Skyjack: A Kidnap-And-Ransom Thriller

by K. J. Howe

  Johann and Fatima strode along the Bosporus, navigating back to the Turkish bathhouse, but the stunning vistas the river offered did little to revive their spirits. What were they going to do now? Marush could do nothing to help them from jail.

  The air was quite brisk, the chilly breeze more pronounced near the water, and few people were out on the streets. Cheeks numb from the cold, Johann looked at Fatima and saw that her shoulders were hunched up around her ears.

  Seeing the look on his face, Fatima squeezed his fingers. “I’m so sorry. I should have called ahead, made sure Marush could help.”

  “I’m the one who should be sorry, involving you in this mess.” A tram passed by, but it felt good to walk, despite the cold. “I hope Yamen can do something to get Marush out of jail.”

  “It won’t be easy, and it won’t happen quickly—he’s so vocal about his political views. I don’t know, sometimes it’s best to stay silent.”

  Johann was about to say that it was always right to fight injustice, but then he thought better of it. “Even Austria has changed in that way.”

  They walked in silence for a few moments.

  “What drove your father to do this . . . this awful thing? Does despair over losing your mother really explain it?”

  Johann wished it were that simple. Maybe then he could understand, help Father find a better way to channel his pain. “His hatred began long before Mutti was killed, but it deepened. Because of his business dealings, he had developed a warped view of many nationalities.” He thought for a moment. “In general, he’s never been very tolerant of people who don’t share his views.”

  “But you’re not like that at all.”

  “Guess I defy both the nature and nurture argument.” He brought their clasped hands to his chest. “Maybe having an illness that made me so different helped me accept people who aren’t like me.”

  She smiled. “It’s one of your best qualities.”

  They turned a corner, headed toward the baths. He felt tired. “Different is good. I already know about my own culture,” he said, sweeping a hand to indicate the skyline of Istanbul. “Why not explore someone else’s? There’s so much to learn about the world!”

  Fatima laughed. “Politics or diplomacy would be a good career for you. The world could use more open minds.”

  “We’ll see.” The future seemed far away. When Johann had stolen the canisters, he’d known it would change his relationship with his father forever. Without the support of his family, the future also seemed uncertain. But if Vater’s love is conditional on me hurting others, I’ll find a way to live without his fortune—or his love. He had Fatima now, who cared about him for who he was, not who she wanted him to be.

  Anyway, none of that mattered if they couldn’t put the canisters of plague into safe hands. He really hoped Thea Paris would come through; she was their last chance to make this right. He looked up. They were near the bathhouse.

  “You’re cold. Why don’t you have another coffee while I go into the bathhouse?” He indicated a restaurant across the street.

  Fatima shivered. “Think I’ll have a tea.”

  “Perfect. I won’t be long.”

  He kissed Fatima on the cheek. She made him feel as if anything was possible. He stepped inside the bathhouse, the thick, humid air claustrophobic after the clear coldness outside. The manager gave him a curt nod. Entering the changing room, Johann made straight for locker number 101.

  His chilly fingers fumbled as he tried sticking the key into the lock. He tried again. A quick twist, and it clicked. Removing the lock, he opened the door and peered inside the locker.

  He blinked in confusion and looked again.

  He checked the number: 101. He stared down at the key and could see it had the same number on the fob.

  But the locker was empty, the canisters gone.

  Chapter 88

  Thea hung up from a call with the Hungarian team guarding the bombs. The nukes would be safe in the warehouse until the exchange. She paced the plush carpet of her hotel suite at the Four Seasons at Sultanahmet, waiting for a knock on the door. Johann Dietrich was due to arrive in fifteen minutes. The sitting room’s large window faced a manicured courtyard showcasing an herb garden that in warmer weather was usually alive with birdsong.

  She was grateful that the team had been able to book the last four rooms available, but the expense would be immense. Hakan would have something to say about that. Still, they had been lucky to get the rooms: a massive cultural event was taking place in Istanbul today, so all nearby hotels were totally booked.

  Waiting was usually Thea’s strong suit, a necessity in the world of kidnap negotiations. But now she was in a tug of war, two imminent crises pulling at her at once. She had called Prospero an hour ago, but he hadn’t answered. He knew she had the truck, so why not set up the exchange? Had something happened to the passengers, the boys?

  Rif was on the phone with Hakan in the next room. She forced herself to sit down and reread the file on Gernot Dietrich that had come through. Widowed, he had one son, Johann. President of Dietrich Arms Manufacturing, he managed the company that had been in the family for four generations. The world of arms manufacturing and dealing was often a shadowy one, as she knew all too well from her brother’s involvement in it. But Dietrich checked out as legit, contracting with everyone from the CIA to world leaders across the globe. Insanely wealthy, Dietrich had substantial real estate holdings in five different countries.

  Dietrich’s wife had died in a car accident five years ago. The odd dalliance with a socialite or two was reported in the Austrian gossip columns, but otherwise the fellow seemed to be a hardworking businessman who traveled extensively selling weapons of all descriptions, from small arms to custom-built systems. Now, according to his son, he was involved in a plot to infect millions with a bioweapon. Bizarre.

  Speaking of family, she needed to talk to her father. Brown hadn’t been able to access the records from Prospero’s phone from all those years ago—they simply didn’t exist anymore. But that wasn’t going to stop her from digging. She pressed the button on her smartphone to FaceTime with Christos.

  He answered on the first ring. “Any news?”

  “Nothing yet. But maybe I could ask you the same question.”

  His forehead wrinkled. “I don’t understand.”

  “Well, you seem to have the inside track when it comes to Prospero. I’ve learned that your recent call to him wasn’t a one-time thing. You were also in contact during the Liberata case.”

  Papa had an impressive poker face, but his left hand came up, and he stroked his neck in a way that was unusual for him. He knew he’d been caught out and was in trouble. A seasoned pro like her father—a veteran of countless tense oil and land-lease negotiations around the world—could, with practice, mask facial expressions, but the body had many ways to betray itself.

  “What makes you think that?” He was trying for indignant but landing somewhere closer to petulant.

  “Your phone records.” Let him try to squirm out of that one.

  Papa sucked in a deep breath. She could almost hear the gears of his brain grinding. “The bastard wanted me to invest in a real-estate project he was working on. I said no.”

  “So he called a complete stranger, asking for money?” Prospero had several other wealthy associates he could have turned to for investment.

  “He wanted legit money, and I’m a well-known international businessman. But I wasn’t about to get involved in what was probably a money-laundering scheme.”

  “And he calls you at the exact moment he and I were tangling?” She didn’t believe in coincidences.

  “Maybe that’s how he got the idea to approach me—our relationship is public record.”

  “You expect me to believe this?”

  “He wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

  That, she believed. But Prospero hadn’t been asking for investment funds—there had to be something else.

 
She heard stirring from the other room; Rif had finished his call. “I have to go, but this is not over. No matter what it is, I’d prefer the truth. Our ‘relationship,’ as you call it, depends on a level of trust that we are failing to achieve.”

  “Don’t you think I’d come up with a better story if I were lying?”

  “Take this opportunity to do the right thing, Papa. If there’s something else going on here, I need to know. The boys’ lives could depend on it.” She pressed the end button.

  Rif walked in, grabbed a bottle of water from the supplies they’d brought, and plunked down onto one of the velvet couches. “Christos?”

  “He claims that Prospero wanted him to invest in a real-estate project.”

  Rif shook his head. “What, the Brooklyn Bridge?”

  “Exactly.” She sighed. “Any updates from your lovely father?”

  “Hakan confirmed that the hostages were being held in Rize, Turkey, but they’re gone now.”

  They’d been so close to locating the passengers, but the boys had changed all that with their breakout.

  “You should have heard Ayan and Jabari, so proud they’d escaped. I could throttle Prospero for putting them through this.”

  “Get in line,” Rif said. She knew rescuing the boys was as important to him as it was to her; he had volunteered to help her run the orphanage when Nikos died. It was the most generous thing he’d done for her, and their relationship had changed in positive ways as a result.

  She smiled. “Mama bear and papa bear, protecting the cubs.”

  “Damn right,” he said. “Anyway, the nearest airport to where they were being held is in Trabzon, the second closest, Batumi. Hakan is tracking all private flights that departed both airports in the last few days. Maybe we’ll get lucky—”

  A tentative knock at the door interrupted them. She walked through the foyer and stared through the peephole. Two teenagers stood outside, a tall, lanky young man with blond hair and a petite girl wearing a head scarf. Both of them looked very nervous.

  She opened the door. “Johann?”

  “Yes, and this is Fatima.” The way he looked at the girl, Thea could tell they were more than friends.

  “Come in.” Thea spoke to Fatima in Arabic, and her pretty face lit up at hearing her native language. She led them down the hall into the sitting room. “I’d like to introduce you to Rif Asker, who works with me at Quantum. You can trust him completely.”

  Rif shook their hands, and they gathered around the table by the big picture window overlooking the garden.

  “We have a serious problem.” Johann’s face was drawn, his intelligent eyes radiating concern. “The canisters are gone. I stored them in a locker in a bathhouse, and when I went back to retrieve them, they weren’t there.”

  Thea’s stomach lurched, but she kept her voice calm. “Start from the beginning. Tell me everything.”

  Twenty minutes later, the details of Johann’s story divulged, Thea wondered if her face was as pale as his. “You’re sure no one followed you to the bathhouse?”

  “They couldn’t have—we were so careful after leaving the train. All I have is this burner phone”—he held it up for her to see—“and my father couldn’t have found this number.”

  “Empty your pockets. Rif will give you a change of clothes. Your father must have some way of tracking you.”

  Johann removed his jacket, then reached into his jeans pocket, dumping some change, his wallet, a few tissues.

  “Anything else?” Was it possible Dietrich had implanted a tracking device under his son’s skin? Certain clients who traveled regularly to trouble spots elected to use subdermal implants so that Quantum could find them wherever they were. Could Johann’s father really be that paranoid?

  “How about you, Fatima? Did you ditch your cell?” Rif asked.

  “I left everything at home.”

  Johann reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a medallion on a chain. “I have this—it’s what the Freiheitswächter wear.” He placed the necklace on the table.

  Rif picked it up and studied the medallion. He then walked to his duffel and pulled out a bug-sweeping device. A soft beeping noise sounded. “It’s GPS-enabled.”

  “I had no idea.” Johann looked down at the floor, shoulders slumped.

  “You couldn’t have known.” She felt for him. All his impressive efforts to be elusive, and his father had been tracking him all along.

  “The man on the train, the bathhouse. I led Vater right to the canisters.” He reached over and squeezed Fatima’s hand.

  “Does your father wear one of these?” Rif asked.

  “All the members do.”

  “Let’s count on that.” Rif dialed his cell. “Brown, can you join us in Thea’s suite?” He pressed the end button.

  “Time for the mouse to chase the cat?” Thea asked.

  “Precisely.”

  Johann and Fatima looked confused.

  “We have an electronics genius on our team. Using this tracker, he might be able to find your father and his men through the same satellite link.”

  Johann’s face brightened. “So we can hunt them down.”

  “We’ll also need to work up a list of potential targets for an attack.”

  “They want to infect the refugee camps,” Fatima said.

  “That was then, but Johann’s father won’t follow through on the original plan now that he’s been exposed. Instead, he’ll probably release the plague here in Istanbul.”

  Fatima blanched. “Where?”

  “Most likely a famous landmark or transportation hub,” Rif suggested. “Any site that draws big crowds.”

  “Like the terrorists did when they chose Schönbrunn,” Johann said.

  “Yes, exactly. The Metro system, the Grand Bazaar, the Blue Mosque—they would all be excellent choices.” Rif’s expression was intense. “A city the size of Istanbul offers countless targets.”

  A knock sounded at the door. Brown. Hopefully he could work his electronic mojo—and fast.

  Chapter 89

  Rif spent the next two hours with Brown trying to reverse engineer the GPS connection between the transponder in the Freedom Guardians medallion and the source. As suspected, the medallions were linked on one network as a way of monitoring everyone from a single node. It made sense if Dietrich was the only person with access to the information, because the network would be relatively small, but the setup also made the system vulnerable. Gernot Dietrich was about to have his organization’s nervous system turned on itself.

  Thea had ordered food for everyone, and now the two teenagers were resting in one of the bedrooms. They’d had a long trip from Salzburg, and they were devastated about losing the canisters. It was remarkable that they’d managed to safely transport them all the way from Salzburg. From Rif’s perspective, what they had accomplished was heroic.

  Rif battled with Hakan sometimes, but his father always wanted the best for him and for the world at large. Even Thea had a better relationship with her father than this kid. At seventeen, Johann had to cope with a father who had planned genocide and insisted on his son’s active participation. Dysfunctional didn’t even begin to describe it.

  “Any updates?” Thea broke into his thoughts.

  “Brown’s close to cracking the encryption.”

  “Very close,” Brown piped up from the table, two laptops in front of him.

  “The team members are scattered throughout the city, sent to the likeliest targets. We’re ready to move,” Thea said.

  “As long as Dietrich and his fellow cultists are wearing their medallions, we’ll be able to find them.” Rif’s confidence belied the tension in the room. “Any news on the hostages?”

  “Three private planes left the Rize area in the right time frame,” Thea said. “None is registered in Italy, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Anyway, Hakan should have the flight plans for each of them ready shortly.”

  “Got it!” Brown’s triumphant yell bo
omed across the room. “Cracked that sucker.”

  Thea and Rif joined Brown by the table where he had set up two linked laptops. His fingers glided over the keys like those of a concert pianist. A radar-like image overlaid on a map of Europe and Asia was displayed on the screen. Red dots were scattered across the image.

  The door to the bedroom burst open, the teenagers probably woken by Brown’s outburst.

  Johann walked in, looking rumpled. “Are those dots the Freedom Guardians?”

  “Yup.” Brown zoomed in on Istanbul, the only city in the world to straddle two continents. “Six members are here. All look like they’re headed toward the Blue Mosque. Wait, they seem to be bypassing it.”

  “The event that caused the run on hotel rooms—what was it again?” Rif asked.

  “Oh, yeah, right.” Brown tapped a search into Google. “Something about a rally in support of women’s rights in Arab countries, in the Hagia Sophia.”

  Rif glanced at Thea, the implication hitting them at the same time. People from all over the Middle East were here for the event. The release of the bioweapon in the Hagia Sophia could affect thousands—millions when the visitors traveled back to their homelands, not knowing they carried the plague.

  “You can see the event on Facebook Live,” Fatima said. “It’s the Arab version of the Women’s March.”

  Brown tapped a few keys. A live feed from inside the Hagia Sophia popped up on one of the screens. Rif recognized the Byzantine mosaics. A muezzin chanting the call to worship drowned out most of the crowd noise. The camera scanned the scene: thousands of people packed the massive interior of the Hagia Sofia, which at one point in its history had been the largest freestanding structure in the world. Most of the people in the crowd were women, many in head scarves, buzzing with excitement.

  “That’s got to be it.” Rif’s mind raced as he considered their options. “Brown, Thea, let’s go. Contact the others, have them join us at the Hagia Sophia as soon as they can.”

  “I’m coming,” Johann said.

  “Absolutely not,” Thea said. “It’s too dangerous.”