Chief Harper loved the fourth hole at East Lake Golf Club. It suited the way he played the game and he always mastered it. Standing on the tee, he looked down the fairway to the green over four hundred yards away. Two booming wood shots straight down the middle would land him within ten yards of the green. A short chip and putt and he should be down in the par four; he usually was. He had a bet with his playing partner, who had never played the course, that he would be down in five or less.
Days like these, a casual game at a top golf club when the sun shone from dawn till dusk, were one of the perks of his job. Two or three times a year, when visiting high ranking police officers came to Atlanta, he got to play a round of golf with them, paid for by the City. This week there was a conference on international terrorism at the Georgia World Congress Center and he had invited Chief Superintendent Heath, head of the Australian Anti-Terror Unit, for a game.
Joe felt the warm sun on his back. He adjusted his baseball cap and took a couple of practice swings. He carefully placed the club so that the head was beside the ball and focused on what the club pro had told him. Head still and over the ball, feet firmly planted, wrists locked. He slowly pulled the club back in a wide arc over his right shoulder. Head down, left knee bent, hips in a slow swing to the right. He held the position for a second, the clubhead hovered, about to reverse the arc with the full force that he knew would be a perfect swing. Then the mobile phone in his golf bag rang.
‘Goddamn!’ he shouted, throwing the club onto the grass.
‘Leave it,’ said Heath casually, ‘you can call them back while we drive down the fairway.’
‘I can’t,’ said Harper, picking up the club and walking towards the bag, strapped to the back of the golf buggy, ‘it’s a phone number only my office have. I told them I didn’t want any calls unless it was an emergency.’
He unzipped a side pocket on the bag and took out the phone, which was still ringing.
‘Chief Harper,’ he said, ‘this had better be important.’
‘It’s Captain Appleyard, Chief. There’s been an armed robbery at Second National Bank on Ralph McGill Boulevard in Edgewood.’
‘Well, thank you very much for interrupting my game to tell me that, Captain,’ said Harper patiently, ‘but we have a bank robbery somewhere in the city just about every week.’ His voice suddenly rose to a shout. ‘I said emergencies! I don’t want to hear about every stupid two bit robbery! Clear?’
‘There’s something else, Chief.’
‘What!’ demanded Harper, still shouting.
‘There are a bunch of people trapped in the vault.’
‘What do you want me to do? Go over there and open the door? Get someone from the bank to do it, they must have systems that they can use.’
‘The vault is time locked and the robbers have destroyed the override.’
Slowly the whole picture came into focus in Chief Harper’s mind.
‘And the vault is airtight?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘How long have they got?’
‘We don’t know, we’re trying to get hold of someone to give us the figures.’
‘Do you need me there?’
Appleyard paused before answering. The Chief hated his golf days being interrupted. But it had to be said, and there was no easy way to say it.
‘If the press get hold of the fact that you were playing golf while people were suffocating to death, it wouldn’t look good, Chief.’
If he was expecting another explosion from Harper, he was wrong.
‘Send a car for me.’
‘We’ve got a patrol car about five minutes away from you, Sir.’
‘No, there’s a uniform in the closet in my office with a shirt and tie. Put them in a car with a fast driver. Tell him to use the blues and twos. I’ll get changed here, I don’t want to arrive at that bank looking like Jack Nicklaus.’
‘I’m on it, sir.’
Harper closed the phone and turned back to Chief Superintendent Heath.
‘I’m sorry, Ray, I have to go. Emergency. You know how it is.’
‘Pity,’ said Heath, ‘I was looking forward to taking fifty bucks off you, you were never going to make this hole in five.’
‘You’re in town for the next few days, why don’t we play another round before you go?’ said Harper with a forced smile.
Mayor Erica Taylor was Atlanta’s first female mayor. She had fought, like the alleycat she was, to get to the mayor’s mansion. On the way she had built a wide network of spies throughout the city, as she liked to know everything that was going on. ‘My remote eyes and ears’, she called them. One of them called her office.
‘Mayor,’ said Curtis Hoffman, a political adviser, walking into her office, ‘we have a problem in Edgewood.’
She looked up quizzically from the papers she was reading, but didn’t say anything. Hoffman knew it was a sign to keep talking.
‘There has been a robbery at Atlanta Second National Bank on Ralph McGill. They’ve locked the staff and some customers in the vault. It is airtight and the override of the locking system has been blown away by the robbers.’
Mayor Taylor stared at him for five seconds. Then she got up from her seat and walked round the desk.
‘Get a car outside the front door in thirty seconds,’ she said, walking quickly towards the office door. Hoffman followed her, opening a portmanteau he always carried and writing hurriedly in it with a slim gold rollerball.
‘Call police headquarters and organize motorcycle outriders. I want to get through the evening traffic at more than a snail’s pace. Find out how many people are in the vault.’
‘How do we do that, Madam Mayor?’
‘Call the bank and get the number of staff they had on duty. Ask one of the cops to count cars in the customer’s parking lot, that should give you a total, near as dammit. Call the vault manufacturers, see if there is any other way to open the door. Get the size of the vault and see if someone can work out how long those people have got. Call Chief Harper, I need him to be there, we want a show of unity. Call Frank at WATL television, I need some shots of me arriving at the bank. You’d better come with me, we’ll talk in the car.’
By now, they were approaching the front door of the mansion, walking just short of a jog. A servant opened the door. The mayor stopped at the top of the steps. She turned to face Hoffman.
‘Where’s the fucking car?’ she whispered viciously.
Curtis Hoffman was saved from answering as a limousine pulled round the corner and stopped at the foot of the steps. As they descended towards it Hoffman, prioritising, was calling the police to get motorcycle outriders. The back door of the car had been opened by the driver and they climbed in and sank into the wide leather-covered back seat.
‘Do we know where to go?’ Mayor Taylor demanded as the driver got behind the wheel.
‘Atlanta Second National Bank, Edgewood,’ he said over his shoulder.
‘Get there as fast as you can.’
They were five minutes into the journey when Curtis Hoffman heard wailing sirens behind him and two police Harley Davisons, weaving quickly through the traffic, overtook them and then slowed either side of the car, to keep pace with them, sirens still sounding.
Curtis Hoffman closed the portmanteau on his lap and tugged gently at his left ear lobe. The mayor watched him out of the corner of her eye. He always did that when he had something to tell her she might not agree with, but she had never told him that she recognized the sign.
‘Are you sure this is wise?’ he said as he took his hand away from his face.
‘Politically or personally?’
‘Politically.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Wouldn’t it be better,’ said Hoffman smoothly, reopening the leather portmanteau and slowly turning the pages, ‘to separate the executive from the operational?’
‘You’re talking in riddles, Curtis.’
‘You stay at your desk and we get some good shots of you in charge, issuing orders. Chief Harper goes to the bank and has responsibility for getting the vault door open. If all goes well, you step up to claim the credit; if it goes sideways you very publicly fire Harper.’
Erica Taylor pursed her lips, then shook her head.
‘No, we’ve set the ball rolling, I’ll take charge at the bank. The last thing I need is that asshole Burnett’s face all over the local television, saying that what the city needs is a hands-on Mayor.’
‘And if it goes wrong?’
‘It can’t.’
They rode in silence for two minutes, watching the car speed through the busy streets and listening to the sirens of the outriders.
‘Burnett,’ said Erica Taylor, ‘he’ll know by now, won’t he?’
‘He’s got as many contacts in this city as you have so, yeah, he’ll know.’
Curtis Hoffman was wrong, but not by much. As the mayor’s car drove along Highway 20 towards Edgewood, Captain Appleyard was dialling a number he had in the back of his diary.
‘Todd Bauer,’ said a voice.
‘Todd, this is Dan Appleyard. I thought that Mr Burnett may be interested to know about a bank robbery in Edgewood, they’ve locked the staff and customers in the vault and there’s a chance they could all die.’
‘Tell me more,’ said Bauer, reaching for a pad.
‘There’s not much else to tell you.’
‘The mayor, is she there?’
‘I phoned Chief Harper, so I guess he will have contacted her.’
‘And will they get the vault open in time?’
‘That’s anybody’s guess. The robbers have blown the manual override. They have to figure out a way of bypassing the time lock.’
‘Thanks, Dan. When we get elected, we will remember the people who helped us.’
He put the phone down and walked to Porter Burnett’s study. He didn’t knock, Burnett made a point of keeping his door wide open; he told people he had no secrets.
Exactly one year to the day before the mayor was due for re-election, Porter Burnett III stood on the steps of City Hall and announced to a crowd of supporters and press that he was running for the office of mayor of the great city of Atlanta.
He had been born and bred in the city and he played the political card of favourite son with skill and persistence. In public, he meandered from strategy meetings to fundraising dinners, a large, big boned figure in his trademark creased linen suit and red bow tie. He was a large man in every sense, full of bonhomie and humour. When he spoke, it was often home spun philosophy, in a voice and southern accent, both deep.
‘When my poor pappy died,’ he would often say, ‘there was an autopsy and when they took out his heart, written across it in Confederate colours was: “Atalanta, Georgia”. When I go, I’ll be the same’. He wore his blond hair long with a centre parting, so that untidy waves of hair flopped down on each side of his forehead whenever he moved. He always carried a large comb and pulled it out fifty times a day to run it through his hair. People who didn’t know him thought it was vanity, but close friends and family knew it was nerves.
The people who didn’t know him made another larger mistake about Porter Burnett. To the outside world he was a naive, bumbling hometown boy. Anyone who had looked into his background knew that the southern empty-headed charmer was just an act. Educated at a private school, then Duke University, the best in the South ‘because I didn’t want no Yankee teaching me the law’, he studied law and graduated with honours. He sailed through the Georgia bar exams, passing in the top one percent. After six years in the district attorney’s office, he went into private practice with his brother-in-law, Harvey Bridgeman, specializing in medical negligence suits. He gained a reputation as a fierce trial lawyer and an eloquent advocate.
But the public persona was easy to develop, not just because of the accent. He was from an old Atlanta family. His great-great-great-great (‘too many greats for me to count’) grandfather had raised a regiment in the Civil War and was the last one to hold out against Sherman’s invading army. The family had made their money in cotton, pecans and banking. They were one of the last to renounce slavery, a fact that Porter kept well hidden now.
Porter, named after his father and grandfather, was the eldest of five children. His three sisters had all married well and his younger brother now ran the family bank and was the director of the fundraising for Porter’s campaign. Porter had been married for 25 years to Eleanor, a woman from another old Atlanta family and a member of the Daughters of the Revolution. She spent a lot of time attending charity functions and was the treasurer of the Atlanta Junior League.
They had three children, the eldest daughter married to a stockbroker, the second engaged to a junior surgeon and a boy who had followed his father to Duke and was in his sophomore year. Publicly, they were a loving couple, but the reality was that the marriage had gone sour years ago.
Inside his own front door, Porter almost always went directly to his study to work on his computer, meet with his political allies, and occasionally enemies, and make and receive an endless stream of phone calls. His large colonial home was his study, office and where he plotted his political campaign.
Todd Bauer stood in the doorway and waited for Porter to finish his phone call. Burnett saw him and, knowing that Bauer, as his political adviser, wouldn’t interrupt him unless it was urgent, gave his good wishes to the caller and put down the phone with a promise to call back soon.
‘Well, Todd,’ he said, leaning back in his chair, ‘what have you got for me?’
‘A robbery at Atlanta Second National Bank on Ralph McGill Boulevard. I don’t know how much they got away with, but they’ve locked some of the staff and customers in the vault, they could suffocate.’
‘What’s the mayor saying?’
‘Nothing yet, but I’m sure she’s on her way over there.’
Porter Burnett leaned forward, opened the teak humidor door on his desk and took out a large cigar. He took his time piercing and lighting it, revolving the tube of tobacco several times to make sure that end was evenly lit, before throwing the match expertly into a small silver ashtray. He took the cigar out of his mouth and examined the glowing end.
‘Should I go over there, Todd?’
‘No, Porter. The mayor will have assembled her pet pack of reporters and will be barking orders and being statesmanlike. If you go over there, the police will make sure you’re hanging around on the edges, looking like a low roller trying to get into a high-stakes craps game.’
‘So what should I do?’
‘You go on television. WGCL have come out in support of you, we’ll use them. You say your thoughts and prayers are with the families of the poor people in the vault and if there is anything you can do, the mayor or anyone else only has to ask. Then you say that you are sure that the mayor is doing all she can and that she will resolve the problem so no-one gets hurt. Then you pray it all goes wrong for her.’