“Mr. Voss, this is Lieutenant Frank Marshall. I’m Sergeant Morris Jaworski. Please sit down. Can we get you anything? Coffee? Soda?”
“Nein … no, thank you.” Jurgen glanced around at his new surroundings. Fluorescent ceiling fixtures cast a cold white light on the windowless interview room and its sparse furnishings: a scarred refectory table and a number of mismatched wooden chairs. There was a wall-mounted camcorder, a cork bulletin board with wanted posters and official notices thumbtacked to it, and a large mirror, obviously for one-way viewing from outside the room.
Uncomfortable and out of his element as he was, the would-be extortionist felt increasingly unintimidated. During the ride to the police station his confidence had grown. Except for the rather transparent scare tactics of the big blond detective, which in retrospect Voss realized were no more than a well-practiced routine to coerce reluctant subjects into cooperation, both men had treated him fairly courteously—far more courteously than he supposed an actual suspect would have been treated. They had made it clear that he was categorically not under arrest; he was being brought in only for questioning. Voss knew that he, Shiller, and Malloy had left no traces; under his technical direction, the planning and execution of the Thanatos scheme had been flawless. Additionally, he comforted himself with the fact that his computers at home were impregnable. He had erected so many barriers and firewalls—not to mention the deadly deterrents he had concealed—that the data was totally irretrievable to anyone without the codes and passwords that he alone possessed.
Somewhat more relaxed, Jurgen assessed his position. They obviously had something; otherwise, he would not be here. Yet there could not possibly
be any hard evidence against him. Perhaps all this stemmed from his earlier arrest at the Galaxy; maybe the authorities were simply questioning anyone with any connection, no matter how remote, to the giant casino. As long as he admitted nothing, he had nothing to fear. He was actually beginning to look forward to matching wits with these Neanderthals.
“Well, gentlemen,” said the unfrocked card counter with a thin smile. “How may I help the police?”
“Sir, we’re looking into an extortion scheme against … certain hotels here in Las Vegas,” said Marshall. “We believe you may have information that could help us.”
So it was about Thanatos! Voss felt a surge of adrenaline. He struggled to remain composed. “Extortion? I know of no extortion.”
“What do you do for a living?”
“This and that.”
“Are you a professional card counter?”
He was right! But was this all they had? In any event, there was no point denying his former occupation; it was now a matter of police record. “Ja. However, I have not—”
“Do you like movies, Jurgen?” the other policeman cut in suddenly.
“I do not understand … .”
“From the video store,” said Marshall. “Do you ever rent movies from the video store?” Of course! Jurgen thought. These plodders had actually checked the names of every person who had rented Seven and Extreme Measures! How many thousands of names would be on that list! Voss almost laughed aloud as realized exactly how these louts had arrived at their decision to question him—and how little real evidence they had. It was all circumstantial. The card-counting episode at the Galaxy, the movie rentals—that was it! Let them keep him here as long as they wished. Let them ask their foolish questions. He would admit to nothing.
“What did you say his name was, Frank?” Steve Forrester asked, lighting up a Vantage 100 with his free hand. He slid a ruled notepad closer to the phone and reached for a pen. “Jurgen Voss? No, don’t bother spelling it … . I remember the crazy little bastard. A card counter. Sure … that’s right … we sent him over to you guys for booking, what, six months ago?” Steve took a deep drag on his cigarette while Frank Marshall spoke. “What? Lunch with you and Moe? And you want me to bring Druperman? Sure.
He’d appreciate being brought up to speed. Why not swing over here, and the Galaxy will buy the lunch … yes, Frank, the casino can afford it.” Thoughtfully, he replaced the receiver, rose from his chair, and walked to the window.
There was something bothering him, something about the mention of the little card counter’s name. He gazed at all the glistening new hotel-casinos on the south end of the Strip—the Paris, the Venetian, the Bellagio—without really seeing any of them. What was it about Voss? He stared down at the All-Star Café and idly watched two taxicabs experience a near collision on the busy Las Vegas Strip below his window.
Forrester turned away and stubbed out his cigarette. If he left it alone, concentrated on other things, he knew it would come to him. Sooner or later, it always did.
“We’ve got the subject in custody, had him there all night, and I can guarantee you he knows more than he’s telling us,” said Lieutenant Frank Marshall as he picked at his potato salad in the Cosmic Café. “Not only that, but I get the distinct feeling the little bastard is laughing at us.”
“Yes, I remember how cocky he was the day we sent him over to you at the station,” said Steve Forrester. “He just about dared us to arrest him.”
Emmett Druperman looked surprised. “You mean you’ve run into this character before, Steve?”
“Yep. Jurgen Voss is actually a professional card counter. Picked him up about six months ago. He was given the choice of walking or arguing, and he decided to argue. So … we turned him over to Frank’s people.”
“To the police? What happened?” asked the CEO, chewing on a pastrami sandwich.
“The usual. First offense, judge gives him a walk,” Forrester replied. “All we wanted was to scare him a little. Doesn’t look like it worked—if we’re right. About his being part of the Thanatos gang, I mean.”
“What makes you think he’s part of the gang?” Druperman inquired.
“You recall that profile we developed of the person who wrote those extortion letters?” said Morris Jaworski. “Well, sir, this Jurgen Voss scores a bull’s-eye on every single point. He’s egocentric … he’s highly intelligent … he’s physically small … his first language appears to be German … and he’s into computers.
“Not only that, he lives near the Union Pacific tracks … and he’s also
rented Seven and Extreme Measures from Vegas Video within the past month.
“And the icing on the cake is, before they brought him in, Frank’s detectives identified one of his computers and his laser printer as the exact types of machine that generated the letters.
“Now, while this evidence is tremendously compelling, it’s also totally circumstantial. There isn’t a single shred of hard proof that Voss played any part in the murders or the extortion. However, the evidence was strong enough to get us a search warrant for his apartment. I’ve had a team of forensic programmers in there since before midnight, tearing his computer system apart. If there are any traces of his involvement in this scheme, or better still, if there are any indications as to which casino is targeted for the fire, they’ll find them.”
“Well, they better work fast,” Druperman growled. “The latest deadline is five o‘clock today—and I convinced the LVCA to hang tough and not pay the ransom. I told ’em to rely on you guys. It was a tough sell. If you don’t come through, they’ll be hanging me out to dry.”
“Not to mention hanging a few hundred tourists out to fry,” Frank Marshall added.
Forrester nodded grimly and said quietly, “You know, Frank, there’s something that’s bugging me about this guy Jurgen Voss. Something you or Moe said a while ago. I just can’t get a handle on it. But I’ve got a feeling it could be important.”
“Don’t worry about it, O perceptive one. Just let me know when the revelation strikes you.”
A silence fell upon the casino executives and their lawmen guests as the waitress reappeared at their table. “Can I bring you anything else, gentlemen?” she asked.
“How’s the coffee here?” Jaworski asked innocently.
“From what I’ve heard,” Frank Marshall commented dryly, “it either gets you horny or it kills you.”
David Takahashi, freelance forensic computer programmer for the LVMPD, mopped the dusty sweat from his forehead with a soiled handkerchief and cursed softly under his breath. Between the dust bunnies, the cobwebs, and the oppressive heat, this assignment had become an endurance test for him and his crew. In fact, he’d had to send one of the guys home, a fellow with
moderate allergies who could not stop sneezing in Jurgen Voss’s dust-filled computer room. Takahashi was surprised that the equipment still functioned under such adverse conditions.
This whole assignment was unusual. Under normal circumstances, they would have disconnected the equipment and brought it back to the lab for analysis. But Morris Jaworski was worried that the system might have been rigged to trigger massive data destruction if any unsequenced physical disconnection occurred. In addition, Jaworski had made it clear that time was of the essence—if there was any information to be found about the location of the threatened fire, it was crucial to uncover it before the extortionists’ five-o’clock deadline. Hence, the on-site investigation.
“Got you, you dusty bastard!” one of his technicians suddenly shouted triumphantly. “Check this out, Dave. That cunning son of a bitch had more than Intel inside! He’s got two hidden locks in the case, and they’re accessible only through these ventilation slots. But I got them open—and it’s lucky I did. There’s a tiny bit of plastic explosive pressed onto this internal RAID array. If I’d tried to force the case open without releasing the hidden locks, it would’ve gone off and destroyed the data.” The technician shuddered and grimaced. “Might have blown a couple of my fingers off, too.”
“My God,” said Takahashi. “You okay to keep going, man?”
“Sure, Dave, no problem.” The technician paused thoughtfully. “But I just don’t get this guy.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, what is Voss hiding that’s so hands-off, he’s willing to destroy all his data—and his computer—rather than let anyone in?”
“Who knows? Course, the data’s probably backed up somewhere. And the hardware’s replaceable. But that’s beside the point. We’ve got to get in there and find some answers—fast.”
“It’s not gonna be easy. Voss has encrypted the whole system.”
“How?”
“Military-grade IDEA encryption.”
“Damn.”
“It’ll be tough to break in without the password. Any ideas?”
Takahashi shook his head slowly. The password could be anything from a sequence of numbers to a phrase, probably date- and time-dependent. Would Voss keep it in his head, or would he have it written down somewhere? It was more likely he’d keep it in some kind of off-line storage device … .
Suddenly Takahashi brightened and snapped his fingers. Of course! Didn’t Voss possess a magnetic card reader—and a writer? And hadn’t the detectives found a wallet when they tossed his bedroom? With credit cards in it?
The programmer turned to his technician. “I think I know where to look for the password. I’ll have to call the Evidence Room first. If my idea works out, we’ll be inside this mother in forty-five minutes.”