Part 4 Chess Moves #2
As the NYPD detective checked his dead people, Garrett and I bent to examine the body of Winnie Tan’s bodyguard.
Drenched in blood, the man’s chest had literally been blown outwards by all the bullets.
Entry wounds are small, exit wounds are big and burst out: he’d been shot in the back.
And his gun, like those of the others, was still in its holster.
‘Shot from behind with an automatic weapon,’ Garrett said. ‘Entry wounds look like 9mm, so maybe MP5SD.’
‘He never even got his gun out. Neither did the cops,’ I said. ‘This is serious firepower, with silencers. It’s . . .’
My voice trailed off as I fully digested the ramifications of this development.
It was ominous, is what it was.
Our killer—or killers—had snuck up on the two bodyguards and the cops from behind and opened fire on them on full auto, with silencers.
It was beyond ruthless.
It was pitiless.
Few people in the world are capable of such unfeeling violence—
Thump.
A soft whump made everyone spin.
It had come from the walk-in pantry in the kitchen.
We converged on it quickly, all our guns up.
Hooper gripped his service pistol, edgy and nervous. He yanked open the door—
—to reveal the little boy, Alexei, bound and gagged with duct tape, looking up into the barrels of all our guns.
Hooper almost shot the kid, but thankfully didn’t.
‘Move it, Eliot Ness.’ Heidi pushed past Hooper and bent to untie and comfort the petrified boy.
I exhaled and turned to the Tech Detect. ‘What was it you found?’
He was glancing from the boy to all the blood. I don’t think Monty Woods got out in the field very often.
‘Uh, what, sorry?’ he said.
‘Heidi said you found something interesting.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ he said. ‘I recorded that voice earlier, when he was giving us the first riddle. It sounded almost too clean and clear, so I ran it through a voiceprint analyser. It’s completely digital, created by a real-time AI algorithm.
The speaker speaks and the program recreates what he or she says in that voice. ’
‘So, the speaker could be a man or a woman or even multiple people?’ I said. ‘But the voice we hear stays the same?’
‘Correct.’
Audrey said, ‘Our opponent or opponents also just used the second riddle as a distraction for this one. Killed all these men and took the wives from right under our noses. He’s toying with us.’
‘So where are the two wives?’ Hooper asked.
‘They can’t be far,’ Xiao said. ‘This only happened in the last ten to fifteen minutes.’
Director Longmuir turned to the insurance guy, Quinn McCade. ‘Does your board pay out for King’s wives?’
McCade scowled. ‘I’ll call them now, so we’re ready this time.’
Merritt Garrett turned to me. ‘The new riddle was: You can’t laugh without me. You can’t hate without me. I’m silent even when I’m in an orchestra.’
In a flash, I saw the solution.
Either the riddles were getting easier, or I was getting better at solving them.
‘I know the answer,’ I said.
‘What is it?’ Longmuir said.
‘The letter h,’ I said. ‘It’s in the words laugh and hate and it’s silent in the word orchestra.’
‘But what does that mean here?’ Hooper said.
‘What have we seen in this building that starts with the letter h or which has a great big H on it?’ I said. ‘The helipad.’
A few minutes later, the elevator arrived on the roof and we poured out of it . . .
. . . to see a bloodied body slumped in our path.
It was the FBI chopper’s co-pilot.
He was dead, shot many times in the chest.
We dashed past his body, up onto the helipad . . .
. . . and saw it.
‘Jesus God in Heaven,’ Director Longmuir said.
The chopper was no longer on the helipad.
Now it hung precariously off the edge of the roof at a shocking angle, nose down, tail up, 98 storeys above the world.
The four ratchet-straps that had previously secured it to the helipad had been reconfigured so that—instead of being attached to brackets on the chopper’s belly—they were all now looped around the tail of the helicopter.
The long canvas straps were thus extended to their very limits from the four tie-down studs on the helipad.
The chopper’s bubble-shaped windshield was cracked and spattered with blood. The dead pilot was slumped in his seat, strapped in, his head bowed, unmoving.
And inside the dangling helicopter with him—still very much alive, but bound and held in place by seatbelts in the back—were Aristo King’s first and third wives, Winnie Tan and Yasmina King.
THE CHOPPER ON THE ROOF
Director Longmuir’s phone rang.
He answered it.
‘Excellent, you found them,’ the voice said pleasantly. ‘Call me romantic, but how can anyone put a price on love? Let alone the loves of Mr King’s life?
‘Let’s do it anyway.
‘We should start with the first Mrs King, Winnie Tan.
‘Let’s go up another twenty million and charge $80 million for Winnie’s life. Send it to the same bitcoin wallet as before within two minutes and I release her.
‘If you don’t send the money in time, I drop the helicopter.’
Still holding his phone, Longmuir turned to Quinn McCade.
‘Two minutes, insurance guy. You have one.’
McCade was already on his phone. He relayed the kidnapper’s demands to his board.
I looked from him to the dangling helicopter, thinking.
‘Hmmm . . .’ I said aloud.
Audrey heard me. ‘What is it, Sam?’
‘I’m thinking about patterns. This is escalating. And he’s already shown us that this isn’t about the money. The money’s an amusing sideshow. He wants to kill these people.’
Hooper said, ‘Mr McCade . . .?’
‘Yes, thank you!’ McCade said forcefully into his phone before holding it to his chest. ‘The board has approved the payout for Ms Tan! $80 million is being transferred right now.’
Longmuir raised his own phone. ‘You hear that? Your ransom’s on the way.’
The voice said, ‘Thank you. I see it just landed in my account. You may retrieve Ms Tan.’
In the helicopter, I saw Winnie Tan’s four-point seatbelt abruptly open by itself, unbuckled via a remote.
Hooper and Audrey hustled to the helicopter tilted over the edge of the rooftop, climbed onto its landing strut and opened the rear door.
I lingered close behind them.
Hooper reached in and pulled the now unrestrained Winnie Tan out. Winnie walked groggily, dazedly.
‘What about her?’ she yelled above the wind, nodding back at Yasmina.
‘We can only take you at this time!’ Hooper shouted as he guided her to the safety of the helipad.
Audrey stayed on the landing strut and leaned into the rear cabin of the chopper, calling to Yasmina King. ‘Hang tight, ma’am! We’re on the phone to the extortionist now!’
‘Please . . . hurry . . .’ Yasmina yelled.
Hooper, Audrey, Ms Tan and I rejoined Director Longmuir on the helipad as we heard Longmuir say into his phone: ‘All right, you bastard. How much for the other wife?’
The voice replied pleasantly, ‘How about we add another twenty million? $100 million for the current Mrs King seems like a good price. Two minutes.’
‘Mr McCade . . .’ Longmuir yelled above the gusting wind.
McCade once again turned his body against the wind so he could consult with his board on his cell phone.
I watched him as he listened.
Then he blanched.
‘Are you serious?’ McCade said. ‘Say again?’
As he listened, his face went white.
He turned to Longmuir. ‘We got a problem.’
‘What?’
‘Mr King’s K they were unpainted since nobody but maintenance folk would ever come here.
I saw it instantly.
Over by the north side.
The nose of the chopper.
It was dipping into view outside one of the open-air windows there.
As I ran toward it, I pulled out my cell phone and speed-dialled Audrey.
‘How long to go?’ I asked.
‘One minute,’ she answered.
‘Still three straps holding up the chopper?’
‘Yeah. For now. Where are you?’
‘You don’t want to know.’
I hung up and jammed my phone in my pocket as I raced through the rows of shadowy concrete pillars, heading for the building’s north face.
The dark rows of pillars flashed past me.
As I whipped past one row, however, I glimpsed movement off to my right.