by Estelle Ryan
“Hellfire.” Manny straightened. “What cities? And what did he mean about ‘blown up’?”
“I don’t know if he meant it metaphorically.” Francine flipped her hair over one shoulder. “I did ask him, but the twit didn’t answer.”
“What cities?” I didn’t apologise when the words came out loud and impatient.
“Let me see.” Francine scrolled back on the coded conversation she had with Joe. “Here it is. Los Angeles, New York, Washington. These are the only US cities. Then there’s Birmingham, Munich, Marseille, Lyon, Milan, Kiev and Warsaw.”
“With the exception of Kiev in Ukraine, these cities are all in NATO countries.” Colin counted on his fingers. “US, England, Germany, France, Italy and Poland. All NATO members.”
“Do you think NATO is playing a role in this?” Daniel frowned when his question was interrupted by a video call from Tim.
Francine clicked on the icon to answer the call. Tim’s eyes widened as soon as he saw all of us. “Well, hello, everyone.” He narrowed his eyes, then smiled with recognition. “Daniel. You have a lot of people here looking for you.”
The tension in the room rose. Manny glared at the monitor. “Who the hell is looking for Daniel?”
“Oh. Oops. I should’ve phrased it differently.” His smile was apologetic. “Daniel, your team is here with me. Should I send them up?”
“Yes,” Vinnie said before anyone else could.
“Done and done.” Tim wriggled his fingers in an unprofessional wave and ended the call.
One of the countless things I disliked about working with other people was the constant interruptions. I had rushed to the office this morning to prepare myself for interviewing Emad to confirm my suspicions. That had been interrupted by Nikolai’s call, then Joe’s communication and now Daniel’s GIPN team. I was becoming impatient. I wanted to speak to Emad.
The next five minutes reiterated the importance of allowing interruptions. Everyone in the room relaxed as Claudette, Bonnard, Gautier, Cosse and Meslot came into the team room. After an emotional initial greeting and the team inspecting Daniel to assure themselves he was indeed not injured too badly, they asked about our progress.
“First tell me, how’s Pink?” Daniel looked at Gautier. “What’s the doctor saying?”
“It’s a waiting game now.” Gautier looked regretful. “I wish I had better news, but we won’t know for the next twenty-four to thirty-six hours. The doctors told us that we could do nothing more and we should go home.”
“There’s nothing for us to do at our homes.” Claudette smiled when the other team members nodded their heads. “We want to do something to catch this bastard.”
“Good. We might need more hands.” Francine pointed at her computer. “A lot of info to work through.”
Manny walked in from my viewing room. I had been so busy observing the GIPN team’s nonverbal cues that I had not seen him go into my space. He put his smartphone in his trouser pocket. “Just got off the phone with Louis Bellamy.”
“Who’s that again?” Cosse, the newest GIPN member, asked.
“The secretary general of Interpol,” Manny said. “He wants us to confirm that the threat is real before we inform these cities. And he wants us to do this within the hour.”
“Joe already sent info to all these cities.” Francine scrolled through her coded communication. “He hacked the FBI director, the MI5 Director General and the heads of all these countries’ federal law enforcement agencies. That’s his way to show how vulnerable they are.”
“And to make bloody sure these people take note.” Manny tried to hide his approval, but I’d seen it. “We still need to confirm that the threat is real though.”
“What else did Joe tell you?” I needed all the information before I could proceed.
“Let me see.” She scrolled down. “He said that he got a look at Fradkov’s emails and he’s convinced Fradkov is planning to kill tens of thousands of people, if not more. He also suspects that Fradkov doesn’t trust him and that’s another reason he wants to disappear.”
“Holy hell!” Manny got up. “He saw Fradkov’s emails? We need to speak to him, supermodel.”
“I tried, handsome.” The corners of her mouth pulled down. “I really tried, but he wouldn’t budge.”
“How many IP addresses did he give you?” I asked.
“Thirty-eight.”
“It will take too long.” I lifted one hand when I saw Francine’s reaction. I had not been clear in my communication. “I want to speak to Emad and if I’m going to help looking into the IP addresses, I will have to wait even longer before I can interview him.”
“Is it essential that you speak to him now?” Colin pointed at Francine’s computer. “Won’t it help if you have even more data when you do speak to him?”
I thought about it. “That makes sense.”
Colin winked at me, then looked at Francine. “We’ll take half of the IP addresses.”
“Give us some of it as well.” Claudette sat down at the large round table next to the windows and opened a laptop. “I’m not as good as Pink, but I know how to get as much information as possible from an IP address.”
Manny cleared his throat and waited until he had everyone’s attention. “If this Joe person is right, then we have less than ten hours until Fradkov’s plan is executed. We need to find out if Fradkov is planning bombs other than the weaponised polonium-210, who else might be involved and where exactly. All these cities are huge with too many opportunities for mass casualties.”
“Especially with today being Friday. Any of the transportation or entertainment hubs would be like shooting fish in a barrel.” Daniel looked at me. “An easy target. Manny and I will co-ordinate with the other countries. You guys get everything you can from this new intel.”
It turned out to be more time-consuming than I had anticipated. Francine was the only one with the hacking skills to procure the true identities of the owners of the IP addresses. While she worked on that, I finished watching the footage I had on Emad. I was convinced now that nothing he’d told us was to be trusted as the absolute truth.
An hour later, Francine had a list of thirty-eight addresses linked to the IP addresses. Some of the addresses were in apartment buildings, which took even more time to ensure that we had the correct person. Francine was happy to take those. She thrived on the challenge.
Colin and I took the IP addresses located in houses. With our resources, we were able to find sufficient information on each person. Claudette took all the names and ran a search for mentions of their names as well as postings of photos on all available social media. Together we built profiles on the owners of each of the IP addresses.
When Colin and I got to the sixth name on our list, I frowned. “I recognise this name.”
“From where?” Colin stopped typing and turned to me.
“Give me a moment.” I closed my eyes and mentally played Mozart’s symphony no.28 in C major. My eyes flew open. “The money.”
“Huh.” Colin pushed the keyboard towards me and stayed quiet while I opened a few files until I got to the right one. Francine had refreshed the list of names with any connection to Paporotnik and had emailed it to me three hours ago.
I highlighted two lines. “Paporotnik bought tickets for Robert Barnes six hours ago.”
Colin turned to look through my open door. “Francine!”
From my seat I could see Francine completely focused on her computer monitor. Colin called her again and she turned to him with a frown. “What?”
“Can you hack Paporotnik’s account?”
“Again?” She rolled her eyes when Manny groaned. “I’m just about done with all the IP addresses. Give me a few minutes and I’ll have access to that account.”
“Bloody hell.”
I couldn’t see Manny, but his tone was enough to know that his censure was not sincere. I would never have imagined that I would be grateful that someone could break the law to give me more
data.
In the beginning I had resisted Colin, Vinnie and Francine’s actions which were mostly borderline, but often indisputably illegal. Now I knew they would continue regardless of my disapproval. They had, however, proven themselves never to abuse their power.
Colin and I continued with the other IP addresses until Francine rushed into my viewing room. “You struck gold there, girlfriend. Ooh, look, just look at this.”
She fell into the empty chair to my left and grabbed my keyboard. I sighed heavily and pushed the computer mouse over to her as well. Usually she asked before she invaded my space, but the excitement on her face made me forego my usual lecture.
“What’s going on here?” Manny walked in and stood behind her chair.
“We have payments, handsome. Lots and lots of payments.” She pointed at the monitor to the far left. “Last night Paporotnik’s account only showed that tickets were bought for Daniel, Amélie and the men who had hijacked the plane. And of course the transfers to Isabelle’s fake account in St Kitts and Nevis.” She highlighted lines as she spoke. “Here is the transfer to Robert Barnes. But look at the last twelve hours. There are ten transfers, each one a whopping fifty thousand euros.”
“Could be a deposit,” Daniel said from the door. He walked in when Vinnie joined us. “These might be the people who are going to do Fradkov’s dirty work in the other cities.”
“And they’ll get the rest of the money as soon as the dirty bombs do their job.” Vinnie crossed his arms. “We need to stop this.”
“Can you cross-reference all the names we got from the IP addresses to...” There was no reason for me to continue. Francine was already comparing the thirty-eight names to the owners of the ten accounts that all received fifty thousand euros.
“Bingo!” Francine did a little dance in her chair. “So, Robert Barnes is in New York. Then we have Roy Young in Washington, Paul Marley in Birmingham, Walter McGee in Los Angeles, Olivier Duhamel in Lyon, Jerzy Balce”—she frowned—“let me try this again, Jerzy Balcerowicz in Warsaw, Anatole Plaviuk in Kiev, Hermann Grünewald in Munich, and Charles Mathieu in Marseille. They’re all here.”
“Claudette.” Daniel walked back into the team room. “Get us everything you found on these names. Anything and everything on social media.” He turned back and looked at Manny. “It’s time we contact these cities.”
Manny left my viewing room, his phone already in his hand. I turned to Francine. It wasn’t the determination or focus on her face that concerned me. It was the familiar glee that brought tension to my shoulders. “Don’t hack from my computer. Do it from yours.”
“But I’m here.” She winked at me without pausing her typing. “And I’m already in Robert Barnes’ Gmail account.”
“Millard’s going to have an apoplectic fit.” Colin didn’t look concerned about this. He leaned back to look at the monitor. “What did you find?”
“Nothing yet. I haven’t read any of Robbie’s emails. I’m busy getting into Roy Young’s account.” She paused for a second, then continued. “Why don’t you guys go through the emails and see if you can find any clues about Fradkov’s plan?”
I didn’t like it. This was a gross, unacceptable invasion of privacy. Yet I carefully aligned my keyboard in front of me when Francine rushed to her computer. I pulled up the email account she’d accessed and scanned each email for anything that could help us stop the attack Fradkov was planning.
Robert Barnes from New York had received twenty-three emails yesterday alone, a few of which referred to previous conversations. It took longer than I preferred to carefully go through each email. Colin pulled his computer closer when Francine gained access to Roy Young’s account and started analysing his emails.
With each new email address, Francine delegated it to someone else to go through. Roxy and Nikki were more than happy to help. It felt like a mere hour later when Vinnie grabbed my keyboard from my desk. “I have food on the table.”
“I’m not hungry.” I glared at my keyboard, then at Vinnie’s face when he hid it behind his back. “Let me work.”
“The old man wants us to debrief and I think you need to eat.”
“I could eat.” Colin got up and held his hand out to me. “It’s been seven hours since Vin’s casserole.”
My eyes widened and I looked at the clock on my computer. It was twenty-seven minutes past twelve. I had been about to ask for the next email account since I’d learned everything I’d been able to from Robert Barnes and Charles Mathieu’s accounts. I got up without taking Colin’s hand. Then I thought about it and took his hand before I walked out of the room.
Someone had added more chairs to the round table to accommodate Roxy, Nikki and Daniel and his team members. I didn’t like the change, but refrained from commenting. There was less space around my chair, but I didn’t mind sitting close to Colin. Nikki always invaded my personal space and this time was no different.
“Let’s compare notes.” Manny took one of the fresh bread rolls and proceeded to make himself a sandwich with the selection of cheeses, hams and sliced vegetables laid out in the centre of the table.
“If you mean we should compare our findings, I can report that I found two emails mentioning seventeen hundred hours today.” I’d found the use of twenty-four-hour time interesting. It was more common for the average person to refer to five o’clock in the afternoon.
“Huh. Mine is an hour earlier.” Roxy added an extra slice of ham to her sandwich. “Paul Marley said that he’ll have everything set up for sixteen hundred.”
“I have a different time frame.” Claudette’s eyebrows drew together. “Roy Young confirmed that he’ll be ready at eleven hundred.”
“Walter McGee’s email showed that they are planning it for oh-eight-hundred,” Francine said.
“Then it will happen at the same time.” I reached for a bread roll. “Four o’clock in the afternoon in Birmingham is eleven o’clock in the morning in New York and eight o’clock in Los Angeles. This is a co-ordinated attack.”
“Where?” Manny had his smartphone in his hand.
“Grand Central Station,” Claudette said. “It was mentioned twice in Young’s emails. It makes sense. At any time of the day, that place is filled with people coming in and out of New York.”
“Union Station in Washington,” Nikki said.
“München Hauptbahnhof in Munich.”
“Gare de la Part-Dieu in Lyon and the central train station in Warsaw.” Both cities were in the same time zone, which made it rush hour on a Friday afternoon. “Gare de la Part-Dieu is a very busy train station. It serves up to a hundred and forty thousand passengers a day.”
The others reported the main train stations in Birmingham, Marseille and Kiev. No sooner did Francine receive the location she’d found in Marseille than Manny got up and tapped his smartphone screen. I put two slices of cheese on my bread roll while listening to Manny’s side of the conversation.
It was clear that he was talking to the secretary general of Interpol. It was also apparent that the secretary general had been in contact with the other law enforcement agencies and everyone was ready to deploy. Now that they had the names of Fradkov’s contacts in each city and the possible locations, they could take action. Manny reassured the secretary general that we were still looking for more information, then ended the call.
I looked at Amélie. “What would you have done to reach as many people as possible with the polonium-210? Taking into consideration the locations that we’ve found.”
She didn’t hesitate. “The ventilation systems. That’s the most effective way to release the polonium-210.”
“You think it will go along with a big bang, Doc?”
“A type of explosion? Very likely. Fradkov would want to draw people’s attention to this co-ordinated attack. He can’t do that if the polonium-210 is spread unobtrusively.”
Manny’s phone rang and again we sat quietly listening to his side of the conversation. All the cities had sent out
all their specialised units to these locations as well as to arrest every person on our list. He ended the call and asked Amélie to explain more options of getting mass casualties with weaponised polonium-210.
I stopped listening. I finished my sandwich and closed my eyes. I continued mentally listening to Mozart’s Symphony No.28 in C major. For the entire Andante, I allowed myself to not think about the case. I just luxuriated in the beauty of the strings, the complexity of the harmonies building to an exciting crescendo. When the last notes filled my mind, I exhaled and opened my eyes.
“I need to speak to Emad. Now.”
Chapter TWENTY-TWO
“Madame Godard.” Phillip took Isabelle’s hand in his and shook it gently. “It’s an honour to have you here. I wish it had been under different circumstances.”
I waited impatiently in the hallway. Isabelle and her security detail had just stepped off the elevator. Even though I was glad she had immediately agreed to come in and rushed to get here, it had still added another forty-three minutes of waiting before I could speak to Emad.
“I want to once again state that I’m completely against the first lady being here.” Luc was in charge of Isabelle’s security, but had also been her friend since their university years. I liked him, if only for his genuine and proactive concern over Isabelle’s safety. He turned to Manny. “Since when do we give in to terrorists’ demands?”
I stepped closer. “I’m no longer certain that Emad fits in that category.”
Luc jerked. The look he gave me was not friendly. “Is Emad Vernet not the same person who’s in bed with Fradkov? The very man planning to let off dirty bombs all over the world?”
“I have no knowledge that Emad ever shared a bed with Fradkov.”
Isabelle snorted. “Luc’s being overprotective again. And he was using a silly expression.”
“That bastard doesn’t have any weapons and hasn’t been out of our sight since we captured him yesterday morning.” Manny pointed at the conference room door where Emad was waiting. “The room is secure. I would never let my people in there if it wasn’t safe.”
