Renegade, p.18
Renegade, page 18
Chester was sitting opposite her with her camera phone recording on a tripod. She was glaring at Haan, elbows on the glass table. Fischer was in the room too, on his feet, leaning against the wall, arms folded. Haan knew there were two of the security team outside the door. Not her team anymore, it seemed.
‘No.’ Fischer shook his head, as if he was talking to an idiotic child. ‘You’re going to have to explain it to me again.’
‘Barton fucked up,’ Haan said. ‘I tried to control him, but the man was a fool.’
Haan looked from Chester to Fischer as she spoke, her agitation clear, and well justified as far as she was concerned, even if she wasn’t being entirely truthful. What kind of torture would she endure before she came clean? Should she just save herself the pain and spill all now? Wasn’t protecting herself the most important thing?
No. Stay strong.
‘To be honest, Mr Fischer, I’m a bit surprised a man like that ever got through the recruitment process,’ Haan added.
Fischer glanced over to Chester now as though himself questioning that point.
‘I can assure you he was perfectly qualified,’ Chester said coolly. ‘So please try and explain the situation again, as Mr Fischer asked.’
Haan sighed and folded her arms. ‘As you know, we learned that Adam Wheeler is a British national and a convicted computer hacker who used to work for the UK’s GCHQ. Before his conviction, that is. He’s a guy who had the smarts to perform a heist like this, though it is a little surprising a man like him was involved in something so elaborate. Anyway, we tracked Wheeler to Frichebois, but we didn’t know where he was staying, so we employed some basic surveillance to fish him out–’
‘I heard you took him for coffee,’ Fischer said.
Well there wasn’t a torture chamber nearby, Haan felt like responding. She turned her full attention to the big boss now, giving him a scathing look that was at odds with the curdling of her insides.
‘The priority was getting back your crypto,’ she offered as calmly as she could. ‘It was my call that it was better to keep Wheeler in town, and quietly, until we got what we needed from him. We did have leverage though. I sent a man to England to watch his young daughter, so it’s not as if it was an enjoyable coffee break for our guy.’
Fischer shook his head as if disgusted at the step of involving Wheeler’s daughter. Like he was a man of high morals.
‘I admit it didn’t work out how I intended. I didn’t anticipate Wheeler to be stupid enough to run and for all he knew, put his own daughter at risk. But it was Barton who screwed this up. When I realised there was heat on us, I ordered Barton and Klein to clear out. Barton instead shot at a Gendarme on a crowded street in broad daylight. From there it was simply damage limitation. Get Wheeler. Get out of town.’
‘Which you did,’ Chester said. ‘But only after leaving a heck of a mess for me to clear up with the French authorities.’
‘And I still don’t understand how that resulted in a bloodbath in the van,’ Fischer added.
Haan sighed. ‘It’s as I already explained. Once again, Barton was a moron.’
Fischer gave Chester another unimpressed look. Did that mean he was coming around to Haan’s side?
‘Barton caused that mess in Frichebois,’ Haan continued. ‘I was pissed off. We got into an argument. He wanted to torture Wheeler there and then in the van. He shot at Wheeler. I wasn’t having any of it.’
‘Why not?’ Fischer said. ‘Getting my money back was the priority. Why care about Wheeler?’
‘Actually, at that moment getting us all back here, without a trail of police behind us, was the most important thing. That was the call I made. Barton didn’t listen.’
‘So you shot him?’ Fischer said, in such a way as to suggest he still couldn’t see the logical jump.
‘He turned his gun on me first. I tackled him. Unfortunately, Klein got hit when Barton tried to unload on me.’
The room went silent now, all eyes on Haan. Did they believe this part? She didn’t know for sure but she wouldn’t put it past Fischer and Chester to have some crime-scene investigators up their sleeves who’d already been over that van, and the bodies of Klein and Barton, and decided exactly which guns the bullets that killed them both came from. That would be fine. It would at least confirm this part of the story as the truth.
‘Klein was dead at the wheel,’ Haan continued. ‘We were heading downhill in the forest. The crash was inevitable. I took Barton out before he got to me. Simple as that.’
‘And then both you and Wheeler decided to go for a nice walk through the forest,’ Fischer stated matter-of-factly.
‘A walk back to here, yes.’
‘You didn’t call for help,’ Chester said. ‘Why?’
The toughest question so far. Was there a logical answer that wouldn’t get her strung up?
Haan paused and sighed, as though building up to say something that was hard to admit. ‘Honestly? I was a little worried. For my own safety. I had just killed Barton, and it would make sense for Klein’s death to be pinned on me too. I didn’t want to make the call and then find I had their chums out after me. I thought it best to get back here with Wheeler and speak to you both, as quickly as possible.’
That seemed to give both Fischer and Chester food for thought.
‘Perhaps you could explain something to me,’ Haan said. Fischer raised an eyebrow. ‘Why is Wheeler dead?’
It was several hours since he’d been shot in the forest. Seconds afterward, Haan had been surrounded by a fully geared and tooled assault team of four, dressed head to toe in camouflage and carrying heavy-duty weaponry. The way they moved and acted, they were definitely elite military. How on earth did Fischer even find these people, and get them working for him?
Chester sighed. ‘I think we can answer that,’ she said. ‘We’re asking you to be straight with us, so it’s only fair.’
Fischer didn’t agree or disagree.
‘We heard about the incident in Frichebois even before you called me from the van to say you had Wheeler. I sent a team there to try to clear up the mess. We found where Wheeler was staying–’
‘What? How?’
‘That’s not important. What’s important is that we got the digital keys. We’ve since been able to trace all of the crypto transactions, and very soon Mr Fischer will have every cent of his money back.’
Haan shook her head in disbelief at just how little she knew, and how much had been achieved by others. She was also more than a little sad that Wheeler was dead. Whatever the reason he’d got himself mixed up in the heist, Haan believed he was a good guy. At least compared to many others she knew.
‘But Wheeler could still have been useful,’ Haan said, confused. ‘We still don’t know the identities of the other members of his team, nor if there was anyone else who’d helped them or even put them up to this.’
‘No,’ Chester said. ‘We don’t.’ Though the ever so brief look that she and Fischer shared suggested otherwise. Possibly.
‘So why is he dead?’
A pause from Chester. ‘The retrieval team weren’t given specific orders to shoot and kill Wheeler on sight. But when he grabbed you... it wasn’t the perfect outcome, I’ll admit.’
Fischer looked pissed off now. He wouldn’t look at Chester, as though some of the blame was on her. It made Haan feel a lot better to know that she wasn’t the only one under the spotlight. The whole security team operated under Chester, so any failings ultimately reflected on her.
What had happened to the poor guy who’d pulled the trigger? Haan wondered. Perhaps they hadn’t been so elite after all.
The room fell silent.
‘That’s everything I can think of,’ Haan said.
Fischer and Chester didn’t say anything more. At least not to Haan. Fischer moved over to Chester and leaned toward her and the two of them had a brief and ultra-quiet conversation. When they were finished Fischer walked to the door, opened it and stepped out without so much of a glance to Haan.
The door closed behind him. Haan fixed her gaze on Chester as her heart rattled away in her chest.
‘So what now?’ Haan asked.
Worst case was Chester would say nothing, and the goons would descend to tackle Haan and drag her away. Best case was for Chester to say something along the lines of ‘take a few days off.’ Or ‘you’re not to leave this house until further notice.’
Instead she commanded, ‘get back to work.’
Then she got to her feet, grabbed the phone and the tripod, and headed for the door. Seconds later, Haan was alone in the room.
She waited for several minutes, barely moving, still expecting the door to burst open any second with a hit squad.
It didn’t.
She wanted to heave a sigh of relief. She wanted to sob and shout and scream, anything to channel away the tension that was consuming her. She didn’t do any of that. Her eyes fell upon the tiny lens of the CCTV camera up in the corner of the room.
Was someone watching her right now? Fischer? Chester?
Haan didn’t know what to think. Had she really been let off, or was she simply under extra scrutiny now, both Fischer and Chester waiting for her to make one final and fatal mistake?
Did they already know the truth, and were simply toying with her to prolong her suffering?
Only time would tell.
35
Ryker was left with few options after leaving Winter’s home. He’d already spent much of the cash he had on the jammer and other basic equipment to get inside the JIA Commander’s plush apartment, so not long after leaving Winter’s he’d used a cashpoint to take out as much hard currency as he could on his debit and credit cards. He wouldn’t be using those electronic means – easily traceable, and easily blocked – again for the foreseeable future.
The cash he now had would see him through the night, possibly a few days if he was careful, but to stay on the move he’d need to either go back to his apartment or to the safe deposit box. Even then, his reserves would soon dwindle.
His apartment was a no, he decided. The surveillance team outside his building hadn’t seen him last time, but only because he’d scarpered without trying to get inside, and there was no point in giving MI5 a head start on his whereabouts if they really were intent on snaring him. He couldn’t retrieve what he needed from the safe deposit box until the morning, so the only other option for shelter was to pay cash for a room at a poxy hotel in the West End.
Sad really, that other than Moreno – who’d disappeared – and Winter – who’d pretty much disowned him – he had no one else to turn to.
The next morning, he arrived at Carter & Blake’s, located in a handsome sandstone building on a plush street on the edge of Hyde Park, three minutes after opening. After making it through the protracted security procedure, he soon emerged with his swag bag full. He hadn’t taken everything, not in one swoop, and he hadn’t taken any weapons. Whatever he did next, wherever he travelled, arming himself was a potentially big problem. He couldn’t afford to be caught with an unlicensed firearm, not when he no longer had an ally to pull some strings. It was back to basics for him.
Well, almost. Because he did have one mod con that he’d already put to good use since he’d checked into the hotel the previous night. A tablet computer. Not just any tablet computer, but Peter Winter’s.
Had the Commander even realised it was missing?
It didn’t matter to Ryker either way. After uploading all of the stored data from the device to the cloud for later perusal, he’d run a cleansing software to overwrite the hard drive several times, before performing a hard factory reset. He’d also taken the device apart and run a series of tests over the hardware to make sure there was no tracking or bugging equipment. There was nothing. Aside from a few scuffs and scratches, the tablet was now as good as new, and exactly what Ryker needed to figure out his next step.
Which he had managed to do the previous night before he’d got some paltry sleep. And so, after leaving the bank, he headed straight for the nearest Tube station, his next destination London St Pancras and the Eurostar terminal.
It had been years since Ryker had last been to Paris. For all its obvious charm, it wasn’t a city he’d ever wanted to go back to. In Paris, there were far too many painful memories better left somewhere deep in the recesses of his mind. Much like the majority of his life.
Yet he wasn’t going to pass up on this opportunity.
There was only one moment of tension for Ryker on the journey to the French capital, and that came right at the start as he showed his passport at the Eurostar terminal in St Pancras. His fake Irish passport in the name of Eoin Grigg. It was a basic identity that he’d set up himself and he had never used it before, so it was clean as a whistle – but also paper thin. The good thing, though, was that it was an identity Winter and MI5 and the like knew nothing about.
Once successfully through the border check it was time to relax. Ryker would soon be in mainland Europe, and within one of the twenty-six European states signed up to the Schengen Agreement. It essentially meant borderless travel from there on, as long as he remained in those countries.
He hoped it would be sufficient given his intention on tracking down Bastian Fischer – a German national whose vast business empire was spread throughout his home continent.
Ryker had been aware of the multi-billionaire before last night – how could he not be? Fischer wasn’t just rich, he had a megalomaniac persona and kept his profile extremely public. Ryker’s basic research into the man’s past had highlighted that Fischer was anything but a rags-to-riches story. Still, his was a classic, more common than most of the mega-rich would care to admit: Fischer had acquired his wealth through good fortune and a huge leg-up early on in his adult life.
Fischer’s grandfather – a dual German and Swiss national – had been a shipping magnate at the start of the twentieth century, and despite never officially serving the Nazi party, had come out of the Second World War as one of the richest men on the continent. Upon his death in the 1950s, his fortune was split between three sons. One of those sons had survived little more than twelve months before dying in a freak helicopter accident in the Alps. The two other sons had fought for control of the original business, until eventually Bastian’s father won when his brother was convicted of tax fraud.
By that point, the family fortune was on a slow decline through various circumstances, but particularly the in-family squabbles, and it was only in the early 1990s when Bastian graduated from university with an MBA, and immediately took a position on the board of his father’s company, that the family’s fortunes once again took an upward turn.
Bastian wasn’t interested in shipping – buying, dismantling and selling were his forte. With an ever-present tap of cheap debt from various banks, Fischer bought struggling companies in any field of industry, stripped them down, and either made them viable again before selling them on, or just wound them down completely. Most of the time this made him a lot of money, even if on numerous occasions the businesses he was stripping had no future option but bankruptcy. An easy way to avoid paying off those bank debts, and a sure way to lead to countless job losses.
For Fischer, though, it was always onward and upward, despite the destruction he left in his wake. Over the years his bullish philosophy had seen his empire grow to include companies in all major industries across the globe: oil and gas, pharma, tech, automotive. He even owned a large press company with the second largest readership in Germany, the highest in Poland, and the top ten in virtually every other European country.
Which was particularly handy for a man like Fischer who seemed to thrive off attention. Taking a firm hand with his home nation’s press, he’d been able to paint a picture of himself as a national hero – and from what Ryker could see, many people bought into it.
Fischer’s life in the spotlight had been far from plain sailing though, particularly outside of Germany. Allegations of fraud and tax evasion had dogged him for years, and more than once hefty criticism from trade unions and the like had been levied against him when the livelihoods of the thousands of employees were put out of work by his shark-like corporate tactics.
No allegations had ever stuck though, nor did it even seem to tarnish his reputation, perhaps in large part due to his excellent manipulation of the media.
Ryker was surprised he hadn’t been able to find out more about Fischer’s personal life. Fischer was rumoured to be behind some of the world’s largest art purchases, though had never admitted to this, but was open about his love for sport – which included part ownership of both a Bundesliga football team, and a fledgling F1 team. Otherwise, Fischer was a very private man. He’d been married once, but his wife had succumbed to cancer before they’d ever had children, and he’d never remarried or even been in another relationship from what Ryker could tell.
The other element of the story that Ryker continued to struggle with was why Fischer was on his radar at all. Other than Fischer’s businesses selling car parts to Akkan, what on earth did Fischer have to do with Parker, Yedlin, Moreno?
Was Ryker reaching too far?
Time to find out the answers from the man himself.
36
The Hotel Le Grande was two streets away from the Champs-Élysées. Ryker could see the majestic Arc de Triomphe as he headed along the wide avenue toward the neo-classical hotel. A sprawling stone structure, the hotel had a wide elevated facade with twelve steps leading up to the columned entrance. The bottom of the steps was where Ryker chose to hang out.
