At his Mesopotamia Estate in the Bay Area, Denis Hisami had not slept. His eyes were still open when the light showed at the edges of the curtains. He swung his legs from the bed and sat thinking for a few moments before taking a shower and dressing.
Waiting for him when he emerged from the bathroom was a tray with juice, sliced mango, oval breads called samoon, and gaymer, a thick white cream made from buffalo milk, all prepared by his Yazedi chef. He took the juice and sat down at a small round table with a view out over the ocean. He glanced at the framed photographs of Aysel and Anastasia surrounded by children in a refugee camp, thought for a few seconds and thumbed the numbers of his passcode into his phone.
He hoped a message would be waiting for him but he did not expect it. The coordination of Anastasia’s kidnap and the seizing of his passport were proof enough of what they wanted. They didn’t need to underline the point with an email, although he had received three in the previous forty-eight hours from different addresses which obliquely suggested he back off and sell his shares in TangKi. The situation was now clear to him. Her abduction had been triggered by news of the meeting in Palo Alto. He had said little of what he knew but now everything he’d found out, all that he suspected about Adam Crane, could not be revealed if he wanted to see Anastasia again.
His eyes moved to her photograph, a black-and-white shot he’d seen on the New York Times site before they were together and bought from the photographer. This time, he would not lose, he told himself again, though he had no idea how he could win and that, for Hisami, was a frighteningly new experience.
Downstairs in the Ocean Room, the group of six had already assembled when he entered, so quietly that no one heard him, took a cup of coffee and set it down with his mobile phone beside a high-backed chair facing them. There were three from his company, including Jim Tulliver, and three from Dee Strategy, two of whom were about to leave for Italy. Zillah Dee came in wearing ear buds and clutching two phones. A young man came behind her, holding two more phones. She wore black pants, a loose grey shirt, trainers and her usual string of pearls. The tiny tattoo on the underside of her wrist was just visible. She chose a chair near to Hisami. ‘We’re ready, sir. Craig, you can go ahead,’ she said to the man who’d followed her into the room.
‘Before you start, have the Italian authorities had any kind of demand?’ asked Hisami.
She shook her head. ‘No. Sometimes it takes a long time for them to make the demand. It’s all part of softening up the loved ones, sir.’ She said this as a matter of fact. It was one of the things Hisami liked about Zillah – no frills, no sentiment.
A big screen set up in front of a fireplace came to life. ‘This is an aerial of the place where Mrs Hisami was abducted yesterday,’ she said. ‘The bodies of the two African migrants used by the kidnappers were found at or near the places marked beside the road. The second body, which we believe to be Louis, was hard to recover because it had fallen down a deep crevice and lay in a small watercourse at the bottom.’
She got up and moved to the screen. ‘Here is the track where the Mercedes waited for the interception to take place. We assume the kidnappers needed to know that Mrs Hisami’s vehicle had been stopped before they made their move. The Carabinieri believe that this indicates they did not want to attempt the abduction while the car was moving, which means they wanted to make sure no harm came to her. We know that they turned the Mercedes here and headed east, but the important fact is that officers picked up cigarette stubs here, and these are being examined for DNA.’
‘What about the plate?’ asked Hisami.
‘That’s interesting – they’ve tied it to the underworld in Naples. The registered owner is a man who runs a funeral parlour and is part of one of the connected families. He uses the van to collect the bodies from people’s homes. The Carabinieri are talking to him now.’
‘My wife’s phone?’
‘No sign of that, sir, and it’s going straight to voicemail. We’ve tried getting a fix, but there’s nothing doing. No signal, or the battery is down. We used the phone towers in the area to confirm her position when she was taken. I asked the police to do analysis of other calls made around the time locally and they were already on it. We believe that one of the migrants phoned or sent a text to the men waiting up the track. And if we can trace that, we can get a number for the phone the men were using and track it.’
Hisami nodded. ‘What else?’
‘I recorded the conversation with the man who is leading the investigation. His name is Colonel Fenarelli. He speaks good English – he did some time on attachment to the NYPD.’ She nodded to Craig, who played it through the TV set. ‘We’ll go straight to the relevant part.’
‘We are sure,’ said the Italian policeman, ‘that this was a well-planned operation which was initiated in Sicily and depended on exact intelligence of Signora Hisami’s plans. The two men who took Mrs Hisami groomed these two men, so we are tracing their movements to learn where contact took place. We have a description of the two abductors, which Mrs Hisami gave to Mr Ciccone in Prianzano and Mr Hisami in the voicemail. This is being used by officers in Napoli to find the names of the two men, and we have our own database, of course. We are certain that we will trace them.’
‘What do you need from us?’ Zillah asked the police officer in the film.
‘We want to know when Signora Hisami changed her plans and when she told her husband.’ Zillah stopped the recording and looked at Hisami for an answer.
‘She told me in the phone call yesterday morning,’ he said. ‘I expected her to be on a plane by then.’
‘Okay, I’ll inform them,’ she said. ‘But there were others who knew before you. Eight members of the charity’s team knew she was going to the village. I’ll be giving their names to the police.’ She nodded for the recording to continue.
‘Typically, how does a case like this go?’ Zillah asked Fenarelli.
‘Mr Hisami is a very rich man, so we believe there will be a ransom demand. But we must ask ourselves questions.’
‘What are those questions?’
‘Kidnapping is rare in Italy today. There is too much inconvenience for the criminals. It is complicated to collect the money without being arrested and they risk being sent to prison for many years. Those men who made a living doing this sort of crime now earn millions of euros selling drugs.’
‘Go on, please, sir.’
‘But the suspects were obviously professional criminals and they were very organised. So we ask ourselves why they are doing this, when they can make more money on a shipment of cocaina to Il Porto di Napoli. Did these men kidnap Signora Hisami because she was working with migrants? We cannot answer that for sure, though it does not seem likely.’ He paused and they could hear the officer take a drag on a cigarette. ‘Is there someone who wishes to harm Signor Hisami? Maybe that is an answer. Maybe this is not about money. Maybe it is about revenge, or possibly someone wants to threaten him.’
‘Thank you for sharing your thinking with me,’ she said. ‘What steps are you taking to trace the Mercedes?’
‘There is a national alert on the registration plate.’
‘As I made clear earlier, Mr Hisami does not want any publicity about his wife’s abduction. He believes it would endanger her life. The US Embassy has contacted you to emphasise that the American government also does not believe that publicity is in the interests of Mrs Hisami. But on the murders of the two African men, will you be telling the media about that?’
‘We issued a statement about the two dead migrants,’ replied Fenarelli. ‘After a little time we will have to say they were shot, and that will be a story for the media because violence against migrants is, regrettably, more common than it used to be. But we will not say anything about a kidnap.’
‘We have your assurance on that?’
‘Sí, Signora, but this decision will be reviewed if circumstances change.’
‘The US Embassy would need to be consulted about that,’ said Zillah firmly. ‘Mr Hisami also.’
She nodded to Craig to stop the recording and swivelled to Hisami. ‘Shall we go through the arrangements in Italy?’
Hisami nodded. ‘Go ahead.’
‘We already have two operatives there. Yossi is setting up in a town on the coast – forty miles from the site where the kidnap took place, which is a short distance to the local headquarters for the Carabinieri. He has been in touch with Fenarelli, and Pete and Jonathan here are leaving for Italy tonight and will carry out on-the-ground investigations. We need to make sure that the Italians are doing all they can. We’ve fired up FBI and CIA contacts in Italy and I’m in constant touch with the embassy. They’re being helpful.’
After they had talked a few minutes more on the arrangements Zillah had set in place, the room started to empty, leaving only Hisami, Tulliver and Zillah.
‘Any news on the passport?’ she asked.
Hisami shook his head. He removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. There was a long silence, during which they heard the distant swell of the ocean. Zillah was about to say something but Tulliver gave her an imperceptible shake of the head. Eventually, Hisami looked up, his eyes burning with a deep inner fury. He appeared to force himself to communicate.
‘So you agree this is all connected, Zillah?’ he murmured.
‘It’s a concerted campaign.’ She handed him a tablet. ‘It’s just a question of who’s doing it.’
‘What’s this?’ he said, looking down at it.
‘That’s a story that was published last night by newsJip.com. It’s a political-gossip website, Silicon Valley-based.’
Hisami read the headline that was leading the site: SPECIAL FORCES PAST OF HIGH-PROFILE TECH INVESTOR DENIS HISAMI AND A DRAMATIC BALKANS HOSTAGE RESCUE.
Underneath was a photograph of Hisami and Anastasia taken at a charity fundraiser and, more worrying, a blurred shot from twenty-five years before of a young man in fatigues, an automatic weapon hanging from his shoulder, addressing half a dozen soldiers. It didn’t look like him and he didn’t recognise any of the men in the picture, but he thought the leather flying jacket on the young man in the photograph was almost certainly his.
We interrupt your evening, dear reader, to bring you news of mystery man and billionaire tech investor Denis Hisami, who, it is revealed, stormed an IS terrorist hideout in the Balkans three years ago in an action that resulted in the slaying of four or more terrorists and the rescue of hostages.
Hisami, who made billions of dollars jumping on the social media boom early, is believed to have freed a former British spy who was being tortured by IS terrorists. His name is not known and mystery surrounds the identity of the other hostages, but rumour has it that one may have been his current wife, Anastasia, with whom this tech éminence grise set up a foundation to help migrants.
Her presence on that lonely mountainside has yet to be confirmed, but impeccable sources state that it all has something to do with Hisami’s sister, who was serving as doctor with Kurdish forces on the front line with ISIS four years ago when she was killed. Hisami tracked down the people responsible for her death and eliminated the squad of trained Moslem killers in a deadly hail of bullets.
At the time, there was no mention of Mr Hisami’s role in the action, though his presence in the area has been established without doubt. The Macedonian authorities took the credit for killing the terrorist squad and for releasing the hostages, but you can’t keep a story like this hidden for too long.
Facts have emerged about Mr Hisami’s past that suggest he’s certainly capable of ruthless action. He served on the front line in Northern Iraq with the Peshmerga forces a quarter of a century ago and as a young man won a reputation as an audacious and skilful commander.
For years, rumours have circulated in the investor community about Hisami, who is famous for his shrewd, below-the-radar operating style. But few suspected that he was so handy with a gun and could, on his own, pull off an operation like this, which, our sources say, was more reminiscent of Rambo than an investor with the old-world courtesy and intellectual tastes of Denis Hisami.
Lately, things have not been going so well for Hisami, who is estimated to be worth over $5.6 billion. It is said that he is under pressure on several large-scale investments, especially one in the Reason TV Channel, which he has been trying to buy into for three years. Other investments have not done so well either, and banking sources say that Hisami is being pressed to sell stock in companies that have yet to make the big bucks. In consequence, the whole complex web of his holdings is now threatened.
But with this kind of resumé, Homeland Security can find a role for him. Watch this space, folks – there’s more on this one coming down the pike. Be sure of that!
Hisami handed the phone to Tulliver. ‘See if the lawyers can do something about this.’
Tulliver skimmed the story and started shaking his head. ‘My advice is to leave it. This isn’t worth your time right now.’
Hisami nodded and studied Zillah Dee. ‘Okay. Where do you think this comes from?’
‘Not sure yet, but someone badly wants to stop you investigating TangKi.’
‘And you think they’d kidnap my wife for that and have my passport suspended?’
‘Yes.’
‘So do I.’ He reached for a water bottle and looked out across the ocean, which sparkled in the morning sun. After a couple of minutes of intense thought, he turned to them. ‘Only someone in the government can be behind this, or someone who has a very great deal of influence and has access to a lot of information.’
‘The CIA knew about the incident in the Balkans,’ said Zillah. ‘Word gets out about these things, and I guess the story on the website is preparation for someone to leak the news about your passport. Evidently, they’re building a case that makes it seem as though you concealed your past from the US authorities when applying for citizenship and that your activities are a danger to US foreign-policy interests.’
Hisami glanced at Tulliver for his reaction. ‘I pretty much agree with Zillah’s assessment.’
‘But to have my wife kidnapped by Mafia types in Italy – even the US government doesn’t do that.’
‘Maybe there are two separate strands to the campaign – an official one and a dirty one.’
Hisami thought again then opened his hands in genuine mystification.
‘Wouldn’t it be easier to just kill me?’
‘That’s maybe an option – they’ve kept this place under surveillance.’
‘It’s the obvious course.’
‘Maybe you have something that is valuable to them – something they need you to give up,’ said Zillah.
Hisami said nothing and stood. ‘We have to think of Anastasia – she’s all that matters. I appreciate what you’re doing in Italy, Zillah, but we all know that there’s one person in the world who can find my wife, and that’s Paul Samson, and he’s already working on the Crane side of this affair.’
‘Yes, Mr Hisami, but I thought …’
‘Samson probably already knows I’m behind the investigation. He’s smart – he will have made connections. Talk to Macy Harp. See what he thinks about the idea.’
Tulliver coughed and looked at Zillah. ‘As I understand it, he was once close to Mrs Hisami.’
‘Yes, he was. That’s why I want him to work on the case. There’s no better incentive.’
‘But is that fair? And maybe he’ll have too much invested in the case to do a really good job.’
‘Jim, I’m grounded. I can’t leave the country. I have to sit here and wait. There’s no one I trust more than Samson.’ He pinched his finger and thumb in the air. ‘He came this close to finding Aysel, and he never gave up, even when we stopped paying him. He will find Anastasia. All that matters is that we get her back, right?’
‘Just raising my concerns …’ Tulliver stopped when he saw the look in his boss’s eye.
‘I have no choice and, by the way, when Samson hears she has been abducted it’s the only thing he’ll want to do. Zillah, talk to Macy then take the plane and go and see Samson in London. You will be dropping me off at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey so I’ll have just a five-hour time difference with Europe. Tell Samson everything – every detail about TangKi. If he wants to speak to me, that’s fine. Jim, I need you to stay here and work on the passport issue and the TangKi board meeting tomorrow. And tell Sam Castell to look at this newsJip website.’
They got up. ‘I’ll see you on the plane in about two hours,’ said Hisami, picking up his phone. When they’d left the room he searched his contacts for Senator Shelly Magee, an old ally and friend, but before he tapped in her number, there was an incoming call from Gil Leppo.
‘Hey!’ said Gil. ‘Just got out of the pool. And I guessed you’d be up. I wondered how you’re doing.’
‘Thanks for helping out at the meeting yesterday. I was grateful for your support. I’m sorry I had to leave.’
‘Yeah, Castell said you had some problems.’
‘Gil, I want to ask you something – who’s my enemy in that room? Which of them wants to destroy me?’
‘No one, as far as I know. I mean, they’re competitive people, but they respect your judgement. In our world, everyone can behave like a See You Next Tuesday but, honestly, Denis. I don’t think anyone is, like, seriously fucking with you.’
‘Word leaked out about that meeting, Gil. Someone told Crane.’
‘That’s not surprising. They all like him and admire what he’s done.’
‘So people are in touch with him. They know where he is. Is that Gehrig? He seemed defensive during the meeting. Martin Reid?’
‘I didn’t say that people are in touch with him, Denis. I just said it wasn’t a big surprise that word leaked out. From Micky and Martin’s point of view, it looks like you’re trying to mount a coup against Adam. They’re pissed. They think you’re after something.’
‘Did you talk to Crane, Gil?’
‘Nope. Like you, I haven’t heard from Adam in a while.’
‘Okay, so if you hear anything from him or anyone else about anything, let me know, will you? I’d appreciate that.’
‘Sure thing,’ said Gil. ‘Say hi to your beautiful wife for me.’
‘I’ll be sure to do that, Gil.’ He hung up and sat thinking for the best part of half an hour.