“According to her, men are strange creatures – they can sit in a room for an hour and not remember the color of the curtains or the walls. It would never occur to him that these strange fibers in his suitcase were from his broad’s sweater”
***
Another three futile days passed in surveillance of the cigar shop and their hopes for success dissipated with every day. They started looking for an alternative lead and reviewed the reports about Link over and over again but no new findings or ideas came up. A couple of times they took off on the scooter following buyers who left the shop. It was all pointless, all futile. The first time the cigars were delivered to a yacht again, the second time to a villa drowning in greenery where a respectable looking little old man met the courier at the gates and immediately lit up a specimen from his purchase. It was the same house in La Margarita that Bikie had already been to. This time they even saw the smoker, and it was not Link.
The fifth week of surveillance was just beginning. The laptop chirped and Isaac looked at the screen. He saw the door of the little shop closing behind an elegant figure in a light dress.
“Bikie! A girl, a girl has gone into the shop! She looked Oriental and quite young, as far as I can tell. She hasn’t been there before. You can’t see her now, but the salesman is rummaging in the fridge!”
They ran out of their hotel, hopped on the scooter, started the engine and stood by waiting. Within a minute, the girl came out and walked towards her car, holding a package. The friends managed to get a good look at her as she got into the driver’s seat. It was Yoshi! Her car set off unhurriedly. Wild with excitement, Bikie and Isaac followed.
Chapter three
In Paris, Pellegrini phoned the Monaco branch of UNICOMA to find out what the board that had disappeared consisted of. The system administrator, now fit and well, told him that the most valuable part lost was a memory card, something that really ought to have been backed up constantly, but the instructions were not to do that, in order to protect from copies being made of the classified data base. Pellegrini frowned with the man’s ability to bore one to death with his work talk, thanked him for assisting the police and hung up without waiting for more explanations. Pellegrini hated people who talked too much and off the point, in fact he was afraid of them. That was just about all that he feared in life.
As an experienced army officer, he had been through a lot and had a reduced sense of fear. The commissioner had also conducted hostage negotiations at least three times, all of them successful. Even though the last time, the success was relative – he had to shoot the hostage-taker in front of a young teenager. After talking the perpetrator into losing his guard with a promise to meet his conditions and go even further, Pellegrini put a bullet through his head so neatly that it became the talk of the precinct for a whole week. It was perfectly legal since the criminal was using the kid as a human shield threatening to kill him.
There was also a fourth similar incident, when a deranged drug addict was so desperate for a fix that he demanded his wife sell their only daughter, yelling that she was no good for anything anyway. He was so badly disturbed that he couldn’t even explain who to sell her to, he just yelled with foam on his lips, holding a knife to the girl’s throat.
A neighbor saw the quarrel from the window opposite and called the police. The situation was critical; the junkie’s hands were trembling, leaving scratches at the child’s throat. He could blow his top any moment.
The commissioner decided to act without waiting for the backup team. He assessed the situation and suggested to the junkie to take painkillers while waiting for heroin to be brought.
Holding out his open left hand with the pills, the commissioner coaxed the freak to make a couple of steps towards him to take a look at them. Seizing the moment when the junkie loosened his grip to transfer the little girl to his other arm and the knifepoint lowered some distance away from the child’s throat, Pellegrini flung up his right hand and put a bullet straight into the man’s heart. In two swift bounds he reached the man before he fell down and grabbed hold of the little girl. The knife and the body fell almost simultaneously. The knife sprang back off the wooden floor with the blade pointing upwards and at that instant the body fell onto it. It was a ghoulish sight. The little girl didn’t even scream, she was completely stunned with fear. The commissioner liked to recall this story, but it at the same time he didn’t really like it.
Later he visited the girl, made sure that she received free psychological care and even gave a part of his bonus to the mother, so that she could at least buy something for herself. Their home resembled a garbage dump: everything that could be sold or exchanged for drugs was gone and they used all sorts of trash in the household. The atrocious father used to bring home from the dumps everything that could have any value and there were even two cassette players there, which he obviously had not yet gainfully disposed of.
Two years later when the little girl turned seven, she started calling the commissioner daddy, and he called her his goddaughter.
The most repulsive memory was the way the dropped knife ripped open the man’s stomach, with guts spilling out and feces flowing out on the floor. Sometimes, when he stayed on late at work, the commissioner summoned up this picture from his memory to suppress his hunger pangs.
Right now it was time to end the working day, but Pellegrini kept on sitting there, going through his notes again while suppressing his hunger. The notepad fell out of his hands and opened at a page with the names of the witnesses to the terrorist attack. One of them was a dark horse, who had been overlooked somehow. Not even Captain Nero had said much; just that he was an ordinary young guy and the captain had checked him out and let him go. This ordinary young guy’s name was too French, and with a hint of aristocracy to it – Leroy. Pellegrini arranged another working trip to Monaco in order to meet him.
However the search for Isaac Leroy was futile. Pellegrini was only able to dig up a whole heap of information about Isaac, but the guy himself was nowhere to be found. Leroy’s phone has registered for roaming on Sardinia. So he was in Italy, at least.
Isaac’s apartment had been repossessed by the bank for debts and where he lived now was unclear. Questioning the neighbors didn’t turn up anything. Isaac hadn’t been on friendly terms with any of them.
Isaac’s sister was in hospital, in a coma. Pellegrini visited the hospital and asked them to call him immediately if Monsieur Leroy shows up.
The commissioner had a pleasant, warm feeling in his chest — as always when he was not idling but focused on a case. Since this case meant he could skip down to Cote d’Azur one more time, the feeling was particularly pleasant. Repeated calls to Isaac’s mobile still went unanswered. “OK, I’ll get through to him and call him in for questioning,” Pellegrini told himself as he left to go back to Paris. “And I’ll be back here again.”
Chapter four
“Let’s go through it again.” Bikie was a bit nervous.
“Again, we’re reporters from a student journal and we’ve come to interview Professor Link.” Isaac wasn’t nervous, on the contrary, he had calmed down a little. “That cover story works just fine.”
They were standing near the gates of a high wall around a mansion where Yoshi had dropped out of sight the day before. In the last few days they had thought through lots of different options. The absence of an entry phone seemed strange, they could not see any security cameras either. Bikie had wanted to launch a small drone, but Isaac was afraid its noise would alarm their game. And they did not have the money for an expensive noiseless drone.
The request of an interview would astonish anybody who opens the gate. If the staff in the villa didn’t know who they were really working for, then they must know him by a different name. They would probably repeat the name “Link” and tell the guys they had the wrong address, but if the person who opened the door knew, he would be startled. Only then would he ask who had come and say they were mistaken, or something of the kind. Si
nce there were no cameras, someone would open up in person and a person’s face could say a lot.
In any case they would ask to pass on a note that said the following:
“Dear Professor Link,
We kindly request you to grant us an interview. You need have no concern that your whereabouts are known to anyone but us. We are neither enemies nor friends of yours, but we need your help. We need it so badly, that we took the trouble of finding you. If you turn us down, it will be pointless for us to keep your location secret.
Yours sincerely, Isaac and Bikie.
“PS. Please call the following number, we are staying in a hotel not far from you.”
In the case that they refused to take the note, Isaac and Bikie had planned to leave. Half an hour later a pizza delivery man drove up to the house and handed over the note together with the bill while Isaac and Bikie remained at a safe distance.
Bikie thought they had to give Link three hours to consider, assuming that he wasn’t likely to contact the police, and if he had any backup, it could only come from COMA. But that was unlikely – plus it would take at least three or four hours.
The guys shelled out for a second hotel room, on the ground floor with an exit into a beautiful rose garden. It was a fancy area and the hotel was by no means cheap, with air conditioning and a mini-bar, which, of course, were totally useless for the operation. But one big plus was the market nearby, and several tourist cafes and souvenir shops. Basically a busy spot. Bikie bought more video cameras and a local mobile phone - a prepaid one for visitors, that didn’t require registering or showing a passport at purchase.
They set up the notebook and a web camera in the new room. The broadcast signal went directly into the Internet, and it was impossible to determine quickly who was watching it and where from. The telephone number in the note was cunningly redirected, and the phone itself was linked to the computer.
If an expert tried to figure out where the number in the note led tо, the address of the hotel would come up, and if they dug deeper, they still wouldn’t find the redirected number. Bikie had done something smart: after a minute of the ringing tone, a program cut in that sent the call into the web. But the phone carried on ringing, and you could still answer it, or you could answer via the Internet.
“In short, it’s not possible to tell exactly where we are,” said Bikie, explaining his scheme. “At least not without looking into the hotel room. Of course, this primitive trap won’t fool a serious hacker, but where would one of those come from here? If anyone does drop into the room, we’ll see him on the web cam. I’ve pointed it straight at the door. I’ll hang another one on the bushes opposite the gates of the villa and set two up by the wall.”
Bikie hung a mirror over the door so they could see the window. He blocked off the keyhole on the inside with three layers of tape and covered the crack under the door with a rug, on which he dumped a night-table. It was impossible to get into the room without being noticed. Or at least very difficult.
Isaac and Bikie stood in front of the beautiful wrought-iron gates with a small wicket door. and then they saw the first camera. Not on the wall, but hidden inside the garden which explained why they hadn’t noticed it yesterday. Isaac hesitated for a moment and rang the bell.
“Good afternoon, who are you looking for?” a voice that obviously belonged to a woman, answered in Italian a minute later.
There’s no denying it, you live and learn. Sometimes you lose sight of elementary, but important, details. The guys were so carried away with designing a plan of retreat and preventing a professional from finding them, that they had overlooked a simple contingency: that no one would come up to the gate; there was simply a voice. The call button was on the wicket door, but the entry phone was hidden on the other side of the metalwork.
Bikie shrugged in confusion. Isaac feverishly tried to think of something.
The pause started dragging out and the voice asked again, this time in broken English:
“Pardon me, who are you looking for?”
“We, we… is this house number five?” asked Isaac, playing for time.
“Yes it is. Are you looking for someone? Who are you?”
“Could you please ask the owner to come to the intercom?”
“Who? The owner? What for, on what business? Stop playing games, young people, or I’ll call the police.”
“We have a personal letter for him.”
“There’s a letterbox on the left. Drop it in there.”
“It’s a confidential letter, we’d like to be sure it won’t get lost.”
The only reply they heard was the entry phone being switched off.
They stood there for a while, bewildered, not knowing what to do, whether leave the letter, ring again or just go. .
Finally Isaac pressed the call button once more.
“Now what?” The voice was by no means as cordial as the first time.
“Signora, I’ve dropped the letter in the box as you requested. It is a letter from the owner’s home country, we have travelled thousands of kilometers to deliver it. It’s very urgent and important. Please be sure to pass on greetings from Elvis.”
“Very well.”
The line went dead again.
“What has Elvis got to do with this?” Bikie asked.
“Nothing at all. This is just to make them curious. To make them read the note sooner.”
Once they were sure the envelope had been collected from the box, the guys dashed to a café they had chosen earlier to watch the web camera.
Chapter five
The next three hours seemed like three days. No call came. No one came to their hotel. No one drove out of the professor’s villa. Nothing.
“What if he’s not home?”
“Sleeping?”
“Or they didn’t give him the letter?”
Many questions, no answers. Both were nervous.
“All right, let’s think. If it’s not Link, then whoever it is would clearly have called the police by now. The letter can be interpreted in various ways, even as a threat.”
“That means Link either hasn’t read it yet, or he doesn’t know how to react.”
“Or maybe they took us for pranksters?”
Take a look at us, we’re obviously not street riffraff. We’re too old to be simply monkeying around.”
“Let’s see again: if it’s not Link, anyone who got the note would call either the police or us. Or they would get one of the staff to call, just to be on the safe side.”
“True.”
“Then if there’s no call, it is Link after all.”
“I hope so. Yes, it’s definitely Link! We saw Yoshi.”
“And how long can we wait for him to react?”
“Let’s wait until morning. We were there around lunchtime, let’s suppose he got all the morning papers and the next viewing, including our letter, and won’t be until tomorrow morning.”
“All right, we’ll wait until morning, but what do we do then if he doesn’t call?”
“Well, tomorrow is a new day, you know.”
“If you say so.”
Suddenly the phone rang which made Isaac and Bikie almost jump out of their skin. Isaac waited a few seconds to pull himself together and answered the call.
“Hello?”
“Good evening. I’ve been handed a very strange letter from you and, to be honest, I don’t understand a thing.” The voice had a slight nasal twang, as if the nose was squeezed shut by something.
“A-ah, yes, I sent you a letter.”
“Perhaps you’ll explain what it means?”
“It means that we want to meet you.”
“Me? What for? I think it must be some kind of mistake.”
“No, Mr. Link, it isn’t a mistake.” Isaac was completely confident again now. “We put in a lot of work to find you, and we did. There’s no point in playing games with us. You’re dealing with a couple of pretty smart young guys here. Believe me, it would be bes
t for us to meet and discuss everything. I recognized your voice, I’ve listened to your lecture on YouTube, so there’s no doubt. Either you meet with us or I post my conclusions about your whereabouts on the most popular forums, you decide. If I’m wrong, then sorry. The police will come and you can try to prove that you’re not Professor Link after all.”
“According to my calculations, you should have done that a couple of hours ago. But you haven’t.”
“But…”
“Of course, if the meeting really is so important to you, I don’t think you’re ready to flush the results of your work down the pan because of an hour or two’s delay.”
“True, but it doesn’t mean I’m not prepared to flush them down the pan at all. I quite definitely am. If the result is negative, it can be discarded.”
“All right,” said the voice, losing its nasal twang. “Let’s not waste time on words. What do you want?”
“I told you, I want to meet.”
‘I’m afraid that’s not possible.”
“Why not, I wonder?”
“You’re probably in Sardinia now?”
“And aren’t you?”
“Not any longer. I’m in Capri. Or maybe in Corsica.”
“Won’t you get tired of running? We found you, so we can find you again. But not just for ourselves any longer, for everyone. How did you sneak out of the villa, by the way? ”
“Now that, young man, is none of your business. So let’s manage this by phone somehow. By the way, it’s your fault I had to leave Sardinia.”
“Professor, the questions I want to discuss are not for telephone.”
“You mean you want to discuss something illegal with me?”
Collective Mind Page 19
