by Henry Porter
‘That’s not my impression.’
‘I sure hope you’re right. I’ll call the doctor.’
She rang off and looked across the lobby. Naji was turned away and still had his phone close to his face. She found a chair at the far end and dialled the doctor’s assistant. He was busy. She waited, aware of the disconcerting thought that she had buried the real possibility that Denis might not recover. She dialled again and was put straight through to the usually upbeat Dr Jamie Carrew. But his voice was grave and there were no pleasantries. ‘I know you are out of DC, Mrs Hisami, so I wanted to bring you up to date with some concerns of mine. Are you aware of any history of breathlessness in Denis?’
‘No, he’s pretty fit. He plays tennis and exercises in the gym maybe five times a week.’
‘I looked at the notes sent to me by his doctor in San Francisco, and there was nothing to explain his arrhythmia, in his case a sometimes dangerously slow heartbeat. His fitness would explain an efficiently low heartbeat, but this is out of the ordinary. I just wanted to establish if this was an underlying condition. So, he hasn’t experienced shortness of breath?’
‘No.’
‘Any chest pains?’
‘No, not as far as I’m aware.’
‘A fluttering in his chest? Unusual fatigue?’
‘No, Denis has exceptional energy.’
‘And no blackouts?’
‘No.’
‘But as you told me, he has a very stressful life. He drinks maybe a little too much and he smokes cigars occasionally. Neither of those is helpful, but I don’t believe that they’re the cause. So we’re going to put him on some medication that should increase his heart rate, but if that doesn’t work we may be considering other options. Possibly a surgical intervention, but that has to be balanced with the needs of recovery from the nerve agent. I’ll be consulting with other specialists to see what’s the best course.’
‘This doesn’t sound good,’ she said. ‘Without the heart issue, how’s he doing?’
‘Better than expected, but he’s still in the coma and we won’t know what kind of neurological impact he has suffered.’
‘God, I wish I hadn’t left now.’
‘Well, he is comatose, so it wouldn’t make a heap of difference. I believe he will recover, but I want to keep an eye on his heart. I’ll let you know if there’s any change in his condition or in our plans for him. When do you expect to be back in Washington?’
‘In two or three days.’
‘Good, I look forward to seeing you then. We’ve got your cell number and will call you with any developments.’
She hung up and walked over to Naji, feeling lousy and wondering why she’d left the States. She communicated some of this to Naji, who looked up and for the first time properly engaged with her. ‘You are in charge of Denis’s money. You have to be here and you have to be at Mr Harland’s funeral because you and Denis owe him.’ He gestured the plain truth of his logic. ‘You are the boss of this, Anastasia.’
‘Then why won’t you talk to me about it?’
‘I can’t. We must wait. Others know things.’
‘Who?’
‘Zoe.’
‘Who is she?’
‘The person Samson was protecting. Very beautiful,’ he concluded. He snapped up his phone and peered myopically at the screen again.
‘What are you doing?’
He jerked his head towards two men at the reception desk. He was using his back camera to watch them. ‘No bags,’ he said.
Anastasia moved a little to see round a palm plant. Without warning, Naji got up, then, dragging his foot and hooking his arm in front of him, as though he had impaired movement on his right side, he set off towards the reception. He revolved his head and spoke in Arabic to a non-existent caller, smiled goofily at the two men and lunged for the complimentary bowl of sweets on the reception desk, where he spent a little time making his choice. Anastasia held her breath. She had seen him do something like this in the camp when he jumped a food line, and he’d told her that he had put on an act to get past ticket inspection on the ferry to Piraeus. The two men stepped back. Naji wheeled round chaotically and, laughing manically, fell into one of them, then, by way of apology, offered the sweets in his hand to the man. The man stepped back with a look of horror and Naji continued on his way towards the dining area.
A moment later a text came to Anastasia’s phone. ‘Russians.’
She called him. ‘What do we do?’
‘You must leave now. They don’t know what I look like, but your face is everywhere on the internet. I’ve got the room key. I will get your bag. Go to the car park. I’ll meet you there.’
She felt he was being paranoid, but watched closely from her cover of the palm and a pillar. One of the men casually wandered off in the direction Naji had gone. The second waited for the receptionist to process their bookings and was looking around at the other guests with a keen interest. She got up and backed away to a side door that led to a covered area where some rustic wooden tables and chairs had been pushed together because of the rain. She headed for a strip of wet grass to her left and followed the line of the building into the darkness. At the end she saw a small car park. Naji was nowhere. She moved to the lines of cars, crouched down and dialled Naji’s number, but got no reply. She texted: ‘I’m in car park. Where are you?’ She heard a car’s lock operate and saw its lights flash in response. She remained in a crouching position, waiting for the car to start up and leave. Nothing happened. Then she heard Naji call out. She stood up and saw him standing triumphantly by the open door of an Audi. ‘Come, we must leave now,’ he said.
‘You can’t just steal a car like that.’
‘Rentals are shut.’
‘I know, but we have a flight in six hours. Anyway, whose car is it?’
‘Russians. They are looking for us. We must go.’ That was Naji – nothing superfluous.
She went towards him. ‘You took their car key!’
‘It was on the desk.’
‘What if they are perfectly innocent businessmen?’
‘I don’t think so,’ he said, with absolute certainty. ‘I know a killer when I see one.’
He did, too. She shook her damp hair, brushed the rainwater from her jacket and climbed in on the passenger side. Naji groped for the lever to adjust the driver’s seat, exclaimed in Arabic and pulled out a small handgun. ‘Businessmen with no bags and plenty of guns.’
‘Okay, you’re right. Should I drive?’
‘You have been drinking. Two glasses of wine.’
‘One!’
‘Two! Mini-bar!’ It was true. She’d forgotten the quarter bottle she opened while trying to get hold of Tulliver and Dr Carrew.
‘Do you drive? I mean, do you have any experience?’
‘Yes, I am the most excellent driver.’
‘You stole a policeman’s car when you were a kid and crashed it. I know that. Have you done any driving since then?’
‘Of course.’
‘Where?’
‘All over.’
‘What are we going to do with the car?’
‘Drive to Riga in Latvia and burn it. Then my sister Munira will bring us to Tallinn. She will enjoy that.’
‘Why would we burn a perfectly good car?’
‘Those men came to murder us, and I do not want the car to be found in Riga. Seat belt, please.’
‘Then you should not stop in Riga. We should go straight to Tallinn. We have to think of the two borders between here and Tallinn.’
‘Not a problem. Our car has Latvian registration and I know driver’s name. I saw it on registration card.’ He started the engine, moved sedately towards the exit and fed the ticket he’d found in the sun-visor clip into the machine. They thought they heard a shout before the barrier rose, but they c
ouldn’t be sure because of the noise of the rain. Naji didn’t hang around. In the first few seconds of the journey, Anastasia decided she would never let him drive her again. Her phone told her that it was exactly six hundred kilometres to Tallinn. They’d be there by morning if Naji didn’t kill them first.
‘I like this car,’ shouted Naji, ‘Audi Q7 has good economy and great driver engagement. Mr Stepurin has good taste.’ He winked at her.
‘Stepurin!’
‘Name on the hotel registration card with car registration. That is why I know we should leave.’
Chapter 24
Wet Grass
Ulrike handled the book with a kind of reverence; it was intensely important to her husband and therefore almost sacred to her. She moved through it, brushing its pages with the flat of her hands and smiling. ‘It really is a work of art, the way it’s laid out and with the references to colour found in nature,’ she said. ‘Poetic, in its way.’
She let it rest open in her lap and laid her hands on the end papers, then glanced down with a look of enquiry. ‘What is this?’ she said, picking up the book and examining the endpaper pasted to the back cover. ‘Aha! Bobby has left something for us. Can you get me a knife from the kitchen, dear Samson?’
She slipped the knife into the almost invisible slit between the endpaper and the hard cover and retrieved a single sheet of thin marker paper, looked at it and handed it to Samson. ‘Here are some more names for you.’
There were another twelve, each of them filed under one of the colours. These were the people working for, or associated with Jonathan Mobius, Erik Kukorin, Chester Abelman and Elliot Jeffreys. Apart from Mobius, none of the four original names or the dozen hidden in the back of the book meant anything to them.
‘This is Mila Daus’s network,’ said Ulrike, taking back the paper. ‘And you see Bobby has dated each addition, and the last one was made three months ago, which is when I believe he decided that he had done enough and he was going to concentrate on the show.’
‘Let’s start at the top,’ said Samson, reaching for his computer. ‘With Mila Daus.’
There was very little on the Web about her under any of her three married names – Muller, Mobius and Gaspar. A legal dispute with her first husband Muller’s children over a $30 million fortune in 1996 was almost expunged, and the lone court document they found was buried with numerous similar references that led to ‘404 Page Not Found’ or ‘DNS error’ notices. This was Düppel, the chaff that Francis, the young member of the tech team at GreenState, had spoken about. Anyone researching the court case would have given up. It was even a challenge to find the names of Muller’s two children, Karen and George, because they too had been more or less airbrushed from the internet. Mila Daus did not exist, and, when they went back to 1989 and accounts of the Stasi, they found nothing that would link her to the programme of mass psychological torture – nothing that would impede the progress in American society of the icy young beauty from the GDR.
‘It’s going to be tough to prove that this woman is the same person you saw in prison,’ said Samson. ‘Identification at thirty years’ distance won’t be accepted.’
‘It was for Nazi war criminals,’ said Ulrike sharply.
‘But we will need ways of connecting her to that past.’
‘If she’s running a Russian spy ring, which is what Bobby knew this to be, does it really matter if we don’t link her to the Stasi?’
‘Still, we have to prove the purpose of the network,’ said Samson. ‘There’s nothing in the book to say what these seventeen individuals are actually doing.’
‘The proof exists. Bobby had it; Denis had it.’
‘And this is what Denis was going to reveal in Congress.’
She frowned, searched frantically for her cigarettes. ‘Bobby didn’t know about that. I’m sure Denis didn’t tell him, and in fact I’m certain that he would have informed Bobby because they worked so closely together. They were very fond of each other, respected each other’s life experience.’ The packet revealed itself when she shifted on the sofa. She took out a cigarette but did not light it. ‘I believe Mila Daus struck early. She knew what was coming and moved to stop it.’ Samson sat back and waited. She lit up and inhaled. ‘The funeral is a target. There will be security. So many of Bobby’s friends and old colleagues are determined to come. The police are going to shut off some streets and they’ll have armed guards at the church and the gallery afterwards. Not everyone is invited to the reception – just family and a few trusted friends, but we will need protection.’ She gave him an odd look. ‘But we have to pay for that. You understand what I’m saying, don’t you, Samson?’
‘With this?’ He waved his hand at the laptops on the table. ‘Tomas already mentioned that to me.’
‘He phoned after he saw you,’ she said. ‘He knew you were hiding something, so they made the security conditional on receiving what we have. I had to say yes.’
‘Do you know what Naji and Zoe and the others found out about Daus’s networks?’
‘No.’
‘So, you give KaPo what you know and leave it at that.’
She nodded, and they moved on to the only other name they recognised – Jonathan Mobius. Mobius was forty-seven, a multimillionaire who had sold his communications and PR company but remained on the board and was the chair of GreenState. He was the son of Arthur Mobius, whom Mila Daus had married in late 1996, a few months after the court case with the Muller family was concluded and her fortune assured. Arthur Mobius was also rich, and he died in circumstances that were never fully explained. Samson looked up the week of his death in the local newspaper in New York state, the Wyoming County Star, and found that the paper’s archive wasn’t digitised. But each edition of the newspaper had been photographed and, with the help of a magnification tool, you could read the entire paper. The headline at the top of page three of the old-time broadsheet from Thursday 7 October 1999 read ‘Notable Businessman Dies in Power Line Tragedy’. Below this was a picture of Arthur Mobius on his wedding day, a solid man – comb-over, late fifties – with his bride in sunglasses lightly hanging on his arm. She wore high heels and a cream two-piece suit. It showed her figure to good effect – she was still trim for her early forties. In the background were a party of stout, beaming relatives and to Arthur’s left was his only child, Jonathan, who seemed somehow detached from the occasion.
Samson read the first paragraphs of the story. ‘“Mystery surrounds the death of computer pioneer and benefactor Arthur Mobius II, aged 62, after his body was found lying near a live power line at Allan’s Farm Estate, near Silver Lake.
‘“Mr Mobius, a mathematician and inventor of early software for hand-held organisers, was found near a group of beehives, where a power line came down. One theory is that Mr Mobius, a lifelong beekeeper, was trying to remove the line from the beehives, one of which was burnt out. However, power-company engineers said that the hive might have caught light after Mr Mobius had been electrocuted. They believe the line was hidden in wet grass and Mr Mobius likely did not see it and stumbled on it. He is thought to have died instantly.
‘“The Wyoming County Sheriff’s Department and the Fire Department attended the scene. Investigation is now underway to determine how the power line, which was part of the property’s internal power arrangements, not the distribution grid, came down. Early examination of the line indicates that it may have been cut.
‘“Mr Mobius’s widow, Mila, who is a director of his company, A. J. Mobius Data, was away on business at the time of the accident. The Sheriff’s Department interviewed Jonathan Mobius, 27, his heir, who is also a director of his late father’s company, at Allan’s Farm. Mr Mobius discovered his father’s body late Tuesday evening and is said to be in a state of shock.”’
Samson looked up. ‘So they arranged his death.’
Ulrike nodded and leaned over to look at the photograph
. ‘She seduces the young man then they decide to get rid of Arthur when she’s away and so speed up the business of inheriting. I wonder if she slept with him before the wedding.’ She raised her reading glasses from the end of her nose to her forehead and Samson momentarily saw the grief in her eyes. ‘What did she want? She was already wealthy, and we can assume she would have inherited anyway. It wasn’t for love, because she later married someone else.’
‘Data,’ said Samson. He had skimmed the next few lines. ‘Listen to this. “In recent years, Arthur Mobius’s fortune increased manyfold because of the success of Mobius Data Strip, a program designed to collect consumers’ data from instalment plans, and in the mortgage and insurance industries. Mr Mobius devised algorithms for the analysis of that data.” That’s the motive – she wanted those algorithms, and fast.’
He bookmarked the story and started searching references for A. J. Mobius Data in the first years of the new century. The company was privately owned by Jonathan Mobius, Arthur’s sister, Lilli, and Mila Daus, and little had been written about it. But profits were obviously large and, under joint CEOs Mila Daus and Jonathan, the AJM data expanded rapidly, picking up casualties of the dotcom crash that had owned valuable intellectual property. There were interviews in New York magazine and Forbes with Jonathan, who presented as the understated wunderkind of consumer data, but his father’s widow was never mentioned. It was if she was the sleeping partner, whereas in fact she was building her own empire, based on the use of Arthur Mobius’s programs, presumably leased at a favourable rate from the company she part-owned with the Mobius family.
Over the next half-hour, Samson used the skills he’d acquired as a banker to unearth a number of acquisitions made by a new entity, a company owned wholly by Mila Daus. Using the lustre of her second husband’s name, she called it Mobius Pioneer Investment and purchased advertising and communications companies and software outfits, invested in financial apps and start-up internet banks. Samson assumed she had used Wall Street banks to finance the company’s investments, some of which ran into hundreds of millions, but it was hard to tell which she was working with. There were few clues. A theme began to emerge. Besides the core business of acquiring, processing and selling data, another entity – MMM Data and Research – invested in environmental start-ups and those with adventurous R&D projects, particularly Low-earth Orbit satellite communications.