Bloodless (Aloysius Pendergast #20)(62)

He raised the window about two feet, then turned and once more made a careful reconnoiter. He was in complete darkness, and in any case the closest person he could see was in a car waiting at a streetlight two blocks away. Quickly, hand on the sash, he hoisted one leg over, then the other, slipping between the curtains and letting them close again behind him. No point in shutting the window: he didn’t plan to be here long.

He took out a flashlight and, using its low beam, looked around the room. With a rush of adrenaline, he saw Moller’s unmistakable equipment case, closed and sitting on the floor at the end of the bed. Now there was no doubt: he was in the right room. Daisy’s images had shown that the case was zippered and latched. Moving quickly to the door, he examined its locks. In addition to the usual hotel doorknob, it had both a chain and a hinged privacy bolt. He couldn’t secure the chain—that would be a dead giveaway—but he could swing the small latch halfway across the jamb, which would buy him extra time while not arousing suspicion. This probably wouldn’t be necessary, but Wellstone wasn’t the kind to take chances.

Now he returned to the suitcase at the end of the bed. Leaving his flashlight on and placing it on a side table, he took out his phone and snapped several shots of Moller’s case from different angles. Would it be locked? He lifted it and placed it gently on the foot of the bed. It was surprisingly heavy. He unzipped it and tried the latches, and they snapped open—unlocked! He took a brief video of its contents, plucking out one item after another and turning it this way and that for the camera. He’d seen a lot of this stuff already, thanks to Daisy, but up close the items appeared a lot more fake, especially the silver wand, which felt as light as aluminum, and the smoked glass, distressed to look like obsidian.

There it was: the camera. It was snugged into its padding in a far corner of the case. Wellstone lifted it up and, still wearing gloves, took great care when placing it on the duvet cover. This was what made the case so heavy, and this was what he’d come for: the instrument of his vengeance.

He repositioned his flashlight, then carefully felt around the edges of the device. It looked like an old Hasselblad 500C box camera, except it was larger and covered with a wooden inlay. The standard controls for focusing and exposure were visible, but there was also a row of unlabeled buttons. A small metal box had been retrofitted to the antique upper lid, most likely the Bluetooth apparatus Daisy had told him of.

But enough gawking: time to figure out just how Moller worked his scam. Wellstone slid his fingers around the flanks of the camera, trying to figure out how it opened while being careful to leave no signs of tampering. Damn, it was like a Chinese puzzle box…and then, suddenly, he heard a click and the lid sprang open. He must have accidentally pressed a hidden detent. His luck was still holding.

Now, adjusting the flashlight once again, he carefully opened the lid. The interior was even more complicated than he’d expected: a couple of circuit boards, what looked like RAM chips, and a microprocessor, in addition to the guts of a 6×6 camera. But he searched in vain for the hard disk or SSD drive he knew must be somewhere inside. In his coat pocket, he had a disk cloner that could create a bit-for-bit image in ten minutes, as well as a two-terabyte flash stick. But he couldn’t copy the disk if he couldn’t find the damn thing.

Muttering a curse, he picked up his flashlight and bent over the device, peering more closely. No hard disk or SSD array for storage…

It was then that Wellstone noticed, hidden under a ribbon cable, a line of identical black chips, each the size of a thumbnail and thin as a communion wafer. They had tiny labels, which bore equally tiny printing in German. What the hell were these?

He looked at some of the labels. GEISTER. HEXEN. D?MONEN. SKELETTE.

In an epiphany, Wellstone understood. Those small, identical chips were nonvolatile memory cards, such as one would find in a home security camera. And each held phony digital images. Wellstone knew enough German to translate the handwritten labels. Geister—ghosts. Hexen—witches. D?monen—demons. Skelette—skeletons. That bastard would snap a photograph, and then—by manipulating this camera—choose a fake from his miniature gallery to superimpose over the final. It confirmed what he thought.

There was no hard disk in the camera, after all—but this was even better. He could take one or two of the chips—he’d snag the ones at the far end—and Moller probably wouldn’t even notice for a while. No need for any time-consuming copying. Pushing the ribbon cable to one side, he fished his fingers into the device, preparing to pluck out the last two chips in the array.

But it wasn’t as easy as he expected. The entire row of chips was held in place by a steel rod that lay across their upper edges and snapped into place on the camera’s inner body. It should be a simple matter of lifting this retaining rod and removing the chips. But the rod seemed stuck in place, and he couldn’t see what was—

All of a sudden, he heard voices in the hallway outside the door.

Wellstone felt his heart freeze over as he recognized Betts’s argumentative voice. “Couldn’t it wait?”

“I don’t wish to leave it unattended.” This was Moller’s voice.

Wellstone crouched over the bed, paralyzed by surprise and dismay. What should he do?

“Hurry up!” Betts shouted petulantly, not caring if he disturbed the entire wing of the hotel.

“Eine Minute!” Moller called back irritably. Then, in a lower voice: “Die dumme Ames geben mir keine Ruhe.”