Right then and there, Enrico says to me, ‘Life can be so dangerous, so sad. It’s important to have friends who can protect you, especially in a foreign country.’, then he gets up and says ‘Let’s go now.’, but I was still in shock, so he grabs me by the arm and lifts me up like I was a pack of cigarettes. I out-weigh that guy by about forty pounds, and I boxed in college, man, but that guy… I don’t know, man, I just don’t know. He doesn’t have a drop of human blood in his veins, just animal blood, you know?
It was only after the meeting in Amsterdam that I had my first time to think. The first time I’d been out of his sight since the woman had gotten killed to make a point.
That’s when I knew I was marked. I was so scared the first thing I thought of was John. I called him in the middle of the night and uploaded the data from the flight, with the correct GPS markers on it. I told him to hide it and tell nobody, just get us in on the deal somehow, and we’d make a fortune. We’d be set for life, and we could protect ourselves from Enrico. I told him it was all in the data, and then I let the notebook run, while I went out for breakfast with devil’s sidekick.
I was plenty scared by that time, and I guess it showed. He followed after me when I went to the ‘gents at the restaurant we were at. He said he ‘had to make a call’, and the phones were near the washroom. They had the tape I’d made for them, and it showed the data analyzed exactly the way that they’d requested. The problem was, the GPS fix was off by a good fifty nautical miles. When those lakes drained, that small clearing would be just like looking for a needle in a haystack.
I knew that, but they didn’t. What I was expecting was that they would verify the data analysis I’d done, and then I’d be toast. I had the fifty grand down payment that we’d agreed on, and the rest was in the account in Zurich. They showed me the bankbook. I was supposed to get the code when they were satisfied. I figured I’d get the same as the tourist woman outside the café.
I was shaking in my boots, man, but I just couldn’t get rid of him. Everywhere I went, he went with me. We walked around Amsterdam that day, he took me to some of the most wonderful museums I’ve ever seen. He talked to me like I was his best pal the whole time, and I found out that he may have had anti-freeze in his veins, but he wasn’t stupid, not by a long shot. He pointed out the finer pieces at all the museums, discussed the painters and their lives with me, gave me background information on some of the stuff that only an art historian should know. But he knew.
All day long I was getting more resigned to the fact that if he wanted to whack me, there was going to be absolutely zip that I could do about it. Then it suddenly dawned on me that they wouldn’t be able to tell that the GPS fix had been relocated until they actually went there in person. That wasn’t going to happen in a day, and even if they went and took their own readings, they still had to analyze the data all over again.
So if it didn’t pan out, they’d need me alive to tell them why. I started calming down then. Later that same day, about ten o’clock in the evening, we had a meeting with Meir again, for dinner.
This time it was all sweetness and light. Over steak tartar, she gives me the bankbook to the account, with the access number taped to the inside of the front cover. ‘Job well done’, all that crap. They hadn’t caught the relocated GPS fix. I started to think I might be able to get out of the whole thing alive, but I’d have to tell them about the GPS data being offset to stay that way, and if I told them that I’d scammed them at that point, they’d lose face. And I couldn’t see Enrico taking that lying down, so I was back where I’d started, but with some breathing room. Not much, but maybe enough to get away. If I had told them up front, it might have been acceptable to them. Or maybe they would have said ‘no go, pal’, and I would have had to give them the offset co-ordinates. But I wouldn’t have put them in a position where they looked like dummies. Maybe if I’d done that the right way, Johnny would still be alive. I think about that every day now, all the time. I curse myself for the idiot that I am. Anyway.
When we went back to the hotel that night I packed up my notebook, and slung it over my shoulder cross-wise, so it wouldn’t drop, you know? I climbed down from my balcony to the one below my room, and pounded on the glass door. It was about 2:00 AM, and nobody came to the door, so I kicked it in. It made so much noise that I thought for sure I was going to be caught, but again, nobody came. I picked up a clean kitchen staff uniform from the basement, after taking the stairs like a maniac. When I had the uniform on, I went upstairs to the kitchen area, and just walked out the deliveries door, and kept going.
I thought I was doing pretty good with the money transfers, but I guess it wasn’t good enough, huh?”
“That’s fair to say, Ted. Any good hacker could have followed the trail. Cyber bucks may be harder to comprehend than the real thing in the eyes of an older generation, but most twelve year olds get the concept these days. That’s all you need to get started. The basic concepts, a PC, and time on your hands. Or someone who’s very good at it to do it for you if you’re in a hurry, and you can pay the bill. That they can do, without question. You were marked for a hit today. The only reason that you’re still alive is because we came to get you at the same time.
This thing goes much deeper than you even know, and these people are far more dangerous than you could have ever suspected. When we bring them in, you’re going to be a star witness. That means I keep you alive, now that I’ve found you.”
“Good luck.”
“Luck doesn’t have a hell of a lot to do with it.”
The rest of the drive to Geneva was quiet in the ‘Vette. I picked up some chatter from the Audi, but not much. We had the Swiss stage done, and I’d only had to kill a few times to do it. I was so cold inside that I was afraid of how long it would take to wrap up and get back to normal. Sometimes it didn’t happen at all. The coming back to normal part. I’d seen that too many times before. Focus. Just focus, function, and walk away. But there was still a lot to do. Enrico was still on the loose, and he was the most dangerous man I’d gone up against in a long time. It was my job to bring him in for the murder of J.D. I was sure it had been him at this stage.
The people he worked for were going to be wickedly hard to get to, even if we could verify it all. With Ted’s testimony, and Therese’s corroboration with regards to the data upload in the middle of the night, and J.D.’s involvement after that with the Crassberg Group on the part of Citecorp, it was starting to fit into place at the Canadian end, and we might find that when we nailed whoever ran Enrico, we would have solved the Toronto bank job and accompanying murders as well. Time would tell, but time was getting short.
I had a pretty good idea where J.D. had gotten the ‘seed’ money for his holding company’s purchase of a few points in the Citecorp backing of the Brazilian deal. Our Ms. Meir would be able to verify that, as well as the answers to a lot of other questions as well. Like where the five hundred grand to pay Ted had come from. It had to be discretionary funds from the bank jobs. It had to be. George would know how to track that, maybe with Walter’s help. Anyone we could still trust was on a short list, so it meant playing it close to the vest.
We pulled into Geneva while it was still light, and everyone was starving, me included, so we stopped for an early supper before crossing into France. There was a little place called Les Cascades, just a few minute drive from the Geneva Hilton. They made the best fondue in the whole country, and that’s where we went.
~
Chapter Thirty-Four
O
ur meal turned out to be just what everyone needed. We ordered the ‘jumbo’ carafe of house white, and a couple of large fondue pots to go with it. The Girls and Ted had a salad on the side, while I had a filet mignon with mine. I cut it into small pieces and dunked them along with the hard crusty bread. I was sharing my pot with Ronnie and Evie, and if they minded the beef, neither one said anything about it.
Therese sat on my right, Ronnie on my left, and Ted sat o
n Evie’s left, which put him across from Therese, so they shared their own pot. Therese ate like a bird and Ted was miles away through most of the meal. I ended up stealing their pot when ours was done. I don’t eat fondue very often, but this place was the best there was. I never missed an opportunity to drop by when I was in town. The last time had been four years ago, but the food and the service remained the same, excellent. Tourists hardly ever came here except by accident. The place looked like a low-class joint from the get-go, and they never strove to change it. Formica topped tables, with various types of tablecloths and chairs scattered around the joint, never quite matching, but always clean and comfortable.
As far as I knew, it had been sitting here for about the last sixty or seventy years, across the street from the tiniest waterfall you ever saw. It was technically referred to as a ‘cascade’ in the river flowing into Lake Geneva from the south, hence the name, Les Cascades. It was about six inches, all told.
We were sitting at a table in the back, and I watched the door as much as the food. The cars were parked around the corner on a side street, and by the time we were done it was after seven, and the sundown had begun. Geneva is a beautiful city in the light or the dark, but we weren’t going to have much of a look-see this time. It was going to be an ‘in and out’.
Before we left the restaurant, I hooked up my HP palmtop to the digital cell phone and logged onto the Web just long enough to download my mail, upload a new query set, and then I signed off. I slipped the gear back into my jacket and threw enough money down for the meal and a good tip, then we all left, after taking advantage of the facilities. At the ladies’ request, naturally. Women just don’t like to do the gas-station thing, and we men of the world have to respect that. I know I do.
I had stopped at a small town once, well, the only town actually, on the road from Riyadh to Jeddah, which brings you slowly uphill, starting at three thousand feet above sea level, and rising from there for about a thousand kilometers or so across the Arabian Peninsula until you reach Taif, the summer home of the King, and then, wow! You’re so high you can touch heaven if you’re tall, and the road from Taif to Jeddah drops to sea level in about twenty-five kilometers. Winding in and out of mountain passes and valleys, with multi-thousand foot drops on either side sometimes, and bridges that looked like marvels of engineering, until you put your vehicle on them, and felt the road sway under your wheels… but I digress. When I stopped in that little town about half way there, it was just after the noonish Salah, or call to prayer, and there weren’t too many people about. It was a sleepy little desert town to start with, mind, but I stopped at the local gas station for the full treatment, man-style. Gas and a quick whiz. Well, the pumps weren’t working because the power was off. In the whole town. I knew that there was supposed to have been a completely new gas and rest stop facility built recently, at the time, but I hadn’t seen it yet and I was over five hundred klicks from Riyadh, so I’d pulled in. No gas.
Now I wasn’t foolish, I had twin five-gallon red plastic gas cans strapped down in the back of my new Mazda 929 station wagon. Sort of like the Japanese Cadillac edition of a station wagon. I was still above the quarter tank mark, so I wasn’t bothered about the pumps being down. I’d search for that new station on the highway, but I took the opportunity to use the facilities. I almost lost it all over the floor, not that anyone would have noticed. It was on my first tour in the Middle East, and I wasn’t used to everything yet. But even the most battle-hardened member of the team I had joined up with wouldn’t have fared better.
This ‘water/closet’ was done in the traditional Arabian style, tiles everywhere, floor, walls, ceiling, like that. And old. Cracked and grey with age, and brown with ‘rust & dust’. There were three ‘units’, lined up next to each other in the open room. It was about fifteen feet deep, and about six feet wide. Along the one wall were three evenly spaced holes in the flooring, with a rusting mutant water-pic massager alongside each hole. The mannish version of a European toilet thing. The flexible steel tubing on those was the source of most of the rust.
There were indentations in the floor where you were supposed to place your feet while you half-stood, half squatted, and let loose. This was the middle of the desert remember, so really, there was nowhere for it all to go except into these holes in the floor, and I don’t think the tank had been emptied since the place had been built, sometime before ‘doubleya-doubleya two’, or World War II as it was more commonly known. I passed on it and ever since, I’ve had a respectful understanding of women’s attitudes towards using a gas station washroom. They see them as I saw that one, that day in that small town on the road to Taif. Which was where I ended up finally getting to refill the gas tank and the cans. I swear I coasted into Taif on fumes for the last hundred kilometers. Good little car that Mazda.
Ronnie and I had agreed that it was worth a stop at the address we had for Meir on the other side of the border, both hers, and the one across the street from hers. In the end, it may well turn out to be the same tenant in both locations. We didn’t know for sure if Enrico had called her, or if she was even going to be in France at all tonight.
I was certain that there would be something worth looking at either way, unless the call had gone out to high-tail it out of town. If that were the case, then there might be a welcoming committee waiting for us with a reception along the lines of the one we got at Enrico’s barracks. Or maybe just two apartments stripped to the walls. It was along one of the alternate routes we could take on our way to the main road to Paris, so we decided to check it out.
If Enrico and his ‘people’ had left Meir high and dry, she might not be expecting company tonight, but I doubted that he would have done that. She knew too much about everything to let her fall into our hands. They knew that we had Ted now, so they would know that we wanted Meir. My bet was that she was en route to either the Bahamas or to Rio. Probably the Bahamas.
She would have the protection of non-extradition, in her eyes at least, and her job at the bank there would give her a legitimate reason to show up, and stay, if necessary. So far, the only connection that could be made between her and Brazil, besides the meeting with Ted that Enrico had set up, was a business one relating to her job with the Crassberg Group. But someone had been put in touch with her on a different wavelength completely, dealing with the same issue, but on an extended level. One that had appealed to her dark side. Maybe she hadn’t been so hard to turn, come to that. Maybe she had been a co-instigator of some of this crap going down all over the place. Maybe she was the one who had tried to get it going big-time on the European front. All of this was useless speculation until we had her in our possession.
We knew for sure that she was profiting already with a controlling interest in the Bahamian bank that was putting in a few points of the cash round-up that she’d been tasked with by the Crassberg HQ. And that few points would make her very rich all by itself, if I was going to buy the story Ted was selling.
I was inclined to believe him after seeing that stone. Ted wouldn’t normally make enough money in his lifetime to pay for a fire-diamond of that size, and I had no doubt that it was a real diamond. Whether or not he had acquired it in the manner he’d said, the fact remained that he’d gotten it somewhere.
On my next e-mail download Walter would have some answers about that whole fire-diamond issue for me. Considering all the trouble that had unfolded to date based on mineral rights to the area where it was supposed to have come from, it was a fair bet that he was speaking the gospel truth. If it was that rich a strike, then the money spent, and the mayhem released in its wake, were going to be well worth the effort. Unless we succeeded in the mission, and I had no serious doubts about that as of tonight.
So it looked right now as if the Brazilians were getting shafted from the inside as well as out, and I was planning to use that to our benefit when the time came.
Governments frowned on internal conspiracies, from the ugliest dictatorships to the most fre
e democratic systems in the world. There would be only one reaction to the exposure of this type of… what could you call it? Treason, fraud, subversion, conspiracy, plain old thieving? Hang the bastard, and how may I help you? And the photo op! What a coup. Minister and President posing with International Police Forces, and Brazilian Special Forces, and the traitors. Ronnie was right, it would give them the next election on a platter.
We crossed over into France at the pre-arranged border crossing point, and all of the paperwork had been done. The Swiss were very good at that. Fifteen minutes after pulling into the station at the border, we were under way with French plates on both cars. Money is the universal grease for the squeaky wheel, although if I’d been trying to do it the other way ‘round, from France to Switzerland, it would have been a trifle more complicated. Well, maybe next to impossible.
Ted was riding in the back of the ‘Vette with Ronnie and I up front. Therese was still doing a good job of making herself useful by doing the driving in the Audi, leaving Evie free to protect them, as and if required.
The plan was for us to take the ‘Vette on ahead a bit, but not far enough ahead that we lost ‘comms’. They were going to stay out of the line of fire on this little stop, and Ted was going to get his first opportunity to show allegiance. Both Ronnie and I were going up, and Ted was going to stay in the background, but close enough to call on for a positive ID, again, if required.
As we came within the last twenty-five kilometers of Chambéry, I punched the ‘Vette and put it up to about one forty MPH, leaving the Audi in my wake. Evie came on-line every five minutes after that, and we seemed to have no problem staying online. The town was small, and as soon as we were within five klicks of the town limits I dropped to a reasonable highway speed, then down to city speeds as we passed the blue sign-post on the right welcoming us to town. The highway ran through the main drag, well, it was the main drag, and it was also the street we wanted for Meir’s address. As soon as we were within town limits, the highway became the Rue Constance-de-Lac, probably named after someone on their way to saint-hood.
The Diamond Dust on Dragonfly Wings: A Jeffry Claxton Mystery Novel Page 81