“Whoa. Hold on now. I think you’re overreacting.”
For many, Quinn’s name was gold in the secret world. As Nate hoped, the last thing an operative like Reiser would want was for Quinn to spread the word that the German wasn’t worth hiring.
Nate looked over his shoulder. “And how am I overreacting? You refused to help us.”
“When did I say that? All I said was that I wasn’t going to move my men.”
“Which is an obstacle to any conversation, and therefore a refusal to help. We’ll find someone else who’s more willing.”
He took another step toward the door.
“Wait.”
Nate stopped, but said nothing.
“Okay, fine. But they’re not leaving the room for anything less than five thousand euros.”
“Make it ten, and they leave the building.”
ONCE THE MONEY was transferred to Reiser’s account and his men had verifiably exited the building, Nate and the others sat down at Reiser’s dining table.
“I’ve got a full schedule today,” Reiser said. “I’d appreciate it if we can make this quick.”
“It shouldn’t take long,” Nate said.
“Good. Then what is it I can help you with?”
“We’re interested in a local operative by the name of Katrine Dehler.” Reiser’s eyes widened just enough to confirm he indeed knew who she was. “We would like to know everything you know about her. Her habits. Where she lives. Who she hangs out with.”
“Let me stop you right there. I’ve never heard of…what did you say her name was? Dyer?”
“Dehler.”
“Right, Dehler. I have no idea who that is, but even if I did, I don’t give out information on other operatives. No one would ever work for me again if I did. If you’d told me what you wanted from the start, you wouldn’t be ten grand lighter.”
Nate smiled. “Let’s get your lie out of the way first, shall we? You know her. I know you know her. My associates know you know her. Quinn knows you know her. All right?”
Reiser thought for a moment and then shrugged. “Okay, sure. I may have heard of her. But it doesn’t change the fact that I’m not going to tell you anything.”
Nate clasped his hands on the table, giving the prearranged go sign.
“May I use your toilet, please?” Jar asked.
“Um, sure,” Reiser said. He pointed across the room. “It’s over there. That red door.”
“Thank you.” Jar rose and headed across the room.
“I understand your position,” Nate said. “And normally I would agree with you, but this is a special…”
JAR COULD FEEL Reiser’s gaze on her all the way to the bathroom. But they had expected this. So, as Nate had instructed, she’d walked across the apartment with purpose, making it clear the bathroom was the only thing she was interested in.
After locking the door behind her, she removed the packet from the hidden compartment in the lining of her jacket. Inside was a stack of ten black, dual-use surveillance discs, each smaller than an American dime. Nate had told Jar and Daeng that he assumed Reiser would be uncooperative, and from the way the meeting had begun, it sounded like he’d been right.
She separated the discs, set them on the counter, and activated them one by one. Nate had shelled out extra cash for top-of-the-line models, so not only would their batteries last at least seventy-two hours—more than enough time—these particular discs could be used both for listening in on conversations and tracking something. Like most high-end surveillance discs these days, they would go temporarily dark any time a bug scanner was detected. The only way they could be discovered was visually, and Jar had no intentions of leaving any of them where they would be seen.
She placed the first disc under the vanity, then put the remaining chips in her pocket and moved next to the door, ready for the signal. The wait for Daeng’s text was short. One word: GO. Pre-typed into his phone, and sent as soon as Reiser lost interest in Jar’s location. Quietly, she exited the bathroom.
Over at the dining table, the information negotiation continued. Predictably, it didn’t sound like much progress had been made. She paused outside the bathroom door to see if Reiser noticed her, but all his attention was on Nate.
Staying in their host’s blind spot, she placed bugs throughout the area. As she was attaching one to the underside of his bed frame, something sticking out of the pocket of a pair of jeans on a nearby chair caught her attention. She worked free the unexpected bonus and slipped it into her own pocket.
By the time she returned to the table and had stuck one under the chair she was sitting on, she had only two bugs left.
“Look, you want to sit here and go round and round for the rest of the day? Fine. You paid me enough to clear my calendar, but we all know you aren’t going to get anything out of me. I know Quinn’s a big man on principles, so I’d think he’d appreciate me sticking to mine and keeping my mouth shut.”
For the next several minutes Nate kept at Reiser, trying to open the man up.
Eventually, Reiser leaned back and laughed. “Jesus. Are you not getting this? My friend, it’s not going to happen.”
Nate considered him for several seconds before saying, “That’s too bad. Quinn is big on remembering those who helped him.”
“My loss, I guess.”
Nate nodded. “Then I guess we’re through.”
“Yeah, I guess we are.” Reiser’s smile lasted only a few seconds before he narrowed his eyes. “There’s not going to be any trouble about the money, is there?”
“No. No trouble.”
Reiser hesitated, seemingly waiting for the other shoe to drop. When it didn’t, he chuckled. “Feel free to come back anytime and pay for more information I can’t give you.”
Nate nodded at Jar and Daeng. Together they stood and headed toward the exit. When they reached the door, Nate stopped and turned back.
“One more thing,” Nate said. “What we discussed here is confidential and is not to be shared with anyone. Just like the information you’ve been unwilling to give us.”
“Of course. It’s the only way I operate.”
With Reiser’s attention on Nate, Jar deftly slipped one of the remaining bugs under the small table next to the door.
“I mean anyone. Including Dehler.”
“Yeah, yeah. I understand.” Reiser mimed locking his lips.
“Good.”
They left.
“Any problems?” Nate whispered as they made their way down the stairs.
“None,” Jar said.
The three exiled goons were huddled together outside the basement door, smoking.
“That stuff will kill you,” Daeng said in English.
The men sneered, tossed their cigarettes into the snow, and reentered the building.
When Jar and the others reached the rental, she said, “I need a second.”
She walked around their car, pulling from her pocket the set of keys she’d taken from the jeans upstairs.
Nate stared at her, dumbfounded. “You took his key?”
“Keys,” she replied, holding up the set.
“What are you going to do?” Nate asked.
“I have one bug left,” she said.
From her backpack in the rental, she removed her rollup tool pouch and selected what she needed. She had the fob pulled apart and hooked up to her laptop in seconds. A few keystrokes later, the BMW’s alarm disengaged and the locks popped open without the usual chirp.
She opened the car’s door, placed the bug under the driver’s seat. Next she removed two signal boosters from the equipment duffel bag in the rental. The black rectangles were about the size of a standard paperback book, and would allow them to monitor the bugs via the cellular network. Each box also had the capability to store multiple hours of recorded conversations for later playback.
She activated the magnet on the back of one of the boxes, and attached it to the underside of the BMW. The other one she shove
d into a pile of debris next to the building, where it probably wouldn’t be found for years. Finally, she reset the M6’s alarm via her computer.
She stuffed the disassembled fob into the bag, climbed into the rental’s backseat, and looked out at the others. They were all staring at her. “Why are you standing there? We should go.”
Nate said, “He’s going to know we took his keys.”
“He will think he misplaced them.”
“He’s going to know,” Nate said.
“So what if he does? He will assume we are planning on breaking in when he is not around. Maybe he will change his locks and beef up his security. In the meantime, we can listen in when he is in his car, too.”
“Except we have his key.”
“If he does not have a spare then he is an idiot.”
JAR HAD HER computer up and running by the time they reached the main road, and confirmed all the bugs were working. At the moment, though, the only sound was that of people moving around.
She scrolled back through the data that had been recorded between the time the bugs were activated and when she’d opened the monitoring software. The audio graphs from the discs nearest the dining table spiked almost right away. She took the feed back to where the noise started, and then let it play.
The voices were speaking in German so she couldn’t understand them, but she did recognize the second speaker as Reiser.
She started it again, this time turning up the volume. “What are they saying?”
Nate listened as he drove. “The first guy’s one of Reiser’s men. He’s asking if everything is okay. Reiser says, ‘Maybe. Maybe not.’ Then he asks his men if anyone’s heard from…” He paused. “Play that last bit back. It’s kinda garbled.”
She did as he asked.
“Bingo,” Nate said.
“Bingo? What does this mean?” she asked.
“It means it worked,” Daeng said. “He asked them if they’d heard from the Hyena.”
“And have they?”
“It doesn’t sound like it.”
Silence followed the conversation so she fast-forwarded. The graph spiked again about a minute shy of when she started listening live, so she let it play.
“It’s Reiser again,” Nate said, and then translated, “‘I just had a conversation I think you will be interested in. Call me back right away.’”
Jar fast-forwarded until she reached the next spike. It had occurred only a few minutes before, as they’d been listening to the earlier recordings.
Reiser again. “‘Yes?…. You got my message…. What? Then why did you…. Some people were here asking about you.’” A pause. “‘Yes, here. In my home…. Do you know Jonathan Quinn?…. He’s a cleaner. It was his people.’ Stop it for a moment.”
Jar halted the playback as Nate spotted a parking lot. He pulled in and took one of the spots.
“Play it,” he said.
Jar reset the audio back a few seconds and hit PLAY. The part about Quinn was followed by a long pause. When Reiser spoke again, his tone was surprised.
“‘Yes. He was one of them. How did…. When was this?…. Last night?…. No, he didn’t say anything about why…. Yes. Yes, of course. Anything. You know that…. Hang on.’” A longer pause, then, “‘Go ahead. I’m ready…. Okay…. Uh-huh…. Yes, I do…. Uh-huh…. Uh-huh…. Got it…. Give me forty-five minutes. I’ll let you know when I’m close. Should I use this number?…. Okay.’”
“I’m not the only one who thinks he’s meeting Dehler, am I?” Daeng said.
“That’s what it sounded like to me,” Nate said. He looked at Jar. “Is there anything else?”
She sped ahead as far as she could and let it play again. “This is live.”
They could hear someone moving around the loft. There was the sound of cloth falling on cloth, and a drawer opening. Walking, more drawers, and then a bark in German.
Nate looked at Jar. “Surprise, surprise. He can’t find his keys.”
Another shout, and the sound of more people moving around. Jar didn’t need Nate to tell her Reiser had ordered his men to help him look.
When their search proved just as unsuccessful, Reiser spoke again.
“He’s going over his actions, trying to remember where he last had them,” Nate said. “One of his men is suggesting that maybe he dropped them outside.” Reiser’s tone turned sharp again. “He’s not exactly a fan of that idea, but he’s sending the guy out to check anyway.” A few seconds of movement before another man said something. “Ah, there it is. It’s been suggested that maybe we took them.” Nate’s I-told-you-so look didn’t last long.
“What?” Jar asked.
“He, um, thinks maybe we’ll try to break in later.”
“Why is this surprising? Is that not what I said he would think?” Jar said.
They heard someone walk fast across the loft and a door open. Based on the proximity of the sound to the bugs, it was neither the bathroom nor the front door. The only other door Jar had seen had been along the back wall. Best guess, a storage room or closet.
After about a minute, Reiser spoke again. “He’s telling a guy named Morgan to go with him. Now he’s instructing the other two to stay behind,” Nate said.
“See,” Jar said. “Good thing I put a bug in his car.”
“There’s more than one vehicle parked outside,” Daeng pointed out.
One side of Jar’s mouth ticked up, but she said nothing.
After the main door to the loft slammed shut, the only thing they heard was some small talk between the two men left behind.
Jar fast-forwarded to listen live again. Still just the two men talking in the loft.
“If they’re taking the BMW, should we hear them by now?” Daeng said.
“No,” Jar said. “It took us two minutes and forty seconds to walk from the apartment back to the cars. It has only been two minutes and twenty.”
“My money’s on the other car,” Nate said.
“How much?”
“I’m sorry?”
“How much money?”
“Um, okay. Sure. How about a hundred euros?”
Jar thought about it for a moment, and then nodded. “One hundred euros.”
Ten seconds later, they heard the chirp of the BMW’s alarm being switched off, immediately followed by the doors opening.
“Do you want to pay me now, or do you need to stop by an ATM first?” Jar asked.
USING THE BUG as their guide, they followed Reiser at a discreet distance.
The German headed southeast toward the heart of Munich. For a while, Nate thought the guy’s destination was the train station, but he eventually drove right past it, and then arced around the city center and headed in a southeastern direction.
It wasn’t long before Nate felt a tingle in the pit of his stomach, and not long after that he said, “I know where he’s going. At least the area.”
“Where?” Daeng asked.
“We’re heading toward the junkyard and Dehler’s safe room. She must still be in the neighborhood.”
He clenched his jaw and silently berated himself. He should have stayed there. If he had, chances were he’d have her stowed away by now.
“Don’t,” Daeng said.
It took Nate a moment to realize his friend was talking to him. “Don’t what?
“Do that to yourself.”
“You into mind reading now?”
“Just the easy ones.”
“Yeah? Well, keep out of mine.”
“Then stop telegraphing your thoughts.”
Since Reiser and Morgan had driven off, the only sounds coming from the bug in the BMW had been those of the engine and the occasional swearing at traffic. But suddenly the ringing of a phone leaped from Jar’s laptop.
The second ring had barely started when it was cut off by a click, and then, “Tell me you’re close.” The woman’s voice was amplified, so Nate knew it was coming from the BMW’s stereo system. Though Nate had never heard Dehler
speak, he was sure it was her.
“Ten minutes away,” Reiser said via Nate’s translation. “Where do you want me to pick you up?”
“I’ll be on the street. Call when you reach Aschauer Strasse.”
Nate tensed. “She’s still at the junkyard.”
Over the speaker, Reiser said, “See you soon.” This was followed by the click of the call being disconnected.
“Is there any faster route?” Nate asked.
He could hear the tap-tap-tap of Jar’s keyboard. “Nothing more direct than the way we are going.”
That’s what he was afraid of. He pressed down on the accelerator, and began weaving through the traffic to close the gap between them and Reiser.
“There he is,” Daeng said a couple of minutes later. “Our lane, just about to reach the next light.”
Nate eased the sedan around the car in front of them, and spotted the BMW as it passed into the intersection. The moment it was through, the traffic light switched to yellow.
There were three cars between the rental and the intersection, and all were already slowing, eliminating any chance of Nate making the light.
Knowing that by the time the green light came around again, Reiser would be almost to Dehler, Nate jerked the sedan over the short curb that bordered the divide at the center of the road. On the other side was a wide strip of snow-covered land, where the dual tracks for the local electric tram ran. Shoving the pedal all the way to the floor, he raced down the strip, passing the cars that were stopping for the light, and rushed through the intersection seconds before the cross traffic started. With a jerk of the wheel, he adjusted his path so that when he reached the other side, he was back on the road again. Soon enough, he caught up to the cars ahead of them and spotted the BMW right where it should be.
A phone ringing again.
“Yes?” Dehler’s voice on the BMW’s speaker, and Nate turning the word into English.
“Three minutes away,” Reiser said.
“When you near the south end, slow down.”
“Got it.”
Click.
“The turn is coming up,” Jar said.
“She’s meeting him at the south end,” Nate said. “What’s down there?”
“She is talking about where Aschauer Strasse dead-ends at Ständlerstrasse.”
The Aggrieved Page 11
