David Duffy - Last to Fold

“For real?”

“Cheka honor.”

“Cheka honor.” He shook his head. “That’s supposed to make me believe you?”

I shrugged. “We didn’t have Boy Scouts.”

He put his glasses on, stood, and went to the window and looked out, most likely without seeing anything. He was trying to make up his mind about something. I let him take his time.

“I don’t think this has anything to do with you,” he said when he turned back to face me.

“Because?”

“What do you know about whaling?”

“Phishing for big fish. Send bogus e-mail, try to get the recipient to open an attachment that installs a keyboarding bug, phisher can see everything on your computer. It’s one of Lachko’s businesses, but he’s got plenty of competition. Did Mulholland…”

He nodded. “About three months ago. We’ve had other clients get scammed, too. Bait in his instance was a fake letter from the U.S. attorney, Southern District. Most people know better than to open unsolicited attachments, but since this looked exactly like the real deal, he didn’t think twice.”

“He get keyboarded?”

He nodded. “Didn’t tell us until ten days ago. Whoever it was copied a lot of computer activity. Of course, we informed Victoria right away, since it was her fake paper. Could be one reason she felt she had to move on Rory before anything else happened.”

“You think there’s a connection?”

“Don’t know. That’s why I bring it up. Could’ve been Barsukov.”

“Could’ve been, but we don’t know enough.” I looked at my watch. “Still want me to make the drop?”

He nodded. “I don’t have a lot of options, as you point out. But I want to be clear on priorities—girl, money, kidnappers, in that order.”

“What about explanation?”

“Girl, money, kidnappers, in that order.”

“You don’t want to know what’s going on?”

“I want to know your efforts are focused where they should be—especially, as you say, if you have to improvise.”

He wasn’t in a mood to argue, and his priorities were the ones I’d focus on first in any event—then I’d find out what was going on.

“Okay,” I said, “but here’s one more piece of information you may want to factor in. Mulholland’s been buying FTB stock with every dime he can raise for the last two months.”

He’d started for the door, but his head whipped around. “Buying? You sure?”

“Uh-huh. Basilisk told me.”

“That monster ought to be illegal. I didn’t know. Thanks. I don’t know what it means, other than Rory’s a man of his convictions. He believes in himself and his bank.”

“Knowing that changes everything I thought about him,” I said with a grin.

“Keep your opinions to yourself. He’s your client.”

“I know. I’m looking forward to collecting that six sixty-six. Plus—”

“I know. Plus the goddamned expenses. Sometimes I wonder how we won the Cold War. I spent the better part of three decades analyzing Russians, and I still have no idea what makes you tick.”

“You didn’t win.” He’d heard this speech before, too. Maybe it was national pride, but I never tired of making the point, especially to Americans. “We lost.”

Girl, money, kidnappers.

Bernie’s priorities were fine as far as they went, but they didn’t go far enough. I had a plan for the money. The same plan would lead me to the kidnappers, if there were any kidnappers, and I’d figure out what to do with them once I saw them in the flesh. Neither worried me much. The girl was a different issue. Priority one, of course, as she should be. Only problem was, she wouldn’t be anywhere near the drop site tonight, no matter what the supposed kidnappers said. That much I was reasonably certain of, and that moved explanation up on the priority list. No point in pushing the point now. Bernie’s hands were tied, as were mine, by the same client—or the same client’s wife.

Bernie led me down the hall to a small conference room. A red backpack sat on a table surrounded by leather chairs. A clean-cut young man in a suit stood as we came in.

Bernie said, “This is Malcolm Watkins. You spoke on the phone.”

I shook hands with the kid and pointed to the backpack. “That the money?”

“Yes, sir. They specified a red backpack.”

“What did they sound like?”

“What do you mean?”

“The voice on the phone—man, woman, American, foreign, young, old?”

“Oh, sorry. I have no idea—Mrs. Mulholland talked to them.”

I looked at Bernie. “Mulholland said—”

“I know. No way around telling her. I’ll deal with Rory.”

I didn’t point out she almost certainly already knew. I’d caused enough trouble. Instead, I asked, “What’s the drill?”

Franklin looked down at a yellow legal pad. “Bring the money to the Sheraton at Newark Airport tonight at ten. Alone. She said they repeated that. Go to the front door with the backpack, wait. You’ll be searched. No guns. Then you go to the room they tell you. The door will be ajar. Put the backpack on the bed and leave. The girl will be in the lobby. They said if anything goes wrong, they’ll kill her first, then you.”

He said the last part awkwardly, clearly uncomfortable. This wasn’t what he’d been trained for. I nodded and smiled.

“Don’t worry. These guys probably learned that watching TV. Let’s see what we have.” I picked up the backpack. It was full of bills, tens and twenties, banded into packs of a thousand dollars each. I looked up at Watkins. “All here, right?”

“Yes, sir. Counted it twice.”

I took the box of small electronic devices from my messenger bag and selected one about the size and shape of a Wheat Thins cracker. Then I reached around in the backpack until I felt an inside pocket, and used some Super Glue to stick the RFID tag to the nylon. Bernie and Watkins watched while I rezipped the pocket, the latter with some suspicion.

“Radio frequency identification transponder,” I said. “RFID. Everybody’s using them. Casinos, Walmart, car rental companies—it’s the big new thing. Sends a signal to my laptop. GPS software communicates with the satellite, tells me where the backpack is.”

Watkins looked at Bernie, then back at me. “She said they said no tricks. They said—”

I cut him off. Whatever they said wasn’t important. “These guys have any brains at all, they’ll expect us to try something. Hundred grand’s too much money to just piss away—that’s how they’ll look at it. This is an older radio tag. I want them to find it. So they won’t look for this one.” I held up a piece of plastic about the size of a grain of rice. “New generation, just out. Japanese, of course.”

I removed a pack of bills from the bag and slid a twenty from the middle. A tiny drop of glue stuck the transponder to the currency, which I reinserted into the pack. “If they take the money and leave the bag, we’ll still know where they are.”

Bernie said, “What will you do when you find them?”

“Don’t know. Depends in part on who they are. I’ll think of something.” I picked up the red backpack along with my bag. “Better get going. Might be traffic in the tunnel. Where do you want me to call?”

“We’ll be here,” Bernie said. “Good luck.”

I walked north through the all but empty, muggy streets. I keep the Potemkin in a garage on Pearl Street. I keep the Vlost and Found company car—a black 2003 Ford Crown Victoria, Police Interceptor model—in an open lot on Water Street. I call it the Valdez, after the ill-fated tanker, not the Madison Avenue coffee character. It has seventy-five thousand miles on the odometer, dents in the front fender and back door, and cost $9,800. It’s essentially a Crown Vic with a bunch of extra features and equipment and drives like its namesake, but it’ll move when you ask it to, and I couldn’t care less if it gets nicked, dinged, or totaled. A perfect New York City car.