Vanished Read online

  “Where the hell—?” he said.

  “Ten o’clock,” I said.

  “How high?”

  I closed my eyes, called the memory of Paladin’s lobby to mind. “Roughly eight feet.”

  “ ‘Roughly’ doesn’t help.”

  “You’re wearing a mask.”

  He shrugged, stepped into the dark office. He planted his feet and directed a beam of light into the reception area. Then he raised the laser pointer and waited a few seconds. “Okay.”

  We entered behind him, and I squirted that camera with the Super Soaker as well.

  Merlin washed the walls with the LED beam, his eyes scanning the room quickly. “Motion detectors?”

  “No,” I said.

  “You’re sure.”

  “No.”

  “Great,” Dorothy said.

  “Not likely,” I said. “Building cleaners probably come in here at night.”

  “Not likely,” Merlin echoed. “Probably.” He lowered the flashlight beam to the floor.

  “Life’s a risk,” I said.

  “Especially around you,” Dorothy said. “Are we cool here? I’m going to get to work.”

  I nodded, handed her an LED flashlight, and shined mine along the floor to the next room, illuminating a path to the windows. The Paladin offices seemed a lot smaller in the dark. Starting at the leftmost window, I tugged the venetian blinds closed. Then I directed Dorothy to the desk where Koblenz’s admin, Eleanor Appleby, normally sat.

  Meanwhile, Merlin busied himself with his equipment, looking for stray micro waves that might indicate a microwave-based motion detector, and an RF detector to search for hidden cameras.

  “Clear?” I said.

  “So far.”

  Dorothy made a pssst sound, and I came over, shining my flashlight. She was sitting at Eleanor Appleby’s computer, looking frustrated. “They do take precautions here,” she said. “It’s logged out.”

  “Did you check the usual place?” Merlin asked.

  “You mean, the Post-it pad in the middle drawer? Yeah, I checked it, but there’s nothing there. What’s wrong with these people?”

  “Can you crack the password?” I asked her.

  “If you don’t mind me sitting here until morning, I might be able to. I’ll need a pot of coffee, though.”

  “Maybe not such a good idea,” I said.

  “That means I can’t install any spyware. But maybe that’s just as well. Place like this, they probably have antivirus software that’d pick it up.”

  “Now what?”

  “I’m stumped.”

  This was a disappointment. If we wanted to capture any of Eleanor Appleby’s passwords, we needed to put some kind of eavesdropping device on her computer.

  “How about a piece of hardware?” Merlin said. He’d brought a couple of different keyloggers—plastic devices that looked like one of those barrel connectors you might—or might not—notice in the rat’s nest of cables behind your computer.

  “Uh-uh,” Dorothy said. She pointed at the back of the admin’s computer. “They’re making life hard for us. Check it out.”

  I trained my flashlight at the back of the computer, saw only smooth wood. “What am I looking at?”

  “All the computer cables are routed through the desk so no one can tamper with them.”

  “That rules out the hardware keylogger, too,” I said.

  “No,” said Merlin. “It just means Plan C. The keyboard module.”

  That was another little electronic component he’d brought along, which you installed inside the keyboard. Even harder to detect than the barrel connector, but time-consuming to put in. He put his messenger bag on Eleanor Appleby’s desk.

  “Dorothy, can you put it in?” I asked.

  “I can figure it out, yeah,” she said. “Though Walter might be faster at it.”

  “Faster and better,” Merlin said, “but I’ve got another job to do.”

  “Then you’ll just have to settle,” Dorothy snapped. She reached into his messenger bag and took out a crimping tool, a screwdriver, and a tube of Superglue. She flipped the keyboard over, began loosening the miniature screws.

  “You realize,” Merlin said, “that this means you’re going to have to get back in here and retrieve this thing in a day or two, right?”

  “We are,” I said.

  He grunted. “Then you really better hope nothing goes south tonight.”

  I nodded. “Let’s get lucky.”

  I approached Koblenz’s office door, turned the knob slowly, pushed it open. Merlin followed right behind, carrying a second messenger bag full of equipment.

  I looked back at Merlin. “You didn’t detect any motion detectors in here, right?”

  “Not microwave-based,” he said. “Passive infrared I’m not going to pick up.”

  “You think he might have passive infrared?”

  Merlin shined the light quickly around the office, saw the immaculate desk, the perfectly squared piles on the credenza behind it. “Nah. He’s too orderly.”

  Unless the cleaning people had been given instructions not to clean his office, Koblenz wouldn’t have a motion detector of any kind inside his office. I agreed with Merlin: Koblenz seemed the fastidious type, the sort of guy who’d want his office carpet vacuumed every night, the wastebaskets emptied. And, although it was possible, I doubted his admin cleaned his office for him.

  Merlin sighed. “That’s a TL-30X6.”

  “I thought it was a Diebold.”

  “That’s the rating. The most secure safe they make. And an electronic lock. Oh, man.”

  “Like I told you.”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Right?”

  “You said electronic lock. I didn’t know it was a TL-30X6.”

  “I don’t like your tone, Merlin. You sound very pessimistic. Maybe even defeatist.”

  “Heller, listen to me. I brought my StrongArm safe cracker diamond-core drill bits, okay? But drilling through one of these, that’s a five-hour job at least. That mother’s made from inch-and-a-half-thick steel and cobalt-carbide matrix hardplate, okay?”

  “If you say so.”

  “Then they’ve got sheets of tempered glass mounted inside, rigged to break when a drill hits it. Triggers a relocking mechanism that even the right combination won’t open.”

  “Merlin,” I said. “I get you. I think we’re going to have to change your name to Eeyore. Now, why don’t we try the keypad? I’d prefer nondestructive means.”

  He gave me a look, telling me that was his plan anyway.

  The safe had an electronic keypad on the front: nine numbers, on black keys, inset in a round black dial with a red LED light at the top. Instead of turning a dial, you punched in the combination.

  He knelt before the safe, took out a small jar and brush, and began dusting the keypad with white fingerprint powder. When he shined the flashlight beam at it, I could see distinct fingerprints on only four of the keys: 3, 5, 9, and ENTER.

  “That’s a start,” I said. “That limits us to three numbers.”

  “It’s a six-digit combination of 3, 5, and 9,” Merlin said. “How many possible permutations does that make? Like a million?”

  “Less than that, Eeyore.”

  “Not a lot less. Anyway, we get four tries before we go into penalty mode.”

  “And then?”

  “Then a five-minute lockout before we can try again.”

  “So let’s hope we guess right. What about the manufacturer’s tryout combo?”

  “It’s 1-2-3-4-5-6.”

  “That’s not it, then. You’re just going to have to try randomly.”

  As far as I knew, there were no six-digit numbers that Koblenz had any obvious connection to—his house number had four digits, the number of the office building had five, the suite number had three.

  “Right. Great.” He hissed in a breath. “All right, here goes.” He punched in one sequence.

  And nothing happened.


  “Try again,” I said.

  He punched in another sequence.

  Nothing.

  And a third time. Nothing.

  Merlin gritted his teeth and entered another sequence.

  Then something happened. But not what we wanted. The red LED light flashed. On, then off, with a ten-second delay between flashes.

  “Crap,” he said. “Now we have to wait five minutes.”

  “No. Try spiking the solenoid.”

  He shrugged, gave me a dyspeptic scowl, and twisted the keypad off the safe door. It’s meant to be easily removed, so you can change the battery. He pushed on a couple of clips, releasing a plastic cover, then pulled out the black rubber membrane. This exposed a circuit board and a row of eight tiny metal posts.

  Then he took a nine-volt battery from his bag and clipped on a pair of leads. One end he held against the leftmost post. When he touched the other lead to the top right post, there was a crackling sound and the smell of electronic components burning.

  And nothing else. It didn’t unlock.

  “That’s it,” he said. “We’re screwed now.”

  “Try the drill.”

  “I thought you wanted nondestructive.”

  “I want the card,” I said. “At this point I want it any way we can get it.”

  “If you told me in the first place, I could have brought in a thermic lance.”

  “What, from the Ocean’s Eleven prop room?”

  “No, man, it’s for real. Cuts through concrete and rebar steel and everything. But it’s huge, and you need an oxygen tank.”

  I was about to tell him to try the drill anyway, despite the long odds, when, out of the murky darkness of Koblenz’s inner sanctum, a tiny red light winked at me from high on the wall near the ceiling.

  “You see that flashing light?” I said.

  “Yeah,” Merlin said impatiently. “Told you, that’s the penalty mode light. Means we gotta wait five minutes.”

  “No. Up there.” I pointed.

  He looked up.

  Saw the blinking red light.

  “Damn it, Heller.”

  “What?”

  “PIR. Passive infrared.”

  A motion detector.

  “We gotta get out of here,” he said, his voice rising.

  “What’s going on?” Dorothy called from the desk right outside.

  “We just set off an alarm,” I said.

  71.

  His guys are probably already on their way,” Merlin said.

  “Oh, good Lord,” Dorothy said.

  “Move it,” Merlin said. “Let’s go. Won’t take them more than ten minutes to show up, I bet. Damn it to hell!”

  “No,” I said. “We’re not leaving here with nothing. Dorothy, how much more time do you need?”

  “I don’t know—three, four minutes. But I can’t rush it.”

  “Don’t rush,” I said. “Get that thing in there and clean things up so they can’t tell we’ve been here.”

  I swung the flashlight beam around Koblenz’s office, saw the built-in ventilation system beneath his windows. Raced over to it and flipped open the control panel.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Merlin said. Perspiration had broken out on his forehead. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “Calm down,” I said. “This is why we have the backup procedure.” The air-conditioning had gone off for the evening, as an energy-saving measure, but I switched it back on and turned the fan on full blast. Then I adjusted the louvers on the front of the unit so that air was blowing up at an angle, rattling the papers on top of the file cabinets and the credenza. On top of the credenza were a large rubber plant and a smaller jade plant. I tipped over the jade plant. The plastic pot went in one direction, the plant and its clump of earth went another. Then I took a pile of papers from the credenza and scattered some of them to the floor.

  “What the hell?” Merlin said.

  “Establishing a plausible explanation,” I said. In reality, the gust of air probably wouldn’t be strong enough to tip over the jade plant, but Koblenz would probably accept it. Especially since nothing would appear to have been stolen. He’d focus on the real anomaly, which was why his AC had gone on in the middle of the night. But he’d dismiss that as a malfunction in the building’s ventilation system. People always blame technology.

  I pulled out the four disposable cell phones, found the one that I’d labeled in Sharpie marker with a big number “1.”

  “All right,” I said. “Here goes.” I hit the preset number on the first cell phone.

  I couldn’t see the result right away. I didn’t need to. The incendiary devices we’d jury-rigged were rudimentary, but the effect would be dramatic. Not that we wanted to burn the building down; not at all. We just wanted to make it look that way.

  Inside each Whole Foods bag was a simple contraption: a cell phone wired to a relay, a nine-volt battery, the filament from a chandelier bulb. Phone rings, bulb filament gets hot, sets off a mixture of sugar and potassium chlorate inside a smoke grenade. That in turn sets off the plaster-of-paris and aluminum-powder mix, which we’d poured into a flowerpot and let harden. That mixture would get incredibly hot. It would actually burn underwater.

  Basic explosives training; nothing fancy. But within thirty seconds, the entire lobby would be filled with smoke, billowing from a blazing hot fire. Hot but contained. And extremely dramatic. The smoke would pour out of the building.

  Even before I made it to the window and saw the clouds of grayish white smoke in the moonlight, the building’s smoke alarm started clanging.

  Dorothy announced, “All set.” She adjusted the keyboard on Eleanor Appleby’s desk, restoring it to where it had been before she tinkered with it, then she stood up.

  “The fire trucks should be here in five minutes,” I said. “We’d just better hope none of our Paladin friends is closer than that.”

  “I thought you said it would take the Paladin guys ten minutes,” Dorothy said.

  “That was an estimate.”

  “You didn’t know? You were guessing?”

  “An educated guess.”

  “Heller, why didn’t you tell me that?”

  I didn’t reply. The answer was simple: It was a gap in the plan I was hoping to just finesse. I was hoping for good luck. But if I’d told them that, I’d have been doing this alone.

  For the first time, I was nervous.

  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 loa
ding-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.

  72.

  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.