Whiteout (8 page)

“I'm sure the microbiologists at Fort Detrick would prefer to be doing this research themselves, if they had the choice.”

“Where would that leave you?”

“Bankrupt.”

“What?” Toni was appalled.

“I've invested everything in the new laboratory,” Stanley said grimly. “I have a personal overdraft of a million pounds. Our contract with the
Department of Defense would cover the cost of the lab over four years. But if they pull the rug now, I've got no way of paying the debts—either the company's or my own.”

Toni could hardly take it in. How could Stanley's entire future—and her own—be threatened so suddenly? “But the new drug is worth millions.”

“It will be, eventually. I'm sure of the science—that's why I was happy to borrow so much money. But I didn't foresee that the project might be destroyed by mere publicity.”

She touched his arm. “And all because a stupid television personality needs a scare story,” she said. “I can hardly believe it.”

Stanley patted the hand she had rested on his arm, then removed it and stood up. “No point in whining. We've just got to manage our way out of this.”

“Yes. You're due to speak to the staff. Are you ready?”

“Yes.” They walked out of his office together. “It will be good practice for the press later.”

As they passed Dorothy's desk, she held up a hand to stop them. “One moment, please,” she said into the phone. She touched a button and spoke to Stanley. “It's the First Minister of Scotland,” she said. “Personally,” she added, evidently impressed. “He wants a word.”

Stanley said to Toni, “Go down to the hall and hold them. I'll be as quick as I can.” He went back into his office.

KIT OXENFORD waited more than an hour for Harry McGarry.

McGarry, known as Harry Mac, had been born in Govan, a working-class district of Glasgow. He was raised in a tenement near Ibrox Park, the home of the city's Protestant football team, Rangers. With his profits from drugs, illegal gambling, theft, and prostitution, he had moved—only a mile geographically, but a long way socially—across the Paisley Road to Dumbreck. Now he lived in a large new-built house with a pool.

The place was decorated like an expensive hotel, with reproduction furniture and framed prints on the wall, but no personal touches: no family photographs, no ornaments, no flowers, no pets. Kit waited nervously in the spacious hall, staring at the striped yellow wallpaper and the spindly legs of the occasional tables, watched by a fat bodyguard in a cheap black suit.

Harry Mac's empire covered Scotland and the north of England. He worked with his daughter, Diana, always called Daisy. The nickname was ironic: she was a violent, sadistic thug.

Harry owned the illegal casino where Kit played. Licensed casinos in Britain suffered under all kinds of petty laws that limited their profits: no house percentage, no table fee, no tipping, no drinking at the tables, and you had to be a member for twenty-four hours before you could play. Harry ignored the laws. Kit liked the louche atmosphere of an illegitimate game.

Most gamblers were stupid, Kit believed; and the people who ran casinos were not much brighter. An intelligent player should always win.
In blackjack there was a correct way to play every possible hand—a system called Basic—and he knew it backwards. Then, he improved his chances by keeping track of the cards that were dealt from the six-pack deck. Starting with zero, he added one point for every low card—twos, threes, fours, fives, and sixes—and took away one point for every high card—tens, jacks, queens, kings, and aces. (He ignored sevens, eights, and nines.) When the number in his head was positive, the remaining deck contained more high cards than low, so he had a better-than-average chance of drawing a ten. A negative number gave a high probability of drawing a low card. Knowing the odds told him when to bet heavily.

But Kit had suffered a run of bad luck and, when the debt reached fifty thousand pounds, Harry asked for his money.

Kit had gone to his father and begged to be rescued. It was humiliating, of course. When Stanley had fired him, Kit had accused his father bitterly of not caring about him. Now he was admitting the truth: his father did love him, and would do almost anything for him, and Kit knew that perfectly well. His pretense had collapsed ignominiously. But it was worth it. Stanley had paid.

Kit had promised he would never gamble again, and meant it, but the temptation had been too strong. It was madness; it was a disease; it was shameful and humiliating; but it was the most exciting thing in the world, and he could not resist.

Next time his debt reached fifty thousand, he went back to his father, but this time Stanley put his foot down. “I haven't got the money,” he said. “I could borrow it, perhaps, but what's the point? You'd lose it and come back for more until we both were broke.” Kit had accused him of heartlessness and greed, called him Shylock and Scrooge and fucking Fagin, and sworn never to speak to him again. The words had hurt—he could always hurt his father, he knew that—but Stanley had not changed his mind.

At that point, Kit should have left the country.

He dreamed of going to Italy to live in his mother's hometown of Lucca. The family had visited several times during his childhood, before the grandparents died. It was a pretty walled town, ancient and peaceful,
with little squares where you could drink espresso in the shade. He knew some Italian—Mamma Marta had spoken her native tongue to all of them when they were small. He could rent a room in one of the tall old houses and get a job helping people with their computer problems, easy work. He thought he could be happy, living like that.

But, instead, he had tried to win back what he owed.

His debt went up to a quarter of a million.

For that much money, Harry Mac would pursue him to the North Pole. He thought about killing himself, and eyed tall buildings in central Glasgow, wondering if he could get up on the roofs in order to throw himself to his death.

Three weeks ago, he had been summoned to this house. He had felt sick with fear. He was sure they were going to beat him up. When he was shown into the drawing room, with its yellow silk couches, he wondered how they would prevent the blood spoiling the upholstery. “There's a gentleman here wants to ask you a question,” Harry had said. Kit could not imagine what question any of Harry's friends would want to ask him, unless it was
Where's the fucking money?

The gentleman was Nigel Buchanan, a quiet type in his forties wearing expensive casual clothes: a cashmere jacket, dark slacks, and an open-necked shirt. Speaking in a soft London accent, he said, “Can you get me inside the Level Four laboratory at Oxenford Medical?”

There were two other people in the yellow drawing room at the time. One was Daisy, a muscular girl of about twenty-five with a broken nose, bad skin, and a ring through her lower lip. She was wearing leather gloves. The other was Elton, a handsome black man about the same age as Daisy, apparently a sidekick of Nigel's.

Kit was so relieved at not being beaten up that he would have agreed to anything.

Nigel offered him a fee of three hundred thousand pounds for the night's work.

Kit could hardly believe his luck. It would be enough to pay his debts and more. He could leave the country. He could go to Lucca and realize his dream. He felt overjoyed. His problems were solved at a stroke.

Later, Harry had talked about Nigel in reverent tones. A professional thief, Nigel stole only to order, for a prearranged price. “He's the greatest,” Harry said. “You're after a painting by Michelangelo? No problem. A nuclear warhead? He'll get it for you—if you can afford it. Remember Shergar, the racehorse that was kidnapped? That was Nigel.” He added: “He lives in Liechtenstein,” as if Liechtenstein were a more exotic place of residence than Mars.

Kit had spent the next three weeks planning the theft of the antiviral drug. He felt the occasional twinge of remorse as he refined the scheme to rob his father, but mostly he felt a delirious glee at the thought of revenge on the daddy who had fired him then refused to rescue him from gangsters. It would be a nasty poke in the eye for Toni Gallo, too.

Nigel had gone over the details with him meticulously, questioning everything. Occasionally he would consult with Elton, who was in charge of equipment, especially cars. Kit got the impression that Elton was a valued technical expert who had worked with Nigel before. Daisy was to join them on the raid, ostensibly to provide extra muscle if necessary—though Kit suspected her real purpose was to take £250,000 from him as soon as the fee was in his hands.

Kit suggested they rendezvous at a disused airfield near the Kremlin. Nigel looked at Elton. “That's cool,” Elton said. He spoke with a broad London accent: “We could meet the buyer there after—he might want to fly in.”

In the end, Nigel had pronounced the plan brilliant, and Kit had glowed with pleasure.

Now, today, Kit had to tell Harry the whole deal was off. He felt wretched: disappointed, depressed, and scared.

At last he was summoned to Harry's presence. Nervous, he followed the bodyguard through the laundry at the back of the house to the pool pavilion. It was built to look like an Edwardian orangery, with glazed tiles in somber colors, the pool itself an unpleasant shade of dark green. Some interior decorator had proposed this, Kit guessed, and Harry had said yes without looking at the plans.

Harry was a stocky man of fifty with the gray skin of a lifelong
smoker. He sat at a wrought-iron table, dressed in a purple toweling robe, drinking dark coffee from a small china cup and reading the
Sun
. The newspaper was open at the horoscope. Daisy was in the water, swimming laps tirelessly. Kit was startled to see that she seemed to be naked except for diver's gloves. She always wore gloves.

“I don't need to see you, laddie,” Harry said. “I don't want to see you. I don't know anything about you or what you're doing tonight. And I've never met anyone called Nigel Buchanan. Are you catching my drift?” He did not offer Kit a cup of coffee.

The air was hot and humid. Kit was wearing his best suit, a midnight-blue mohair, with a white shirt open at the neck. It seemed an effort to breathe, and his skin felt uncomfortably damp under his clothes. He realized he had broken some rule of criminal etiquette by contacting Harry on the day of the robbery, but he had no alternative. “I had to talk to you,” Kit said. “Haven't you seen the news?”

“What if I have?”

Kit suppressed a surge of irritation. Men such as Harry could never bring themselves to admit to not knowing something, however trivial. “There's a big flap on at Oxenford Medical,” Kit said. “A technician died of a virus.”

“What do you want me to do, send flowers?”

“They'll be tightening security. This is the worst possible time to rob the place. It's difficult enough anyway. They have a state-of-the-art alarm system. And the woman in charge is as tough as a rubber steak.”

“What a whiner you are.”

Kit had not been asked to sit down, so he leaned on the back of a chair, feeling awkward. “We have to call it off.”

“Let me explain something to you.” Harry took a cigarette from a packet on the table and lit it with a gold lighter. Then he coughed, an old smoker's cough from the depths of his lungs. When the spasm had passed, he spat into the pool and drank some coffee. Then he resumed. “For one thing, I've said it's going to happen. Now you may not realize this, being so well brought up, but when a man says something's going to happen, and then it doesn't, people think he's a wanker.”

“Yes, but—”

“Don't even dream of interrupting me.”

Kit shut up.

“For another thing, Nigel Buchanan's no drugged-up schoolboy wanting to rob Woolworth's in Govan Cross. He's a legend and, more important than that, he's connected with some highly respected people in London. When you're dealing with folk like that, even more you don't want to look like a wanker.”

He paused, as if daring Kit to argue. Kit said nothing. How had he got himself involved with these people? He had walked into the wolves' cave, and now he stood paralyzed, waiting to be torn to pieces.

“And for a third thing, you owe me a quarter of a million pounds. No one has ever owed me that much money for so long and still been able to walk without crutches. I trust I'm making myself clear.”

Kit nodded silently. He was so scared he felt he might throw up.

“So don't tell me we have to call it off.” Harry picked up the
Sun
as if the conversation were over.

Kit forced himself to speak. “I meant postpone it, not call it off,” he managed. “We can do it another day, when the fuss has died down.”

Harry did not look up. “Ten a.m. on Christmas Day, Nigel said. And I want my money.”

“There's no point in doing it if we're going to get caught!” Kit said desperately. Harry did not respond. “Everyone can wait a little longer, can't they?” It was like talking to the wall. “Better late than never.”

Harry glanced toward the pool and made a beckoning gesture. Daisy must have been keeping an eye on him, for she immediately climbed out of the pool. She did not take off the gloves. She had powerful shoulders and arms. Her shallow breasts hardly moved as she walked. Kit saw that she had a tattoo over one breast and a nipple ring in the other. When she came closer, he realized she was shaved all over. She had a flat belly and lean thighs, and her pubic mound was prominent. Every detail was visible, not just to Kit but to her father, if he cared to look. Kit felt weird.

Harry did not seem to notice. “Kit wants us to wait for our money, Daisy.” He stood up and tightened the belt of his robe. “Explain to him
how we feel about that—I'm too tired.” He put the newspaper under his arm and walked away.

Daisy grabbed Kit by the lapels of his best suit. “Look,” he pleaded. “I just want to make sure this doesn't end in disaster for all of us.” Then Daisy jerked him sideways. He lost his balance and would have fallen to the ground, but she took his weight; then she threw him into the pool.

It was a shock but, if the worst thing she did was ruin his suit, he would count himself lucky. Then, as he got his head above the surface, she jumped on him, her knees smashing into his back painfully, so that he cried out and swallowed water as his head went under.

They were at the shallow end. When his feet touched the bottom he struggled to stand upright, but his head was clamped by Daisy's arm, and he was pulled off balance again. She held him face down under the water.

He held his breath, expecting her to punch him, or something, but she remained still. Needing to breathe, he began to struggle, trying to break her hold, but she was too strong. He became angry, and lashed out feebly with his arms and legs. He felt like a child in a tantrum, flailing helplessly in the grip of its mother.