The Aggrieved Read online

  If XA014 had a beating heart, this had to be it.

  “Over here,” Orlando called.

  He found her crouched near the back wall, pointing her light at a hinged manhole cover. Again, the Mole’s information had been right on the money.

  Using the grating on top of the cover as a handhold, they pulled it up, exposing a ladder that led down into darkness.

  Orlando went first. As soon as she reached the bottom, she turned on her phone’s flashlight. “Clear.”

  As Quinn descended, he pulled the manhole cover closed behind him.

  The area below was not a second level to the building, but a cement brick corridor that went farther than their lights could illuminate, its walls covered with pipes and conduits.

  Orlando checked for cameras and other electronic security devices, but nothing showed up on her scan, so they headed down the tunnel, stopping again when they reached the expected fork. The two new tunnels ran off at a ninety-degree angle from each other. If the schematics were correct, each tunnel would meet another perpendicular passageway, and those two passageways would then meet up with each other, forming a square of interconnected corridors that passed under all four of the large living quarters.

  They went to the right, toward the northeast building, and soon were standing at the base of a ladder that would take them back to the surface. Quinn went first this time. The hatch at the top was another manhole cover, its grating more than wide enough to slip the gooseneck camera through.

  Since the room beyond was dark, Orlando switched the feed to night vision, revealing a room occupied by metal shelving units filled with boxes.

  A storage space. Perfect.

  The cover opened with only a slight groan. Quinn eased his head out and looked around, in case the camera had missed something. Satisfied they were alone, he climbed out and held the cover in place while Orlando followed.

  At the room’s only door, Orlando listened for noise on the other side and then shook her head. Quinn slipped the door open just enough for the camera to fit through.

  “A short hallway,” Orlando whispered. “Closed door at the other end. No people, but there is a camera.”

  She pulled the gooseneck back and activated the security scan on her phone. A few taps on the screen, a pause, more taps, another pause, and then a grin.

  “There’s a blind spot that starts about a meter out from the door. I’m going to give us a twenty-second window. That should be more than enough to get there. Ready?”

  Quinn grabbed the doorknob, and Orlando tapped her screen again.

  They made it to the blind spot in plenty of time. There was just enough clearance along the bottom of the door for the gooseneck to slip through.

  On the other side were two longer corridors, one leading straight out from the door, and the other heading off to the left. Minimal lighting, probably in deference to the early morning hour.

  A scan revealed multiple cameras.

  While Orlando could turn them all off, someone would surely notice.

  “Give me a moment,” she said. Her thumbs flew across her phone’s screen. After a few seconds, she muttered, “Dammit.”

  “What?”

  “The only wireless network is for the cameras. Everything else must be hardwired. I should be able to piggyback on one of their signals.” She glanced at him. “This might take a few minutes.”

  He spent the time with his ear pressed against the door, but the corridors remained quiet.

  Finally, Orlando said, “I’m in. It’s not full system access, but let’s see…” She studied her phone. “All right. There’s an outer hallway that goes around all four sides. We’re at one of the corners. There are also two hallways that slice through the center, one in each direction, creating a cross. Hmmm…looks like some larger rooms down at the other end of the building. And…hold on…twenty-five smaller rooms with what appear to be attached bathrooms. Suites, I’m guessing.”

  “Or cells,” Quinn suggested.

  “Or that.”

  Though the Mole had provided them with a layout of the facility, the information on the living quarters basically stopped at the outer walls.

  Orlando continued working her phone. “There’s got to be a roster here somewhere…ah, okay. Here we go.” She read for a moment, and then cursed under her breath. “It’s a list, but it refers to everyone by number, not name. The good news is that there are only six rooms in this building being used right now, and half of those are shared by two people.”

  Six was definitely better than twenty-five, Quinn thought. And he was willing to bet those sharing rooms were couples. “Let’s concentrate on the solo ones first.”

  “I agree.”

  “What’s the guard situation?”

  More taps. “Five men.” She flipped through security camera feeds. “Three are in an office at the other end of the building. That’s where the camera viewing monitors are. No one seems to be paying them attention, though. The other two…hold on…okay, one’s in the hall farthest from us, walking toward the front of the building. And his buddy, let’s see…”

  She suddenly brought a finger to her mouth, telling Quinn to be quiet. A few seconds later, he heard footsteps on the other side of the door.

  If Orlando’s thumbs had been flying across her phone before, they were blazing now. Within moments, she indicated she’d killed the camera in their hallway again. They hurried back the way they’d come, and as they started down the ladder into the access tunnel, they heard the door they’d been hiding behind open.

  Quinn carefully lowered the lid behind them, and they hung on the ladder a few feet down.

  The storage room door opened, and footsteps clicked across the concrete floor, moving closer and closer to the manhole cover.

  A pause, then steps again, moving away.

  The door closing, followed by silence.

  Orlando accessed the security feed, and they watched the guard return to the larger corridor and turn down one of the central hallways. Orlando checked the other roaming guard again. Apparently having finished his route, he’d joined his buddies in the office.

  “Where are the occupied rooms?” Quinn asked.

  Orlando consulted the roster. “One off the hall on either side, one along the back, and three down that center one the guard’s in right now. Those last ones are the shared ones.”

  “Are there cameras in any of them?”

  “If there are, nothing’s registering.”

  It looked like they’d have to do this the old-fashioned way—check each room in person. The problem was getting to the rooms without being seen by one of the cameras, and Quinn expressed this to Orlando.

  “I might have a solution,” she said. A few touches on her phone, then, “Here we go.”

  On her screen was the feed from the guards’ room. She had magnified it so that the shot focused on the monitors the guards used to keep tabs on the security cameras. There were three TVs, each cycling to a new camera feed every fifteen seconds. Quinn and Orlando watched each monitor complete a full cycle.

  “There’s our answer,” Orlando said. “I just need to identify the sequence of shots and where each camera is, then I can plan out a route that’ll keep us out of view.”

  “Do it,” he said.

  DIMA WAS RUNNING down the street in Jakarta again, Liz a step in front of her.

  The smells, the humidity, the fear—they wrapped around her like a straitjacket two sizes too small.

  When Liz turned into the empty lot, Dima wanted to scream, “No, not that way!” but the words stuck in her throat. She knew what was coming, and yet for a moment, she didn’t know at all.

  They hid behind a tree that now seemed impossibly small. Liz said it would be all right, but when she sent a hurried text, Dima knew Liz didn’t believe it.

  Dima couldn’t remember if she heard the footsteps the first time, but this time she did. The killer approaching. Liz didn’t seem to notice.

  “We need to run,
” Dima tried to say. “We need to get out of here.” But once more her voice stayed silent.

  It wasn’t until the last moment that Liz realized someone was there. By then, it was far too late.

  Bang!

  Dima’s eyes flew open. Darkness, but not that of Jakarta.

  Jakarta was gone.

  The killer was gone.

  Liz was gone.

  Dima’s breaths came in pants, like they did every night she’d had the dream, every night since the woman who had protected her died.

  Dima lay still until her body finally calmed again before she pulled back her covers to climb out of bed and get some water.

  As she set her feet on the floor, she realized she wasn’t alone.

  A single thought consumed her. It’s my turn to die.

  “Don’t be scared.”

  It took a moment for her to register the voice was male, not female like the killer. Confusion mixed with the fear that still gripped her.

  “It’s us,” the man said. “Quinn and Orlando.”

  Quinn and Orlando?

  A shadow took a step forward into the dull light drifting in from the window high on the wall, the illumination just enough for Dima to make out the face of Liz’s brother.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “We need to talk.”

  Chapter Nine

  COPENHAGEN, DENMARK

  MUNICH, GERMANY

  BY SUNUP, JAR was done. As she’d promised, there were always records somewhere, and she was able to identify and locate all the numbers that had called Gomez’s and Dehler’s job lines, even the ones that had been blocked.

  While a handful were repeat callers, only one on each line showed up on the records every day. These had to be the phones belonging to the women, or to someone the women had designated to check their messages for them. Not surprisingly, both numbers belonged to mobile phones.

  Gomez’s phone was currently in Athens, Greece, and Dehler’s in Munich, Germany.

  Not wanting to waste time, Nate decided they would split up. He sent Daeng and Jar to Greece with instructions to only observe and take photos, while he went to Germany alone.

  Upon arrival, he visited one of his local contacts, from whom he was able to equip himself with a weapon and the surveillance gear he thought he might need.

  Before heading in different directions, Jar had programmed his phone so he could track Dehler’s on it. The blip took him to a building by the Isar River, near the center of the city. He considered going inside but didn’t want to chance crossing paths with her, so he waited at a little café on Morassistrasse, near the structure’s main entrance. Like the instructions he’d given his friends, his job at this point was to observe and take photos only.

  The dot representing the target’s phone moved around a small section of the fifth floor. After a while, he wondered if the person in possession of it would stay inside all day. It wasn’t until he was halfway through his third cup of coffee when the dot finally descended to the ground floor.

  He quickly placed euros on the table to more than cover his bill, and headed outside. When he checked the tracking map again, he grunted in annoyance. He’d been expecting the phone’s owner to use the building’s main exit, but she or he was headed out one on the south side.

  Nate hurried down the walkway, zipping his jacket and tightening his scarf around his nose and mouth to fight off the cold.

  By the time he reached the end of the block, the dot had already left the building and was crossing the Isar River via the Bosch Bridge. He raced across the street and around the end of the building, not slowing again until he, too, was on the bridge. The dot was approaching the other end, but there were dozens of pedestrians crossing in the same approximate area, and all were bundled up so it was impossible for him to pick out his target.

  The map showed the road ended just beyond the bridge, on an island dominated by the Deutsches Museum. Why was the person heading there? A meeting? Maybe. Museums were good for secret encounters.

  When he checked his screen again, he saw the dot break from the crowd as it reached the end of the bridge, and go left. Nate increased his pace and reached the center of the bridge just in time to see the back of a person wearing a black hat and jacket climb into one of the waiting taxis.

  As the taxi began to move, so did the dot.

  Bingo.

  His moment of elation was squelched when he realized the cab was about to turn onto the bridge and head straight toward him. There was no way he could make it back to the other side before the car reached him, so he tugged down on his stocking cap and pulled up his scarf until only his eyes were exposed.

  As the car drove by, he casually glanced at it. The person in back was as bundled up as Nate was so he couldn’t see a face, but from the style of clothing, he was all but positive the passenger was a woman. Dehler herself?

  He sprinted the remaining distance across the bridge and grabbed the next taxi in line. Dropping a hundred euros onto the seat next to the driver, he said in perfect German, “I’ll give you directions as we go. For now, head toward Maxvorstadt.”

  Maxvorstadt was the name of the area the other taxi was heading toward. It didn’t stay on that course for long, however. Before they reached the other end of the bridge, Nate was already giving his driver new instructions.

  They stayed on a westward path for over ten minutes, until the dot stopped next to München Hauptbahnhof, Munich’s central train station.

  “Crap,” he muttered.

  He stared at his screen, hoping the cab had only been delayed by traffic, but no. When the dot started moving again, it was traveling at a walking pace toward the train station.

  “Hauptbahnhof, schnell,” Nate said.

  The cabbie did his best Formula One driver impression, and got them to the station only two minutes after the other taxi.

  “Danke,” Nate said, dropping another twenty euros up front before hopping out.

  He rushed past the InterCityHotel and inside the station. The interior was an expansive space open to a ceiling at least twelve meters above masses of travelers. There were shops and places to eat on both the ground level and the balcony rimming two sides of the room. The main train platforms were to the left, but the dot on his screen had gone to the right and was now a few meters below him.

  Nate turned until he spotted escalators leading to a lower level. Beside it was the familiar sign featuring a white U in the middle of a blue square, indicating the escalator was the entrance to the U-bahn—the subway.

  He pulled up a map of Munich’s metro system and saw that several U-bahn lines came into the hauptbahnhof. The dot appeared to be on the platform for the U-1 and U-2 lines. Nate took the escalator down, bought a ticket, and headed for the platform.

  As he neared, he could hear an approaching train. He weaved through the crowd as fast as he could, and reached the platform just as the train came to a stop. He looked down toward the other end where the dot was, and caught a glimpse of the woman’s profile as she boarded the train.

  He frowned. Between her winter clothes, the surging crowd, and the distance, Nate couldn’t tell if she was Liz’s killer.

  The last of the passengers trickled onto the train, but Nate remained on the platform. He knew the woman was concerned about being tailed. Why else would she have walked several blocks to grab a taxi that took her to the busiest train station in Munich?

  Since he was able to track her on his phone, he didn’t need to take the same train.

  The next one would work just as well.

  ATHENS, GREECE

  THE SIXTY-FIVE-degree temperature that greeted Daeng and Jar as they exited Athens International Airport felt like a balmy day back in Thailand compared to the frigid conditions they’d left in Copenhagen.

  Their hired driver was waiting for them at the prearranged spot. He was a local freelance operative named Tadeo, whom Nate had recommended.

  Jar gave the man directions based on th
e glowing dot on her screen representing the phone associated with Mara Gomez. The circle had been sitting motionless inside an apartment building in the northern part of the city since before their plane landed, and continued to remain idle through their entire trip along the crowded highway that rimmed Athens. It was obvious to Jar that the person in charge of monitoring the phone was not currently in possession of it.

  When they moved off the highway onto the city streets, traffic became worse. It took them nearly thirty minutes to travel the kilometer and a half to the block where the building was.

  “Any change?” Daeng asked in Thai.

  Jar shook her head.

  To Tadeo he said in English, “Do a drive-by, and then find a place to park a couple streets over.”

  The street was a mix of apartment buildings and single-family homes, all of which looked at least fifty years old. A well-established neighborhood.

  The building the phone was in had six stories, with an open-air parking area at ground level under five floors of flats. On each of the residential levels, balconies stretched across the entire front and wrapped around the west side.

  The outdoor spaces were divided in a way that gave the impression of two apartments per floor. Except for the top one, where Gomez’s phone was located. Its balcony had no divider, hence only one apartment for the entire level. A private penthouse.

  Tadeo parked the car as instructed, and stayed with the vehicle while Daeng and Jar walked back toward the building. At Daeng’s suggestion, they held hands to look like a couple out for a walk.

  Jar found the experience unsettling. Close human contact always made her uncomfortable. Even as a child, she’d never held the hand of another person who wasn’t either her mother or grandfather. Thankfully, Daeng kept his grip loose, making it almost bearable.

  When they reached the corner, Daeng turned to her and moved into her personal space. After a moment of terror, she realized his actions were designed to reinforce the idea they were a couple, but that did little to lessen the tightening in her chest.