Blindside (Michael Bennett)

by James Patterson

  Fiore faced the man and stepped toward him. The tubby FBI agent had no fear, that was for sure.

  Then someone else came from the side and bumped into the younger FBI agent, Miller. He bumped into him hard enough to knock him off his feet. Apparently this guy had a hard time staying upright.

  I wondered if I would have to help my captors in some sort of confrontation. Then a pair of strong hands grabbed me from behind and started leading me toward the front door.

  A voice from behind me said in English, “Just keep walking. Don’t do anything stupid.”

  Not doing something stupid was always my goal. I had found that I was not always able to accomplish that goal. For the moment, I moved along with my new captors. But I was looking for an angle. Something that would help me if I fought or if I ran.

  I couldn’t believe it, but suddenly I was worried about the two FBI agents’ safety. I had no idea who these new guys were, but I didn’t want them to hurt any cops.

  Outside, a beat-up red Fiat skidded to a stop right in front of us. I didn’t like the looks of this at all. If I got in that thing, there was no telling where I would end up. Or, more important, who I might end up meeting. I had to do something.

  I started to turn and look back into the terminal. A strong forearm kept my head from turning and shoved me forward. That was one plan out the window.

  Where were the uniformed cops in this airport? If something like this happened in JFK, there’d be a dozen cops pouncing on us right now. Here, about to be shoved into a car headed to God knows where, I had to think of something else fast.

  CHAPTER 57

  AS SOON AS I was shoved into the back seat of the Fiat, I swung my elbow back. I had no idea where I would catch the person behind me, but I was hoping it’d be the face. My plan got hazy after that.

  The man behind me blocked my elbow. Hard. His forearms felt like steel. Then he surprised me.

  The man called out, “Whoa, hold on, Ace. I’m on the job.”

  I froze at the combination of a Brooklyn accent and the code for a plainclothes NYPD officer. “I’m on the job” goes back decades. The origin is unclear, but it means “I’m a cop.” So I listened.

  The Fiat sputtered away from the curb. The airport building faded from the side-view.

  I glanced out the rear window to see if the FBI agents were following. It looked like we were in the clear, although I had no idea what the FBI would drive in Estonia. In New York, if they weren’t in a Crown Vic or a Taurus, they were in some weird seized vehicle, like a Land Rover or Cadillac.

  I sat back in the seat. The man next to me settled down, too, giving me space like a zookeeper would with an agitated animal.

  He said, “That’s better.” He stuck out his hand. “I’m Barry Davis, NYPD.” He grinned as if he’d just told a joke.

  I took his hand and assessed him. He was a powerfully built man, about forty-five, with a crew cut that had gone gray.

  I realized my hand was on my elbow where I had tried to strike Davis. It still throbbed a little, but I wasn’t going to admit it. I controlled my breathing, then pushed my hair back into place. I was stalling as I accepted my new surroundings and companions.

  I said, “The driver doesn’t speak?”

  Davis smiled. “He’d rather not be identified, seeing as how we’re way out of our home base doing a favor for Lieutenant Martindale.”

  “That’s a good partner.”

  “The best. And he doesn’t want to know why the FBI tried to detain you. You know, plausible deniability and all that shit. We figured they were more worried about their jurisdiction. They hate the NYPD.”

  I asked, “Where are you assigned?”

  “Paris.”

  “No shit. And you came all the way up here to help me?”

  “NYPD never leaves a detective behind.” He handed me a folded newspaper. “Or unarmed.”

  I opened the paper to see a black Beretta 9mm inside. I pulled the slide back a few centimeters to check if a round was in the chamber. It was loaded and ready to go.

  Davis smiled and said, “In case of emergency.” Then he handed me a card with just a phone number. “Any problems you can’t handle, call that number. I’ll be in Bonn on an unrelated issue. We’re off the books. No official engagement at all. But that doesn’t mean you’re alone.”

  “Thanks. Did Martindale tell you what I was up to?”

  “Nope. And I don’t want to know. Remember, we’ll deny everything if you cause a bunch of shit here.”

  I was impressed by Martindale’s tight lips. “I won’t do anything that reflects poorly on us.”

  Davis laughed. “Me? I was never here. How can it reflect poorly on me?”

  I smiled. “I meant I won’t embarrass the NYPD.”

  “Still not an issue I’m worried about. Cops have got enough to worry about. All I care about is that you get home safely.”

  “Thanks. That’s my main concern, too.”

  We pulled up to a four-story hotel on the edge of the city.

  Davis said, “You’re all set up here. Good luck.” He handed me my small carry-on bag, which I thought had been lost in the scuffles.

  Then they were gone.

  CHAPTER 58

  CHRISTOPH VISSER AND Ollie Van Netta were happy to be back in Amsterdam. Here the pot was better, they knew plenty of girls, and Christoph was able to stop by his mother’s apartment.

  His mom was always happy to see her engineer. At least, that’s what he told her he did for a living. A traveling engineer. His fake diploma from Erasmus University in Rotterdam hung on the wall of her living room, along with photos of his late father.

  Christoph enjoyed playing the role of dutiful and respectable son. He liked seeing his mother happy and proud, and when he visited home, he did everything his mother expected of him. He even attended mass at Christmas and Easter.

  Christoph knew this deception would work because for twenty-five years his father had worked as a collector for a loan shark. Christoph’s mother had believed her husband’s lie, that he was an accountant for a private equity firm.

  The gullible tend to be the happiest.

  No matter what he told his mother, Christoph wanted to take care of her. She was the only one in his whole life who cared what happened to him. She was the only one he didn’t want to disappoint.

  When he killed someone when he was young, Christoph realized it didn’t bother him. That wasn’t to say he enjoyed killing; he didn’t. He did it to make money. Money he planned to use on a nice house for his mother. And a wild apartment for himself.

  He had, on occasion, appreciated killing someone. Like those asses Janos and Alice. He and Ollie had made good money for that one, but it had been fun, too. It had been satisfying.

  He found Ollie at his favorite coffeehouse on the edge of the tourist district in Amsterdam. He usually went to a place on Handboogstraat called Dampkring. Tonight, he was in a smaller place, down the street, that didn’t mind when Ollie dozed off in a booth, as long as he spent plenty of money and didn’t cause problems.

  They both had been careful to keep their profession a secret. Since they had met Endrik Laar, who liked to be called Henry, their fortunes had seen a serious upturn. They didn’t have to seek out work. Henry paid well. And they liked their small, shared apartment in Tallinn, Estonia.

  In Amsterdam, Christoph maintained his own apartment. He brought home too many women to make sharing an apartment reasonable. It also gave him a sense that he was on vacation whenever he came to his hometown.

  Ollie lived with his father, who operated a bed-and-breakfast in the suburb of Haarlem. His father didn’t know and didn’t care what Ollie did for a living. That worked out great for Ollie. Aside from occasionally taking out the garbage or checking in a guest, Ollie did little to help his father.

  Christoph took a moment to shake his partner out of his hash-induced daze. The thirty-eight-year-old blinked his eyes a dozen times and sat up straight, as if he’d just hear
d a fire alarm. He brushed his brown, greasy hair from his eyes and tucked the long strands behind his ears. He looked surprised to see Christoph.

  “Hello, my brother. What brings you to Nirvana?”

  Christoph said, “You need to straighten up. Henry has a job for us.”

  “Where?”

  “I’ll give you a hint. Our Nordica flight leaves in two hours.”

  “Shit. Back to Estonia?”

  Christoph said, “It shouldn’t be too bad. Henry is going to give us a bonus for going to New York to kill Janos and Alice.”

  “Those assholes had it coming.” He scratched his head, then looked at Christoph and asked, “Why do you think Alice shot the Asian chick in the back?”

  “I guess she was just a bitch. We’ll never know. And Henry is pissed.”

  Ollie said, “He’s been quick to use us lately. He’s cutting into our party time. I wonder what he wants done now.”

  Christoph said, “He said something about a cop from New York.”

  CHAPTER 59

  THE NEXT MORNING, I was up and moving early. Early by Tallinn, Estonia, time—it was the middle of the night in New York, and I got a text telling me to call home no matter the time. I made a quick call to let Mary Catherine know I was safe. Somehow I neglected to tell her about my excitement at the airport. Just that I was staying in a lovely city with a beautiful Old Town district on a hill not far away.

  Her sleepy voice made me homesick. She said, “You promise to be careful?”

  “Sure, but what could go wrong? I’m in a country with a low crime rate looking for a missing girl who hangs out with computer geeks. I think I’ll manage.”

  She let out that warm Irish laugh and said, “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  Then it was back to reality.

  The breakfast in the main room of the hotel included three different kinds of fish. I’m not used to salted smelt for breakfast, but they weren’t bad.

  Then I hit the streets with a vengeance. Not like I might in New York. There, I knew every street corner, most hustlers, and a lot of cops. Here, it was just me, hoping I didn’t do anything to be noticed.

  I had several addresses I wanted to check out from Tony Martindale’s Intelligence Bureau resources. The folder he’d handed me on Henry hadn’t provided much information, but this turd looked to be bad news from the description they’d acquired through different informants.

  Usually a criminal was known to be either tough or smart. This guy appeared to be both. But he had no actual criminal history. No arrests at all. That was the sign of the worst kind of criminal: one who was smart enough to work the system or avoid detection altogether.

  The brief from Intel said he’d attacked the computer system of Aldi grocery stores in Germany. He had crippled all of their systems, then demanded ten million euros to let them operate again.

  The only thing that had stopped him was a bank screwup. Somehow the account he had been using in Russia at the time was viewable by the police. That saved the German company a fortune.

  In addition to several other cyberattacks, Henry was listed as responsible for three separate murders, two in Estonia and one in Russia. I thought, And at least one in New York. That didn’t count the dead at the coffeehouse.

  The more I found out about this “Henry,” the more I looked forward to finally meeting him.

  I walked along Pühavaimu, on the edge of the Old Town district. The medieval city walls rose right from the sidewalk, and a plaque advised me that Old Town was a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It explained that the first wall went up around the capital in the year 1265 during the reign of Margaret Sambiria, thus it is named Margaret Wall.

  The streets were filled with tourists, and among them I heard a number of American accents. My cabdriver had told me Estonians greatly preferred to hear English to Russian if someone wasn’t going to speak Estonian. Cruise ships docked at the main port and shuttled busloads of tourists to Old Town to see Toompea Castle as well as farther east to see the Kadriorg Palace. At the moment, I was dodging those crowds.

  At least two cruise ships were in the port, which I could tell by the different groups. Some had blue bags with the Princess Cruises logo on them. Others had Norwegian tags on their shirts. Each group shuffled along like the Peanuts gang, all closed in and cramped, trying to hear their guide.

  I took in the city as I looked for the first address on my list, which turned out to be a warehouse. I could tell by the windows and how clean the interior was that it’d been used recently. That fell in with what I knew about cybercriminals. They tended to move from location to location. I inspected the warehouse, hoping to find some clue as to where the operation had moved.

  I was surprised to find the front door unlocked. I walked in carefully, taking a few photos with my phone as I went. At the far end of an empty loading bay, a man in some kind of a janitor’s uniform pushed a wide broom.

  When he noticed me, he smiled and waved. He said something in Estonian.

  I held up my hands and said, “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Estonian.”

  The man, who looked to be about fifty with short gray hair, perked up and said, “English?”

  I nodded, and he walked over to me.

  “I like to speak English. Where you from?”

  “New York.”

  “New York, America?”

  “That’s the one.” I also gave him a quick thumbs-up.

  The man was small and a little hunched over. He patted me on the arm in a friendly gesture. “I’m Gunnar.”

  I took a chance and said, “Gunnar, do you know where the company that was here moved?”

  He gave me a confused stare, then smiled. “Computer company?”

  I nodded.

  “They have new building. On Tartu Maantee near Toit’s City.”

  “What’s Toit’s City?”

  “Nice café. You eat. You like.”

  I had to smile. That was perfect. I thanked the man and eased away from him as he tried to practice more English on me.

  I stepped outside into the bright sunshine of the Estonian morning. As my eyes adjusted, a man in a suit approached me. I could tell by the way he was walking that he was looking specifically for me. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

  I felt for the pistol stuck in my waistband. Now I really appreciated the efforts of the NYPD last night at the airport. I had almost refused the offer of the gun. Now I was glad I had it.

  The man stopped ten paces in front of me and immediately held up some kind of government ID. The way he did it, and the look of the ID, left no question that he was in law enforcement. It was almost a universal method of identification.

  He spoke English with only a slight accent. He said, “Mr. Bennett, I need to speak with you.”

  I was made.

  CHAPTER 60

  THE COP SEEMED a little casual as he approached me. Maybe he wasn’t used to the same threats American cops faced every day. And like many criminals in the United States, I was armed.

  I didn’t want to be searched and have the pistol discovered. But there was no way I was going to hurt a cop, either. He knew me. By name. That was disconcerting. It was a little surreal to be on the other end of a police stop. The fact that I was in a foreign country only made it more uncomfortable.

  He was about my age and fit. Maybe six feet tall. His eyes scanned me from head to toe. Then he said, “Why are you here?”

  “You mean, here on the street?” I hated when someone tried to double-talk me in New York. Now I was on the other side of the conversation, and frankly, it was kind of fun. I saw the frustration on the cop’s face. I could tell he was wondering if maybe his English wasn’t as good as he thought.

  Then he said firmly, “What are you doing in Estonia?”

  Not being a hardened street criminal, I stammered but didn’t come up with a smart-ass answer. Finally I spat out, “Sightseeing.” I had to wonder if this guy was legit. Was he on Henry’s pa
yroll? I became more apprehensive the longer he just stared at me.

  Then he pulled a phone from his pocket.

  I didn’t know what to do, so I just stood there. I didn’t want to make any threatening moves. I certainly wasn’t prepared to run.

  The cop spoke English on the phone. He said, “Yes, it’s definitely Bennett.” He listened to someone speak for a moment, then replied, “We’ll wait right here.”

  I had a sinking feeling in my stomach.

  I had never heard anything specifically about Estonian cops being corrupt. Certainly not like I’d heard about Russian police or the police in Mexico. I had to make a decision. Was this something I could risk? Not just for my safety but for Natalie Lunden’s? If Henry was as powerful and rich as I’d heard, he could buy a couple of cops. Or at least outfit someone to look like a cop.

  I needed to do something. I just wasn’t sure what.

  CHAPTER 61

  I LOOKED THE cop in the eye. He wasn’t concerned or frightened in the least, and he wasn’t going to back down. I considered running. Then I thought it through. The idea of hiding from the police while searching for a missing girl seemed foolish.

  A green Peugeot turned the corner and headed for us. I looked up and down the cobblestone street. There weren’t as many tourists now. Where were the crowds when you needed them?

  The car came up to the curb right next to me. A window rolled down and the driver called out, “Get in the car, Detective.” That made my cheek twitch. This was getting worse by the moment.

  Then I leaned down and looked through the open window. Sitting behind the steering wheel was the tubby FBI agent, Bill Fiore. He didn’t look particularly happy to see me. After the way the NYPD had snatched me away from him at the airport, I understood his frustration.

  He said, “What are you waiting for? A better invitation? Trust me, I’m doing you a favor.”

  I glanced over at the cop who’d approached me. He was waiting to see how I responded.