Джозеф Файндер - Vanished

Our escape plan rested entirely on the likelihood that the firefighters would get here before the Paladin guys. Once the fire department arrived, they’d secure the scene and allow no one to enter. But if Paladin got here first, they might well decide to race upstairs, smoke or no smoke. It was entirely possible that they’d connect the two things – the motion sensor in Koblenz’s office going off and an apparent fire raging in the lobby – and conclude that their office had been the target of vandals. Then they’d be all the more motivated to rush up here.

I could hear the sirens, louder and closer, heard the shouts and the braking of the trucks and the clatter of the equipment as the firemen jumped out, and I heaved a sigh of relief.

“They’re here,” she said.

I pressed the second preprogrammed number, detonating the second incendiary device, which I’d placed in the lobby of the second floor.

“I’m not deaf,” I said.

The loud squealing of tires.

“No, Heller, I mean Paladin. Two black Humvees. That’s Paladin.”

“I’m out of here!” Merlin shouted.

“Walter,” Dorothy said. “Man up.”

THE LAST thing I saw before we raced out of the Paladin office and down the stairs was a shouting match between some intimidating-looking Paladin employees, a couple of Falls Church policemen, and a few firemen.

Not a contest the Paladin security people were going to win. The police and the fire department would never let them enter what appeared to be a burning building.

We raced out through the loading-dock entrance at the ground level. No one was waiting for us there. Both smoke devices were at the front of the building, so that was where the firefighters were gathered.

“Merlin,” I said as we parted, Dorothy running ahead toward the Defender. “Thank you.”

He turned toward me, gave me a dark look, and didn’t say a word.

Dorothy and I didn’t talk for a long while. Maybe it was the adrenaline crash, that low-level anxiety and mild depression that often sets in after a time of great stress. You see that a lot after a battle.

Finally, she said, “Now what?”

“There’s always another way.”

“Well, I sure can’t think of one.”

“I can,” I said, and I explained.

“Oh man,” she said. “That’s either incredibly bold or incredibly stupid.”

“I like to think positive.”

“You know, if Koblenz really has one of those RaptorCards, that’s just incredible.”

“Is that what it’s called?”

“I’ve only heard rumors about this. Remember a couple years back how it came out about the U.S. government tapping into the whole SWIFT banking consortium? So they could monitor suspicious movements of money?”

“For terrorist surveillance, sure.”

“Right. But then it turned out the government could spy on every single funds transfer, every single financial transaction – everything. No more bank secrecy. Big Brother was watching, right?”

I didn’t want to argue with her, but I’d always believed that there was a whole lot less secrecy in banking than most people thought. Rich folks assume that when they stash money offshore, it’s going to remain a deep, dark secret. But bankers are human beings. Even offshore bankers. All you have to do is pay off the right one, or make the right friend, and you can find out all sorts of things.

Which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing for people in my line of work, of course.

And then there was a report that was leaked on the Internet not so long ago about how Cisco Systems was secretly building a backdoor into all its routers to enable the government to eavesdrop on all network traffic, including e-mails and phone calls.

“So a RaptorCard allows you to move money around without the government watching.”

“Right. By embedding private-key cryptography in an appliance that looks like a credit card. The strongest encryption ever devised. The closest thing to a true random number generator. Authentication’s built right in. You can use it anywhere.”

“Numbered accounts are just so twentieth-century, huh?”

“Right. So my question for you, Nick, is what do you plan to do with it?”

I thought for a long moment. The answer was complicated, and in truth, I hadn’t yet figured it out. Not entirely, anyway.

But I didn’t get a chance to answer before my cell phone rang.

“Got something for you,” Frank Montello said. “Something really interesting. That cell phone you asked me to track?”

I hesitated, then remembered. “Yeah?”

“She just called the same throwaway cell phone number your father called.”

“Roger’s cell phone,” I said, and I began to feel queasy. “You’re not serious.”

“Yeah,” Frank said. “Just about an hour ago, Lauren Heller called her husband.”

Marjorie Ogonowski parted the curtains and looked out her living-room window.

A dark blue Buick Century sedan pulled up to the curb. She took note of the white license plate with the dark blue lettering that said U.S. GOVERNMENT. The license-plate number started with a J, denoting the Justice Department. Marjorie, whose cousin was married to an FBI employee, knew a fair amount about the FBI.

After the FBI man had called her to arrange an interview concerning a matter at work, she’d been sorely tempted to call her cousin and see what she could find out. But he had instructed her not to speak to anyone. She hadn’t stopped worrying since the man called. She wondered if it had anything to do with her boss, Roger Heller. She was pretty sure it did. Especially after that man John Murray from Security Compliance had come to talk to her at the office about Roger and why he’d gone missing.

Well, at least the FBI man was right on time. Seven o’clock p.m., just as he promised. She liked that. Marjorie was always on time, always precise. She was orderly in all things. She was nothing if not detail-oriented. This was one of the qualities that made her such a good lawyer, she was convinced. That, and her brains, and her willingness to work long hours without complaining. Right out of Georgetown Law she’d landed a job as an associate counsel in the corporate development division at Gifford Industries, working on mergers and acquisitions, and she was convinced that she was on the fast track to general counsel.

Her salary wasn’t great, but that would change in short order. In the meantime, it had allowed her to buy this tiny ranch house in Linthicum, Maryland. The real-estate salesman had called it “an investor’s dream,” which meant that it needed a lot of work. She had done most of it herself, stripping the yellowed wallpaper, painting, even installing a new laminate hardwood floor in her kitchen by herself over a long weekend.

This was the advantage of not having a social life. You got a lot of work done around the house.

The FBI agent rang the doorbell, and she tried not to answer it too quickly. She didn’t want him to know how nervous she was. Nor that this was the high point of her week, although it was.

In the other room her cockatiel, Caesar, whistled loudly.

She opened the aluminum screen door and shook his hand. Something about his unhandsome face made him seem trustworthy.

“Were my directions okay?” she said.

“Perfect,” he said. “The Parkway wasn’t bad at all. Took me exactly thirty-seven minutes.”

She liked his precision.

She let him in and offered him tea or a soft drink, but he declined. He showed her his FBI badge and credentials, which she inspected carefully, though she’d only seen things like that on TV. The gold badge with the eagle and the embossed letters, in a black leather wallet. The laminated credentials with his photo and signature were clipped to the breast pocket of his cheap suit. He handed her a business card.