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Then her voice turned brisk. “Access your email account on your laptop,” she instructed. “Download the attachment into a new folder. I’ll take it from there.”
A couple of minutes later, Dirk said, “Okay.” He slid the laptop so it was sitting in front of her. “Show me the GPS coordinates.”
“I can’t promise they’re there, but...” Mei-li right-clicked on the JPEG file and selected Properties, then clicked on the details tab and quickly scrolled down. Her eyes closed suddenly, and she breathed deeply, then whispered, “Thank you, God,” under her breath. When her eyes opened again and met his, they were filled with excitement. “Look,” she said, turning the laptop so Dirk could see the screen better. There it was, about three-fourths of the way down. A small section titled GPS. And underneath that header were three rows labeled Latitude, Longitude and Altitude.
Dirk found his voice at last. “What do the numbers mean?” he asked.
“Altitude is height above sea level,” Mei-li replied. “But the latitude and longitude are in hours, minutes and seconds.”
“Which means what, exactly?”
“It’s easy math,” she explained. “Add the first number in the latitude string to the second number divided by sixty—that’s the minutes,” she clarified. “Then you add that sum to the third number divided by thirty-six hundred—that’s the seconds. North of the equator is a positive number, and south is a negative.” She smiled at Dirk. “Then you do exactly the same for the longitude, only east is a positive number and west is a negative. Hong Kong is a positive-positive latitude and longitude. Once you do the math, you key in the latitude and longitude numbers into Google Maps, and it will pinpoint exactly where the picture was taken.”
Dirk stared at the screen for several seconds, then looked at Mei-li. “It can’t be that simple.”
Her smile grew. “Yes it can. And that’s not all. Look what else the photo tells us.” She scrolled up on the details tab until she came to the camera section. “Whoever he is, he’s using an iPhone, same as you. But he didn’t upgrade to the latest model, see? Not a regular camera or a disposable cell. But there’s one more piece of data stored in the photo,” she said. “Just as important as the GPS coordinates.” She scrolled almost all the way to the top, until she reached the origin section. “Look,” she said softly. “This is the date and time stamp that’s really important. Not the date and time stamp on the file itself—that just tells you when the file was last saved.”
Dirk looked where Mei-li was pointing, and sure enough, right there on the screen were the words Date Taken, followed by a date and time. Today’s date. And the time was two minutes after the kidnapper’s last call.
“They’re alive,” Dirk said in a harsh voice he didn’t recognize as coming from him. “Sweet mother of God, they’re alive.” Energy surged through him—a restless energy he couldn’t contain. He stood suddenly and paced to the window looking out over Victoria Harbour’s nighttime skyline, his emotions threatening to get away from him. He hadn’t realized until that moment just how badly he’d wanted it to be true—that his daughters were still alive—or how afraid he’d been that it wasn’t.
He closed his eyes briefly as thankfulness shuddered through him, and when he opened his eyes again he saw himself mirrored in the window—a desperate father who’d just been given a priceless gift...the gift of hope. Mei-li stood right behind him, a slender silhouette that barely came to his shoulder, and yet...indomitable. The woman who’d given him that priceless gift.
He swung around, and he knew she could see the dampness in his eyes he couldn’t possibly suppress. His heart was thudding in his chest when he repeated in a voice barely above a whisper, “They’re alive.”
* * *
Dirk walked out of the bank the next morning flanked by Rafe and Mike, with a duffel bag crammed with a million dollars in cash. A hundred neat bundles at ten thousand dollars each, with each bundle containing a hundred hundred-dollar bills. It looked relatively small and didn’t weigh all that much...until he thought about trying to transport twenty million in cash. Mei-li had been right. It would have been too much even for two men to carry easily.
He hefted the bag over one shoulder and headed for the Rolls-Royce waiting at the curb with Patrick at the wheel. He didn’t know why, but he suddenly remembered Patrick telling him weeks ago that parking in Hong Kong was so bad, if you had a car it was cheaper to hire a driver rather than pay for parking. It boggled the mind, but it had made sense when Patrick first mentioned it. Space in Hong Kong was at more of a premium than it was in New York City—so many people crammed into so little space, even cemeteries were vertical rather than horizontal. It also added credence to why the kidnappers had taken a cab instead of having a getaway car.
