Page 171 of King’s Ransom

My wrists were cuffed in front of me with a plastic zip-tie.

I glimpsed my watch.

It was 11:55 p.m.

I looked around myself, trying to figure out where I was.

I noticed that the ceiling above me and the floor on which I sat were both made of raw grey concrete. A thick concrete spray pipe stood nearby. Dirty wheelbarrows and power tools lay about.

A building site.

For some kind of parking structure. But with no side walls: hence indoor but also outdoor.

It was also below ground level. Way below.

I could see that this unfinished structure was hemmed in by the high walls of a square-sided construction crater that itself must have been four storeys deep. I was right at the very bottom of it, where the parking structure’s concrete met dirt.

Looking up, I could just see the upper edge of the crater and beyond it, the night sky and something truly odd.

A rollercoaster.

I was next door to Luna Park, at Coney Island, not far from the project tower where I’d met Roman Oberov and his son a few days earlier.

In fact, I figured I was in the very same square construction pit I’d seen from Oberov’s top-floor apartment, the one with the parking structure being built in it.

I stood up beside the Unperson and discovered that I was not the only captive here.

There were three others.

‘Oh, damn . . .’ I said.

A pair of concrete pits lay in the floor before me and the Unperson.

One was in the very corner of the floor and it was wide and square. It was about ten feet to a side and six feet deep, with walls of sheer concrete.

It shared a common wall with the next pit, which was smaller and narrower, a slim rectangle. Running around the outside of both pits—and around the entire corner of this unfinished parking level—was a dirt trench that was open to the sky.

Inside the bigger pit was an oblong concrete box maybe seven feet long, five feet wide and three feet deep; basically, a wide concrete coffin that had been used as a trash skip.

Litter and broken equipment had been tossed into it: Coke cans, beer bottles, hot dog wrappers, a cracked construction helmet, even a small rusted-and-busted concrete mixer on wheels.

The Unperson and his crew had placed the three other captives in these pits.

In the ‘coffin’ in the bigger pit knelt Roman Oberov and his son, Dmitri, dressed in their nice suits and cuffed with zip-ties.

They looked furious.

And in the smaller rectangular pit, lying on his side, his hands bound and looking scared out of his mind, was Monty Woods, the Tech Detect.

‘Sam? Sam!’ he cried.

‘Monty . . .’

‘The fuckers, they set a trap for me. On Tinder—’

‘Quiet,’ the Unperson said.

Monty shut up immediately.