Lynne Heitman - The Pandora Key aka The Hostage Room

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 source. “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.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Think about it. A computer has something on it worth a billion dollars. Wouldn’t you encrypt it or protect it somehow, just in case someone boosted it? And whatever that protection was-the password or the code or the key-wouldn’t you be likely to keep that on you?”

“Yes on both counts. So what?”

I had a few pretzels. They were good and fresh. “This e-mail that accidentally fell out of Roger’s out-box when you signed on, it was to Rachel, and it was asking for the location of Vladi’s grave.”

“Vladi, the dead Russian?”

“Yep.”

“What, you’re thinking the dead Russian still has this…this code or key or whatever it is on him?”

“Well, it would have been more viable four years ago, I would think, when Roger actually intended to send the message.”

“Hey,” he said. “Here’s what I want to know. How the hell is this guy’s account still active if he’s dead?”

I thought about that. If it was a business account, it would have been paid for through Betelco. Since he’d been on the lam at the time he sent it, that wasn’t likely. “His wife,” I said, remembering the look on Susan Fratello’s face when I’d asked her if she would want to know if Roger were alive. “His wife might have kept it open all these years.”

He smiled for the first time and pointed the longneck at me. “Grave robbing. I like it. A little creepy but a good angle. Too bad I’m not doing that story.” Then he shrugged. “But who gives a shit? Russians…obscene amounts of money. It’s been done.”

“Was Vladi’s one of the computers you bought from the kid with the goat? Do you have the billion-dollar treasure map?”

He sat back and stretched with his hands over his head. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

I did want to know. I wasn’t sure I needed to know, because I had no plans to dig up Vladi, not even for a billion dollars. But when I didn’t jump all over his idea, he got agitated.

“You do, don’t you? Don’t you want to know if I have a computer worth a billion clams?”

Kraft was a unique personality, to be sure. He was either flush with confidence to the point of overbearing arrogance or anxious and needy to the point of mewling. He didn’t seem afraid to be either.