“What?”
The man pointed to a side street. “Pull over there and let me out. Don’t try and follow me. It would be a waste of your time.”
Eric braked and swung the SUV onto the side street. The man was convincing, he would give him that. The Dancing Bones were notorious for their secrecy, and analysts believed that what information the OTM did have on them had been deliberately leaked by the organization itself. “What were you going to say? What might we actually do?”
The man pointed to a spot between two brick buildings. “Stop here, Mr. Wise.”
Eric pulled the SUV into a parking space in front a coffee shop. The man opened the door, stepped out, and turned back to him. “I was going to say we might actually survive.”
Eric pondered that. “What am I supposed to do with this information?”
The man smiled. “Be the man the human race needs you to be, Eric Wise. Be better.”
“Better than what?”
“Why, better than the rest of us.” He slammed the SUV door shut and took off at a quick pace in the crisp January air.
Eric pondered the stranger’s words all the way to the airport in Hebron.
The worm finally returned a positive match. Nathan Elliot had subscribed to many technical journals. Some Huang Lei recognized, but many he did not. Elliot’s last known address was an apartment in Cambridge. There was no forwarding address.
In fact, there were no more records for Nathan Elliot. No electric utility payments. No water or sewer payments. No rent. No mortgage. No jobs.
A man does not disappear.
There was a way to find Elliot, if only he had access to more data. It would require contacting people that he preferred not to contact, but given their common enemy, he was sure they could reach an accord.
I will find Elliot with the Lotus Blossom.
John relaxed on the luxurious bed. The Sheraton was a nice place, nicer than he could have afforded, and he was determined to enjoy it as much as possible before they had to leave.
The twinges of pain in his back were wearing on him. Now, spread out on the soft bedding, he could almost imagine the pain was gone.
Almost.
Deion and Valerie hunched over laptops on the desk against the wall. The cameras and sensors feeding the laptops were pointed through the window curtains at the Park Hyatt across the street.
“Is he doing anything?” John asked.
Deion grunted. “Same thing he was doing when you asked an hour ago. Pacing the room.”
Valerie Simon sighed. “We’re no closer to finding Katrina’s killer.”
“We know Holzinger really needs a colonoscopy,” John said. “That man has a frightening amount of gas.”
Klaus Holzinger was the vice president of Dynoson, a German oil and gas conglomerate, and Katrina Reinemann’s boss. They had surveilled Holzinger for almost a full day, but there were few signs that he was anything other than a wealthy businessman.
John couldn’t complain. Zürich was a far cry from the crappy places he had been, and he actually enjoyed Deion and Valerie’s company. Since the pair had publicly acknowledged their relationship, he’d found them pleasant and, at times, almost fun.
“John,” came the crackling in his earpiece. “It’s time for your check-in.”
Half a world away, Sergeant Clark monitored their mission from the War Room. John liked the sergeant. Clark was a good soldier and a good man. “Nothing to report,” he said. “Holzinger hasn’t done anything.”
“Kryzowski hacked the hotel’s computer,” Clark said. “No one has accessed his suite.”
“Has the drone captured anything?”
An unmanned blimp hovered well above the city at seventy thousand feet, its advanced electronics intercepting cell phone traffic near the hotel, relaying that telemetry to a military satellite, and bouncing that information around the world for inspection by the analysts at Area 51.
“He hasn’t made any calls from his room,” Clark said.
“Can’t we just grab him?” Deion asked. “We can have him out of the country before anyone knows he’s missing. A few days with me and he’ll talk.”
John shuddered. He remembered the things Deion had done to him in Guantánamo Bay.
“Steeljaw was crystal clear,” Clark said. “Surveillance only.”
“If he’s been manipulating oil prices,” Valerie said, “either alone or as part of a consortium, then he’s just as guilty as a terrorist. People are making the choice between buying food, or medicine, or gas. The United States is a wealthy country, but that doesn’t mean we should allow people to commit economic terrorism.”
John agreed. “What are we going to do?”
“I guess we’re gonna sit here until this guy makes a move,” Deion said. “One way or another.”
John groaned. “This is so boring.”
“Do I have to remind everybody that he might have murdered Karen Reinemann?” Valerie asked.
“You really think he killed her?” John asked. “To what end?”
“He’s got a point, Val.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe her information implicated Dynoson. Maybe he found out she was going to blow the whistle.”
John considered that for a moment before shaking his head. “Murder is pretty… hard-core for a businessman.”
“It’s a lot of money,” Deion said.
“I know,” John said, “but isn’t Holzinger the kind that would weasel out of murder charges?”
“Maybe Holzinger decided it wasn’t worth his time,” Deion said. “Maybe he thought killing her was easier.”
“Holzinger comes from old money,” John said. “Right, Valerie? It’s a big step from that life to murder.”
“He might not have done it himself,” Valerie said. “You’re right about his family. Maybe he just made a phone call.”
“It doesn’t add up,” John said. “Murder is personal. Intimate.”
Deion frowned. “Idle speculation, man. We go where the evidence leads.”
John knew about murder and the way it changed a man. It left a mark, a stain, that no amount of recrimination could wash away. “I just think—”
“Quiet,” Valerie said. “His phone is ringing.”
John leaned forward and listened as Holzinger picked up the phone and said hello repeatedly in German before slamming it down.
“Clark,” Deion said, “can you get a trace?”
“Karen’s on it,” Clark said. A few seconds passed. “It came from the next room.”
“The next room?” Valerie asked. “Who’s registered in the next room?”
“According to the hotel’s computer, the room is unoccupied.”
“Something ain’t right,” Deion said.
“What are we going to do?” John asked. He peeked through the window at the hotel across the street.
From inside Holzinger’s room, the microphone picked up the sound of a knock on the door and Holzinger’s footsteps.
“I don’t like this,” John said. “He shouldn’t open that door. Can we message him or something?”
“We can’t,” Deion said. “Clark, can you do anything?”
John didn’t wait. He grabbed his coat, pausing long enough to make sure it covered his M11, and ran to the door. “I’m going.”
“Hurry,” Valerie urged.
The sound of Holzinger opening the door came through his earpiece as he exited the hotel room and ran to the stairwell. He took the stairs four at a time with the help of his prosthetic foot and smashed through the emergency exit, which dumped him out on the street a block from the Park Hyatt.