Time on the Wire

by Jay Giles

  The phone rang. Albrecht took a final sip of coffee, put the cup down, lifted the phone to his ear. “Yes.”

  “Herr Albrecht,” the voice said in German, “it is I, Joseph Otting, calling as requested. I am pleased to inform you your funds are now on deposit. Are there additional instructions?”

  “No, Herr Otting. The arrangements remain the way we discussed.”

  “I understand. They will be carried out to the letter. May I say it is a pleasure to work with you, Herr Albrecht.”

  “Thank you, Herr Otting. I look forward to a most productive relationship,” Albrecht said before hanging up. He stood, picked up his coffee cup, carried it into the galley, poured the cold coffee in the sink, refilled his mug with hot. Now that Otting had the funds under his management, $10-million would be placed in trust for Alma’s care, the remainder invested to provide him a generous income stream.

  Albrecht carried his coffee topside, made himself comfortable in a chair on the stern deck that provided a panoramic view of the harbor. He felt the warmth of the sun on his face and arms, the slight roll of the boat underneath him. He sipped his coffee, his gaze dancing from boat to boat, lingering on the larger, more expensive ones. The best was a black-hulled Moody 64 sailing yacht, flying a British flag. Albrecht envied the man fishing off the stern, assumed he was the owner. Envied him all the more when a well-endowed redhead wearing only a skimpy bikini bottom emerged from below decks, brought the man a beer. The man caught Albrecht looking, raised his bottle of beer. Albrecht raised his coffee cup. “Prosit,” he called over.

  Albrecht looked at his watch, sighed, went below to finish his packing. The well-endowed redhead had reminded him he was to meet a woman in a little over an hour. It wouldn’t do to be late.

  CHAPTER 85

  Hanna spent much of the next morning working with a case officer at the Interpol General Secretariat in Lyon, France. With his assistance, information on Albrecht, Silber, the Beck kidnapping, and the Lohse murder had been uploaded to Interpol’s I-24/7 global police communications systems and transmitted to 186 participating countries and Interpol Sub-Regional Bureaus in Argentina, Cote d’Ivoire, El Salvador, Kenya, Thailand, Zimbabwe and the U.N. Mission in Kosovo. Additionally, a Red Notice—a document recognized as the legal basis for an arrest—had been issued for both Silber and Albrecht to help local police with a potential arrest and extradition.

  At noontime, Amy brought her a tuna fish sandwich and a cup of mango tea. It sat untouched as Hanna finished a conference call with the agents at Bureau headquarters in D.C. responsible for securing Albrecht’s phone records.

  “There are privacy issues that have to be dealt with,” Agent Collins explained. He had a husky, easy-going voice. “We’ve made the request to his cell phone provider, now they need to cover their butts before they release the information to us.”

  “How long will that take?”

  The other agent on the call, Stinger, who seemed tighter wound, jumped in. “I wouldn’t expect to hear from them for at least a week, maybe two,” his voice had a nasal quality to it, “and that’s if we put the heat on them.”

  “Then light a fire under them,” Hanna urged. “Call them every day, twice a day, more if you have to. In a week those records could be useless.”

  “I hear you.” Collins commiserated. “We’ll do everything we can. Just don’t count on this happening instantaneously.”

  Hanna clicked off, annoyed. Everyone seemed to want to lower her expectations.

  The Interpol Case Officer’s parting comment had been, “They have probably gone to ground, changed their appearances. If so, we may never locate either of them.”

  She noted both calls in the case file, buzzed Amy. “Did we hear back from anyone at Daimler?”

  “Yes.” Amy coughed quickly, continued. “Two calls. Reinsharfer, their head of security, and Polzing from finance. Since you were talking with Interpol, I had them talk to Arroyro.” Arroyro was the duty officer.

  “Good.”

  “Oh, and Mr. Marin called to see if you two were still having dinner tonight.”

  Hanna smiled. This was the dinner they’d postponed to visit Ruhl’s condo.

  “Hanna, you can’t be at your desk 24/7. Go.”

  “I know. It’s jus—”

  “Arroyro’s good,” Amy offered. “If anything comes in, he’ll call you.”

  Hanna looked at the tuna fish, now cold tea. “Alright, I’ll call him.”

  • • •

  Three hours later, Hanna and Miles were seated in a booth at Barnacle Bill’s, a seafood restaurant, located amidst the shops and galleries on Main Street in downtown Sarasota. Usually, at this time of night, the restaurant would be wall-to-wall people. Tonight, it had a mere smattering of diners. A drenching rain that showed no signs of letting up had cleared the street of shoppers, kept all but the most adventurous dinner-goers from venturing out.

  Miles glanced at Hanna over the top of his menu. She’d been unusually subdued on the ride to the restaurant. At first, he attributed it to the gray, gloomy weather. His attempts to lighten her mood, get her to smile, had gone over like bad stand-up. Lame as his conversation might have been, he doubted he was the cause of her funk. It had to be work related. Miles reached over, put his hand on top of hers. “What’s bothering you?”

  At his touch, her gaze found his. She’d been a million miles away. “I’m sorry,” she began with a shake of her head that tousled her curls. “I’m probably not going to be very good company, tonight.”

  “It’s the Beck/Lohse thing, isn’t it?”

  “I really shouldn’t talk about it.”

  “Oh sure,” Miles laughed. “Take me to Ruhl’s condo, get me to help you, then clam up on me.”

  That brought a fleeting smile. The first of the evening. “No. It’s not that at all,” she said before her face turned serious. “It’s internal. It’s stupid Bureau bureaucratic butt-covering. Nobody has a sense of urgency on this matter. They’re all making sure their ‘t’s are crossed and their ‘i’s are dotted, letting Albrecht and Silber get further and further away.” Anger put an edge in her voice. “If you don’t solve a matter like this quickly, it doesn’t get solved. They win. I don’t want that to happen. I don’t want them to get away with—”

  A waiter, dressed in a white shirt, black tie and pants, a white apron tied around his waist, picked that moment to appear smiling at the table. Miles waved him away. “Give us a few minutes.” The waiter retreated.

  Hanna reached for her water glass, took a drink. Miles saw that her hand trembled ever so slightly, probably from the anger.

  “How about tracing the phone?” He asked, probing. “That’s what somebody needed to jump on.”

  Hanna shook her head in exasperation. “They told me maybe in a week or two.”

  Her eyebrow’s arched up. “If I’m lucky.”

  Miles got his cell out of his pocket, searched through his list of phone numbers.

  “Who are you calling?”

  “Someone who can fix this.” He held up his hand for the waiter, said to Hanna. “How would you feel about eating in the car?”

  CHAPTER 86

  It was after 11:00, when the Jeep pulled to a stop. They’d driven almost two-and-a-half hours in the pouring rain, much of it in the dark on side roads, the last half hour on a rutted dirt path that had been rife with pot holes.

  Hanna looked out the mud-splattered front window, saw a low one-story, concrete-block building with a corrugated steel roof. The place had the look of a bunker with only one small window and a metal reinforced door marking the front façade. To the left of the house was a giant telecommunications dish—one far larger than those used for Direct TV. To the right, a tarp had been strung between poles to cover two motorcycles and a muddy Ford 150 pickup truck.

  “Where are we?” Hanna wanted to know.

  “We’re on the edge of the Glades,” Miles said. He looked over at her, grinned. “Ready to run for it?”

/>   Hanna estimated the distance between the Jeep and the building—four feet.

  They’d be drenched before they reached the door. “Sure.” She opened the door, stepped out, tried to make a dash for it. Her feet sank in the mud, the ooze sucked off a shoe.

  Hanna reached down in the mud, pulled it out, carried it with her as she slogged forward.

  Miles was pounding on the door with his fist. It opened to reveal a man with a short buzz cut, black Led Zeppelin tee-shirt, tan cargo shorts, woven sandals. Every exposed inch of his sinewy arms and legs was covered with tattoos.

  Hanna stared at the tattoos, not moving. All Miles had told her was that they were seeing a traveling buddy.

  The man reached out, grabbed her wrist. He had a particularly strong grip. With one jerk, he pulled her out of the rain. Miles stepped in behind her, shutting the door.

  The tattooed man let go of her wrist, gave Miles a hug, patted him on the back. “Good to see you, man.”

  Miles turned to Hanna. “Hanna this is Brody Pipe. Brody, Hanna.”

  Brody reached out, shook Hanna’s hand. “Pleasure.”

  Another man joined the group. He was big, six-three, three-hundred pounds, broad in the shoulders, with a gut that was starting to go to flab. His shaved head looked too small to go with his massive body. His face was stretched in a broad devil-may-care grin. “Miles,” he said loudly, slapping him on the back.

  “And this,” Miles said to Hanna, “is Billy Bob.”

  The big man’s smile disappeared, his brow furrowed. “That’s not—”

  “Hanna’s a Fed,” Miles explained.

  “Ohhh,” he said knowingly. The playful smile returned. “Billy Bob Thornton, good to meet you.” He stuck out his hand.

  Hanna shook his hand, played along. “You look bigger in person than on the screen.”

  “Everybody tells me that. Just yesterday, George Clooney was here and said—”Miles gave Billy Bob a look, said to Hanna. “Don’t encourage him.”

  “Yeah, we’ve got work to do,” Brody agreed. He nodded his head toward a battered plaid-covered sofa. “We need to talk.”

  Hanna took off her other shoe, left it with the muddy one by the door. She surveyed the room as she walked barefoot across the concrete floor to the sofa. It was one big space, no interior walls, illuminated by a string of bare bulbs draped through the roof trusses. The left side of the room was weights and exercise equipment. Next to the weight area, a refrigerator and stove. On the back wall were two unmade single beds. Mounds of clothes littered the floor. Hanna saw no laundry facilities, more importantly, no bathroom. There was a back door. Probably a Port-o-let outside. To the right, the sofa, some mismatched chairs, faced a fifty-inch Mitsubishi wide-screen.

  Miles and Hanna found seats on the sofa. Brody pulled up a wooden straight-backed kitchen chair, whirled it around so he could sit on it backwards, facing them.

  “Here’s what I know. What you want me to do is illegal as hell. She’s a Fed.” He looked from Miles to Hanna back to Miles. “I’m listening.”

  Miles glanced over at Hanna, saw the worry on her face. “He’s right. He needs to know what this is about.”

  “I don’t feel comfortable—”“You can trust Brody,” Miles assured her. Hanna’s expression didn’t change. “He’s our only shot at finding Albrecht.”

  “I know,” she said in a quiet voice. “I’m still bothered about breaking Bureau regulations.”

  Miles grinned. “Think of it has bypassing the bureaucratic butt-covering. We use Brody, we nail Albrecht.”

  Hanna took a deep breath, blew out. “Okay, here’s what we know.” She did a quick recap of Beck’s kidnapping, the murders of Beck, Lohse, Tom and Robert Ruhl, finished with the disappearance of Albrecht and Silber.

  Brody listened intently, soaking up every detail. “Albrecht’s just a white-collar opportunist,” he argued when Hanna finished. “This woman, Silber, killed people, she’s the one who needs to be tracked down. Why aren’t you going after her?”

  “We are,” Hanna said meeting his gaze. “If you killed for $50million and someone took it from you, what would you do?”

  “I’d go find that person,” Brody snorted.

  Hanna smiled. “Exactly. Find Albrecht and we’ll find Silber, too.”

  CHAPTER 87

  Marike had slept late that morning and breakfasted in the hotel’s restaurant before setting out in her rented car.

  Her first stop was the Neckar River house. When she’d taken Albrecht to bed there, the two of them had been filmed. The plan had been to threaten Albrecht with exposure if he didn’t cooperate. Marike wanted to retrieve those tapes, eliminate any evidence linking her to Albrecht or, more importantly, to the owner of the house, Tom Ruhl.

  She parked her car on the street, used her key in the front door lock, shut the door behind her. The house was silent, had that musty, closed-up smell. Marike let her eyes adjust to the dim light, made her way back to the closet in the guest bedroom. Inside, she found the camera, tapes. She gathered them up, took them outside, put them in the trunk of her car. She returned to the house, used a kitchen towel to wipe off any surface she might have touched. Satisfied, she’d eliminated any evidence of her most recent visit, she left, locking the door behind her.

  She drove from the Neckar River house to the affluent area north of town where Albrecht lived. The houses there were large, old, set well back from the street on large, heavily-treed lots. She watched the house numbers, found Albrecht’s, turned into the long driveway, pulled up to the house, parked. The gothic-style house was a three-story, red brick with limestone trim. The windows had diamond-pattern leading with colored medallions. The front door had a high gothic arch at the top, small leaded-glass window at eye level.

  Marike used a pick to open the door, entered, found her way to the garage. She opened the garage door, pulled her car in, closed the door. A strange car in the drive would attract attention. With the car concealed, she returned to the living quarters. Somewhere in here was a clue to Albrecht’s whereabouts.

  CHAPTER 88

  Armed with Albrecht’s cell number, Brody worked at a Dell laptop, systematically hacking German cell providers. He was confident he could find the cell’s records, not so confident the cell would still be in service. “If he tossed it, best I’ll be able to tell you is where he used it last,” he’d explained.

  Miles and Hanna watched over his shoulder for a little bit, but couldn’t make sense of what he was doing and returned to the sofa. Hanna put her head close to Miles, whispered, “What’s the story on these two? Why are they hiding out here?” The thumping of the rain on the corrugated steel room mixed with the whine of a generator masked their side conversation.

  Miles nodded across the room at Billy Bob doing arm curls, said in a low voice: “Ex-NFL lineman, ran a small internet sports book from Costa Rica. Met Brody when Brody was vacationing down there. Brody was an internet strategist for Google. They got to talking over beers, Brody told him a bunch of ways he could make the sports book better. They teamed up, grew the thing like crazy, made millions.”

  “Then why are they here? Hiding?”

  “One of the rival sports books decided they were getting too big, planted a car bomb in Billy Bob’s Range Rover, blew up his girl friend.”

  “How horrible.”

  “Yeah, he hired bodyguards, of course. Didn’t do any good. He was having a pool party at his place when a helicopter appeared and began strafing the pool area. Killed a bunch of the guests. I think that was the turning point. He and Brody went into hiding, eventually made it to the states. They’ve been holed up here for awhile now.”

  “Is the FBI after him?”

  “Not that I know of.

  “Then why didn’t you want me to know his name?”

  “He thinks the FBI has been infiltrated.”

  Hanna looked at him in disbelief.

  Miles shrugged. “It’s possible.”

  “Aren’t they concern
ed I know Brody’s name?”

  Miles chuckled. “They would be if it was his real name. Brody Pipe is the name on a fake passport he sometimes uses.”

  Hanna shook her head, looked at the tattooed man hunched over the laptop, the giant doing squats. She had a hard time picturing either of them as millionaires. She whispered. “How much are they worth?”

  “Hard to say. Maybe a hundred million between them from the sports book,” Miles told her. “Brody also owns a boat load of Google stock.”

  “How do you know them?”

  Miles had been waiting for this question. “Brody and I’ve been on a bunch of trips together. He’s our communications geek. Billy Bob I met in Costa Rica when the book was getting big.”

  Hanna had more questions. But Billy Bob ambled over, a towel draped around his neck. “Beer?” He asked. Laced between the fingers of his big left hand, he held four Miller High-Life longnecks.

  “Sure,” Miles said taking one.

  “None for me, thanks,” Hanna told him.

  From the computer, Brody held up his arm, said, “I’ll have hers.”

  “You making progress?” Miles asked.

  Brody took a pull on his beer, looked over at them, said, “Yeah, shouldn’t be too much longer.”

  But it was.

  To pass the time, Miles talked with Billy Bob, looked out the window at the rain, did some weights. Around 2:00 in the morning, he settled on the sofa, closed his eyes for an instant, felt someone shaking his arm. Wearily he opened an eye, saw Brody standing over him.

  “Found him.”

  From beside him on the sofa he heard Hanna ask, “Is the phone active?”

  CHAPTER 89

  Marike started her search in the study, sorted through the papers she found on Albrecht’s enormous wooden desk. He had neatly organized bills, statements, past-due notices, receipts, correspondence. Methodically, she picked up each piece of paper, scanned it for any clue—however small—to Albrecht’s location.