“So you and dad are flying out tonight? Maybe our paths will cross at the airport.”
“Well, I’m flying out tonight but your dad is joining me next week. He said I could get in a week’s worth of shopping in Paris before we embark on the cruise. But that’s a great idea about crossing paths at the airport. Your dad will be able to pick you up when he drops me off. You two can spend some quality time together.”
“No, Mom, I think it’ll be more convenient if I bunk in the city. I don’t want to be commuting from Armonk.”
“Rebecca Joy, it won’t kill you to spend some time with your father.”
So here she was.
“Did Mom get away on time?”
She watched her father’s eyes flick continuously between the rear view mirror and rear view camera. He had always been a precise driver, but he seemed to have taken careful driving to an entirely new plane, she decided.
“She was sorry to miss you. Her flight leaves in fifteen minutes, but she had to check in three hours ago.”
Bex yawned. The SUV was so roomy she could stretch her long legs and recline the seat for a snooze.
“What are you doing in New York?”
The rudeness of her father’s question startled her. She was used to him not being demonstrative but he sounded as though he didn’t want her here. She checked his profile and noted the worried creases slicing his forehead and realized it wasn’t rudeness. He simply didn’t know how else to share his concern.
“I’m back to sort out some of Zane’s affairs.”
“I thought they would’ve been sorted out a year ago before you left for London.”
“I thought so too, but something’s come up. Zane’s ex-wife is contesting his will.”
She braced herself for questions, but her father bypassed the topic.
“Who knows you’re in town?”
“I’m not here to socialize, Dad. I haven’t called anyone other than you, Mom, Walt and Neil. I anticipate being caught up with court proceedings and lawyers for the week.”
Steven didn’t say anything, just absorbed her words. She watched his hands, sure and deft on the steering wheel.
“Where will you stay?”
Again the question seemed cold and rude. If Ruth were there she would have pressured Bex to stay in the family home and commute to the city from Armonk. Ruth would tell her that her father’s question meant he never took anything for granted.
“Probably Neil’s. I want to be in the city and Walt’s place is too unsanitary for anyone with even basic hygiene standards.”
“Maybe you should stay in a hotel. I’ll book you into one when we get home.”
“New York hotels are ridiculously over priced,” she protested.
“I’m happy to pay. Call it a late birthday present,” he insisted.
“Alright, Dad.” She was too tired to argue the point, too tired to even yawn. “I might just take a nap on the way to Armonk if that’s okay with you. It’s early morning my time and I didn’t get much shut-eye on the flight.”
“That’s a good idea. You know I’ve always said the best way to overcome jet lag is to reacquaint yourself with the local time system.”
Bex barely heard the end of the lecture before she drifted off.
Chapter 9
National Crimes Agency,
Tuesday, 24 April
Cole had grabbed an uncomfortable five hours tossing and turning on the bunk bed in his office. After a trip to the bathroom to freshen up with a quick shower and ransack his locker for a change of shirt and underwear, he was back in the project room. Fausch had called a meeting for 10:00 a.m. That gave him four hours to dig up something substantial to report.
He checked the program he had left processing data last night. Heathrow Airport serviced around 220,000 passengers every day. Gatwick Airport processed another hundred thousand daily. The program had access to over a million passenger names to see if there was a match from airline manifests covering the past four days since Fausch announced Nutwick was Lander Dresden’s shooter, with any passengers leaving London on March 24. That was the date Dresden had escaped from Bex.
Cole was counting on Dresden making an immediate getaway before the police could organize a national manhunt to track her down. In her place he would have headed straight for the nearest airport to catch the first plane out of London. Since there was no record of Sophie Dresden booking a flight, he was also betting she had left on false documentation. He knew Dresden was a stickler for good organization so it made sense she had her contingency plans in place.
When Cole checked the list he found 124 names from the recent dates matched against passengers leaving London on March 24. Thirty-five names were from non-British passports and would be more difficult to track down, so he started with the 89 names belonging to British nationals. If these were legitimate travelers journeying for valid reasons such as business trips or vacations, the names from the manifests would belong to real people who could be accounted for via electoral rolls, births and deaths registers and the Police National Database. Those names would be attached to addresses, families and jobs.
By 9:45 a.m. he was left with three names from his list of potential aliases for Dresden. These were the names for which he had found no record of any person living in Britain, not a birth certificate or a driver’s license, not a car or voting registration to their names.
Harry Galpin.
Jayce Driscoll.
Ivy Booker.
According to the Passenger Name Records he had pulled, Harry and Jayce were misters and Ivy was a Ms.
Cole didn’t automatically discount any of the names. He knew it was much easier for a woman to disguise herself as a man than it was for the opposite; easier to add masculine attributes like a fake beard than take away physical attributes such as height and musculature.
Cole went to the coffee machine set up in one corner of the room. It was a fancy espresso machine that foamed his milk as he filled his cup. It was a nice perk but it brought to mind Bex. This coffee would be much more to her taste than the lackluster swill at Bridesmead.
All morning the thought of her had been an undercurrent to his work. He hadn’t broken down like that about Lara since his wife’s funeral. Bex’s reaction had been guarded. He had been unable to read her true feelings when he exposed his bitter vulnerability. That left him wondering if she now viewed him differently. Did she class him as a man who had let down his wife?
What the hell difference did it make how she viewed him! he silently reproved himself. He had told Bex at the beginning, and he’d meant it, he didn’t want anything complicated. But he knew he was lying when he tried to deny that something unexpected had happened to his feelings. Yet she hadn’t even texted him to say her plane had landed at JFK.
When his thoughts got to this point, he took himself in hand, reminding himself that they didn’t have the type of relationship where they kept each other informed of their movements. Bex made no claims on him and he certainly had no entitlements over her.
He sipped his coffee on the way back to his computer. The project room had filled with agents and a discernible tremor of expectation hung in the air as Lloyd Fausch entered the room.
Fausch looked gaunt, the bags under his eyes attesting to a sleepless night. His suit looked loose on him as though he had lost weight overnight while tension leached out of his mouth with every word he spoke.
Nolan Weaver had been right. The higher-ups had leaned heavily on Fausch for yesterday’s stuff up. A pedestrian in critical condition had died in the early hours of the morning, bringing the body count to four. Fausch’s address to them was less about moving forward to trace Dresden and more about how they needed to cover their arses. He advised them that every agent’s scene of crime logs, every notebook entry, in fact every record would be scrutinized by an internal investigation. The area in front of Shoreditch County Court had become a crime scene and it was imperative that any piece of evidence, no matter how small or
inconsequential, be accounted for so the crime could be attributed where it belonged.
“I don’t want anybody to so much as sneeze on this case without permission from me,” Fausch concluded. “Whatever aspect of Operation Bluebird you’re working on has to be approved by me before you proceed.”
At the end of his address, Cole approached Fausch, showing him the three names.
“I think one of these could be Dresden’s alias,” he said. “All I need is a little more time to dig deeper and nail down which one it is.”
Fausch shook his head and speared him with a bloodshot glance. “I need every agent on board to sort this mess at Shoreditch.”
Cole wasn’t deterred.
“If I can identify Dresden’s alias then we have a real chance to track down her whereabouts. There’s not much point harvesting the evidence from Shoreditch if we don’t have a body in hand to pin it on. It’ll just be a repeat of the Fairchild serial murders. A crime without an arrest.”
Fausch flashed him a grim look. Cole could tell he was feeling cornered. He was in a position of being damned no matter what course he took.
“You’ve got till lunchtime to see what you can scare up. Then I’m putting you under Banks’s lead to sift through the evidence from yesterday.”
Cole wasted no time returning his attention to the puzzle of Dresden’s movements into and out of London. He settled into his swivel chair, cursing his lack of typing skills as he pecked his way through the Passenger Name Records.
Harry Galpin.
DOB: 18 September, 1952.
2:40 p.m. flight from London to Paris on March 24.
Point of purchase was the airline company, ticket paid in cash.
Returned to London from Paris on April 19.
Left London 11:00 a.m. on April 22, destination Reykjavik.
Point of purchase for the London ticket was a local travel agent, again paid for in cash.
Jayce Driscoll.
DOB: 4 February, 1974.
Left London for Frankfurt on March 24.
Point of purchase was the airline company, ticket paid in cash.
Flight to London via Athens on April 21.
Cash purchase via the airline company.
There was no record of him flying out of London. That didn’t mean he hadn’t left by other means, such as the Eurostar.
Ivy Booker.
DOB: 30 November, 1968.
Recorded leaving London on a flight to Ostreva in the Czech Republic.
Ticket point of purchase was the airline company, ticket paid in cash.
Returned to London from Chicago on April 21.
Left London on April 22 at noon, flying to Madrid.
Both trips recorded as paid for by cash with a point of purchase as the airline company.
His information put all three of them squarely in London during the bomb explosion. Their dates of birth didn’t preclude Dresden from assuming any persona. The PNR contained contact numbers. Harry’s was disconnected. Jayce’s went to an answering service so Cole hung up without leaving a message. Ivy’s number went to a woman who claimed no knowledge of Ivy Booker. It could be a misprint in the number caused by human error.
He considered his next move.
The PNR listed their British passport numbers so he could check with the Passport Office to verify the passports’ validity. Or he could contact Immigration. Their lack of British birth certificates could mean Harry, Jayce and Ivy had been born overseas or obtained a passport through a British parent while living overseas. If they had immigrated to Britain there should be entry and residential registrations.
He checked his watch. Fausch had given him till lunchtime. Even if he took a late lunch he was unlikely to get any joy from these government departments before then.
Cole scanned the room, seeking Zia Venediktov’s frizzy hair like a firework explosion amongst the nondescript heads. Then he headed back to the coffee machine. When he approached her, he held out a coffee mug.
“Thought you might like a pick-me-up.”
Zia had a broad face covered in light brown freckles. Her unruly curls were clipped back from her face by a plastic headband to spring behind in gloriously thick red splendor.
“Milk, two sugars, right?”
Zia took the cup and smirked at him, her eyes blinking from behind thick panes of glass.
“You must want something bad,” she said, her Eastern European accent hardly discernible. “Agents don’t normally run around doing coffee duty for IT.”
“Maybe just a little favor.” He placed a sheet of paper in front of her with his list of names and their dates of birth. “Any chance you could search online and see if you get a hit on any of these people?”
She sipped the coffee. “I’m presuming you did a regular search?”
“I couldn’t get a likely match on any of the usual social media sites, but I have to admit I’m a bit lost after that.”
“You have permission from Fausch?”
“Absolutely.” Cole crossed his fingers over his chest. “Cross my heart et cetera. But I’m on a deadline. I’ve got to supply this information to him by lunchtime.”
“I can spare five minutes for you. The time it takes me to drink my coffee.”
Cole admired the speed with which her fake fingernails whipped over the keyboard. Web pages appeared, disappeared and stacked up, one behind the other on her screen. Five minutes passed, then ten. After twenty minutes she sat back.
“What are you checking into, Cole?”
“Just looking for a clue to help us track down Bluebird. Did you find anything?”
“A few things. This name, Jayce Driscoll, he’s got an online presence in a few kiddie porn forums. They’re not exactly forthcoming but not totally hidden. Easy enough to find when you start looking.
“Harry Galpin has published several academic papers on the topics of Viking and medieval Norse mythology. I found them in a conference archive from twenty years ago. His name also turns up in a local university human resources file as an associate professor, also in Viking and Medieval Norse Studies. If you give me a bit more time I can hack the university computer to pull his full employment records.”
This last was said so deadpan that Cole wasn’t sure if she was joking. He decided to ignore it.
“So, Jayce Driscoll could be an alias to keep some pervert’s privacy intact. Harry Galpin could simply be a Luddite, eschewing computers and credit cards for the sake of his medieval Norse beliefs. In either case they appear to be names attached to real people. What about Ivy Booker?”
“Now that is strange. There are Ivy Bookers on the web, but I’m not getting a match for the details you provided. I suggest checking your information again.”
Cole felt his spirits lift. Ivy Booker deserved a more thorough investigation.
Chapter 10
Laurel Leaf Drive, Armonk,
Tuesday, 24 April
“So, tell me about this surprise trip you’ve planned for you and Mom. She says it’s a cruise down the Rhine after a week in Paris.”
The weather was mild enough for them to breakfast on the porch outside overlooking a spread of well-kept grounds. The lawn was still the same smooth green diamond where she had practiced her little league pitching.
Bex sat at the round table while Steven served her poached egg and smashed avocado on rye for breakfast. Past her father’s shoulder she could see the log cabin fort where she and her brother had spent childhood hours. How odd that her father hadn’t pulled it down and put in something more practical! She and Bram hadn’t played there together since Bram hit the surly teens. She had found it a sanctuary in her own teenage years when she needed privacy for her thoughts. It was as though the fort and her parents were waiting for a new generation to play there.
Will my child play here?
Without volition her hand fell under the table to nestle against her flat belly. The thought made her non-existent bump seem real. She bit her lip, wondering how her pare
nts would react to her news. She would have to tell them as soon as Cole knew.
Last night, after arriving at the modest colonial home she had grown up in, Steven had dropped her bag in her old room on the second floor and said good night. Surrounded by her childhood baseball trophies, merit certificates from high school and posters of her teenage crushes she knew she wouldn’t sleep easy. The last time she had slept in her childhood bed was when she was convalescing from the car accident. Just another reason why she couldn’t stay in Armonk, she told herself as she dragged her bag into the guest room down the hall. A room that stirred no haunting memories, plus had the added bonus of an en suite bathroom.
Steven took a seat opposite her and spread a napkin over his lap. “I haven’t taken your mother on a real vacation for years. She deserves it. We’re empty nesters now, so there’s nothing to keep us chained to Armonk.”
Bex inhaled deeply before sipping her coffee. She savored its strong, aromatic flavor, tasting it hot and bitter on her tongue. She hadn’t realized how much she missed an American brew. It was a recuperative kickstart for her jetlagged nerves.
“Except work,” she said. “Your company’s always been the most important aspect of your life.”
His mouth thinned. “Well, perhaps not any more. I’ve made enough money to retire on. I’m thinking of selling my shares. There’s a conglomerate of young tech mavericks who’d love to buy me out.”
Bex felt herself gaping at her father. “Is this an alien invasion? What have you done with the real Steven Kirwan?”
“Don’t be facetious, Bex. Now, I hope you enjoy breakfast. Your mother arranged for a catering company to drop meals off this week for me. Thinks I’ll starve to death if I have to cook for myself.”
Smart woman, Bex thought, savoring her first bite and turning her attention back to the yard. The cover was off the heated swimming pool so she knew her father had done his early morning laps. Behind that was a half tennis court where Steven sometimes entertained his business partners or big clients the company were wooing. Bram had been pretty handy with a racket but Bex hadn’t developed the right coordination. She swung her racket too much like a baseball bat and had never got the knack of backhand.
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