Chapter 16

 

Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, France

 

Luna Faye was sitting upstairs in Elaine’s office, a pair of Nick’s high quality headphones over her ears, staring at complex audio waveforms that slowly scrolled across the computer screen, listening intently. The chore had to be performed twice a day and required intense concentration. The bug that Dmitry had planted on Raj’s obscenely expensive sports car transmitted compressed, encrypted audio data over the Internet every twelve hours, and she had to painstakingly listen to every word of it.

Although she was able to fast-forward through most of the blank portions, listening to thousands of minutes of recorded conversations was tedious work. Fortunately, she had downloaded an audio editing program that made it easy to find all the blank spots, such as when Raj’s car was unoccupied and either parked in his garage at his house, or the underground parking garage at Interpol headquarters. By simply looking at the waveforms on the screen and jumping ahead to the parts where it was not flat, she could go straight to the conversations. But she had to be careful to expand each portion’s time scale as a short conversation would show up as nothing more than a thin vertical line that was easy to overlook.

Luna continued listening to the recording. Now, she felt like she knew Raj Malik’s daily routine even better than he did. Drive the kids to school, drive to work, maybe go out to a restaurant for a business lunch, pick the kids up from school, take them to various lessons and club meetings, then go to the fitness center, or for a long jog through the Parc de la Tête d’Or and go home. She had no idea what Raj’s wife did all day—from their conversations, she was apparently involved in a lot of charity work.

What made the process particularly annoying were the conversations Luna had to endure between Raj and his kids. Raj Malik appeared to be the ideal father. The man spent countless hours with his three girls, driving them to the movies, roller skating, to their piano lessons, fencing lessons, dancing lessons, horseback riding lessons—you name it. In the car, he talked to them patiently about their grades, their problem teachers, boyfriends, and snobby girls at the fancy international preparatory academy that the three of them attended. They spoke fluent English with posh accents.

It was clear that the three girls adored their daddy—Raj seemed to take a sincere interest in everything they were doing. Luna wondered what his precious daughters would think if they found out that their wonderful papa was not only a diamond smuggler, but abused his power at the Secret Service in every possible way, including sending his own people to CIA black sites to torture them into turning over money he thought they’d taken as bribes, with the intention of keeping it himself.

This particular recording had just been sent half an hour ago. So far, Luna hadn’t found anything of interest whatsoever. Absolutely nothing. In fact, there had not been a single suspicious call or conversation on any of the previous recordings, which she had been receiving like clockwork every twelve hours since Dmitry had planted the bug on Raj’s car. As far as she could determine, the Director of the U.S. Secret Service’s European Operations never made any phone calls concerning his dirty dealings from inside his Bugatti, which was both frustrating and disappointing.

Now Luna at least hoped that she would hear him receive the call from Stanley Ketchum to set up the meeting in N’Djamena where he would receive this month’s supply of diamonds. Of course she would probably get a call from Elaine first, or shortly thereafter, telling her that she and Ketchum had safely crossed the border into Chad.

She fast-forwarded to the only remaining unheard segment of voice data and started listening.

The conversation was between Raj and his middle daughter, who was about ten years old. Apparently the girl wanted her father to book the two of them for an overnight stay in Cinderella’s Castle at Paris Disney World. Luna had to listen to her excited description of the fancy suite, which she had seen online. “Daddy, they drive you through The Magic Kingdom in Cinderella’s carriage to the room, and in the room there are mosaics with real gold tiles and stained glass windows. There’s even one of Cinderella’s glass slippers in the room!”

When the girl told her father the price of a one-night stay in the ridiculously tricked-out suite, which was only available to celebrities and the uber-rich, Luna nearly fell out of her chair. Five thousand euros! “Only” five thousand euros, according to Raj’s daughter, and you got to keep the glass slipper!

Raj gently tried to talk the girl out of the idea, but she persisted.

“Well, of course my darling,” Raj cooed, “if it will make you happy.” Luna heard the rustle of clothes the sound of smacked lips as Raj leaned over to kiss the child.

Luna glanced over at her phone to check his GPS position—the tracker Dmitry had placed under the bumper was still working—she saw that his car had just passed through the gate in front of his house.

She heard the sound of the car doors opening. She expanded the GPS map on her phone. The vehicle was inside Raj’s garage now.

On the computer screen in front of her, there was nothing else but a flat-line waveform for another hour, absolute silence, until the end of the recording.

“Damn,” Luna muttered.

“That’s a bad word,” Ryan said. Luna jumped.

Ryan was standing right behind her, looking over her shoulder.

“You’re right,” Luna said, swiveling around in the chair. “I thought I was alone.”

“Is it okay to say bad words if nobody can hear you?”

Luna chuckled. “Um...you know, that’s a very intelligent question. You should save that and ask your mom when she gets home.”

“Where are they? What are they doing?”

“They’re working, honey.”

“Why?”

“Because they have to make money.”

“Why?”

Luna laughed. “Why, why, why?” she said, ruffling his dark hair. “Isn’t it past your bedtime, young man?”

He flashed a quick smile. “Why?”

As Luna gazed at him, she kept telling herself that he favored Nick just as much as Giorgio, but the more time she spent around the child, the harder it became to convince herself of that. It was his mannerisms, more than his looks, that made him seem related. And the way he moved, so agile and light on his feet—a lithe, elusive creature that was always alert and on guard, remaining just out of reach.

But the clincher was that occasional, quick smile. There was something mischievous in it, and when he flashed it, it gave his face an unmistakable feline appearance.

“Why do they have to make money?” Ryan persisted.

“Because they have to pay for food and clothes and electricity.”

“‘Lectricity?” Ryan’s eyes suddenly sparkled with excitement. He skipped over to the switch by the door and started turning the overhead light off and on.

Off and on.

Off and on.

Luna sighed.

“Ryan!” Tony yelled from the bottom of the steps. “Stop botherin’ Luna and come-a down here.”

“No!”

The little boy was going through a contrarian stage, too.

“It’s time for-a you to go to bed!” Tony called.

“I’m not sleepy!”

“Wait...never mind. You stay upstairs with-a Luna! Okay? You can’t come-a down here, I just remembered something important.”

Ryan took a step towards the stairway. “What?”

“I’m makin’ chocolate gelato, and I don’t want you botherin’ me! Stay upstairs, okay?”

The boy bounded towards the steps.

“Don’t run…” Luna said, but he was halfway down them almost before she’d finished the second word.

 

* * *

A few minutes later, Luna was still sitting at Elaine’s desk, staring at a notepad in front of her. There were three bits of information about this situation in Africa that did not add up, which she had written down on the pad. She had been contemplating them ever since Nick had left, trying to find answers.

Raj Malik does not appear to be trying to track down Elaine and Nick. This seemed odd to her, under the circumstances, the two of them having escaped from a black site Raj put them in. Elaine said that Cattoretti had blackmailed Raj into leaving them alone...but was that really enough? Wouldn’t Raj want to protect himself anyway? As a former FBI agent, she knew that with kidnappings, most people contacted the police even though the blackmailers always told them not to. It was human nature to cover all your bases.

Isabella, with whom Nick apparently had some sort of romantic history, just happened to be at the same black site as Nick and Elaine. Nick might have thought it was a coincidence, but Luna didn’t buy it. She believed Isabella had been planted there on purpose by Raj. But why? Was Raj afraid that Nick, as an experienced extractor, could spring himself and Elaine, and so he put Isabella there as a distraction? That didn’t quite add up, either.

There do not seem to be any known black sites in Chad. This, of course, did not mean that much in and of itself, because that’s why they were called black sites—the prisons and their locations were above Top Secret. Still, word always spread, and Luna had checked with a few of her CIA contacts and none of them had heard of any operating black site in Chad. What made this even more puzzling was that Elaine said that the site was located at an active military base, which greatly narrowed down the possibilities. She’d heard jets and helicopters landing and taking off at all hours, including the aircraft that flew Raj in and out when he had traveled there to interrogate her and Nick. It was pretty much impossible to keep a large air force base secret, and there were few in Chad.

Taken individually, these three bits of information were not that bothersome, but taken as a whole, they were deeply troubling. They kept Luna up at night as she kept trying to connect the dots.

After ruminating for another half hour, Luna decided that the connection between these three ill-fitting bits of information had to be Giorgio Cattoretti.

She had to see what more current information she could dig up on the man, despite the fact that word might get back to him and jeopardize Elaine’s situation. Something was amiss here, and Luna’s instincts told her that it was something crucial, and that Elaine needed to know.

Luna had Cattoretti’s phone number in Morocco, the number of his burner phone that Elaine had given her.

After vacillating for another five minutes, she finally picked up the phone and called the small cellular company in Morocco that provided the number.