Vanished (26 page)

71.

H
is guys are probably already on their way,” Merlin said.

“Oh, good Lord,” Dorothy said.

“
Move
it,” Merlin said. “Let’s go. Won’t take them more than ten minutes to show up, I bet. Damn it to hell!”

“No,” I said. “We’re not leaving here with nothing. Dorothy, how much more time do you need?”

“I don’t know—three, four minutes. But I can’t rush it.”

“Don’t rush,” I said. “Get that thing in there and clean things up so they can’t tell we’ve been here.”

I swung the flashlight beam around Koblenz’s office, saw the built-in ventilation system beneath his windows. Raced over to it and flipped open the control panel.

“What the hell are you doing?” Merlin said. Perspiration had broken out on his forehead. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“Calm down,” I said. “This is why we have the backup procedure.” The air-conditioning had gone off for the evening, as an energy-saving measure, but I switched it back on and turned the fan on full blast. Then I adjusted the louvers on the front of the unit so that air was blowing up at an angle, rattling the papers on top of the file cabinets and the credenza. On top of the credenza were a large rubber plant and a smaller jade plant. I tipped over the jade plant. The plastic pot went in one direction, the plant and its clump of earth went another. Then I took a pile of papers from the credenza and scattered some of them to the floor.

“What the hell?” Merlin said.

“Establishing a plausible explanation,” I said. In reality, the gust of air probably wouldn’t be strong enough to tip over the jade plant, but Koblenz would probably accept it. Especially since nothing would appear to have been stolen. He’d focus on the real anomaly, which was why his AC had gone on in the middle of the night. But he’d dismiss that as a malfunction in the building’s ventilation system. People always blame technology.

I pulled out the four disposable cell phones, found the one that I’d labeled in Sharpie marker with a big number “1.”

“All right,” I said. “Here goes.” I hit the preset number on the first cell phone.

I couldn’t see the result right away. I didn’t need to. The incendiary devices we’d jury-rigged were rudimentary, but the effect would be dramatic. Not that we wanted to burn the building down; not at all. We just wanted to make it look that way.

Inside each Whole Foods bag was a simple contraption: a cell phone wired to a relay, a nine-volt battery, the filament from a chandelier bulb. Phone rings, bulb filament gets hot, sets off a mixture of sugar and potassium chlorate inside a smoke grenade. That in turn sets off the plaster-of-paris and aluminum-powder mix, which we’d poured into a flowerpot and let harden. That mixture would get incredibly hot. It would actually burn underwater.

Basic explosives training; nothing fancy. But within thirty seconds, the entire lobby would be filled with smoke, billowing from a blazing hot fire. Hot but contained. And extremely dramatic. The smoke would pour out of the building.

Even before I made it to the window and saw the clouds of grayish white smoke in the moonlight, the building’s smoke alarm started clanging.

Dorothy announced, “All set.” She adjusted the keyboard on Eleanor Appleby’s desk, restoring it to where it had been before she tinkered with it, then she stood up.

“The fire trucks should be here in five minutes,” I said. “We’d just better hope none of our Paladin friends is closer than that.”

“I thought you said it would take the Paladin guys ten minutes,” Dorothy said.

“That was an estimate.”

“You didn’t know? You were
guessing
?”

“An educated guess.”

“Heller, why didn’t you tell me that?”

I didn’t reply. The answer was simple: It was a gap in the plan I was hoping to just finesse. I was hoping for good luck. But if I’d told them that, I’d have been doing this alone.

For the first time, I was nervous.

Our escape plan rested entirely on the likelihood that the firefighters would get here before the Paladin guys. Once the fire department arrived, they’d secure the scene and allow no one to enter. But if Paladin got here first, they might well decide to race upstairs, smoke or no smoke. It was entirely possible that they’d connect the two things—the motion sensor in Koblenz’s office going off and an apparent fire raging in the lobby—and conclude that their office had been the target of vandals. Then they’d be all the more motivated to rush up here.

I could hear the sirens, louder and closer, heard the shouts and the braking of the trucks and the clatter of the equipment as the firemen jumped out, and I heaved a sigh of relief.

“They’re here,” she said.

I pressed the second preprogrammed number, detonating the second incendiary device, which I’d placed in the lobby of the second floor.

“I’m not deaf,” I said.

The loud squealing of tires.

“No, Heller, I mean Paladin. Two black Humvees. That’s Paladin.”

“I’m
out
of here!” Merlin shouted.

“Walter,” Dorothy said. “Man up.”

THE LAST
thing I saw before we raced out of the Paladin office and down the stairs was a shouting match between some intimidating-looking Paladin employees, a couple of Falls Church policemen, and a few firemen.

Not a contest the Paladin security people were going to win. The police and the fire department would never let them enter what appeared to be a burning building.

We raced out through the loading-dock entrance at the ground level. No one was waiting for us there. Both smoke devices were at the front of the building, so that was where the firefighters were gathered.

“Merlin,” I said as we parted, Dorothy running ahead toward the Defender. “Thank you.”

He turned toward me, gave me a dark look, and didn’t say a word.

72.

D
orothy and I didn’t talk for a long while. Maybe it was the adrenaline crash, that low-level anxiety and mild depression that often sets in after a time of great stress. You see that a lot after a battle.

Finally, she said, “Now what?”

“There’s always another way.”

“Well, I sure can’t think of one.”

“I can,” I said, and I explained.

“Oh man,” she said. “That’s either incredibly bold or incredibly stupid.”

“I like to think positive.”

“You know, if Koblenz really has one of those RaptorCards, that’s just incredible.”

“Is that what it’s called?”

“I’ve only heard rumors about this. Remember a couple years back how it came out about the U.S. government tapping into the whole SWIFT banking consortium? So they could monitor suspicious movements of money?”

“For terrorist surveillance, sure.”

“Right. But then it turned out the government could spy on every single funds transfer, every single financial transaction—everything. No more bank secrecy. Big Brother was watching, right?”

I didn’t want to argue with her, but I’d always believed that there was a whole lot less secrecy in banking than most people thought. Rich folks assume that when they stash money offshore, it’s going to remain a deep, dark secret. But bankers are human beings. Even offshore bankers. All you have to do is pay off the right one, or make the right friend, and you can find out all sorts of things.

Which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing for people in my line of work, of course.

And then there was a report that was leaked on the Internet not so long ago about how Cisco Systems was secretly building a backdoor into all its routers to enable the government to eavesdrop on all network traffic, including e-mails and phone calls.

“So a RaptorCard allows you to move money around without the government watching.”

“Right. By embedding private-key cryptography in an appliance that looks like a credit card. The strongest encryption ever devised. The closest thing to a true random number generator. Authentication’s built right in. You can use it anywhere.”

“Numbered accounts are just so twentieth-century, huh?”

“Right. So my question for you, Nick, is what do you plan to do with it?”

I thought for a long moment. The answer was complicated, and in truth, I hadn’t yet figured it out. Not entirely, anyway.

But I didn’t get a chance to answer before my cell phone rang.

“Got something for you,” Frank Montello said. “Something really interesting. That cell phone you asked me to track?”

I hesitated, then remembered. “Yeah?”

“She just called the same throwaway cell phone number your father called.”

“Roger’s cell phone,” I said, and I began to feel queasy. “You’re not serious.”

“Yeah,” Frank said. “Just about an hour ago, Lauren Heller called her husband.”

73.

M
arjorie Ogonowski parted the curtains and looked out her living-room window.

A dark blue Buick Century sedan pulled up to the curb. She took note of the white license plate with the dark blue lettering that said
U.S. GOVERNMENT.
The license-plate number started with a J, denoting the Justice Department. Marjorie, whose cousin was married to an FBI employee, knew a fair amount about the FBI.

After the FBI man had called her to arrange an interview concerning a matter at work, she’d been sorely tempted to call her cousin and see what she could find out. But he had instructed her not to speak to anyone. She hadn’t stopped worrying since the man called. She wondered if it had anything to do with her boss, Roger Heller. She was pretty sure it did. Especially after that man John Murray from Security Compliance had come to talk to her at the office about Roger and why he’d gone missing.

Well, at least the FBI man was right on time. Seven o’clock
p.m.
, just as he promised. She liked that. Marjorie was always on time, always precise. She was orderly in all things. She was nothing if not detail-oriented. This was one of the qualities that made her such a good lawyer, she was convinced. That, and her brains, and her willingness to work long hours without complaining. Right out of Georgetown Law she’d landed a job as an associate counsel in the corporate development division at Gifford Industries, working on mergers and acquisitions, and she was convinced that she was on the fast track to general counsel.

Her salary wasn’t great, but that would change in short order. In the meantime, it had allowed her to buy this tiny ranch house in Linthicum, Mary land. The real-estate salesman had called it “an investor’s dream,” which meant that it needed a lot of work. She had done most of it herself, stripping the yellowed wallpaper, painting, even installing a new laminate hardwood floor in her kitchen by herself over a long weekend.

This was the advantage of not having a social life. You got a lot of work done around the house.

The FBI agent rang the doorbell, and she tried not to answer it too quickly. She didn’t want him to know how nervous she was. Nor that this was the high point of her week, although it was.

In the other room her cockatiel, Caesar, whistled loudly.

She opened the aluminum screen door and shook his hand. Something about his unhandsome face made him seem trustworthy.

“Were my directions okay?” she said.

“Perfect,” he said. “The Parkway wasn’t bad at all. Took me exactly thirty-seven minutes.”

She liked his precision.

She let him in and offered him tea or a soft drink, but he declined. He showed her his FBI badge and credentials, which she inspected carefully, though she’d only seen things like that on TV. The gold badge with the eagle and the embossed letters, in a black leather wallet. The laminated credentials with his photo and signature were clipped to the breast pocket of his cheap suit. He handed her a business card.

They sat facing each other at an angle in the two easy chairs, which she had slipcovered herself with remnant fabric from a shop in Laurel. Her Apple MacBook laptop was open on the narrow desk. She glanced at it. She could see the screen from where she sat and wondered whether he could, too.

His name was Special Agent Corelli, and he had a slight stammer that sounded like a residue from childhood. He was not slick or arrogant, as she was afraid an FBI agent might be, and she liked that, too.

From his black nylon briefcase he took out a note pad.

“Ms. Ogonowski, how well do you know Roger Heller?” he said.

So it was about Roger after all. “Marjorie, please.”

“Marjorie,” he said with an abashed smile.

“Did something happen to him?”

“I’m afraid I can’t talk about an active investigation. I’m sorry.”

An active investigation! “Well, Mr. Heller is my boss—I mean, I just know him that way, of course.” She found herself looking at the business card, turning it over, evading his eyes.

“Of course.”

“He’s my direct supervisor, and it’s been superbusy lately—”

“He’s been out of town a lot, hasn’t he? Out of the office?”

“He travels a lot for business, yes.”

“And for other reasons.”

She hesitated. She drummed her fingers on the end table next to her chair, then reflexively, compulsively, began realigning the objects on the table, lining up the tiny Apple remote alongside the TV and cable and DVD remotes, making them all nice and parallel and evenly spaced. “I’m sorry, what’s the question?”

“You recently tried to reach him when he was out of town. Not on company business.”

How could the FBI possibly know about this? She’d promised never to tell anyone. Could that Security Compliance consultant, John Murray, have found out and told him? “I don’t remember.”

“I think you do,” the FBI man said quietly.

Something in him had suddenly switched off. No longer was he the trustworthy and sincere-seeming federal agent. Now there was a coldness in the man that frightened her even more than the question.

Caesar started whistling again.

“I’m sorry about the bird,” she said. “I need to change the cage liner, so he’s getting a little cranky.”

“Not a problem,” the FBI man said.

She slid her hand across the end table again, shifting, then straightening the remotes back into parallel lines.

“Would you mind if I called the Bureau,” she said abruptly. “Is that all right? Just to—I don’t know . . .”

He lifted his chin, turned up his hands, smiled. “Go right ahead. We always encourage that. The number’s right there on the card.”

She stood up, went over to the wall phone in the hall outside the kitchen, within view of the FBI man. “My cousin’s husband works there,” she said. “I’m going to call him, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course,” he said. “I don’t mind at all. Whatever puts your mind at ease.”

Taped to the wall was a long list of phone numbers that included her cousin Beverly and Beverly’s husband, Stuart. She found Stuart’s office number and dialed it.

The number on Agent Corelli’s card had a different exchange, she noticed, though she wasn’t sure that meant anything. Maybe main FBI had a different area code from the Washington Field Office. Then something else about the card attracted her notice, too.

“Did they redo the business cards recently?” she asked, looking at Corelli’s card closely. “The seal on my cousin Stuart’s business card—”

A hand shot out and depressed the plunger on the wall phone, breaking the connection. She hadn’t even heard him approach.

She tried to scream, but a hand was clapped over her mouth. “I need you to tell me everything,” the man said softly, so quietly that she could barely hear his words over Caesar’s shrill whistle.