Spider - Michael Morley [87]
Nancy had agonized about whether she should break her guest’s right to privacy by going through his room and his belongings while he was out. In the end, she’d subscribed to her father’s old maxim that it was ‘far better to say sorry than ask permission’. Surprisingly though, their search had turned up absolutely nothing to support her superficial dislike of him or her deep-rooted suspicion that he might have been the intruder in her bedroom.
‘What do you think?’ she asked Carlo.
The hotel manager shrugged. ‘It was dark when it happened. And you say yourself that you never saw the man, because of his mask. We have found nothing that shows it was Signor McLeod.’ He looked at her sympathetically; he was aware that she had been badly spooked by the incident. ‘I can only think, Signora King, that you may have made a mistake. It seems our Signor McLeod is what he says he is. An American tourist. And in my experience, sometimes they can be much stranger and far more trouble than any burglar.’
56
Pan Arabia News Channel, New York
Tariq el Daher looked out over the hazy New York skyline while he tried to decide exactly how long he should keep the two FBI agents waiting. He checked his watch; it was a little after 11.30. Was twenty minutes enough to show them that he was in control and that things happened as and when he wanted them to? Or should he go for a full hour, to make sure that at least this government agency took Pan Arabia seriously in future and had the politeness to return its calls and treat it with the same respect they extended to the likes of Fox and CNN?
Tariq sent his PA to make him more coffee and asked her to tell the Feds that he was very busy and would do his best to fit them in as soon as possible. He drank the coffee while he finished reading the morning newspapers. He smiled to himself. Tomorrow, they would be full of quotes from him, and probably a photograph or two as well. He hoped they used the one taken a few years back at a press dinner when he had been presented with the special award for investigative journalism.
Tariq fully anticipated that all the news media, be it newspapers, TV or magazines, would steal screen shots of the girl from the video report he’d put together, so he’d already instructed Pan Arabia’s lawyers to issue a legal copyright warning and circulate a range of digitally enhanced photographs that the press could use for free, providing of course they credited Pan Arabia. Yes, tomorrow all the hacks will be scavenging on his scoop, he was sure of that. He smiled once more, this time at the thought of them having to search for his long-forgotten phone number and wonder if he’d deign to speak to them. First though, he would have to put up with annoying meetings with the FBI and the NYPD. The tame cop he’d used to help stand up the story in the first place was now going crazy, claiming he’d been quoted out of context and threatening to bust Tariq’s balls for getting him in so much trouble. Tariq wondered whether he’d also give him back the $500 he’d asked for in return for the interview. Somehow he thought not.
After forty minutes Tariq instructed his PA to show the agents through to the executive boardroom. Then he changed his mind. He decided instead that he’d see them, along with the company lawyer, in the smallest of all the ground-floor meeting rooms, the one usually reserved for junior reporters who were sent downstairs to get rid of potential time-wasters.
Ryan Jeffries from Legal met him in his office and they rode the elevator together. Fifty-year-old Jeffries had been round the block more times than a yellow cab and there wasn’t anything about media law that he either didn’t know, or couldn’t find a way round.
‘Good