There was no reply.
‘Disappointing. I’d imagined that the FBI would be more careful than that.’ Lucien shrugged. ‘But then again, I didn’t give you guys that much notice, did I?’
Hunter’s earlier thought came back to him:
this could be a costly mistake.
‘So,’ Lucien carried on, ‘we have a few options here. You can both take off your shirts and throw them out the window . . .’ He gave Taylor a provoking wink. ‘And that would no doubt add to my pleasure here in the backseat. Or you can rip the buttons off, one by one, and throw them out the window.’ Lucien was still staring at Taylor. ‘I bet you have a beautiful belly button, Agent Taylor.’
‘Fuck you,’ Taylor couldn’t contain herself.
Lucien laughed. ‘Alternatively, you can keep your shirts on with the buttons intact and just rip off the satellite transmitter, which I’m sure is taped to your bodies somewhere.’
Without even noticing it, Taylor looked like an angry kid who had just been caught on a lie.
‘Please,’ Lucien added, ‘waste as much time as you like thinking about it.’ He placed his head against the leather headrest and closed his eyes. ‘Let me know when you’ve made your minds up.’
Hunter unbuckled his seatbelt, leaned forward a little and ripped the satellite transmitter from his lower back.
With her weapon still aimed at Lucien, Taylor did the same.
Back in the Operations Room in Quantico, Director Adrian Kennedy heard a scraping sound. A moment after that, Hunter’s microphone went into complete silence. A couple of seconds later, so did Taylor’s. The two dots that represented both of them on the radar screen they were looking at faded to nothing.
The agent sitting at the radar station quickly typed several commands into his computer before finally looking up at Kennedy, who was standing by his side. ‘We’ve lost them, sir. I’m sorry. There’s nothing we can do from here.’
‘Sonofabitch,’ Kennedy whispered between clenched teeth.
Inside Bird Two, circling around the sky near Berlin’s municipal airport, Agent Brody ran his hand through his close-cropped hair and uttered the exact same comment.
Eighty-Eight
‘That’s much better,’ Lucien said, once Hunter and Taylor had both dropped their satellite transmitters out their windows. ‘Now, let’s be on the safe side, shall we? Take off your belts and drop them outside the window as well.’
‘That was the only transmitter we had on,’ Taylor said.
‘Noted,’ Lucien said with a polite nod. ‘But forgive me for not trusting you at this particular moment, Agent Taylor. Now, if you please, the belts.’
Hunter and Taylor complied, dropping them outside the window.
‘Now empty your pockets. Change, credit cards, wallets, pens . . . all of it. And your watches too.’
‘How about this,’ Taylor said, showing Lucien the keychain that belonged to him. The one they had used to get access to the house in Murphy in North Carolina.
‘Oh, you’d better hang on to that, Agent Taylor. We’ll need it to get into this place.’
Hunter and Taylor dropped their watches and whatever they had in their pockets out the window.
‘Don’t worry,’ Lucien said. ‘I’m sure the pilot will collect everything once we drive off. Nothing will be lost. Now, since we’re on a roll here, let’s do the same with your shoes too. Take them off and leave them outside.’
‘The shoes?’ Taylor asked.
‘I’ve seen transmitters hidden inside heels, Agent Taylor. And since you’ve already abused my trust once, I’m not leaving anything to chance. But if you want to waste more time, you’ll get no opposition from me.’
Seconds later, Hunter’s boots and Taylor’s shoes hit the asphalt by the side of the car.
Lucien leaned forward slowly and looked down at Taylor’s feet.
‘You have very pretty toes, Agent Taylor.’ He nodded his agreement. ‘Red, the color for passion. Interesting. Did you know that it’s estimated that maybe as many as thirty to forty percent of men have some sort of foot fetish? I’m sure that there’re people out there who’d kill just to be able to touch those pretty toes.’
Cringing at his words, Taylor instinctively moved her feet back, as if trying to hide them away.
Lucien laughed animatedly.
‘And last but not least,’ he continued. ‘Let’s get rid of the cellphones, shall we? We all know that they have trackable GPS systems.’
As much as this was making them mad, Hunter and Taylor couldn’t argue. Lucien was still holding all the cards in this game. They did as they were told, and the phones were dropped outside their windows.
Satisfied, Lucien smiled at Hunter via the rearview mirror.
‘I think we’re good now,’ he said. ‘You can start the car again, Robert.’
Hunter did, and the satellite navigation system came to life on the 8.4-inch touchscreen on the dashboard.
‘You won’t need that,’ Lucien said. ‘There’s no road name, or number or anything. Just a dirt path.’
‘And how do we get there?’
‘I’ll guide you,’ Lucien said. ‘First thing we got to do is get the hell out of this shithole of an airport.’
Eighty-Nine
Director Adrian Kennedy stared at the radar screen inside the Operations Room at the FBI Academy in Quantico for a long time, trying to figure out what to do next.
‘We can try to track the GPS signal in their cellphones,’ the agent at the radar station offered.
Kennedy shrugged. ‘We can give that a spin, but this guy is too smart. He figured out the buttons just because they were a couple of shades darker than the original ones for chrissakes. Who notices the color of buttons on someone else’s shirt?’
‘Someone who knows what to expect,’ Doctor Lambert said. ‘Lucien never expected the FBI to simply bend over and accept his demands. He knew we would try something, and he was ready for it.’
‘And that’s exactly what I mean,’ Kennedy said. ‘If he was ready for the buttons, I don’t think there’s a chance he would allow Robert and Agent Taylor to proceed carrying their cellphones with them. Even a ten-year-old kid knows that a cellphone GPS system is trackable.’ He looked at the agent at the radar station. ‘But by all means, give it a spin.’
The agent called an internal FBI application on his computer. ‘What’s the agent’s name?’ he asked.
‘Courtney Taylor,’ Kennedy replied. ‘She’s with the Behavioral Science Unit.’
A few more keyboard clicks.
‘Found her,’ the agent said.
The application he had called up on his screen listed the trackable GPS ID for every cellphone issued to an FBI agent.
‘Give me a few seconds.’ The agent began typing ferociously. A moment later, the word ‘locating’ appeared on his screen, followed by three blinking dots. Just a few seconds after that, the screen announced: ‘GPS ID found’.
A new dot appeared on the radar system.
‘The phone is live,’ the agent said. ‘The GPS is still transmitting, which means it hasn’t been destroyed, and the battery is still in it. The location is exactly the same as we had before. They’re still on the runway at Berlin’s municipal airport.’
‘Either that,’ Kennedy said, ‘or they were told to leave their phones behind.’ He looked at Doctor Lambert, who nodded.
‘That’s what I would do.’
The cellphone in Kennedy’s pocket rang. It was Agent Brody inside Bird Two.
‘Director,’ Brody said once Kennedy answered the call. ‘Our pilot has just been in contact with the pilot in Bird One. He said that the car with the target is gone, but they left behind a pile of stuff on the runway – cellphones, wallets, belts, even shoes. The target is taking no chances.’
Kennedy had his answer.
‘What do you suggest we do?’ Brody asked. ‘With no ears on the ground anymore, and no accurate target location, landing can be too risky, and even if we get away with it without the target noticing it, we don’t have a dot to follow once we’re on the ground.’
‘I understand,’ Kennedy said. ‘And the answer is: I’m not sure yet. Let me call you back once I figure something out.’ He disconnected. His tired brain was working hard to come up with an idea. And then a thought came to him. ‘The car,’ he said, looking at Doctor Lambert and then at the radar station agent. ‘Robert got the car from the guy who runs air traffic control at the airport. His name is Josh. We heard that whole conversation through Robert’s button mic, remember? Josh said he just got the car, a Jeep Grand Cherokee, a couple of months ago.’
‘And a lot of new cars,’ the agent said, picking up on Kennedy’s line of thought, ‘already come equipped with an anti-theft satellite tracking system. It’s definitely worth a try.’
Kennedy nodded. ‘Let’s get Josh on the phone right now.’
Ninety
As soon as he drove through the airport gates, Hunter found himself on East Side River Road.
‘Make a left,’ Lucien said, ‘then take your first right. We’ve got to cross the small bridge into the city of Milan. Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite compare to the one in Italy. No Duomo Cathedral to see here. Actually, nothing at all to see here.’
Hunter followed Lucien’s instructions. They crossed the bridge and passed an elementary school on their right before coming to a T-junction at the top of the road.
‘Hang a right, and just follow the road on,’ Lucien commanded.
Hunter did, and within a few hundred yards he drove past a few houses, some small, some a little larger, but nothing too exuberant.
‘Welcome to the city of Milan, New Hampshire,’ Lucien said, jerking his chin toward the window. ‘There’s nothing here but rednecks, fields, solitude and isolated places. It’s a great place to disappear, go under the radar. No one will disturb you here. No one cares. And that’s one of the greatest things about America – it’s riddled with similar towns. Every state you go, you’ll find tens of Milans and Berlins and Murphys and Shitkickersville. Just God-forsaken places where many of the streets don’t even have a name, where people don’t notice you.’
Taylor felt the weight of Lucien’s keychain in her pocket and thought back to the seventeen keys it held. Each one of them could belong to a different anonymous place scattered around the land. Just like the house in Murphy.
Lucien read her like a book.
‘You’re wondering how I come upon these places, aren’t you, Agent Taylor?’
‘No, I’m not,’ Taylor replied just to contradict Lucien. ‘I don’t really care.’
Hunter checked her in his rearview mirror.
Taylor’s reply didn’t deter Lucien.
‘They are actually quite easy to come by,’ he explained. ‘You can buy them for next to nothing, because they are neglected, abandoned, half-destroyed places that no one wants or cares about anymore. If there is an owner, he or she usually just wants to get rid of the burden, so any offer is an offer, no matter how small. No refurbishment needed either. On the contrary, the more fucked-up, dirty, rotten and putrid the place is, the better. And you know why that is, don’t you, Robert?’
Hunter kept his eyes on the road, but he knew exactly why:
The fear factor
. You throw an abducted victim into a soiled, rancid and dark place, infested with rats or cockroaches, and the place alone will scare the life out of them.
Lucien didn’t need an answer. He knew Hunter knew. Lucien moved his head from side to side, and then forward and backward to try to release some of the tension in his neck.
‘This particular house,’ he continued, ‘was sheer luck, but a great find. It belonged to someone I met while at Yale. His great-grandfather built it some one hundred years ago. The house was passed down from generation to generation, being refurbished twice before it finally ended up as my friend’s property, but he hated everything about this place – the location, the looks, the layout and, according to him, its legacy and its history. In his mind, the house was cursed, a jinx. His mother died in an accident in the backyard. A few years later, his father hanged himself in the kitchen. His grandfather also died there. He said that he never wanted to see this place again. If he did, he’d burn it to the ground. I offered to buy it from him, but he wouldn’t have it. He just gave me the keys, signed away the deeds and said, “Take it. It’s yours.”’
Once they passed the initial cluster of houses, the scenery began to change. To their right, following the banks of the river, were nicely cropped fields that stretched as far as the eye could see. To their left, nothing but densely populated forests.
After about two miles, Hunter started noticing several little dirt paths that sprang out from the main road, leading deeper into the forest fields on their left. From the road, he couldn’t see how deep they went, or where they’d lead.
Lucien was still watching Hunter through the rearview mirror.
‘You’re wondering which one of these will take you to where Madeleine is, aren’t you, Robert?’
Hunter locked eyes with him for a quick moment.
Lucien gave Hunter a tight smile. ‘Well, we’ll be there soon enough. And for your sake, I really hope we’re not too late.’
Ninety-One
He’s going to keep on pushing.
Taylor’s finger tightened around the trigger on her weapon once again, as anger began to boil her blood.
Lucien noticed it, and calmly leaned his head against the window.
‘Easy on that trigger, Agent Taylor. I don’t think you can, or want, to shoot me just yet.’ He winked at her again. ‘Plus, I’m sure that that would really piss Robert off. He wants that privilege for himself.’
Without any warning, Hunter’s memory threw several images of Jessica lying in a pool of blood in her living room at him. His grip stiffened around the steering wheel until both of his fists had gone white.
The road swerved slightly to the left, then to the right, then to the left again. There were no crossroads and no tight bends, just dirt paths every so often leading away from the main road and into the unknown. The forestland to their left seemed to get denser the further they went. There were no lampposts, and darkness began to clothe them like an ill-fitting suit, tight and uncomfortable. Hunter switched the inside lights on. There was no way he would allow Lucien to hide his movements in darkness.