“Of course not. They are on the boat with the contractors. My husband and I will be returning to Europe immediately.”
“Very well. Leave Kate Walker’s phone with the men on the boat. I will be there within the hour.” The line went dead.
Martina turned to find Braam standing close to her. They high-fived on the bow with a grin and went back downstairs to grab their backpacks, then they tossed them onto the dinghy and motored off. The four men on the boat had said nothing to them, nor they to the men.
As Braam opened the throttle on the dinghy’s engine, he leaned over to Martina. “It’s nice here. I’d like to come back.”
Martina said, “This job was beneath us. I’ll only come back if they have something for us to do.”
Braam shrugged a little. “The pay was the same.”
Martina looked at her brother for a moment. “You do this for the money still? Braam, darling, you really worry me sometimes.”
43
Terry Walker looked up from his computer and checked the clock on his wall. It was almost seven p.m., which meant he had only a few minutes before the Robinson landed at the helipad to fly him back home for the evening.
He rubbed soreness from his eyes and started to close down his computers for the night, but his mobile phone rang. Looking down, he saw that it was Kate’s number. “Hello, darling. I’m on schedule. I’ll be home in half an hour.”
To his surprise, a man replied. He immediately recognized the Russian accent of Mr. Popov. “We are very sorry to have to take these measures, Mr. Walker, but you forced our hand.”
“What?” He looked down at his phone, double-checking to make sure it was, in fact, Kate’s line calling. “Where… where is my wife?”
“She is perfectly safe. I promise you that. She will remain so, as long as you comply with our requests.”
Terry Walker was overcome with a feeling of disbelief. That some joke, some trick, was being played on him. He even coughed out a little laugh. “You’ve got me, Popov. Bloody good joke, mate. I don’t know how or why—”
He heard a shuffling on the line, then a new voice. Soft, distant, unsure.
“Dad?”
Walker’s blood ran cold. “Noah?”
“They say you have to do a job for them, it will only take you a couple of weeks. You’ll do it, right? Mom and I need you to do it. They wanted me to tell you that.”
Tears poured down Walker’s face and his voice cracked. “Where’s your mother, Noah? What have they done?”
“Her mouth is all covered with tape. Dad, I think they are pirates. Tell me you’ll do what they want you to.”
“Yes, of course. Don’t worry, buddy.”
There was a knock at the door to Walker’s office. He leapt to his feet, unsure.
Popov said, “You can answer the door.” He hung up the phone.
Walker ran to the door, thinking Kate would be on the other side. He flung it open, only to find the man called Ivanov standing there. Two big, tough-looking men stood behind him, their hands held behind their backs.
The Russian called Ivanov said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Walker. But I need to come in and talk.”
A few minutes later Ivanov and Walker sat in the office, staring at each other across Terry Walker’s desk. The Australian’s eyes were rimmed red, and he’d made no attempt to wipe his tears off his cheeks.
The two big men remained in the lobby. They hadn’t said a word.
Ivanov said, “So, Mr. Walker, it is very simple. We know your security setup. You have retinal scanners and fingerprint scanners here that you have to use to log in. You can only make trades and purchases from your office computer so that no one can steal your credentials and operate under your identity. For this reason we cannot take you somewhere else to do this, we must remain here. This makes things difficult, but we have a plan. You and I will live at a private residence here on Tortola. We will simply go to work every day, but you will not work with any other clients. Only our account. You will purchase two hundred sixty-six million dollars a day in Bitcoin in automatic small increments, then you will sell it for dollars in other small automatic increments through your tumbler system. The dollars will be deposited in accounts that I have already established throughout the world. I will enter the information at the end of each transaction to disburse the money.”
Walker said nothing.
Ivanov added, “Obviously, the more quickly we conduct this operation, the better it will be for everyone. I am hoping the addition of the money into the marketplace will bring up the market, and we can increase our trading volume.” He smiled. “And shorten the amount of time you are inconvenienced by all this.”
Still, Walker did not reply.
“You will also let the staff at Tarpon Island Resort know that your wife and son have been called away to tend to a family illness. They will be well taken care of, but we will hold them until you fulfill your end of the bargain.”
Slowly Walker rubbed the wetness from his face, and he sat up. “I won’t be staying with my family?”
“No. They will be held somewhere else.”
“I will work with you. I will do whatever you want. But I want my family to remain here in the area. I don’t want you shipping them off to Siberia.”
“Certainly. No one is going to Siberia.”
“Return them to Tarpon Island.”
“Out of the question.”
Walker held firm. “Look. You need my compliance. You made that obvious by the steps you have taken. You will get what you need, but you have to give me something in return.”
“I’ll give you your family back. Not enough for you?”
“No, it’s not. I want to see them while I work. You deliver me to them, every single night. I don’t care what you have to do to do it, I don’t care what I have to do.”
Ivanov said, “My colleague, Mr. Popov, said you would ask for this. Here is what we are prepared to do. I will give you a walkie-talkie. Its range is fifteen miles. You can communicate with your family once a day. If they can transmit to you, then you know they are in the area.”
Ivanov pulled the device out of his coat and turned it on. He held it out and Walker took it.
Immediately, he pressed the talk button. “Kate? Kate, are you there?”
His wife’s voice came through the speaker after a few seconds. She sounded impossibly far away, but Terry wondered if what he was hearing was just her fear. “I’m here, Terry.”
“How are you? Have they laid a finger on you?”
He could tell she had been crying. “We are okay. They taped my mouth for a bit, but I’m fine.”
Terry started crying himself again. “Good. It’s going to be just fine. These men just need me for a couple of weeks.”
“They told me. Please do what they say.”
“I promise I will. Where are you?”
“I can’t tell you. They told me not to.”
“Are you sure you are all right?”
“I’m… I’m feeling better than I was, actually. No more of that damn nausea, which is a surprise, considering.”
Suddenly Walker knew his wife was trying to tell him something. He wasn’t sure what it was. He thought a moment, but then Ivanov motioned for him to wrap up the conversation.
“I have to go, darling, but we’ll talk tomorrow. They told me I could talk to you every night.”
To this she just said, “Okay.”
“I love you, Kate. I’m sorry, but this will be over soon.”
Instead of his wife, Popov came over the radio now. “You start work in the morning.”
Terry Walker looked up to Ivanov. The Russian looked upset by having to listen to the conversation between Walker and his kidnapped wife. His face was pale, his eyes narrow, almost as if he was taking it all in for the first time.