Whiteout by Ken Follett Page B

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 lifelongsmoker. 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.
    â€œI 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?”
    â€œWhat 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.”
    â€œWhat do you want me to do, send flowers?”
    â€œThey’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.”
    â€œWhat 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.”
    â€œLet 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