Collective Mind (20 page)

“Chicks
are weird, you know. For them even vodka is a kind of perfume; it has to have a
fragrance, a noble smell: cherry, lemon, black currant or something of the
kind. But then after a shower, everything was just fine with her. She called
her boyfriend and told him everything was all right, that she spent the whole
evening at Cathy’s place and would be home soon. He did not suspect anything.
After she talked to him, she calmed down and told me everything. We sat by the
window in our bathrobes for a long time, I drank coffee with a stale croissant,
and she told me all her secrets. She knew we’d never see each other again, and
I was a reliable skeleton in the cupboard of her soul. Although later she asked
how to find me in the social networks and she left her phone number too.

“Her
name was Francesca and she was about thirty-five. She worked in Marseille as an
assistant accountant in a little company. She said her boyfriend wasn’t all
that bad, and she was afraid this would break up their relationship. The
boyfriend, she didn’t tell me his name, was an asshole, but the others were
assholes too, and it was better to have an asshole that was kind and
predictable. He went to a football match in Turin, and picked up some female
fan on the way back. Everything would have been just fine, she would never have
known a thing, if the local branch of the Marseille fan club hadn’t posted a
photo report of the group that went on the trip. And there was one of a girl in
a shaggy, light-blue sweater – Francesca had found hair from it in his things.
Francesca didn’t start fantasizing about the hair from the sweater getting into
his suitcase by accident, she understood everything, but she said nothing. But
now she felt bad every time he went on a trip with a night away from home.

“According
to her, men are strange creatures – they can sit in a room for an hour and not
remember the color of the curtains or the walls. It would never occur to him
that these strange fibers in his suitcase were from his broad’s sweater”

***

Another
three futile days passed in surveillance of the cigar shop and their hopes for
success dissipated with every day. They started looking for an alternative lead
and reviewed the reports about Link over and over again but no new findings or
ideas came up. A couple of times they took off on the scooter following buyers
who left the shop. It was all pointless, all futile. The first time the cigars
were delivered to a yacht again, the second time to a villa drowning in
greenery where a respectable looking little old man met the courier at the
gates and immediately lit up a specimen from his purchase. It was the same
house in La Margarita that Bikie had already been to. This time they even saw
the smoker, and it was not Link.

The
fifth week of surveillance was just beginning. The laptop chirped and Isaac
looked at the screen. He saw the door of the little shop closing behind an
elegant figure in a light dress.

“Bikie!
A girl, a girl has gone into the shop! She looked Oriental and quite young, as
far as I can tell. She hasn’t been there before. You can’t see her now, but the
salesman is rummaging in the fridge!”

They
ran out of their hotel, hopped on the scooter, started the engine and stood by
waiting. Within a minute, the girl came out and walked towards her car, holding
a package. The friends managed to get a good look at her as she got into the
driver’s seat. It was Yoshi! Her car set off unhurriedly. Wild with excitement,
Bikie and Isaac followed.

In
Paris, Pellegrini phoned the Monaco branch of UNICOMA to find out what the
board that had disappeared consisted of. The system administrator, now fit and
well, told him that the most valuable part lost was a memory card, something
that really ought to have been backed up constantly, but the instructions were
not to do that, in order to protect from copies being made of the classified
data base. Pellegrini frowned with the man’s ability to bore one to death with
his work talk, thanked him for assisting the police and hung up without waiting
for more explanations. Pellegrini hated people who talked too much and off the
point, in fact he was afraid of them. That was just about all that he feared in
life.

As
an experienced army officer, he had been through a lot and had a reduced sense
of fear. The commissioner had also conducted hostage negotiations at least
three times, all of them successful. Even though the last time, the success was
relative – he had to shoot the hostage-taker in front of a young teenager.
After talking the perpetrator into losing his guard with a promise to meet his
conditions and go even further, Pellegrini put a bullet through his head so
neatly that it became the talk of the precinct for a whole week. It was
perfectly legal since the criminal was using the kid as a human shield
threatening to kill him.

There
was also a fourth similar incident, when a deranged drug addict was so
desperate for a fix that he demanded his wife sell their only daughter, yelling
that she was no good for anything anyway. He was so badly disturbed that he
couldn’t even explain who to sell her to, he just yelled with foam on his lips,
holding a knife to the girl’s throat.

A
neighbor saw the quarrel from the window opposite and called the police. The
situation was critical; the junkie’s hands were trembling, leaving scratches at
the child’s throat. He could blow his top any moment.

The
commissioner decided to act without waiting for the backup team. He assessed
the situation and suggested to the junkie to take painkillers while waiting for
heroin to be brought.

 Holding
out his open left hand with the pills, the commissioner coaxed the freak to
make a couple of steps towards him to take a look at them. Seizing the moment
when the junkie loosened his grip to transfer the little girl to his other arm
and the knifepoint lowered some distance away from the child’s throat,
Pellegrini flung up his right hand and put a bullet straight into the man’s
heart. In two swift bounds he reached the man before he fell down and grabbed
hold of the little girl. The knife and the body fell almost simultaneously. The
knife sprang back off the wooden floor with the blade pointing upwards and at
that instant the body fell onto it. It was a ghoulish sight. The little girl
didn’t even scream, she was completely stunned with fear. The commissioner
liked to recall this story, but it at the same time he didn’t really like it.

Later
he visited the girl, made sure that she received free psychological care and
even gave a part of his bonus to the mother, so that she could at least buy
something for herself. Their home resembled a garbage dump: everything that
could be sold or exchanged for drugs was gone and they used all sorts of trash
in the household. The atrocious father used to bring home from the dumps
everything that could have any value and there were even two cassette players
there, which he obviously had not yet gainfully disposed of.

Two
years later when the little girl turned seven, she started calling the
commissioner daddy, and he called her his goddaughter.

The
most repulsive memory was the way the dropped knife ripped open the man’s
stomach, with guts spilling out and feces flowing out on the floor. Sometimes,
when he stayed on late at work, the commissioner summoned up this picture from
his memory to suppress his hunger pangs.

Right
now it was time to end the working day, but Pellegrini kept on sitting there,
going through his notes again while suppressing his hunger. The notepad fell
out of his hands and opened at a page with the names of the witnesses to the
terrorist attack. One of them was a dark horse, who had been overlooked
somehow. Not even Captain Nero had said much; just that he was an ordinary
young guy and the captain had checked him out and let him go. This ordinary
young guy’s name was too French, and with a hint of aristocracy to it – Leroy.
Pellegrini arranged another working trip to Monaco in order to meet him.

However
the search for Isaac Leroy was futile. Pellegrini was only able to dig up a
whole heap of information about Isaac, but the guy himself was nowhere to be
found. Leroy’s phone has registered for roaming on Sardinia. So he was in
Italy, at least.

Isaac’s
apartment had been repossessed by the bank for debts and where he lived now was
unclear. Questioning the neighbors didn’t turn up anything. Isaac hadn’t been
on friendly terms with any of them.

Isaac’s
sister was in hospital, in a coma. Pellegrini visited the hospital and asked
them to call him immediately if Monsieur Leroy shows up.

The
commissioner had a pleasant, warm feeling in his chest — as always when he was
not idling but focused on a case. Since this case meant he could skip down to
Cote d’Azur one more time, the feeling was particularly pleasant. Repeated
calls to Isaac’s mobile still went unanswered. “OK, I’ll get through to him and
call him in for questioning,” Pellegrini told himself as he left to go back to
Paris. “And I’ll be back here again.”

“Let’s
go through it again.” Bikie was a bit nervous.

“Again,
we’re reporters from a student journal and we’ve come to interview Professor
Link.” Isaac wasn’t nervous, on the contrary, he had calmed down a little.
“That cover story works just fine.”

They
were standing near the gates of a high wall around a mansion where Yoshi had
dropped out of sight the day before. In the last few days they had thought
through lots of different options. The absence of an entry phone seemed
strange, they could not see any security cameras either. Bikie had wanted to
launch a small drone, but Isaac was afraid its noise would alarm their game.
And they did not have the money for an expensive noiseless drone.

The
request of an interview would astonish anybody who opens the gate. If the staff
in the villa didn’t know who they were really working for, then they must know
him by a different name. They would probably repeat the name “Link” and tell
the guys they had the wrong address, but if the person who opened the door
knew, he would be startled. Only then would he ask who had come and say they
were mistaken, or something of the kind. Since there were no cameras, someone
would open up in person and a person’s face could say a lot.

In
any case they would ask to pass on a note that said the following:

“Dear
Professor Link,

We
kindly request you to grant us an interview. You need have no concern that your
whereabouts are known to anyone but us. We are neither enemies nor friends of
yours, but we need your help. We need it so badly, that we took the trouble of
finding you. If you turn us down, it will be pointless for us to keep your
location secret.

Yours
sincerely, Isaac and Bikie.

“PS.
Please call the following number, we are staying in a hotel not far from you.”

In
the case that they refused to take the note, Isaac and Bikie had planned to
leave. Half an hour later a pizza delivery man drove up to the house and handed
over the note together with the bill while Isaac and Bikie remained at a safe
distance.

Bikie
thought they had to give Link three hours to consider, assuming that he wasn’t
likely to contact the police, and if he had any backup, it could only come from
COMA. But that was unlikely – plus it would take at least three or four hours.

The
guys shelled out for a second hotel room, on the ground floor with an exit into
a beautiful rose garden. It was a fancy area and the hotel was by no means
cheap, with air conditioning and a mini-bar, which, of course, were totally
useless for the operation. But one big plus was the market nearby, and several
tourist cafes and souvenir shops. Basically a busy spot. Bikie bought more
video cameras and a local mobile phone - a prepaid one for visitors, that
didn’t require registering or showing a passport at purchase.

They
set up the notebook and a web camera in the new room. The broadcast signal went
directly into the Internet, and it was impossible to determine quickly who was
watching it and where from. The telephone number in the note was cunningly
redirected, and the phone itself was linked to the computer.

If
an expert tried to figure out where the number in the note led tо, the address
of the hotel would come up, and if they dug deeper, they still wouldn’t find
the redirected number. Bikie had done something smart: after a minute of the
ringing tone, a program cut in that sent the call into the web. But the phone
carried on ringing, and you could still answer it, or you could answer via the
Internet.

“In
short, it’s not possible to tell exactly where we are,” said Bikie, explaining
his scheme. “At least not without looking into the hotel room. Of course, this
primitive trap won’t fool a serious hacker, but where would one of those come
from here? If anyone does drop into the room, we’ll see him on the web cam.
I’ve pointed it straight at the door. I’ll hang another one on the bushes
opposite the gates of the villa and set two up by the wall.”

Bikie
hung a mirror over the door so they could see the window. He blocked off the
keyhole on the inside with three layers of tape and covered the crack under the
door with a rug, on which he dumped a night-table. It was impossible to get
into the room without being noticed. Or at least very difficult.

Isaac
and Bikie stood in front of the beautiful wrought-iron gates with a small
wicket door. and then they saw the first camera. Not on the wall, but hidden
inside the garden which explained why they hadn’t noticed it yesterday. Isaac
hesitated for a moment and rang the bell.

“Good
afternoon, who are you looking for?” a voice that obviously belonged to a
woman, answered in Italian a minute later.

There’s
no denying it, you live and learn. Sometimes you lose sight of elementary, but
important, details. The guys were so carried away with designing a plan of
retreat and preventing a professional from finding them, that they had
overlooked a simple contingency: that no one would come up to the gate; there
was simply a voice. The call button was on the wicket door, but the entry phone
was hidden on the other side of the metalwork.

Bikie
shrugged in confusion. Isaac feverishly tried to think of something.

The
pause started dragging out and the voice asked again, this time in broken
English:

“Pardon
me, who are you looking for?”

“We,
we… is this house number five?” asked Isaac, playing for time.

“Yes
it is. Are you looking for someone? Who are you?”

“Could
you please ask the owner to come to the intercom?”

“Who?
The owner? What for, on what business? Stop playing games, young people, or
I’ll call the police.”

“We
have a personal letter for him.”

“There’s
a letterbox on the left. Drop it in there.”

“It’s
a confidential letter, we’d like to be sure it won’t get lost.”

The
only reply they heard was the entry phone being switched off.

 They
stood there for a while, bewildered, not knowing what to do, whether leave the
letter, ring again or just go. .

Finally
Isaac pressed the call button once more.

“Now
what?” The voice was by no means as cordial as the first time.

“Signora,
I’ve dropped the letter in the box as you requested. It is a letter from the
owner’s home country, we have travelled thousands of kilometers to deliver it.
It’s very urgent and important. Please be sure to pass on greetings from
Elvis.”

“Very
well.”

The
line went dead again.

“What
has Elvis got to do with this?” Bikie asked.

“Nothing
at all. This is just to make them curious. To make them read the note sooner.”

Once
they were sure the envelope had been collected from the box, the guys dashed to
a café they had chosen earlier to watch the web camera.