by Tim Tigner
No one was paying the finery any heed. All the action was off to the side in an enormous study that boasted floor-to-ceiling windows and bookshelves. One large section of shelving had been swung aside to reveal two open elevator doorways and a closet. There was a lot of action around it. In fact, there was a lot of action everywhere. There had to be close to a hundred people, between the medical and law enforcement personnel and the victims.
Vic quickly spotted the RPD officer who was likely in charge of the scene. Lieutenant Marty Acevedo, who of course went by Ace, was busy talking to a group of victims. They were dressed like doctors, but then so was every victim at the scene.
Vic walked up and stood next to his city counterpart without interrupting.
“Then we heard two sickening thuds coming from the elevator shaft. We looked inside and saw two bodies. A man and a woman.” The speaker was a big blond fellow with over-bleached teeth. He had a New York accent and emitted an arrogant air despite his demeaned position.
“And you think it was this Achilles fellow who did it?” Ace spotted Vic as he spoke, causing a telltale shadow to flash across his face like a flying bird.
The two had worked a few cases together, always pleasantly enough, so Vic knew the slip didn’t reflect personal animosity. Ace was reacting like anyone would when his winning hand got trumped.
“Nobody else was in the shaft. It had to be him,” Blondie replied.
“And then he fled on a motorcycle?” Ace asked.
“One of those cross-country types with a big suspension and knobby tires. I ordered him to stop, even raised a gun, but he ignored me.”
“Where did you get a gun?”
“From under a couch.”
“Down in the bunker?”
“That’s right. Achilles left it there.”
“I’m confused. He left you a gun?”
“It wasn’t loaded. That was part of his trick.”
“Yet you’re surprised that he ignored you when you raised it at him?”
“He didn’t know it was empty. He gave Kai an identical gun that was loaded.”
“Why would he do that, if he was one of the kidnappers?”
“To make us think he wasn’t, obviously.”
“But then he ran?”
“Right. Once I made it clear we were on to him.”
Ace put his hands on his hips. “We’re going to need to continue this discussion downtown. You’ll be more comfortable there.”
Vic noted that Ace didn’t indicate whose downtown office he was referencing.
Blondie crossed his arms. “We’re not going anywhere but to the airport. We need to get back to New York. My bank has chartered a plane.”
“This is a complicated case. We still have a lot of questions.”
“My colleagues and I only have one. Where’s our money? Collectively, we’re out forty-eight million dollars. You know who took it. You have their names right there on your pad. You should be looking for the four of them, not sitting in a comfortable office with us.”
“Please calm down. There’s a process to these things.”
“Don’t tell us what to do or lecture us on process. We’re not ignorant hicks. And don’t you dare try to pull any of that obstruction of justice crap. We’re happy to provide any information you may require by telephone, from New York. Or did you bring a subpoena?”
Vic chose that moment to step forward—not on Ace’s toes. More like a dance move. “Vic Link, FBI. I missed the first part of your discussion. Do I understand correctly that you believe one of the victims was really a kidnapper?”
“Six of them, actually. Four got away with the money. One is dead, another is still in the bunker.”
“So you believe six of the fifty were in on it?”
“How many times do I have to repeat myself with you people? This is why we’re going to New York and not downtown.”
Vic ignored the rebuke and addressed the rest of Blondie’s coterie. “Do you all agree with that? Some of the victims were in on the abduction?”
Some said, “Yes.” The rest nodded.
“They were undercover, so to speak? Masquerading as fellow prisoners before double-crossing their partners upstairs?”
“Exactly. You have their names,” Blondie said, pointing to Ace’s notepad.
Vic turned to Ace. “Did you hear that?”
Ace kept a straight face, but his eyes smiled. “I did.”
“What?” Blondie asked.
“With eight eyewitnesses claiming that there are perpetrators hiding among the victims, all the victims have to be treated as suspects—and detained.”
Vic watched with some satisfaction as the arrogant banker puckered like a fish, but it didn’t last. “Nice try, but no dice. All you have to do is interrogate Sebastian. He can confirm who his accomplices were, here and now.”
“I’m afraid that’s not an option.” The gravelly voice emanated from somewhere behind Vic’s left shoulder. He turned to see a fit sixty-something male with a shaved head and piercing eyes standing beside the governor of Florida.
“Why not?” Blondie asked with a tinge of panic.
“Sebastian is dead. He committed suicide.”
55
Bad Ride
Location: Unknown
KATYA OPENED HER EYES to pain and blackness. Her first thought was that she was back in the bunker, but that oddly appealing idea evaporated like a desert mirage. She was moving.
Also, the dark wasn’t absolute. She couldn’t see any source of light, but there seemed to be a few photons bouncing around. More like midnight in the woods than an underground cave.
The conclusion came quickly. She was in the trunk of a car.
The lack of light wasn’t her primary concern at that moment. It wasn’t even in the top five. For starters, she really needed a bathroom. Not that she could actually make use of one. Her wrists were bound behind her back and her ankles were also taped. This arrangement had her lying on her chest with her face in fuzzy flooring.
The carpeting seemed to be inducing an allergic reaction, because her eyes were itchy and her nose was clogged. The latter was particularly concerning because her mouth was taped shut. She was having trouble breathing.
Had the owners kept cats in the trunk?
Katya attempted to dislodge her gag by opening her jaw as wide as possible. This had the unexpected result of putting pressure on her ears. Ears that were covered.
She was wearing a headset. One of the big pairs like you used to protect your ears on a firing range. It must have been duct taped in place. Wrapped vertically around her jaw. Was that to prevent her from overhearing something? What could they not want her to hear? A secret plan? Achilles calling her name? No, she realized. That wasn’t it at all. It was likely one of the anesthetic headsets that Sabrina saw at Cinquante Bouches.
So why wasn’t she unconscious? Katya pondered that for a minute, for a mile, all the while struggling to take her mind off her exploding bladder. She concluded that the batteries had died.
How much longer could she hold it? How much longer would she have to? Which would give out first—her bladder or her nose?
Rather than dwell on those unpleasant details, Katya attempted to analyze her situation, beginning with a timeline.
What was the last thing she remembered?
The shock of that answer hit her hard.
She’d heard the sounds that Achilles primed her for—the clicks and whooshes of an opening and closing safe. Seconds later, she’d been grabbed by the arm and quietly threatened not to speak or move. She’d responded by swinging the small dumbbell fast and hard at the side of her assailant’s head. He—Sebastian or Webster, she wasn’t sure which—had collapsed at her feet. Miraculously, he hadn’t shouted, and she hadn’t screamed.
Had she killed him? Or just knocked him out? Katya didn’t know. But she’d made it onto the elevator. Her last memory was stepping aboard.
Was that it? The reason for her cruel conf
inement? Revenge for killing one of the kidnappers’ spies? No way to tell.
Given what she knew about the memory loss associated with headphone use, Katya concluded that she’d been ambushed as she exited the elevator. Sabrina was likely in another trunk. Hopefully Achilles and Oz were too.
That was the best-case scenario, she realized. Achilles would never permit her to be taken. His assault on the cabin had obviously failed.
The idea that Achilles could come up short in something so important, something so close to his core competence, was more frightening than any of the physical threats to Katya’s health. She simply couldn’t turn her mind’s eye in that direction.
She decided to focus on saving herself. Getting the duct tape off her mouth was top of that priority list. Katya figured that she could use the carpeting to catch the edge and peel it off. But the edge didn’t seem to be exposed.
The headset would have to come off first. No easy task given that it too was taped.
She began rubbing the side of her head against the floor like an affectionate cat. A few passes were enough to realize that dislodging it would be a challenge. The tape was tightly wrapped.
She repositioned herself to gain better leverage, moving into something resembling Child’s Pose, facing downward and bent double with her knees to her chest. The yoga position smashed her back against the roof of the trunk, but it gave her a good angle. A few seconds later, she almost wished it hadn’t. The duct tape wasn’t just stuck to her chin, the earphones and headband. It also clung to her hair.
Katya wanted to rip it off quickly, like a Band-Aid. But she didn’t have the range of motion. She had to twist it millimeter by millimeter and endure the pain of each follicle pulling free. It felt like the world’s worst bikini wax—but higher.
The end result yielded good news and bad. The good news was that when the headset peeled off, it took the gag with it. The bad news was that the sticky wad of tape remained tangled in her hair.
Best to ignore it. To focus on the positive. One problem down. Make that the start of a trend.
Katya decided her next move would be to free her hands. Although a less painful undertaking, it promised to be more difficult. It felt as if her wrists had been wrapped a dozen times. She pictured the kind of overkill an exuberant kid would use on an art project. But that image quickly fled her mind.
The surface beneath the tires changed and the car began to slow. What would her captors do when they saw what she’d done? How much more duct tape would they use the next time?
56
About Face
Western Nevada
WHILE WAITING for permission to enter, Vic reflected that his boss had a proper office. A corner suite in a dedicated, modern building. Although not quite as impressive as the shining blue glass and white stone in Sacramento, the Las Vegas field office was both comfortable and stately. A source of employee pride.
Vic’s satellite office in Reno, by contrast, was a generic rental space. One was more likely to associate it with a startup commercial operation than the point of the Justice Department’s spear. He found the disparity motivating. One more reason to keep clawing his way up the lofty ladder.
“Mr. Brick will see you now,” his administrative assistant announced, rising and coming around her desk. She always escorted visitors to the door. Boss’s orders, Vic had heard. A pet peeve. Part of his persona.
“Thank you, Melanie.”
Brick was reading when Vic entered. That was what he went by, Brick or Mr. Brick. Take your pick. If you asked for his first name he’d say “Special Agent-in-Charge.” Heaven help the underling who addressed him as Percy.
Vic sat opposite the big desk and waited for his boss to look up.
Brick didn’t. He kept his eyes glued to his laptop screen. “Special Agent Link, have you found the money?”
The money was the ninety-two million in ransom payments collected from forty-six hostages and converted into cryptocurrency. Forty-six very influential, now former hostages. Bankers and executives who were now using their apparently limitless supply of political connections to rain pressure from above. The torrent flowed downward, of course, leaving Vic and his career drowning in the gutter.
Despite that unpleasant circumstance, Vic found the cold reception puzzling. Brick was habitually and intentionally one of those everybody’s best friend guys. He was always slapping your back with one hand even when stabbing it with the other.
“The money can’t be tracked directly,” Vic said, struggling to maintain a positive tone. “That’s the point of cryptocurrency. To retrieve it, we have to find the people who control it.”
“And you’ve made no progress there?”
“They, like the money, have gone off-grid.”
“The two Maltese, the Russian and the American?” Brick clarified.
“Actually, the two may not have been Maltese.”
That got Brick to look up. “Pardon me?”
“They may have been Middle Eastern.”
“But they received ESTA approval. Their passports had to be valid,” Brick noted, referencing the visa program that allowed EU citizens to enter the United States for up to two years as long as they didn’t stay for more than ninety days at a time.
“Their Maltese passports are valid, but the government can’t find the documents used to obtain them.”
“Which means some government clerical worker probably sold them,” Brick said.
“That’s the most-likely scenario,” Vic agreed.
“So now we believe they’re from the Middle East. You’d think the State Department might have gotten a clue from their names.”
“Actually, although Arabic in origin, Abdilla and Saida are among the most common Maltese names. There’s a lot of Middle Eastern blood in the Mediterranean.”
Brick grunted, then cocked his chin. “If the passports are fake, what makes you think the names are real?”
“They have a history. I’ve confirmed what they claimed while challenged in the bunker. Both did study at Oxford. If you think about it, it’s relatively easy to create a false background if all you have to change is nationality.”
“Were they Maltese at Oxford?”
“The university confirms it.”
“So they come from powerful families,” Brick said, probably thinking of the other Osama. “Parents who wanted more opportunities for their children than they were likely to get at home.”
“Or at least parents who wanted to cover all the bases. They probably retained their native citizenship as well.”
“Not that the suspect countries would ever let us check their records.”
Vic confirmed his boss’s assumption with a somber nod. “I’m afraid there’s more.”
Brick pursed his lips. “Why am I not surprised about that either?”
“I just learned that Abdilla and Saida flew from Las Vegas to London while we were still investigating the site.”
Brick banged the table. “How on earth did they get past the TSA?”
“The detain order didn’t make it into the system until they were already through security, and they landed before the system synchronized with historical data.”
“Historical data? They were in flight.”
“But past the checkpoint.”
“Just them? Not the Russian or the American.”
“It appears so. We’re still combing through flight records at McCarran and other airports they could have reached before the curtain came down, but no hits so far.”
“So in any case they’ve split up and we can assume half the money is now overseas,” Brick said with a shake of the head.
Vic didn’t comment.
“How did the four ever get together in the first place?” Brick asked. “The American used to be one of us.”
“We’re still looking into that.”
“Look faster. We need to find them before they make the money vanish.”
They’ve already done that, Vic thought. “Wi
ll do.”
Brick returned his attention to his laptop screen.
Vic saw himself out, forcing his pointy titanium pen through the bottom of his pants pocket as he walked, then letting it slide down his leg and onto the floor while closing Brick’s office door.
“Thank you, Melanie.”
“Have a good flight.”
Vic walked to the elevator and pushed the button before doing an about-face and returning to Brick’s office suite.
Melanie looked up with surprise as he walked in.
Vic mouthed, “Lost my pen,” with a shrug of his shoulders while glancing around. He spotted it in the gap between Brick’s door and the floor. He pointed while moving in, ears peaked and properly tuned.
“—in any case we’ve got our fall guy,” Brick said.
57
Into the Woods
Location: Unknown
KATYA couldn’t help but tense up as the car finally came to a stop. They’d left the highway about three minutes earlier and made several turns. More than it would take to reach the typical highway exit gas station or diner. It didn’t feel like they pulled into a parking space either. They just stopped.
Was that good or bad?
She rolled onto her side to enable a clear view of the action if the trunk opened. Whatever her fate, she wouldn’t shirk. She’d face it head-on.
Two doors opened. One closed. The passenger door.
Two people approached, one from each side.
The trunk popped and she saw no one. Just green trees and blue sky. Then Oz peeked around the corner on the driver’s side.
Katya felt a warm wave of relief run down her body. “Oz! Thank goodness. What happened? Where’s Achilles?”
His expression went the wrong direction. His eyes and lips narrowed.
He moved around to the back of the vehicle and she saw that he was holding a submachine gun. The same brand she’d seen at Cinquante Bouches. Probably the same gun.
“Get out,” he said in a flat monotone.