Dead or Alive

35

GOOSE CHASE,” Brian Caruso said, staring out the car’s passenger window at the scenery. “Worse places to do it, though, I guess.” Sweden was damned pretty, with lots of green and, as far as they’d seen since leaving Stockholm, spotless highways. Not a scrap of trash to be seen. They were ninety miles north of the Swedish capital; twelve miles to the northeast, the waters of the Gulf of Bothnia sparkled under a partially overcast sky. “Where do you suppose they keep the bikini team?” the Marine asked now.

Dominic laughed. “They’re all computer-generated, bro. Nobody’s ever seen them in person.”

“Bullshit; they’re real. How far is this place? What’s it called? Soderhamn?”

“Yeah. About a hundred fifty miles.”

Jack and Sam Granger had given them the briefing, and while the Caruso Brothers agreed with the chief of ops’s “long shot” assessment of the job, they also liked the idea of beating the bushes. Plus, it was a good way to sharpen their tradecraft. So far most of their work at The Campus had been in Europe, and the more time one got to train in a real operating environment, the better. They both felt more than a little naked without guns, but this, too, was an operational reality: More often than not, when overseas, they would find themselves unarmed.

How exactly Jack had found Hlasek Air’s connection to Soderhamn’s tiny airport neither of them knew, but wherever the missing Dassault Falcon had ended up, its last known touchdown had been there. It was, Dominic explained, a lot like tracking down a missing person: Where were they last seen, and by whom? How exactly they’d go about answering those questions once they reached Soderhamn was another matter altogether. Jack’s suggestion, which had been offered with a sheepish grin, would probably turn out to be prescient: Improvise. To that end, The Campus’s documents people, who lived in some cubbyhole office in the bowels of the building, had provided them with letterheads, business cards, and credentials from the claims-investigation division of Lloyd’s of London, XL Insurance Switzerland’s parent company.

It was early afternoon when they reached the southern outskirts of Soderhamn, population 12,000, and Dominic turned east off the E4, following aircraft pictograph signs for five miles before pulling into the mostly empty airport parking lot. They counted three cars. Through the eight-foot hurricane fence they saw a line of four white-roofed hangar buildings. A lone fuel bowser tooled across the cracked tarmac.

“Good idea to come on a weekend, I guess,” Brian observed. The theory was that the airport would be lightly manned on a Saturday afternoon, which meant, they hoped, less chance of them coming across anyone with real authority. With greater luck they’d find the office staffed by a part-time minimum-wager who just wanted to pass the afternoon with a commensurate minimum of fuss. “Score another one for cuz.”

They got out, walked over to the office, and went inside. An early-twenties blond kid sat behind the counter, his feet propped on a filing cabinet. In the background a boom box blasted the latest version of Swedish techno-pop. The kid stood up and turned down the music.

“God middag,” the kid said.

Dominic laid his credentials out on the counter. “God middag.”

It took but five minutes of cajoling and oblique threats to talk their way into the airport’s daily flight logs, which showed only two arrivals of Dassault Falcons in the last eight weeks, one from Moscow a month and a half ago and one from Zurich-based Hlasek Air three weeks ago. “We’ll need to see the manifest, flight plan, and maintenance record for this aircraft,” Dominic said, tapping the binder.

“I don’t have that here. It would be in the main hangar.”

“Let’s go there, then.”

The kid picked up the phone.

The on-duty flight mechanic, Harold, was barely older than the desk clerk and even more unsettled by their appearance. Insurance investigator, missing aircraft, and maintenance records was a trio of phrases no flight mechanic wanted to hear, especially when combined with Lloyd’s of London, which had for nearly three hundred years enjoyed and wielded cachet like few other companies in the world.

Harold showed them into the maintenance office, and in short order Dominic and Brian had before them the records they’d requested and two cups of coffee. Harold loitered in the doorway until Brian gave him a you’re dismissed stare that only a Marine officer can generate.

The flight plan Hlasek Air filed listed the Falcon’s destination as Madrid, Spain, but flight plans were just that: plans. Once outside Soderhamn’s airspace, the Falcon could have gone anywhere. There were complications to this, of course, but nothing insurmountable. The maintenance records seemed similarly routine until they got past the summary and read the details. In addition to a topping off of the Falcon’s fuel tanks, the on-duty flight mechanic had performed a diagnostics scan of the aircraft’s transponder.

Dominic got up, tapped on the office’s glass window, and waved Harold over. He showed the mechanic the maintenance report. “This mechanic-Anton Rolf-we’d like to talk to him.”

“Uh, he’s not here today.”

“We assumed as much. Where can we find him?”

“I don’t know.”

Brian said, “What’s that mean?”

“Anton hasn’t been to work in a week. No one’s seen him or heard from him.”

The Soderhamn police, Harold further explained, had come to the airport the previous Wednesday, following up on a missing-person report from Rolf’s aunt, with whom Anton lived. Her nephew had failed to return home after work a week ago Friday.

Assuming the police would have already done the customary legwork, Brian and Dominic drove into Soderhamn, checked into the Hotel Linblomman, and slept until six, then found a nearby restaurant, where they ate and killed an hour before walking three blocks to a pub called Dalig Radisa-the Bad Radish-which, according to Harold, was Anton Rolf’s preferred hangout.

After doing a walk-around survey of the block, they pushed through the bar’s front door and were struck by a wave of cigarette smoke and heavy metal, and engulfed in a sea of blondhaired bodies either jostling for position at the bar or dancing wherever free space was to be found.

“At least it isn’t that techno shit,” Brian yelled over the cacophony.

Dominic grabbed a passing waitress and used his halting Swedish to order two beers. She disappeared and returned five minutes later. “You speak English?” he asked her.

“Yes, English. You are English?”

“American.”

“Hey, American, that’s great, yeah?”

“We’re looking for Anton. You seen him?”

“Which Anton? There are many that come here.”

“Rolf,” Brian replied. “Mechanic, works at the airport.”

“Yes, okay, Anton. He has not been here for a week, I think.”

“You know where we can find him?”

The waitress’s smile faded a bit. “Why are you looking for him?”

“We met him on Facebook last year. Told him next time we were over here we’d look him up.”

“Oh, hey, Facebook. That’s cool. His friends are here. They might know. Over there, in the corner.” She pointed to a table surrounded by half a dozen twentysomethings in jerseys.

“Thanks,” Brian said, and the waitress turned to go. Dominic stopped her. “Hey, just curious: Why’d you ask why we were looking for Anton?”

“There were others. Not nice like you.”

“When?”

“Last Tuesday? No, sorry, Monday.”