* * *
Back inside, the contracts were ready. Eight copies, four English and four Spanish. Dos millones de euros… prometer pagar… Fine, whatever. Brian signed them all.
Fernandes’s phone buzzed. He had a rapid-fire Spanish conversation, hung up shaking his head.
“None of these banks have two million euros lying around. Even the Santander on Passeig de Gràcia says it only has half a million.”
“Your central bank must have a branch here,” Rebecca said.
“The Bank of Spain,” Fernandes said. “We ask them, it will take all week.”
“What about the casino?” Brian said.
* * *
Forty-five minutes later, the Unsworths and Fernandes stepped into an unmarked Mossos van. Two officers waited in the front seats, armed but no uniforms. Garza, the Special Operations colonel, had already left. My men are ready, his final words.
“Come on,” Fernandes said. He had the tight-lipped look of a pool hustler who knew he’d been taken but couldn’t figure out how. Brian knew the feeling.
They were quiet on the trip down to the waterfront. Even Becks seemed to have nothing to say. Brian wondered what his dearly beloved wife was thinking. She’d be blaming herself, no doubt, making the kidnapping all about her. He blamed her, too. For a change they agreed.
He wondered what she’d do if he told her the truth. But Becks wasn’t the forgiving sort. He’d have to trust Irlov. At least the Russian knew what Brian was worth.
* * *
A blond-haired man in a crisp blue suit waited for them in the Casino Barcelona garage. “Ken Harrington, director of security.”
“You’re Irish?” Brian couldn’t help himself.
“Welcome to the modern EU. Free markets, free sangria, I think that’s this year’s slogan. Mr. Fernandes, may I see the letter we discussed?”
Fernandes handed Harrington an envelope. The letter inside guaranteed the government of Spain would repay the money within one week. Harrington scanned it, tucked it away.
“This way, please.”
He led them to the employee entrance, spare and white-painted. The hallway ended in a no-nonsense steel door that reminded Brian of the NSA. Harrington put his badge to a wall sensor, led them into an anteroom watched over by a woman behind a plexiglass window.
“I probably don’t need to say this, but please, no pictures.” Harrington raised his badge to the window.
“Cuánto?” the woman said.
“Cinco.”
The lock buzzed. Harrington led them into another white-walled hallway, this one lined with cash carts and watched by two guards wearing pistols and bulletproof vests.
“I understand the security may seem severe,” Harrington said. “But we move hundreds of millions of euros through here every year.”
Near the end of the hallway yellow hospital gowns were stacked on a shelf. “Normally visitors wear gowns before entering a count room, but I’ll make an exception. Please don’t touch anything until I tell you. And I’d rather the boy wait here.”
“No,” Brian said. Tony had been alone too much today. “He’ll be fine.”
Harrington nodded. To Tony: “Hands to yourself, please, my son.”
* * *
Harrington led them into a room whose walls were so white they almost glowed. Bubble cameras studded the corners. Digital safes were embedded in the walls. Two fiftyish women stood near the back of the room. They were identically dressed in hairnets, black pants, and black short-sleeved shirts. They stepped aside, revealing a table covered with inch-thick stacks of rubber-banded notes.
“Each note one hundred euros,” Harrington said. “Two hundred notes per stack. One hundred stacks in all. One hundred times two hundred times one hundred. Two million. The Casino Barcelona has no interest in cheating the government of Spain but check them if you wish.” He picked up a stack from the center, riffled it, showing them that each note was identical.
Brian had to admit, seeing so much cash aroused something primal in him, lit his blood. Maybe this was what other people meant when they talked about love. Most people worked their whole lives without ever seeing this much money. Here it was sitting on a table for him to take.
He stepped to the table to examine his temporary fortune. Compared to American bills, the European currency seemed fussy, almost fake. The notes were green and beige, a big blue-black 100 just off center. Bridges and archways decorated them. The Europeans couldn’t pick historical figures to decorate their bills—one country’s hero was another’s villain.
He thumbed through a stack. All hundreds. He laid it down, tried another. Also perfect. Of course. As Harrington had said, the casino wasn’t going to rip off the Interior Ministry.
“Looks fine,” he said. He wanted to be in charge, at least for a moment.
Harrington pulled a soft green zippered bag from a basket beneath the table. “Good luck, then.”
* * *
Twenty minutes later Brian, Rebecca, and Tony sat in CC’s office at the El Raval Mossos station, the safest place they could find to keep the cash while they waited for instructions.
Fernandes was gone. At the casino, he’d taken pictures of the money with his phone. “Call if you hear anything.” Then he’d left, barely saying goodbye.
“We should have gone upstairs, put it all on red,” Brian said now.
No one smiled.
“Double or nothing. Make an extra couple million.” He could see the stacks doubling, multiplying, filling another bag and another.
“Shut up, Dad.”
“Don’t tell me to shut up, Tony.”
“Or what? I’ll get taken too and you’ll talk about gambling the ransom?” Tony’s voice was tight, angry.
“Tony,” Rebecca said. “We’re all stressed. Apologize.”
“Sorry.” The word a mutter. “I wish they wouldn’t make us wait.”
“She’s okay,” Brian said.
“How do you know?”
Because I know who took her, and I know why.
“Nobody goes to this much trouble to show off, Tony. This is about money. If these men didn’t know who your mom was before, they’ve figured it out now. They’ll know their best move is to get paid and go.”
As if the kidnappers had been waiting for Brian to conjure them, his phone trilled with an incoming text. Rebecca’s followed.
“I’m getting a Craigslist link,” Rebecca said. “In New York.”
“Mine’s in Hong Kong.” Brian clicked through, found nothing but a string of numbers and letters.
“I’ve got a link to a Dropbox account,” Rebecca said. “Asking for a password.”
“This must be it.” Brian handed her his phone.
She copied the key into hers.
A single file. A voice recording.
“Mom. Dad. Tony. I miss you.”
Kira’s voice, unmistakable.
She stopped speaking for a moment, though the playback continued.
“I miss you,” she said again. The words slow and careful. From a script, Brian thought. “I want to see you again. Please buy two first-class tickets on the 21:23, Barcelona to Madrid.” The 9:23 p.m. train. Proof Kira was reading someone else’s words. She would never say 21:23. “Tony stays in Barcelona. You travel without escorts. You carry the money in a soft-sided bag. You do not carry weapons. No tracker or dye packs in the bag. You will receive further instructions on the train.”
Another pause.
“Follow these rules or you won’t see me again.” Her voice broke a little on the last words. “To accept this offer, send two male uniformed Mossos officers to walk three times around the Font de Canaletes”—she stumbled a bit over the Spanish—“at 1800 hours exactly. If you accept but do not yet have the cash, send two female Mossos officers. In that case you will have one more day. The price will be three million euros instead of two.”
A pause, longer than the others, the silence grinding at them.
The timer on t
he file showed the recording had a few seconds left.
“If you do not accept—”
The recording ended.
They were silent as Rebecca tapped her phone. “That’s it.”
They played the message a second time, and a third. But Kira’s words remained stubbornly scripted, her only message the one the kidnappers wanted to send.
“What’s the Font de Canaletes?”
“A fountain near the top of the Rambla,” CC said. “Always very crowded. No chance for decent surveillance. Why they chose it.”
“Anyway, you better send two men. We’re going to get on the train,” Brian said.
“You’re sure.” CC looked at Rebecca, like Brian’s opinion didn’t count.
“Of course,” Rebecca said.
“Then we need”—CC hesitated, looking for the word—“plainclothes officers on the train too.”
“You heard what she said.”
“Hundreds of people on that train; our men are good, they won’t know.”
“Not worth it.”
“I’m sorry, it’s two million euros and there’s danger for you too. If someone puts a pistol on you, takes the money, my men can see what’s happening, protect you.”
“Tony, you need to wait outside.”
Tony walked out, slammed the door.
“I didn’t want him to hear his, but let me be as clear as I can,” Rebecca said. “I want her free, and if that means taking a bullet I’ll do it. I’m sure Brian feels the same.”
Brian nodded. Though he was really thinking, Rebecca and her drama, Rebecca the avenging FBI agent, Rebecca the supermom… The truth, yeah, she wanted Kira back, but she hated not being in control. She’d been antsy all day, she didn’t like relying on these cops.
“No plainclothes,” Rebecca said.
“All right.”
Brian suspected CC would put the officers on the train anyway. “Tony,” he yelled. “Come on back in.”
Then he realized the kidnappers had made a mistake. Dropbox wasn’t Telegram or Signal, a service designed to frustrate government monitoring, with uncrackable end-to-end encryption. It was an American company that had helped the NSA in the past. At the least, it should give them the IP address from which the message had been uploaded. If the message had been uploaded directly from a phone or iPad or other mobile device, the agency and the Spanish police might be able to find it fast.
Brian wondered if he should keep his mouth shut. Maybe Irlov would be angry if they found Kira on their own. But the Russian had made his point. “Becks—Dropbox—”
“They’re a friend, right?”
So he didn’t even get to tell her. He called the duty officer at Fort Meade, explained what they needed.
* * *
Fifteen minutes later they had an answer. Though not the one they wanted.
The IP address routed to a hardline network, not a mobile device. And the locations of hardline nodes were less precise than those belonging to mobiles. Mobile carriers needed to know the exact location of the devices they served. Hardline Internet networks were just big dumb highways with endless on- and off-ramps. A single node could serve a big neighborhood or a small city.
Nonetheless, the address provided a clue. It routed to central Zaragoza, a city of over seven hundred thousand people in northeastern Spain. Zaragoza lay almost exactly halfway between Madrid and Barcelona, and the 9:23 express from Barcelona to Madrid stopped there.
The kidnappers had been careful so far. Still, Brian doubted they would have driven too far from their base to upload this message. Most likely they were in Zaragoza, or close.
“Is there any practical way to narrow it?” Rebecca said when Brian finished the explanation. “If they did it at an Internet café, could the Zaragoza police go to the cafés with pictures of Jacques and the girl?”
“No way did they hang around.”
“Maybe we could get a license plate from a car outside—”
“Zaragoza isn’t part of Catalonia,” CC said.
Meaning they would be asking Fernandes for help. So, they needed to keep the long shots to a minimum.
“Tell them we have a clue pointing to Zaragoza,” Brian said. “Ask for police on the platform when the train pulls in. They’ll do that.”
“Still. They must be planning to take the money before they hand her over,” Rebecca said.
“So we just hand two million euros to whoever asks and assume they keep their end, let us go?” Brian said.
“Do we have a choice?”
“I’m afraid they’ll split you up,” CC said. “Tell one of you, get off the train with the money, the other stays on, meets your daughter. Then you can’t protect each other.”
Brian and Rebecca didn’t say a word.
28
Somewhere in Spain
Taping the message took longer than Kira expected. When Jacques gave her the script, she wondered if she could sneak in extra information, Me and my three kidnappers, including one with black fingernails, who are not in Barcelona but still in Spain, but he tapped her cheek and said, “Read it exactly.”
Oh Jacques. Touchy, touchy.
They recorded in an upstairs bedroom. Scrupulously clean, the sheets tight over the mattress. No books, no clothes, no evidence of nationality or astrological sign or any human personality. So probably Jacques’s. A blackout shade taped over the window. Rodrigo stood in a corner, eyes roving over her. She wasn’t sure why Jacques had him here. Maybe an object lesson in what would happen to her if she didn’t make the tape.
Jacques made her record the script several times. Finally he seemed satisfied. He saved the file onto a flash drive, murmured under his breath to Rodrigo, and handed it over. Rodrigo trotted out. A minute later she heard the distinctive thrum of a motorcycle engine.
“Want him to take you for a ride?”
She didn’t bother answering.
“Hungry?” Jacques said. “I’m making panini.”
Her stomach was tight. She didn’t mind being hungry, but she wanted to stay strong and sharp.
Still, taking food from Jacques seemed like a bad idea. “It’s all right.”
“You think I’m going to drug you again? Why bother?”
“To move me more easily?”
“I don’t need to drug you anymore. Maybe I just tell you, I kill you if you run.”
Not this time You move me, I’m going for it. Kill me if you want.
“Or, no, you don’t listen, this time you plan to be brave. Okay, I tell you, we’re taking you to your family. Mommy, daddy, Tony.”
Rodrigo was her best bet for freedom, but Jacques was the one she wanted dead.
“But you decide you can’t trust me, you still want to run. Then I tell you if you try to escape, I kill them. Start with Tony, you make fun but you like him, I think. The back of the head, he never even feels it.” Jacques pointed a finger pistol at her, gotcha. “Would that work? Because that’s what I’m saying, if you try to run, your family dies.”
“Fuck you fuck you fuck you.” The words only betrayed her own weakness, she knew.
“I don’t think you mean it. Too bad. Come on, lunch. Jamón and Manchego. I’ll even make a deal, I cut it in half, you pick which half you want, I eat the other.”
Why not? She’d get to see more of the house, anyway. She nodded.
But he disappointed her. He locked her inside the closet, came back with the sandwich. Sure enough, he’d split it.
“Your choice.”
She pointed at his left hand.
“Wise.” He handed her the panini, chomped into the half she hadn’t chosen.
She couldn’t help feeling he was playing with her, somehow he’d known which side she’d pick and had laced it. But she’d picked on the spot. She nibbled at the sandwich. Which was as delicious as it sounded, hot, the cheese slightly salty, the ham rich with fat.
“Still nervous? We can switch.”
They traded. She took another nibble. “Thanks
.” Her manners taking over before she could stop herself.
“I’m sorry about Rodrigo. You’re beautiful. But he needs to control himself.” Jacques smelled good, a peppery male musk she hadn’t expected. Of course Jacques wore the right scent, and of course he wore the right amount. She was suddenly conscious of how terrible she must smell.
“Why don’t you get rid of him?”
Jacques laughed, the sound dry, European somehow. “He has his uses. Tell me about yourself, Kira.”
She shook her head, You cannot be serious.
“Come on, just because we’re in this position doesn’t mean we can’t have a conversation.”
She snapped to reality.
“Go fuck yourself.”
He pushed her backward, stepped out of the closet, locked the door. In the dark she fell back to the wall, the only space in the house that belonged to her.
Only now that he’d left did she realize she hadn’t heard Lilly or anyone else downstairs since Rodrigo left. Jacques was alone. She could have waited at the door with the acetone and the lighter. Yet the idea hadn’t even occurred to her, he was so completely in control. He’d threatened to kill her family, and she’d thanked him for making her a sandwich. She threw the panini across the room. She’d starve before she took another bite.
* * *
Hours passed. The heat in the closet faded. The light leaking under the plywood faded. She didn’t relax at all. She’d realized why what Jacques had done bothered her.
Obviously he didn’t care about making her feel better. But she didn’t think he cared about frightening her either, or proving how smart he was. She wasn’t even an animal to him. She was just a thing he’d stolen for a while, until he gave it back or passed it on.
He was pure psychopath. She had to assume everything he did was strategic. Even toying with her. He had a reason. A plan. Why had he offered her food? Asked her about herself? To distract her, keep her off balance, as he readied his next move.
The Power Couple Page 28