Lynne Heitman - The Pandora Key aka The Hostage Room

“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.”

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.