Chapter 6
Harbinger walked into his comm room and stopped short. Con’s arms were crossed, and his head was down on the desk. A soft snore carried to where Harbinger stood. He glanced at the phone, which was disassembled beside the man. Con’s computer ran with some script flashing across the screen. Harbinger walked up behind him and opened the Faraday box, closing the lid as soon as he saw a small computer chip inside.
So, the phone was bugged. The rage he felt at being played by Pierre was nothing compared to the hatred he’d wield if he found out the man was using his daughter as a pawn. There was no way that photo of Ysabel was anything but original. He could see the terror in her eyes; those bruises weren’t makeup. They couldn’t be.
Con’s head popped up. “What?”
Harbinger lifted an eyebrow as the man pulled his computer to him without even looking at Harbinger.
“No, I grabbed a couple of minutes of sleep. It”s been about seventy-two hours since I last powered down.” Con finally saw him out of the corner of his eye and damn near jumped out of his skin. “Fuck, dude, knock next time?”
Harbinger cocked his head. “My house, I don’t have to knock, and the door was unlocked.”
“No, it’s H. He’s here. Has it been six hours?” Con looked at his watch and then yawned. “Okay.” He glanced over at Harbinger. “Are Val and Smith here?”
“No, they went to their place and will patch in from there.” Harbinger sat down in front of the screen where the video call would take place.
“Hear that?” Con asked whoever was on the other end of his earpiece. “Yeah, give me a sec.”
Con ran his hand through his sleep-strewn hair and yawned. Then he dropped his hands and started typing faster than Harbinger had seen anyone type before. The screen activated, and Jewell King appeared on the screen. She waved, and her voice came over the speaker. “Patching everyone in. Standby.”
Harbinger nudged Con’s chair with his boot. “Anything good on that?”
“Oh hell, yeah,” Con whispered.
“Archangel online,” Jewell said, and the screens started to populate as each of the other sections checked in.
“Sunset Operative Thirteen and Bravo online,” Val chimed in.
Harbinger announced his and Con’s presence after Fury, Anubis, and Alpha announced they were present.
Archangel leaned forward. “I have a bare-bones brief in front of me. Harbinger, how did Pierre Archambeau know to come to you for help?”
“He played hide and go seek with Archambeau’s private dicks.” Fury provided the answer. “So, of course, the guy thought he was James freaking double oh seven or something.”
“All right. Taking that at face value, what have we learned or accomplished in the last six hours?”
Harbinger started the conversation, “There was a man watching my building. He didn’t move when Val, Smith, or Con entered. They left, and he stayed, so I’m assuming he was told to sit on me. I went out and came back in. He didn’t follow. After that, I put on a disguise and made my way out. The guy grunted and kept looking toward the street.”
“Where is he now?” Alpha asked.
Con jolted and moved to the computer system. Harbinger put his hand on Con’s shoulder and shook his head. “Still downstairs as of three minutes ago in a black sedan that pulled up right after I bumped into him the second time.” Con instantaneously relaxed.
“We’ve taken a lot of information off the phone. The photos were sanitized and had no geo markers attached to them, but based on the background, you can tell Ysabel is being held in a very dark area. The flash of the camera barely punctuated past her person. What we can see is stone and a lot of it.”
“Specifically, limestone,” Con added.
“Correct, which leads to the massive assumption she’s being held in the catacombs,” Jewell said as she typed. “We reached out to our sources, one of whom is a Cataphile.”
“A what?” Val asked.
“Cataphile. They’re a society of about three hundred people who enter the non-public areas of the catacombs and explore. Completely illegal, mind you. There have been massive bars and cinemas placed in the catacombs. Of course, when they’re found out, they’re shut down. There are over two hundred miles of passages dug through the limestone. A very small portion is maintained and open to the public.”
“How do we find her?” Harbinger leaned forward, his elbows on his knees.
“Unfortunately, that would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.” Fury shook his head. “What other information did you get from the phone?”
Jewell answered, “The first picture was sent from a different telephone number than the second. Again, a burner phone. Service was paid for in cash, and the phone was reported as one of the thousands of phones stolen when the pirates off the Strait of Malacca in Indonesia ransacked that freighter.”
“And why is that important, you ask?” Con interjected. “Well, thank you for that question,” he answered himself. “The pirates who stopped and raided that freighter have ties to the Russian Mafia.” Con smiled at Harbinger like he’d just blown the case open.
“So?” Harbinger asked.
“So? Dude, Abrasha Molchalin is Russian.”
“That’s like saying because I’m American, I’m involved with the mob,” Fury snapped.
Jewell shook her head. “No, it isn’t. You haven’t been connected to the mob. AM has been.”
“AM?” Alpha asked.
“It’s too flipping hard saying his name all the time. Besides, that’s what Smith calls him,” Jewell said. “Anyway, according to the information provided by the CIA, the ring of pirates in that area of Indonesia was alleged to be funded by the Russian Mafia. That’s where they got their guns, boats, and training.”
“How does that tie Abrasha to the phone?” Alpha asked.
“We assumed the money used to fund the pirates was moved through the shell company shuffle. We didn’t look at the obvious—a bank. One bank in particular is in Switzerland. Plume Pharma’s bank.”
Fury blurted, “You’re shitting me.”
“I am not,” Jewell said, continuing, “As we’re learning, Plume Pharma has no income from their business in Switzerland. They do, however, receive huge amounts of money from various Plume holdings. Then, they send money internationally to small satellite facilities. One of which is on a tiny island on the Strait of Malacca. This year, it has received over one million dollars and has two employees. A receptionist and a security guard.”
Archangel leaned forward and growled, “When did you find this information? This indicates a conduit.”
“About three hours ago. When we were researching the phone heist. We wouldn”t have seen the connection if we hadn’t just had a mission in France that included Plume.” Jewell clapped her hands together. “But we saw the transfer, and he could be paying the pirates.”
“That doesn’t help Ysabel.” Harbinger had enough of the extra shit going on. It wasn’t the focus of the conference call.
“But it could!” Jewell said. “He’s using his companies to fund his efforts. What’s to say he’s not funding whatever’s going on in Paris with Plume or one of the other of his companies?”
“How long would it take you to find a connection?” Fury asked.
“If we have permission to go dark, a week, maybe two.”
“She might not have that long.” Harbinger stood up and started pacing. “What else do we have?”
“Her father called three unregistered numbers right before he came to see you,” Con said. “We tried to call those numbers. All three failed to answer our random and changing number from the Paris exchange. There was a tracker in his phone; however, where it was placed was strange. It was almost as if it had been manufactured that way.” Con picked up a large piece of the phone with wires attached to it running to his computer. “This still works. If he gets a call, we can answer it. If he gets a text, we can see it and trace it back if the person who sends it doesn’t turn off their phone. At a minimum, we hope we can get a cell phone tower location.”
“We confirmed a death certificate for Léonie was issued in Switzerland. There’s a burial site and headstone also.”
Harbinger’s attention snapped to the screen. “So, the funeral Ysabel attended was a setup?”
“The company that dug the hole in France was paid in cash, and the casket was empty, but they didn’t care. The priest was contacted via email and offered a big gratuity to perform the service when it happened. It had been set up for over six months. The priest was told the date and made the trek to the gravesite. Nothing can be traced. We don’t have any information on the alleged messenger,” Jewell noted.
“What about the heist Pierre says Abrasha wants him to orchestrate?” Harbinger asked.
Jewell sighed, “Unfortunately, we need more information.”
“He said there was a list of businesses and people who would be targeted and that the devices the crypto was held on would be stolen and provided to him,” Harbinger repeated the information Pierre had told him.
Con turned to him. “At a minimum, we need the list.”
“Righto,” Jewell added.
“Stealing those devices, or fobs as they’re called, will take a highly experienced thief.” Archangel rubbed his chin. “I’ll contact our resident expert and find out who could do it. The community of people that skilled is small.”
“They might not be physical fobs. They could be digital, which is now the norm. My bet is they’re digital,” Jewell informed the big guy.
“I’d rather have too much information than not enough,” Archangel said. “I’ll still ask.”
“And in the meantime?” Harbinger wanted to pull his hair out by the roots.
“We need proof of life,” Fury said. “With a newspaper that shows a date. Hopefully, we can get a cell tower ping at a minimum. Then we enlist our cave dweller?—”
“Cataphile,” Jewell and Con said at the same time.
“What the fuck ever,” Fury growled. “We get that guy to tell us where the entrances in that location are, and we start searching for her.”
“We?” Harbinger asked.
“I can help,” Smith offered. “Flack would be able to do the research needed without me. CCS can pick up whatever slack is left.”
Fury nodded on the screen. “That’s one. Jinx is two if you need him, and you would be three. Any more than that, and you’ll leave tracks. We don’t need the French government involved in this.”
“H, get ahold of Pierre and tell him to ask for proof of life and a copy of that list,” Archangel commanded. “Con, clone that phone and give it to Harbinger to take to Pierre.”
“You got it,” Con agreed instantly.
“For some reason, they need Pierre to crack these encrypted devices. Jewell, what kind of tech does the man need to do that?”
“One hell of a super processor,” Con said under his breath.
“What Con said.” Jewell nodded. “We have the capability; not many do, but then again, we haven’t been tracking who has what supercomputer access. And then he’ll need to have some damn fine operators. Ones he trusts not to reroute the crypto for themselves.”
“Could you override his operators?” Alpha asked.
Both Con and Jewell stopped typing. “What?” they asked in unison.
Alpha shrugged. “Do we trust Pierre?”
“No,” everyone answered at once.
“Then we need to be able to ensure the crypto goes where we want it to go. Into the account and out of the account when we have Ysabel’s location and ensure she’s safe. Also, I have two teams in France. One is on alert, but that mission may not materialize. If you need backup, they’ll be there.”
“Has anyone ever told you you’re so much smarter than your brother?” When Con put his hand over his chest and batted his eyes, Harbinger sneered. It wasn’t the time to be fucking playing.
“Con …” Archangel warned the operator.
“Sorry. Old habits.” Con apologized and completed some type of cross maneuver in front of himself.
“What teams?” Fury asked as he flipped off the screen. Everyone knew who the gesture was for. Con smiled wickedly.
“Delta and Tango.”
“Turn Giovanni loose on Pierre.” Fury sneered. “She’s been on Tango for a couple of years now.”
“We aren’t interrogating prominent French citizens. Yet.” Archangel sighed. “Hold that idea, though. Harbinger, I know this is hard. I know it seems like we’re sitting on our hands, but we’re not. Alpha, send Giovanni’s team to Corsica. See if they can find out something from the people who were supposed to be guarding Ysabel down there.”
Fury’s face split in a smile. “Are we starting a war with the mob?”
“A war? No. A precision strike, yes,” Archangel said and leaned forward. “Harbinger, we will find her, and when we do, I promise you whoever is responsible will pay.”
Harbinger leveled a stare at the big guy. “As long as I’m at the register when they cash out.”
“Smoke and I have talked. I’m of the same mind as he is. Your request to cash out the individuals involved is granted … if the situation requires it. Archangel clear.” The screen went black.
“H, get over to Pierre’s,” Fury said. “Everyone else has their assignments. We convene again in twelve hours. I want movement on this issue. The Rose is clear.”
“Alpha clear.”
“Yeah, we’re clear, too,” Val said.
Jewell was the last on the screen. “Con, get the phone cloned and sleep for a couple of hours. I’ll keep everything going. Ethan and I are available to work it if the proof of life or a call happens.”
“That’s a deal,” Con said. “Until then.” Con turned to him. “Give me a few minutes.”
“I have something to do. I’ll be back for it,” Harbinger said and headed to the primary bedroom and the secret room behind his walk-in closet. It was time to become someone else.