Vanished

by Joseph Finder

  Sitting at the desk right outside Koblenz’s office was a small, plain woman with short, mousy brown hair. The fake wood plaque on her desk said ELEANOR APPLEBY.

  “You know, I do mind,” I said apologetically. “I was hoping we could have a candid talk.”

  “I’d prefer to loop them in.”

  “I’m not going to hurt you, Carl,” I said. “I promise.”

  “Hurt me?” A twinkle of amusement came into his eyes. “You don’t know much about me, do you?”

  I knew more about him by now than he probably wanted. I knew that after Eton and Sandhurst, he joined the Scots Guards, and was then selected to the SAS, the British equivalent of the Special Forces that was widely believed to be even tougher than our own, though of course I doubted that. He was sort of a legend during Desert Storm. He was part of the assault team that tried to sneak into an Iraqi communications facility, found themselves facing three hundred Iraqi soldiers, but planted the explosives anyway and pulled out of there under fire. Not a single SAS man was injured. A lot of rich Arabs in Kensington wanted to hire him to do their security after that, but instead he cashed in, joined an international mercenary firm. He ran guns for the government of Sierra Leone, in violation of the U.N. embargo. Then he got involved in a coup attempt against the president of Equatorial Guinea and was arrested and locked up for six months in Black Beach Prison in Malabo, which made the Alta-mont Correctional Facility look like Canyon Ranch.

  “Enough not to mess with you,” I said with a generous smile, and he smiled back. With his hand on my shoulder, he guided me into his office, which was as generic as the rest of the place. It smelled like old cigar smoke.

  The three security guards filed in behind me. I stopped short, then turned around. “Thanks, guys,” I said. “You got me here safely. Well done. Now, your boss and I have some personal business to discuss.”

  Koblenz shook his head, sighed, and said, “All right, mates, wait outside, please.”

  He sat behind his desk, I sat in the chair in front of his desk, and he said, “Well, you’ve certainly got quite the track record.”

  “Lies, all lies,” I said modestly.

  I noticed his office safe, where-according to Neil Burris-he stored the smart card with the embedded cryptochip that enabled access to the most secure layer of the Paladin computer network. The safe was black, about as tall as his desk, and looked like a three-or four-drawer model. An electronic keypad. Formidable-looking.

  Despite the great safecracking scenes we’ve all seen in movies, in reality it’s become extremely difficult to crack a high-security safe. The technology has evolved far too much in the last dozen or so years. But with the right plan, nothing was truly impossible.

  “Hunting war criminals in Bosnia, huh? With some triple-top secret army unit-what was it, the ISA, right?”

  “Couldn’t be all that secret if you know about it.”

  He’d done his homework. The Intelligence Support Activity was a classified military intelligence unit that roamed Bosnia looking for Serbian war criminals. Snatch-and-grab strikes on “high-value targets,” as we called them. I never talked about what I’d done in Bosnia or Iraq during the first Gulf War, not to anyone. So Paladin obviously had some excellent sources deep inside the Pentagon.

  “What you did to that Serb guy… Draškovi?” His pronunciation was excellent. He shook his head, smiled. “Well done.” An admiring, conspiratorial chuckle.

  I said nothing. Just pulled out a folder of photographs and handed it to him.

  One was a close-up of the license plate on the Econoline van in which one of his guys had abducted Roger. The other was a close-up of the same guy’s face. The third was a medium view showing Roger and his abductor next to the van.

  “Your employee was careful not to let his license plate be seen by the bank’s surveillance camera,” I said, “but he didn’t think about the gas station having its own security cameras.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I’ve seen the tape.”

  Well, that’s a start, I thought.

  “Am I supposed to know what this is about?” he asked.

  “It’s about fifteen years in prison for abduction,” I said. “For you and for your boss. And millions of dollars in lost government business. If you had him killed, well, I think we’re looking at forty years to life.”

  “You might want to be a bit more careful about tossing around legal threats.”

  “I have no interest in the legal process.” I folded my arms and gave him a lethal smile. “See, I just want my brother back.”

  63.

  Koblenz went quiet for a few seconds, seemed to be thinking. He blew out air through pursed lips. “Where do I begin, Heller?”

  “Maybe with the container of cash in Los Angeles. You could start there. I’m sure Allen Granger would love to hear about that.”

  “So much ground to cover.”

  “I’ll bet. Or else we could talk about my brother’s attempts to extort money from you. I’m sure it seemed a lot easier just to get rid of the guy than risk exposure of all the kickbacks you give the Pentagon.”

  He shook his head, looked mildly amused. “Ah, well, let’s see.” He held up the picture, then let go. It fluttered and slid across his desktop, finally landing on the floor. “First of all, I have no idea who this fellow is. The other one is obviously your brother.”

  “We’re running a search right now,” I bluffed. “The PATRIOT Act makes it much easier these days. That and facial-recognition software.”

  “Well, let me knowwhat you find. And if you find the guy, maybe you could ask him why he stole a license plate off of one of our vehicles.”

  “You can do better than that, Carl.”

  “We don’t own a single Econoline van, Heller.”

  “Who doesn’t? Paladin? Or one of your twelve subsidiaries?”

  “More than twelve. But no. No Econoline vans. I assure you, Heller, we didn’t abduct your brother. Although I do wish we’d thought of it.”

  “I hope you’re not denying that’s your license plate,” I said.

  “I can neither confirm nor deny,” Koblenz said with a wry smile. “I can barely remember the license-plate numbers of my own cars. But the prefix on the plate suggests it’s one of ours, so I’m not going to argue. You’ll find it’s registered to either a Hummer or an Escalade, though. As for who switched the plates, well, I have no idea.”

  “The D.C. police aren’t going to care what kind of vehicle it belongs on.”

  “I doubt that seriously,” Koblenz said. “And as for the cash-well, all I can say is, you have my deepest thanks. You’re every bit as good as Jay Stoddard said you are.”

  “A billion dollars in cash,” I said. “That should about cover your off-the-books payroll for a month or two.”

  “Guilty as charged. But surely you don’t think we’re the only security firm in Baghdad who had to pay cash bribes to Iraqi officials to get things done. It was like Nigeria over there.” He slid a cigar box across the expanse of desk. “Have you forgotten how it worked, Heller? It was a cash economy. The biggest dispenser of cash bribes was the U.S. government. I’d love to see them try to prosecute. Have a Cuban?”

  I shook my head. “No, thanks.”

  “Are you sure? Hoyo de Monterrey Double Coronas. Handmade in Cuba by only the most skilled torcedoras. Totalmente a mano.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Your father’s favorites. Though I don’t imagine he gets much of a chance to smoke them these days.” He selected one, took a guillotine clipper from his desk, held the cigar at eye level, then decisively circumcised it.

  I paused, smiled, thought of at least three possible rejoinders. Then I took one of his cigars and studied it for a few seconds before handing it back to him. “My father, whatever his flaws, would never smoke counterfeit cigars.”

  “Counterfeit? I don’t think so, Heller.” He flicked a silver butane lighter and held the end of the cigar near the flame, rotating it slow
ly before putting it in his mouth and drawing on it slowly like a baby enjoying his first reassuring suck on a pacifier.

  I pointed to the green-and-white tax stamp on the left front side of the box. “Put it under a blacklight and you’ll see. You won’t see the micro-printing above REPÚBLICA DE CUBA. That’s not a Cuban Government Warranty Seal.”

  Wreathed in smoke, he examined the box suspiciously. “You can’t be serious.” He sounded uncertain.

  “Sorry. Shouldn’t have said anything. Didn’t mean to spoil it for you. You’d never have known the difference.”

  He stared at me through narrowed, glittering eyes.

  I continued, “It took me a while to figure out why you’d hire the security director of Argon Express Cargo to steal your own shipment of cash. Until I realized that you didn’t want U.S. Customs discovering the cash, maybe on a random inspection. So you arranged a bogus theft. To make sure Paladin wasn’t charged with bulk-cash smuggling by some government bureaucrat.”

  “I like your theory.”

  “Thank you.”

  “The only hole in it, of course, is that the U.S. government hired us to round up the cash in Baghdad and ship it back. Everything was aboveboard, or at least as much as it can be with the government.” He smiled.

  “Sorry. Your mistake was giving Elwood Sawyer your cell-phone number as an emergency contact.”

  “And on that slender reed you’re building a case against me? That someone gave him my cell-phone number? Now I’m wondering whether Jay Stoddard gives you too much credit.”

  “No doubt,” I said.

  “And as for your brother, well, he simply took on the wrong people.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “He probably meant to go after Mother Teresa instead.”

  “The hellbat of Calcutta is dead, alas,” Koblenz said with a lopsided grin. “Though I always wanted to have a tablecloth made out of her sari. Do we pay kickbacks to certain influential individuals in the Pentagon? Sure.”

  “You admit it.”

  “Well, not on the record, no, of course not. I’m not that stupid.”

  “How much money did he demand from you for silence?”

  “Not a cent, as far as I know.”

  “Then why was my brother such a threat to you?”

  “Who says he was a threat?”

  “ ‘I got a stone in my shoe, Mr. Corleone,’ ” I said, quoting from the third Godfather movie. Another Stoddard favorite, but I liked it, too.

  He got the reference. “As I said, we had nothing to do with your brother’s disappearance. Whoever’s on that surveillance tape, it wasn’t us. Do a little legwork, and you’ll see.” He smiled. “And no, we didn’t give your brother a poisoned cannoli either. Why would we?”

  “Maybe for the same reason your goons are threatening to kidnap Roger’s son. Or e-mailing videos to his wife. And the spyware and the video cameras you planted in his house? The data went out to some Eastern European botnet and eventually right back to Paladin. Which I’ll admit took us a lot of digging. But every step was documented.” Only half of that was true. Dorothy still hadn’t been able to figure out where the network traffic ended up after it went to that Ukrainian network. But let him think we were more on top of things than we actually were.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know anything about any surveillance device or any Eastern European… what ever. But arguendo, as the lawyers say-just for the sake of argument-let’s say my employees have been applying pressure on your brother’s wife. Why would they do that if we’d taken Roger prisoner? Where’s the sense in that?”

  “Because he left something behind, and you want it.”

  “Now you’re starting to make sense. You’re half-right.”

  “Am I?”

  “Absolutely. He does have something we want. That’s absolutely true. But I doubt he left it behind. That doesn’t fit with my understanding of your brother’s character. Though maybe that’s presumptuous. You know him far better than we do. Am I wrong to assume that he takes after your father?”

  “What’s your point?”

  He spun around in his chair and took a brown file folder from a wire rack on the credenza behind him next to a couple of generic office plants. He opened it, took out a sheet of paper, and looked at it for a moment. Then he handed it to me.

  It was a fax from a bank in the Caymans called Transatlantic Bank & Trust (Cayman) Limited, located on Mary Street in George Town, Grand Cayman. A copy of a copy of a copy, festooned with smudges and photocopier artifacts. It was a letter from Roger, on Gifford Industries letterhead, to the bank’s manager. A letter of instruction.

  Roger was instructing the bank manager to move two hundred and fifty million dollars from one account-a subsidiary of Paladin whose name I recognized-to an account in his own name.

  “What does that look like to you?” he said.

  “A forgery.”

  He shrugged, snorted quietly. “That’s right, Heller. We have teams of forgers at work creating phony documents just for you.” His sarcasm was subtle. “Now do you see? Starting to recognize your brother’s modus operandi? Steal a bunch of money, then, when you realize that you’ve messed with the wrong guys, do the cowardly thing and run? Wonder where he got that from.”

  “Screw you.” I no longer felt bad about making up that story about his cigars.

  “Oh, believe me, it’s the truth. Maybe to Victor Heller’s sons that’s nothing more than loose change you find under your sofa cushions. But not to me. And certainly not to Allen Granger.”

  “Roger worked for Gifford Industries. Not for Paladin. He wouldn’t even have had the legal authority to make a transfer.”

  “Sure he did.”

  “It doesn’t work that way,” I said.

  “Your brother had Leland Gifford’s proxy.”

  “What does Gifford have to do with Paladin?”

  Koblenz tipped his head to one side. “I’m disappointed you don’t know.”

  “Know what?”

  “Gifford Industries is our parent company. Gifford owns Paladin. Has done for five months.”

  At that point I didn’t know what to say. I just looked at him.

  “This is not public information, obviously,” he said. “As a privately held corporation, Gifford isn’t required to tell anyone about the acquisition. But Allen was looking to sell for years. So it’s not just me or Allen Granger who wants this money back. It’s Leland Gifford, too. And the gentlemen out there. They each have a significant cash incentive to find your brother, and more important, to find the money he’s stolen. Call them bounty hunters. The profit motive always works.”

  “Screw you,” I said. My vocabulary had become very limited all of a sudden.

  “Roger’s wife may require a different type of incentive to cooperate.”

  “That’s not going to work anymore.”

  “Heller, there are so many ways to induce her to cooperate.”

  “I don’t recommend you try any of them.”

  “And I’d rather not. But I’ll do whatever it takes.”

  I rattled the sheet of paper he’d just handed me. “If this is the only proof you have-”

  “I don’t need proof,” Koblenz said calmly. “I’m like you-I have no interest in the legal process. We just want our money back. Whatever it takes. If there’s collateral damage, so be it.”

  “That kind of sounds like another threat,” I said.

  He shrugged. “It is what it is.”

  I stood up, put the piece of paper down on the desk, tapped it with my forefinger. “It’s actually a good forgery. Though it would have been more persuasive if you got the bank’s SWIFT code right.”

  The SWIFT code is a series of numbers or letters that banks use to identify themselves for the purpose of transferring funds.

  “I see,” Koblenz said. “Since of course you have every SWIFT code memorized.”

  “No, not at all,” I said. “I just know that the SWIFT code for Cayman Islands banks a
lways includes the letters KY. Like K-Y Jelly. I’m sure you know what that is. And this one doesn’t have those letters. Close, but no cigar, as they say.”

  Koblenz, who didn’t seem to be a guy who was ever at a loss for words, was momentarily silenced. He blinked a few times, and his mouth made fishlike motions.

  Then I said, “You’ve been a big help, Carl. You’ve told me exactly what I wanted to know.”

  He recovered, gave a tart, skeptical smile, and I went on, “See, I know where my brother is. I just wanted to find out whether you do. And now I’ve learned you don’t. So, thanks for the help.”

  And I walked calmly out of his office.

  64.

  It was, of course, an outrageous bluff, pure and simple, though I soon wished I hadn’t done it.

  And not until I’d left Paladin’s office and was riding the elevator down to the parking garage did what Koblenz had told me finally sink in.

  I had to assume, of course, that every word Koblenz had told me, including “and” and “the,” was a lie. That was a given. But I operated on that assumption most of the time anyway: Washington, D.C., is to lying what Hershey, Pennsylvania, is to chocolate.

  Was Paladin Worldwide really owned by Gifford Industries?

  Why not? That wasn’t inconceivable at all. This was the age of corporate consolidation. Big companies buy smaller companies all the time. It’s part of nature, the corporate food chain. The same way microscopic phyto-plankton are eaten by zooplankton, which are in turn eaten by little fish, which get eaten by bigger fish and so on up to the orca killer whale.

  I’d heard rumors that Allen Granger had been looking to sell Paladin. Maybe he realized that things had changed in Washington, that the new administration didn’t want to do so much business with him.

  For instance, one of Paladin’s subsidiaries was an aviation company that did secret “extraordinary rendition” flights for the CIA. Which basically meant that when suspected terrorists were seized by masked men on the street somewhere in Europe and blindfolded and tranquilized and spirited away, it was a Paladin-owned Gulfstream or Boeing 737 that flew the guy off to be tortured in a secret CIA prison in Egypt or Macedonia or Morocco or Libya or another such country that took a more broad-minded view of human rights than the U.S.