There was a group of people in the courtyard, clearly drunk, and we matched their attitude when they hollered at us, giving them the impression that we were tourists who’d had too much to drink as well. Besides helping us blend in, it would give us an excuse for any mistakes we made looking for the right door.
Moving up the stairs, I saw that there wasn’t any surveillance effort here. No cameras at all, which was odd in this day and age, but a strong indicator that we were in the right place. The Arabs wouldn’t want that.
We found room 406 and staged to fight. Decoy slapped on the radar scope, and we came up negative. I slotted the key, half expecting it to fail, but it slid in easily. I nodded.
I followed in after the last man. While they cleared the apartment, I saw the damage. A man handcuffed to a radiator pipe. His eyes half open, his head lolling to the side, his pants down to his knees. The obscene view of his genitals overshadowed by the barbaric damage to his legs. The torrent of blood from his throat puddling around his waist.
The room stank of meat. Of packed steaks that had lost refrigeration. I waited for the all-clear, unable to take my eyes from the body. The blood off of his neck had blackened, but the pool around his waist was still liquid. I turned away, not wanting the image to become a fixture in my head for later dreams, although I knew it was too late.
Buckshot returned and gave the all-clear, looking at the body.
“What the fuck is going on?” he said. “That’s the guy from Jennifer’s cell phone picture.”
I said, “We’ve got little time. The Arab’s cleaning house. Search the room and body. Find something we can use. But watch yourself. Don’t leave any evidence that can be used against us.”
The team went to work, wearing latex gloves and moving gingerly around the room. It would suffice for a quick check, but I knew it wouldn’t withstand scrutiny if someone really wanted to do an in-depth analysis.
Buckshot turned from the body. “I’ve got a card here. Not sure what it is.”
He held up a small piece of heavy bonded paper the same size as a plastic hotel key card. It had nothing on it but a red arrow pointing to one end and a magnetic stripe down the side.
Decoy said, “It’s a locker rental card. I’ve used them before. You stick that into a slot instead of a key, and your locker opens.”
I said, “Where? Where’s it from?”
“Doesn’t have anything on it,” Buckshot said. “Nothing other than the arrow.”
Decoy said, “Mine was from a train station in Vienna. Probably the same thing here.”
Retro said, “There’re only three train stations in Budapest.”
“We just going to hit all three,” Decoy said, “hoping to luck out?”
“Might as well,” I said. “We have nothing else to go on.”
Jennifer dropped Decoy and me off at the Keleti pu, or eastern railway station. It was our second stop, the first being the western station called Nyugati pu. We’d found some lockers there, but they used old-fashioned metal keys. No help.
Walking up the steps to the entrance, I didn’t have much hope that this card would pan out. After all, for all we knew, every bus station in Budapest had lockers as well. Even that might be irrelevant. Maybe no lockers in this entire city used a computer key card. It was a pretty modern technology compared to the iron curtain amenities I’d seen so far.
The station itself was huge, with an imposing nineteenth-century Victorian look on the outside. Inside, it was a smoky, confusing mash of Cold War construction grafted onto one-hundred-year-old granite. We were in the main hall, with the train platforms straight ahead, and even at this hour, people were coming and going. We went to an information booth on the south end, which was closed, but we could see a man inside. Tapping on the window, I got his attention. He looked at us suspiciously, two older Americans asking about lockers in the middle of the night, but he pointed at the large staircase that dominated the entrance, leading to a basement level.
His gesture appeared simple enough, but there was a ton of construction going on, with plywood walls everywhere and no signs in English. Eventually, after bumping into dead ends like rats in a maze, we found the lockers. A bank extended fifteen feet with an ATM-like digital display in the center, an incongruous bit of modernity housed in the stark surroundings.
Decoy slipped in the card, and the screen flashed twice with a number. To our left, one of the upper locker doors popped open.
We both remained still for a second, completely surprised by the success, then raced each other to be the first to see what was inside. It was empty except for a cell phone. Turning it on, it had one number in the contact menu.
Decoy said, “Jackpot.”
Fifteen minutes later, Decoy was slapping the van seat in frustration. “What the fuck! This guy’s phone has less capability than the damn Jitterbug phone I bought my grandmother last year.”
I’d given the go-ahead to track the number with our technical capability, figuring it was worth the risk since we were reaching an endgame, but that relied on the target phone having specific capabilities, namely a basic software package and the GPS chip that came with just about every cell phone on earth. This one, however, was a pathetically cheap version that did something that no other modern cell phone did: It made calls alone.
Retro said, “What now? We want to dial it?”
I considered the idea. The man in the hotel had been tortured, then killed, which blatantly showed that the Arab was trying to get information, information that could possibly be used against him. The fact that the cell phone in the locker even existed, and hadn’t been taken, indicated that the dead man was, in fact, doing something outside the Arab’s purview. The contact number might be the key, but it would have to be handled carefully.
“I think we have Jennifer call. A woman on this end might give us an edge before the guy hangs up. Let him know we’re friends, and that the Arab is dangerous. Maybe we’ll get something.”
Everyone in the van agreed, and we spent a couple of minutes war gaming and rehearsing, going over what we knew. Then Jennifer dialed.
She hung up in seconds, saying, “Straight to voice mail. No answer.”
Retro threw the water bottle he was holding. I took a deep breath, then said, “Track its usage. If it’s been turned on at all, it’s talked somewhere in this city.”
Decoy said, “Already working. It’s an active number, but it shuts down each night, coming on every morning about eight. All tower registers are inside the city, on this side of the Danube, with most popping downtown within two miles of us.”
The timing news actually made me happy, because it didn’t force us to jump through our ass tonight. We needed some rest, and this provided the excuse.
“Okay. Let’s get to a hotel and grab some rack. Plot its habitual track, and we’ll stage there before eight tomorrow.”
56
The pilot shivered, telling himself it was the morning chill and not his nerves. He took a sip of his coffee and tried to relax, to appear as calm as the few other patrons around him at the cafe.
Kamil had called him last night and set up this meeting, but he hadn’t said what it was about. Kamil also hadn’t said why he couldn’t return to the apartment. A part of him wanted to believe the meeting was simply to give them the final instructions for their flight to Montreal, but the location raised his suspicions.
He felt his phone vibrate in his pocket.
Pulling it out, he was puzzled to see nobody on the other end, then he felt another vibration in his pocket. With a shock, he realized it was the other phone. The special one.
He frantically ripped it out before it went to voice mail. He saw the number and immediately hit the connect button, saying hello in Indonesian.
A woman’s voice came through, telling him it was a wrong number.
“Hello? Can you speak English?”
