“How did he save a hostage?”
“They were threatening to kill one of us. It turned out it was going to be Peter. Pete Voytag, God rest his soul. It was all so random. It could have just as easily been me.” He sucked a little more life out of his cigarette. “They came and got Peter and took him up there screaming and crying. Next thing, Hoffmeyer just pushes the kid watching us out of the way and goes up there. This kid had a Kalashnikov.” He shook his head, still impressed. “Anyways, there’s a lot of shouting and yelling, not in English. Then the two of them, Peter and Hoff, they both came back. That was it. I don’t know what he said to them, but they never tried that again.”
I made a note to check out Hoffmeyer’s background. It would be easy enough to see if he’d really worked in Saudi. “What else?”
“He knew his way around a situation, I’ll tell you that.”
“How do you mean?”
“Tim and me, we’re not standing here today if it wasn’t for him. He saved us. I don’t know why Timmy doesn’t see that. I think he sees it. He just won’t say it, you know?”
“How did he save you?”
“The night that it happened, the kid they had watching went up to the front of the plane and left us alone. He’d never done that before, so I had to think”—he touched his temple with his middle finger—“what is so important? It can’t be too many choices, right? Either they’re letting us go, or they’re not, and I just had the feeling it wasn’t that they were about to let us walk. I wasn’t the only one, because even though the cabin smelled like piss the whole time we were in there, it started to smell like fresh piss. Everyone was thinking the same thing, that we were all gonna die. After ten days of the worst hell you can imagine, they were about to kill us. It sucked.”
He was a little hard to follow, because he was shoving so many words into such a small space. But I had practice. I knew Dan.
“Then the kid came back through the curtain, and I swear to you, the look on his face, he looked exactly like one of those Columbine boys. Slow, mechanical, completely blank. He came down the aisle and started shooting people, but his face, you know, he looked like he was taking out the garbage. I got up and ran, but there were some that fell, and this kid, I don’t know, maybe he was seventeen, he walked up and just…” Frank put his index and middle fingers together and aimed them carefully at the sidewalk. “He put the barrel up against a man’s head, this human being he’d been talking and joking with, and pulled the trigger.”
He paused for another long drag, sucking until the insides of his cheeks must have touched. I got the feeling looking at his face that it was easy to launch into this story but not so easy to finish it.
“Anyways,” he said, “that was Gil. He was the first one to go.”
My mind went blank for a few seconds, the way a computer screen does when things go haywire. News of Roger’s death had crashed the system for me. All my assumptions were wrong.
He loosened his tie and shoved one hand into his pocket. Again, he turned his shoulder in toward me, and it was almost as if the two of us were watching the incident unfold on a screen in front of us as he narrated. “Then what happened was a bomb went off. The shooting started outside. All of us stampeded for the door. Everyone was yelling and pushing. There was another explosion. This one knocked me down, and I didn’t want to get up. All I wanted to do was hug the floor. There was so much smoke. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t breathe. Someone grabbed me by the shoulders and stood me up and shoved me down the aisle. Me and the rest.”
“ ‘Stay low.’ He kept telling us that, to stay under the smoke, but then another bomb went off just as we got to this crack, this opening. Everything went sideways. He told me to jump. I looked down, and it was too far down, but it was too damn hot to go back, and he said, ‘Drop and roll. You’ll be fine. Go.’ He pushed me, and I was all of a sudden on the ground, and I did roll, because that was the last thing he said to me, and it was what was in my mind. Then he was there again picking me up and pushing me away from the fire. I turned around to look and see who it was. It was Hoffmeyer. He looked me right in the eye and said to me, ‘Good luck, man,’ and that was it. He ran off.”
“Ran where?”
“Into the smoke. I wanted to go with him, because he was the only one who knew what he was doing. But somebody else grabbed me and pulled me behind something.” He shook his head. Now he was looking at his own movie that only he could see. “I could hear the damn thing burning. Do you know what that sounds like? An airplane burning? It was like a roar, but I could still hear the screaming. I knew they were burning to death. I could hear them, and all I could think was it could have been me.”
“I’m sorry.” I didn’t know what else to say. “I’m sorry that happened to you.” He shrugged. “It sounds pretty chaotic. As Tim said, a lot going on. You’re absolutely sure Roger didn’t make it?”
“Are you talking about Gilbert?”
“Yes, sorry.”
“I stepped on him. We all did. He was on the floor, and we trampled over him like a bunch of crazed bulls. His head was split open. There was no way he got off that plane alive.”
“What about bodies? Dead bodies don’t get mixed up these days.”
“You can’t believe how hot that fire burned. Instant cremation. And I guess our government had some issues with Sudan getting back the remains. Besides that, if Hoffmeyer was CIA and they extracted him, do you think they would admit to that? Hell no. Blood, beards, bullets, smoke. I must have been confused, right? How could I know?”
He certainly sounded convincing, but so did many in the grassy-knoll set. It was because they believed so passionately. “Seven other men survived. Did anyone else identify Hoffmeyer?”
“No. Well, Timmy, but he won’t cop to it. He doesn’t want to think he’s crazy. He already thinks he’s crazy because he never sleeps. It just goes to show you, don’t it?”
“Show me what?”
“We all burn the same, even the ones with a fortune.”
He said it with half a smile that suggested the tiniest bit of schadenfreude. “You’re saying one of the hostages had a fortune?”
“Gil said his laptop was worth a billion dollars. He tried to ransom his way off with it. They laughed at him.”
“Gilbert Bernays said he had a computer worth a billion dollars?”
“Look, I’m not giving away any secrets here. We all got down and dirty with each other. We thought we were going to die. He told us he stole it off a dead Russian. He just didn’t have what he needed to get to the money.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know.”
“A password?”
“Maybe.”
I wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him until the answer came out. There was only one dead Russian Roger could have been talking about, the one Rachel had killed, and so far, she had failed to mention anything about Vladi having a computer worth a billion dollars.
“To my way of thinking, a billion dollars wouldn’t have made a difference. Whatever those boys were doing, whyever they were doing it, it wasn’t about money.”
“What was it about?”
“Who knows? I don’t think the baby terrorists even knew. They started with this sheikh demand but dropped that pretty fast, so that wasn’t the ultimate goal.”
“Maybe it was planned as a martyr operation from the beginning. The sheikh would have been a bonus.”
“The whole point of a martyr operation is to wreak havoc and spread terror. If these boys were interested in publicizing their cause, why did they insist on a media blackout?”
“There was a media blackout?”
“They gave no interviews and didn’t want any cameras around. The whole thing was a debacle from beginning to end. I’m telling you, we don’t know the whole story of what happened on that plane.”
Something over my shoulder caught his attention. “I think there’s someone in there watching us.”
�
�Is it the woman again?”
“No. It’s a man this time. I think they’ve put some people on me, if you want to know the truth. It pisses me off. What about my rights? I’m a citizen. I didn’t do anything. Nobody ever told me not to talk about what I saw. I’m going in there and—”
“Let’s go in and have another drink, Frank. We don’t need a scene here with all these good people, do we? Besides, I need to talk to Tim.”
He dropped his cigarette on the sidewalk and crushed it under his loafer. It was only half gone, but it was the third one he’d lit since we’d been out there.
Frank was the one who found Tim. It wasn’t hard. They were seated at the same table, and brunch was about to begin.
“Excuse me, Tim?” I pulled him away from the table and from Helene, who seemed determined not to let anything go on without her. “I was wondering if you had a contact number for that reporter Max Kraft.”
“He asked me not to give it to anyone.”
“I’m sure he did, but he’ll want to talk to me.” I pulled out the manifest Dan had given me. It had updated contact information for probably seventy-five percent of the survivors. “I’ve got something he’s looking for.”
21
MAX KRAFT LOOKED LIKE A SCRAPPER. HE WASN’T TALL. He wasn’t particularly big. His arms seemed a little long for his body, and he definitely spent more time in front of his computer than working out. From the looks of him, though, you would want him on your side when a fight broke out. He had the look of a man who knew how to fight dirty, and would. He wore his brown-going-gray hair just long enough to prove he didn’t have to go to work in an office every day. He probably owned lots of safari shirts and no neckties.
I had no idea how long he’d been holed up in room 5 at the Novotel, a twelve-room motel on the Left Bank, but when he opened the door and let me into his room, it looked as if he’d lived there half his life. The smell of warm beer and greasy hamburgers lingered. Torn bags of vending-machine pretzels littered the premises, and carefully arranged light blue Post-it notes festooned the dresser mirror.
He closed the door behind me and went immediately to the window, where he had to move the heavy curtains to peek out. “How did you get here?”
“Cab. I switched twice. There was no one on me.”
“Good.” He turned and held out his hand. “Where is it?”
“Slow down.” I walked over to the dresser mirror and glanced at his notes, mostly names and phone numbers. They looked like contacts. When he saw me perusing them, he scurried over and barged in between the mirror and me.
“How did you get my name?” he asked, snatching the contacts off the mirror, one by one.
“I’m an investigator. I investigated. Do you have the video?”
He pulled a flash drive from his pocket and held it up. “Here’s what you want. Where’s mine?”
I took the drive, slung my backpack around, unzipped it, and pulled out my laptop.
“What are you doing?”
“Do you expect me to just believe you?” I sat on the unmade bed and turned on the computer. “I’m going to watch it.”
He put his hands on his hips, apparently incensed that I didn’t just take the word of an investigative journalist. “Are you sure that unit will even read this drive?”
“If it doesn’t, we have a problem. You’re not getting the 809 list until I’m convinced I’m getting what I need.”
His mouth crimped around the edges. It actually made him look prim, which I knew he wasn’t. He went over and flung himself into the hotel’s one seating surface that wasn’t a bed—a chair in the corner.
“Tell me where you got this,” I said, waiting for my programs to load.
“I told you, I copied it from the laptop that belonged to Roger Fratello, then erased it from the hard drive. As long as that was the only one, this is now the only one.”
“Where is the laptop?”
“I’m not saying.”
That was a problem. I had been around Felix long enough to know that just erasing a file didn’t really kill it. But I was hoping that Roger being dead might buy me some time on full eradication. Theoretically, no one would be looking for the video but me.
I pulled up Explorer while he bounced up and down…checked the window…wound his watch…went to the sink to throw cold water on his face…. He had a point about the software thing. If my machine couldn’t recognize the drive, I had problems. I opened the small device, inserted it into the USB port, held my breath, and…nothing happened.
Shit.
I sat for a moment, considering the options. I could go online and search for the necessary software and download it, but I had never tried to access the Internet in France. I got out my cell phone and started to dial my best option.
Kraft rushed over. “What are you doing?”
“It doesn’t work. I’ll have to go to plan B.”
“Forget that.” He ripped the drive from the port. Arrogant prick. Time for a bluff. I signed off, closed down, and started packing to go.
“Wait a minute. I delivered. You owe me that contact list.”
“If I can’t verify that you delivered, I can’t give you the list. Sorry.”
“Just…just slow the fuck down here.” He put his hands on either side of his head as he paced around the small room, eyes to the ceiling. He looked as if steam might start issuing from his ears at any second. “Okay, stop. Let’s just stop right here.” I hadn’t even moved off the bed. He had a way of saying things to me that mostly applied to him. “What can I do to convince you?”
I thought about that. Maybe he was onto something. I spied an unopened bag of pretzels on the dresser. Except for breakfast a few hours earlier, I hadn’t eaten much in the past few days. “Can I have those?”
“They’re stale. Here…” Suddenly very accommodating, he went over to a Styrofoam cooler on the floor, pulled out a full-size bag, the kind you get at the grocery store, and tossed it over. His generosity, though, seemed to go only as far as snack goods, because, when he went in again, he came out with only one bottle of beer. I would have berated him, but I didn’t need to be drinking anyway.
The plastic wrapping on the pretzels was still cold from being stored in the cooler. I opened the bag and stuffed a few of the salty delights into my mouth.
“Where did you get Roger’s laptop?”
“Bought it from a kid with a goat.”
“Where?”
“Afghanistan. What is this? Twenty questions?”
“This is plan C. I need to know more about Blackthorne. You seem to know about them, so let’s talk for a while and see if we can find some common ground.” If I was right about Max Kraft, Investigative Journalist, he was itching to tell someone his story.
He twisted the cap off the bottle and took a swig, then moved back to the chair, set the bottle on the little, round, fake-wood-grain table next to it, and seemed to settle in.
“The story of a lifetime cost me fifty bucks and an Elton John CD.” He savored the thought, much like he savored his cold beer.
“What’s the story?”
“I won’t tell you that.”
“It’s Blackthorne, isn’t it? Something about the private army? The CIA? Stephen Hoffmeyer.” I threw everything out there. Something had to stick, and I knew I was on the right track. The last guy I’d seen nervous enough to be peeking through the curtains was Lyle Burquart.
“I don’t think you need to know. You don’t want to know.”
“How did you know the computers were in Zormat?”
He squeezed one eye shut and looked at me with the other. “I never said Zormat.”
“You haven’t mentioned Salanna 809, either. But I know that’s where you got the machine, from the hijacking victims’ stuff in Zormat. Roger Fratello was on that flight as Gilbert Bernays, who seems to be dead. That’s how his computer got into the closet.”
He stared at me, seemingly confused about whether to view me as a threat or a sourc
e. “The locals got into the house before the CIA ever showed up. They stripped it clean. My contacts got word to me. I have a lot of contacts. I went there, I checked out the merchandise, and I bought it.”
“Just Roger’s?”
“No comment.”
That meant there were more, and he had them. “One of the hostages said Roger claimed to have a billion dollars on his laptop.”
“A billion dollars? What, are you kidding?”
“It’s what I heard.” I got out my notebook and flipped to the Frank pages. “He said Roger used the machine to try to ransom himself off, but he couldn’t access the money. Something was missing. Maybe a password?”
I looked up at him. This didn’t seem to be something he already knew about, which meant he was interested. “Where would he get a billion dollars? Is that what he embezzled from that…that—”
“Betelco. I don’t think so. Roger told this other hostage he’d stolen it off a dead Russian, the one on the video.” I pointed to the drive he’d ripped from my machine. It was still in his fist. He looked at it.
“The one Rachel killed.”
“Yeah. I know that she took cash belonging to Vladi.” She and Harvey had pulled it from the trunk of the car. “It ended up in a safety deposit box in Brussels. So far, she hasn’t mentioned any billion-dollar computer.” That she hadn’t mentioned it, of course, did not preclude the fact that she knew about it.
He held up the drive. “This video came off a machine belonging to Roger Fratello. It had an e-mail program, a bunch of files with memos and business-related stuff he wrote. I didn’t see anything that looked like a billion dollars, and I looked all through it. It was one of the few I didn’t need a translator for.”
I leaned back on the bed, bracing myself with my arms behind me. “I wonder what it would look like. What do you think? Secret accounts? Treasure map?”
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s probably it. A treasure map. Yo-ho-ho.”
“Whatever it was,” I said, “I don’t think Roger could get to it.”
The Pandora Key Page 16
