The shadow network, p.6
The Shadow Network, page 6
Which was why, as much as he needed sleep, he had opted to stay.
And Michael clearly knew it.
‘Ah, come on, man. I knew you’d like her.’
Once again Dempsey said nothing. And once again he didn’t have to. He could feel the hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth. Something he was sure Michael would spot.
‘Are you seriously not going to compliment me on a job well done?’ the Irishman asked. ‘What are you worried about, that I’ll tell your priest and he’ll make you hold out ’til your wedding night?’
‘You don’t know my priest, mate,’ Dempsey answered with another laugh. ‘Not if you think that’s what he’d say.’
‘Well then. You’re only here a few days. You want my view?’
‘Would it matter if I said no?’
‘When did you last get any action, Joe? My advice? Get in there lively and make sure you make a good impression.’
Dempsey spat out the mouthful of water he had just sipped at Michael’s final sentence, barely managing to send it sideways instead of across the table.
‘Jesus Christ, Mikey. That’s your friend you’re talking about.’
‘Yeah. The only friend with a love life more boring than yours,’ Michael answered. ‘The pair of you, I swear, it’s like your bloody virginities grew back, it’s been that long. I can see she likes you, too. So go have some fun, would you?’
‘And what does Sarah think about all this?’
‘Sarah? Who the hell do you think did the table plan?’
Dempsey rolled his eyes, unsurprised that Michael had not been alone in his plotting. He had more he wanted to say, but the sound of approaching footsteps distracted him before he could speak again.
Sarah and Levy were heading back with fresh drinks in each of their hands, including two bottles of Italian lager. Bebe, it seemed, had stayed in the house. Sarah passed one of the bottles to Dempsey, then the other to Michael.
‘Sorry it’s not Guinness,’ she said.
‘As long as it’s not bloody white wine,’ Dempsey replied.
The seat next to him was filled again by the returning Joelle Levy; Michael’s amused expression and sudden focus on speaking to Sarah confirmed that without even the need to turn.
But Dempsey turned anyway. And Levy was waiting.
‘So, then,’ she said. ‘The ISB. When are we going to talk about that?’
Dempsey was taken aback, if only for a moment. After hours of small talk they had come to the elephant in the room: the career that most women would consider a dealbreaker. He was surprised, then, that Levy was raising the subject with no hint of concern.
‘Could be a short conversation,’ Dempsey replied.
‘Because if you tell me anything you’ll have to kill me, right?’ Levy’s smile dismissed any doubts that she was being serious, despite the subject. ‘You’d be surprised by the level of security clearance we get in Scotland Yard.’
‘I wouldn’t. I know all about that.’
‘So go on, then. What have you been working on lately?’
‘You first.’
‘Murder’s murder, Joe. And anyway, I beat you to the question. Tell me about your stuff.’
‘You really don’t wan—’
Dempsey was interrupted by a scream from within the house. The sound banished every effect of the alcohol he had consumed and sent him sprinting for the steps.
TEN
The information that was now displayed on the computer screen earned a rare smile from its reader. Here was a problem, it now appeared, that would have a simple solution. A welcome change from the logistical nightmares that had plagued him and his organisation in recent months.
The name Konrad Frankowski had meant nothing when Vic Sethi had provided it hours earlier. A fact that was as unexpected as it was unwelcome. There was very little in his corner of the world that the Monk did not know, and that included the identities of those players who operated within it. Even the most peripheral of figures were at least vaguely familiar by the time they became the focus of his attention; it was exceptionally rare for anyone to enter the game at this high a level.
Frankowski, then, was an oddity. A complete unknown. And that had presented the Monk with a rare task: the need to construct a profile from nothing that would tell him everything about a hitherto anonymous enemy, especially their key weaknesses and vulnerabilities.
A few hours later and the Monk was almost disappointed in how easy the exercise had proved.
Initially Frankowski had seemed out of place. A forty-four-yearold American computer specialist, former digital security system expert and now the owner of a successful website design company, he was nonetheless an obvious underachiever; his dual 4.0 degree from the Massachusetts Institution of Technology suggested much more potential. But there was nothing in that first search to mark him out as someone who would throw in his lot with Hannibal Strauss. It left the Monk suspecting that Sethi had made a mistake.
That conclusion was quickly dismissed when a little more research exposed the real focus of Frankowski’s hard-earned tech skills. With a brief migration across to the dark web, the Monk had discovered just why it was that so sophisticated a mind could be satisfied by something as mundane as web design.
The answer was that it could not. That the design company, for all its apparent success, was a façade. Frankowski, it emerged, was a money launderer. Highly specialised and even more highly valued, he possessed a skill-set so sought after in a world of digital banking, water-tight regulation and instantly transparent movement of funds that he was worth more than the illegal commodities in which his clients chose to trade.
It was a role with which the Monk was intimately familiar. The changes in finance across the past three decades – the efforts made by governments internationally to identify the source and the locations of their citizens’ wealth, even if they seemed less enthusiastic to claim their share of it through tax – had made life difficult for people like him. It had forced him to engage men like Frankowski; men who could ensure that the funding of his operation remained unseen and uninterrupted.
And so the Monk recognised exactly what he was seeing as Frankowski’s true nature began to emerge.
What he discovered was extremely impressive. So much that he found himself questioning how he had not heard the name before; how it was that Frankowski had been engaged by Hannibal Strauss rather than by the Monk himself. But that question was a distraction for another time. The only important thing now was proof of the connection between Frankowski and Strauss.
Vic Sethi had been right.
Frankowski was their man.
With that settled – and with confirmation within the last hour that Frankowski was not among the dead or the injured – the Monk had one remaining problem on which to focus: how to lay hands on a man who did not want to be found.
It was a not unfamiliar question. In a career that often involved solving the unsolvable and delivering the most complex and intricate plans, finding ways to compel people to act against their own best interests was unsurprisingly common.
Violence and murder – whether threatened or real – were never the Monk’s preferred methods. He found them blunt. A little . . . primitive. But he was also not afraid of resorting to them as an option, and he recognised that sometimes, like today in the Grote Markt, their more civilised alternatives were insufficient.
Sometimes the simplest solution was the best solution. And right now, with the clock ticking fast and with so much of his usually abundant resources tied up by the debacle in Ukraine, it was the Monk’s only solution.
The threat of violence would get him what he wanted from Konrad Frankowski.
But first he would have to find him.
It was, he had reasoned, highly unlikely that the man would be foolish enough to go back to his hotel. And he had to assume that any kind of a criminal, even one whose misdeeds were carried out from behind a keyboard, would know how to cover his tracks. It left a stark reality: with the Monk’s resources stretched as they were, there was every chance Frankowski could simply disappear into the night.
The thought angered him. Frankowski was a loose end that needed to be tied. One of three, along with the lawyers and Hannibal Strauss. And so far only one of those problems was properly in hand.
The Monk would not be happy until all three were out of the picture. They all had to go, because this had gone on long enough. It was time this thing came to an end.
If he was going to achieve that, he could not begin some aimless search for the missing man. And to avoid that he needed leverage. Something that would bring Frankowski out of hiding and running towards the bullet he had so far dodged; a willing target embracing his own surrender.
It could be done. The Monk knew that for sure because the Monk had done it before. Many, many times. It was, he believed, his greatest skill: the ability to find the one thing a man values above all else.
Above even his own life.
Everyone has something. And Konrad Frankowski is no different.
The Monk nodded to himself as he looked at the address on the screen. At the address and at the picture.
A beautiful woman and her two young sons.
He took no satisfaction in what he already knew would be their fate. They were nothing but a means to an end. Nothing but a necessary tool.
He tapped the screen with his index finger, gently touching the image of Kon Frankowski’s wife.
‘You’ll do.’
ELEVEN
Michael rushed up the steps and into the kitchen. He was barely a step behind Dempsey and so had little obstruction to the sight of Bebe Duffy slumped against the large island unit, her forearm alone resting on the worktop. That point of contact seemed all that was keeping her upright; her legs were bent at the knees, as if they had given way.
Unlike her body, her eyes seemed steady. They were transfixed by her phone screen.
Dempsey stepped aside as the two men entered the room. Michael understood the silent message. With no threat to life to concern them, it made sense for Michael to reach Bebe first, as the one who actually knew her.
Michael did not hesitate, even as he felt his heart rate lessen; his initial panic – the instinct that Bebe’s scream had been something to do with the boys – was fast subsiding now that he could see that wasn’t the case.
Whatever shocked her, it’s on that screen.
‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘What’s happened?’
Bebe said nothing. Instead she held out the handset, her fingers trembling violently as she turned the screen towards Michael. He took the phone from her hand and held it up so that Dempsey and Levy could also see.
The images on the screen were from a television news broadcast. One of the twenty-four-hour rolling channels. The footage was shaky as hell, even in Michael’s steady hand, but what it showed was clear enough. Something they had all seen way too many times, in way too many reports like this one.
It was the aftermath of a mass shooting.
‘Is this today?’ Levy asked. ‘Where?’
‘Somewhere in continental Europe, judging by the architecture.’ The answer came from Dempsey, whose view of the screen had to be limited from where he was standing. ‘And it has to be today, yeah. No later than midday local time, based on the position of the shadows.’
Levy nodded her head but she said nothing. Michael did not speak either. He was horrified into silence, not quite able to comprehend what he was seeing. The footage had no doubt come with a viewer warning at its outset, but it was still more graphic than was necessary for a news broadcast. It was, he realised, the inevitable result of every smartphone having a professional-standard camera: a population of amateurs transformed into millions of potential paparazzi.
All of the equipment, Michael thought. And none of the restraint.
He watched the footage for a second or two more. At first there was little it could tell him. Just jumpy images of blood and bodies; a poor source of intelligence. But then came the breaking news bar at the foot of the page. Two sentences that told him everything:
TERROR IN THE NETHERLANDS.
THIRTY-TWO DEAD, FORTY-THREE INJURED
IN GUNMAN ATTACK ON THE HAGUE.
Michael understood immediately. He passed the handset to Dempsey with one hand and used the other to reach out for his grief-stricken friend, pulling her close into his chest.
‘It’s Will,’ Michael explained over his shoulder. ‘He’s working in The Hague. Getting ready for a trial at the International Criminal Court. That’s why he couldn’t be here today.’
Michael turned his attention back towards Bebe, lifting her face up from his chest so he could look into her eyes. Her already pale skin was now deathly white, contrasted against her dark-brown, almost black hair. That alone hinted how close she was to collapse, confirmed by the extra weight that now pressed down on Michael’s cradling arm.
Dempsey seemed to sense both Bebe’s burden and Michael’s own upset at the thought of his friend. He stepped forwards, gently placed an arm on either of Bebe’s shoulders and guided her away from Michael, towards the nearest chair. Then he visibly supported her weight as she lowered herself down.
‘Are you OK?’
‘No. Will. Will’s there. What do I do?’
‘The Hague’s a big place,’ Dempsey said. ‘What’s happened there, it’s terrible. But it’s just one square in a whole city. The odds on your husband being one of those poor people caught up in all that, they’re . . . you’ve got more chance of winning the lottery.’
‘You don’t understand. You didn’t see what I saw.’
‘You mean you saw Will?’ Michael asked. Bebe’s statement had broken into his own negative thoughts and pulled him back into the moment. ‘On the screen? You saw Will in the footage?’
‘No. No, not Will.’
‘Who then?’
‘I saw the man he is working with, Michael. The other lawyer. I saw Mr Prochnik.’
Michael stood up. He felt his own skin go cold, a sign that the blood had drained from his face. Bebe’s answer felt like confirmation of his own worst fears.
‘Mendel Prochnik? Where did you see him?’
‘On the news report. He was one of . . . he is one of the victims they’ve identified.’
For all her efforts to remain composed, Bebe’s emotions and her shock were beginning to win through. Michael could see that, but he still had questions.
‘You’re sure it was Prochnik?’
‘Michael, they named him. They showed a picture.’
‘But they didn’t name Will?’
‘No. But I’ve been messaging him, Michael. Pictures from today, on WhatsApp. He hasn’t looked at them. Not one. And now if this had happened in . . . in the city and he was OK, he . . . he would have called me. He would have called to say . . . to say . . . he was fine.’
Michael looked to Dempsey. His sharp lawyer’s mind was working again, the combination of alcohol and panic now passed. It meant that he was once again reaching logical conclusions.
He almost wished he was not.
‘She’s got a point,’ he said to Dempsey, his voice low. ‘Will’s a clear thinker. He would have called her.’
‘What about you?’ Dempsey asked. ‘If for some reason he couldn’t connect to Bebe, would he have called you?’
Michael nodded his head.
‘Maybe. My phone’s been off all day. Sarah insisted.’
‘Check it now. There might be a missed call or a voicemail.’
Michael needed no convincing. With a gesture to Levy, he moved away. Understanding the unspoken communication, Levy stepped into the space left by his departure and without a word she wrapped her arms around Bebe, allowing the younger woman to cry silently into her shoulder.
‘There is a missed call,’ Michael said. He put the phone to his ear as Dempsey approached. ‘Just before eleven a.m. And a message.’
‘ Mike, it’ s Will. Listen, big man, we’ve found something out. Something big. We’re heading out now to meet this guy and . . . I’m not gonna lie, I’m scared. Because if it’s true, well, that means people have been killed to keep this quiet. I can’t say more now, we don’t know who’s listening. But if anything happens to me, I need you to know the name of the guy we’re meeting. Konrad Frankowski. He’s the key to this, Mike. He’s the key to exposing everything. If . . . I know I’ll be fine . . . but if I’m not, you have to find him. Get him to tell you what he knows. You’ve got people who can help you do that. I don’t want all this to have been for nothing, Mike. I don’t . . . I . . . I know I can count on you. Look, I’m probably being ridiculous. I’ll call you back when this is over, OK? Let you know there’s nothing to worry about after all. Speak soon, buddy.’
Michael’s eyes filled with tears as the voicemail ended, his mind unable to shake the fear that the missed message was now a dead man’s testimony.
Not again, he told himself, the thought of losing yet another friend almost too much to take. Jesus, not again.
Michael could not keep the emotion from his face, nor could he stop his gaze from drifting to Bebe. The combination was all it took to confirm what she already suspected. For a second time, her pure, primal scream filled the room.
Dempsey stepped forwards, forcing himself into Michael’s field of vision.
‘Michael, are you OK, buddy?’
The question only half-registered. Like Bebe, Michael had been utterly shaken by what he had seen and heard.
‘What was the message, Michael?’ Dempsey asked. ‘Was it from Will? Is he alive?’
Michael tried to look towards Bebe before he answered, but Dempsey remained in his line of sight and, using his right hand on Michael’s jaw, he turned his friend’s head to directly face his own. It was a practical act, typical of Dempsey, and it forced Michael to shake off the blow that had just been struck.
