Jaws of the Tiger

by Andre Baby

  “It takes rather sophisticated people and equipment to track a hacker.”

  “Who do you have in mind?”

  “Well, we can safely rule out the FSB and the FBI. They’re probably out of range. So that leaves the French Sureté and MI 6. And of course us.”

  “Now really, Dulac. That’s pretty wild. Even for you.”

  “I’m merely pointing out the possibilities.

  “So what do you suggest?”

  “I was afraid you’d ask that.”

  Arlberg took in a deep breath. “I know you have something in mind.”

  “The problem is that MI 6 and the Sureté track hundreds of calls daily, but they are recorded in their logs. If we could find out if they tracked any from Messier—”

  “You’re not suggesting we hack their lines?”

  “The thought crossed my mind, but all we really need is a copy of their logs.”

  “Assuming for a moment you’re right, surely the people involved would have eliminated all traces in the logs also,” said Arlberg.

  “Perhaps, but sometimes the omission is as incriminating as the act itself.”

  “And who do you have in mind to get copies of those logs?”

  Dulac smiled at Arlberg. “Only one person here has that kind of authority level.”

  “Forget it.”

  * * *

  Paris, Karen’s apartment, two days later

  Karen had made rapid progress in her recuperation and been discharged from the Centre de Rééducation weeks earlier than originally anticipated. Upon hearing the great news, Dulac had decided he needed a small break from the investigation to clear his thoughts, so had invited her for supper at Chez François. He took the 4.10 pm. TGV to Paris, and two hours plus a taxi ride later, he stood in front of Karen’s apartment on Avenue de Boisbriand. Karen buzzed him in and he went up the stairs, grabbing the handrail to help himself up the last flight. He stood panting at the door for an instant, catching his breath when the door opened.

  Karen, dressed in a light blue blouse and cream-colored silk pants, stood at the doorway leaning on a cane. She smiled broadly.

  He hadn’t forgotten how ravishing she could look.

  She leaned forward and kissed him. “Miss me?”

  “Very much so.”

  She took him by the arm. “Come. Let’s have an aperitif.”

  Dulac felt the warmth of the elegantly decorated apartment as soon as he entered. The pastel hues and mixture of classical Louis 16th furniture and pre-Columbian art soothed him. He didn’t hesitate to plop himself down onto the plush leather Italian sofa in the center of the salon.

  Using her cane, Karen limped slowly towards the bar across the room.

  “The usual?”

  “Sounds good.”

  She poured the scotch into two glasses.

  “You’ll have to come and get them, I’m afraid.”

  “Of course. How inconsiderate of me. You seem to be doing a lot better.”

  “Let’s say it’s very encouraging.”

  Dulac carryied the glasses to the table near the sofa and then turned back to offer a steadying hand. She sat down beside him.

  “To you.” He lifted his glass and toasted her. “And how are you feeling?”

  “Apart from a slight tingling sensation in my left leg, quite well. I have to be careful and remind myself not to lift anything heavy until the stitches are out. Should be early next month.”

  “You’re damn lucky the bullet didn’t hit any vital organs.”

  “Absolutely. But enough about me. What about your investigation?”

  Dulac always felt a little uncomfortable when talking shop with Karen. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her, but protocol required that you normally didn’t confide in your lover about company business. Still, she’d helped him more than once with her insightful outlook on matters criminal. He took a sip from his glass. “Good stuff.”

  Karen cocked her head and looked inquisitively at Dulac. “And?”

  “Ah yes, the investigation. It’s either going to blow wide open, or dissolve into a sea of oblivion. Take your pick.”

  “Care to be a little more specific?”

  “For starters, there’s Bolding. He sold shares of P & W’s stock just two weeks before the hijack. Nothing illegal in that per se, but a bit unethical when one’s company is near bankruptcy. Same with Sir Terence Hays, who sits on the board. Then there’s this Swiss company shorting P & W ‘s stock, betting the shares will go down.”

  “Are you suggesting all this could be linked to the hijack?”

  “Everybody is saying it’s coincidental, but a man is dead, and I’ve been shot at while trying to find out if there is any connection between these so-called coincidences.”

  “You’ve been shot at?”

  “Two days ago. A man was trying to get information for me about an unlisted, encrypted number, and paid for that indiscretion with his life. Then a hit man tries to whack me in my garage in Lyon. Someone doesn’t want me to get that number’s owner.”

  “Jesus.” Karen’s eyes widening in amazement. “Can’t Interpol get it?”

  “Not without a court order.” Dulac felt he didn’t have to go into the other option.

  “So you’re saying the hijacking and the unlisted number’s owner could somehow be connected?”

  “Or the shorting of the shares and the unlisted number, or all three. The problem is that the owner of that number is covering his tracks as we speak.”

  “So where do you go from here?”

  “I’ve got to keep digging. My instinct tells me Bolding, Hays, Toombs and Mirolet are connected in more ways than appear on the surface. Unless my instincts are dead wrong, and no comment on that thank you very much, they’re an integral part of the thread line.”

  “Leading to?”

  “To whoever conspired with the hijackers and caused the death of 27 passengers and the destruction of a ship.”

  “Speaking of which, we haven’t heard anything in the news lately. Surely the Americans aren’t going to stand by the sidelines for very much longer.” Karen took a sip of her scotch.

  “Based on their track record, I’d have to agree with you.”

  “Coming back to that attempt on your life, you’re convinced that—”

  “And by the way, Lescop discovered that before being murdered, Leon Binagro, the hijackers’ agent in Costa Rica, made a payment to the Swiss company, most probably from the ransom money. Another coincidence? I think not.”

  Karen looked probingly at Dulac. “I presume you don’t have enough for the Swiss to investigate?”

  “Dead on. Besides, anyone owning shares in that Swiss company will have layered his or her ownership through anonymously held, numbered companies.”

  “An investigator’s nightmare.”

  “Don’t rub it in.”

  At that moment, Dulac’s cell rang. Arlberg.

  “I’ve got to take this.”

  “Sure.”

  “Mr. Dulac?”

  Dulac recognized the voice of Arlberg’s secretary.

  “Yes Mary.”

  “Sorry to disturb you sir, but General Secretary Arlberg instructed me to call you. She’s just received word from the Centrale’s Inspector Poitiers in Lyon. She told me to tell you that you’ve won your bet on your bonus, whatever that means.”

  Chapter 55

  Southampton, law firm of Andrew Toombs and Associates

  His headache throbbing, Toombs was looking at the file of one of his offshore clients when Sarah Froome walked into his office, briefcase in hand.

  “So how did it go at Berkeley’s?” asked Toombs.

  “Quite well, I think.”

  “You think?”

  “Walters is at least going to reconsider, before being stuck with a bunch of rusting ships.”

  Toombs looked doubtfully at Froome. “Personally, I think you could have put your time to better use.”

  “I rechecked the law. The juri
sprudence is heavily in our favor. Besides, Phillips and---”

  “Mark my words. They’ll never release the ships, and without that, P & W is a dead duck. They’ll never get their day in court.”

  Froome looked perplexed at Toomb’s pessimism.

  “I know I might sound negative to you, but I’ve seen this sort of thing before. I don’t want you to waste your time. And mine.”

  “But I have a meeting with Phillips and Kent this morning, to finalize P & W’s claim,” said Froome. “They seem to believe in the case.”

  “All I can say is good luck.”

  Froome gathered her briefcase and got up to leave.

  “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” said Toombs.

  Froome left and Toombs got up, closed his office door and locked it. His headache was getting worse. He went back to his desk, opened the drawer and took out a bottle of Aspirin. He downed two tablets and poured himself a glass of water from the pitcher on his desk. As he waited for the pills to take effect, he went across to the other side of the room, to the cheap reproduction of Monet’s water lilies. He removed the picture and placed it on the floor. After a few turns of the dial of the Chubb safe, he twisted the handle and opened it. Inside, next to the 10,000 pounds of cash neatly stacked in 100 pound notes, lay two brown accordion-type file holders. One bore the handwritten name “Miramar SA”, the other, “Mirolet SA”. He removed the Mirolet file, closed the safe, replaced the picture on the wall and went back to his desk. Apart from Toombs, no one in his office knew of the existence of the files, as they weren’t logged in any of the firm’s systems.

  He opened the file, glanced at one of the numbers handwritten on the inside cover, picked up his phone and dialed. After two rings an automated response kicked in. “We are sorry, the number you have dialed is no longer in service.”

  He paused for a moment, then dialed Allister Mills’s direct line at P & W and left a message. “Allister, it’s Andrew, call me concerning the seizure of the ships.”

  Half an hour later, the phone rang. It was Mills. “What’s up?”

  “I’ll call you back in five minutes.” Toombs went downstairs and outside, to the red phone booth. He inserted a prepayed card and dialed Mills’s direct line.

  “It’s me. Did you speak to Bolding?”

  “No. I haven’t seen him this morning.”

  “We have a problem.”

  “Oh?”

  “Sarah Froome and Bolding just came back from Berkeley’s Trust. She thinks Bolding convinced or scared them into extending their credit line and releasing the ships.”

  “Damn.”

  “I tried to convince her she was wasting her time. As its lawyers, it’s our duty to represent P & W to the fullest extent of its rights and present all the options to the client. She has also convinced Phillips and Kent to take on the lawsuit on a contingency basis. Now I have a serious conflict of interest. And so do you.”

  “What do you mean?” exclaimed Mills.

  “Mirolet. If Berkeley’s releases the ships and the word gets out that P & W will survive, even if only briefly, its stock will rise and the short position taken by Mirolet will be worth nothing. It will owe 20 million pounds to the broker. If it doesn’t pay, all hell will break loose and I can’t guarantee the Swiss won’t break their confidentiality rules. Mirolet is also my client, so the conflict is real.”

  There was a silence. “We’ll lose everything,” whispered Mills.

  “Allister, this is far from a done deal. You know how bankers prevaricate. Chances are—”

  “We can’t leave 20 million pounds up to chance, Andrew. Have you spoken to the others?”

  “I tried but they’ve deactivated the number.”

  “We’ve got to do something. The call on the shares is next Tuesday.”

  Chapter 56

  Lyon, Interpol HQ

  Dulac received news from Judge Pierre Bellet and scheduled an urgent meeting with Arlberg.

  Dulac got to the point as soon as he closed her office door behind him. “After I gave him copies of the USB sticks, he did some investigating on his own.”

  “The ones with the calls from the encrypted unregistered phone?”

  “Yes. I also let him know about the stock sales by Hays and Bolding. It’s public information, but I wanted him to put pressure on his sources. Nothing like a bit of political spicing up to ensure interest.”

  “What was his reaction?”

  “Positive. He says his source at La Sureté can’t precisely identify the owner’s name by the phone number but do confirm that the number is part of a series. That series is reserved for members of MI-6 and British government high-level personnel.”

  Arlberg pushed her bifocals up higher along the bridge of her thin nose. “How reliable is the source?”

  “Bellet tells me his man is the French specialist on British intelligence.”

  “He’s a spy?”

  “The best in the business, according to Bellet.”

  She got up and walked to and fro behind her desk, pausing now and then to look over Dulac. “So the French judiciary has more intelligence info than we do on this.”

  Dulac shrugged his shoulders and arched his eyebrows. “What can I say? It is what it is.”

  “So if I have this right,” continued Arlberg, “according to what’s on the sticks, this owner of the mystery phone, either an MI-6 operative or a high ranking British government official, has called Andrew Toombs how many times?”

  “I have twenty-two calls over a three-month period. He also called P & W’s offices at their main number fourteen times. We don’t know who he contacted there.”

  Arlberg crossed her arms. She stopped for a moment and eyed Dulac. “And you have reason to believe the owner, either himself or through others, had Messier killed and tried to kill you for attempting to discover his identity. Is that about it?”

  “That pretty well sums it up.” Dulac scratched the back of his head and ran his hand through his hair.

  “All this being purely hypothetical at this point, of course.” Arlberg cocked her head slightly from left to right. “So what do you suggest we do?”

  “I’ll start by what we can’t do. We can’t go to the Yard on this. At least not yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “Who knows the relationship between members of the Yard and MI-6? One leak and the whole thing gets buried even deeper. Also, we can’t very well walk into MI-6 and go on a fishing expedition. What would we say? ‘Oh, by the way old chaps, the French Sureté knows about your reserved numbers.’”

  “Obviously not.”

  “That really leaves us only one option. And I guarantee you’re not going to like it.”

  “Here we go again. Really, Dulac—”

  “We get the French Sureté to hack into MI-6. Either they are successful and get the owner’s identity, or—”

  “Why on earth would they even try?”

  “They’re into each other’s beds already. One more intrusion, what’s the difference? If we go that route, they flush the owner out. Either way, he’s bound to react. He’ll think twice about going after a member of the Sureté the way he went after Messier and me.”

  “That’s a pretty tall order.”

  “Officially impossible. Unofficially, that’s another matter.”

  “Dulac, you realize there can’t be a hint of Interpol’s involvement in any of this.”

  “Wouldn’t think of it.”

  “So if, and that’s a big if , we eventually find out who this mysterious owner is, how do you go about proving anything else but his or her perfectly legitimate right to having an unregistered phone?”

  “That ties in with another idea of mine. We can actually get the content of those calls through the server, through the US government.”

  “What?”

  “There is a strong chance that the NSA has tapped MI-6’s lines and certainly the British government’s lines. All we have to do is get the number and a contact ther
e. I’ll bet my bonus we can get the contents of the calls and the identity of the parties.”

  “So far, I must admit you do rather well when you bet your bonus.” Arlberg smirked, “But surely the NSA will be more protective than even MI-6.”

  “Unless we have something to offer in return.”

  “Such as?”

  “I’ll have to come up with something.”

  “I’m sure you will. Until then, let’s get back to the home front.”

  “I saw Autissier this morning. She’s tracking the movement of P & W’s shares relative to Mirolet’s short position. Since Bolding’s going to stand and fight, P &W shares are rising. Not good for an investor with a short position.”

  “Mirolet. That’s the Swiss shareholder of P & W,” said Arlberg.

  “Correct.”

  “Anything further on who owns Mirolet?”

  “No. I spoke to my Swiss banker contact Gustav Thoeni. All I got from him is that Mirolet’s ownership is layered with offshore corporations.”

  “What about its directors?”

  “Under Swiss law, you don’t have to be a shareholder to be a director,” said Dulac. “They’re often front men, paid under the table, who don’t know who they’re representing.”

  “Keep me posted if anything develops on Mirolet. I’ll want to know when they cover their short. In the meantime, what about Tajar Singh? Any trace of him?”

  “Nothing new. I haven’t spoken to Lescop, but he has a couple of agents working on it. That guy is probably enjoying some serious protection from someone at P & W.”

  Arlberg threw another exasperated look at Dulac. “There you go again. Until you give me a shred of evidence—”

  “I know, I know, but you’ve got to admit, these coincidences are starting to mount up to a significant pile of circumstantial shit.”

  Chapter 57

  Southampton, Toombs’s offices

  Toombs phone rang just as he was about to close up shop for the day.