Storm Front: A Derrick Storm Thriller (11 page)

“Hey, Arnie, be nice,” Whitely said. “But Lee?”

“Yeah?” the man said, pausing just as he was about to disappear behind the partition.

“Arnie is right about one thing,” he said. “Please don’t wear those shoes out here again.”

The SUV was parked halfway down Fulton Street, a block from the club. It had windows tinted so dark they were, technically, illegal. The people inside the vehicle were not concerned about the penny-ante fines that might result from such an infraction. Their greater worry was having someone realize that inside that boxy black truck was a trove of surveillance equipment.

“Did you get all that?” the man working the monitoring equipment asked the driver.

“Yeah,” the driver said.

Bugging the racket club had been a real pain. The place had twenty-four-hour security and had been able to afford the best. But they knew Cracker went there at least twice a week for roughly two hours a shot. Their stalking of Whitely Cracker was a round-the-clock venture. And that clock couldn’t have a four-hour hole in it each week.

The man thrust his shoulders in between the driver and the front passenger seat, so his head was even with the driver’s.

“Should we move in? We could take him right now. End this thing,” the man said.

“Where? When he comes out of the club? Right there on the curb?”

“Yeah, sure. Why not?”

“No. Not yet,” the driver replied. “We’ve been patient for a reason. We’ve got to do this right.”

“But you heard that. Fulcher just demanded his money. All his money. Do you know how much that is?”

“No. But I’m sure it’s not nothing.”

“What’s going to happen when he realizes Cracker doesn’t have it?”

“Who knows?” the driver said. “Maybe our boy is going to be able to come up with it. He’s resourceful.”

The man retreated to the back of the truck. All the coffee he had been drinking to stay awake was pressing at his bladder. He needed to pee. He shook his head and grabbed the Gatorade bottle he had been using for that purpose.

“It feels like we’re just delaying the inevitable,” he called as the urine hit the bottle.

“I know,” the driver said. “Just be patient. It won’t be much longer.”

C
leveland Detroit had performed the necessary measures to ensure his departure from Paris was unaccompanied by any prying parties. Once he cleared city limits, Derrick Storm pointed himself toward the designated rendezvous point, a manor house that was only seven hundred years old and therefore not considered very interesting by the French.

The house was on the outskirts of Blois (pronounced “blah”), southwest of Paris. Storm was expecting to be met by an escort from French authorities, as Jedediah Jones had promised—some kind of lights-flashing ride through the Channel Tunnel, at which point he’d be turned over to the British, who would speed him on to London in similar fashion. Storm never knew how Jones arranged such things three thousand miles from home, in foreign jurisdictions. But Jones had never let him down.

Until this time. Storm arrived at the manor grounds, passed through the outer walls, and knocked on the front door of the main house. It was answered by a weathered old caretaker. Storm was quite the sure the man was an operative… for the French resistance during World War II. But, following orders, he said in French: “Jones sent me.”

Usually these three words were enough to make things happen. Instead, the caretaker welcomed him with all the warmth French
hospitality is famous for, which is to say he looked at Storm like he was wearing a shirt made of donkey dung.

“
Qu’avez-vous dit?
” he asked. Approximate translation: “Say what, homey?”

Storm had switched to French and started to explain himself when he heard the distant sound of helicopter rotors chopping the air. If Storm knew Jones, that meant his ride had arrived.

“Never mind,” Storm said, changing back to English. “Wrong house. My sense of direction must be a little… Blois.”

Storm chortled at his own joke as he turned to go.

“Oh, you must be the American,” the caretaker said in English, grabbing Storm’s arm with surprising strength. “Stay right here. I have a few things for you.”

Storm stood at the door of the manor house until the man returned with a change of clothes and a rectangular-shaped package, approximately a foot in length and perhaps half that in width. It was wrapped in plain, brown paper.

“Here,” he said. “He said you might like this.”

“Is this… a toy?” Storm said, feeling the gleam forming in his eye.

The caretaker tilted his head, as if Storm had re-donned his donkey dung shirt. By now, the helicopter was coming in for a landing, flattening the grass in a nearby field with its downdraft.

“Never mind,” Storm said, peeling away the brown paper to reveal a box. Printed on the side in bold, block letters was the name “ACME.”

“It
is
a toy,” Storm exclaimed. The ACME thing was a running joke between him and Jones, both fans of classic Road Runner cartoons. Storm went into the box and pulled out what appeared to be a sleeve like the one quarterback Robert Griffin III had popularized in the NFL.

“What… what is it?” Storm asked, sliding the sleeve on his arm. At the end near his shoulder, it had two straps that Storm strapped around his torso, keeping the sleeve in place. Over the
forearm, there was a nearly flat housing with a small aperture near the wrist.

“It’s a kind of grappling hook,” the old man said. “The line is as thin as dental floss but stronger than steel. The latest in nanotechnology. The line accelerates at ninety-six feet per second squared—”

“That’s three times faster than gravity,” Storm interjected.

“—and the hook forms as the line pays out. Except it’s not really a hook. It’s more like a disk. It is only eight centimeters wide, but it will stick to virtually any material or structure, even a flat wall, and be able to hold five hundred pounds.”

“Yet it couldn’t weigh more than about two pounds itself,” Storm said, hearing himself sounding a little too gee-whizzish.

“Again: nanotechnology.”

“So
not
Blois,” Storm said to himself.

“Just make sure you read the instructions,” the caretaker said

“Why would I do that?”

“I was told you would ask that,” he said, chuckling. “The answer is: because Jones said so.”

Storm went inside and quickly changed into the new clothes, silently thanking Jones for arranging a more Derrick Storm–like outfit, one that actually matched. It also included one of his favorite kind of fashion accessories, the kind that took bullets. The 9mm Beretta wasn’t necessarily Storm’s gun of choice, but it would beat a good talking-to if he bumped across someone with a bad attitude. He slipped the grappling hook sleeve onto his arm, over his shirt but under his jacket, leaving the small aperture just barely peeking out from the jacket’s cuff.

He left without further comment, jogging to the waiting helicopter, a Griffin HAR2 that had the markings of the Royal Air Force. Storm clambered into the main hold. There was a seat with a helmet sitting on it that he assumed was for him. He donned the helmet and strapped himself in.

“You’re late,” Storm said into the helmet’s intercom.

“Sorry, sir,” the pi lot replied.

“What, did you get caught in queuing on the M-1?” Storm joked. “Or was it that the destination made your navigation sort of… Blois.”

The pilot did not reply.

Storm tried again: “Or maybe the helicopter is having a… Blois day.”

The pilot punched a few buttons on the control panel.

“Oh, come on, nothing for that? You have such a… Blois sense of humor.”

Still no words from the pilot.

“Get it? Because you’re going to a city called Blois and…”

“You think a joke improves when you have to explain it?” the pilot asked.

“Right. To London, then.”

Storm felt the surge of the chopper lifting upward then watched out the small side window as the fields of northern France passed underneath. He turned his attention to the grappling hook, tossing the instructions onto the floor of the chopper. By the time they reached the iconic shores of Normandy, he felt comfortable with the device’s operation.

Somewhere over the English Channel, he dozed off.

It was mid-morning by the time Storm landed near the crime scene. He felt refreshed from the nap and was keen to be able to do his own investigating, not just rely on reports from others. He didn’t necessarily think he was smarter than any of the agents who had combed through the other scenes. But he did know Volkov. Maybe there would be something the other agents had overlooked or the significance of which they didn’t understand.

The building where the killing had occurred was filled with fashionable condominium lofts in a reclaimed industrial building
along the south bank of the Thames, two turns of the river away from Parliament, not far from King’s Stairs Gardens.

This was a part of London that had undergone much change since World War II, and its rejuvenation had continued into the twenty-first century, albeit haltingly. Next to the loft, rising forlornly from the earth, there were empty steel girders of what would someday—if the financing could ever again come together—be an office tower to approach the Shard as one of London’s tallest buildings. The superstructure had been completed, but construction had since been halted, a reminder that En gland had not been immune to the economic malaise that had gripped Europe. Storm wondered idly how many millions of dollars of steel had been used in making what was essentially a towering skeleton.

Storm entered the condo building and rode to its top floor, the eighth, which was swarming with officials of all stripes. At the front door, he was handed a pair of latex gloves by a uniformed man, who logged Storm’s entry. He walked through the foyer, into a sitting room, then toward where all the action seemed to be taking place: the office, in the northwest corner of the loft.

At least in the Western world, crime scenes always looked the same. There were people in varying kinds of uniform running around, working on their small piece of the action, doing their duty. And then, somewhere, not in uniform, there was the person in charge.

Storm finally found that person in the office. He was tall, bespectacled, and gentle-looking, with long, chestnut-brown hair tied back in a ponytail. He looked less like a Scotland Yard detective and more like someone you might find in a computer science Ph.D. program. The man was staring at something on a clipboard, looking up as Storm approached.

“Hi, I’m…”

“Derrick Storm,” the man said. “And I’m Nick Walton, Scotland Yard. I’ve been told to cooperate fully with you. Would you like some tea?”

Okay, so maybe there
were
small differences in crime scenes. “No, thank you,” Storm said. “What do we have here?”

Storm gestured toward the corpse still duct-taped to a desk chair. The man had slumped forward slightly against his restraints, his head lolling to the left. The angle gave Storm more of a view than he needed of the missing portion of the back of the man’s skull. The man’s right hand, which hung at his side, looked like raw meat. Volkov’s work, for sure.

“Victim’s name is Nigel Wormsley,” Walton said. “He was an executive vice president at Queen Royal Bank. I’m told that might be of interest to you.”

Storm just nodded.

“Took two bullets right between the eyes from close range,” Walton continued. “The shots were close enough that the entrance wounds merged into one hole. But from looking at the edges of the one on the left, it appears to be forty-five-caliber. That’s my best guess. As you know, we’re not as accustomed to gun violence as you Yanks, so I don’t get as much practice on that sort of thing.”

Storm let the cheap shot—if, in fact, it was intended as a cheap shot and not merely a statement of fact—pass without comment.

“If you want to have a look, you have to sort of get underneath him and look up,” Walton said. “Obviously, it’s not as hard to see the exit wound. And I’m sure you noticed that his hand is a bloody mess. Whoever did this is some brutal bastard.”

“Any other victims?” Storm asked, braced for the answer.

“No, just Mr. Wormsley,” Walton said. “He has a house in the country where his wife and son stay. This has been described to me as his city crash pad.”

Storm looked around at the office, with its sleek, modern furnishings. Either Wormsley or his decorator had expensive tastes. The office had large, nearly floor-to-ceiling windows that offered an expansive view of the city.

“Nice crash pad,” Storm said.

“Mr. Wormsley was a very wealthy man, as you might imagine,” Walton said. “I’m told his bonus alone last year was in the millions of pounds. Not bad, eh?”

“Do you know what kind of work he did at Queen Royal?”

“I don’t know. Banker stuff. Does it matter?”

“It might,” Storm said. “Do you happen to know if he was involved in currency trading?”

Walton’s right eyebrow arched. “Yes, as a matter of fact. He was executive vice president in charge of currency exchange.”

Good old Dad. His hunch had been correct. Of course. It was now no coincidence: four bankers, all involved in currency trading, all tortured for some reason. What that reason was remained unclear.

Storm studied the desk without touching anything. It was a large, open surface, mostly devoid of tchotchkes or mementos. There was a good bit of blood, now congealing or congealed, pooled on top. That must have been where Volkov yanked out the man’s fingernails. There were a few picture frames and a paperweight on the floor nearby, as if someone had swept them off the desk.

“Anything taken?” Storm asked.

“We won’t know until the wife gets here to have a look around. She should be here anytime, and we were hoping to get Mr. Wormsley out of here before she does her walk-through, so if you need to examine him, you might want to do it now.”

Storm did not make a move toward the body. There was nothing it could tell him, unless it suddenly started talking.