Borkin’s target went down to the basement car park immediately after the special board meeting. The meeting had gone well, she thought.
The parcel containing her recipe had arrived but, after being switched by her target at the entrance to the building, the recipe shown to the board was a fake all right, but not her fake!
The board had made copies of the recipe, before sending Senior Technician Ramirez away with instructions to brew a batch as quickly as possible for sampling. Before the meeting Borkin had wondered how close it would be. It wouldn’t be the real recipe, but it had to seem real.
She saw her target walk past her office at 5:50 p.m., close enough to the end of the day to seem as if he were simply going home. But she knew he wasn’t. She desperately hoped he hadn’t yet twigged the trap she was building.
She radioed quickly to the FBI team and confirmed the description of the car. They would pick him up the moment he left the car park and keep him in sight, informing her of all his stops. And they wouldn’t get noticed. The FBI was very, very good at this kind of work.
Her cellphone rang, and she plucked it out of her handbag tiredly. It had better be important, she thought.
It was. Fraser and Tupai had not arrived back in New Zealand. The flight had arrived, but they hadn’t been on it. There seemed no obvious explanation for it. That caused a chill that started in the extremities of her fingers and spread like iced water through the channels of her body.
Anastasia Borkin expressed her distress by using a phrase she had picked up from the New Zealanders.
‘Bloody hell!’ she said loudly.
Her radio crackled and the FBI had their first report. The target had driven straight to a nearby mall, and used a pay phone in the entrance. He had made a quick call and was now waiting by the phone. She thanked them and put the radio down on her desk.
A pay phone. She mentally played through the possible moves in this chess game. The target must have contacted the kidnappers, and was waiting for them to call him back. The FBI couldn’t afford to pick him up at this stage. Not if they wanted him to lead them to the kidnappers. He would just deny everything. Better to play the waiting game.
The FBI would be able to track down the number he had called, and also the number that called back, although it would probably be another pay phone.
Still they’d be able to narrow it down to the state and hopefully even the city, which would give them a good start. She hoped it wasn’t overseas, because that would make it twice as difficult for the FBI, as they would have to involve local law enforcement authorities in the country concerned.
Even as she was worrying about such a possibility, a call came through from the FBI team. The first call had been to a cellphone number, somewhere in Australia.
‘Bloody hell!’