‘Follow that cab,’ the driver repeated the cliché. ‘Man you gotta be joking. I ain’t never followed no cab. Where you wanna go?’
‘Come on, just follow that yellow taxi.’
‘But where you goin’ man? You gotta know where you wanna go.’
‘Look, just follow the man in that cab, he’s stolen money from my wife.’ It was the first thing that came into my mind. Julia French looked startled.
The driver didn’t reply but we moved off. It looked as though Kardosov had decided not to wait for backup. Or more likely Donnell had decided not to wait for the Russians to fly in reinforcements. The other taxi was now in Michigan Avenue. We followed, the driver gunning the engine and the taxi skidding on the wet surface. He had obviously got the message that people do follow other people in taxis.
Kardosov’s taxi turned right into Wacker, past the circular towers of Marina City across the river and then left down La Salle.
‘Man, perhaps he’s going to put the money he stole in the bank,’ the driver suggested. ‘There’s a whole lot of banks down this way.’
We passed under The Loop. A green and white train trundling overhead. La Salle is one of the few Chicago streets that is not dead straight. At Jackson Boulevard it kinks around the Chicago Board of Trade building. It was there that Kardosov’s taxi stopped.
I gave our driver a generous tip.
‘That cabby will remember us,’ Julia commented.
‘True, but nobody will question him unless the mission’s already gone wrong.’
The lobby of the Board of Trade was enormous. To the left stood the ‘Visitors’ Centre’, at the back a row of lifts. A sign indicated Bollings Restaurant in the basement.
We reached the revolving doors as Kardosov disappeared down a staircase.
‘Stay here,’ I shouted, running after him. But he’d gone. And when I found him four minutes later I almost failed to recognise him. Now I knew what his parcel had contained: a faded red jacket emblazoned ‘Chicago Board Options Exchange’ and a badge with the same inscription and, in large letters, ‘RVB’ above the name Robert Burens.
I was walking towards the stairs when he emerged from the men’s room. I strode past him, reasonably confident that he hadn’t seen me at the hotel or in Zandvoort. He didn’t look at me.
I found Julia’s arm and guided her towards the lifts. ‘He’s going to the Options Exchange.’
‘Did he see you?’
‘I don’t think he really noticed me. Still I’ll try to keep out of his sight. He’s wearing a red jacket and a badge with the initials RVB.’
‘Are you sure he’s on the floor of the Exchange?’
‘No, but why else would Donnell send him the jacket? An exchange at the Exchange. It’s a good idea. Crowded so Kardosov shouldn’t be tempted to any funny business. A distinctive badge so Donnell can recognise him. And a place Donnell presumably knows well and therefore with a well-planned escape route. There’s only one problem: how do we get in?’
‘We just walk. Look as if we know exactly what we’re doing and nobody will interfere.’
There was a desk at the entrance but the attendant was surrounded by people. We walked quickly past.
The overwhelming impression was of a mass of people scurrying round like human ants. Most of them, but fortunately not all, wore jackets like Kardosov’s, red, blue or mustard. The few women, mostly young girls, wore mustard jackets or street clothes.
We separated and started looking for Kardosov. There were dozens, perhaps hundreds of red-jacketed men. In those days share options were an esoteric novelty and the Options Exchange was a new, speculative market; the brokers were quite different from their contemporaries in the City or on Wall Street, younger looking with fashionable shirts and hair. It should have made Kardosov easier to find but it didn’t.
I wove through the babbling figures, ignoring their meaningless shouts.
‘April one eighty.’
‘Five eighths.’
‘Jan. the twenty.’
‘Quarter.’
‘I’ll split bid.’
Fingers flashed. Men clutched handfuls of little cards. Women, looking as if they should have been at school, pushed past.
I saw Julia ten yards away. And then, between us, Donnell, looking exactly like his photograph. He wore a blue jacket and was talking out of the side of his mouth to a man standing beside the IBM stand: Kardosov. Julia saw him at the same moment. We both stopped.
Donnell passed something to the Russian who pocketed it. Then Donnell reached towards Kardosov again, presumably to take something in return.
A mustard coat stepped in front of me, pushing a card towards a red coat. ‘Take this for us.’
I shoved past. Kardosov was moving. And Donnell was falling, an odd look on his face: pain, shock.
Julia moved forward. I could only see Donnell’s hand now, grasping at somebody’s leg. I turned, pushing towards the door. Kardosov was leaving the floor. As I reached the door a few seconds later there was a clear shout of ‘Ambulance’ from behind. I glanced around. Julia was a few yards away. We met at the lifts. Kardosov had gone.
‘He’ll have to get out of that jacket,’ Julia said. ‘If he changes in the basement again we can catch him in the lobby.’
The lift was full and we descended in silence. Standing by the Visitors’ Centre I asked the obvious question, ‘What happened?’
‘Donnell reached forward and Kardosov seemed to grab his wrist. He must have had a hypodermic or something. It’s exactly the way they killed that Ukrainian émigré in Frankfurt last year.’
‘But why?’ I asked. ‘Why attract attention? He could so easily have walked away.’
‘I know. It’s stupid. Perhaps that’s the way the Russians think. No witnesses. No loose ends. Nobody who can give away the name Nils Olssen. To us it’s madness but we didn’t do it. Donnell may simply have asked for too much or was in too much of a hurry. Perhaps he panicked and insisted on a meeting right away. If Henning is bringing the payment Kardosov might have just decided to act rather than let Donnell go somewhere else.’
Before I could comment Kardosov emerged, without the red jacket. He marched to the doors without looking round, a satisfied smile streaked across his face. He pushed through the revolving doors and turned right.
‘What’s he doing?’ Julia asked. He made no attempt to flag a taxi. Instead he looked up La Salle, as if to get his bearings, and then at his watch. Apparently satisfied, he turned left and walked along Jackson.
‘We must call Nick Broadbent. Tell him what happened so he can grab Kardosov when he gets to the hotel,’ said Julia.
‘He’s not going to the hotel. He didn’t check in, he just picked up the jacket and badge. Now that he’s got what he came for he’ll be off. Why would he hang around?’
But he was hanging around. He walked off steadily: past the Telegraph Savings and Loan Association’s electric sign informing the world it was forty-seven degrees. Under The Loop at Wells.
Julia took my hand. ‘In case he stops and looks around. Looks less suspicious.’
Just then he stopped. I leaned towards Julia and kissed her. ‘That looks less suspicious,’ I said.
‘At this time of the morning? I think not. We should separate.’ A fleeting grin crossed her face.
Kardosov crossed the street and turned up Franklin.
‘What do we do?’ I asked. ‘And don’t suggest bopping him on the head.’ It was my turn to grin.
Julia raised her eyebrows and shook her head.
As he approached the Sears Tower I realised what he was doing. ‘He’s playing tourist. His work’s done. He’s not going to risk going back to the hotel. He probably has time to spare before his flight. So what can he do? He climbs the world’s tallest building, has a look at the city from a hundred storeys up.’
‘It can’t be. You can’t kill someone and then go and casually admire a view. It’s ridiculous.’
‘So was attacking Donnell. And this isn’t so stupid. Who’s going to look for him up there?’
Sure enough, Kardosov strode into Sears Tower, past the reception desk and followed the arrows marked ‘Skydeck’.
‘Thomas, this could be our break. I’ll tell Nick to drive down here as fast as possible and keep circling the block. You follow Kardosov.’
Julia was off and the Russian was entering one of the two lifts going up to the observation platform, the Skydeck. I joined the line buying tickets, plucking a brochure from the booth. I would need to remind Julia that she was supposed to be calling me Ashton, although I quite enjoyed the small breach of procedure. On the wall of the lift the number of the Skydeck’s floor, 103, lay on its side, gradually colouring orange as we rocketed 350 feet in less than a minute.
The Skydeck was like similar vantage points all over the world, but higher. Grey carpets. A few bare wooden seats. Pay telescopes. Pay phones. Bars on front of the windows that sparked with static whenever I touched them. On the west side a souvenir shop.
People milled around or stared fixedly out of the windows; the piped music lost below the hum of voices. Men stole glances at the brochure and then authoritatively told their wives what they were looking at.
‘That’s the Chicago Board of Trade,’ said a schoolteacher type pointing at the Museum of Art.
‘That’s Lake Michigan,’ said another with unassailable accuracy.
Kardosov first stood staring towards the railroad yards and then moved methodically around the tower. I kept well away from him. He spent thirty minutes in the Skydeck, buying plenty of souvenirs.
He glanced at me as I followed him into the crowded lift. For a second I thought he’d recognised me, perhaps from the Board of Trade. But he did nothing. A cold wind whipped up the lift shaft until the doors closed and we started the ear-popping descent.
‘Exit to your left,’ someone shouted as the doors opened.
Without looking in my direction Kardosov strode past the ground floor souvenir shop towards the revolving doors. Only when he reached them did he seem to sense my presence behind him.
A black Dodge Tradesman van was parked outside next to a ‘No Parking’ sign, a tall man in tan overalls held the sliding side door open. Julia and another man were approaching the entrance. Kardosov hesitated a moment. I pushed him forward, into the revolving doors.
‘Keep walking comrade.’
Julia had a raincoat over her arm. From the side it concealed the Colt .45 automatic in her hand but Kardosov could see it. Where the hell had the gun come from? Kardosov faltered for a second as he came out of the revolving door before walking slowly to the van. He probably thought we were the FBI and had a legion of gun-happy agents saturating the area. His eyes lingered on the U-Park multi-storey garage opposite and then he stepped into the van.
‘Put your face on the seat and close your eyes,’ I heard someone tell him.
Julia and I followed him into the van and the door was slammed behind us. Kardosov now lay on the floor and a woman in some kind of uniform knelt over him with a hypodermic syringe. As we moved off she inserted the syringe expertly into a vein at his ankle. Today was the day for needles, although the dose Kardosov had given poor Donnell was undoubtedly more dangerous than the sedative being pumped into him.
There were five of us in the back of the van: Julia, me, Kardosov, the woman I now realised was dressed as a nurse and a man I took to be Nick Broadbent. There was another man in the front alongside the driver.
It was over. So easy. Julia found the Interrogator in Kardosov’s pocket. Exultation. Relief. Any worries I may have had disappeared. What was important was that we had succeeded. If there had been any doubts about my actions in Zandvoort I had redeemed myself.
‘What now?’ I asked.
‘We drop you and Miss French near the hotel,’ replied Broadbent. ‘Go to room 544 and tell George “Pandora”. He’ll understand that means get the hell out of there and clear our tracks. You too.’
‘And what will you be doing?’
‘Losing this van as soon as possible and then going home.’
‘How?’
Broadbent gave me the look Julia had given me earlier. ‘You don’t need to know that.’
‘Presumably you’re taking Kardosov back in an ambulance,’ I suggested.
Broadbent ignored me and turned to Julia. ‘We’ll be home in six hours maximum. I’ll expect to see you in Jarvis Street then. We’ll keep Kardosov there overnight if necessary. You should maybe call London before you leave Chicago. And you can give me back that gun.’
He tapped the driver on the shoulder. ‘Drop our friends here.’
And that was it. No farewells.
Back in my hotel room I booked a flight and phoned Watkins with the details. I expected him to want to know exactly what had happened but that, he said, could wait until I returned.
Julia knocked on the door and came in with the Griffin Interrogator. It seemed such a small thing to kill for. I wondered if the police had identified the dead man at the Options Exchange yet. It wouldn’t take them long to discover that this was the man wanted for stealing the Griffin Interrogator and it probably wouldn’t take them long to link his death to a couple with English accents dropped outside the Exchange a few minutes earlier.
The expressway out of town followed the railway tracks, past ornate churches, factories and crummy houses. Hoardings screamed J&B Scotch, Budweiser and Walton Rugs. Trees pushed bare branches into the electric aura of the streetlights. ‘BACK IN DROVERS COUNTRY’ a sign told me. Streets passed with foreign-sounding names: Pulaski Road, Kostner Avenue. The moving panorama of the industrial Midwest. Montrose station sat in the middle of the road, a toy-like train pausing at the platform. And then, bearing right before the Illinois Tollway, O’Hare Field. Almost home.
Past the O’Hare International Tower Hotel, a couple of terminals sitting low and black, and then Trans World. Little more than half an hour from the hotel.
Julia had insisted that I be dropped first and when I left the taxi she gave me a peck on the cheek that I wanted to convince myself meant more than it did.
Inside, the clerk punched at his keyboard and asked a question unthinkable today. ‘Smoker or non-smoker sir?’
‘Non-smoker.’
‘Window or aisle?’
‘Window. Where’s the duty-free shop?’
‘There is none sir. Cigarettes and liquor on the plane.’
That was the worst blow since leaving London. The terminal was bleak. The gift shop had nothing I would give. The English Pub looked more like an English Launderette and I settled for the liquefied ice cream the drugstore called strawberry milkshake.
Most of the passengers were American. A group of sailors. A fat man with a lemon shirt and bootlace tie. A young boy and his father wearing identical jackets. Occasionally someone passed who looked foreign. Two Japanese businessmen. A tall, Germanic-looking man, the Varig tag on his bag identifying him as Hector Bunge. A family speaking Italian.
Time ticked by. Nearly 6.30. I stepped into the Gents opposite the doors leading to the Trans World gates, G1 to G12. It was empty. Someone came in behind me. Instinctively I turned to look at him, but too late. The blow caught me behind the right ear and I fell, the floor rising to catch me, a stinging pain filling my head. I passed out.
Coming to, my eyes flashed with glaring colours. Screaming pink, aquamarine, yellow, magenta. I screwed them shut but the colours were still there when I reopened them. Slowly things came into focus. I was looking at the world’s most nauseous tie. I closed my eyes again.
A voice tried to penetrate my mushy eardrums. ‘You all right buster?’
I nodded weakly. A hammer burst against the inside of my skull. I tried to rise, scrabbling at the floor, my legs feeling like sticks of chalk: weak, brittle, about to crack.
‘Easy buster.’
‘Take your time,’ said a second voice.
With the help of the two men I groggily got up and leaned against the wall.
‘What happened?’ one of them asked.
I was asking myself the same question. I couldn’t think properly. Should I say I had been mugged? That would mean the police.
‘I slipped.’ My voice sounded hoarse and unnatural.
‘Probably wet floor. You oughta sue the guys who run this place, their insurance will pay.’
I didn’t feel like suing anybody. Shakily I crossed to the washbasin and splashed water on my face, and then searched for a towel. The room was fitted with warm-air blowers. Finally I found paper towels near the door.
‘You sure you’re OK?’ The man with the tie registered concern.
‘I’ll be fine. Just needed a minute or two. It was stupid of me.’
‘Probably wet floor,’ he repeated. ‘Like I say, you oughta sue them.’
The other man nodded in agreement and left.
‘Thanks,’ I said to the tie, ‘I’ll be OK now.’
Outside there was no sign of anyone carrying a briefcase like mine. I wasn’t surprised.
A board on the wall opposite showed that flight 77 had arrived from San Francisco and would continue to London at 7.10. Not long to go.
I walked around the terminal, skull still throbbing and eyes occasionally losing focus. At one point my head started spinning and I sat down for a few minutes before continuing the search. Nobody had a case that even approximated mine.
The Skycaps couldn’t help. I thought of the police but not for long. Either they would not find the case or they would find it with the Griffin Interrogator gone. In the remote chance that they found the case intact, the FBI would surely have circulated Griffin’s description and I could find myself in even more trouble.
‘Be cautious,’ Watkins had said, ‘we can’t afford another Lechlade.’ If the police eventually found the case there was nothing in it to connect it with me, either in my real name or as Rupert Ashton. I had no leads of my own. The most sensible course was to go home, admit failure.
The signs to Gate G11 led me past an array of men’s rooms I could have used. Passengers were already boarding. I let them get on with it. At the end of the room a huge red board bore the headline ‘NOW PLAYING AT LONDON THEATRES’. I didn’t want to know.
‘We are boarding those passengers whose computer-generated boarding passes are colour-coded green,’ boomed the loudspeakers. ‘Only those passengers with the word “Green” printed on their pass at this moment.’
My pass was gold, the next to be called, and I trudged aboard. Outside, the terminal was busy. There were other planes, big and small, parked and moving, all normal. But something had changed. American Airlines, Eastern, United, they had all been there when I arrived. But yesterday I had been a bright young man with a glowing future. Tomorrow I could be out of a job. And I had no idea how it had happened.
The plane hurtled along the runway, hauling itself into the sky. The loudspeakers informed us it was 3 953 miles to London. I could have wished it was further. Chicago lay deceptively beautiful below, a jumble of coloured lights and roadways. Off to the right as we moved out over Lake Michigan the Sears Tower blinked farewell.