Terror Bounty (4 page)

The Tysons Corner Center was one of the
largest shopping malls in America and so it was a perfect meeting place for
what Rick had in mind. It helped too that there was a sizable crowd which made
him all but invisible.

At the moment, he was on the third level,
smack dab in the middle of the food court. He was having some rather flavorsome
ice cream when Peter walked up to his table and sat down, pausing only to
unbutton his jacket.

“D’you get ‘em?” Rick asked sloppily, his
mouth full and his brain on the verge of freezing.

“I made you copies, yeah. I got you your
own FBI file too.”

With that, he retrieved an overstuffed
#10 envelope from inside his jacket.

“Really? I have an FBI file?”

Of course he did, he judged a second too
late. He had applied to the Academy three times. It was normal that they had
run background checks on him. He grabbed the envelope before his uncle could
hand it over. He pulled out the folded paper, leafing through them to find his
file.

“Thought it might come in handy,” Peter
said.

“There isn’t much here.”

“You sound disappointed, kid.”

“Well, you know, I had more faith in our
nation’s institutions.”

“That’s what happens when you’re not a
criminal, you have a thin file.” With a smirk, Peter snatched the sheets away
from his nephew and scanned them. “You were in Greenpeace?”

“In college, for about five minutes. Frat
party, I was drunk enough to accept the dare. There might have been a hot girl
involved.”

He ate another spoonful of ice cream
before going over the Greenwood files proper.

“There’s nothing much in our friendly
terrorist’s file either. Almost nothing.”

“Yeah, I noticed. The current
investigation material for the new bombing hasn’t been compiled yet, not that I
suspect they’ve found anything earth shattering. Otherwise we would’ve found
him already.”

“Well that sucks.”

“That’s why I had to pull a favor.” Peter
produced another white envelope from his pocket. “Don’t say I never did
anything for you.”

Rick frowned with confusion and great
respect as he glanced over this new document.

“Jesus… This is from CIA.”

“I have an acquaintance. I told my friend
there that it was for my own pleasure only so be sure to keep it for yourself,
okay?”

“This is great,” Rick said, his voice
fading as he read. “Listen, I need one more favor.”

“I’m afraid to ask what it is.”

“Is there any way you could give me your
remote computer access codes?”

“What?! Are you out of your goddamn mind?”

Rick pushed his ice cream away. “Uncle
Pete, I know it’s asking a lot. It’s in case I need to look at some other files
while I’m on the road. I don’t wanna have to call anyone.”

Peter closed his eyes, shook his head,
and sighed. “I don’t even know why I’m doing this.”

He fished out a pen and scribbled on the
back of the envelope. Rick saw that it was a username and password. He folded
everything back together and stuffed the valuable information in the inside
pocket of his windbreaker.

“You understand I could lose my job for giving
you this, right? I could go to prison.”

“And I thank you very much, Uncle Pete. I
wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

“You’re really gonna go through with
this, uh?”

“Yeah, I have to.”

Peter snorted. “Then let me be the first
to tell you, you’ve officially lost your damn mind.”

“Thanks. Coming from you that’s a
compliment.”

The older man stood up. “Don’t let anyone
catch you with those or it’ll be both our asses.”

Rick nodded and stood up as well to give
his uncle a hug. Neither had to be told that the situation was a lot more dire
than this. If Rick got caught it meant he would probably be dead.

~  ~  ~  ~

Ice cream before lunch had been a
terrible idea. Rick belched – loudly since he was alone in his apartment – and
shifted on the kitchen chair. He had purchased it because it looked nice but
now it was truly sinking in how uncomfortable it was.

Forget it
,
he thought.
Think of all the amazing chairs $4 million will get you
…

He bent over the kitchen table and
inspected the files his uncle had provided him. At the same time, he had his
laptop nearby to take some notes.

Willis Greenwood had been born in New
York City in 1968. He came from a wealthy family. Both his parents had been
architects but the money came from his paternal grandfather who’d made a
fortune in lumber, mostly in Maine and Vermont.

There wasn’t much about Greenwood before
he became an adult. He went to Columbia University and in 1990 received a
bachelor’s degree in political science, with a minor in philosophy. He then
joined the Peace Corps and spent two years in Latin America.

The first blip on the radar came in 1993
when Greenwood was thrown out of the Socialist Party. Notes from the CIA file
mentioned that his views had been apparently too hardcore for the party which
was trying to gain social acceptance.

Rick had a good chuckle at that, the
Socialist Party trying to become socially acceptable. Ha!

In October of the same year, Greenwood’s
parents died in a plane crash. He spent the next several months trying to build
a lawsuit against the airline but eventually lost. The footnotes from the CIA
were again interesting. The airline in question had been a small regional
carrier but had in fact belonged to a Fortune 500 company.

More and more, this solidified Greenwood’s
position against corporate greed. At the end of 1994, he published a book
called
The Burdens of Social Justice
, it sold 120,000 copies. He got a million-dollar
advance for a second book that was never published. Greenwood failed to pay
taxes on all this money and in January 1995 he officially vanished.

That’s when he turned to mayhem. Details
were sketchy but he surrounded himself with likeminded revolutionaries
hell-bent on shaking up the status quo.

The list of crimes was impressive, Rick
thought in spite of himself. The sabotage of an oil rig in Brazil which left
three people dead. A Lufthansa Airlines bombing in South Africa, 47 dead.

The kidnapping and subsequent murder of
the British ambassador to Japan. A Royal Dutch Shell refinery bombing. In
Canada, the Noranda mines bombing. And finally the Wells Eastern Lancaster Bank
bombing.

All claimed by the Oppressed World
Liberators.

That’s the name he had given to his
so-called organization. The OWL. In the files and on the Internet, there weren’t
a lot of specifics. Until he reached the last page of the CIA file.

Whereabouts of Greenwood and the OWL were
currently unknown but there were unconfirmed reports that they were purchasing
weapons and equipment from a faction of Russian organized crime based out of Luxembourg.

“Bingo, bitch.”

Excitement mounting, Rick did a summary
of all this on his laptop, even including his uncle’s FBI database login
information in the file. He saved this as
Travelnotes.doc
in the My
Documents folder.

That’s when he realized it wasn’t really
crafty. He then moved the file into the Windows root directory. No one would
ever look there.

Shutting down his computer, he carried
all the paperwork to the sink. He found a box of matches in a drawer and lit
everything on fire. It thankfully burned quickly and didn’t have time to
trigger the smoke detector. He washed down the ashes with a little water.

With a newfound sense of purpose, he
headed for his bedroom before stopping dead in his tracks. Where the hell had
he stored his suitcases?

It was early afternoon, local time, when
Rick arrived in Paris, touching down at Charles de Gaulles Airport in the
middle of what seemed to be rush hour anyway. His system was out of whack but
he had thankfully gotten a little sleep on the plane.

After clearing customs he had to ask
three different employees for directions, at least he thought they worked
there, and finally found his way to the TGV station. Coming from America, the
idea of a high-speed train was almost the stuff of science fiction.

Rick was excited about watching the
pastoral scenery as he headed east but even though the trip was to take just a
little more than two hours, he fell asleep again. He only woke up when the
train slowed down as he approached Luxembourg City.

He yawned and rubbed his face. A porter smiled
at his condition, probably amused by the confused foreigner. Rick paid him no
attention, he was on a mission.

He gathered his laptop case and carry-on
bag and rolled it behind him as he left the train, and then the station. A
smattering of taxis was waiting for customers and he headed to one that was
sparkling.

“The Luxe Patton Hotel,” he ordered the
driver.

Rick gulped when he saw that the meter
was already costing the price of a good meal. Then again, he reminded himself
that he was here gambling on a $4 million payday.

You have to spend money to make money
.

The city was old. It was exactly how he’d
always pictured Europe. Sure, there were some newer buildings but the character
of Luxembourg City was definitely medieval, with stone embankments and castle-like
structures.

They reached his hotel and it struck him how
it looked almost nothing like what he’d seen on the Internet before booking.
Seeing it in the flesh, it looked like a Travelodge from the 60s. It was plain,
most definitely not where one would choose to spend their honeymoon.

Conversely, it was on the outskirts of
the city and it was one of the cheaper options he’d found. The name had
intrigued him at first – Patton didn’t sound very French or German – but he’d
read that this was where General Patton was buried after he’d liberated the
country.

Rick paid the fare and walked into the
establishment where his suspicions were confirmed immediately. It was a cheap
off-circuit hotel with few rooms and even fewer employees.

The frumpy middle-aged woman behind the
reception desk was unexpectedly cheerful. “
Bonjour, monsieur! Bienvenu à l’Hotel
Luxe Patton
.”

“Uh, hi. You speak English?”

“Of course,
monsieur
.”

He gave her his name and pulled out his
wallet. His heart was beating faster because he was about to do his first shady
act.

“You don’t need my name and passport, do
you?”

“Well...”

Before leaving, he had done research
about how things were done in Europe. He had seen in countless movies people
leaving their passports at the front desk in hotels but he had never really
known why.

It turned out that it was because hotels
needed to register visitors with their countries since there were no borders
anymore. Most often, they sent the information to the closest police station.

“I’m looking for peace and quiet while I’m
writing my book,” he said before placing a €50 bill on the counter. “I’m sure
it’s not really necessary, right?”

The receptionist pursed her lips and
shook her head. “Too much trouble.”

“Thank you, you’re a lifesaver.”

He finished checking in and received an
old-fashioned key from the woman. She then gave him the usual spiel about
breakfast hours and local attractions before he headed toward the stairs.

Then Rick turned back. “Say, how do you
say Russian in French?”

“
Russe
.”

“You spell that how?”

~  ~  ~  ~

He didn’t pay much attention to the room.
It was Spartan at best, the walls painted white and the bedspread out of
fashion since the early 80s. But there was a desk and Internet access, that’s
all Rick truly needed.

Once he’d removed his dark leather jacket
and unpacked a few items from his suitcase, he settled down with his laptop and
a complimentary copy of the local newspaper.

He fired up Google Chrome and browsed
onto the newspaper’s website. He scanned the cluttered homepage for a minute
until he found the archives. Then he searched for the term
Russe mafia
.

There were a dozen hits but he clicked on
the first link. As expected, the text was in French. Through the beauty of
modern technology, he massaged his trackpad until he clicked on the Translate
button. The article was swiftly adapted to English.

Rick cleared his throat and read out
loud, “The garden ruled yesterday that the searching carried out May last in a
bar of the area downtown was indeed illegal. The Schwarzer Bär, believed by the
police as be the operational center of the Russian mafia in Luxembourg, will be
able to thus remain open.”

The translation was dubious but Rick
definitely got the gist of it. The best part was that this seemed like a
promising lead.

He opened a new browser tab and searched
for the Schwarzer Bär address which he then jotted down on a piece of paper.

Now was the time to get his hands dirty.