CHAPTER 25
Eliza
◆
The penthouse is awake at ten in the morning the way a house is awake when nobody in it slept more than four hours, which is to say: the coffee is too hot, the cups have been refilled twice already, and nobody has said anything that is not necessary.
I am at the marble island in the dove-gray wool trousers I have not worn since the cage was new.
Cream silk blouse. The brass pencil clipped at my left collar.
The peacoat is on the hook by the foyer; I had it sent back from the Hawthorne apartment with Henrik on the Day-Twelve retrieval and I have not put it on since.
I am going to put it on tonight. I do not know that yet at ten in the morning.
I know it by seven in the evening. The body learns the route before the mind does.
Julian is across the island in a charcoal shirt without a tie.
He has the brand pulsing cold under his cuff again; I do not need to ask.
The cold of it has come up the inside of his left forearm and laid against his sternum like a second pulse, and I can read it in the way he is holding the espresso cup with two fingers instead of three.
Adrienne is in her Patek pocket watch — the wound is fresh from yesterday's water-taxi; the seconds tick under the candle of the kitchen pendant; she sets the watch back inside her jacket without comment.
Sebastian is at the south window of the great room, looking at the harbor, his Sig at his right hip and his cutlass left at the Tessellate because we did not need to look like soldiers coming home.
Henrik is on the lobby. Helene is in her quarters writing the medical brief for the Friday vote.
"The vote was Saturday at eleven," Adrienne says. "Konstantin's absence per protocol delays one day. Eleven Monday."
"He will not let the vote stand," Julian says.
"No."
"He will move before."
"Yes."
"How will he strike?" I ask.
Julian sets the espresso cup down. The two fingers go to the white porcelain of the saucer. "He will come for me. He has no other move. The seat is gone whether he sits in the room or not. He has to make the seat moot. That means me dead before eleven o'clock Monday morning."
"And Marcus?"
He looks at me. The pale gray of his eyes is winter sky over the Atlantic and it does not blink. "Marcus is the secondary target. We have to assume yes."
I put the coffee down. The cup is the Royal Crown Derby with the small chip on the rim that I drink from on principle because Adrienne offered to replace it Sunday before the Tessellate and I said no, I like it.
The chip is on the side away from my mouth.
I drink black with two raw sugars. The sugar is in the bowl beside me.
I stir it twice with the small silver spoon and watch the small spiral.
The auditor watches the small spiral. The auditor is what holds when the rest of me does not.
"Then the call," Adrienne says, "will come today or tomorrow."
"Today," Julian says. "He has Atticus on a line. He had the contractor queued yesterday. He has had twenty-four hours."
"I will have Henrik double the lobby," I say.
The voice comes out level. "I will go to my study.
I will have the brass pencil. I will not leave the penthouse.
If Marcus —" My mouth pauses on the if. The auditor closes the if and replaces it with a unit.
"If the call comes I want Sebastian on Pippa within thirty minutes. "
"Done," Sebastian says from the window.
Julian does not say anything. His left hand opens once on the marble. The brand is talking under the cuff and he is listening.
I go to the study.
---
The hours from twelve to four o'clock walk by like a column of figures I am not allowed to add yet.
I sit at the Bloomberg terminal in the converted vault and I open Volume Eight of the leather-bound ledger appendix and I read the routing entries one more time, slowly, in the way I read a chart in a hospital when I do not yet know what I am looking for.
The numbers do not move. The numbers are good.
The audit-hash chain is in the Faraday safe one floor below and on the encrypted USB-C in my own safe behind me at the combination eighteen-forty-seven-eighty-nine.
The Sargent reproduction at my own apartment is on its hook three miles east. The wall safe behind it holds the second backup hash I had not yet brought across.
I had meant to bring it across last week.
I had not. The auditor is the woman who keeps a redundancy off-site because she does not trust the universe to leave one safe standing.
The auditor is also the woman whose redundancy is now three miles east on the wrong side of the city tonight.
At three minutes past four the brass pencil cap comes off in my fingers.
I do not remember taking it off. I set it back on, off, on, off.
I press the eraser. I stop pressing the eraser.
The terminal cursor blinks at me twice a second and the cursor is the only thing in the room that has anywhere to be.
At eight minutes past four the sat-phone vibrates on the desk.
I look at it. The screen says PIPPA.
I pick it up. The plastic is warm in my hand and the warmth is wrong because the room is cool. The warmth is me.
"Pippa."
"Eliza. " Pippa's voice is flat the way water is flat when the wind has gone out from over it. "Marcus is dead. His office. Two shots. I just found him. I called 911."
The room steps back from me one full pace. The Bloomberg cursor blinks twice. The brass pencil is in my left hand. The right hand is on the sat-phone. The sat-phone is at my ear. The auditor speaks. The auditor goes more precise, not less. The auditor names the units.
"Pippa. Do not touch anything. Wait for the police.
When the police arrive, tell them you are Eliza Quinn's junior analyst; do not name me beyond that.
After the police clear you, leave the building immediately.
Sebastian will pick you up at the corner of Fitzroy and Third at seventeen-thirty.
He will take you to a safe place tonight.
Trust him. Pippa, I am very sorry. I owe you.
I will tell you everything when this is over. Stay alive for me tonight. Yes?"
"Yes. Yes. Yes. " The flat voice cracks once on the third yes. "Eliza. Yes."
The line goes.
I do not move. I sit at the Bloomberg terminal in the converted vault on the forty-fifth floor of a granite tower three blocks west of where my mentor's body is on the carpet of his fourth-floor office at two hundred Fitzroy Street, and I do not move, and the cursor blinks, and the small silver spoon is across the room on the marble island where I left it.
Marcus, who pitched me the engagement on the eighteenth of November in the boardroom on the third floor of two hundred Fitzroy Street, under the original 1924 stained-glass skylight that throws cobalt blue and yellow and red onto the long oak table at noon.
Marcus who said I want the best forensic auditor in the city, kid, and I am told that is you.
Marcus who was paid by Julian without knowing it and would not have taken less from any client.
Marcus who has a wife named Margaret and two adult children he keeps photographs of in a brass frame on his desk, and the photographs are now in a room with a body and two shots and a small red blossom on the wool of his lapel where the dot of the.
45 went through, and Pippa is on her feet in the doorway with her hand in her hair and the takeout coffee from the lobby cart still in her other hand.
I set the sat-phone on the desk.
I stand.
I walk to the door of the study. I open it. Sebastian is in the corridor. He has the earpiece in and the earpiece has been live since I sat down at the terminal at noon. He is already moving toward the elevator.
"Fitzroy and Third," I say. "Seventeen-thirty. Pippa."
"Yes."
"Take her to the rail apartment with Cora. Get Henrik to put two on them. Do not lose her."
"Yes."
"Sebastian."
He stops. The pale blue eyes go to me. The military-short dark blond hair has the trace of silver at the temple that has been there since 1812 and the rust of sun across the cheekbones that has been there longer.
"Pippa is twenty-six. She passed the CPA two weeks ago. She is mine. Do not lose her."
"Eliza. " He has called me Eliza since the night Ines went down in the lobby on Day Twenty-Nine and he is going to call me Eliza forever. "I will not lose her."
He goes.
I walk to the kitchen.
Julian is at the island with the espresso cup empty and the two fingers gone to three on the porcelain because the brand has stopped its talking for a moment to let him hear what is in my face.
"Marcus," I say.
"Yes."
"Pippa is on her way out. Sebastian has her at seventeen-thirty."
"Yes."
"He killed Marcus to break the audit chain in mortal evidence. He thinks if the custodian is gone the chain is gone. He does not understand mortal evidence."
"No," Julian says, very low. "He does not."
I put both hands flat on the marble. The marble is cold under my palms. The chip on the Royal Crown Derby cup is on the side away from my mouth and the small spiral of dissolved sugar at the bottom of the empty cup has gone still.
"There is a backup hash of the audit-hash chain at my apartment," I say. "I keep a wall safe behind the Sargent reproduction over my desk. It is one of two backups. The other is in your Faraday at the Vault Room. I want the apartment one. I want it tonight."
He does not move. The pale gray watches me.
"You will not go alone."
"I will not. Sebastian."
"Sebastian and Henrik. I will go too."