by Sean Black
Budapest/48
A Ryan Lock Story
Sean Black
Praise for Sean Black’s Ryan Lock Thrillers
‘This series is ace. There are deservedly strong Lee Child comparisons as the author is also a Brit, his novels US-based, his character appealing, and his publisher the same.’
Sarah Broadhurst, Bookseller
‘This is a writer, and a hero, to watch.’
Geoffrey Wansell, Daily Mail
‘Black’s style is supremely slick.’
Jeremy Jehu, Daily Telegraph
‘The pace of Lee Child, and the heart of Harlan Coben.’
Joseph Finder, New York Times Bestseller (Paranoia, Buried Secrets)
‘The heir apparent to Lee Child.’
Ken Bruen, internationally bestselling author of The Guards
‘Ryan Lock is a protagonist tough enough to take on the Jacks of this world (that’s Bauer and Reacher).’
Russel McLean
‘Black’s star just keeps on rising.’
Evening Telegraph”
About The Story
It sounded too good to be true. Fly into Budapest. Handle the exchange in a straightforward kidnap for ransom case. Fly back home.
Total time involved: 48 hours.
But as private security operators Ryan Lock, and Ty Johnson are about to discover, there is no such thing as easy money.
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Chapter One
On the surface there was nothing extraordinary about Michael Lane’s kidnapping. Apart from taking place in a part of the world not particularly known for cases of kidnap for ransom – that dubious honor goes to Latin America – it was pretty much a textbook case.
The thirty-four-year-old British national was snatched a little after six o’clock on a bitterly cold Monday morning in early December. The abduction took place as he was leaving his two-bedroom apartment on Hild Ter in Budapest's District 5 to go to work at his company’s office on Tüzér Street in District 13.
According to the only known eyewitness, an elderly neighbor walking his dogs, a dark sedan had been parked at the curb along from the apartment entrance for ten minutes before Michael left for work. It was black, or dark blue, and of German manufacture. In this part of the city, which lay on the Pest side of the Danube, such cars were not uncommon
When Michael walked past, the rear passenger door opened. A slender, middle-aged white male in a dark-colored raincoat stepped out of the vehicle, blocking Michael’s path. The kidnapper pointed what appeared to be a firearm at Michael and bundled him into the back of the car. The rear windows were heavily tinted. The car took off at speed towards the river.
Minutes later the sedan was lost in traffic. The vehicle surfaced two days later, burnt out on an abandoned lot in the Kőbánya area of District 10. Michael, a business analyst with a specialist knowledge of Central and Eastern European markets, who had only been posted by his American owned company to their new Budapest office a few months earlier, was gone.
Typically, the abduction part of a kidnap for ransom takes place in the morning, and close to the target's home or work. The reason for that is simple enough. To abduct someone, you first have to know where to find them. Taking someone from inside their home involves getting past some form of security — a doorman, or cameras, or even just a couple of locked doors. That’s usually enough to rule it out. The street works better.
The most obvious pattern to establish in a person's life is their morning journey to work. After work they may go shopping, or to dinner, or to the theatre. Dinner may involve one route, the theatre quite another. They may leave early, or stay late.
The longer the kidnappers have to wait for their victim to be in position, the higher the chance they have of being spotted. From the kidnappers’ perspective, the shorter that time is, the better. The same goes for the final stage: the exchange. If a kidnapper can reduce time on that end, they will.
As crimes go, kidnapping for ransom boils down to one single factor: time. That was why the time between abduction and the kidnappers contacting the victim's family or employer had a term all of its own. It was known as ‘The Wait’, thought it could have been as easily called the weight because every second of silence that ticked by without news of the victim offered its own excruciating agony to their loved ones.
Following this particular kidnapping there followed a series of phone calls between Budapest, Michael’s wife in London, his company’s head office in New York, and more calls to London, this time to the insurance broker who had organized the company’s kidnap and ransom insurance policy. A negotiation team was called in. Talks began. Weeks later the ransom amount was finalized.
Now came the exchange. That required someone with specialist skills, and a very specific temperament. An individual or individuals who was accustomed to dealing with high pressure situations that involved safeguarding life.
A call was made to an unlisted cell phone number in Los Angeles.
Chapter Two
Los Angeles International Airport
Ryan Lock pulled his Audi into a spot next to the elevator on the second floor of the parking structure. In the front passenger seat, Lock’s business partner, Ty Johnson, shifted uncomfortably in his seat, ill at ease with something.
Lock shot him a look. "What?"
"Nothing," said Ty.
Lock put the car in park, and set the motion-activated camera he used when the car was going to be left for a prolonged period. If anyone entered the car, it would immediately relay the footage to him wherever he was in the world. The car was also fitted with a tracking device. Partly it was to do with the car's value – the basic model of the car cost north of a hundred thousand dollars, and that was before the customization that had been done on this particular vehicle. Lock had also acquired a lot of enemies over the years. He looked around the interior, making sure he was set. Ty was still glaring at him from behind his Oakley sunglasses.
"It's clearly not nothing,” said Lock.
"You know this short-term parking is like thirty bucks a day. It costs like double what the lot around the corner does," said Ty.
Lock smiled to himself. Ty could be weird with money. He liked to flash it but he had a careful side borne out of an impoverished childhood in Long Beach. "Client's covering all expenses. Airport parking included."
"Okay," huffed Ty. “As long as it ain't coming out of my share, know what I'm saying?”
Turning left into the Upper Class cabin on their scheduled Virgin Atlantic flight to London seemed to cheer Ty somewhat. The two men slid into their seats, ready for the ten hour flight.
Lock watched as Ty checked out the attractive young female crew members as they flitted back and forth, making sure that the passengers were settled and comfortable for the ten hour flight ahead.
"Tyrone?" said Lock.
Ty didn't look over. His eyes stayed fixed on a petite young blonde flight attendant who was busy serving drinks a few seats down. "Yup?"
"Eyes front, and roll your tongue back in," said Lock. "Business, remember?"
"Dude, she likes me," said Ty.
"Dude," said Lock, "you're sitting in a six thousand dollar seat. Of course she's going to pretend she likes you."
Ty finally looked over at Lock. “Pretend? Man, you’re ruining this for me."
Lock opened a manila folder, and began to flick through the contents one more time. "Pop quiz,” he said to Ty. “Wh
o's the package?"
"Michael Lane. British national. Thirty-four-years-old. White. Mom was a journalist for The London Times, and his father worked in finance in the City of London. Married for seven years to Jan. She's back in London. One child, Grace. Two years of age. Mr.. Lane is believed to be in good health. Or at least he was at the time of abduction. No underlying medical conditions. Ran the London marathon two years ago."
Ty began to lever himself up from his seat. Lock reached over and pulled him back down. It was like trying to stop a steamroller. Ty sat back with a sigh. "Yes?"
"Client?"
"Olsen Associates. Venture capital fund. Based in New York. Registered in the Caymans. Mr. Lane's part of a three-man office in Budapest covering Eastern Europe from Poland in the west to the former Soviet Republic of Latvia in the east. They have diverse interests, but their Budapest office is mostly focused on energy and agriculture. Lane was primarily tasked with finding new investment opportunities." Ty stopped. "Anything else, or can I go hit the head?"
Lock nodded him to go ahead and watched as Ty sprang from his seat to go flirt at the bar with the blonde cabin crew member. Lock turned his attention back to the file in front of him. He flicked to the section that profiled the kidnappers. Precise details were scarce but from the profile gathered from a number of local sources it looked like a small to medium-sized organized crime crew had stumbled into the kidnap-for-ransom business. It also appeared that this wasn’t their first rodeo. This was the third Western businessman targeted by Budapest-based organized crime gangs in the past six months.
In cases like this, and with corruption still being a feature of life in modern Hungary, the decision had been taken to simply pay the negotiated sum and move on. After all, that was why international companies took out K and R (kidnap for ransom) insurance. Apart from those immediately involved no one would ever know. If the cops in Hungary wanted to deal with it after his release, that would be up to them. But right now the only thing that mattered was Mr. Lane’s safe return to London.
Lock flipped to the next page. He took a sip of mineral water. If all went to plan he’d be back in this seat, with a glass of champagne in his hand in under forty eight hours.
Chapter Three
András Szarka, the negotiation team’s designated communicator, stared at the phone ringing on the table. An earnest newcomer to the world of conflict resolution, with a rock climber’s wiry frame and an easy smile, he put on his headset, and waited, counting off the seconds. He already knew who would be on the other end of the line. The only people who had the number were the kidnappers. When precisely five seconds had passed, he picked it up.
"This is András," he said in Hungarian.
Around the conference table, the two other people present, all with headphones connected to the phone, listened intently to the voice on the other end of the line. No one else spoke. They were running silent now. Only András had a headset with a microphone. Next to him, his boss, the chief negotiator, a Scottish psychologist by the name of James Robertson, scribbled a note and slid it over the desk to András.
András glanced at the note, and gave Robertson a thumbs up. "No," he said to the man on the other end of the line, "we agreed two hundred forty six thousand, and five hundred US dollars. I'd also remind you that it comes with a commitment from you that there will be no further targeting of any other Olsen Associates employees or anyone linked to them, either here in Hungary or anywhere else. Call us back when you have the exchange details."
Robertson’s thumb turned downwards, a pre-arranged signal that they had used in a number of previous instances. András ended the call. The line went dead.
Chairs slid back from the conference table. András shot his boss a look. Robertson returned it with a smile.
“Don’t worry, they’ll call back. Do we have a stopwatch on it?" Robertson asked the dark-haired woman sitting next to him. Yuksia Vertov, another local, was the negotiation team's coordinator. She held up her iPhone. The stopwatch function was already running.
Last minute re-negotiations were not uncommon. In this case, the original demand had been five million dollars. Robertson had dismissed that out of hand, countering with an offer of twenty thousand dollars. The kidnappers had blown a gasket, as he knew they would. Twenty thousand was as absurd as their demand. That was the point of it.
The kidnappers had huffed and puffed for some considerable time. They had called back and screamed abuse at András. Listening in, Robertson may not have known the precise terms being used, but there was no mistaking the displeasure.
Once he’d had András patiently explain to the kidnap gang that the brokers at Lloyds in London who had underwritten the K and R insurance policy for Olsen Associates were not about to pay out five million dollars to a mid-sized Hungarian organized crime gang, negotiations settled down. In the background, Robertson used his considerable experience of such cases to balance the need to get Michael home safe as quickly as possible with the most powerful weapon in a negotiation – escalation of commitment.
Time may have been something the kidnappers could use, but it cut both ways. The longer the negotiation, the more invested the kidnappers were in seeing some money at the end of it. Even a single hostage had to be guarded around the clock. Guards, even ones already on the pay roll, were still a cost that had to be applied against income. The longer the kidnap period ran for, the higher the cost to their organization. The higher the cost, the lower their final profit.
Yuksia tapped the red stop button on her iPhone screen as the phone rang. The display read two minutes, thirty four seconds, and ninety nine hundredths of a second. András waited for Robertson’s signal before answering.
"You are a bitch, András!Your mother is also a bitch! You are a son of a bitch."
András rolled his eyes. “You may be correct, but what did you call to tell me?”
He looked over at Robertson, checking his boss's reaction for signs of a rebuke. András liked to freestyle. Robertson allowed him some latitude, but occasionally he would over-step the mark. This time was fine though. Barring last minute complications, this was a straight up case. They were criminals. They wanted money and the hostage off their hands. It was business, regardless of the man on the line questioning the communicator's lineage.
"You pay the full amount you offered, yes?” said the kidnapper.
András looked over at Robertson. Robertson gave him the thumbs up. “Yes, of course. We're honorable people. Now what about the exchange?"
"We will call you tomorrow to make the arrangements. Be ready."
This time they allowed the kidnapper to end the call. Let them have their moment. Yuksia looked up from her iPhone. "The exchange team just landed in London. Flight was on time. I told them to meet us here."
Chapter Four
The negotiation team’s base was a suite at the Gresham Four Seasons, a five star hotel on the banks of Danube, with a jaw-dropping view of the city’s iconic Chain Bridge. In a city with some very good hotels, the Gresham was the most opulent. The rooms were luxurious. The service was impeccable. To people for whom money was no object, this was the only place to stay in the Hungarian capital.
Lock and Ty stepped out of the private car arranged by the hotel's concierge. A doorman ushered them into the lobby of the Art Noveau building. The lobby had as much in common with a regular hotel reception as a beat up Chevy pick-up truck had with a Ferrari. The centerpiece was an ornate chandelier made up of hundreds of glass leaves. Staring up at it, Ty looked almost as impressed as he had been with the cute young flight attendant he'd finally gotten a number from on their flight to London.
Lock didn't blame Ty for his slack-jawed expression. Lock rarely did these types of gigs, but when he did he always wondered why he didn't do more of them. They could be nerve-shredding, but the perks, including the hotels, were almost always excellent.
The reason was two-fold. Five star hotels usually came with a certain level of in-built security and the f
irst rule of a hostage situation was not to become one yourself. Additionally, an insurer paying a quarter of a million dollar ransom tended not to nickel and dime the personnel making sure they got what they were paying for on time and in one piece. Lock and Ty were known on The Circuit, the informal web of private security companies and contacts that had burgeoned since 9/11, as reliable operators.
Lock’s phone buzzed with an incoming text. He read it as the receptionist took their details and arranged the key cards for their rooms. As Lock read the text, Ty shooed away an over-eager bellhop who wanted to take their bags. Ty politely explained that the bags were staying with them. The bellhop retreated with a deferential nod.
Lock put his cell back in his pocket and stepped away from the desk so that he could talk to Ty without being overheard. “We’re meeting the team in a half hour for an initial briefing. Then it’s dinner at the restaurant here and then an early night. Tomorrow should be pick-up day. We have three seats booked on the last flight back to London. That’s the good news.”
Ty frowned. “What’s the bad news?”
“The last flight out of Budapest is operated by an airline called Ryanair.”
“Why’s that bad news?” asked Ty.
“You’ll figure it out. But don’t worry, we’re business class back to Los Angeles on Monday morning,” Lock said, turning back to the strikingly beautiful young brunette behind the reception desk.
They took the elevator up to the fourth floor. They had been given rooms next to each other. Lock left Ty to get unpacked, opened the door into his room and walked in. He dumped his bag on the floor, and walked to the window. The bridge was lit up. The lights reflected off the murky black waters of the Danube. Across the river he could make out the hilly slopes of the Buda side of the city. The street below was empty, the bitter cold having driven people inside. Thick gray clouds overhead threatened snow.
