The Vessel

by Taylor Stevens

  Outer trappings were never the disguise, merely subtle cues to distract the eye, to confuse the senses and fill in the peripheral snapshot judgments that people made hundreds of times each day.

  Attitude and behavior were what truly convinced the mind.

  Subterfuge.

  One had to become the illusion, the man beyond suspicion.

  CHAPTER 8

  A single piece of information could be manipulated into something more, but too many turned into a glut that muddied the path and obscured the trail.

  The inexperienced, like a pack of puppies with attention deficit disorder, attempted to chase down every bit; they diffused energy and focus on half leads and false leads, coming away with small portions of many parts that ultimately left them empty-handed.

  The strategist sorted weak evidence from strong. Cast aside that which would distract, allowing the hunter’s instinct to pull her toward the prey, wary, always wary at every bend for reversal and retaliation.

  LATE AFTERNOON SUN streamed through the curtains, Johann Christian Bach filled the hotel room in full symphony, and Munroe sat cross-legged on the bed balancing an index card against a knee while big, thick print transformed a single fact into ink that filled the white space.

  Finished with the card, she set it on top of a small stack and continued this way, card by card, until every connecting point in this international spider’s web had a marker of its own and there was no piece left unaccounted for.

  She shuffled the cards and dealt them out in sadist’s poker, placing each fact faceup in an ordered array: a face, a yacht, the name of the yacht captain, a Cayman corporation, two European AGs—corporations—and the names of law firms and lawyers in three countries—far too many lawyers—each part of which was in some way connected to the Dog Man and his yacht. Choice was in the picking: the man with the most to lose was always the first to speak.

  Munroe stood and, with her eyes tracing out the lines before her, walked the edge of the bed, following piece to piece, mind stretching out move against move, stretching to where each fragment would lead: every name, every fact, had the potential, eventually, to take her to him.

  And there was this.

  Munroe reached over the center of the bed and picked up the card that she’d placed as the hub within the spokes:

  The name and phone number of a contact, a man involved in the registration of the Omicron II in the Caymans. A name not listed on any of the documents, a name that did not sit on any board; a man who, by appearances, was not authorized to sign on behalf of any entity. Merely a man, within a maze of lawyers, who hired others and wanted to be kept informed.

  Munroe tapped the card against her fingers and gazed out the window while the symphony rose, lilting and falling, filling the room and soothing the savage inside her head.

  Teresa Yates had been the one to know.

  Gaining access to the table had been the most difficult part of the evening and that hardly a challenge among challenges: a request for directions; a dinner meeting missed; the disappointment of spending an evening alone in such a beautiful location; an invitation to sit, followed by charm and banter and fluid conversation.

  They’d shared one too many drinks, and between Munroe’s subtle touch and open flirtation, under the weight of misdirection that held no threat of violating confidences, of questions based off cold reading and the possibility of familiar friends in their disparate pasts, Teresa couldn’t help but tell.

  Well yes, it’s the same name, but the person I’m thinking of is tall and blond and he is Swiss.

  Oh, that’s not him. The man I work with has black hair. Austrian, I think. Let me look, I have his information in my phone.

  Pause. A glance over the details. A chance to memorize.

  No, that’s not him.

  Laughter.

  That would have been uncanny.

  Very. A toast. To friends we’ve never met and only think we have!

  To friends.

  There could have been a hundred worse ways to spend the evening.

  Teresa, with a giggle like tinkling bells and a razor wit that silenced them, was a charming, eloquent, and very intelligent woman. But confidence was the gateway to fools and self-doubt was the strength of the wise.

  Teresa Yates had been easy.

  She would never know what she had told and would never think to remember it was worth remembering.

  Munroe placed the card back on the bed, hub within the spokes, then nudged the rest aside and allowed the hunter’s instinct to pull her toward the prey.

  ON THE SIDEWALK, outside Vienna International Airport, the air held a shock of chill that settled down in a lingering damp, a dreary contrast to the warm greenery of islands left behind.

  Winter would be here soon, marking just over two months of hunting.

  Munroe drew in the mix of drizzled mist and exhaust fumes.

  Cigarette burn drifted in bursts from three nearby smokers, who sucked in silent desperation for the relief they’d had to forgo while in the air.

  Another airport, another mix of fragrance: another cornucopia of emotional memories, these still fresh and vivid, the paint still wet from late spring, when she’d pulled children destined for sexual slavery from putrid cells and the reward had been to watch helplessly, unable to prevent the torture and death that followed.

  Munroe zipped up the lightweight leather jacket and pulled the newsboy cap down tighter. Shifted the backpack slung over her shoulder, and dragged the suitcase forward in search of a taxi.

  How much pain, how much death and suffering before she finally broke for good? How much more until she fell permanently into the darkness of the abyss and shut off from humanity forever?

  Each waking moment took her closer to the edge.

  She clung to the pain to keep her upright.

  As long as she could feel, she was still alive.

  Munroe reached the taxi area. The driver stepped around to help with the suitcase, but she waved him off. She shoved the bag, wheels first, into the backseat and sat beside it.

  The driver took her to Wien Hauptbahnhof, Vienna’s main rail station, and she made the trip through the city with her head tipped against the glass and her eyes closed. Vienna, the city of music, modern and steeped in history, destination of tourists from around the world, and she was blind to the beauty. Behind the sunglasses, behind the eyelids, strategy churned and she visualized probability against possibility.

  The driver made an attempt at conversation. She ignored him, and he didn’t speak again until he pulled into the taxi lane and laid claim to a hefty fare that she could have easily avoided had she taken one of the many trains or buses that connected the airport to the station.

  She paid cash and added ten percent, the standard for Austria, nothing more, nothing less, nothing that would give him reason to remember her. She grabbed hold of the suitcase and pulled it out the door with her, back into the chill, and followed signs for the storage lockers.

  At the station Munroe abandoned the suitcase, the accoutrements of her trip to the islands, just as she had the trappings of immigrant homelessness when she’d left Italy. She might have to return to Florence for what she’d left behind, or she might not, just as she might eventually need what she left in storage today. Regardless, she would have to repurpose and reoutfit to build the next subterfuge, and everything in the suitcase was excess—unusable in the moment—and added weight that would only slow her down and draw attention.

  At the counter she purchased a ticket for Graz.

  She had a name and a business address courtesy of Teresa, and, as a gift from the Internet with its permanency in privacy invasion, she also had a face.

  Munroe studied that face now in the form of a printout. She sat with her back to the wall in one of the station cafés, sipping coffee, pages spread out on the table while she waited for the train to arrive.

  How simple a thing it was to find a person when that person had no idea he was being hunted an
d had made no effort to hide: name, birth date, spouse, children, schools, social media, shopping preferences—all obtainable without ever putting foot to pavement or stepping away from a desk. Forget the NSA scandals, cell phone snooping, and government databases; the average Mary, average Joe, was the worst of all culprits. Even in Europe, where privacy laws were stricter and still meant something in a practical sense, so much was available between mouse clicks, courtesy of data aggregation, courtesy of big business, courtesy of marketing, courtesy of a world population that had no idea how the intricacies of their personal lives were bought and sold and publicly traded.

  Of those who knew, few cared enough to change habits.

  If one wasn’t doing anything illegal, what need was there to hide?

  By the time they saw the need, if they ever did, it would be too late.

  Munroe ran a finger over the wife’s face and, after she’d studied the picture for several moments, traded it out for one of the children: two boys, ages seven and nine. They stood side by side in lacrosse uniforms on the edge of a green field, both of them sporting their father’s black hair and mother’s deep blue eyes.

  The man with the most to lose was always the first to speak.

  Munroe stacked the pages, tapped the edges against the table, and tucked them into a folder. He was a man who expected to be kept in contact, whose number was intended as a failsafe for a lawyer should there be issues elsewhere: he was a man who would know. He would be part of the Dog Man’s inner circle, would be privy to name and nationality, home address and sources of income.

  But these were details that held little interest in the moment.

  In the glut of information she had a dozen ways to find these types of minutiae easier and faster than making a trip to Graz.

  Names could be changed. Identities shielded. Companies closed.

  She had no desire to perpetually pursue her target around the globe.

  The inexperienced attempted to chase down every bit.

  What she wanted, needed, was the yacht.

  Find it once, and she would have the Dog Man forever.

  The yacht was his lair, the place he fed his addictions, his need, his craving; was where he would always feel safest and yet be the weakest.

  The yacht was where he would return no matter how long he kept away or where he traveled. And no matter how protected he might be at home, by car, with walls and bodyguards, cameras and bulletproof glass, she could get to him on the water.

  Munroe cast a final look around the small café and outward to the passersby, searching for expressions and body posture that indicated anything more than a passing interest in her. Finding none, she stashed the document folder in her backpack and left for the tracks.

  CHAPTER 9

  Munroe made the twenty-minute walk from Graz Hauptbahnhof to the rental car agency, cap pulled down, eyes hidden behind sunglasses, and with the pack across her back.

  She scanned expressions as she went, noting shoes and clothing and the posture and pace of fellow pedestrians; gauging the stop-start tempo of the streets, drawing in the rhythm of the city: bicycles, buses, pedestrians, cars; sidewalk greetings, dogs on leashes; crosswalks, mom-and-pop storefronts, traffic lights, and signage, all holding clues to the tics and quirks she must mimic to blend.

  Every city had a unique heartbeat.

  This one was cold and beautiful.

  Graz had just over a quarter million people in a tight scenic package of rivers and mountains; carried a history so old that the stones seemed to cry out with the thunder of medieval knights, and, beneath layers of youthful faces and friendly gestures, the city breathed propriety, conservative and formal.

  At the rental car office Munroe handed over a Spanish driver’s license to match a Spanish passport, filled out paperwork, and presented the requisite cash deposit needed to avoid the digital trail left by credit cards.

  Such was the beauty of Europe—the beauty of everywhere outside the United States—a world of economies functioning fully without the need to carry plastic. It was head-shaking, really, how the American consumer culture had become so conjoined to the ubiquitous sixteen digits that paying cash for big-ticket items marked a person as potential drug dealer or terrorist; had created a country where carrying large sums of cash was reason enough to have the money confiscated by law enforcement under asset forfeiture laws. No warrant, no arrest, no proof of wrongdoing, no recourse—just poof, money gone, and feel free to continue on your now cashless way.

  Welcome to the land of the free.

  Munroe pocketed the keys and stepped out into the lot, back into the swirl of wind and leaves and a chill now tempered by the late afternoon sun.

  Behind the wheel, she dumped her bag onto the passenger seat and retrieved printouts from her folder. Flipped through multiple pages of online maps, each one taking her in for a tighter view of her target areas. Then she set them aside and put the car in gear. A smart phone would have saved time; a cell phone, period, was out of the question. She might as well just start carrying a tracking beacon.

  The office was her first hit, and she found it in the old part of town on the ground floor of a three-story stone building with a façade that hinted at money and respectability, and with signage that offered no clue as to what the business did.

  The house was outside the city limits, where manicured farmland rolled along hills in all directions, situated twenty or so meters up a gravel strip off the two-lane main road: a modern house surrounded by well-tended grounds with laundry on the line and a car in the courtyard.

  Munroe made several passes by the house and then returned to Graz and drove the streets of the old city, up one and down another, widening out until the map in her head was fully formed: a precaution against falling into the traps laid by unfamiliarity and ignorance.

  A WEEK OF evenings and weekends spent watching the house and waiting for the man who would know brought Munroe the routines and patterns of the wife and children: bystanders caught up in the sins of the father.

  Five business days of watching the office brought only secondary targets—two men and one woman who showed up at nine and left at six—faces that Munroe separated, over the course of the first few mornings, from the employees who worked at the businesses on the upper floors. She followed them home. Learned their patterns just well enough to know where to apply pressure if fate forced her in that direction, and then let them be.

  More difficult than finding information was having the patience to sit through mind-numbing nothingness in its acquisition; to allow days of inactivity and nights of no progress to pass without the First World stress of time consciousness. But it was often from within this nothingness that strategy flowed, as it did now.

  She’d needed four weeks of immersion on the streets and within the slums of Italy’s cities to pass invisible into the yacht yard and then out again with her trove of information; she’d need far less to access the building across the street, though invisibility would be harder to come by.

  A cheap laptop became both temporary disguise and tool.

  A café table against the inside window became her office.

  Internet VoIP programs worked as a phone to place international calls.

  Prepaid credit cards, loaded with cash long before she’d left the United States, unused and therefore unconnected to any of her prior movements, became a weapon.

  With the doors to the office always within sight, in between jotting occasional observation notes, Munroe ordered clothes and had them shipped to the local FedEx office; paid for a business mailing service, phone answering service, and a registered agent in Delaware; filed to incorporate. She bought domain and web hosting, and, over the following days of waiting and watching for a target that had yet to surface, she utilized stock photography and text lifted off a multitude of websites to build deeper layers for the public image behind suit, tie, and business cards.

  Like driving city streets to map them in her head, creating this foundation of l
egitimacy was a precaution she hoped never to need but would rely on to save her if called upon. And it was a tool with additional uses.

  Munroe shut the laptop.

  She glanced up again at the building entrance, took note of the woman who shut the door behind her, and jotted down the time. If the man who would know wouldn’t come to her, she was ready to come to him.

  CHAPTER 10

  There was only one difference between a man on the run who stayed on the run and the man who found himself bagged and tagged.

  Discounting human error, of course, and stupidity, all things being equal, just one difference.

  Resources.

  Freedom boiled down to time and money.

  Yours against theirs.

  Anything and anyone could eventually be found. Didn’t matter how well hidden, how deeply buried, how far off the map, or even how badly the thing was wanted; the wars of dueling wit, of yes-I-will and no-you-won’t, were fueled by motivation and won through resource attrition.

  Governments had unlimited resources.

  Blow up a few buildings? Steal classified secrets? Thumb your nose at the powers that be? In spite of the best-planned disappearance and a world of wealth, the runner would be shit out of luck. Might take ten years to hunt him down, but they would get their man.

  For everyone else, there was a chance.

  For everyone else, there were the resource limitations of the hunter.

  For everyone else, but not for her target.

  She had time. Skill. And well-funded accounts at her disposal.

  She’d built her life by acquiring for others what they couldn’t get for themselves and had been handsomely paid for the effort. Her balance sheet had been in the black, had diversified into multiple investments long before the Burbank job in Central Africa had come along. She wasn’t stupid about money.

  She’d moved her business to Singapore years before she made that five-million-dollar payday. Salaried as an employee, she earned and was taxed on an amount just above what it took to cover her living expenses, and, given her lifestyle, that wasn’t much. Her company and its resources made more off interest and investments than she could spend in a year, whether she was working or not.