“I’ll take you to a car. Please do not remove the glasses. The three of us will sit in the rear of the car and someone will drive us to where you will be provided with your new identity and airline tickets to Sydney.”
The man and the woman said nothing. Later they were wondering why they didn’t feel fear. The ride in the car took place in silence and ended an hour later in a garage. After the automatic garage gate had closed they were asked to remove the glasses. The man whom they had met in the restaurant took them into the house and introduced them to an elderly woman whose age was hard to guess. She looked elegant, slim, was friendly and could have been anywhere between sixty five and seventy five.
The next forty eight hours they spent either in the company of the elderly woman or amongst themselves in a two-room-apartment. The window shutters were closed and could not be opened, but the apartment was well lit, comfortable and with everything they needed. The woman provided them with Australian passports, driving licenses, birth certificates and other identity documents. She gave them two suitcases and everything a woman and a man need to start a new life in another country: things to wear, an electric shaver, toothbrushes, jewellery and dozens of other items. But most importantly, she spent hours with them practising their new identity und past.
They left the building the same way they had arrived, through the garage and with the non-transparent glasses covering their eyes. Just before they arrived at the airport they were asked to remove the glasses. Two ours later they boarded a plane which took them from New York to Los Angeles. After a three hour stopover in Los Angeles they boarded another plane which took them to Sydney.
They realised should they ever be caught and tell their story, there was nothing they could prove and it was unlikely that anybody would believe them. In a strangely comforting way this added to their sense of security.
6
The explosion was massive. Prior to it there had been two phone calls which allowed the authorities to evacuate the building and surrounding area. Without these warnings many people would have been killed.
The first call came from a woman living in the apartment building. She phoned the police and reported strange noises. It was 2 am and the noises came from the apartment which had belonged to the murdered publisher. This was two and a half weeks after his death. His apartment was still sealed and not to be entered, although the forensics had finished their job. It remained sealed because the police were still looking for relatives of the murdered man, someone who could shed light on his past and lawfully inherit his belongings.
The phone call was put through to Mike Thompson since he was in charge of the investigation. He had gone to bed only an hour earlier but decided to check out what was going on and drove to the address in Greenwich Village. He was almost there when he received a call on his cell phone and was told that the police had just received a warning that the entire apartment building was about to be blown up. Mike ordered an immediate evacuation. Within minutes he, other police officers and the fire brigade were at the scene and ensured that everybody got out of the building. To be on the safe side, they also evacuated the two neighbouring buildings.
Less than two minutes after everybody was evacuated (some people had to be forced to leave), a massive explosion converted the apartment building into a pile of mortar, bricks, metal, plastic and dust.
“I bet there was something in his apartment that we missed and now someone made sure that it remains missed,” Mike said to Christina who had just arrived at the scene. “They must have watched the evacuation and exploded the building by remote control,” Christina added. “The timing of the explosion, just after we had evacuated everybody, was too good to be coincidental.”
“They are here, watching us right now.” Neither Mike nor Christina turned around. They pretended that all their interest was directed towards the collapsed building.
Mike took his cell phone and made a call. Christina could hear him say, “Can you get a few camera people here A S A P and make sure that at least two cameras constantly record what’s going on around the neighbourhood. I want to see the faces of the people at the windows, I want to see people leaving the area, I want to see people on the street, people watching and I want to see the face of every person who behaves the slightest bit suspiciously, like people who do not appear shocked, or people who keep watching the police instead of staring at what had happened. I am especially interested in people who keep watching me. How soon can you be here? – Good. I owe you one.”
“Who was that?”
“A media contact.”
“You are not telling me more?”
“Not now.”
It was lunchtime when Mike and Christina left the scene. Mike went home for another two or three hours of sleep, his partner went to the office. He knew that he did not function well when he was very tired. Last night he went to bed at one o’clock and was woken an hour later. One hour of sleep was not enough. Whatever had to be done next could wait. This was his well known and accepted attitude.
When he arrived in the office at 4 pm he received a phone call. A male voice said, “It’s impressive that you can sleep after such a night.”
“I’m sure you’re not telling me who you are and I’m also sure that you didn’t phone me to talk to me about my sleeping habits. What do you want?”
“You are a remarkable man. You are compassionate, even towards a woman who kills her husband, but you can also be straight to the point to a degree that one might think you are arrogant.”
Mike decided within a fraction of a second what to do. He hung up and disconnected his phone from the wall socket. He was spooked. The man on the phone knew too much about him. Mike had the feeling that he was being watched, not just generally, but at this very moment. He pulled down the blinds of his office windows. The room was now semi-dark. There is still the possibility, he thought, that a microphone, or even a camera, is hidden somewhere in my office. There are cameras that have the size of a fly’s head. Impossible to find in a hurry. I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all. And why did he make this reference to me being a compassionate man, even towards a woman who kills her husband? Whoever he or they are, they know too much. This is not the work of one man. This is the work of an organization. This is big. Be careful Mike.
In his desk were four drawers, one of them was permanently locked. The lock was a sophisticated triple reverse cylinder lock and the only key for the lock was in Mike’s wallet. Mike took a blanket from the top of the cupboard. He used this blanket sometimes when he slept in his office. He covered himself fully with the blanket.
The next five minutes he listened to the world. The blanket did not move.
After he had heard enough, he took his wallet from his left trouser pocket and the key from the wallet. He went to half a dozen drawers and cupboards in his office, covered the areas where he went to with the blanket and whilst he and the area were hidden under the blanket he pretended that he was looking at things. He also went to the locked drawer, making sure that both he and the drawer remained hidden underneath the blanket; he opened the drawer, took a cell phone out of it and wrote and sent two text messages. Next he scribbled a little note on a piece of paper. A few seconds later someone knocked at the door of his office. He pushed the folded note underneath the door to the corridor outside his office. Once more he went to various parts of his office, still making sure that he and whatever he pretended to be doing remained invisible to someone who might be watching him through a hidden camera. Finally he sat in his chair for nearly a further ten minutes, still covered by the blanket, and listened to the world once more. For someone watching the blanket it must have appeared that he was doing absolutely nothing. He seemed frozen. As before, the blanket did not show the slightest movement.
He took the blanket off his head, folded it and put it back on the top of the cupboard where it had been before. He left his office and went for a walk before he entered the same bar in which the murder of the publisher
had taken place two and a half weeks earlier. He sat on the barstool that was occupied by the man who had yelled the warning and saved his life. He watched the entrance to the bar. He did not expect that the two men who had killed the publisher and injured him would appear again, although, he thought, one never knows, but he wanted to see if his listening mind would detect something which the surveillance cameras might have missed.
He ordered a beer and waited and listened. The two men arrived. Mike knew that his mind replayed what he had seen on the security videos. One of the men opened the door and they walked in side by side. So far, nothing new.
They were nervous. It didn’t show on their faces or in their behaviour, but Mike could feel it. They had done this kind of thing before, not that very long ago, and … Mike realized, something had gone wrong. Mike’s eyes were open and he could clearly see the men; at the same time he watched his thoughts. This is not something I am inventing, his thoughts said. These men are nervous. They are afraid of making another mistake. As if this was their last chance.
He repeated, This is not something I am inventing. Something had gone wrong. They are afraid of making another mistake. He couldn’t see question marks behind these statements, not the first time when they occurred to him and not the second time, when the statements repeated themselves. He thought, This is real. This is real.
But what had gone wrong? What the hell had gone wrong? Why were these two guys so damned nervous? What mistake did they make? And when? And where?
7
When Tony Jackson and Nancy Baliva were just about to put their luggage on a trolley they were asked by two men, plain clothed policemen Tony concluded, to accompany them.
The last time Tony committed a con in France was over five years ago. He had sold a property which belonged to a corrupt politician for three million euros and transferred the money to one of his numbered accounts in the Bahamas. At the time he was certain that he got away clean; he had not been identified and had left nothing behind that would have enabled the police to trace him. He looked at Nancy and expected her to look at him with a big question mark on her face. But she did not look at him. Her face had become a mask. She showed no emotion, she looked straight ahead and followed one of the policemen. The other policeman walked at her side at a distance of about a metre. Neither of the two men seemed particularly interested in him, Tony.
“What about our luggage?” he asked the policeman walking beside Nancy. The man pointed to a uniformed policeman who had just arrived at the scene. “He will make sure that nothing will happen to your luggage.”
“Thank you,” Tony replied. “Is there anything wrong?” It was not about him, he was confident about that.
There was no reply to his question. He stopped and asked, “Are you kidnapping us?”
Nancy also stopped. The two plain clothed policemen stopped and looked at Tony. The way they looked at him, very intently, it was obvious that they thought it was totally inappropriate for him to question what was going on. The one who walked beside Nancy and had asked her and Tony to follow them replied in perfect English, “You could say we are kidnapping the lady. Since you are in her company you may regard yourself also as kidnapped. Is this to your satisfaction?”
“Do you always answer simple questions in such a long-winded arrogant tone?”
There was a long silence. Nancy looked at Tony for the first time since they were approached by the two men. Tony could see surprise in her face. He felt that she wasn’t sure whether she should be impressed by his behaviour or should ask him to shut up and not cause any trouble.
The silence grew longer. The uniformed man with their two suitcases on the trolley was standing behind Tony, also waiting for what was going to happen next.
One of the two plain clothed men, the one who had walked in front of Nancy, said, “Please excuse my colleague, he was trying to be humorous. We of course are not kidnapping you.” He showed his police identification and continued, “We would like to ask the lady a few questions and for this purpose we would prefer the privacy of a room in the customs section of the airport. If you would please be kind enough to follow us, it would be appreciated.”
“Thank you,” Tony replied. “Would you mind if I exchanged a few words with the lady.”
“No, of course not.”
Tony took Nancy at her arm and guided her a few metres away from the men in a direction which would not have been a good direction for an attempted escape. The policemen realised this and did not interfere.
Tony whispered to Nancy, “Right now there is not enough time for you to tell me what’s going on, therefore just one question. Do you want me to arrange an escape or do we go along with these guys and take it from there?”
For just a brief moment Nancy looked at him both surprised and attentively, before she said, “Have you escaped from situations like this before?”
“No. But I have seen it on TV and I think it is doable.”
“I see. – Let’s go with them and see what they want. I’ll let you know when I think we should attempt an escape.”
“Good decision.”
They walked back to the waiting men and Tony said, “My friend indicated that we are not in a hurry. We are happy to follow you.” He could see that the policeman whom he had asked a few minutes earlier if he always answered simple questions in a long-winded arrogant tone found it hard not to explode in an outburst of anger.
His colleague replied, “Thank you for your cooperation.”
Tony thought, He’s the dangerous one; doesn’t give anything away; better keep an eye on him.
8
Of the two text messages Mike had sent from his undisclosed cell phone, the first one was addressed to his partner Christina. It stated, “In 2 min knock at my door, do not speak or open, wait for message at bottom of door.” The 2nd message went to the elderly lady who a few days earlier had provided new identities to the woman who had killed her husband and to her boyfriend. This message said, “Arrange immediate surveillance of factory of murdered publisher, but do not enter building. Explosion possible.”
The message that Mike had scribbled on a piece of paper and pushed through the gap underneath his office door was similarly short and precise. It said, “Arrange immediate follow up inspection of factory of murdered publisher. Danger! Explosives may be planted. Get explosives experts and sniffer dogs in first. Arrange personally. Nobody to use phones or other tech com stuff until explosives experts and dogs have finished job.”
The elderly woman immediately dispatched two women, both in their early forties, to the address of the building in which the dead publisher’s factory was located on the 2nd floor. The women went in two separate cars and parked the vehicles at differing locations from where they could observe and take pictures of every person that entered or left the building. They realized there was also the possibility that someone may leave or enter the building through a rear entrance. It could even be that the building had a backyard with a connection to another backyard and from there to another building. However, in order to quickly explore these possibilities they would have had to enter the building, which they were instructed not to do.
At first, before Mike scribbled his instructions for Christina on a piece of paper, he had intended to send a text message with his instructions to Christina. But at the last moment he changed his mind. He could not be sure to what extent his enemies had managed to hack into the police department’s phone, cell phone and internet systems. Because of this uncertainty, in order to get his instruction to Christina in the most secure way possible, he decided on the somewhat unusual and old-fashioned approach he had taken.
The two women arrived at the building ahead of the police. It had taken Christina several minutes of running staircases up and down to coordinate the explosives experts and the people who handled the dogs.
Four uniformed policemen and two dogs arrived at the scene. The two women took photos of them, although they were pretty certain that these photos
were unimportant. Pictures of the people who either had planted the explosives already or who were meant to arrive to plant them were what they were after.
One dog, one dog handler and one explosives expert went into the basement area. The building had a security guard who let them in and unlocked the basement doors. One dog, one dog handler and one explosives expert rushed up to the second floor and entered the factory. The dog in the basement discovered explosives within minutes. The mechanism was hidden in an unobtrusive cardboard box. The explosives expert opened the top of the box and recognized immediately what he was dealing with. There was a cell phone with a thin wire going from the phone to the ignition-device beside the actual explosive pack. The pack was a substantial container approximately one foot by one foot and two feet long. Without hesitation the expert removed the SIM card from the cell phone.
The dog handler who had watched him asked, “Why didn’t you simply cut the wire?”
“If I had, we would be dead by now.”
“How do you know?”
“Never trust wires. It’s as simple as that.”
The two ran up to the second floor where the dog was still rushing from corner to corner and room to room without having found anything. “Help him!” the dog handler who had just arrived said to the dog who had located the bomb in the basement.
The dog just stood there with his head high and sniffed. He looked at the expert who had disposed of the bomb in the basement only minutes earlier. “You’d better get out of here,” the dog handler said to him. “The smell of the basement explosives is attached to you and that’s a problem for the dog.” The expert left the factory area. The dog found a second bomb a few minutes later in a store room. The second bomb disposal expert inspected the parcel and asked the dog handler, “Did he remove the SIM card?” “Yes.” The expert then did exactly the same.
“I think we can start using the phones now and tell Christine to send the forensics,” one of the dog handlers said.
An Almighty Conspiracy – A novel, a thriller, four people doing the unexpected Page 3
