“It was delivered to the front desk just minutes ago by courier.”
The Inspector read aloud: “‘We have the girl. Do not try to find her, or heaven gains another Angel. We will communicate our demands within ten hours.’”
The Inspector turned to Scotty, radiating contempt. “Have you anything to add?”
“That’s a stall,” he said. “They don’t need ten hours to communicate their demands. They need that time to move the girl to a more secure location.”
Inspector Gemmon regarded him pleasantly, rather as if he were a myna bird that might, if prompted, say something quotable but ultimately mindless.
“There was a man,” Scotty continued. “Long blond hair, athletic. Flat hard face. Adriana seemed to be sharing secrets with him. It’s possible that there was an assignation that turned into a kidnap. I have images of this man.”
The Inspector nodded, unimpressed. “We will take those images. After debriefing,” he said, “I believe your services will no longer be required.”
Without another word, Gemmon turned to his men, speaking in rapid-fire Italian. Then he left, leaving behind two men who immediately began scanning the room.
“So,” Scotty said quietly to Mason. “What was he saying?”
Mason laughed bitterly. “All employees to be debriefed, and concentrate efforts on air traffic around the hotel. And that the two Americans no longer have authority of any kind.”
Lovely.
Debriefing had taken a half hour, at the hands of a junior inspector who seemed focused and intelligent, if abrupt and somewhat condescending. By the time the clock read 3:30 A.M., they were back in Scotty’s room. Mason poured himself a bourbon. Scotty would have joined him, but knew his limitations. Mason could stop at the one drink, regardless of the stress. And right now, if Scotty started drinking, he was afraid he’d drown.
Scotty lowered his head into his hands, thinking hard, trying to sink past the shock and personal insult, to the place that was calm enough to crunch data.
Mason laid a sympathetic hand on Scotty’s shoulder, perhaps mistaking his younger friend’s posture for one of depression. “Scott… everyone makes mistakes. The trick is bouncing back from them. Your dad would expect you to bounce high.”
Scotty looked up at him, eyes clear, even if his heart was thumping too loud. “So… what is it that we’re thinking right now? Some golden-haired playboy flirts with her, and lures the silly twit into a kidnap? The ten-hour stall is to make time to slip her out of Switzerland to someplace without an extradition treaty.”
“Let’s say that’s right.”
“Everything’s happening too quickly,” Scotty whispered. “We have a diplomatic snarl… confusion of jurisdictions. You’d better believe the Belgian ambassador’s linked in, and Daddy is having a coronary. Shit.” He shook his head. Behind his words lurked a wellspring of bitter self-recrimination. If the baby climbs out the window, it isn’t the baby’s fault.
So they could trust the FOP to cover the fast-moving escape route. The only useful thing for him to do was to think in exactly the opposite fashion, to look at what the Swiss might be missing. There was a notion there, but when he tried to lay hold of it, all traces vanished into mental darkness.
And then he had it.
“I don’t buy this crap.” He called up the desktop visual display, generated a simple map, and used his finger to trace a line in the floating web. “Look at the route: aircar to private airport, some suborbital hop to a country with no extradition. Hefty ransom, ten-day wonder. Over and done.”
Mason shook his head in disgust, then cocked his head. “You don’t think so?”
“No,” Scotty said. “Look. Air traffic is faster and more convenient, but it’s also more tightly monitored. Lot more satellite power looking over your shoulder.”
“And your conclusion? Is she still in the hotel?”
“I think that the FOP is searching all the usual channels. Why duplicate that effort? If she’s here, they have the manpower to find her. We don’t. More useful for us to assume that she’s not in the hotel… but wasn’t spirited off in an aircar either. Get me all of the imagery for the hotel between eleven and one.”
A glowing translucent communications field appeared at Mason’s chest level. Mason poked at it with his forefinger. A web of tiny laser lines blossomed, linking data points like constellations. In a hundred seconds Mason had accessed a sky-eye view, focusing and adjusting until Scotty was peering down at the Exeter hotel’s roof and surrounding block. Then he ran it backward four hours: cars flew and rolled up to the hotel, vans and limos pulled away, and foot traffic streamed in and out of the front doors.
Scotty’s eyes narrowed. “What’s that?” he asked, poking a finger into the shimmering web. A blocky truck, larger than a limo or passenger vehicle.
“A garbage van?”
“At one in the morning? Do you know what the usual pickup time might be?”
“On it,” Mason said, and pulled away to speak quietly into his communicator.
Scotty gazed at the grid, dreaming.
When Mason returned to him, his round face was grave. “The usual pickup is a garbage chute leading down to a disposal tunnel. The garbage van services other, smaller hotels, and occasionally drops by for an emergency pickup.”
“So… who called the emergency?”
“We don’t know. It could have been one of a dozen people. So far, nothing. They’ll get back to me.”
“Now, look,” Scotty said. “Whatever happens, we’re taking the heat. I say that we jump on this. Tap into the EU security satellite, backtrack and lock on to the garbage truck. Let’s see where it went.”
Mason wagged his head sorrowfully. “We can’t tap into it. We’ve lost our courtesy pass.”
Damn. “I doubt we can get her father to help us… so let’s ask another question: What’s the route? Where’s the terminal, or wherever the truck goes? That might do it.”
Mason rolled his eyes up toward the ceiling. “But even if they didn’t diverge from their route… they might have stopped two dozen times. She could be anywhere.”
“Let’s feel optimistic. Let’s take the answer with the fewest moving parts. So… they need a garbage truck. That’s available at their central motor pool. Contacts there could provide a vehicle and a safe hiding space, as opposed to hijacking a truck-any police reports of vehicle theft?”
A minute of searching dispatches on the Web. “None that I can find.”
“And then dropping her off at another secure location before finishing the route…”
“Or just coordinating with a ground or aircar…” Scotty could see that Mason was getting a headache. Couldn’t blame him. “I don’t know. It’s pretty thin.”
Mason shrugged. “Had my drink. Got nothing better to do. Let’s go do something stupid.”
3
Aire-la-ville, Geneva
They had arrived from the east, slipping over the horizon before dawn brushed the darkness from the eastern sky.
For twenty minutes, Scotty Griffin and Foley Mason had camped on a grassy picnic area a thousand meters from the outer fence of the Cheneviers waste treatment plant. While Scotty studied the T-shaped building with binoculars, Mason fiddled and fussed over his briefcase-sized deep-scan equipment. The hundreds of windows on the broad head were mostly darkened, the parking lot with its rows of charging posts only one-tenth filled.
Scotty and Mason didn’t have extensive apparatus. They’d have preferred police-level hardware, or, better, military quality. But all they had was the standard kit Scotty carried on any job, anywhere in the world: first aid, communications and tracking gear, scanning equipment.
