun to face King’s executive assistant, the diminutive Ms Kimura.
‘Well?’ Longmuir said to the young woman in her sleek suit and heels.
She stammered, blinking quickly. ‘I mean . . . well . . . Mr King has . . . insurance for this kind of thing . . . maybe we should talk to their guy—’
‘Forty-five seconds, folks . . .’ the Tech Detect said. He’d started a stopwatch when the voice had said our time had begun.
At that moment, the well-dressed insurance guy Quinn McCade stepped forward.
‘What do you need?’
‘Can we . . . can we pay twenty million dollars?’ Ms Kimura asked.
Longmuir said, ‘Are you fucking kidding me? We don’t have time for an insurance assessment!’
Ms Kimura swallowed, staring at McCade.
In her chic outfit, this wasn’t what she was used to at all.
She was used to being the Hand of the King, the world’s richest man’s aide. I imagined on any given day she wielded considerable power; she could call the CEO of any major American corporation—heck, the White House—and be put through.
But not today.
Here, now, she was out of her depth.
She clutched her iPad to her chest.
McCade said formally, ‘Our Kidnapping & Ransom policy only covers Mr King and his immediate and/or biological family members. Not employees.’
I was stunned. ‘Are you saying you won’t pay to save the bodyguard?’
McCade stiffened, raised his chin a little higher. ‘This is not my call. I’m just representing the interests of Sinclair & Loewe.’
He cocked his head at Mia Kimura. ‘There’s nothing stopping her from paying the ransom from Mr King’s own funds.’
All eyes turned to the personal assistant again.
‘Thirty seconds . . .’
‘Miss,’ I said gently. ‘Can you make bitcoin payments from King’s personal account with that iPad?’
She nodded rapidly. ‘Yes, yeah, I can.’
I said, ‘You know, I think it might be a good idea to pay up on this occasion, till we know what we’re dealing with.’
‘I don’t . . . Mr King . . . he told me, in an extortion situation, that I should . . .’
Audrey grabbed my arm and pulled me aside. ‘You think he’ll drop the bodyguard?’
‘Yes.’ I had no doubt.
I heard Director Longmuir whisper to Hooper: ‘You think he’s bluffing?’
‘If she doesn’t do something soon, we’ll find out,’ Hooper replied.
Director Longmuir got stern with the woman. ‘Ms Kimura, we don’t have time for this! We need you to pay now—’
She looked hard at him, pursing her lips.
Regripped her iPad . . .
. . . and dropped it.
It clattered to the floor.
‘Fifteen seconds . . . fourteen . . .’ the Tech Detect said.
Longmuir and Ms Kimura scrambled for the iPad.
I looked over at the bodyguard hanging from the underside of the elevator.
He was sweating bullets, his eyes pleading.
‘Okay, okay, let me do it,’ Ms Kimura said. She started tapping on the iPad, then aimed it up at the bodyguard, at the QR code on his gag.
‘Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . .’
‘She’s not going to make the transfer in time,’ I whispered to Audrey.
Ms Kimura tapped some more. ‘I just have to access Mr King’s bitcoin wallet—’
‘Five . . . four . . . three . . .’
‘Hurry up,’ Hooper urged.
‘. . . two . . . one . . . time.’
The countdown expired and—bang!-bang!—two small explosive charges went off near the bodyguard’s feet.
They were tiny blasts, just strong enough to blow off the plastic hooks of his two gravity boots and . . .
. . . to my horror, to everyone’s horror . . .
. . . the bodyguard detached from the elevator . . .
. . . and with a muffled shout through his gag, he fell into darkness, his wide eyes locking on to mine as he dropped away into the bottomless shaft.
Only it wasn’t bottomless.
Ten seconds later, a sickening thud echoed up the shaft.
‘Fucking hell,’ Audrey said.
We all stood in stunned silence at the edge of the shaft.
Audrey didn’t move.
Special Agent Hooper’s mouth hung open.
Director Longmuir was staring into the middle distance, no doubt composing the report he would have to write about this later.
Even the asshole insurance guy, McCade, looked shaken.
But Ms Kimura took it the worst.
She began to babble. ‘I didn’t know he’d actually drop him . . . I mean, I—’
Then the voice returned, this time from the little speaker attached to the boy’s collar.
‘Really? Wow. You let that poor man die over an amount of money that Mr King would hardly even notice?
‘Anyhoo, then. Let’s see what you’ll do for the boy.
‘Oh, and my price just went up by twenty million dollars.
‘$40 million. In bitcoin. Sixty seconds. Your time starts now.’
With his boss Director Longmuir watching, now Special Agent Trey Hooper took charge.
He rounded on Quinn McCade. ‘Okay, insurance guy. Do you pay this time?’
Now it was McCade’s turn to look totally flustered. Gone was the cool confidence with which he’d dismissed the life of the bodyguard.
He pulled out his phone. ‘I’ll . . . I’ll have to call the office. I’m not authorised to remit a payment that large.’
‘Make your fucking call,’ Hooper barked. ‘While you do that, we’ll try another option.’
As McCade stepped away to speak into his phone, Hooper snatched Ms Kimura’s iPad from her and said, ‘All right, lady, this amount of money is nothing to your boss. What do you say we pay the extortionist now and get it back later?’
Ms Kimura stared at the elevator shaft but said nothing.
Tears ran down her face.
She was catatonic, frozen.
‘Miss Kimura!’ Hooper yelled.
‘Trey . . .’ Audrey said. ‘She’s freaked out—’
‘Fifty seconds . . .’ the Tech Detect said, once again our timekeeper.
Hooper turned to check on the insurance guy, McCade. ‘Well?!’