twenty-two

“How long for those fingerprints to be run?” Ruth asked. She was on the phone to Brasher, who had been called away to a progress meeting on one of his other cases. She, Reiks, and Vaslik had eaten snacks that they didn’t really want, if only to keep up the sugar levels if something kicked off and they had to move fast. Now time was ticking by and they were all getting jumpy.

“Not long,” he said. “They told me they’ve got plenty to work with, on the hat and the knife, so if the prints are anywhere in the system, they’ll shake out sooner or later.”

She went back to staring at the map while Vaslik ran through the iPad to see if anything stuck out. An alternate pair of eyes might throw up something others had missed.

In the end she sat back in frustration and spoke at the ceiling.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but we appear to have a former USAF spook with expertise in unmanned aerial vehicles who’s gone missing, possibly taken by another man or men who allegedly want him to help them fly drones or quad-copters for an obviously bullshit reason. We have at least three men in the mix, one identified as a violent extremist with jihadist leanings. This man, Chadwick, seems to have been researching airfields or locations in remote places, which must be tied in in some way to drones, but we have no idea why.”

Vaslik nodded. “That’s all I’ve got, too.”

“Pardon me for saying so, Slik, but you don’t seem that frustrated by the lack of information.”

“You reckon? Maybe I’m just better at hiding it.” His phone rang and he picked it up, pushing the iPad to one side. He listened for a couple of minutes and made some notes, then cut the connection and turned back to Ruth with a blank look.

“A thought occurred to me while you were out,” he announced. “Where are the drones this man Paul was talking about? We don’t know if he already has them or has yet to acquire them, where they are or anything like that.”

“True. So?”

“I did some research on the subject earlier. There’s a ton of regulations you have to go through if you want a top-level drone that isn’t just for flying around your kitchen or back yard and amusing the kids. If you’re serious, you have to get licences and do a training course and lots of other stuff. It takes time and money.”

“And leaves a trail.”

He nodded. “Most of all, it leaves a trail. And if this Paul and his buddies are what we think they are, they wouldn’t want to do that.”

“Which is why they may have kidnapped an expert in drone technology, thus avoiding licences, training, and paying a pilot.”

“Right. That solves some of their problems, but not all. It still leaves the drones themselves.”

“Good point.” With everything else going on, Ruth hadn’t given it much thought. “Where would he get them—it? He’d have to steal one.”

Vaslik smiled again. “That’s another thing, if you were planning something, would you rely on a single machine … or would you have backups in case something went wrong?”

“I’d have backups. Even with somebody like Chadwick helping to teach them, they couldn’t guarantee they wouldn’t screw it up or the machine wouldn’t malfunction. The same question holds, though: where would he get them?”

“That’s what I asked Tom Brasher to find out.” He nodded at the phone. “He just finished running that question through every database he can find—here, the UK, Interpol, and a few others.”

Ruth refrained from throwing her chair at him. He had news and wanted to draw it out, that much was obvious. “So?”

“Seven weeks ago a shipment of six quad-copters from EuroVol in France, bound for L.A., went missing while in transit through the FedEx Express Global cargo hub at Memphis International Airport.”

“An inside job?”

“Had to be. So far there’s no trace of the shipment or a despatcher who worked in that section of the hub on the day it went missing.”

“What kind of machines are we talking about?”

He looked at his notebook. “They’re described as a batch of EVO Moskitos complete with video screens and cameras. Serious stuff by the sounds of it, used for aid relief in remote areas, according to Brasher.”

“So they’d have quite a range?”

“I guess. He’s getting confirmation of what was included in the shipment so we know what we’re dealing with. My guess is that if these were intended for L.A., they were for the film industry. A few companies are already using drones for location surveys and test footage, so they’d be top of the range.”

“Anything else?”

“Yes. The despatcher’s name was Borz Dortyev, described as a legal immigrant originally from Chechnya. Brasher’s running a background search for more details. Dortyev had been with the company for six months before he skipped. Prior to that his employment record has him once living in Queens, New York.”

Ruth felt a glow in her stomach. Even without confirmation it was beginning to look as if there had been a plan all along. Dortyev would have been well-placed to keep an eye out for any shipments coming through the Memphis hub and sideline them out of there if they looked useful. But was he connected to the men surrounding James Chadwick, and if so, how closely?

“Brasher might do well to check whether Dortyev has any contacts in France.” When Vaslik looked puzzled, she explained, “Air France’s main cargo hub is called G1XL, at Paris-Charles de Gaulle. French shipments aimed for the US would begin there. It would be a good place to start.”

“You’re right. I’ll pass it on. But how the heck do you know about that?”

“I had to track a missing person through the airport a couple of months back and got an in-depth tour of the place from one of their security geeks.” She smiled to herself. The official, whose name was André, had been most effusive and even got a little too touchy-feely in one of the transit sheds until she’d pointed out, not unkindly, that he might have stood a better chance if his name had been spelled Andrea. “It’s a pretty impressive operation but like all airports, it has its weak points.”

“I’ll do it now.” He turned and sent off a quick text message to Brasher. The FBI man had told them that it was the best way to contact him as he was on the move so much attending to a backlog of cases. But this was one he didn’t want to let go of.

When Vaslik finished he looked back at Ruth, who was once again scanning the map they’d found among Chadwick’s effects at StoneSeal. “No ideas with that?”

She shook her head. “It’s just a map with a few scribbles, but nothing leaps out at me. He could have been planning a hiking holiday for all I know.”

“Right. Suddenly James Chadwick, corporate and UAV nerd, is a mad trail hiker? I don’t see it.”

“Me neither.” She stood up and took the map over to him. It was about time for some fresh eyes on the damned thing. “See what you can find,” she told him. “It’s there, I can feel it—it’s just a matter of nailing it.”

Vaslik spread the map out and got to his feet. Ruth knew he’d taken a look at it before, but with focussing on other aspects of the case, such as the Newark/New Jersey locations and liaising with Brasher, he’d pretty much left this one to her.

She left him to it and went in search of some tea. Reiks directed her to a pharmacy nearby, where she found tea bags, which she took back and served up to Reiks and Vaslik before rejoining in the study of the map.

“Have you noticed,” Vaslik said after a few minutes, “that the circles are all located in Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Kansas?”

Ruth nodded. “I saw that. The same three states he was Googling for airfields. But I have no idea why. There are no place names in the circles; in fact, they look as if they’re in the middle of nowhere.” She tapped the edge of the map. “He also wrote some stuff down, most of it in pencil and too faded to read. But there’s one word here I can read.” She pointed at a single word on the border of the map. It had been underlined once, and unlike some of the other scribbles, was in ink. “He also made Google searches for the same place.”

Freedom.

They stood and stared at it for a few moments, then Vaslik said dramatically, “I think, Ms. Gonzales, that we’re going to need a bigger map.”