ALL ACTION THRILLER BOXSET: THREE MURRAY MCDONALD STANDALONE THRILLERS

by Murray Mcdonald

  Chapter 34

  Frankie struggled to sleep on their return from Switzerland. She took a shower and stared at the message that Nick had had the nerve to leave on her mirror. She had taken her towel and swiped through it. He was gone. The deception had started four months earlier. Only six weeks after they had started dating, he was already weaving her into his plot. He had definitely used her.

  The words played on her mind throughout the night, every waking moment. It hadn’t been real. The detail he had gone to, even dropping in the hailstorm. It had been so natural, so well acted. But it didn’t make any sense. How was he so sure they’d be together all those months later? Without that clue, they would never have followed up on the transfer. The prince moved money constantly between accounts and that scale of transaction had been far less suspicious than one a hundredth of the size.

  At 5:00 a.m., she gave up. Sleep was not coming, not in her state of mind. She lifted the handset and called the Rahn & Boderman bank in Zurich. After the discovery of Harry Carson’s account, Mr. Rahn had all but ejected them from the premises. He had a business to run and they had interfered far too much in his business as it was.

  “Mr. Paul Rahn, please,” she said. It was 11:00 a.m. in Zurich and she knew that he took tea at eleven and forbade meetings in his diary at that time.

  “I’m afraid Mr. Rahn is busy,” replied his secretary curtly.

  “Tell him it’s Aisha Franks, from yesterday.”

  “Please hold,” said the secretary. Frankie was hopeful, but she came back a moment later and said, “I’m afraid he’s still busy.”

  “Can you tell him it’s urgent and perhaps he should be aware that my mother is a Saudi royal?”

  “One moment please.”

  “Miss Franks,” said Mr. Rahn warmly and almost immediately. Money opened doors and diaries in Swiss banks.

  “Mr. Rahn, can you please check this date in your diary?” asked Frankie, giving Rahn the date and time that coincided with hers and Nick’s trip to Paris and the hailstorm. While she had been waiting, she had sent him an email.

  “Yes,” he said. “A quiet morning and then lunch with a prospective client.”

  Frankie’s pulse raced. “Can you check the email I’ve just sent you, please?”

  After a minute or so of waiting, Rahn came back on the line. “It was a few months ago but if I had to say what the client looked like, I’d say number four.”

  “What name did he use?” she asked excitedly.

  “Frank Hilton. I remember, that’s right… I initially wondered if he was linked to the hotel group but he wasn’t.”

  “Did he say what he did do?”

  “If he did, I’m afraid I can’t remember. He was supposed to call me the following day but never did. I made a note in my diary to expect his call.”

  And I know why he didn’t call, thought Frankie. Because he had let slip with me he had left Paris.

  “However,” Rahn said, cutting into her thoughts, “I remember he had sold a business and had around seven million euros to deposit. I don’t forget numbers,” he laughed.

  “Thank you, Mr. Rahn,” said Frankie, about to the end the call.

  “You mentioned your mother…?” he said quickly.

  “Yes, I’ll pass on your details. Good day, Mr. Rahn.” Frankie replaced the handset and flicked through the images on the email she had sent to Rahn. They were images created of how Nick would look in a number of disguises. Number four was graying temples and a beard. There would, of course, be a persona and documents created for “Frank Hilton” but they would have been ditched long ago, along with his plan to use Rahn & Boderman Bank.

  Being the ex-girlfriend of the world’s most wanted terrorist was not an ideal situation. Being the ex-girlfriend, used as part of a plot, was even less ideal. Being the ex-girlfriend that your ex had respected enough to change your plans due to the tiniest slip-up months earlier, strangely enough, gave Frankie great comfort. He hadn’t used her after all. He had respected her.

  It was 5:20 a.m. She picked up the handset and called Carson. He answered before the first ring ended. It appeared he hadn’t slept either, although his problem was far more basic. He had just lost a quarter of a billion dollars.

  Chapter 35

  Blida Airport was just a short taxi ride to the southwest of Algiers. The small airfield was almost entirely stocked with helicopters. One corner of the apron had been set aside as a scrapyard for two aging fighters that sat alongside an old and past its best transport aircraft. Nick was initially worried that the aircraft he had hired was nowhere to be seen. However, as they drew closer to the small main building, a little corporate jet sat gleaming within the only hangar. Nick proceeded to the info desk, as directed by Shaheed, who had arranged Nick’s transport. The friendly young lady manning the desk asked him to wait while she spoke to an elderly gentleman in an off-white and ill-fitting shirt and tie who eventually made his way towards Nick.

  “Monsieur Guillon?” asked the man.

  Nick returned the gentleman’s handshake and couldn’t help but notice his coffee-stained tie and almost white shirt.

  “I’m Nasim, your pilot.”

  Nick’s handshake became more tentative. The elderly handshake wasn’t the most steady.

  “I’ve been flying for almost fifty years,” Nasim said reassuringly and led the way outside to the runway.

  Nick followed behind and slowed down further on reaching the hangar. The elderly gentleman ignored the shiny new corporate jet and proceeded purposefully to an old propeller plane. Its white paint, like the pilot’s shirt, had seen far better days.

  “There may be some mistake,” Nick called after Nasim. “I chartered a VIP aircraft!”

  “No mistake,” Nasim smiled back. “He’s a little beauty. I opted for all the VIP options when I bought him. King of the skies!”

  “And how long ago was that?” asked Nick, approaching the small turbo prop plane that didn’t look like it would reach the end of the runway, let alone the other side of Africa, almost two thousand miles away.

  “Let’s see, my son’s forty,” he began, “and it was a few years before he was born… so, maybe forty-three years ago? Beechcraft King Air, never let me down yet…unless I wanted it to, of course,” he added, laughing.

  He opened the door and the interior did not look any different than the external condition. Four seats lined each side of the fuselage and the cockpit area was open to the rest of the plane. The seats were badly worn and the controls were from a whole different era, before computers. It would have been an excellent museum piece.

  Nasim turned to face him, instantly losing his joviality, directing the discussion to money. “So young man, payment. Return to Sudan, no questions asked, $12,500 as agreed.”

  Nick pondered the situation. He looked back at the gleaming corporate jet, a small Learjet. It would be twice as fast.

  “A quick call to Net Jets and I’m sure, with all the docs and flight plans in order, you’d be good to go. Of course, it needs a good tarmac runway for landing,” said Nasim, tapping his nose and pointing to his tires.

  Nick looked at them. They were oversized with a chunky tread. The plane could land anywhere.

  Nick handed over his pre-loaded credit card. Nasim looked at it carefully and then pulled out his cell to connect to the credit card’s website. He checked the balance. $15,000 was showing. It seemed Nasim was more than familiar with this type of transaction, somewhat surprising Nick, who thought he was going to have a hard sell.

  “I don’t have change,” said Nasim.

  “If we get there alive, consider it a bonus. If we don’t, it doesn’t really matter,” replied Nick, stepping into the small plane and taking one of the seats.

  Nasim climbed in, removed his tie and started the engines, which immediately fired up. Being the only aircraft on the field, they were given immediate clearance. Nasim wasted no time in powering the small twin prop plane down the runway and with a prayer to Allah
, lifted off.

  Mustafa Ghazi was arranging Nick’s next meeting, just as Mohammed Farsi had organized the meeting with Mustafa. It wasn’t an ideal plan, and involved a significant risk should the meeting details fall into the wrong hands, but it also built a significant level of trust. Trust was lost far more easily than it was gained. Having killed the Caliph, Nick had a mountain to climb but with overwhelming evidence for his actions, the trust was coming back. That and a plan that would strike back and destroy America in the name of the Caliph certainly helped.

  “Do you have the exact co-ordinates?” asked Nasim.

  Nick handed Nasim a slip of paper Shaheed had given him.

  Nasim punched the details into a small GPS locator. “This can’t be right,” he said, looking at the destination displayed by the coordinates.

  “Why, what’s wrong?”

  “It’s directing us into the desert in Northern Sudan, hundreds of miles from anywhere.”

  “No, it’s right,” said Nick, closing his eyes and grabbing some sleep.

  Chapter 36

  Carson and Frankie arrived at NCTC minutes apart, well before Turner but not before Reid. Reid had already gone through the previous night’s updates from across the world by the time they arrived. The situation was, as she informed them on arrival, unchanged. Nick Geller had vanished.

  Reid pointed to a screen on the bottom left of the wall of screens showing the infected man. “They reckon eight hours at most, if the poor guy lasts that long.” She shivered.

  “We may have a lead,” announced Frankie, not wanting to linger any longer than necessary on the Ebola victim’s image.

  Reid perked up. Leads over the previous twenty-four hours had been either nonexistent or false-starts.

  Frankie was bringing Reid up to speed when Turner arrived. She started from the beginning again.

  “He’ll have ditched the identity too,” said Turner.

  “Seven million Euros to deposit though, what are the chances of that amount being deposited in one go at around that time?” explained Frankie.

  “It’s a long shot,” said Reid. “If he changed everything else, why leave the amount of money the same?”

  “That’s what I thought and then I thought maybe he’d think the amount was irrelevant given how many transactions are made daily.”

  Turner looked at Reid and nodded. “Worth a try?”

  “Fair enough, we’ve got nothing else,” said Turner. “Frankie, grab Dan and check out all the other private banks.”

  Frankie grabbed a pad and rushed off to find Dan.

  “So where are we on the fleeing radicals?” asked Carson.

  “Four hundred and eighty-two to date and they were just the ones on our watch list. We have another seven hundred or so who were being watched and haven’t gone anywhere.”

  “I’d bet my left testicle that that’s because they shouldn’t have been on the list in the first place,” said Carson bitterly. “How many of them are we still tracking?” he asked.

  Reid coughed. “Twenty-three,” she replied, embarrassed.

  “Jesus! Four hundred and fifty-nine lost, just like that?!”

  “It was a very coordinated move. Most of them had no bookings. They just headed to the airport without notice, paying cash for flights leaving within the hour. The Security Services in England are tracking ten of the twenty-three after they landed in the UK. Six are being tracked by the Germans, four by the French and three by the Spanish. Most took flights but never arrived. They must have booked transfers under different names when they arrived at their first destinations, thereby avoiding having to leave the airport.”

  “What are the twenty-three doing?”

  “So far, nothing. They’ve just visited family or friends.”

  “Had they pre-booked their flights?” asked Turner.

  Reid checked down the list of names. “They were all pre-booked,” she said.

  “Shit! How can we lose four hundred and fifty-nine potential terrorists so fucking easily?!” shouted Carson to no one in particular.

  “It was hours before we realized what was happening and by that time, we were desperately trying to coordinate resources to be where they were landing but they never arrived where they were supposed to,” replied Reid defensively. “We’re going through footage and passenger lists and bookings, but it’s taking time.”

  “I’m not criticizing you, Jane,” replied Carson. “It’s just frustrating. They’re handing our asses to us on a silver platter!”

  “What about the twenty-three?” asked Turner.

  “Keep a watch on them. If they come back, I suspect they should be off the watch list. If nothing else, we’ve freed up a hell of a lot of resources.”

  Frankie and Dan spent the day calling every Swiss bank they could find. A number of transactions of similar amounts at around that time were found. It would take some time to track them all back to source and identify the owners but they were getting somewhere, or at least it felt as though they were.

  At 6:00 p.m., Carson approached an exhausted Frankie. “May I have a word?”

  “Of course,” she answered.

  “In private,” he said, looking at Dan.

  Dan removed himself from earshot.

  Carson leaned in closer. “I think you may have done it,” he said happily.

  “I haven’t done anything.”

  “No, let’s just say that the NSA can see and hear more than most people think they can. Anyway, I gave them a few parameters this morning and asked them to start a search,” he said, pressing a piece of notepaper into her hand.

  She looked down and read the note.

  Monsieur Jacques Guillon,

  Crédit Agricole Marseille

  “Nobody can know where you got this, especially Dan,” emphasized Carson.

  Frankie nodded while quickly calculating the time in France. Midnight. Too late to call the bank.

  “I’ll get on it at 8:00 a.m. French time,” she said enthusiastically.

  Carson shook his head and pointed to Turner and Reid huddled on the other side of the operations floor.

  “There’s a car waiting. You and Reid are getting over there tonight. Flynn will meet you at the airport with a team of Deltas. You need anything, you just call me, 24/7, and I mean anything! Nothing’s too big or too small and I’m including aircraft carriers!”

  “You’re not coming?”

  “No, Turner and I need to stay here. We’re briefing the President tonight. The crisis planning is kicking into gear.”

  Frankie nodded nervously, feeling a huge weight shift onto her shoulders.

  Carson noticed her mood darken. “Hey, we’re here because of you. You tracked down this lead. Just remember you trained as an investigator with the Secret Service and from looking at your personnel records, you were a damned good one before you moved into protection.”

  Reid joined them. She too was apprehensive. Turner followed. “Best of luck and remember, don’t come back without him!” he said unhelpfully.

  Frankie looked down at the note again. Monsieur Jacques Guillon, aka Nick Geller.

  You are caught, you just don’t know it yet.

  Chapter 37

  The White House

  State Dining Room

  Carson and Turner were among the last to arrive. Turner took the seat next to his boss, the Director of the FBI, while Carson took the seat next to the Secretary of Defense. A spectacularly grand room, the State Dining Room had been transformed with miles of cables into the temporary Situation Room. The President had made it clear he wasn’t hiding in a bunker on his return from the hospital, ruling out the use of the emergency operations center deep below the East Wing.

  Just four days on from the shooting and explosion, the West Wing had all but disappeared. The demolition crews had removed the debris and the site was being prepared for a new West Wing with plans being drawn up. However, the overwhelming suggestion was for the building to be rebuilt exactly as before with gr
eater blast proofing protection. The only positive that remained was the fact that only one person had lost their life in the blast. The Vice President. His on-duty Secret Service detail had recovered his body shortly after the blast and all of them handed in their resignations for not having been by his side. The President had rejected every one of the resignations from his hospital bed but they all refused his rejection. A funeral was scheduled for later that week at which heads of state and leaders from around the world would pay their respects to a great man. He had served his country at war and in peace and whenever called upon, he always rose to the task handed to him. A widower with no children, he had given everything to his country. The President was going to give him a send off fit for the President he should and could have been.

  President James Mitchell entered the State Dining Room, his arm still strapped to his chest. The First Lady escorted him into the room, fussing as any loving wife would, telling him that it was too early, he had just been released from hospital, was lucky to be alive. President Mitchell nodded to each statement as it was thrown at him but continued unperturbed. Sitting him down and making sure he was comfortable, she turned to the group assembled to update her husband. A strong and beautiful Southern Texan, she was a powerful force in her own right.

  “Now y’all listen here!” she said, pointing to a photo of Nick Geller. “I want that man to feel pain before you kill his sorry ass!”

  A few nods emanated around the table.

  “Dead! I want him dead!” she demanded.

  The nods grew stronger as they realized she wasn’t leaving until they all agreed.

  “Okay, good. You’ve got him for forty-five minutes,” she ordered.

  The group consisted of the most powerful individuals the world had ever known. At their fingertips were the mightiest forces ever assembled but they nodded meekly in unison, as though chastised by their grandmothers.