The Unknown

by Brett Battles

  From his toiletry bag, he removed his electric shaver and disassembled it into: a set of lockpicks, a listening bug that could be paired with his phone, and a short wand-like device that looked similar to a popsicle stick. The latter, when plugged into his phone, became a security alarm detector. Also from his toiletry bag came the final items—four condom packages, two of which he tossed to Kincaid.

  “Something you’re not telling me?” Kincaid asked.

  “Put them in your pocket. You’ll need them later.”

  Kincaid gave him a dubious look but put the packages in his pocket.

  It took Quinn and Kincaid a little over seventeen minutes to hike the two kilometers through the woods to the wall behind the Ferbers’ property. Standing next to it, Quinn attached his gooseneck camera lens to his phone—basically a miniature lens at the end of a half-meter long, pencil-thick, flexible pipe. He hooked the camera end so that it would point in the right direction and lifted it above the wall. A scan of the immediate area on the other side revealed one security camera. From the way it was angled, Quinn estimated that if he climbed the fence from where he was, he’d be at the very edge of the camera’s field of view.

  He moved five meters to the east and looked again. Unless they were well hidden, no cameras were covering this section at all. That was surprising. Why would there be one camera focused on a portion of the back wall, but none monitoring the rest? The thought bothered him enough that he took an additional three minutes to make sure he hadn’t missed anything.

  Nope. The area was definitely clear.

  “This will work,” he told Kincaid. “I’ll go first. Wait for my signal.”

  The fence was low enough that Quinn could grab the top with just a small hop. When he landed on the other side, he crouched down and listened for sounds of anyone or anything responding to his presence. At the same time, he scanned the area where the only camera he’d seen had been aimed and discovered the probable reason for its placement. Nestled against the wall, in the middle of the camera’s view, was a cage, one that might hold birds or small animals. It appeared empty at the moment, which made him wonder if the camera was even on.

  He waited a full two minutes, and when the sound of running feet or barking dogs never materialized, he clicked his tongue twice and Kincaid climbed over.

  The Forbes article had mentioned Eric Ferber resided in one of the smaller homes, but the story hadn’t specified which.

  No lights were on in either structure, so Quinn flipped a mental coin and led Kincaid to the eastside house.

  Thinking it best to avoid the front door, he found one on the side and waved the alarm detection wand over it. Within seconds, he received a hit.

  ACTIVE ALARM DETECTED

  HALEN 3500

  SOFTWARE VERSION 7.3

  Not just any alarm—a good one. But not quite good enough, as it was one of the many makes whose override codes were contained within Quinn’s detection app. As soon as the software auto-selected the appropriate settings, he tapped DEACTIVATE. A red light blinked in the corner of his phone’s screen for nearly ten seconds before turning solid green.

  He wanded the door again.

  INACTIVE ALARM DETECTED

  He pulled out the two condom packs and opened them. Inside each was a single rubber glove. Rubber gloves in suitcases might cause questions. Condoms never did.

  Kincaid snickered and opened his packages.

  After donning the gloves, Quinn made quick work of the lock and pushed the door open. Just beyond was a small vestibule off what appeared to be the kitchen. He and Kincaid stepped inside.

  “I’ll take a look around,” Quinn whispered as he shut the door. “You watch for anyone approaching the house.”

  Kincaid nodded, and moved into the front room where he could see out the windows.

  Quinn started with the ground floor. According to the article, Eric Ferber was a confirmed bachelor. That did not mean the house was deserted, however. Ferber could have employed live-in help. But that concern drastically decreased when Quinn found an unused bedroom off the kitchen that was likely meant for a servant.

  Still, he proceeded with caution as he crept up the stairs. On the upper level, he found five bedrooms, each with its own bathroom. The beds were all unoccupied. There were no clothes or personal items in any of the rooms.

  He headed downstairs and said to Kincaid, “It’s the other place.”

  After leaving the house and resetting the alarm, they sneaked across the garden to the home on the west side.

  As soon as they arrived, Quinn knew this was it. Instead of an exterior parking area, there was a garage he hadn’t been able to see from the back of the property. Peeking through a window on the garage’s side door, Quinn spotted three expensive motorcycles off to one side, and rubber marks on the concrete where a car usually parked, it seemed.

  As for the house, layout-wise it appeared to be a mirror image of the one they’d just searched. An alarm check found the exact same system in use. Another click of the DEACTIVATE button and some simple work with the lockpicks and they were in.

  Like they’d done before, Kincaid took up position near the front windows while Quinn conducted the search.

  Again, no servants were in residence.

  Upstairs, however, Quinn discovered the clothes that had been missing from the other house. So many, in fact, that one of the five bedrooms had been turned into a walk-in closet. Finding the room Ferber used as his own was easy. It was the only bedroom with the unmade bed.

  Quinn poked around in it, checking the obvious spots where people liked to hide their secrets, and discovered a loaded Glock 45 beneath the false bottom of a nightstand drawer.

  He moved on to the not-so-obvious places, feeling along the mattress for hidden compartments, checking the dresser and bed frame for invisible hatches, and examining the walls for unseen panels.

  It was this last that proved fruitful. Behind a section of removable baseboard, on the wall by the nightstand, he found one hundred thousand euros, in neatly wrapped bundles of crisp new twenty-euro bills. The packets were stacked in ten columns of five high, and lined up end to end to end. Quinn knew people with money often hid some in their homes in case of emergency, but normally they’d keep their stashes in a safe, or at worst, in a bag hidden in a closet.

  He pulled out a bundle and flipped through the bills.

  Interesting.

  Normally, with a stack of new bills like this, the serial numbers would be sequential. The numbers on these bills were all over the place.

  Quinn frowned.

  This didn’t feel like emergency cash, at least not in the natural-disaster, hold-me-over-until-things-return-to-normal kind of way. This stash felt more like go-money, to be used when one wanted to get out of town in a hurry.

  He returned the bundle to its hidey-hole and replaced the board.

  In the bedroom that had been turned into a walk-in closet, he found a wall safe. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the right tools with him to determine the combination. He tried a couple of common choices but the door didn’t budge.

  “Quinn!” Kincaid yelled. “Down here, fast!”

  Quinn rushed downstairs.

  Out the front window, he could see strobing blue lights reflecting off trees near the front of the property. The source was hidden from view by the main house, but there was no question what it was. A moment later, a sedan came around the side of the big house on the driveway leading to the home Quinn and Kincaid were in. Behind it were two police cars.

  Though Quinn had been hoping Eric Ferber would come home alone, it wasn’t surprising he hadn’t.

  “Out,” Quinn said.

  They ran back to the side door and slipped outside.

  As Quinn reset the alarm, he said, “Go back to the fence and wait for me there.”

  Kincaid took off.

  When Quinn finished with the door, he sneaked to the front of the house and peeked around the corner at the motorcade.

&
nbsp; The lead car was the same dark-colored model of Mercedes Eric Ferber had been seen with at the barricade near the bombing. Quinn used the zoom on his phone’s camera to focus on the driver.

  Yep. Ferber, all right.

  Quinn hurried to the back wall.

  “Up and over,” he said when he reached Kincaid. “But stay low.”

  The two men pulled themselves onto the top of the wall, keeping their bodies tight to the stones to minimize their silhouettes, and dropped on the other side.

  Kincaid headed for the woods.

  “Where are you going?” Quinn whispered.

  Kincaid turned back. “I thought we were aborting.”

  “I never said that.”

  Quinn reattached the gooseneck camera, jogged down the wall until he felt he’d gone far enough, and raised the lens.

  He could see a good slice of the area in front of Eric Ferber’s house. Though the Mercedes wasn’t in view, the two cop cars were, each now parked in front of the building. Two officers had remained by the vehicles. Which meant there were likely anywhere from two to six cops with Ferber.

  A light went on inside the house, then another, and another. This continued in a slow but steady progression throughout the ground floor. After a brief pause, the same pattern repeated on the second level. Given what had happened to Ferber’s father and the family’s company, the police were undoubtedly making sure no one was lying in wait for a possible heir to the Ferber fortune.

  Fifteen minutes passed without anything else occurring. Then the pair of officers standing at the cars turned toward the house. A moment later six officers joined them from the front of the house. They all gathered and talked for nearly two minutes, then half the group climbed into the cars, two per vehicle, and drove back toward the main house. The remaining four officers spread out around Ferber’s home.

  Well, that’s unfortunate, Quinn thought.

  He watched the two cars drive past the main house and disappear, then followed the reflection of their lights on the trees as the vehicles continued toward the gate. After a handful of seconds, the flashing lights ceased their forward movement.

  Must be setting up a checkpoint at the front.

  He lowered the camera.

  “What’s the plan?” Kincaid asked. He’d been watching over Quinn’s shoulder.

  Quinn considered returning to their car and driving up to the gate, where he could use his Interpol ID again. But he doubted they would let him in this time. Instead, calls would be made, first to Commander Mettler, and then to Interpol itself. Though Misty had arranged for Leonard Hendricks to cover for Quinn when he’d sprung Kincaid, it would take time to obtain the same cooperation now.

  And that was time Quinn could not afford to waste. Every second that passed diminished the chances of finding Brunner. The sooner they talked to Ferber, the better.

  “We’re going to have to take out the cops,” Quinn said.

  Kincaid looked surprised.

  “Not permanently,” Quinn told him. “Just put them to sleep for a little while. You know how to do that?”

  “Yeah. I mean, I’ve never tried it in the field. But I know how.”

  The answer didn’t thrill Quinn. A sleeper hold could just as easily kill someone as render a person unconscious.

  Quinn thought for a moment. “I’ll take care of the cops. You shadow me and watch my back.”

  “I can do it. Don’t worry about me.”

  “My rules, remember?” Quinn said.

  Kincaid’s jaw tensed. “If you want me to back you up, I’ll back you up.”

  “Good.”

  Quinn used the camera to check over the wall. The cop watching the back of the house was partially obscured by a large patch of brush growing in the garden between the wall and the house. A move three meters to the left put the officer completely out of sight.

  Quinn and Kincaid scaled the wall, and, keeping low, worked their way forward. They were almost to the large bush when a distant pop echoed across the property.

  Quinn and Kincaid dropped to the ground.

  To an untrained ear, the pop might have sounded like a firecracker or the backfire of an engine. But they both knew better.

  Another pop, and another, and then a whole cascade of them, as a full-on gunfight broke out toward the front gate. The threat the police had been concerned about had apparently arrived. From the sound of the onslaught, Quinn had a feeling the cops wouldn’t come out on top.

  He pushed himself to his feet, whispered, “Come on,” and hurried forward.

  When he reached the bush, he paused and peered through the branches. As he suspected, the cop who had been there was gone.

  Quinn rushed around the vegetation and raced to the house.

  The gunfight was still raging but its intensity was waning. Which meant, if the attackers were indeed winning, they’d be heading this way soon.

  Quinn checked the side of the house. The officer who’d been there was gone, too. Quinn moved over to a window and peeked through. An officer stood in the living room, looking toward the stairway, talking to someone.

  “Hang back until I call you,” Quinn said to Kincaid.

  The bodyguard nodded.

  A check of the front yard revealed no officer there, either, meaning they had all gone inside to protect Ferber.

  Staying below the windows, Quinn moved to the front door, stopping just short of it. He reached over and knocked. “This is Inspector Schwartz. Is everyone all right in there?”

  A pause. “Inspector who?”

  “Schwartz.”

  “We don’t know any Inspector Schwartz!”

  “I’m with Interpol. I’m going to open the door. Do not shoot me. Please. I’m unarmed.”

  When no one responded, he turned the knob and pushed the door open but remained to the side, out of view. He removed his badge from his pocket and extended it into the open doorway so the officers could see it.

  “Move into the doorway,” a cop shouted. “Keep your hands visible.”

  Quinn stood up and stepped into the threshold.

  He noted three of the cops right away—one half hidden in the passageway to the back of the house, another even farther down the hall in the doorway to the servant’s quarters, and the third on the upper floor kneeling near the top of the stairs.

  “Who’s in charge here?” Quinn said.

  The officer in the passageway stepped into the room, his gun pointed at Quinn. “Toss your ID over here.”

  Quinn threw his badge at the man’s feet. The officer picked it up and examined it, then looked at Quinn. “What’s Interpol doing here?”

  “What the hell do you think we’re doing here? The bombing was just the start. If you haven’t figured it out yet, you’re in the middle of a terrorist attack, and if we don’t get Herr Ferber out of here in the next thirty seconds, we will all be killed.”

  Behind him, scattered gunshots still rung out, but for the most part the fighting had ended.

  “I can’t believe your instructions were to let him sit here and die,” Quinn said.

  The officer lowered his weapon and looked toward the officer at the top of the stairs. “Bring Herr Ferber down!”

  The kneeling man stood and moved quickly out of sight, toward Ferber’s bedroom. At the same time, the officer downstairs tossed the Interpol badge back to Quinn. When the upstairs man returned, Eric Ferber and the fourth cop were with him. They hurried down.

  A moment before they reached the ground floor, Kincaid appeared in the front doorway. “We’ve got to go! They’re coming!”

  The cops raised their guns again and nearly shot the bodyguard.

  “He’s with me,” Quinn said.

  Beyond Kincaid, Quinn saw moving headlights playing off the trees in front of the main house.

  “Let’s go! Everyone!” He motioned toward the door then said to Kincaid, “Back wall.”

  The cops headed out the door with Ferber, Quinn right behind them. As they rounded the side
of the building, Quinn caught a glimpse of headlights appearing beside the main house.

  “Run!” he said.

  They sprinted through the garden, dodging bushes and weaving around trees. When Kincaid reached the wall, he made a step with his hands so the others could use them to get over the top. Two of the cops went first, then Ferber.

  Quinn glanced back as the other two cops passed over. Headlight reflections were coming from directly in front of Eric Ferber’s house.

  “Your turn,” Kincaid said.

  Quinn put his foot in Kincaid’s hands and pulled himself over the top. As Kincaid was cresting the wall, a shout came from the distance, followed by the pop-pop-pop-pop of automatic rifle fire. Kincaid half dropped, half fell to the ground as bullets smacked into the wall on the other side.

  Quinn grabbed his shoulder. “Are you hit?”

  “No. I’m okay.”

  “Here,” Quinn said, holding out a hand.

  As he pulled the bodyguard to his feet, shots continued to hit the wall, a few passing over the top and smashing into the trees.

  Quinn looked over to where the officers and Ferber were crouched. The cops were all wearing their game faces now, ready for a fight if need be. Ferber, on the other hand, looked white as a ghost.

  “You all have radios?” Quinn asked the cops.

  “Of course,” one of them said.

  “Give them to me.”

  “Why?”

  “You want to stay alive? Give me your radios. Hurry.”

  Confused, they did as he asked. As soon as he had them all, he threw them into the woods behind him and said, “Follow me. And try to say quiet.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  Quinn ran into the forest without answering. If they couldn’t figure out that a single sound from a radio might be enough to get them all killed, that was their problem.

  Quinn headed through the trees toward his car, alert for any noise from back toward the wall. All was quiet at the moment, but he doubted it would stay that way for long. The wall certainly wasn’t going to deter the intruders. The only thing that would prevent them from taking up the chase was time. The violent frontal assault on the property meant every police officer in Zurich and any Swiss army units in the area would be headed this way by now. Unless the attackers had a death wish, they wouldn’t hang around long enough for a counter assault to be mounted.