Chapter 28
Passy, sixteenth arrondissement
Paris
“I need phone numbers,” said Harry Crooks.
The tea kettle was empty. Mac had finished recounting the events of the last twenty-four hours. He rose from his chair and made a tour of the living room.
“You can track a mobile signal?” he asked. “From here?”
“No,” said Crooks. “Only the telecoms can track the exact location of a mobile handset in real time . . . or the people you and I used to work for. But I can track where a mobile handset has been.”
“Without hacking a telecom?”
“You don’t hack a telecom,” said Crooks.
“Every bad actor in the world tries to hack a telecom 24/7/365. It’s the holy grail, isn’t it?
Once in a while some punk in Romania manages to siphon off a few million government identification numbers, credit cards, birthdays, but it stops there.
Telecoms have moats and firewalls and more moats.
Ring after ring of security to stop people like me.
The information we want—you and I, here, this morning—we have to get from the inside. ”
“A Trojan horse,” suggested Mac.
“Just a Trojan, actually,” said Crooks. “Someone who likes earning a little extra cash. Someone who can help us cross the moat and jump the firewalls. For now, we’re not interested in who Ava called or who called her. We’re interested in where she went after your Qatari friends kidnapped her.”
“No telecoms,” said Mac.
“Something better,” said Crooks.
“I’m listening.”
“Every cell phone is like a permanent homing beacon. The handset is constantly pinging cell towers, sending GPS signals to satellites, as well as Bluetooth queries to other devices. You might as well be wearing an animal tracking collar around your throat. That traffic app on your phone is tracking your phone’s location every second of every day.
I can’t find Ava at this precise moment, but I can find out where she was yesterday at three p.m. when the abduction occurred. ”
“But you said you can’t get into a telecom.”
“Don’t need to. I can access a dozen companies that make it their business to know the location of every man, woman, and child every second of the day.”
“Google?”
“Let’s not name names,” said Crooks. “But them or someone like them. Let’s call it a search engine. A company that sells your location data to other interested parties.”
“Like a traffic app?”
“Traffic, advertisers, marketers. They all want to know where you are 24/7. Money makes the world go round.”
“And privacy?”
“Privacy doesn’t stand a chance.”
“What are you waiting for?”
“Bloody hell,” said Crooks. “I can’t just snap my fingers. Watch some TV. Better yet, take a walk in the garden. Give me thirty minutes.”
Mac stood and stretched. He opened the French doors and wandered into the backyard.
Rows of vegetables were planted to the left.
A vine of tomatoes, green beans, radishes.
There was a trellis and a stone bench and a gurgling fountain.
Mac sat, looking up at the blue sky, thinking of Jane and her warning, and ruing her decision to follow him into the intelligence business.
And now another chance to make right. A granddaughter that he must raise as his own.
A whistle brought his attention back to the present. He jumped to his feet and rushed inside. “Any luck?”
“Luck has nothing to do with it,” said Crooks. “Draw up a chair. Come close so you can see the screen.”
Mac dropped into a chair and scooted it close to Crooks.
On the large curved monitor was a street map centered on the Eiffel Tower.
A fat, red dotted line formed a rectangle around the monument, four square blocks in area.
Inside the rectangle were numerous slim, white, baton-shaped icons each labeled with a phone number and, beneath the number, a handset ID.
“Behold the geo-fence,” said Crooks, pointing to the map. “It’s an arbitrary digital boundary I constructed that allows me to capture every mobile handset inside its perimeter.”
“But there are hundreds of phones there,” said Mac, eyeing the mishmash of batons stacked atop one another.
“Of course there are. You’re looking at everyone visiting the monument. The fence isn’t three-dimensional. I can’t specify altitude. No worries . . . watch.”
Crooks punched in Mac’s and Ava’s cell numbers. Two icons located dead center in the Eiffel Tower lit up blue. Crooks tapped some more keys, and all the other batons vanished. “At 3:06 p.m. both of you were seated in the restaurant. Ava took the call at 3:20, right?”
“Give or take,” said Mac.
Crooks advanced the time signature to 3:20. Ava’s icon didn’t move. “Don’t worry,” he said. “GPS is only accurate to around fifteen feet. You said she stepped into the corridor and it was there that she was drugged. Too small a distance to register. We want to know where she goes after.”
Crooks advanced the time signature in fifteen-second increments. Mac leaned closer, his heart thumping, as he watched Ava’s icon jump to the right, then jump again. By 3:24, she had left the restaurant. By 3:28, she was standing at the south side of the monument, at the Avenue Gustave Eiffel.
“Now let’s see who’s with her.” Crooks tapped a few keys. The screen came alive with hundreds of batons. He zoomed in on Ava. Two batons were stacked atop hers.
“Two other people are with her,” said Mac, pointing.
“Let’s see where they go.” Crooks double-clicked on each number, turning the icons red.
For thirty seconds, Ava and the two unidentified parties remained standing on the Avenue Gustave Eiffel.
And then, two new batons appeared at the right of the screen and sped jerkily along the street, stopping directly beside them.
“The getaway car,” said Mac.
“Quick learner.”
Another fifteen seconds passed. Mac imagined Ava being bundled into the back seat of a car, the kidnappers piling in after her.
And then, all five icons—Ava’s blue baton, her kidnappers’ red batons, the drivers’ white batons—advanced rapidly down the street.
The moment the five icons breached the digital fence, they disappeared.
“Outside the perimeter,” said Crooks.
“Go back,” said Mac. “I want to make sure those two were inside the restaurant.”
Crooks reset the time signature to 3:10. The two red icons appeared on the screen practically atop Mac and Ava, inside the restaurant. When Ava left, they went with her.
“I saw them on the security camera footage.” Mac took out his phone and showed Crooks the photographs he’d taken of the kidnappers from the restaurant’s security monitors.
“Is that the prince?” asked Crooks.
“That’s him,” said Mac. “Both of them were seated at a table beside us. They were watching us the entire time.”
“Right there? Brazen of them.”
“She thought it was a safe meet,” said Mac.
“How do you know?” asked Crooks.
“She left her gun at the hotel,” said Mac.
“I wouldn’t have done,” said Crooks.
Mac looked at his old friend. He’d had the same thought. You never went to a meet empty handed. Ava knew better.
“Still no idea why?” said Crooks. “I mean, the whole thing. What the woman was doing here? All these characters. Shady prince, Saudi hit men, some crazy politician in Jerusalem. She’s Mossad all those years. Something’s going down. Something big.”
Mac shook his head. He’d come to the same conclusion. Something big was going down. But no matter how he tried, he couldn’t find a thread to tie them all together. What did it matter anyway? His only concern was to find Ava and get her out of trouble. One step at a time.
“Can we follow the phone numbers?” he asked. “I want to see where they took her.”
“Where did you say he lived . . . the shady prince?”
“Avenue Montaigne.” Mac had come across an article from Gulf Architectural Digest showcasing the prince’s opulent residence. It was nice, Mac thought, if you liked lots of gold and marble and the odd masterpiece here and there.
Crooks drew a new perimeter on the city map. This time the area was much larger, encompassing the Golden Triangle and the streets surrounding it. He entered Ava’s number, as well as her kidnappers’, and set the time signature at 3:35. “Let’s take a look.”
He pressed Play. The icons popped up on the screen at the nearest corner of the triangle. “Got ’em,” said Mac, thumping Crooks on the shoulder.
The kidnappers were not immune to Paris traffic. Their vehicle required fifteen minutes to navigate the Quai d’Orsay and cross the Pont des Invalides. All three icons came to a halt before turning onto the Avenue Montaigne.
“Give me an address,” said Mac.
Crooks zoomed in and the street addresses popped up. “27 to 29. Right next door to the H?tel Plaza Athénée. Sweet digs.”
“He’s a prince, Harry. What do you expect?”
Crooks kept the program running. At 4:25, Ava’s icon vanished. “Finally turned it off,” said Crooks.
“We know where she is,” said Mac.
“We know where her phone was yesterday afternoon at 4:25,” said Crooks.
“That the best you can do?”
“Legally.”
“Screw legally,” said Mac. “I’m asking, Harry. Come on. Do me a solid.”
Crooks studied Mac. He smiled softly, shaking his head. “Okay, then. But just once.”
He placed a call. “I need a favor. Check if this number pinged any towers near 27 to 29 Avenue Montaigne during the last eighteen hours. Call me back.”
Crooks hung up. “You know this is illegal,” he said. “I could go to jail. The French authorities are touchy about privacy.”
“Tell them I put a gun to your head.”
“You wouldn’t.”
Mac slid the pistol from his waistband and set it on the table. “Up to you.”
The phone rang. Crooks answered. He shot Mac a glance, then jotted down a number.
“Success?” asked Mac.
“Her phone popped up this morning, dialed one number, then powered off. The duration was six seconds. The call didn’t go through. Maybe you know the number. Country code 41.”
“That’s Switzerland,” said Mac.
“Province code 27.”
“Valais,” said Mac. “A canton.”
“8878 9877.” Crooks read off the numbers slowly. “Know it?”
Mac nodded. “It’s my number. I destroyed the SIM card yesterday in case someone like you was looking for me.”
“Wise move.”
“What time did you say the call was placed again?”
“Six sixteen this morning.”
“It’s her,” said Mac. “She’s alive.”
“How do you know?” asked Crooks.
“June 16,” said Mac. “It’s my birthday.”