One Minute Out Read online

  Someone asked, “Where do we start?”

  “We talk to the woman he’s working with, and then we’ll go hunting. Trust me, you’ll have to be switched on tonight. He’ll be ready to look for men like you.”

  He surveyed his team now. “Jonker. Lose those pants. Too new. Klerk, your watch . . . what tourist wears a Luminox? Van Straaten . . . the necklace. Put it in your kit bag and buy something local from a street vendor.”

  “Sir.”

  “Liebenberg . . . every bladdy item you’re wearing has to go.”

  “Right, sir.”

  He went through the rest of the team, looking them over one by one with a discriminating eye, trying to pick out the most subtle clues that they were involved with this sort of work. He found things wrong with the attire or gear of Bakkes, Duiker, and Boyle, but Loots, his second-in-command, was perfectly clean of incriminating telltales.

  “Let’s break out the maps and get to work. Three hours till landing.”

  NINETEEN

  The Old Town is a ghost town in the middle of the night when the tourists leave, and it’s so quiet I find myself on the verge of dozing as I sit here on the slanted slate roof of the apartment building, tucked behind a small satellite dish that breaks up my silhouette to anyone looking from a distance.

  But I fight sleep, check my camera feeds every couple of minutes, and try to push worry from my mind.

  I have a rope already attached to an iron bar affixing the water tank to the roof. I’m wearing leather gloves, and my backpack is secured on my back. I’m in the black T-shirt and jeans, the brown Merrell hiking shoes, and I have a black balaclava over my hair like a watch cap, ready to pull down over my face if necessary.

  The Glock 19 is hidden inside my waistband on the right with an extra magazine and a quick-utilization tourniquet; my Spyderco matte black Paramilitary 2 folding knife is in my back-left pocket next to my SureFire Tactician tactical flashlight. I have medical gear, more clothing, rope, cash, and ammo in my pack.

  This is me rolling light, but I’m in the middle of the city, and that mandates the absence of body armor, a long gun, and other gear that would make me less comfortable, but more comforted, considering I might have to put myself up against a half dozen assholes tonight.

  I also have Talyssa’s pistol in a side pocket of the backpack, but I’d fire every round on my person out of my Glock before I went for her little gun.

  Around one a.m. I hear the sound of movement over my earpiece. Talyssa is stirring in her bed. I’m surprised that she’s been able to sleep, and wonder if she might have been doing so only because she was finally granting me the nearly blind trust I’ve been asking from her for the past two days.

  Her soft voice comes through a second later. “Harry?”

  I’m on the roof directly above her window, but she doesn’t know my exact location. “I’m here. Everything is fine.”

  “Everything is not fine,” she replies.

  “What do you—”

  “I have something I need to tell you.”

  Yes, she does. I know she is lying about parts of her story. I’ve worked out a theory about some of it, and I do want to hear it all from her at some point.

  But not now. Now I need her focused on the operation, not on what led her to everything that has happened.

  “Listen, Talyssa, whatever it is, it will keep until we—”

  “No. I need to tell you, I need to tell someone, because I don’t know if I will still be alive when the sun comes up.”

  There goes my theory that she was giving me blind trust. She doesn’t even know if I can keep her alive for the next few hours.

  “Two things,” I say. “You aren’t going to die, and I already know what you are going to tell me.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  With a tired sigh I say, “Okay. Stop me when I’m wrong.”

  “What?”

  I should ease into this, but sometimes I don’t filter myself well. “You say you got involved in all this when your sister was kidnapped. But that’s not what happened, is it? Your sister got involved in all this when you used her to help you investigate the Consortium.”

  I can hear her on the verge of crying when she answers. “Yes. Yes. This is all my fault.”

  I sigh again. She’s going to tell me about it. She needs to tell me about it, so all I can do is stay vigilant while we talk.

  Talyssa says, “I spent two years digging into the ways transnational crime launders money through European banks. I worked with police organizations around the EU and, with the help of some friends in Liechtenstein, in Switzerland, and in Portugal, I began to put together a picture of something massive. Different shadowy companies I was finding in my research, companies that didn’t seem to have any connection between one another, all seemed to be following the same set of practices. Their offshore corporations were set up the same, their capital purchases, their investments—the ones I could see, anyway—were nearly identical.”

  I scan my cameras, then the alleys below. “Sorry, Talyssa . . . you’re losing me.”

  She sniffs hard. “We dug into a corporation registered in the Cayman Islands that made large deposits into an account in Germany. I find out the corporation has investments around the world, small percentages of aboveboard companies. Restaurants, shipping, computer applications, whatever. But then I find another corporation making deposits into another account at the same bank, this one registered in Singapore, and it has virtually the same holdings. A third and a fourth concern, these with transactions into and out of other accounts, do exactly the same. Over time I started looking for little tip-offs, and I was able to identify over one hundred forty concerns, all around the world, acting in concert.”

  She’s forgotten that I knock heads for a living. “So . . . what are you saying?”

  “It’s simple, Harry. If one organization purchases a million dollars’ worth of common stock in Siemens, the other one hundred thirty-nine do the same. There are some variances, but there is a definite pattern.”

  “Okay, I’m tracking, but I don’t know the relevance of it.”

  “It means there is a process in place, and there is someone overseeing the financial end of a massive amount of shell corporations.”

  “Right . . . like a consortium.”

  “Exactly like a consortium. A collection of concerns, each individually worth something below the threshold of an amount that would generate much interest from banking investigators. But together they value billions of dollars.”

  I’m with her now. “And whatever they were doing, you think it was illicit.”

  “Clearly. I presented my theory to my employers but was told I was venturing out of bounds of my mandate. They told me to get back to doing what I was being paid to do. Instead I began researching this consortium alone. Six weeks ago I tracked an airplane owned by a company tied to the group to Bucharest, my hometown. I thought that, just maybe, this would be the break I was looking for. I didn’t tell a soul in my office, I only contacted local immigration officials there. I found that the men on board the plane were in town for a week of meetings with a hotel and restaurant chain.”

  “Who were they?”

  “I didn’t know any names. Corporations and individuals can shield that easily. The flight itself originated in Budapest, but that doesn’t mean anything. The businessmen could have been having meetings there. It landed in London and Barcelona, as well. Whoever was on board, all I knew was that they managed money illegitimately. I took them for white-collar criminals. Boring illicit finance and tax evasion, maybe some associations to accountants who worked more directly with organized crime. I didn’t think these people were dangerous. I mean . . . I just assumed they were wealthy bankers laundering money.”

  I look down over the narrow passageways to the north below me as I say, “Rich people can be assh
oles, too.”

  “I know.” She hesitates a moment. Then, “Roxana . . . you’ve seen the picture. She was . . . is . . . beautiful. She’s also charming, irresistible to men. I used to be so jealous of her growing up; even with our age difference she always got all the attention.” She’s crying again, but keeping it together. “You know what my mother said to us?”

  “What’s that?”

  “She would tell her friends, in front of us, ‘Talyssa is the smart one. Roxana is the pretty one.’ It used to upset us both.”

  “I get it.” I’m sensing Talyssa wasn’t just jealous of her sister growing up, but she retains some of that jealousy even now. I wonder if the sister felt the same way, but jealous of Talyssa’s intellect.

  But it’s time to get to the hard stuff. I say, “So . . . how did Roxana get involved in all this?”

  Through tears she says, “The best, most exclusive nightclub in the city is owned by the hotel group the bankers were flying in to meet with. It’s in a factory building near where they were staying, and it was no big leap to assume those rich bankers on the flight would go there. The afternoon the plane landed I called Roxana from The Hague, told her I was working on an investigation with Europol, and I asked her to go to the club to help me.”

  “And she just did it?”

  Talyssa sighs. “Roxana looked up to me. She would do anything I asked. I knew that when I called her.”

  “So you two were close?”

  Another pause, and I can feel the weight behind it. She says, “No. We weren’t. We’ve had a strained relationship for a long time. I could tell she agreed to go spy on the bankers only because it was her sister who asked her to do so. She wanted to impress me. To please me. And I knew she would react that way.”

  “So she went to the nightclub?”

  “That evening. And, just like I’d hoped, she met a group of wealthy men who’d flown in that day; they said they were looking to buy hotels and restaurants around Bucharest.”

  “Where were they from?”

  She replies immediately. “The head of the group, the one in charge . . . he was American. He told her his name was Tom, and he had her sit next to him at his table. He came on to Roxana that night, but she played cool, rejected his advances. She called me at four a.m., said she’d agreed to meet him the next night at a restaurant with a girlfriend of hers. She didn’t know if she should go; she worried about how far this could lead.” A pause. “But I encouraged her. I wanted names, specifics.”

  I point out the obvious now. “She was your agent. You were her handler.”

  Talyssa sounds like she’s about to break down now. “Exactly.”

  This was bad. Worse than I’d expected. “Keep going.”

  “The second night after dinner they went to a club again, and again he tried to get her to come back to his room. She resisted, although she admitted he was very charming. She also told me Tom met with gangsters from a local group known as the Clanu, or Clan. She said she’d seen them around in discos before, so she knew who they were. She was worried about this, and about the fact that Tom had gotten more aggressive with her, but I talked her into seeing him one more time.

  “Everything she told me he said . . . none of it helped me pinpoint anything tangible. A few details about his home and family is all. I knew this man was from the West Coast, that he had a family, and that he worked with the local mafia in Romania in some capacity. I needed photographs, names, I needed something to help the case I was working on.

  “So Roxana did what I asked, and she met him the third night in his hotel room.”

  I put my head in my hands on the darkened roof. Clearly Talyssa’s drive in all this, despite her lack of experience and her abject terror about what she is doing, stems from deep unwavering guilt about all but handing her sister over to some powerful and evil men.

  She seems to sense what I am thinking, and she only confirms it when she says, “I don’t know how to run an agent. I don’t know how to do any type of criminal investigation that doesn’t involve spreadsheets. I sent her into danger, over and over. But I didn’t know it was dangerous. I swear to you, I didn’t know.”

  She feels bad enough, so I don’t draw the connection that she’s probably gotten her sister killed.

  But she’s been thinking it, thinking about nothing else. That much has been clear all along.

  I let her sob a moment without replying. Finally, I say, “And you still didn’t find out who he was?”

  “No. She didn’t get me any pictures for facial recognition; she said his bodyguard was always close and always looking. She wasn’t trained for this either, it’s not her fault, but I was hard on her. I knew how much my approval meant to her, and I used that to my advantage.

  “She didn’t sleep with him, even after three nights, and he became more aggressive. She sensed a growing anger welling in him.”

  “What did this guy look like?”

  “About forty-five or fifty years old. Tom was bald, short, very sure of himself. She liked him at first. Found herself being sucked in by his personality.”

  “He sounds like a douche.”

  “A . . . a what?”

  “Never mind. What about others with him?”

  “She told me about two men who were always by Tom’s side. One was American; late thirties. He was the bodyguard, and she heard Tom call him Sean. She thought he was nice, and she thought Tom treated him badly.”

  I’m picturing an ex-military man being ordered around by a rich and bossy little runt.

  “But the one who scared her most, much more than Tom, was a South African. They called him John; I don’t know if that is a real name or not. She said he looked at her with eyes of pure evil.”

  “But still . . . you told her to go back and see them again.”

  “No. Not after the third night. It was getting too much, even for me. The gangsters, the aggressive behavior of Tom, the unease Roxana felt from John. On that fourth day I recognized this wasn’t just about bankers with ties to organized crime. I began to suspect that this American who called himself Tom was the leader of an organized-crime concern himself. But even then, I had no clue whatsoever that they were sex traffickers.”

  She cries a moment. “Roxana decided to go back on her own. By now I guess she felt bad she hadn’t given me what I asked for, so she took the risk.”

  “What happened when she went back?”

  After a heavy, wet sniff, she says, “She told me he tried to rape her in his hotel room, but she got away, raced past his bodyguard outside the door, and made it through the lobby. I flew to Bucharest that afternoon. Her face and arms were bruised, and she was terrified. I went personally to the police, but they did nothing. I went to the hotel, but the American had left.

  “Roxana didn’t want anything else to do with me or my investigation, and I couldn’t blame her. She wouldn’t talk to me.”

  “And then she disappeared.”

  “Four weeks later she went out to a club, a different club, with some girlfriends. They said she started acting strange, very tired, like she was drugged. They put her in a cab to send her back to her flat, but she never arrived. The cab was found burning under a bridge. There was no one inside.”

  “Jesus Christ,” I mutter.

  “Harry, either she is still alive, which means I can’t rest until I find her . . . or she is not alive, which means it doesn’t matter what I do.”

  “Of course it does. You want to bring her killers to justice, right?”

  “Yes,” she says, but it’s not very convincing.

  “What is it?”

  “This is my fault. If she is dead . . . I will die, too.”

  She isn’t speaking metaphorically; I can hear that in her voice.

  I say, “I don’t need a partner with a death wish.”

  The sobs continue for a
time, and then she says, “I understand. I am okay. I must see this through.”

  I think a moment about my own actions, then say, “I’ve learned something in my years doing what I do. If you don’t feel guilt, then you can’t change. Guilt can be a driving force for good, for doing what’s right. Or it can be a limiting force. Something that causes you to throw away right and wrong, to justify yourself. That’s the weak way to deal with your conscience. The determining factor in whether guilt locks you into evil or spurs you on towards good is your own inner strength. Your own moral compass.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying you fucked up. Bad. But you’ve come all this way because you are strong enough to admit it, and strong enough to try to rectify your mistake. That’s all anyone can ask of you now.”

  I add, “I’ve fucked up before. I’ve gotten people killed. People who didn’t deserve it. It never goes away, but I tell myself the only thing I can do is to help others.”

  “That’s why you are here?”

  “I guess you and I have similar motivations.”

  She sobs yet again, but her voice regains some strength. “I am okay, Harry. I will do this.”

  I understand so much now. What I saw as an almost childlike fear in Talyssa was, in part, at least, an incredible dread about what she would find.

  A scared young woman who simultaneously wants to pay penance for what she’s done. And I see her for what she is now.

  Dangerous.

  * * *

  • • •

  Minutes later, I sense fresh trouble. Movement in the dark, down a long passage that runs up from the center of the Old Town, hundreds of ancient stone steps, past dozens and dozens of doorways leading to private residences, raised porches lined with potted plants.

  At first I can only tell I’m observing a group of individuals, but as they pass into one of the too-sparsely-placed streetlights, the orange glow reveals a half dozen men, dressed differently than the ones I saw earlier. Whereas the other men looked more tactical in nature, this group looks like a tiny gang of soccer hooligans.