A World Without Secrets (34 page)

"Take off your belt," he said.

After I had removed my belt and handed it to him so he could place it on a workbench, he started over. This time he made it all the way to the top of my head without the device making a sound, then scanned me again by slowly moving the control down my left side to my feet.

He returned the device to the workbench, then took my belt to another workbench where he examined it under a bright light.

"Come over here," he said. When I had, he pointed to a seam. "The belt is two pieces of leather stitched together, but here— " he said, pointing— "the seam is glued." Taking a razor knife with a fine point, he cut through the seam. A second later he was studying a small, flat electronic bug under a microscope. "I've seen these before. They're made for the French government, but you can buy them on the black market if you have enough Euros." He applied a narrow line of glue and sealed the hole in the belt's seam, then took the belt to where the detection device sat on a workbench. The unit never made a peep as he held the belt out and ran the controller up and down the entire length. Handing the belt back to me, he said, "You're clean, Yank," as he dropped the bug into a small metal container that would block its outgoing signal.

"Thanks. That bug is pretty small. What do you think the range might be?"

"Certainly no more than a hundred meters."

"This sweep cleans me as I stand here but doesn't clear my other clothes and suitcase. Can I purchase one of those devices from you or someone else?"

"I make these myself, so they're not available elsewhere. I do sell them, but the price is pretty steep. Your government didn't want to buy them."

"My life is very precious to me. I'd like to purchase one. How do they do against wired devices?"

"They detect all disturbances in electromagnetic fields, such as from transmitters and receivers. The loudness of the chirp tells you how powerful the disturbance is. Naturally, wireless devices create a far larger disturbance. There's a sensitivity adjustment because there are usually electromagnetic disturbances all around us. Not in here, of course, but in most other places. So you adjust the sensitivity setting as far from potential disturbances as possible while remaining in the same general environment. You might do it in the center of a room, for example, if you're reasonably sure there are no bugs overhead or underfoot."

"Do these devices detect hidden cameras?"

"Of course. A camera creates a much higher disturbance than a locator beacon."

"I'll take one."

"I haven't told you the price yet."

"Williams trusts you, so I'm confident you won't take advantage. And if it works as well as you claim, I'll make a recommendation that the Bureau throw some business your way."

Finding the tiny transmitter in my belt had been an eye opener. I knew it hadn't been there when I left New York and hadn't been put there by the Customs officials, so it had to be someone else. It must have been put into the belt by the hotel maid. I wondered who
she
was working for. But then I realized it could have been done when I sent my clothes out to be cleaned after my swim in the canal.

I'd known when I accepted the invitation to come to Amsterdam that things would be difficult, but I had never anticipated the kinds of problems I was encountering. I should have expected it, though. They don't pay five million dollars for a walk in the park. There were a lot of interested groups involved, and each had their own agenda. I only knew of the ones who had announced themselves. My reputation could be the problem because other people seeking the recovery might believe that watching me could allow them to swoop in and grab the prize before I claimed it. I believed only one group was trying to kill me. Anyone hoping that I would lead them to the art would at least wait until I located it.

On the way back to the B&B, I stopped and picked up two take-out meals. The first was a fish-and-chips dinner that I would enjoy for lunch, and the second was an English Cottage Pie. The pie was made from ground beef, potatoes, cheese, and vegetables. It would be cold by dinnertime, but the B&B had a microwave available for guest use. The pie looked and smelled so wonderful that I considered eating that for lunch, but by dinnertime the fish and chips might be ruined.

My first job was to use the bug detector on the rest of my clothes and my suitcase. I found another of the bugs in my other belt and removed it, but I wondered if it was already too late. If the maximum range was a hundred meters and the killer presently resting in someone's morgue had been the only one on my trail, then I should be okay now that the second bug was in the metal case Watson had given me with the device. Still, I would have to keep a wary eye out for tails every time I left the B&B. I also performed a full sweep of the room and bath. I got a hit on the TV and clock radio, but the signal died when I unplugged them. I assumed the electromagnetic variation was only part of their normal operation.

Knowing, or at least hoping, that the room was now clean, I placed a chair near the wall and put the gizmo up where I could reach it easily. Tracking someone to learn their name or motives without audio was a real time killer, but it was necessary.

I started viewing from the point where the killer had gone to bed at his home after the minor surgery to his head and fast forwarded until he woke up. The first thing he did after waking up was to look at the clock. Then he picked up his phone. I thought it was to place a call, but it was to receive one. He spoke for less than a minute, then put the phone down and got out of bed.

After a quick shower, the killer, whose name I still didn't know, dressed quickly and left the house. I wasn't surprised when I saw him board the same train I was taking to Rotterdam. He never looked for me, but he didn't have to. He had a spotter. Just before stepping into the train car, he nodded almost imperceptibly to another man on the platform, and the man nodded back. I supposed the other man could merely be an acquaintance, but I didn't believe that for a second.

After the killer was aboard the train, the spotter turned and left the platform. I moved the view inside the car so I could keep my eyes on the killer. He looked out the window, probably to see if I got off the train, until it started to move. Once we were clipping along, he closed his eyes and appeared to be sleeping.

When we reached Rotterdam, my tail took out a device that looked like a smartphone and watched the tiny screen as he walked. I guess that meant he was following along by using the electronic bug in my belt. He never got so close that I'd notice him. He'd spoken on his phone three times after boarding the train in Amsterdam, so I guess he was keeping his associates apprised of our travel. After boarding the ferry to Harwich, my tail met another man who handed him a small case.

The killer hadn't taken a cabin on the ferry. He simply sat in one of the lounges until it was time to go to my cabin. In one of the corridors along the way, he paused to screw the silencer onto a 9mm pistol. Both pieces had been in the small case passed to him. The only other thing in the case was the electronic device he had used to open my door. The thieves had managed to override the alarm system at the museum, so either one of them was an electronics genius or they had access to someone who was. I made a note to find out which.

I watched as the killer entered my room and put three rounds into the dummy shape. Then I saw my arm flash out and fire three rounds into the killer. As he fell backward, he passed through the gizmo's window, but I'd seen enough, so I returned to his room in Amsterdam and tried to learn his name.

I couldn't open drawers, and it was too dark inside to see anything while they were closed, so I examined every inch of the room for any correspondence. I found nothing that had a name on it. There was no name on the entrance door and no name on the doorbell. I knew it was time to move on. I would learn his name from the NCA or Interpol.

My stomach growled, reminding me that I'd bought fish and chips for lunch, so I spread out the paper bag used to hold the food and prepared to dig in. But before I started to eat, I called up the robbery on the gizmo so I could watch it as I chowed down. I was hoping I'd spot something I had missed earlier.

I'd been frustrated when working the Boston case, but that was nothing compared to the frustration I felt on this case. Immediately following the robbery, the thieves split up and most never met their fellow gang members again. They hardly seemed like a gang at all. The one whom I thought of as the ringleader, and one other, had driven the stolen artwork to Madrid and stashed it in a small warehouse where a storeroom the size of a large closet had been prepared. It had temperature and humidity control to preserve the fifty million dollars in artwork and was protected by a recycled safe door that appeared able to withstand an assault by a mortar team. It looked every bit as impregnable as some bank vaults. I added the address of the warehouse to my notes.

I wanted to prepare a report showing the location of the artwork while naming the thieves, but I couldn't name even one of them yet, much less explain how I'd gotten the information about the location of the warehouse. I was pinning a lot of hope on the blood recovered at the museum to open a new lead I could exploit.

I never left the B&B again except for meals and to call Kathy. I didn't have a specific place from which to call, so I moved around. The important thing was that it be remote enough from my sleeping accommodations that no one could pinpoint the B&B when I removed my cell phone from its special case.

Kathy hadn't heard about the ferry attack, and I didn't tell her. If she had known, she'd have been on me to take the next plane home each time we talked.

I spent a full day watching the gang members in fast forward mode and trying to learn their names. They spent a lot of time on the phone, and I imagined they were keeping in touch that way instead of having face-to-face meetings, which would have established their association to any observers. Without audio, observing phone conversations offered no help to me. I probably wouldn't have been able to understand what they were saying anyway. They also watched a lot of sports on television, and exhibited surprising self-discipline by drinking only lightly as they hung around in taverns. I wondered if they were waiting for the insurance company to pay the claim before they came out of hiding.

I spent the last of my planned days in London with the group's ringleader, watching him for anything I could use. I had to view him in fast forward because I couldn't spend months watching his minute to minute activity from the time I felt he might have begun planning the job. I made a note of every contact he made that appeared suspicious, although I didn't know who the contact was or why he was meeting them. But I was afraid I was going to miss something because I had to skip over so many hours, such as when he went to bed. I just had to hope he hadn't gotten up in the middle of the night and gone out, returning before I picked him up again in the morning.

At the end of my last day in London, I had a difficult decision to make. I could return to Amsterdam as planned or extend my stay in London. I knew I couldn't use the gizmo in Amsterdam unless I moved to another hotel, and my safety was in question no matter where I went in the Netherlands. Returning before I knew the whole score would merely expose me as a target to the people trying to kill me. I decided to remain in London until I had learned everything possible from the gizmo.

If I were to make a break in the case, I really felt it would come from watching the ringleader, so I stayed on him for a fourth day. Seven months prior to the crime, I thought I saw something that might be important. I went to the bathroom and washed my face with cold water before returning to view it again.

Back at the gizmo, I reset the time and watched the scene in normal time from multiple angles. And there it was— the connection I'd been searching for. The ringleader made definite contact with the one person who, more than any other, gave the thieves the ability to pull off an almost perfect robbery. I still didn't know the names of the gang members or how I was going to explain my knowledge of it, but this new information might enable me to tie everything together and close the case.

For all of my life, the person I'd always gotten most upset with was myself. When something important completely escaped my attention and later appeared to have been as obvious as the fingers on my right hand, such as when I failed to view the building explosion early on while trying to learn where the gizmo had come from, I scolded myself for my stupidity. In this case, I suddenly realized that learning the names of the gang members should be the simplest thing in the world. I berated myself for not having thought of using this technique with the Boston gang. I had been looking over their shoulders at mail and such to learn their identities when all I had to do was tag each of the gang members, then travel back to when they were in grade school and look over their shoulders as they took a test or filled out some papers. If that didn't work, I could follow them home and probably find something at their parent's house. Or, easier yet, I could simply go back to the day they were born and read the names off their birth certificates. I decided that last idea would be the most foolproof method, so I took a deep breath, stopped silently rebuking myself, and got down to work.

Within a few hours, I had identified all of the gang members. Or perhaps I should say I had the names associated with them at birth. Some might be using aliases or their names could have changed, such as through adoption or simply to hide their past. But I also had their exact ages. I figured that if I had their childhood name and date of birth, the rest could be learned from one of the criminal databases. This simple method for learning identities would no doubt save me countless hours of search time in the future.

I hesitated to use my access privileges to the FBI database for a personal case, but Interpol
had
requested their assistance— and it might help solve a major crime. It wasn't like I was using it for ulterior purposes. And if the FBI wanted to claim the case had been solved through their participation, I had no problem with that. They could have every last bit of the credit as long I got the offered reward for the recovery as per my agreement with the Bureau.