by Anne Holt
Manipulation of this sort required substantial resources.
Yeah, yeah, he thought. No one ever thought it was the work of a poor man.
And presumably a telecommunications satellite. Or access to capacity on one. Rented or stolen.
A satellite? A bloody spaceship?
Warren was starting to feel cold; fifteen degrees was obviously not warm enough. He got up again to reset the switch in the box on the wall. This time he turned it to twenty degrees and then climbed back into bed and continued reading.
Satellites of this type were located in stationary orbits about forty thousand kilometres from the surface of the earth. Since all the telephone calls and electronic messages were linked to phones and computers on the east coast of the States, the actions were compatible with the use of an Arabic satellite.
An Arabic satellite would not be able to penetrate further into the country than that.
But it could reach the east coast.
Tracking, Warren thought impatiently and leafed quickly through the pages. With all the billions of dollars and powers of attorney and technology that we have, what about the tracking and reconstruction of the phone calls and messages?
Warren Scifford was a profiler.
He respected technique. In the course of his work tracking down serial killers and sadistic, sexually motivated murderers, he had over the years developed a deep respect for forensic pathologists and their magic, using chemistry, physics, electronics and technology. On occasion, he even sneaked a peak at an episode of CSI, in deep awe of the profession.
But this was beyond him. He could set up a PC and learn a few codes, but generally he was happy to let others look after the technology.
His area of competence was the soul.
He couldn’t understand this.
He carried on reading.
The messages stopped suddenly at 9.14 a.m., Eastern Time. At the exact time that the FBI went to investigate the first address they had traced. According to NSA’s log, someone had phoned the FBI headquarters in Quantico from a small house on the outskirts of the Everglades in Florida, with a chilling message that the USA was heading for a fall.
An old man with poor eyesight and terrible hearing lived in the house. His telephone wasn’t even connected. It lay covered in dust in the cellar, but his subscription was still live as his son in Miami paid all his father’s regular bills. Obviously without checking what they were for. Presumably he hadn’t visited the old man in years.
The messages had stopped at exactly the same time.
And none had been received since.
The report finished by saying that work was ongoing to analyse the voices and the language used, but nothing of any value to the investigation could be said yet about the recordings of the threats or the sixty or so emails with similar content. The voices were scrambled and distorted, so expectations were not high. The only thing that could be said with any certainty was that all the callers were men. For obvious reasons it was more difficult to establish the sex of the originators of the electronic messages.
End of report.
Warren was hungry.
He went to the minibar, took out a bar of chocolate and opened a bottle of Coke. Neither of them tasted any good, but did help to increase his blood sugar. The slight headache that he got when he didn’t have enough sleep disappeared.
He went back to bed. The thick document fell to the floor. According to instructions, it was to be destroyed immediately. But that could wait. He picked up the thinner file and held it at arm’s length for a few seconds. Then he lowered his arm on to the duvet.
The slim report was a masterpiece.
The problem was that no one seemed to be particularly interested in reading it, and even less so in responding to it.
Warren knew it almost off by heart, even though he had only read through the paper twice. The report had been prepared by the BSC Unit at home in DC and he had contributed as much as he could from this godforsaken place they called Norway.
Warren longed to go home. He closed his eyes.
He had started to feel old more and more frequently. Not just older, but old. He was tired and had bitten off more than he could chew with this new job. He wanted to go back to Quantico, to Virginia, to his family. To Kathleen, who had put up with him and his countless, deeply hurtful infidelities over the years. To his grown-up children, who had all settled near their childhood home. To his own house and garden. He wanted to go home, and felt a great pressure under his ribs that did not disappear even though he swallowed several times.
The thin report was a profile.
As always, they had started their work by analysing the actions and events. The BSC Unit worked along timelines and in depth, putting the events in context, analysing the causes and effects and studying the costs and complexity. Every detail in the sequence of events was set against alternative solutions, because that was the only way in which they could come close to capturing the motives and attitudes of the people who were behind the kidnapping of Madam President.
The picture that slowly emerged over the twenty pages worried Warren and his loyal colleagues in the BSC Unit just as much as the thick report scared the life out of the rest of the FBI.
They thought they would establish the profile of an organisation. A group of people, a terrorist cell. Possibly a small unit, an army fighting a holy war against Satan’s bulwark, the US.
Instead they saw the profile of a man.
One man.
Obviously he could not be acting alone. Everything that had happened since the BSC Unit saw the first vague signs of the Trojan Horse more than six weeks ago indicated that a disconcerting number of people were involved.
The problem was that they didn’t seem to belong together. In any way. Instead of developing a more detailed description of a terrorist organisation, the BSC Unit had outlined a single individual who used people the way that others used tools, and showed the same lack of loyalty or other human emotion to his helpers that anyone else would to a toolbox.
Nothing was done to look after or help the various actors afterwards. Once they had played their role, done their bit, there was no protection. Gerhard Skrøder had been thrown to the wolves, as had the Pakistani cleaner and all the rest of the pieces in this complex jigsaw puzzle.
Which must mean that they didn’t know who they were working for.
Warren yawned, shook his head briskly and opened his eyes wide to force back the tears. His hand, which was still holding the report, felt heavy as lead. He pulled himself together, lifted it up and caste his eyes over the front page.
The title was modestly placed at the top of the page in the same font size as the rest of the document, only it was in bold: The Guilty. A profile of the abductor.
Warren wasn’t sure whether he liked the name they had chosen. On the other hand, it was neutral, with no ethnic or national connotations. Again he tried to make himself more comfortable, and then started to read:
I.i. The Abduction.
As usual, their starting point was the key event.
The actual kidnapping of the President gave the BSC Unit strong characteristics in terms of the perpetrator’s profile. Ever since he had been woken in his flat in Washington DC at some ungodly hour by an emotional agent who told him that the President had apparently been kidnapped in Norway, Warren Scifford had been thoroughly perplexed. On the flight to Europe, he had constantly been expecting, and in some absurd way hoping, that he would arrive to be told that Madam President had been found dead.
He had already dismissed the possibility that she would be found alive.
The key question was: why kidnapping? Why not kill Helen Bentley instead? By all accounts, it was far easier to carry out an assassination, and therefore far less risky. Being the commander-in-chief of the US was definitely a high-risk job, due to the simple fact that it was impossible to fully protect any individual from sudden fatal attacks by other people, unless that individual was kept in isolat
ion.
The kidnapping had to have a purpose, its own value. And this had to be something to do with what could be gained by keeping the US in suspense, rather than letting the American people gather in shared shock and grief over their murdered president.
The obvious effect of the disappearance was that the country was now more vulnerable to attack.
Just the thought made Warren’s skin crawl.
He turned to the next page before taking a swig of Coke. He still had a feeling in his stomach that he couldn’t define, and wondered for a moment whether he should order some food to see if that would help. The clock on his mobile phone showed three minutes to six, so he abandoned that idea. Breakfast would be served in an hour.
The use of Secret Service agent Jeffrey Hunter was as genius as it was simple. Even though it might in theory be possible to kidnap the President without the help of an insider, he could imagine no way in which it would be possible to carry it out in practice. The fact that the Guilty had an apparatus in the States that could abduct an autistic boy, twice, in order to frighten a professional security agent into cooperation was one of the elements that made the profile increasingly clear. And even more overwhelming.
The phone rang.
The sound gave Warren such a surprise that the Coke bottle that was wedged between his thighs fell over. He cursed, managed to catch the bottle of sticky dark fluid and grabbed the phone.
‘Hello,’ he grunted, drying his free hand on the duvet cover.
‘Warren?’ a distant voice said.
‘Yes.’
‘It’s Colin.’
‘Oh, hi, Colin. You sound very far away.’
‘I have to be quick.’
‘Sounds like you’re whispering. Speak up!’
‘Dammit, Warren, listen to me. We’re not exactly in people’s good books at the moment.’
‘No, I noticed that here, too.’
Colin Wolf and Warren Scifford had worked together for nearly ten years. Warren’s first choice when he was putting together the BSC Unit was his peer. Colin was old school. His name might be Wolf, but he looked like a bear and he was thorough, calm and compliant. His voice was higher than normal and the delay on the line made him stressed.
‘They won’t listen to us,’ Colin said. ‘They’ve made up their minds.’
‘About what?’ Warren asked, even though he knew the answer.
‘That there’s some Islamist organisation or other behind it all. And they’re back on the al-Qaeda track again. Al-Qaeda! They’re no more involved in this case than the IRA. Or the Scouts, for that matter. And now they’ve seen red. That’s why I’m calling.’
‘What’s happened?’
‘They’ve discovered an account.’
‘An account?’
‘Jeffrey Hunter. Transferred money to his wife.’
Warren swallowed. The brown stain on his groin was disgusting. He pulled the duvet over it with his sticky hand.
‘Hello?’
‘Yes, I’m still here,’ Warren said. ‘Well I’ll be damned.’
‘Quite. It’s all too good to be true.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Listen, but I have to be quick. I want you to know. The amount was two hundred thousand dollars. The money was of course filtered through the usual channels so there is no identity, but we’ve managed to trace it back to the sender all the same. It only took the boys over in Pennsylvania Avenue five hours.’
‘And who did they find?’
‘Are you sitting down?’
‘I’m lying in bed.’
‘The cousin of the Saudi oil minister. He lives in Iran.’
‘Shit.’
‘You can say that again.’
Warren picked up the BSC Unit report again. The papers stuck to his hand. That wasn’t right. That couldn’t be right. They were right: Colin and Warren and the rest of the small, marginalised group of profilers who no one would listen to.
‘That just can’t be right,’ he said pensively. ‘The Guilty would never have done anything in such an amateur way that the money could be traced.’
‘What?’
‘That can’t be right!’
‘No, that’s why I’m calling! It’s too simple, Warren. But what about if we turn the whole thing on its head?’
‘What? I can’t hear, there’s . . .’
‘Turn the whole thing on its head,’ Colin shouted. ‘Let’s suppose that the trail to Saudi Arabia was laid on purpose. If we’re right, and the intention was that the money would be found and traced . . .’
Then everything falls into place, thought Warren, aghast. That’s the way the Guilty works. He wants this to happen. He wants chaos, he creates crises, he’s . . .
‘Don’t you see? Do you agree?’
Colin’s voice was so distant.
Warren wasn’t listening properly.
‘It won’t take long before this leaks,’ Colin said, as the connection deteriorated. ‘Have you been watching the stock exchange?’
‘Vaguely.’
‘When the link between Saudi Arabia and Iran becomes known . . .’
Oil prices, Warren realised. They’ll rocket, like never before in history.
‘. . . dramatic fall in the Dow Jones, and it’s so bloody sharp and . . .’
‘Hello,’ Warren shouted.
‘Hi. Are you still there? I’ll have to stop, Warren. I have to run because . . .’
The crackling was unbearable. Warren held the receiver out a few centimetres from his ear. Suddenly Colin came back. The connection was crystal clear for the first time.
‘They’re talking about a hundred dollars a barrel,’ he said grimly. ‘Before the end of next week. That’s what he wants. It fits, Warren. It all fits. I have to go. Call me.’
The connection was cut.
Warren got up from the bed. He had to shower again. With his legs wide apart, so that his sticky thighs wouldn’t touch, he waddled over to his suitcase.
He still hadn’t unpacked properly.
‘The Guilty is a man with enormous capital and a sound understanding of the West,’ he parroted from the report. ‘He has well-above-average intelligence, incredible patience and a unique ability to plan and think long term. He has built up an impressive international and extremely complex network of helpers, presumably through the use of threats, capital and costly cultivation. There is every reason to believe that few of these people know who he is. If any.’
Warren couldn’t find any clean boxer shorts. He checked and double-checked the side pockets of the suitcase. His fingers touched something heavy. He waited a moment before fishing the object out of the narrow opening.
His watch.
Verus amicus rara avis.
He’d thought that he’d lost it for good. It had bothered him more than he liked to admit. He liked the watch and was proud to have received it from Madam President. He never took it off.
Except when he had sex.
Sex and time did not go together, so he always took it off.
Deep down, he was afraid that the watch had been stolen by the woman with red hair. He couldn’t remember what she was called any more, even though it was only a week since they’d met. In a bar. She worked in advertising, he seemed to remember. Or maybe it was film.
Whatever, he said to himself and slipped the watch on to his wrist.
There were no clean boxer shorts in his suitcase.
He would just have to make do without.
‘It is unlikely that he is American,’ Warren imagined a voice saying, as if the profile document was being played on a tape recorder in his head. ‘If he is a Muslim, he is more secular than he is fanatical. He presumably lives in the Middle East, but he also has places to stay in Europe.’
It was now thirty-three minutes past six and Warren Scifford no longer felt in the slightest bit tired.
III
As he approached the guest room, Al Muffet looked down over the banister to the grandfather clo
ck in the hall below. It was thirty-three minutes past midnight. He was sure he’d read somewhere that people slept most deeply between three and five in the morning. As his brother had been rather drunk that evening, Al reckoned he would already be sound asleep.
He didn’t have the patience to wait any longer.
He took care to avoid the floorboards that creaked. He was barefoot and regretted not having put on a pair of socks. The soles of his feet were moist and made a gentle sucking sound on the wooden floor. Whereas Fayed was unlikely to be disturbed by it, the girls, Louise in particular, were very light sleepers. They had been ever since their mother died at ten past three one November night.
Fortunately he had managed to pull himself together during the evening meal, when Fayed’s comment about his mother’s death had knocked him sideways for a moment or two. After a quick trip to the bathroom, where he splashed his face and hands with ice-cold water, he had been able to go back down to his brother and daughters and continue the meal with some composure. He sent the girls to bed at ten, with great protest, and was relieved when Fayed announced half an hour later that he too wanted to go to bed.
Al Muffet went up to the door behind which his brother was sleeping.
His mother had never confused her two sons.
The age difference was one reason. But Ali and Fayed had such different personalities. Al Muffet knew that his mother felt that he was much more like her, a friendly person, open to most things and most people.
Fayed was the black sheep. He was smarter than his brother at school, and in fact was one of the brightest in the whole school. But he was hopeless with his hands. His father realised early on that there was no point in forcing him to help with the odd bit of work in the garage. Little Ali, on the other hand, knew the principles behind a car engine by the time he was eight. He passed his driving test when he was sixteen, and built his own car from old parts that his father had let him have.
His brother’s sullen, suspicious nature was physically visible from an early age. He viewed the world from the corner of his eye and his furtive attitude made people doubt that he was ever really listening. He also had a slightly sideways walk, as if he was always expecting to be attacked and wanted to be ready to throw a punch, better first than last.