Liz Carlyle - 07 - The Geneva Trap (32 page)

So he hadn’t had time to draw breath, much less worry, and it was only now, as Fézard wrapped up the briefing, that Martin felt again the extent of his own fear. It was four o’clock; in half an hour they’d know whether Liz had been taken to the office of the South Koreans; in half an hour he’d know whether this uncertain agony was over, or would continue. Who could have kidnapped her? This man Dong had never seen her; neither, as far as he knew, had the Russians. But how exactly had they found out about Sorsky’s treachery? Could they have monitored his meetings with Liz in Geneva?

He wondered if they’d find her inside the building. Part of him fervently hoped so, but part of him was frightened. If they found her, what state would she be in? If she weren’t there, then at least he could hope that she was somewhere else – and alive.

Chapter 53

For a few minutes Liz thought she was lost. She couldn’t be more than a quarter of a mile from the bistro where she was supposed to meet Martin for lunch, but so dense and confusing was the geography of the Old Port that she might as well have been in Mexico. Streets were too grand a name for the little lanes and alleyways that twisted like the Minotaur’s maze, and all the sinuous pathways seemed to lie in the shade of tenement buildings that blocked out the sun – Liz couldn’t even locate its position in the sky to establish where south lay.

Then suddenly she emerged into a street she recognised – it ran past the Koreans’ office building. Not wanting to pass that again, she decided to risk a shortcut down a narrow side road that seemed to head in the right direction. The alley was lined on both sides by the backs of old stone houses, and the smells of midday meals cooking wafted out of windows. The street itself was deserted.

She heard a vehicle turn into the alley behind her. When she looked back she saw a battered blue van, driving slowly. She continued walking and as the van drove past her it struck her as odd that it had no name stencilled on its side. Thirty feet or so in front of her the van stopped, the driver’s door opened, and a heavy-set man in a bulky leather jacket and a cloth cap got out, leaving the engine running. Without looking at Liz, he went to the rear and wrenched open the van’s double doors. She noticed that the back of the van was empty and at the same time felt there was something familiar about the driver. As she came level with him, the man turned towards her. ‘
Excusez-moi, Madame
,’ he said with a smile, and Liz stopped.

A big mistake: he stepped forward and grabbed her coat with his left arm, then before she could try and pull away he hit her, hard with a clenched fist, smack on the jaw. The cliché was true – Liz literally saw stars, and would have fallen down had the man not been holding her so tightly with his other hand. He turned her halfway round, circling her chest with both arms, squeezing the breath out of her as she tried to wriggle free. Then in one swift motion he lifted her up into the air and dumped her like a side of beef into the back of the van.

She lay dazed on the floor as he banged the doors shut. She heard the front driver’s door slam as the man got back in and drove off quickly.

By then she was sitting up, shouting for help, and kicking the rear doors and sides of the van as hard as she could. There was nothing to hold on to; the van was being driven fast, and every time it went round a corner, she slid across the metal floor. But she kept up the noise, though she thought it unlikely that anyone could hear her, and from what she’d seen of the neighbourhood, even if they did hear, they probably wouldn’t report it.

After about five minutes the van stopped abruptly, and Liz found herself slammed against the hard wall separating her from the driver’s cab. She heard what sounded like a metal garage door opening and closing. What would happen next? Sensing this could be her only chance of escape, she got up awkwardly, crouched under the roof of the van, ready to launch herself out and run for it.

One of the back doors suddenly swung open and a harsh light from a powerful torch shone in Liz’s eyes, briefly blinding her. A voice behind the light said, ‘My other hand is holding this,’ and the light moved down to shine on an automatic pistol pointed right at her.

‘Now lie on your stomach,’ he ordered. When Liz hesitated he jabbed the pistol at her. ‘Do it or I will kill you right now. There’s a silencer on this gun so no one will hear me fire.’ The English was good, but strongly accented.

Liz did as she was told, pressing her face against the cold metal floor of the van, her back crawling as she wondered what this man was going to do to her. He must have put the torch down; there was less direct light on her now.

‘Put your hands together behind your back,’ he said, and she obeyed. A moment later Liz felt plastic cuffs go round each of her wrists, then snap shut.

Then he pushed her legs together and what felt like rope was wrapped around her ankles, and tied quickly but tightly with double knots. The man roughly turned her on her side, then on to her back, rolling her like a trussed turkey. She could just make out his features and thought again that she recognised them. From where? Whenever it was, it seemed ages ago.

Leaning forward, he grabbed Liz by the front of her blouse, and hauled her up to a sitting position. She tried to catch his eye, but he ignored her, and reached into the side pocket of his leather jacket, bringing out a roll of surgical tape. ‘Stay still,’ he said as he tore long strips off the roll, attaching them temporarily to the side wall of the van. He then took them one at a time, pressing them against Liz’s mouth and wrapping them all the way around her head. He worked methodically, layer by layer, until the whole area from her chin to just below her nose was sealed tight with tape.

He stared at her, listening to her breathe through her nose, then nodded to himself, satisfied. ‘I’ll be back in a while and then we’re going for a bit of a ride.’ He backed out and closed the van door, leaving Liz again in darkness.

With her hands manacled behind her back, she couldn’t see her watch, and it was hard to gauge how much time had passed when she heard the garage door open and the man climb back into the cab and start the engine. An hour, she guessed, maybe more.

The van reversed and stopped, then the driver got out and closed the garage doors. When he got back in he drove at speed through the streets, while Liz tried to keep herself from banging against the inner sides of the rear compartment. They paused occasionally for what she assumed were traffic lights, and she could hear street noises from outside. But bound and gagged, there was nothing she could do to let people know that she was being held inside the van.

They drove for almost half an hour, she reckoned, speeding up on what must have been a main road, then slowing and manoeuvring through smaller roads. The man’s driving was erratic. He would speed up then suddenly slam the brakes on and turn abruptly, so Liz rolled around like a puppet, sometimes smashing into the sides and the rear doors of the van, unable to protect herself .

At last they slowed down, and then braked so sharply that again she was hurled forwards. She waited for the driver to turn off the engine and then … what? If he were going to kill her, wouldn’t he have done it in the security of the garage, then taken his time disposing of the body? The body?
My
body, thought Liz, filled with sudden fury. For a moment her fear receded as she determined to get away from this man, and make sure he was caught and punished. She tried to ignore the small voice in the back of her mind that was telling her she’d been brought somewhere private, far from the hubbub of the city centre, away from the eyes of the public or the police, where at his leisure the man could …

She was trying to stop herself shuddering when the van moved forward again, this time very slowly and deliberately. She felt a sudden jolt when they hit something – something big enough to jar the whole vehicle. Was it an accident? she asked herself hopefully. But it couldn’t be – not crawling forward as they were, and Liz listened as the van’s front bumper made a high-pitched grinding noise as it pushed against some large object. Slowly but surely, the van seemed to be winning against this inanimate obstacle, and suddenly it seemed that the impediment had been pushed away and they moved forward freely for several yards.

Then the van slowed and stopped, only to reverse suddenly at speed. This time the jolt came from the rear. Liz found herself pitched into the air, and thrown against the partition. She hit it with the back of her head, then crashed on to the floor of the van, knocked out cold.

Chapter 54

The receptionist, a pretty brunette with ruby-painted nails, stared wide-eyed as an armed, uniformed police inspector led a team of officers into the building, followed by Fézard, three plain clothes officers, Martin Seurat, Isobel Florian, and a mechanic in overalls and stout boots.

‘Stay where you are and don’t touch the phones,’ the inspector ordered the frightened girl, while Fézard and his group crossed the atrium to the stairs and the mechanic set about disabling the lifts. Three police officers were despatched to guard the back exit and disable the service lift.

Fézard and his team took the stairs to the fifth floor two at a time, stopping on the landing to catch their breath; even Isobel, slim and fit as she was, was panting slightly. Fézard, neither slim nor particularly fit, was puffing hard.

Two doors led off the landing. One was half-glazed and bearing the sign: ‘Beauchêne et Fils: Négotiants en Vin’. The other, on the opposite side of the landing, was a strong-looking black windowless door with a security keypad beside it, and a small laminated sign on the wall that read ‘Technomatics Inc.’

One of Fézard’s officers stepped forward and applied a small device to the keypad. After a few seconds the door opened with a click and a buzzer sounded inside the offices. Fézard drew his gun and led the way into a small ante-room furnished with two chairs and a low table piled with a stack of
Time
magazines. Behind an unmanned reception desk an open doorway led to the rest of the offices.

Fézard stood tensely, waiting for a response to the buzzer. But no one came through the doorway and no sound came from within. Covered by his officers, who had now all drawn their weapons, Fézard took three slow steps to the doorway. He stared into the silence, and gradually the expression on his face changed, from alert to puzzled.

Then, jerking his head sideways to his officers, he said quietly, ‘Follow me,’ and walked through the doorway. As Martin followed behind, he saw in front of him a large open-plan office. Roughly the size of the briefing room at the Préfecture, it held about a dozen desks, each equipped with a black leather swivel chair and a glowing television-sized computer monitor. Soft beige carpet ran wall to wall, and the ceiling was lined with sound-deadening panels in which long lines of lights were recessed. The effect was like the hi-tech trading floor of an investment bank, but instead of shouted phone calls and frantic activity, the room was silent and apparently deserted.

‘Where is everyone?’ Isobel whispered to Seurat. ‘Is it an Asian holiday or something?’

Overhearing her, Fézard said, ‘No one’s gone anywhere.’ He sounded puzzled. ‘They all came in this morning and we haven’t seen any of them going out. We’ve been watching the place all day. He started suddenly. ‘Wait a minute!’ he said, and pointed to the far corner of the room. A young man dressed in a black turtleneck sweater and black trousers sat slumped forward on his desk, his head pillowed on his crossed arms. He looked as if he was taking a catnap, but he must be very sound asleep not to have been woken by the commotion of their arrival. On the screen in front of him a satellite image showed an area Seurat recognised as the Gulf – on one side the sandy shores of the UAE with Oman beneath, on the other Iran north of the Strait of Hormuz.

Fézard walked over to the desk and shook the young man’s shoulder. ‘
Monsieur
?’ he said gently. There was no movement. ‘
Monsieur
,’ he said again, shaking the man more sharply. This time the head rolled slightly on the arms but the man did not sit up.

Fézard turned to the others who were watching him and shook his head; there was no point in trying to wake the man – he wasn’t asleep, he was no longer breathing. Martin took in the implications and suddenly felt sick. What did this mean for Liz?

At this end of the room there was a little archway, leading to a short corridor with three doors opening off it along one side. Fézard motioned to two of his men to check the rooms. The first contained toilets with no one inside. The second door was kicked open and the two men went in. There was a pause, then one came out and gestured for Fézard. Isobel and Martin followed.

This was a small meeting room. Round a long table sat six young Korean men, all dressed in black turtleneck sweaters and black trousers. They too seemed to be asleep – some sat upright in their chairs, some were slumped on the table. Most had mild expressions on their faces, as if they were dreaming. On the table in front of them were small teacups, all empty or nearly empty. In the middle of the table sat a large Chinese teapot. There were four empty chairs and, stepping into the room, Martin saw two more bodies sprawled on the carpet at the far end.

He counted the teacups around the table – there were eleven. Eight bodies here, one in the open-plan office; that left two unaccounted for. And where was Liz?