Jack turned off the headlamp. Then, with his right arm extended ahead and his left arm close against his side, he squeezed himself diagonally into the duct.
Tight. Very tight.
Now he truly appreciated what Dud had meant about claustrophobia being a deterrent to hacking.
Slowly, silently, he inched forward until he had about eighty percent of the office in view.
A plump, red-haired man in a white shirt—Gordon Haffner, Jack hoped—sat behind the desk, talking on the phone. Jack could hear him perfectly. As he watched, two other men entered. Jack recognized one from the van on Thursday night: Thomas Clayton. The other was new—dark-skinned, dark-haired, bearded, very intense-looking, with an accent from somewhere in the Middle East.
Jack smiled. He figured he was looking at Thomas Clayton's backer—the guy who was killing anyone who stood between him and the Clayton House. Excellent. Now, if they'd all just be so good as to discuss exactly why they wanted the house so badly, Jack could get the hell out of here.
But they didn't. They talked about Alicia and how they hoped she'd come up with a sale price this morning so they could settle the matter of ownership, but the reason was never mentioned.
And what was Thomas doing here? Sean had told Haffner that Alicia didn't want her brother present at the meeting. But here he was, and the clock was ticking, getting close to nine-thirty. He was sure Alicia would pop her cork if she saw him here. This was no way to get her to cooperate. What were they thinking?
And then Haffner's intercom buzzed, announcing "Mr. O'Neill and Ms. Clayton." Haffner got up, slipped on his suit jacket, and said he'd be back as soon as he finished speaking to her.
Jack's head jerked up and almost struck the ceiling of the duct.
What?
The meeting was supposed to be in Haffner's office, just the other side of the register. Where the hell was he going?
Not that the meeting itself mattered. Alicia could fill him in later on anything important. Jack had crawled through these ducts to hear the postmortem. If he had any chance of picking up some choice tidbits of unguarded conversation about the Clayton house, that would be the time.
But if the meeting was being held somewhere else, so might the postmortem.
He listened awhile to hear if Thomas and his Middle Eastern wallet man would drop anything worthwhile, but they didn't seem to be buddies: Thomas read the paper while the stranger stood at the window and stared at the street below.
Jack eased back into the larger duct and checked out his options.
2
"What are we doing here?" Alicia said as Gordon Haffner ushered them into a mahogany-paneled conference room.
"Having a meeting," Haffner said. He looked confused as he laid a file folder on the gleaming surface of the oval mahogany table. "Isn't that why you called? To have a meeting?"
"We met in your office last time, so I thought—"
"This is much roomier."
Alicia glanced at Sean O'Neill, who replied with a barely perceptible shrug.
"Is something wrong?" Haffner said.
Yes, but Alicia couldn't tell him what. They'd set up this meeting to allow Jack to identify Thomas's backers. But what if the backers met in here instead of Haffner's office after the meeting? Jack would be eavesdropping on an empty room.
If she demanded to meet in Haffner's office, would that make him suspicious? And what would that accomplish if the backers were set to meet here afterward?
Jack needed to know about this conference room. And she could think of only one way to do that.
"Wrong?" Alicia said, letting her voice rise. "You want to know if something's wrong! Let me tell you what's wrong!" She raised the volume, pushing it to a shout. "Your client, my half brother Thomas Clayton, is what's wrong! Do you have any idea what kind of a slug you're representing? Do you know what he did to me Thursday night?"
She saw O'Neill turn her way and give her a quick smile and a wink.
But as she started in on the details of her abduction, she found she no longer needed to force the volume, or act angry. Suddenly the rage was real and her pitch rose.
Gordon Haffner's face went a little pale, and Sean O'Neill's smile faded.
Alicia heard her own voice… screaming…
3
You're beautiful, Alicia.
Jack smiled as he watched her wind down from her tirade. He'd been crouched outside the return from Haffner's office, pondering his next move, when he'd heard a woman screaming. He hadn't recognized the voice—a scream was a scream—but he'd followed the sound. After all, no one should be screaming in an attorney's office, unless maybe it was a client who'd just got a bill.
A few turns this way and that, and here she was, sliced by the louvers of a register high in the wall of some sort of conference room, doing a very convincing Screaming Mimi.
Finally, she began losing steam. As she wound down, Jack eased back into the larger duct and positioned himself facing the way he'd come. He turned on his headlamp and narrowed the beam to check his watch. Barely past nine-thirty. He'd be back on the street before eleven—hopefully with the answers to some of his questions.
All he had to do was wait until the meeting was over, then see where the other side chose to hash over Alicia's proposal.
*
Jack didn't have to wait long or go far. Sean presented Alicia's asking price of ten million dollars, Haffner expressed shock—genuine, Jack was sure—then tried to bargain her down. But Alicia held firm and finally Haffner said, Thenk-yew-veddy-much, and the room emptied out.
Jack gave them a few minutes, and was about to crawl back toward Haffner's office when he heard the conference door open.
"You can have the room as long as you want," Haffner said. "I'll be in my office should you need me."
Jack wedged himself into the duct in time to see the door close, leaving Thomas and the Middle East guy together. Neither sat down.
"Ten million," Thomas said, shaking his head in what might have been admiration. "Christ, she's got balls." He glanced at his companion. "Well, Kemel, what's it going to be? Are your people going to go for it?"
"I do not see that we have a choice," the guy called Kemel said. His accent was definitely Middle East, but his English had a faintly British accent. He spoke rapidly, clipping his words.
"You've got to be kidding! You heard Haffner. He's sure he can get the will set aside. Ten million for that place? That's crazy."
Jack too was shocked. He'd hauled that asking price out of the air, never dreaming they'd even consider it.
"My people want this matter settled. It has dragged on too long. And after all, what is ten million against what we will gain by keeping it out of the wrong hands? A pittance."
The wrong hands? Jack thought, mentally rubbing his own hands together. He was hot, sweaty, and cramped, but suddenly that no longer mattered. Now we're getting to the good stuff. Keep going.
"A pittance to you, maybe. But a hell of a lot of money for something that might not be there."
"If it is not, it is of no loss to you. It is not your money."
"Yeah, but then Alicia will be a millionaire and I'll have zilch. Less than zilch. I quit my job to help you with this."
"You are being well compensated. And don't forget that you will have the house—after all, we are buying it in your name."
"Yeah…the house," Thomas said. "What's left of it. I mean, we've turned the insides upside down—at least as upside down as you can without making it obvious—and we've come up empty-handed. We push it much further and we risk getting arrested for trespassing and vandalism."
"There is something there," Kemel said. "Perhaps not the plans and diagrams themselves, but if not, then I believe it is reasonable to assume that your father left some clue as to their whereabouts."
"That's becoming an expensive assumption."
"The will all but says so. One cannot ignore your father's message to that ecology group—what is it called?"
"Greenpeace."
"Yes. Greenpeace. Such a strange concept. We have no such groups in my land. But your father, he said, 'This house holds the key that points the way to all you wish to achieve. Sell it and you lose everything you've worked for.' That to me is proof enough that the house is hiding something."
"Fine. But we've got to find it."
"Have no fear. We will find it. As soon as the house is ours, we will begin a most thorough search, breaking down the walls if necessary. And if we still have not found it, we will dismantle the house brick by brick, beam by beam, until we succeed."
"And if we don't?"
"At least we will have prevented others from finding it and using it."
"Yeah, but then I don't get my payday."
"Well, certainly you would not expect us to buy something that you do not have. Would you?"
Thomas shrugged. "What's our next step?"
"I contact my superiors to approve the purchase price—a mere formality, I assure you—and then we let Mr. Haffner arrange the details."
"Ten million bucks," Thomas said, shaking his head as he'd done when this little tete-a-tete started. "Well, I guess I should be thankful my dear sister has no inkling what we're after. If she did, she'd be asking ten million per brick."
"Yes," Kemel said. "And that would still be a bargain."
He's got to be exaggerating, Jack thought. But somehow he doubted it.
As he lay there wondering what the hell could be worth so damn much and be small enough to hide in a house, he noticed Thomas and Kemel heading for the door.
Jack felt like singing that old Peggy Lee song, "Is That All There Is?"
What had he learned here?
Well, he'd seen Kemel. That was something. And he'd learned that whatever was in the Clayton house was damn near priceless to some very rich folks from the Middle East. And he'd learned that Thomas's people weren't the only ones interested in it. They were concerned about it falling into "the wrong hands." Whose hands were the "wrong" hands? He didn't think they meant Alicia's. Another Middle East power? Israel? Or someone else?
But he'd hoped for more, especially after risking his butt in an elevator shaft, sweating and crawling through filthy heating ducts, and wedging himself into spaces where he could barely breathe.
He cursed them for being so damn oblique. What was this mysterious it? Why couldn't they just come out and say what was in the house? He grinned—hell, it wasn't as if anybody was listening in on them.
But maybe the it they were after was so important, so valuable, that they instinctively avoided referring to it by name.
As Jack wiped some sweat from his eyes, his overall sleeve caught the lens on his headlamp and knocked it off. He snatched at it but it slipped from his fingers and landed with a clunk on the floor of the duct.
Jack froze as Kemel stopped at the threshold and whirled.
"What was that?"
"What was what?" Thomas said, poking his head back in from the hall.
"That noise." Kemel was moving around the conference table and heading for Jack's position. "It came from over there. From that heating vent, I think."
Jack grabbed the lens and slid back as far as he could without completely withdrawing from the duct. He didn't think he could do that without making more noise, so he lay silent and waited.
He held his breath as a bearded face popped into view beyond the louvers.
"It came from in here," Kemel said. "I am sure of it."
"So?" Thomas said from somewhere behind Kemel. "Probably a mouse or something."
"This was not a mouse." Kemel tried to force his fingers between the louvers but the spaces were too small. "Quick. Give me something to remove this grate."
Jack inched back a little farther. If that vent plate started to come loose, he'd have to take off.
"You've got to be kidding," Thomas said. "What do you think you're going to find?"
"Perhaps someone has been listening."
"From in there?" Thomas laughed. "Look, Kemel, I don't know about the level of espionage technology in Saudi Arabia, but over here if we want to eavesdrop on someone, we don't stuff a midget into a vent. We do it electronically: We plant a bug."
He's right, Kemel, Jack thought. Don't be a jerk. Listen to the man.
"I know what I heard," Kemel said. "Get me a screwdriver."
"I didn't think you Moslems drank."
"This is not a matter for joking! I want to look in here!"
"All right, all right. Here. It's my nail clipper. You can use the back end there as a screwdriver."
Jack knew this was his signal to chuck caution and vamoose. He backed into the larger duct and began his return trip.
Behind him, Kemel's voice rose in pitch and volume.
"There! Do you hear that? Someone is in there, I tell you! Call Mr. Haffner. Tell him to call security. Someone has been spying on us!"
Jack paused to turn on his headlamp and replace the lens, then he resumed his crawl. He followed Milkdud's red return arrows and didn't stop until he reached the big vertical shaft.
Sweating and panting, he clung to the ladder to catch his breath and cool off. He unzipped the front of his overall to let in some air—damn thing must be insulated.
This was not good. Depending on the size of the building's security force and whether or not they called in the city cops, this little jaunt might well end with Jack's arrest. The charge would be piddly—what could they hold him for besides trespassing?
But the charge would be irrelevant. The arrest itself would do all the damage. Arrest meant photos and fingerprints and giving an address. Suddenly he'd be Citizen Jack. Officialdom would have a record of his existence. They'd want to fill in all the blanks on their forms, and so they'd start prying at his doors and chipping away at his walls, bringing down all the barriers he'd spent his whole adult life erecting between his world and. theirs.
He needed out of here. Now.
Jack pulled out the cell phone and speed-dialed Milkdud.
"Yeah," Dud's voice said after the second ring.
"It's me," Jack said in a low voice. "They know I'm in here. What's the quickest way out?"
"The quickest? Jump out a window."
"That's not a big help right now, Dud."
"Sorry. The quickest way out is to go through the door from the HVAC area into the building proper, then take the stairs down. But the door's alarmed, and that'll let them know where you are and give them a chance to cut you off. Best way out is exactly the way you came in. Climb up to the HVAC area ASAP, get back into that business suit, and wait by the door to the elevator shaft. I'm on my way now, moving as we speak. When I have the left elevator all to myself on the top floor, I'll call you. Got it?"
"Got it."
Jack hit end and left the cell phone's power on, but he switched off the ringer and activated the vibration option. When Milkdud called back, Jack would feel it rather than hear it.
He climbed up the ladder and exited the duct system into the HVAC area. At last—someplace cool. He stripped off the sneakers and dusty coverall, stuffed them back into the briefcase, then wriggled back into his suit and wing tips.
At least he didn't have to retie the tie.
When he looked like a lawyer again, he buckled the briefcase into his belt, turned off the room lights, stepped over to the door to the elevator shaft, and waited for Milkdud's call.
But a couple of maintenance guys arrived first.
Jack heard their voices on the far side of the other HVAC door, the alarmed one that led into the building proper. He opened his door, swung out into the elevator shaft, and closed the door behind him.
"Here I am, Dud," he whispered. "Now where the hell are you?"
He looked down. All three elevators seemed to be at the lower end of the shaft at the moment, and it looked like one godawful long way down. Jack pressed his ear to the door to see if he could hear what the maintenance men were saying.
"Y'ever hear anyt'ing
so fuckin' stupid?" said a faint voice. "A guy crawling t'rough d' heating ducts? I mean, what's dat all about?"
"Yeah. I think maybe someone's been hittin' the nose candy a little hard, if y'know what I'm sayin' and I think you do."
"Right. Tis the season to be jolly an' all 'at shit. But let's go t'rough d' motions an' make 'em happy."
Jack thought he heard footsteps coming his way on the far side of the door, so he hurried down the ladder and hung at about the spot where he'd stepped off the top of the elevator.
He looked down and saw that same old elevator pulling to a stop at the twenty-sixth. Too early for Milkdud to be inside. He looked down at the top of the car, where he'd crouched, clutching the sling bar.
Above him, the door handle rattled. Christ, were they going to check the elevator shaft?
Check the ventilation ducts first, you idiots!
They'd see the lights he'd left on in the shaft and think he was still in there.
But the door was opening. The elevator had stopped just below him, and Jack didn't see that he had much choice. He didn't want another ride, really he didn't, but—
He stepped off the ladder onto the car's sling bar.
As the door above swung open, Jack flicked off the cab roof bulb just in time and crouched behind the hoist cables, doing his best to conceal himself. He glanced up and saw someone silhouetted in the light from the HVAC area, shining a flashlight into the shaft.
Then the car started down. Jack closed his eyes and hung on. The ride was worse in the dark.
He groaned. "Hope you've got your running shoes on, Dud."
Jack had made three round trips and was starting the fourth when the cell phone vibrated against his leg. He whipped it out.
"Dud?"
"I've got the leftest car to myself, and I'm comin' to getcha, Jack."
"I'm already here."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, here. As in"—Jack rapped on the roof of the car—"here."
"All right! We'll make a hacker out of you yet."
"Don't hold your breath, my man. Just get me off this thing."
"Okay. Here's what we'll do. I'll stop her at six, then Instep her halfway to seven. You won't need your hook, just pull the safety lever and the outer doors will open. You just step off and wait for me to join you."