Jack thanked her profusely, and she said she only wished she could do more.
Jack thought she was doing plenty; in fact, he was certain Christine had accomplished a hell of a lot more today than he had.
It was exactly the moment when he felt like giving up for the day, as he sat there with his elbows on his desk, rubbing his eyes, when Gavin Biery leaned his head into his cubicle.
“How is she?”
Jack looked up to find Gavin looming over him. “Oh, hey. Ysabel? She’s going to be fine. Eventually. I can’t figure out if she’s really lucky or really unlucky.”
Gavin sat down in the one other chair by Jack’s desk. “Lucky to be alive. Guess that’s all that matters now. The rest is over and done.”
“Yeah.” Jack noticed Gavin had a folder in his hand. “Please tell me there’s something in that folder I want to see.”
“Okay. There is something in this folder you want to see.”
“What is it?”
“The phone records of one Luigi Vignali.”
“Who the hell is”—Jack stopped himself and sat up straight—“Salvatore?”
“That’s right. Salvatore isn’t his real name. Big shocker there.”
“What did you learn about him?”
Gavin chuckled. “This guy is a piece of work.”
“You found something incriminating on him?”
“Yeah, but I don’t really know where to start. Maybe with the drug charges, or the petit larceny stuff.” Gavin glanced down at the file. “Lots of arrests for disturbing-the-peace kind of things, all over Europe. Most involving his paparazzi harassment of celebrities, but he also has been heavily involved in the environmental and antiglobalization movements. He’s been arrested in Paris for protesting nuclear power, in Frankfurt for a sit-in at the European Central Bank, and he had an attempted-arson charge in Davos, Switzerland, at the World Economic Forum.”
“Attempted arson? What does that mean?”
“He threw a Molotov cocktail at a bus full of rich conference attendees, but didn’t douse the rag with gasoline, so the thing burned out in the air.”
“Genius,” Jack said. It didn’t sound relevant to his investigation into the man, but it still showed him something of both the Italian’s character and his aptitude. Jack was disappointed. He wanted to see collusion between this man and Russian intelligence. “That’s it?”
Gavin looked back down. “Pretty much. He punched out his mom once, put her in the hospital, and did a couple of days in the slammer for that, but Mommy dropped the charges.”
“Jeez,” muttered Ryan.
“Aren’t moms the best?” quipped Gavin. “There is also some interesting logistical stuff. I geolocated his phone and found out he’s not in Rome.”
“Where is he?”
“He flew to Brussels today, went to a hotel in the European Quarter and spent the night. I pulled up the hotel’s guest info, and he’s staying there under the name Salvatore. Reservation for a week at the Stanhope Hotel.”
“What’s going on in Brussels?” Jack asked.
“What do you mean?”
“He takes pictures of celebrities for a living. Is there something happening in Brussels that would be of interest to a paparazzo?”
Gavin just shrugged. “I wouldn’t really know, Ryan.”
Jack thought about it. “Yeah, me either.”
The computer geek and the intelligence analyst both sat in silence for a moment. Neither of them was exactly dialed in to the pulse of celebrity goings-on these days, if ever.
Gavin said, “I could do some research.”
“How?” Jack asked.
“Dunno. Turn on a TV or something.”
Jack broke into a smile, his first one since Luxembourg. “Wonder if Gerry would let us expense a People magazine for research purposes.”
Gavin said, “He let Clark expense a freakin’ sailboat, so I bet he’d be okay with it.”
Jack spun around in his desk and started looking at goings-on in Brussels in the next few days. There were concerts and plays and political conferences and corporate conventions, but with no idea what he was looking for, it was hard to know how to narrow down his search.
He shrugged. “The only way to find out what he’s up to is to go over there and watch him. Or else go over there, grab him by the throat, and throttle the information out of him.”
Gavin said, “I know which method you’d prefer.”
“Yeah. He was involved with the people who hurt Ysabel. I don’t know if he knew what was going on or if he was just a patsy.” Jack shrugged. “I’m not sure I give a damn. I’ve got to use him to find them.”
Gavin leaned forward a little. “There is no way in hell Gerry is going to let you go back to Europe alone.”
Jack knew this was true.
Gavin surprised him by saying, “Tell you what. I’ll talk to him, maybe he’ll let me go along with you to watch your back.”
Jack smiled affectionately at Gavin. If Gerry wouldn’t let Jack go alone, he sure as hell wouldn’t let Jack go supported by an overweight IT director pushing sixty whose experience in the field in the past few years had been extremely hit-and-miss. He patted Gavin on the shoulder. “I appreciate it. But I need to handle this on my own for now. I’m going to walk into Gerry’s office and tell him how important it is.”
“Good luck.”
Ten minutes later Jack walked out of Gerry’s office, his face a mask of utter frustration. Gerry had said just exactly what Jack feared he would: His request to return to Europe to conduct physical surveillance of Salvatore had been denied. He returned to his desk, opened up the security feeds at the Stanhope Hotel in Brussels, and began to scroll through the different cameras.
He told himself he’d sit here all night if he had to, but he was going to learn something.
53
John Clark sailed his fifty-two-foot sailboat around Monkey Point, at the southern tip of Guana Island, just after noon. He wasn’t sure of the exact location of the cove mentioned by the captain in the bar, but it wasn’t a large island at all, so Clark knew he could circle the entire landmass in under an hour.
But he didn’t have to. Within five minutes he found exactly what he was looking for. A massive but sleek catamaran, bigger and more impressive than anything in the waters of the BVIs that he’d seen to date, bobbed at anchor in a little cove on the south side of the island. It was tucked away, but not that hard to see from the main sailing route.
Clark was a quarter-mile from the other vessel as he passed by, but he didn’t use his binoculars to look it over. Instead, he just sailed on, standing by the helm with the wheel in his hand, doing his best to keep his eyes on the water in front of him. He knew if this was the boat the kidnap victims were being kept on, there was a good chance someone on that catamaran — on the deck, in the cockpit, or up on the flying bridge — was watching him right now with optics that could easily see every move he made. As long as he appeared nonchalant and concentrated more on sailing than on searching the coves for hidden boats, he’d arouse no suspicions.
An hour later Clark’s boat lay at anchor itself, three coves over from where he had noticed the Spinnaker II, and Clark was in his dinghy, motoring toward a remote secluded beach on the southwestern side of Guana Island.
When he came ashore he pulled in his outboard and heaved the ten-foot-long craft onto the sand, then he threw a small backpack over a shoulder and began to walk.
The island was all but deserted other than a single resort hotel, and it was covered in high and sometimes steep hills, but there was a decent network of rustic hiking trails. Clark followed one such trail across the southern end of the island, taking almost an hour to bisect the little landmass sticking out of the perfect water before finally coming close to the crest of a steep hill. Here he checked his GPS carefully, then left the sandy trail and pushed into the mangroves alongside.