Dead in a Week, Page 2

  His tender musings were interrupted by the ringing of his secure cell phone.

  His smiled vanished. “What’s up?” he answered.

  “I need to see you.” Terri Underwood had an unmistakably authoritative tone to her voice. A former analyst for the National Security Agency and now a freelance security consultant, she had no time for bullshit small talk. She knew more about PRISM—the US government’s not-so-secret data collection and spying efforts—than the people running it. She knew every nuance of the massive information-gathering behemoth, and even where a trap door existed so she could sneak into its vast repository of information without being detected.

  Aidan relied heavily on Terri’s clandestine genius to use PRISM for a secret purpose—ferreting out variations in human communication patterns, variations that were the precursors to tragic or even catastrophic events.

  “We’ve got a high-risk situation,” she told him now.

  Aidan glanced at his watch. “Give me a half hour to wrap things up. Then I’m on my way.”

  Los Altos Hills, California

  23 February

  Friday, 7:45 p.m. local time

  “Vance, there’s something wrong. I know it.”

  Susan Pennington was pacing anxiously around Vance’s massive walnut desk, which seemed diminutive inside the expansive, well-appointed study.

  Vance didn’t answer. He was deep in concentration, squinting at his computer screen and studying an Excel spreadsheet that Robert Maxwell, the CEO of NanoUSA, had just forwarded to him. As VP of Manufacturing, he was pressed to review the data tonight. That way, he and Robert could have their closed-door meeting in the office at seven a.m. tomorrow.

  “Vance!” Susan repeated, this time more adamantly. She might have her husband home, but his mind was still locked into the round-the-clock work schedule that comprised his life. He’d be at it till way past midnight. And she needed his attention now.

  With a resigned sigh, Vance removed his glasses and eased back in his leather chair, studying his wife’s stricken expression.

  “Susan, it’s only been three days since she called. She’s pissed. She didn’t like our reaction to her grand announcement that she’d be blowing off our annual family gathering. She’s still been texting us every day at the same time to let us know she’s okay. So what is it you’re worried about?”

  “It’s not like Lauren to hold a grudge,” Susan answered. “She’s always about making up and moving on. This time’s different. Even when I call her, my calls go straight to voice mail. She’s clearly ignoring me. And her texts are cryptic. They sound more like a travel guide than like our daughter.”

  “Like I said, she’s pissed at us. Maybe there’s a guy in the picture,” Vance suggested. “You know how Lauren is. If she’s `in love’ yet again, she’ll be totally consumed with God knows who. It would explain everything—including why she wants to stay in Europe rather than joining her family for our once-a-year vacation. Hormones trump skiing.”

  Susan rubbed her hands together and considered that. Vance wasn’t wrong in his assessment. When Lauren fell for a guy, it was hard, it was fast, and it overshadowed all else. After numerous failed relationships, Lauren had stopped sharing the details, waiting until the love affair was over and then defaulting to: “It didn’t work out.”

  Could that be what this was about?

  She blew out her breath. “I suppose that could explain it.”

  “Of course it could.” Vance slid his glasses back on his nose and returned to his work. “Why don’t you make yourself a cup of chamomile tea to unwind and then go upstairs? I’ll join you as soon as I can.”

  “Okay.” Susan left the room and headed down to the kitchen.

  But she couldn’t get rid of the nagging feeling that something just wasn’t right.

  The Zermatt Group Offices

  West 75th Street, Manhattan, New York

  23 February

  Friday, 10:55 p.m. local time

  Aidan went straight to his apartment building, greeted George the doorman, and then took the elevator up to the seventh floor.

  He unlocked the front door and strode in, locking it firmly behind him.

  This was home to him and Abby, and often to Joyce Reynolds, Abby’s middle-aged nanny, who spent many an overnight or a late night—such as tonight—in the guest room while Aidan traveled or worked. Joyce had twenty years of experience, an enormously long fuse, and a genuine fondness for her little charge. She cooked, straightened up the apartment, and accompanied Abby to preschool and to all her other activities and playdates. She was a lifesaver.

  The apartment was well-appointed and huge, with tons of rooms and a loft-like area that Abby loved to play in. Right now, it was quiet, which meant that Abby was asleep.

  He’d check in on her later. At the moment, enjoying his home’s amenities was the farthest thing from his mind.

  He headed directly for the windowless room at the rear of the apartment, which served as the strategic command center for the Zermatt Group, a.k.a. the home base of Aidan’s “other life.” They called this space “the Cage” because the entire room was a Faraday cage. It didn’t allow electromagnetic waves to enter and thereby protected all the sensitive electronic devices within its walls from electronic surveillance. All communications to the outside world were hardwired, heavily monitored, and protected with multiple firewalls. When someone tried to reach either Aidan or Terri on their cell phone when inside the Cage, the call could be routed instead to the desk phone in the room.

  He paused in front of the solid steel door and the Hirsh keypad controlling access to it. Adjacent to the keypad was a small red light. When it glowed, Aidan was inside and not to be disturbed.

  Spotting a crumpled candy wrapper on the floor, he squatted to pick it up and pocket it, a smile tugging at his lips as he thought of Abby repeating to her little friends, “Unless there’s fire, flood, or blood, do not disturb my daddy ’cause he’s working.” So very Abbylike. She defended her daddy’s unusual and über-private work space with absolute loyalty, even if she did have a million questions about it when she and Aidan were alone.

  Right now Aidan could see that the red light was glowing, which told him that Terri was already inside. Only the two of them had the combination to the Hirsh. Aidan entered the access code and pushed the door open when he heard the lock click.

  “I’m here,” he announced, tossing his jacket on the nearest chair and striding over to Terri’s desk, peering over her head as he did. The entire wall was a panorama of LED monitors partitioned into smaller screens that displayed everything from international news broadcasts to PRISM to computers monitoring events all over the world.

  As a former NSA analyst and a sought-after computer security consultant, Terri was an expert on finding people who were trying to stay anonymous. From her stint at the NSA, she knew what worked and what didn’t. Friends and foes quickly learned that she was quite the force to be reckoned with.

  Physically, she was also a formidable woman, almost six feet tall, with a figure that rivaled Wonder Woman’s. Her eyes were intense and dark, her hair was wavy and shoulder-length, and her skin was a light golden brown, the product of an African-American father and a Caucasian mother. As head of intelligence for the Zermatt Group and Aidan’s right hand, she’d been an integral part of it since its onset.

  Now she glanced up from her laptop, then rose and walked over to the printer, where she retrieved a handful of pages and passed them to Aidan. “Take a look at what Donovan found.”

  Donovan, Terri’s artificial intelligence system, had been named by Aidan after “Wild Bill” Donovan, head of the OSS during World War II and regarded as the father of modern intelligence. Terri’s Donovan would sniff out examples of corporations stealing from each other, criminal enterprises working with terrorists, and governments spying on everybody. The Zermatt Group didn’t have the time or the resources to address all of them, only those that were really serious and that they m
ight be able to do something about.

  Clearly, this one was really serious. It would be interesting to see if they could impact it.

  Frowning in concentration, Aidan flipped through the pages, noting the key briefing points in his hands.

  He returned to page one.

  “Vance Pennington,” he said, without reading the details he already knew. “He’s NanoUSA’s Vice-President of Manufacturing. They’re in the middle of something very big.”

  Terri nodded. “Our intelligence tells us that NanoUSA is about to commercialize a breakthrough manufacturing technology that will turn the electronics industry upside down. The Chinese desperately need this technology—to protect the status quo of their electronics dominance. Over the past few months, my analysis shows increased chatter from Chinese companies about stealing the technology—including hacking attempts targeting NanoUSA, heightened communications between known spies for the Chinese, and Chinese-sponsored agents looking to bribe or blackmail company employees into leaking details.”

  Aidan pursed his lips. “I assume that, to date, all attempts on the part of the Chinese have failed.”

  “Yes,” Terri replied. “Let’s move on to Pennington’s personal life. Turn to page ten.” She waited and then pointed at the page Aidan had flipped to. “He has a wife, Susan, and three children—Andrew, twenty-seven, Jessica, twenty-five, and Lauren, twenty. Lauren is an exchange student in Munich. She just finished up her winter semester. She’s on her break now, supposedly touring Europe.”

  “Supposedly?”

  “My system has detected a statistically significant shift in the communication flow from Lauren to her parents. Upon further analysis, I don’t believe she’s the person who’s been communicating with them for the past three days.”

  Aidan’s brows lifted. Terri never failed to impress him. “Go on.”

  “Lauren hasn’t returned any of her parents’ calls, nor has she initiated a single phone call to them,” Terri replied. “That’s the first anomaly. As for her text messages, they’ve diminished in frequency from many times a day to one per day, delivered at precisely the same time. I’m also seeing a marked change in linguistic patterns. Up until three days ago, the language pattern suggested a US-educated, college-aged female.”

  “And now?”

  “Now the words are more typical of a Balkan male, in his thirties—a person who’s trying very hard to appear female and American.”

  “So two different people composed the messages.”

  “Yes.” Terri folded her arms across her chest, looking troubled. “I took it upon myself to contact Philip in London. I asked him to do some local reconnaissance on Lauren in Munich, using his former MI6 contacts. Philip confirmed that she was last seen having a beer and pretzel at the Hofbräuhaus, flirting with some Euro trash. Her apartment’s been empty for days. Every piece of her matching set of luggage is accounted for. Her backpack is hanging on a hook. Her birth control pills, makeup, and pharmaceuticals are still in her medicine cabinet. Philip and I agree. Lauren’s not traveling in Europe. She’s been kidnapped.”

  Aidan nodded. “It’s no coincidence that the victim is the daughter of NanoUSA’s VP of Manufacturing. All that’s required now is a simple barter transaction—NanoUSA’s trade secrets in exchange for Lauren.”

  “My guess is that the Chinese aren’t even doing their own dirty work.” Terri sank down on the edge of her desk. “They’ve hired a Balkan crime group—probably the Albanians—to handle the kidnapping. This is now a High Priority.”

  Aidan didn’t miss a beat. “I’ll set up a meeting with Vance Pennington.”

  He reached for the phone on the desk and dialed his office. He knew that his personal assistant was still at her desk at this ungodly hour, addressing a situation with the Far East. Then again, a quarter of Heckman Flax’s staff was still in the building, hard at work.

  “Melissa, sorry for the hour and the short notice. I need you to book me on tomorrow’s six a.m. flight to San Francisco, returning the following day. Have a rental car ready for me at the airport. I need to drive down to Santa Clara for a meeting in Silicon Valley.” A pause. “Good. Also, I need to speak to John Reams. Right, our analyst who covers the technology space. He was there when I left. Phone is fine. Thanks.”

  Aidan hung up and turned to Terri. “I’m going into my home office for a teleconference,” he told Terri. “I’ll contact you tomorrow after I meet with Pennington. Lock up on your way out.”

  * * *

  Aidan’s teleconference with John Reams had been illuminating.

  Heckman Flax’s technology expert had explained that the breakthrough electronics technology NanoUSA had developed would significantly reduce labor required for electronics assembly. Implementation of the technology would result in massive unemployment in the Asian electronics industry.

  To make matters worse, Robert Maxwell, the CEO of NanoUSA, was a patriot and was determined to revitalize electronics manufacturing in the US. In a seismic shift, cell phones, tablets, laptops would all be made in the US. The Chinese leaders were running scared. Millions had migrated from rural China to urban areas in order to fill factory jobs. If NanoUSA had its way, those Chinese factories would be empty. For the first time, Chinese workers would experience what their American counterparts felt in the Rust Belt as Chinese manufacturing eviscerated their manufacturing jobs. Now the tables would be turned.

  John made the call to Vance Pennington’s secretary and got Aidan an appointment on Pennington’s calendar for tomorrow. So everything in California was set.

  John deserved a huge thank-you. Aidan planned to give him one—something that Terri would relish arranging.

  He texted her, asking her to finagle a table for two at Rao’s East Harlem restaurant for John and his girlfriend. Then, he chuckled, thinking of what her reaction would be. She’d wallow like a pig in shit. Terri loved nothing more than to screw over a rich, entitled SOB. She’d hack into Rao’s computerized seating list with great relish and replace the name of some Hollywood diva with John Reams.

  You couldn’t just get a table at Rao’s. Tables had owners. Owners let you sit at their table.

  Well, some asshole or other wouldn’t be eating at Rao’s tomorrow night.

  Aidan had one last task left to complete the arrangements—an imperative task, since he’d given Joyce the rest of Saturday and Sunday off.

  Abby would be thrilled.

  He couldn’t speak for her Uncle Marc and Aunt Madeline.

  Farmhouse

  Slavonia, Croatia

  24 February

  Saturday, 10:00 a.m. local time

  Lauren paced around the bedroom, pausing to stare out the windows that overlooked nothing but acres and acres of lightly snow-covered land punctuated only by the occasional ice-glistening tree. Flat. Barren. It was the same in every room of the house—windows with views of nothingness. No signs of life or roads or activity.

  Even after four days…God only knew where she was.

  She still couldn’t get rid of the faint odor of chloroform in her nostrils. It made her retch unless she breathed through her mouth. Between that and the paralyzing terror she felt, she’d barely eaten or left this room, although she was allowed to move freely through the one-story house and offered three full meals a day. The only people she saw were Marko and a terrifying-looking man who Marko addressed as Bashkim, whose powerful build told Lauren he was probably the man who’d grabbed her. He was in his mid-forties and balding, and the receding hairline of his light brown hair made his forehead and nose look all the more prominent. But it was his piercing light blue eyes that were the most frightening to Lauren. They were like lasers, pinning her to the post with a stare that made her insides clench with fear.

  He never spoke to her and barely looked at her. She was a commodity to him, a pawn in whatever game he and his associates were playing. And she desperately tried not to imagine what role that was.

  Someone higher level than Marko and Bashk
im was running the show. She could hear snippets of phone conversations—too muffled for her to decipher through the wall and spoken in a language she didn’t understand. But she picked up on a definite tone of deference and respect. Lauren was smart enough to realize that this was no random kidnapping. It had been carefully planned with her as its target.

  Why? Why?

  She kept trying to stifle her sobs. Showing weakness around these monsters would only bring them pleasure and give them more ammunition to torment her with.

  Were they going to kill her?

  She sank down on the bed, shivering as she curled up in a tight, self-protective ball.

  The bedroom door opened, and Marko walked in, shutting the door behind him. He sauntered over to the bed and sank down beside her—way too close for comfort.

  It wasn’t the first time.

  Lauren stiffened and, instinctively, shifted her weight to put a bit more distance between them. She loathed Marko joining her. Normally, he was somewhere else in the farmhouse, either conversing with Bashkim or talking quietly on the phone in what he’d proudly told Lauren was Albanian. But periodically, he’d pay her a visit, during which he managed to touch and taunt her. He hadn’t taken it beyond that—yet—but the very sight of him turned Lauren’s stomach even more.

  Now, she fought back another gag as he put his hand on her thigh, gliding it upward, simultaneously caressing the gold chain around his neck in a blatant show of what he wanted to do to her. “You haven’t eaten a decent meal since the pretzel at Hofbräuhaus,” he said. “Starving yourself isn’t going to help.”

  “I’m not hungry,” Lauren said.

  “Of course you are.” He caressed her hip. “What would you like? I’m sure I can supply it.”

  Die and go to hell, Lauren thought with a shudder.

  Marko smiled, arrogant enough to assume she was shuddering with desire. “We did have a connection, didn’t we? I saw the look in your eyes when I asked if I could join you. You wanted me. I wanted you, too.”