Private Monaco, page 3
She was in a position of weakness now, confined and outnumbered. There would be better opportunities to escape, and the very fact she was being held told her these people did not want her dead. They wanted something else, but that unknown quantity concerned Justine. It was sufficiently valuable to them that they would be prepared to use any leverage at their disposal to win it, and that might include hurting or eventually killing her. She pushed such dark thoughts from her mind. She had to stay positive.
Justine heard the van’s side panel open, and footsteps above her as someone jumped in and checked the rear compartment. She felt the second man pin her arms and wrap a leg over hers to prevent her from flailing out to draw attention to herself. She felt violated by such intimate contact, but there was nothing she could do, and so she lay in impotent silence as the person above her completed their search, jumped out of the vehicle, and slid the side door shut.
Moments later, the heavy hand and restraining limbs were removed as the van accelerated away. Justine was relieved to be able to breathe freely again.
She lost track of time in the darkness, but it could not have been more than an hour later when she felt a shift in gravity toward her feet as the van began to climb a steep incline. Then there were a series of sharp turns that made her feel queasy in the confined space. The winding climb seemed to go on and on, which meant they were on a hill or mountain, probably somewhere in the southern ranges of France, north of Monaco.
With each passing moment Justine was drawing further and further away from Jack. She struggled to control mounting fear as she tried not to anticipate what lay ahead.
CHAPTER 9
OUR SUITE AT the Hôtel de Paris was alive with the buzz of activity, but in the most important way it felt lifeless to me.
Justine’s empty suitcase was set on a stand at the foot of our king-size bed, the contents distributed between the closet, antique dresser and shining ebonized chest of drawers. I couldn’t believe she was gone and still half expected her to come through the door, smiling.
I was on a video call with Mo-bot, who had mobilized the Los Angeles office, and Seymour Kloppenberg, our resident forensics expert, who wore the same worried expression as I did.
My landline kept ringing with calls from international offices who’d been alerted by the company-wide bulletin Mo-bot and I had drafted, giving details of Justine’s abduction. I spoke briefly to each and every country manager and thanked them for their offers of practical or emotional support. My experience of running large teams was that people needed to feel invested in an idea, personally connected to it in some way. Each one of these leaders would convey that to their team, so I knew it was important for me to take the time to talk, listen and instill in them the conviction that there was no higher priority than finding Justine Smith.
I had no idea who had taken her or what I was up against, so I wanted everyone to be ready. Better to overreact and scale down as the nature of the crisis became clear, than try and play catch up when things were in motion.
I answered my hotel line. “Morgan.”
“Jack, I’m so sorry to hear about Justine.”
It was Dinara Orlova, the head of Private Moscow. We’d become close after smashing a Russian intelligence operation that had almost claimed the life of Secretary of Defense Eli Carver and put US geopolitical superiority at risk.
“I know you are busy, but I just wanted to let you know we will do whatever you need from us to get Justine back. Our thoughts are with you, but we also stand ready to act,” Dinara said.
“I appreciate it. I’ll keep you posted,” I replied, before hanging up.
“Busy,” Mo-bot observed.
“It’s good to feel the love,” her colleague remarked.
On the video call, I could see both of them in Private LA’s fourth-floor server room. They were surrounded by members of Mo-bot’s team, all focused on screens full of information on Justine’s abduction.
Mo-bot was a formidable white-hat hacker. A digital genius who used her skills for good. Fifty-something, she was the embodiment of the unexpected. Her tattoos and spiky hair suggested a cold, hard rebel, but she had the warmest heart and was thought of by many at Private as their second mom, someone they could go to with any problems. The only thing that hinted at a softer side were the bifocals she wore, which I always said looked as though she’d lifted them from a Boca Raton grandmother.
Seymour Kloppenberg, nicknamed ‘Dr. Science’—‘Sci’ for short—ran a team of twelve forensic scientists who worked out of a lab in the basement of the Los Angeles building. He was an international expert on criminology, and when time allowed, would consult for law-enforcement agencies all over the world, ensuring Private stayed current with the very latest scientific thinking. A slight man, Sci dressed like a Hells Angel, which was where I think his heart lay because he was always restoring old muscle bikes.
Diligent and brilliant, I’d known them both long enough to consider them good friends, but I wasn’t about to tell them the other reason I was glad of all the calls: distraction. By taking Justine from me those men had torn out my heart. If I allowed myself a moment to reflect on what had happened, it might break me. The steady stream of people expressing concern and offering support was all that enabled me to keep my composure.
I was grateful when my landline rang again. I picked up the receiver without hesitation.
“Morgan,” I said.
“Jack, it’s Eli Carver,” the US Defense Secretary said. “Philippe Duval told me what happened. I’m so sorry. I’m sure you’re being pulled in every direction, but I want you to know that if there’s anything I can do, you are to call me. I’m in London right now, so we’re almost in the same time zone. You need something, you pick up the phone anytime, day or night.”
I had seen news reports on the London summit Carver had organized, which aimed to bring lasting peace to Eastern Europe. War had spread instability throughout the region, and Carver had made it his mission to ensure lasting peace and American geopolitical security by negotiating a multilateral non-aggression pact, with the tacit threat of US military intervention in the event of a breach. I’d saved his life during the Moscow investigation, when he’d been taken hostage at Fallon Airbase by a deep-cover Russian operative who’d tried to murder him, and since then our paths had crossed enough times for us to become friends.
“Thanks,” I replied. “I appreciate the call.”
As a senior member of the government, he knew what it was to face a crisis, and he didn’t linger.
“Anytime, Jack, you hear me? And anything,” he reiterated.
“I hear you, sir,” I replied.
“Good. And cut the ‘sir’ stuff. Keep me posted,” he said, before hanging up.
“I’ve pulled the data from the SIM,” Mo-bot announced as I replaced the receiver.
I could see her peering at her screen.
“It’s encrypted, but I can handle that. Once I break it, we’ll know where the guy you took it from has been.”
She was talking about the data from the SIM card in the phone I’d taken from the first motorcyclist. I’d downloaded the contents and sent the file to her through Private’s secure server, along with images of fingerprints I’d taken from the wallet and phone. Sci was working on those to see if he could come up with a match.
I was impatient and eager for a breakthrough that would lead me to Justine, but experience had taught me these things took time.
Burning with nervous energy, I almost jumped when there was a knock at the door of my suite.
“Careful, Jack,” Sci cautioned, glancing at the web camera that was picking up their end of the video call.
He needn’t have worried. When I glanced through the spyhole, I saw a skinny uniformed bellhop. The young guy was peering into a mirror opposite my suite and fixing his hair. He held a brown envelope.
I reached into my pocket for a five-euro note as I opened the door.
“Package for you, Mr. Morgan,” he said, turning away from the mirror.
“Thanks,” I replied, taking the envelope and handing him the tip.
I closed the door and tore open the package to find a cell phone inside. The device rang almost immediately, and the screen displayed the words “unknown number.”
“Hello,” I said when I answered.
“Mr. Morgan,” a distorted voice replied, “we are the people who have Justine Smith. Listen carefully.”
CHAPTER 10
“IF YOU PAY attention to what I say and do exactly what we tell you, both you and your woman will be unharmed,” said the machine-altered voice.
I swallowed my anger at the dehumanizing description of Justine as my “woman,” and the fact that this coward was using intimidation and threats of violence against her to coerce me. I focused on remaining as dispassionate as possible and applying my experience as a detective to the situation.
Their choice of phone was the second indication we were dealing with professionals. Mo-bot had tapped my cell and the hotel line, and her team was ready to run a trace at a moment’s notice. If the police were in any way competent, they would have at least covered the hotel switchboard, but here was an unexpected element, and like the scale and discipline of Justine’s abduction, it suggested we were facing people with a high degree of experience in serious crime.
“No,” I said, gesturing at the phone expressively, so I would be seen by Sci and Mo-bot via my computer webcam.
On-screen, I saw their reactions as they registered who I was talking to. Sci shrugged in frustration, and Mo-bot threw up her arms in exasperation. They realized the kidnappers had circumvented our plans to trace them.
“No?” the machine voice answered. The growling distortion was so effective, it masked whether the speaker was a man or a woman, but even through the vocal disguise, I could hear hesitation.
Good.
“No,” I repeated. “I’m not new to this and neither are you. Professional to professional, let’s show each other proper respect. You know what I need from you next.”
I’d spun that out for as long as I could because every second gained meant further grounds for hope. Mo-bot was marshaling all the means at her disposal, poised to act upon any slip-up, phone log, mast relay or data packet she could trace while I was on the line to the kidnappers.
“Proof of life,” I continued after stretching out the pause. “I need to know you have Justine and that she’s safe and unharmed.”
I didn’t bother with macho threats uttered to serve my own ego. We both knew what would happen if she had been harmed, and I’d already settled on the best way to deal with this person when I got my hands on them. I didn’t need to broadcast it. They would find out soon enough.
“Proof of life?” the voice sneered.
“Proof of life,” I reiterated coolly.
“Okay,” the voice said before hanging up.
I lowered the phone.
“Is it over?” Sci asked.
I nodded.
“You give me the number of that phone you’re holding, Jack. Right now,” Mo-bot instructed. “And I want all the data off the SIM.”
“And when you’re through with it, you’d better tell the Monaco police,” Sci suggested.
I nodded again and walked to my computer. I picked up the SIM card-reader and prayed Mo-bot would be able to work her magic.
CHAPTER 11
JUSTINE HAD FOUND it increasingly difficult to breathe in the stuffy, cramped space, and was suppressing waves of panic at the idea that she might die next to these unknown, silent men. She tried to control her rising anxiety, telling herself the compartment had to be ventilated otherwise she’d be dead already. But panic couldn’t be reasoned away and it was made worse by the combined body heat of three people squeezed into a metal coffin.
Justine’s legs tingled with the desire to kick out, and her stomach churned with the nausea that resulted from feeling out of control. She tried to focus on the journey, but it was hard to tune out the physical manifestations of stress.
She’d been aware of the van continuing to climb, of more twists and turns, which exacerbated her queasy feeling, but kept being drawn back into the storm inside her mind until she lost track of how long they drove or their direction of travel.
When they finally stopped, Justine experienced a surge of relief. She heard the engine fall silent. Then came footsteps and the sound of the rear doors being opened. More footsteps on the flatbed above her, and then a catch being drawn back and the concealed panel opened to allow soft light to fill the compartment. Justine found it dazzling and squinted as her eyes took a moment to adjust. In that time, arms closed around her and she was lifted from the compartment and pushed out of the vehicle.
Forcing her eyes open, Justine saw a red sun, partially obscured by a nearby mountain. The terrain, rustic architecture and notices printed on sacks of grain leaning against an old barn, told her they were in the south of France. She could see a stone building further down the mountainside, and bare brown fields either waiting to be sown or recently seeded.
There were six men around her, all masked, wearing combat trousers and dark T-shirts, light jackets and protective vests. The two men who’d been in the compartment with her were walking off their stiffness. Justine tried to record any distinctive features. Four of the men were tattooed, but she couldn’t see the full patterns, just the beginnings and ends, rising from their collars or peeking from their cuffs. She focused on trying to remember their unique gaits, which was a reliable way of identifying people. There was a bulky man who lumbered, one who walked with a limp, another who moved fluidly, and one with a confident strut. The two who’d been in the van with her weren’t sufficiently limber yet for her to receive any impression of them.
She was pushed across a cobblestone yard, away from a large two-story sandstone farmhouse, and taken to a small outbuilding made of the same stone. It looked as though it might have once been a stable or livestock pen because there was an old stone trough by the steel door, which was secured with a padlock.
Justine didn’t resist but allowed herself to be steered across the shiny cobblestones. One of the men, the lumberer, fiddled with the padlock and opened the door, and Justine saw her cell. Twelve feet long, twenty wide, there was an army surplus cot, a simple table and a single chair. A partially screened toilet and a wash basin beneath a barred window completed her new accommodation. Justine could feel the remains of the baking heat that had filled the space during the day. It was unventilated and would be extremely uncomfortable when the sun was high, but she could already see the advantages to this place. She was alive, and the cell they had prepared was a sign her captors intended to keep her that way. At least for now.
“Inside,” Strutter said, giving her a shove.
She didn’t resist or complain and allowed the momentum to carry her in. The door shut and she heard the padlock being secured on the other side. As she stood in the center of her cell, surveying it in the fading light of the day, her mind turned to thoughts of escape.
CHAPTER 12
I HARDLY SLEPT.
I couldn’t.
Every time I closed my eyes, I was haunted by the events of the day and returned to them over and over, torturing myself with what would have happened if I’d been half a beat faster, a little stronger, more aggressive in my response. There were a hundred ways I could have saved Justine and I hadn’t been able to deliver on a single one. I’d failed, and she was now in the hands of dangerous people who were going to use her to get something from me. Money would be the obvious option, but I’d made a lot of enemies over the years, all of whom had different ideas about their preferred means of retribution.
Instead of sleep, I’d kept the LA team company on a video call and exchanged information and theories with them. Sci and Mo-bot were on a flight to Paris that was scheduled to arrive first thing. They would travel on to Monaco as soon as they landed.
Mo-bot hadn’t been able to pull anything useful from either of the SIM card packets I’d sent her. The phone I’d taken from the motorcyclist was proving hard to crack. Mo-bot believed the men who’d assaulted us and taken Justine had been using proxy servers and encryption that spoofed data sources to stop anyone identifying which cell towers their phones had connected to, preventing us from tracking where the motorcyclist had been. Mo-bot was working on ways around the problem but said it would take time.
The phone the bellhop had delivered had never been used prior to the call I’d received. Mo-bot had traced the device to a consignment stolen from a container that had gone missing soon after leaving the factory in China. It could have been bought on the street anywhere in the world. It hadn’t been switched on until it had been given to me, and when I went to reception to quiz the bellhop on how it had come into his possession, he said the package had been delivered by a DHL courier. Once he’d given me the original plastic bag it had come in, Mo-bot had used the tracking number to learn it had been sent from a drop-off point the previous day. A convenience store in Toulouse, deposited by someone who’d paid cash and given the French Ministry of the Interior as their contact address and phone number, which suggested a dark sense of humor if nothing else.
Mo-bot messaged me from somewhere over the Atlantic. She was working on tracing the incoming call but had encountered the same digital subterfuge.
So, we hadn’t had any breakthroughs yet, but I’d bought us some time by refusing to cooperate with Justine’s captors until I had proof of life.
When morning finally came, and the May sun rose over the city, making everything blush, I forced myself to eat the continental breakfast I’d ordered to my room. Without proper sleep, I’d need to gain energy from somewhere. The last thing I wanted was to let Justine down again by being unable to perform at my best.
