The Arx (12 page)

Rebecca shook her head, incredulous. His precautions seemed way over the top.

“Never stay logged in for too long. Wipe the keyboard and any surfaces you’ve touched before you leave. You get the idea?”

“Sounds like something out of a spy movie,” she said.

“Pretend your life depends on no one finding out,” Frank said. “Maybe it does. Promise me you’ll do everything I just said – and more.”

Rebecca nodded.

“We need a way to contact each other,” he said. “I don’t trust the phone. I definitely don’t trust e-mail. How about if we just meet at your office?”

“My office?”

“Hey, maybe I’m just one of your clients. If I drop by regularly nobody’s going to be surprised.”

“I guess.”

“What’s your slackest day?”

“Tuesday.”

“If I’ve got anything to tell you I’ll show up at one PM on Tuesday.”

“I’ll make sure not to book anything.”

“You may not hear from me for a while.”

They reached the station and stopped outside the main doors.

“What about our sessions?” she asked.

“They’ll have to take a back seat for the time being.”

She frowned at him.

“Only for a while,” he said. “I promise. After that, maybe we can combine the two.” He smiled. ”You know, information dump slash therapy session.”

A Mansion in Point Grey

It was a sweltering day, and the fan in Frank’s car had been busted for months. He’d almost nodded off when the strikingly beautiful Catherine Lesko finally exited the main doors of her office building and strolled through the shimmering afternoon heat toward a gray BMW. After an almost imperceptible glance around, she opened the door and got in. Frank slouched behind the wheel.

Lesko hadn’t shown up again at Child Connect. After days of dead ends and wasted phone calls he’d finally located her, at a well-heeled private practice downtown. Out of the corner of his eye he watched as she started the car and drove off. He started his own and followed at a safe distance. They drove for about twenty minutes, to an upscale but undistinguished low-rise in the back streets of the West End.

She parked on the street and entered the building. Frank found a sheltered spot with a view of the front door and parked. A few minutes later the curtains fluttered in the window of a second floor apartment. He looked up just in time to catch a glimpse of Lesko.

He sat and waited. He was probably wasting his time, but you never knew. He’d been through the drill. Experience had taught him the technique of half-daydreaming, half-sleeping, while at the same time paying fleeting attention to a surveillance target.

As he waited, he considered how long he was willing to sit there before giving up. One hour, two, three…definitely no more than three. Chances were good that she was in for the long haul and wouldn’t be leaving until morning.

An hour later his eye caught a movement in the target apartment. He sat up, rubbed the knot of pain in his back, and focused his attention on the window. One of the curtains swayed slightly. He shifted his gaze to the main doors of the building.

To his surprise, a few minutes later Catherine Lesko appeared, having changed her clothes. Once again he slouched behind the wheel. She glanced around before getting into her car, but didn’t notice him. Was she up to something, he thought, or just a beautiful woman being careful in a dangerous world?

Her car pulled out and again he followed. She crossed the Burrard Street Bridge and headed west. As they drove, the opulence of their surroundings steadily grew. Featureless middle-class homes transformed into spacious upper-class ones, then into mansions, as they climbed a hill with a stunning vista of English Bay. They turned onto an expansive boulevard lined with giant Catalpa trees that arched over the roadway like the vaulting ribs of some massive cathedral.

They penetrated deep into the wealthiest section of Point Grey, past gated properties surrounded by impenetrable walls and hedges. The most expensive homes, he considered, were the ones you never actually saw; they were concealed behind forbidding barriers, securely hidden from the view of the peasants below.

It got more and more difficult to maintain his view of Lesko’s car and still blend in with his surroundings. It was the dinner hour; there wasn’t much traffic in this part of town, and he guessed that not many folks in this neighbourhood drove a nineteen eighty-nine Ford Topaz. He was forced to hang way back, which made it tough to maintain visual contact.

It was more important not to be spotted than to keep following. He was about to give up when she slowed, and finally stopped in front of a massive wrought-iron gate set in an impressive three meter hedge that completely obscured the interior.

He kept driving and parked on the slope of a nearby hill. In the distance, beyond the massive hedge, the slate-tiled vaults of a magnificent mansion rose like a mountain range above the treetops. In the distance were the white-tipped waters of English Bay, tiny sailboats dotting its surface.

The gate guarding the entrance opened, and Lesko drove inside. Frank waited for half an hour. There was nothing. He couldn’t stay where he was without arousing suspicion. He finally gave up and drove home.

He continued the surveillance for a couple of weeks, alternating between Lesko and another woman who visited the mansion, though only once. He convinced Art Crawford to run the second woman’s license plate, and learned that her name was Madeline Lyon. Her profession was listed as ‘Gynecologist’.

Both Lesko and Lyon showed a similar pattern: a quick stop at a nondescript apartment – Lyon’s was in Yaletown – followed by a drive to a far more prestigious location – Lyon’s regular stop was another magnificent mansion in the heart of one of the wealthiest neighbourhoods in Vancouver, the British Properties. The trips didn’t happen every night, but frequently, more often than not. On a hunch he staked out the women’s apartments the morning after their visits. Both showed up just after sunrise, changed clothes, and went to work.

He researched the two women, looking for any connection to Kaffir. It turned out that Catherine Lesko got her Ph.D. on a scholarship from Kaffir, and Madeline Lyon rented an office owned by a company controlled by Kaffir. He watched the comings and goings to both mansions, and noticed several other regular visitors, all of them women.

He followed a couple of them home and then to work. One was a lab technician at a research company in which Kaffir had a significant stake. The other was the first he’d come across with no clear connection to Kaffir.

She worked for Stats Canada.

At the same time, he researched the ownership of the Point Grey mansion. It was officially owned by a numbered company out of Hong Kong. After hours of meticulous navigation through a labyrinthine maze of companies, subsidiaries, and subsidiaries of subsidiaries, multiple long-distance calls, and the conning of several government officials, he eventually settled on a reclusive financier named Arthur Dogan.

It was tough to find anything on Dogan. The man’s public persona was a blank slate. It was unclear what he did and what his affiliations were. He had no known connection to organized crime or any other illegal activity. He was rarely seen in public, either at social functions or in business gatherings.

Frank thought again about the unusual behaviour of Catherine Lesko and Madeline Lyon.

Why?
he thought.
If the women are going to live there, why not just live there?

The next afternoon Frank followed Catherine Lesko again to the mansion in Point Grey. Once she entered, he drove along the massive hedge, hunting for a weakness. He found what he was looking for – a scalable section conveniently distant from the front gate and the gatehouse. Satisfied, he back-tracked, found a nearby coffee shop and sat for a couple of hours, waiting for nightfall.

What he was planning was insane; it could land him in jail, or worse. He’d thought about it a lot and couldn’t come up with an alternative. If he was still a cop he’d have the authority and resources to gather more information about what went on inside the mansion. Alone he was basically powerless to find out much more than he already knew.

He’d considered trying to gain access legally, maybe disguised as a tradesman or a delivery person, but the stakes were too high. He still didn’t know much about the people on the other side of that hedge, but what he did know scared him. If they saw through his disguise…

He nervously downed cups of coffee until it was dark, then drove his car to a side-street not far from the spot he’d chosen earlier, parked, and started walking.

The hedge turned out to be harder to climb than he was expecting. He had trouble even finding the right spot again in the dark. The branches were thin, and bent back when he applied his weight. They also had spines – a detail he hadn’t noticed before. His hands were red and bleeding as he dragged his way upwards.

He was about half-way to the top when he heard the grating sound of the front gate opening in the distance. Twin beams of light tracked through the trees as a vehicle steered out of the driveway and onto the road.

Frank’s muscles tightened. He was clinging to the hedge in full view of the roadway, too far up to jump to the ground. He climbed down as quickly as he dared, scraping his knuckles and stabbing his fingers on the spines. He’d just reached jumping height when the car turned the corner and two blinding beams of light played over him.

He froze, hoping the driver might not see him, but his hopes were crushed when the car pulled over and skidded to a stop. He jumped to the ground and landed heavily, twisting his ankle. Cursing, he limped toward his car, followed by the pounding of running feet. He dove into some thick brush, hoping he could lose his pursuer in the dark. He heard the hammering footfalls fly by him and continue into the distance. Somehow he stumbled onto a path in the darkness and headed for his car.

As he reached it, the footsteps once again got louder. He stopped for a second and stared behind him, but could see no one. He fumbled the keys out of his pocket and bent down to find the door lock. He’d just inserted the key when there was an explosion at the back of his skull and everything went black.

He awoke in total darkness. He tried to move but both his hands and feet were tied. Something rigid and uneven dug painfully into his back. The space reeked of dust and motor oil. When he tried to lift his head, it hit something metal and hard. He gathered that he was in the trunk of a car – probably his own.

The blackness pressed down, choking him, like he was being crushed at the bottom of the sea. His breath came in accelerating gasps. His gut twisted with a sick foreboding and his heart hammered in his chest. It was coming…

Drawing on every iota of his will, he fought for control, fought to wrench his psyche out of its deadly trajectory. To his surprise, he had some success; the panic attack subsided – at least for now. He tried to free his hands, but they were bound too tightly. He heard footsteps around the vehicle.

A few minutes later the trunk opened. On a hunch he faked unconsciousness. A pair of hands lifted him easily out of the trunk and dropped him heavily on the ground.

Frank continued his charade. The act must have been convincing; his attacker leaned down and listened for a heartbeat. Satisfied that Frank was still alive, the man carried him to the front of the car, shoved him roughly into the driver’s seat, wedged his body into a sitting position, and started to untie his feet and hands.

Through the slits of barely open eyes Frank peered out the windshield far into the distance and saw the lights of dozens of ships floating in English Bay. As he tracked back toward the space in front of him, the lights abruptly disappeared.

Suddenly he knew where he was – not far from where his car had been parked, towards the university, was a series of cliffs overlooking the bay, and a curving road that presented an ideal location for a faked ‘accident’. Whoever was working so diligently to untie him was setting him up to die.

The kidnapper leaned over and released the hand brake, then started to push the car, with the driver’s side door open and one hand on the steering wheel. The car rolled slowly forward, the tires whispering over the long grass.

Frank came up with a plan and mentally rehearsed what he had to do. He would only have one chance to catch his attacker off guard. Satisfied, he sprang into action. He swiveled to face the open door, leaned back with his hands braced on the seat behind him, and kicked his assailant’s torso with both feet. The man grunted and staggered backwards. He lost his grip on the steering wheel, but grabbed the door handle with his left hand and swung out, running alongside.

The car gained momentum as it rolled down an increasingly steep slope. The attacker was off-balance. He hung onto the now flapping door as he stumbled on the uneven ground trying to pull himself in.

They hit a bump and the door flew in almost shut. Frank hauled back again and hammered both feet against it with all his strength. The door exploded outward, taking the attacker with it. It sprang back on its hinges and slammed him against the car. He went down. Frank heard a scream and a sickening wet sound as the back tires rolled over something soft.