“He’s never going to use that account again, he knows it’s burnt,” agreed Reid.
“Not the account but what about the cash he withdrew?” she said teasingly.
“Unless the French have developed some super GPS impregnated paper that we know nothing about, how in the hell do we track cash?” asked Turner.
“It’s what he bought with the cash that we can track,” she said triumphantly pointing to the sheet of paper on the desk.
“What’s that?” asked Reid looking at an array of numerals written across the page.
Turner stared at the page before recognizing what they represented. “Are those credit card details?”
“Yep,” announced Frankie, struggling to hide her excitement. “Pre-paid credit cards.”
“But there must be millions of them, tens of millions,” said Reid, wondering how that could help them.
“I know. I thought they held about a hundred bucks maybe five hundred max but no, you can put thousands on them, a few even take fifteen thousand dollars and that was the breakthrough.”
Both Turner and Reid stared at the numbers on the sheet as Frankie talked. There were four card numbers, one with a tick at the end.
“The transaction history for the account was either ten or fifteen thousand dollar transactions at each location. Not all at once but when you add them up, they’re always around that amount. I had a chat with some of the specialists at Treasury and they told me about these high value pre-paid cards.”
“And this one with the tick?” asked Turner.
“The proof. Transactions on the Guillon account amounted to fifteen thousand dollars in the Chicago area where a pre-paid card was loaded with the same amount. That card was purchased in Chicago at around the same time and that card has just recently been used in Algiers.”
“Nick Geller was in Algiers! He took those cell phones in Algiers a couple of weeks ago!” said Reid excitedly.
“Wait,” cautioned Frankie, “I’ve checked. Nick didn’t use the card. I It was used by a pilot who is known to the authorities as a smuggler. They have his image from the aircraft leasing company where he just put down a payment on a plane he needs to rent.”
“Because we blew the shit out of his in the desert in Sudan, I’ll bet!” Turner chuckled.
“Which means that even though he knows we know about the account, he thinks the prepaid cards are still safe,” said Reid, looking at the other three card details. “Do you think that’s all there are?”
“No, but this was just taking two locations. Two of these are probably innocent or, according to my friends at Treasury, not Nick. As far as they’re concerned, anyone with a pre-paid card with fifteen grand is trying to hide something. But anyway, not many people have the cards loaded to the max and if we tie withdrawal locations to the dates, we just need to find how many pre-paid cards were loaded to the max in that area and get the numbers from the companies.”
“Have we asked the Algerians to pick up the pilot?” asked Reid.
“No, I thought if we did, Nick might guess that we know about the cards,” replied Frankie.
Both Turner and Reid nodded their agreement and admiration. Turner picked up a marker and walked over to his empty white board and wrote four words: ‘Pre paid credit cards.’
“Special Agent Reid, I think we have a lead,” he announced. “Great work, Frankie!”
“Thank Harry,” she said. “He told me to follow the cash!”
Turner didn’t know why but Harry’s involvement somehow soured what had been a very good moment, probably not helped by the fact that every time Harry was involved in anything, it was very seldom what it appeared to be at face value.
Chapter 64
Mary Williams had to negotiate through a line of shoppers to make her way back out to the parking lot. She usually only needed a few hours’ sleep and so found being at the store at 5:30 a.m. no great hardship. She secured a good position in the growing queue for the 7:00 a.m. opening. She had argued with her mother against the need to stock up but had eventually caved. The government would protect them and ensure they were looked after but in the meantime, she just wanted some peace and quiet at home.
With the shopping secured, the next task was to fill up with gas, which fortunately proved far easier than the food shopping, although Mary couldn’t help but notice that the price had increased by nearly twenty cents a gallon. A letter would have to be sent to Exxon. Profiteering during a crisis was un-American and unbecoming of any US company. She expected that type of behavior from BP but certainly not from Exxon. She filed the receipt and would match it with the one she had from just three weeks earlier as evidence of her complaint.
By 8:15 a.m., Mary was back at the small home she shared with her mother and had done since her birth sixty-two years earlier. She unpacked her shopping. Everything had a place and there was a place for everything. That was her motto.
Her mother sat and watched. She had learned many years earlier to let Mary do it herself. Helping just led to huffs and puffs and ultimately Mary reorganizing it all anyway. Her daughter liked things in the right place. By the time Mary had turned sixteen, her mother had known she was going to be stuck with her. There wasn’t a man on the planet who would put up with her. She was, as much as it pained her mother to say, a person only a mother could love.
At 8:22 a.m., Mary fed her two cats. They purred at receiving the food, not at Mary; even they struggled to love the woman. At exactly 8:24 a.m., she kissed her mother goodbye and got behind the wheel of her Ford Focus. She purchased the same car, brand new every year, always American made and built. Just like everything in their lives had to be. Mary believed in her country and appreciated just how important it was to support the nation’s industries, to the extent that she insisted on paying full list price. She had served her country for over forty years and was proud to be a member of the government’s civil service.
Mary hung a left on South Main Street and journeyed the one mile to work in approximately two minutes and thirty seconds, give or take ten seconds. Mary’s short commute ensured her yearly car purchase generated significant interest in her trade-in. Had it not been for the fact that the car was a year old on the license documents, nobody would ever have believed it. The salesmen even joked that it was cleaner when it came back a year later than it was when it had gone out brand new.
Mary drew to a stop outside the two-story redbrick United States Post Office and Custom House and parked beneath the flag of the United States of America that proudly flew on the flagpole just outside. She walked through the right hand archway and entered the door marked ‘US Passport Agency’ at precisely 8:29. This was her domain. Mary was at her desk as the clock on the wall clicked to 8:30 exactly.
A number of her fellow agency officers were still engaged in conversation but when the clock hit 8:30, Mary was already processing her first application. She was a machine. Her job was to process applications and that was exactly what Mary did, with meticulous efficiency. If Mary rejected an application, it was often checked surreptitiously by another officer who, in the interests of customer service, would dot an ‘i’ or change a check to a cross. Despite this, Mary processed more applications than any other agent in the history of the office. Her daily total seldom changed. She was paid to do a job for her country and she did exactly that, to the best of her abilities, every single day.
At 9:30 a.m., a parcel arrived for Mary. She never received personal mail at work, unlike her colleagues who were constantly receiving parcels from Amazon or any number of mail order companies. This parcel was special and one she had been waiting for a number of months. A code on the top right corner of the parcel identified that this was a parcel that required special attention.