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Six days left…
Munich, Germany
25 February
Sunday, 3:00 p.m. local time
Philip Banks didn’t look like the retired MI6 agent that he was, nor like the crackerjack investigator who now comprised one of Zermatt’s core four. No, this afternoon, dressed in his well-worn jeans and half-zipped parka, messenger bag slung over his shoulder and cell phone poised for candids, he looked like a tourist visiting Munich, totally fascinated by Hofbräuhaus, the city’s largest and most historic pub.
Precisely the image he was going for.
Brows knit in apparent concentration, he refocused his phone, appearing to be snapping pictures in a Snapchat frenzy. In fact, he was actually running a special app that Terri had created, which mapped the visual, telemetric, and Wi-Fi data of the entire area around him. The data was captured and streamed real time to Terri in New York. At her end, Terri would be watching her computer systems as they analyzed the data and began to immediately search for nearby businesses, Wi-Fi networks, and security cameras. Philip was well aware that the process would take hours, but by penetrating the local networks, accessing the security and router logs, Terri would be able to tell exactly who had been present when Lauren was kidnapped.
He’d spent the past day and a half conducting fieldwork—casually engaging employees, patrons, and even passersby to see if any of them remembered his “daughter” who’d been at Hofbräuhaus Friday afternoon with friends. No luck. And he had to be careful to keep his questions light and offhanded. He couldn’t come off as a creeper, and he couldn’t tip his hand and alert anyone to a “missing girl” scenario. Other than Zermatt and the Penningtons, no one knew about Lauren’s kidnapping, including and especially law enforcement. Philip intended to keep it that way.
From the brewery, he’d trekked the mile to Ludwig Maximilian University, where Lauren was attending school during her junior year abroad. The campus was quiet, since winter break had just begun, but Philip was determined to check out some of the names Terri had plucked off Lauren’s cell history—names of friends she’d texted who wanted her to visit them during her hiatus from academia. If any of them had yet to leave campus, Philip would find them. And if any of them were already at home, he’d find them, too.
After two hours of searching…nothing.
The sand in the hourglass continued to trickle downward. And Lauren Pennington’s time was running out.
6
Zermatt Cage
25 February
Sunday, 3:15 p.m. local time
Terri was hunched over her computer in the Cage, concentrating on the wall of video screens facing her and analyzing the stream of NSA data that her back-door access provided. Aidan had long since left for JFK and his quick trip to Munich. That left Terri in workaholic solitude—save for Windsor, her black and tan Cavalier King Charles chilling out in his dog bed nearby. He was one of her four rescues, all of whom had a special place in her heart, and each of whom occasionally accompanied her to work. Dogs were worth opening your heart to. People? No.
Right now, Terri was relishing what she was doing. She’d donned her other Zermatt hat as the group’s chief revenue officer. Wealthy as he was, Aidan couldn’t fund all their investigations himself. So it was up to her to find other sources of income. And her back door never let her down. She always enjoyed the irony of hackers—in this case the NSA—being hacked by her. Nothing better than being the mouse chasing the cat.
Tuning her filters to analyze the information stream, she searched for new sources of illegal money that Zermatt could tap into to keep their operations going. She knew what to look for. Patterns in communications that suggested illegal transactions. Drug dealers. Shady businessmen. Equally shady corporations. Corrupt politicians. All of them ripe for the plucking.
It took a while, but Terri found what she needed. Some slimy businessmen who were dodging US taxes by wiring money to an account in the Cayman Islands. Well, it was time for the SOBs to bid farewell to their ill-gotten gains.
This was Terri’s favorite part of the process. It allowed her to indulge in her one mundane pleasure: playing Wheel of Fortune. A game she’d taken to a whole new level.
Smiling, she clicked on a specific icon on her desktop and the Wheel of Fortune game she’d created filled the entire wall of computer screens. She clicked on the spin button and watched as the wheel went round and round, numbers whizzing by amounts ranging from one to five million with everything in between. With Zermatt’s checking account balance on her mind, she was hoping for big money because their Gulfstream G550 had just gone through a major overhaul. Paying those bills had depleted some of their reserves and she was eager to replace them. Even though the plane was obscenely expensive to operate, its ultra-long range allowed Zermatt to reach almost anywhere on the globe without refueling. That tactical advantage had proved invaluable again and again.
Impatiently, she waited for the wheel to stop spinning and point to the sum of money she was going to help herself to.
As it came to a stop, slot machine bells began to ring, fireworks flashed across the screen, and Donna Summer’s “She Works Hard for the Money” burst forth. Terri grinned ear to ear. Jackpot. She hadn’t seen five million come up in ages.
The Gulfstream would get a full tank of aviation fuel and those tax-cheating bastards would get screwed.
She hacked into the Cayman Islands account, entered five million as the wire amount, and ran it through her normal money laundering protocol: bouncing around the world like a steel ball in a pinball machine through a dozen shell companies all around the world. Moments later, it arrived in Zermatt’s secret bank account. The funds had been cleaned, sterilized, and were now untraceable. The scumbags not only couldn’t report it or recover it, they’d never even know where it was or who took it.
* * *
Outside the Cage’s steel door, Abby fidgeted, staring at the intercom button. She knew that Aunt Terri was inside the room and that Windsor was with her. She also knew that Aunt Terri was working, and that Abby was never supposed to interrupt that. But she was so excited about Disneyland and she and Joyce weren’t leaving for the airport until Joyce packed what she called “essentials” into Abby’s suitcase. Her daddy had kissed her good-bye ages ago, and she had to wait to get to the airport to see Emma. So Abby was bursting with energy and she needed someone to share it with.
Giving in to her impulses, she did what she didn’t do too often— not unless she wanted to get scolded.
She dragged one of the hall chairs over to the Cage, climbed up onto it, and pressed the intercom button.
There was no sound from inside, but there never was. Her daddy said the room kept all sounds in and let no sounds out. It sounded like a boring room to her, but she guessed that all work was probably boring. Except art. She loved painting pictures. And since that was homework, it counted as work. She counted it as fun.
