30 Costa Smeralda, Sardinia – June 2018
The spring sun was setting on Sardinia’s western horizon, and a thin late afternoon mist was rising in ribbons of vapor. The shimmering sea began to dull into deep blue patches where the sun was gone and islands of reddish turquoise where the low rays still caught the water. The pink flowers of the cactus plants in the hills began to close, and the white blossoms strung along the roadside that had puffed up like tissue-paper snowflakes at midday fell into shadow. Down in the harbor, the giant yachts were preparing for nightfall as the crews did their last scrubbing and polishing and arrayed the cocktail lights for the owners and courtiers to begin their evening partying.
Michael Dunne returned to his too-fancy hotel room. From his window, he could see the gray vastness of the Cosmos, dominating the other boats at the dock. There were five billion dollars afloat in the harbor, maybe double or triple that if you counted all the vessels spread around Porto Cervo. Pirate ships. Dunne changed clothes, packed his bag, and paid his bill at the reception desk.
The clerk regretted that it was too late to cancel that night’s reservation. Such a shame. Perhaps someone waiting for him in another port? Dunne played along: Yes, another warm bed awaited; he could not refuse. The clerk asked if he could order a cab, but Dunne said not yet, first he wanted to take a walk in the last bit of the afternoon sun. He left his suitcase with the porter and set off with the backpack he had locked in the closet while he was aboard the yacht.
Dunne had studied the terrain when he arrived the day before. He knew precisely where he wanted to go. He left the hotel’s manicured grounds and traversed the ridge that overlooked the harbor until he came to a Catholic church atop a hill a few hundred yards above the marina where the Cosmos was berthed. The chapel was a little work of art, white adobe nestled among topiary hedges. The bells were muffled; the doors locked.
Dunne walked along the lower side of the hedgerow that bounded the churchyard. When he came to a spot that offered a direct line-of-sight view of the Cosmos, he stopped, set down his backpack, and opened the padlock that protected its contents. He removed from the pack a small beam antenna that could power the miniature microphones he had secreted in the salons of the yacht and receive their transmissions. Next to the antenna he placed a compact, high-resolution video camera that could monitor the vessel. He attached both devices to a small server, the size of a lunch box, that could process the images and relay them via its own encrypted wireless network and transmission antenna to Dunne, who would be several miles away. Finally, he connected the little network of monitors and processors to a small battery pack. He covered the array with a cloth that was the same flat green as the shrubbery.
Dunne had spent much of his career installing surveillance tools like these, small and powerful and easy to hide. He had a hobbyist’s fastidiousness, as if he were building a model plane out of balsa wood, or a ship inside a bottle.
When the monitoring platform was complete, Dunne closed his nearly empty pack and slung it over his shoulder. All that remained inside the pack was his computer to monitor the information provided by the sensors.
He returned to the lavish hotel, retrieved his suitcase, and took a cab to a cheap pensione a few kilometers west, near a local ferry terminal. There, he closed the curtains of his room, opened his computer, and began to study the sounds and images from the vessel.
* * *
The Cosmos was still as night fell. Tom Goldman remained on board; the lights were glowing in the top salon, and Dunne’s camera caught his slim form through the window. A steward brought Goldman dinner, and Dunne heard through the hidden microphone the low, sonorous bowing of the Bach cello suites, but no voices. Perhaps Goldman was reading or reviewing the portfolios of his mysterious clients as he listened to the music. Or perhaps he was waiting.
Just after nine that evening, midafternoon on the East Coast, Goldman’s phone rang. The bug captured only Goldman’s end of the conversation. It was like watching one player in a tennis game; you could infer what was happening at the other end even if it wasn’t visible.
“Hey, yeah, I was waiting for your call,” Goldman began. “He left a few hours ago. This guy won’t play ball. He’s arrogant. Monkey on his back, like you said. I don’t understand people who walk away from money because they think they have a higher cause. They’re snobs, in my book. Anyway, he’s gone.”
Goldman was talking about Dunne, evidently. There was a pause while Goldman listened to the response and queries from the other end, and then he was talking again, answering another question about what had gone wrong.
“The pitch about the Russians and Chinese didn’t work. His enemies are personal.”
Another break, while Goldman’s contact deliberated about the failure to recruit Dunne, and its implications. And then Goldman’s languid response.
“I don’t think he knows all that much, really. He saw the operation in Italy, but he didn’t understand it. Certainly not what we’re planning to do with it. He thinks his problem is Howe. Not very curious. Strange for an intel officer. Is that because he’s a tech? They’re mules, right? Or maybe he’s just stupid.”
Dunne flushed, sitting in the darkened room with his earphones on, listening to Goldman badmouthing him. There was another silence, as the caller asked some more questions, and then Goldman’s response.
“Sure, he’s on the prowl, but so what? He came to see me because he was looking for Howe. He’ll never find him. All the threads are cut, in and out. Howe is stashed in Taiwan, building chips for that semiconductor company and chanting in his spare time. He’s living in an old hutong house by the river in Taipei, last I heard. The service there monitors all his communications. They won’t let anyone near him.”
Dunne closed his eyes and registered the information. The monitor was silent as Goldman listened to more questions, and then his voice again.
“No. We didn’t follow him when he left. I don’t have the resources here, and we have no need to do it, anyway. He’s an ex-felon. He’s radioactive. We can pick him up whenever we want. If we track him, we just call attention to ourselves. Don’t complicate things. Never be in a hurry to make a mistake.”
Goldman’s dismissive comments seemed to draw a sharp response, because he interrupted several times to say, “Yes, but—” and “That’s not what I meant” and “Calm down.” Eventually the storm passed, and Goldman adopted his accommodating, lawyerly voice again.
“Sure, if you want. Makes sense to get the group together. We could organize a dry run, go over the logistics and assignments. I thought we could do all that in a month or two, but we can start earlier, if you like. How soon can you get here, assuming you want to meet on the boat?”
Silence again, as Goldman’s caller pondered the timing of a meeting.
“Two days is too soon. People’s schedules are busy. Let’s say four days. Next Monday. That will give me time to do a sweep of the boat.”
Goldman’s comment caused another eruption, and he was defensive again.
“Stop worrying. Dunne was here only a few hours. I’ll bring a crew in tomorrow. If he left anything, it will be gone. You’re worried about nothing. If it really bothers you, I’ll tell the Italians to watch the airports and pick him up. Okay? Are we cool?”
And then: “Yeah. Bye-bye.”
The audio monitor went silent, and after several minutes the video feed captured the lights being extinguished on the top deck. From the lower salon came the sound of a Mozart violin concerto, which stopped a few minutes into the first movement, as Goldman made another phone call.
“Buonasera. Questa è la stazione dei Caribinieri?”
When the duty officer responded, Goldman asked to be transferred to his friend Major Tomassino. The desk patched through a call to Tomassino’s mobile.
“Caro maggiore,” Goldman began, and then switched to English. “This is Mr. Goldman aboard the Cosmos. I am so sorry to bother you. But I want to report a thief, who has damaged my v
essel, the Cosmos. The thief’s name is Michael Dunne. He’s an American, red hair, about six feet tall. Dangerous man, I fear. I’ll send you his passport details later. If he tries to leave Italy, you should stop him. Issue, you know, a mandato di arresto. Tonight’s probably impossible, but tomorrow, please.”
The police official agreed, evidently, because Goldman ended that call and placed another one.
“Ciao, Bruno. I need a nonlinear junction detector. Here, tomorrow morning. If you’ve got a Scantron system, I need that, too. And Delta X. The works. Can you come at ten? … Okay, by noon.”
Dunne knew the brand names: They were fancy surveillance-detection devices, and Bruno was evidently a security consultant who specialized in finding bugs, probably a lucrative trade in the richest harbor in the Mediterranean. The hardware Goldman had requested could find any of the bugs Dunne had installed that were still transmitting.
* * *
Dunne’s only protection was that Goldman thought he was slow and incurious. His Sardinian adventure was over. On his computer, Dunne found a late ferry that left that night for Corsica from a port at the northern tip of Sardinia. Corsica was in France. Once he arrived on French territory, Dunne would be invisible long enough to get back to America.
Dunne needed to move quickly. He reprogrammed the surveillance camera he had embedded in the hedgerow below the church so that it uploaded to a cloud server that he could access from anywhere. He powered off the beam antenna that had been receiving sound signals. Bruno might find the bugs Dunne had hidden aboard the yacht, but he would have to be lucky. They wouldn’t be sending or receiving electronic signals. They were now dead pieces of metal and fiber.
* * *
Dunne checked out of his lodging for the second time that night. He took a bus north to the port. He found a café there with a bathroom, altered his appearance and clothing, and left by a back entrance. Corsica was eight miles north, across the Mediterranean. The ferry left just before midnight. The trip to Bonifacio took just fifty minutes.
Dunne arrived on the French island before one a.m. Thanks to Schengen rules, nobody checked his passport.
The bars and clubs were still jumping. He found a hotel near the port that overcharged him for a noisy room on the second floor, but he didn’t care. He had a map in his mind now. He knew where he was going, and perhaps began to understand better who was coming after him.
Dunne needed to get home quickly, without attracting attention. He rose early the next morning and took a three-hour bus ride up the eastern coast of Corsica to Bastia, where he caught a cheap flight to Marseilles. From Marseilles, he booked a late afternoon flight to JFK via Paris, and slept through the second leg over the Atlantic.
He was back in Pittsburgh on Sunday afternoon, in his office on Forbes Avenue. The tropical fish had died, but otherwise the place looked tidy. He slept on the office couch Sunday night for a few hours, but he awoke at one a.m., as dawn was breaking in Costa Smeralda.
31 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – June 2018
Michael Dunne read the Post-Gazette sports section early Monday with one eye, while the other watched the live feed from the surveillance camera trained on the sleek gray cruiser forty-five hundred miles away. Dunne didn’t want to miss any movement in or out of the vessel, so he toted the screen along with him when he went to the toilet or made coffee. He propped the sports section against the monitor so he could see it while he thumbed the pages.
Dunne stared at the screen for seven empty hours, until the sun had come up over the Monongahela River and it was two p.m. in Sardinia. The crew of the Cosmos had been busy enough, scurrying in and out of the vessel to load provisions and prepare for a voyage. But all the faces visible through the cabin windows and at the dock were familiar. The guests that Tom Goldman had invited four days earlier hadn’t arrived, and Dunne wondered if the gathering had been moved to another time and place.
Just after two-thirty, as the shadows were beginning to lengthen, there was a bustle of action dockside. Three stewards descended the gangway; two stood at attention by the boat, and a third, dressed more elegantly in a double-breasted blue blazer, jumped into a waiting golf cart and steered it up the dock and out of sight of the fixed frame of Dunne’s video camera. Dunne recognized the driver as Rudy, the chief steward who had greeted him when he arrived at the marina the week before.
Dunne peered intently at the screen, wondering who Rudy was fetching. He hoped to identify the mystery guests through facial recognition software, if the images were clear enough to be processed digitally. Dunne waited anxiously for several long minutes as the greeting party awaited the new arrival.
The golf cart rolled back into the frame suddenly. Dunne hunched forward to see the image, but the vehicle and its passenger were obscured by a plastic screen that had been unfurled to cover the cabin. The cart halted, and a steward sprang toward the screen and drew it back so that the guest could exit. In that same moment, the steward popped open a large black umbrella and held it low over the emerging passenger, so that the face was obscured.
Dunne saw the flap of a pair of baggy black trousers and the skirt of a matching jacket under the umbrella, but no more. As the new arrival shambled toward the gangway, the steward protectively handed him the umbrella, so that the face remained covered all the way up into the cabin. This was a practiced maneuver; they were carefully hiding the identity of their visitor.
“Shit,” muttered Dunne. He rubbed his eyes. After all his preparation, and the hours of waiting, all he had seen was a black apparition hidden under a canopy. Who had arrived in such secrecy? Who would work so hard to remain invisible?
Dunne was exhausted, and he needed sleep after so many hours of staring at the computer monitor. He scanned the boat for a hint of who was inside, but the curtains of the salons and staterooms had been drawn tight, blocking any observation. Dunne thought of giving up, but Rudy was still poised at the dock, sitting in his golf cart, as if awaiting more guests.
The cart whirled off again a half hour later. This time it returned with an elegant man with a thin beard, dressed in slacks and a tailored jacket. As he exited the cart, he slung a computer bag over his shoulder. The arrival ceremony wasn’t elaborate or secret this time. The man walked himself to the boat and climbed the gangplank unaided.
As Dunne studied the image, he recognized the face. The man with the computer bag was Lorenzo Ricci, the Italian computer scientist who had secreted himself in the back room of the laboratory in Urbino when Dunne made his fateful visit there, and then spoken so mysteriously over cheese and dessert wine.
* * *
It was nearly five p.m. in Costa Smeralda when the golf cart suddenly sped out of the frame again. Before it returned, the whole troop of cabin stewards came down the gangway one by one and lined up on the dock to greet this special arrival. Goldman himself followed and stood at the head of the line. He had put on a coat and tie.
The golf cart glided back, and with a flourish, Rudy deposited the last arrival. The plastic cover had been re-furled, so the side of the cart was open. The stewards bowed; Goldman extended his hand. From the cart stepped an elegant woman in her fifties, immaculately coiffed, her short blond hair tight against a sculpted face.
Goldman gave the lady his arm and escorted her to the steps as if she were royalty. Scrambling behind was an assistant laden with two cases that appeared to carry computer gear and were stamped with big letters that said BLOOMBERG.
Dunne stared at the woman’s face. She had a beauty that reminded him eerily, disturbingly, of Veronika, the Swiss girl who had unzipped his marriage, but this woman was older. What registered was the deference with which she was treated. Whatever enterprise this might be, she appeared to be the chief executive. Dunne prayed the camera had captured an image clear enough to be processed digitally.
The woman was installed in a cabin that faced toward Dunne’s camera. The curtains remained open enough long enough for Dunne to see the woman’s assistant set up a Bloomberg te
rminal, with two screens to display market data and chat room talk, just like in the trading room of a large bank or hedge fund. The woman, dressed more casually now in a sweater, sat down behind the screens, and the assistant closed the curtain.
Ten minutes later, the crew cast off the bow and stern lines, and then the spring line between; the water churned and eddied under the propellers of the great yacht, and the Cosmos began to slip away from its berth toward open water.
As the boat headed east toward Italy, the last of the evening sun caught the fantail and illuminated the yacht’s grand name, evoking the power of the global dominion, and its inscrutable home port of George Town, in the Cayman Islands.
* * *
Dunne collapsed on the office couch and slept through the rest of that day and into the night. When he awoke before dawn Tuesday morning, he went to his computer and retrieved the best image of the mystery woman who had boarded the Cosmos so grandly. He cropped the frame as tightly on her face as he could. Then he uploaded the image to two facial recognition sites on the Internet. Neither returned a match; or, more precisely, they returned too many matches to be useful.
Dunne found a third facial recognition site, a German company that required registration and payment. The site claimed it could review 101 different facial attributes to make a match. It promised a 90 percent success rate; Dunne paid the fee online, 199 euros. He uploaded the blond woman’s face in the most precise images he had captured.
The software churned for a few seconds and then spit out a name: Adele K. Hecht. She was the head of a network of private banks with offices in Switzerland, Luxembourg, and the Cayman Islands. She was in her mid-fifties, and the profiles said her former husband, Hecht, was dead and that she had a child, unidentified, from an earlier husband, also deceased.
The Paladin Page 19
