by Estelle Ryan
“What are you saying?” Manny frowned. “He’s not going to speak to us?”
“He’s available for a video call like this any time, but he said he doesn’t know if he could be of any help.”
“How well do you know him?” I made sure to register every one of his non-verbal cues.
“Well enough to seriously doubt he had any involvement in the art heist and kidnapping of your friend.”
He was being truthful, but it didn’t mean he was right. “It would be preferable if I could speak to him.”
“I’ll set it up. I assume as soon as possible?”
“Yes.” I thought about his micro-expressions at the start of our conversation. “How do you know about Daniel’s kidnapping?”
“Your Monsieur Privott also asked me about a Russian company.” He glanced towards his office door again and lowered his voice. “I cannot and will not betray my country, but I will tell you that our best people have determined that the plane has not been hacked. Two apps had been hacked to give false information about the plane’s location, but not the plane itself. Hijacked, yes. Not hacked. My government is suspecting a specific group is responsible for this.”
“Who? Why?” Manny asked.
Nikolai didn’t answer immediately. I saw the moment he came to a decision. He leaned closer to the camera. “I want my country to be the great Russia she can be. There is a lot in our past and unfortunately also in our present that I wish we can do away with.”
“What did you find out?” I understood his need for the preamble, but it was not pertinent. Or helpful.
“As we speak, the hijackers are being brought in for questioning.”
“You found them?” Colin asked.
“Yes. I gave Monsieur Privott their names. He said he’ll give them to you. These men are not Russian.” He lowered his voice. “Our people found them quite a distance from the border. No one is supposed to know that we have them or that we’re questioning them.”
I wondered how much trouble Nikolai would be in if his superiors knew he was confiding in us. “If the hijackers reveal any pertinent information—”
“I’ll let you know,” he finished. “I don’t know if it will be of any use. Our people will already have acted on it by the time I hear anything.”
“What about the paintings?” Colin straightened. “Were they recovered?”
“Yes and they’re already on their way to Minsk. This time accompanied by armed guards.”
“What about Daniel?” Manny asked. “Did your people see him? Do they know where he is?”
“It would appear that the hijackers didn’t get what they wanted from your colleague.”
“Is he dead?” Manny’s question was so quiet, I was surprised Nikolai heard it.
“No.” He was telling the truth.
“Is he free?” The thought of Daniel being captured and probably tortured brought dark edges to my peripheral vision.
“I don’t know.” He paused to look at the camera, his expression revealing the truth. “I’m not even supposed to be privy to this information and it would seem that certain entities have tried to keep even this intel away from me. There are apparently nuances to this situation I have not been aware of. What I know now is the men in custody are not the only ones who’d hijacked the plane, but they’re part of a...” His eyes widened and he looked towards the door again. “I can’t tell you anything else. If I have any more news, I will contact you. Please don’t contact me.”
He ended the call before any of us could respond.
“Bloody hell!” Manny’s expletive was muted and sounded as if it came through a tunnel.
I closed my eyes and pushed Mozart’s Sonata for two pianos in D major into my overwhelmed brain. It took the whole Allegro before I felt more in control and opened my eyes.
I had pulled my legs onto the chair and was clutching my knees against my chest as a last keen left my throat. I mentally wrote the next two lines of the Sonata and unlocked my arms.
Colin touched my forearm as I lowered my legs to the floor. “You okay, love?”
“Daniel’s escaped.” My voice sounded raw as if my keening had been loud enough to hurt my throat.
“Holy Mother of all.” Manny pulled a chair closer and sat on my other side. It was only when I turned towards him that I saw Francine, Nikki and Vinnie in the viewing room as well. They were spread out to give me more space, but their nonverbal cues indicated that it was hard for them to keep their distance. “Doc! Come back to me. Why do you say Daniel’s escaped?”
I shook my head and looked at Manny. “It was in Nikolai’s expression when I asked him if Daniel is free. He made an effort to show me his expression. It was genuine. He thinks Daniel is free.”
“Fuck!” Vinnie pushed his hands hard against his temples. “I hope you’re right, Jen-girl. I hope you’re right.”
“But where is he?” Nikki was sitting on the floor between two of my antique-looking cabinets. She put her sketchpad on the floor and rubbed her stomach. “And why hasn’t he contacted us yet?”
“Those are good questions.” Francine tapped her finger on her lips. “If I were him and I escaped capture? And I knew there was some conspiracy going on that included the president of France? And possibly Russia? And my team? Huh.” She rested both hands on her hips and nodded as if coming to a conclusion. “I would not contact you guys, because I wouldn’t know whether your phones, homes, cars, computers are being monitored. I would try to make my way to you staying totally under the radar.”
“Should I let Pink know about this?” Vinnie took his smartphone from one of the many pockets in his black combat trousers.
“Not yet, big guy.” Manny lowered his chin and stared at me. “What else did you see, Doc?”
“Nothing else that will help us find Daniel or help us stop whatever it is that Fradkov is planning.”
“Hmm.” Manny exhaled loudly and slumped in his chair. “If Nikolai knows that Daniel escaped, then Fradkov most likely knows this too.”
“How can you be certain of this?” I asked.
“We have to work on the assumption that”—Manny started counting on his fingers—“Fradkov orchestrated this plane fiasco and that he knows things even before anyone else knows them.”
“Which means that Fradkov will most likely push his plans forward.” Colin scratched the back of his neck. “Something like this usually results in an acceleration of whatever strategy the mastermind has in place.”
“And that means we have to push even harder to figure out what the holy blazes Fradkov is up to.” Manny looked at everyone in the room. “What do we know so far?”
“I got us some extra juicy stuff,” Francine said over her shoulder as she rushed to her desk in the team room. She returned with her tablet, tapping on the screen. “So I looked into all the passengers, but then I decided to first look at the crew. The pilot popped with some delicious questions.” She raised one eyebrow. “For example, why would he have an account in St Kitts and Nevis?”
“The same bank as the account in Isabelle’s name?” I asked.
“Another bank, but it’s affiliated with Isabelle’s bank.” Excitement lightened her expression. “So the pilot has this account, right? Why do you think said account received a lovely two hundred and fifty thousand euros the day before Daniel’s plane was hijacked? And this is my favourite question”—she gave an exaggerated shudder—“why would the very same account receive another two hundred and fifty thousand euros six hours after Daniel’s plane disappeared? Huh? Why do you think?”
After four years of friendship, I was mostly convinced her questions were rhetorical. “Is there a history of payments into this account?”
“Oh, yes, my bestest bestie.” She winked at me. “I traced these payments back to the company that owns the hijackers’ SUVs. Paporotnik is registered in Russia. Weird name, right?” Her tablet pinged and she frowned. “Hmm. Julien just sent me the names of those hijackers. Give me a sec.”
“Three of these guys’ tickets were bought by Paporotnik.” Francine looked up from her tablet. “I haven’t yet hacked this account, so I’m only able to check online info about the tickets. But the pilot’s account is an open book. This pilot has received five payments from this company in the last six years.”
“Fradkov’s pilot on call. Which makes this Fradkov’s account.” Manny turned slowly, his expression severe when he glared at Francine. “Tell me that no one will ever know how many laws you broke to gain that information.”
“Me breaking laws?” She pressed her palm against her chest, the shock on her face false. “Why, handsome, I would never ever in my life do such a thing. And if I ever did, it would never ever be discovered.”
Manny grunted. “Make sure it stays that way.”
“Wanna know what else I found out?” She puckered her lips, her tone the one she used when her flirtation turned outrageous. “Huh? Wanna know how good I am?”
“Oh, just get on with it.” Manny rubbed his hand over his face. “You’re exhausting me.”
Francine laughed, then turned to me. “I looked into Amélie Didden and couldn’t find any dirt on her. I got Pink to look into her as well and nada. Everything we managed to dig up on her points to a righteous girl. She seems to be working her butt off to make sure that nuclear power is being used safely and has invented a few ingenious ways to safeguard nuclear power plants. I won’t bore you and I don’t want to confuse the men, but these safeguards are simple, elegant and effective.”
“What was she doing on the plane?” This was a question that had been bothering me for a while.
“Ooh, this is where it gets interesting. She was on her way to speak at a symposium in Belarus. Some kind of expert exchange. Sounds familiar? Well, the similarities to Daniel’s trip don’t end there. Her ticket was bought for her by no other than Paporotnik, the same shell company who paid for Daniel’s ticket. It took Pink and me some time to trace all the tickets and such, but there we go.”
My longing to be part of academic symposiums no longer held the same attraction. This was dangerous. I thought about everything Francine had revealed about the Russian shell company. “Has Paporotnik bought tickets for anyone else?”
“Ooh. Huh. I haven’t looked that far yet. I just got confirmation of the tickets when the Russian consulate general called.” She cupped her hand against the side of her mouth, glanced at Manny and whispered loudly, “He’s quite good-looking for a Russian diplomat.”
I didn’t have the mental energy to attempt to understand her strange behaviour, so I maintained my focus on the case. “Can you find out if any more tickets were bought by that company?”
“Is the pope Catholic?” She started tapping on her tablet. “It’s a yes, my bestest bestie. I’m checking.”
Manny glared at her tablet before turning to me. “Do you agree that this is a set-up, Doc?”
“If by set-up you mean that the plane hijacking, the art heist, Daniel and Amélie Didden’s abductions have been meticulously planned, then I agree. Moreover, this planning had to have been put in place months in advance. This is not impulsive.”
Something that I had observed in the last thirty-eight hours was niggling in the back of my mind. We had gathered so much information about so many different aspects of this case, a lot of these bits of information seemingly disconnected. Yet I knew that it all linked together and would form a complete picture if only I were able to access the information my brain had registered but was still hovering in my subconscious.
The others were discussing different theories, but I lost interest when Francine suggested neuro-implants as a government experiment, now being used to control people to do whatever the government wanted them to do.
I leaned back in my chair and picked up mentally writing the rest of Mozart’s Sonata. It didn’t take long until disconnected threads untangled, smoothed out and rolled together to become a faultless rope. Before I could attempt to explain this to anyone, I had to get the confirmation and then organise my thoughts. It took sixteen minutes before I was ready.
I turned away from the fifteen monitors in front of me and wasn’t surprised to find the team behind me. What did surprise me was that each of them had a coffee mug in their hands and were eating pastries. “You’re getting crumbs on my floor.”
“I’ll clean it, Jen-girl.” Vinnie nodded with his chin to my desk. “I take it you didn’t see yours.”
To the right of my keyboard was a plate with three of my favourite pastries and a steaming mug of coffee. My stomach contracted with hunger and I picked up the plate. “Thank you.”
“Whatcha got, Doc?” Manny had pulled the third chair to the end of my long desk and was sitting with his legs stretched out in front of him.
“Fradkov’s address.”
Manny inhaled sharply and immediately started coughing. It took him a full minute and a few sips of coffee to regain his composure. “What the bloody hell! Where is he?”
“I don’t know if he is at this address, but the location is here. In Strasbourg.” I put my half-eaten pastry back on the plate and turned to my monitors. “Look here.”
“Those frigging paintings again.” Manny coughed once more and sighed.
I pointed at the first painting. “The micro-writing between the horse’s front legs is a list of numbers.”
“Please tell me you know what these numbers are?” Manny tilted his head. “I’m too tired to try to figure this out.”
“Those sixteen numbers are GPS co-ordinates.” I entered those numbers into the computer and brought the result up on another monitor. “And that’s where it points to.”
“Bloody hell.” Manny straightened. “That’s Fradkov’s house. Where we got Emad.”
“And the numbers for the second painting?” Francine asked.
I brought up the Scene from the Life of the Holy Hermits. “The spiral ends by the priest’s head and gives us two sets of numbers. The first sixteen are exactly the same as the first painting. It’s Fradkov’s house. The next six numbers are not enough to be a phone number or GPS co-ordinates or an IP address.”
“But it could be the code to that locked room in Fradkov’s home office.” She clapped her hands. “We could get in there.”
“That’s speculation.” But I agreed with her assumption. It would be worth trying to get into that locked room. We might find paintings, documents, computers that could help us determine Fradkov’s plan.
“What about the third painting, Doc?”
Again, I zoomed in on where the spiral converges. This time it was the shoulder of a man looking at Mary, Joseph and Jesus. “These numbers are also GPS co-ordinates.”
“Where does—” Manny stopped when I brought the results up on the far right monitor. He squinted at the map. “Show us the street view.”
I clicked on the icon and Rue de Gare filled the monitor. I dragged the view until it stopped on a specific building. “This is the exact location.”
“It looks like a dump.” Vinnie pushed away from the doorway and stepped closer. “That is not the type of neighbourhood I would imagine Fradkov lives in.”
“That’s a good reason for him to be there,” Colin said. “If everyone expects him to live it up, living it down might just be the best way to hide.”
“We need blueprints for that building.” Manny turned to Francine.
“Already on it, handsome.” She tapped and swiped her tablet. “I’ll send it to your devices in the next two minutes.”
“Dan’s team is ready for this.” Vinnie had his smartphone in his hand. “I’m calling Pink.”
Manny got up. “The big guy and I will join the team at this address. Doc, get us everything you can on the owners, the street. Supermodel, get access to any cameras in the vicinity and see if there has been activ
ity in that building in the last forty-eight hours. We are going in, but I don’t want us to go in blind.”
Chapter SEVENTEEN
We were not at the address I had uncovered in the third painting. Colin had suggested we first visit the locked room in Fradkov’s house before anyone went to that address. It had taken eighteen minutes of debate until everyone agreed.
Colin and I were standing by the open front door of the house. A shiver shook my body. The weather had changed in the last two days and it was uncomfortably cold tonight. My jacket had been warm enough for the daytime weather, but was not appropriate for a lengthy wait on the street. Even though our vehicles and the GIPN truck were all parked nearby, I couldn’t sit there waiting for the bomb squad to clear the locked room.
“Damn, it’s cold.” Colin blew into his cupped hands. “How much longer are these guys going to be?”
“We’re done.” Edward, the explosives ordinance disposal technician, came down the hallway, his protective helmet in his hand. “We cleared the house this morning and now we double-cleared it. Not a hint of explosive material.”
“Have you opened the door to the room off the home office?” What if there were explosives in there?
“We did. It’s safe to go in.” He looked at Colin. “Colonel Millard said that you’re going to think it’s Christmas.”
“Who?” Colin’s eyes widened. “Me?”
“He sure wasn’t talking about Doctor Lenard.” Edward winked at me and waved us in. “He did say that he wanted you there as well. Something about making sense of this psycho.”
“Thank you, Edward.” Colin grabbed my hand and entered the house.
We walked into the home office and once again I took note of how different it was from the rest of the house. The modern furnishings seemed out of place, but I wasn’t interested in that. It was the open door and what lay beyond it that had my attention.
