Whiteout(41)
Stanley's card would have the right site code, but the chip in it would contain Stanley's fingerprint data, not Kit's. However, he had thought of a way around that.
The movie was building to a climax. John Wayne was about to start shooting people. This was a good moment for Kit to make a clandestine move.
He got up, grunted something about the bathroom, and went out. From the hall, he glanced into the kitchen. Olga was stuffing a huge turkey while Miranda cleaned brussels sprouts. Along one wall were two doors, one to the laundry and the other to the dining room. As he looked, Lori came out of the laundry carrying a folded tablecloth and took it into the dining room.
Kit stepped into his father's study and closed the door.
The likeliest place for the smart card was in one of the pockets of his father's suit coat, as he had told Nigel. He had expected to find the jacket either on the hook behind the door or draped over the back of the desk chair; but he saw immediately that it was not in the room.
He decided to check some other possibilities while he was here. It was risky—anyone might come in, and what would he say? But he had to take chances. The alternative was no robbery, no three hundred thousand pounds, no ticket to Lucca—and, worst of all, the debt to Harry Mac unpaid. He remembered what Daisy had done to him that morning, and shuddered.
The old man's briefcase was on the floor beside the desk. Kit went through it quickly. It contained a file of scatter graphs, all meaningless to Kit; todays Times with the crossword not quite finished; half a bar of chocolate; and the small leather notebook in which his father made lists of things he had to do. Old people always had lists, Kit had noticed. Why were they so terrified of forgetting something?
The top of the pedestal desk was tidy, and Kit could not see a card or mything that might contain one: just a small stack of files, a pencil jar, and a book entitled Seventh Report of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses.
He started opening the drawers. His breath came fast and he felt his heartbeat speed up. But if he were caught, what would they do—call the police? He told himself he had nothing to lose, and carried on; but his hands were unsteady.
His father had been using this desk for thirty years, and the accumulation of useless objects was staggering: souvenir key rings, dried-up pens, an old-fashioned printing calculator, stationery with out-of-date phone codes, ink bottles, manuals for obsolete software—how long was it since anyone had used PlanPerfect? But there was no smart card.
Kit left the room. No one had seen him go in, and no one saw him go out.
He went quietly up the stairs. His father was not an untidy man, and rarely lost things: he would not have carelessly left his wallet in some unlikely place such as the boot cupboard. The only remaining possibility was the bedroom.
Kit went inside and closed the door.
His mother's presence was gradually disappearing. Last time he was here, her possessions were still scattered around: a leather writing case, a silver brush set that had belonged to her mother, a photograph of Stanley in an antique frame. Those had gone. But the curtains and the upholstery were the same, done in a bold blue-and-white fabric that was typical of his mother's dramatic taste.
On either side of the bed were a pair of Victorian commode chests made of heavy mahogany, used as bedside tables. His father had always slept on the right of the big double bed. Kit opened the drawers on that side. He found a flashlight, presumably for power cuts, and a volume of Proust, presumably for insomnia. He checked the drawers on his mother's side of the bed, but they were empty.
The suite was arranged as three rooms: first the bedroom, then the dressing room, then the bathroom. Kit went into the dressing room, a square space lined with closets, some painted white, some with mirrored doors. Outside it was twilight, but he could see well enough for what he needed to do, so he did not switch on the lights.
He opened the door of his father's suit cupboard. There on a hanger was the jacket of the suit Stanley was wearing today. Kit reached into the inside pocket and drew out a large black leather wallet, old and worn. It contained a small wad of banknotes and a row of plastic cards. One was a smart card for the Kremlin.
"Bingo," Kit said softly.
The bedroom door opened.
Kit had not closed the door to the dressing room, and he was able to look through the doorway and see his sister Miranda step into the bedroom, carrying an orange plastic laundry basket.
Kit was in her line of sight, standing at the open door of the suit cupboard, but she did not immediately spot him in the twilight, and he quickly moved behind the dressing-room door. If he peeked around the side of the door, he could see her reflected in the big mirror on the bedroom wall.
She switched the lights on and began to strip the bed. She and Olga were obviously doing some of Lori's chores. Kit decided he would just have to wait.
He suffered a moment of self-dislike. Here he was, acting like an intruder in the house of his family. He was stealing from his father and hiding from his sister. How had it got like this?
He knew the answer. His father had let him down. Just when he needed help, Stanley had said no. That was the cause of everything.
Well, he would leave them all behind. He would not even tell them where he was going. He would make a new life in a different country. He would disappear into the small-town routine of Lucca, eating tomatoes and pasta, drinking Tuscan wine, playing pinochle for low stakes in the evenings. He would be like a background figure in a big painting, the passerby who does not look at the dying martyr. He would be at peace.