No Fortunate Son (Pike Logan, #7)(80)

—“Ratko, I don’t want you chasing me. That’s why I’m calling. I have the people we took. I don’t know what Seamus is up to. If he crossed you, it had nothing to do with me, but I can give you more than that necklace.”

—“Damn it, listen to me! We’ve caught the son of the vice president of the United States. Along with his fiancée. They’re worth more than that necklace. Seamus is auctioning them off as I speak.”

—“Because I don’t want you hunting me, that’s why. Look, Seamus is going to be wondering what I’m doing. Am I good? I pass them to you and I’m not on your list?”

—“Okay, okay. If Braden doesn’t show, I’ll call you. Will that work?”

There was a long pause, then Colin said, “I understand. I’m not working with Seamus on this. No tricks. Trust me, you want him, I’ll set it up.”

They heard nothing else. Kylie said, “What does that mean? What’s he talking about?”

Nick said, “It means we have a seam. Something to exploit.”

She looked at his face in the shadow of the heat lamps and saw despair. She knew he was lying, and things had gone from bad to worse.






55




Jennifer turned from the computer and said, “Okay, I think we have something. A start.”

I stopped pacing the hotel room and said, “What?”

“The number the flip phone called is dead. Turned off or gone, but it has a history. The guys at the Taskforce triangulated from the cell towers, and it was used most right here.”

She pointed to the computer, showing a section of buildings that looked like everything else in Paris. The usual five-story baroque structure surrounding a courtyard that you saw all over the damn city. I said, “That’s too much terrain. We don’t have days to search.”

Knowing what I was asking, she said, “I . . . I can’t get any closer.”

I said, “Bullshit. There’s something that’ll neck it down. Squeeze over.”

She moved aside, letting me in front of the computer. I switched screens and found myself looking at some geek who was apparently bored to be working the problem. I said, “Hey, you there?”

He snapped to the screen and said, “Yeah. I’m here.”

“That’s the best you can do? Give us a thousand-meter grid square?”

“The phone isn’t on. All we have is historical data. Yeah, that’s the best we can do.”

“Well, that ain’t good enough. I need a miracle. What can I give you for that? What do you need?”

He looked over his shoulder again, and I heard something in the background.

I said, “Pay attention.”

He became truculent, saying, “We’ve got a situation here. Possible casualties. Forgive me if I don’t give you my undivided devotion.”

As if he would feel the death of Knuckles more than me. I said, “Did you get the Prairie Fire alert from the command? For my element?”

“I got a Prairie Fire, yeah, but I don’t think it was for you. I couldn’t find a ‘Grolier Recovery Services’ active as a Taskforce element. You aren’t even authorized to be talking to me. I don’t even know how you have the encryption.”

I couldn’t believe it. I took a deep breath and said, “Listen to me closely. The fact that I have the encryption is proof I can talk to you. My Prairie Fire is real, and you’d better start helping.”

He turned to respond to something said offscreen, and I was losing the fight. I felt the rage grow, compounded by a feeling of impotence. In a low voice, I said, “Mr. Geek, turn back to this computer.”

He heard the tone, the violence leaking through the connection, and he snapped to the screen. I said, “There are lives on the line. If they die, I will come back and find you. When I do, I will replicate whatever happened to the hostages.”

He started to say something smart, then his confidence faltered at the sight of my expression. He said, “Okay. What do you need?”

I said, “You got a geolocation request for a phone that was dead. I want you to juxtapose the Galaxy smartphone locations with the history of that phone. Tell me where they intersect. It’s plugged in right now on this end.”

Thirty seconds later he said, “That phone only made one call on the cell network, and it’s miles from there, in another section of Paris. It has a VOIP application that’s been used, but we can’t trace that.”

“Voice-over-Internet Protocol? Is that what you mean? You can’t trace it because it’s going over the Internet instead of the cell system?”

“Yes.”

I said, “Okay, now give me an IP address search. Find the Wi-Fi nodes the smartphone touched. If he’s using the Internet, it had to touch something.”

He started typing, and the Samsung hooked to our computer lit up, getting probed from over three thousand miles away. He said, “There are quite a few, but one stands out. It spent more than twelve hours at a time hooked to a Wi-Fi node called Linksy 201.”

Because it’s in the bed-down location. I said, “That’s where he’s staying. How can I find that node?”

“You have a Growler? If it’s in that building, you could find the signal.”