Rules of Vengeance (26 page)

“I do,” said Kate. “He’s going to find her.”

   The drive to the Skye Tavern and Inn took twenty minutes. Kate and Graves went inside, showed their identifications at the reception counter, and asked for Isabelle Lauren. They were told she was on the third floor, room 33. Graves asked their local police escorts to wait in the lobby, and he and Kate walked up the stairs to the third floor.

Isabelle Lauren had not been difficult to find. She was listed in the directory. A call to her home in Hull was answered by her mother, who revealed without the least prodding that her daughter had run off to parts unknown, leaving her infant daughter in her care, a favor she was none too happy to render. Call number two went to the Inland Revenue, which duly provided Isabelle Lauren’s social insurance number. Call three went to the Nationwide Credit Bureau, which replied that Miss Lauren possessed four charge accounts with the larger credit card companies. The fourth call went to American Express, which e-mailed a list of her most recent charges. Most prominent were a second-class British Rail ticket to Inverness, a charge to Hertz auto rental, and a two-hundred-pound hold placed by the Skye Tavern and Inn. The fifth call went to said Skye Tavern and Inn, which confirmed that Lauren had indeed checked in and was at that moment upstairs in her room, watching the in-house cable movie channel.

Five calls. Forty-seven minutes.

Kate knocked and stepped away from the door. “Police, Miss Lauren,” she announced. “We’d like a word.”

A pretty brown-haired woman opened the door. It took a moment to realize that this was the mousy-haired mother after she’d had a shower, exchanged glasses for contact lenses, and put on clean clothing. “I’m Bella Lauren,” she said. “Would you mind showing me some identification?”

Kate proffered her warrant card and a look at her identification. “We’ve come from London.”

“I’m glad it’s you,” said Bella.

“Who were you expecting?” asked Kate.

“Pretty much the opposite. Come in, then.”

Kate and Graves entered the hotel room. It was large and neatly furnished, with windows looking over the ocean. Kate took a place on the couch, with Bella next to her. Graves paced.

“May I ask how you found me so quickly?” Bella asked.

“We were at Robert Russell’s apartment when you made your last call.”

“But Robbie promised me that no one could ever track our messages.”

“He was telling the truth,” said Kate. “Despite our best efforts, we haven’t been able to track where the message came from. His web security was quite elaborate.”

“Then how?”

“Your university signet ring,” explained Kate. “When we studied the transmission, we observed that the ring bore the Oxford crest. We found your photo in the yearbook.”

“And from there? It was my ma, wasn’t it?”

“Your mother was no help,” said Graves. “But next time you decide to run and hide, I’d caution you not to be so free with your credit card.”

“But they’re not allowed to share that data. It’s private.”

Graves gave her a look to suggest that that wasn’t remotely the case.

“Have you come to protect me, then?” she asked. “It wasn’t a suicide, you know.”

“We’re taking the view that Lord Russell’s death was a homicide,” agreed Kate. “But we have no reason to believe that you’re in any danger. Just in case, we’re leaving you with two policemen for the next several days.”

Graves cut in. “If you don’t mind, we’ve traveled quite a long way to ask you some questions.”

“Certainly.” Bella clasped her hands, the picture of cooperation. “How can I help?”

“To begin with, what can you tell us about yesterday’s attack on Igor Ivanov?”

“Who?” Bella looked between them, confused.

“Igor Ivanov,” Graves repeated. “The Russian interior minister who was attacked in London yesterday.”

“Oh, yes. Now I know,” came the annoyed response. “Why are you asking me about him?”

“You alluded to the attack in your message,” said Kate. “You informed Lord Russell that someone named Mischa had come to London for a meeting that was scheduled to take place at eleven-fifteen yesterday morning. You even gave a clue as to the location.
Victoria Bear.”

“But I’ve no idea what Victoria Bear means. I told Robbie as much.”

“He knew already,” said Kate. “He visited the site shortly before he was murdered. It referred to the headquarters of the Department of Business, Enterprise, and Regulatory Reform, at One Victoria Street— the precise location of yesterday’s attack against Ivanov.”

“But Mischa isn’t Russian,” said Bella.

“He isn’t?” said Graves.

“Not he.
She
. Mischa’s a woman. Her name is Michaela Dibner. She’s German. She works for the International Atomic Energy Agency. It was Mischa whom Robbie and I were afraid for. Not Igor Ivanov.”

Graves looked at Kate, who appeared to share his consternation. “I think it best if we start from the beginning,” he said. “How did you come to know Lord Russell?”

“We were friends,” said Bella. “Colleagues. We met six years ago at an event at Chatham House, a think tank in London. Mostly they work on national security issues. They publish papers, give talks, organize symposiums, that kind of thing. At the time I was with British Petroleum, working as an engineer designing rigs and other power installations. The talk that night was about the true level of world oil reserves. He bought me a drink and chatted me up a bit. He was very charming.”

“And what did he want to know?”

“Nothing. Actually, he gave
me
a bit of information. He told me that there might be a new field worth exploring in the North Sea. He didn’t tell me how he knew, just that it might be worth our while to stake a claim to a certain quadrant in international waters.”

“And was it?”

“Do you mean was there oil there? Quite a bit. But at the time oil was going for forty dollars a barrel. At that price, it was too cheap to be extracted profitably from such a difficult spot. The boys in exploration didn’t want to touch it.”

“But the price went up,” said Kate.

Bella smiled knowingly. “That’s why BP has a rig up and running on those exact coordinates.”

“That’s some information,” said Graves.

“Five billion euros’ worth.”

He whistled under his breath. “And so?”

“And so,” Bella continued, “when Robbie asked for my help, I gave it.”

Graves crossed his arms, assuming the inquisitor’s stance. “What exactly did he want to know?”

“He wanted me to put him in touch with some of my contacts at the IAEA,” responded Bella Lauren, answering his stare with one of her own. “I left BP years back. I design nuclear plants now. He said he had information for them.”

“What kind?”

“He was worried about an accident at a power plant. A
nuclear
plant. He wasn’t specific as to what kind of accident or where, but he seemed to believe that something might happen soon.”

“In your message you said, ‘Seven days isn’t long enough for them to unpack their bags,’” said Kate, hoping to prod her. “That soon?”

Bella nodded. “It’s scary, I know. He asked me lots of questions about security measures and that kind of thing. I put two and two together. If Robbie wanted to talk to the IAEA about a possible ‘accident,’ and he was interested in how well or poorly guarded the plants were, then I just assumed he had wind of something bad. I mean glow-in-the-dark, hair-falling-out-of-your-scalp-in-handfuls bad.”

“So you put him in contact with the IAEA?”

“Yes.”

Kate consulted her notepad. “You also asked him if you needed to leave. Did he ever indicate that the ‘accident’ might occur on British soil?”

“Never. I can’t think it was, or he would have warned me.”

“Can we talk about Mischa?” inquired Graves. “What exactly does she do for the IAEA?”

“She’s director of S&S at their headquarters in Vienna. That’s the Department of Nuclear Safety and Security. She’d come to London to meet with the UK Safeguards Office. They help manage security protocols for the EU.”

Graves exhaled loudly, then turned away and planted himself by the window, where he stood gazing at the sea. “Safety and Security,” he said, his voice wrung out. “They’re the IAEA’s watchdogs.”

“What do they do?” asked Kate.

“A lot of things,” said Bella. “They set up procedures for safeguarding plants, of course. Handle vetting of employees. Standardize training of plant workers.”

“And watch over the illegal trafficking of radioactive materials,” added Graves from across the room. “It’s up to them to make sure that no one is selling weapons-grade uranium on the black market.”

“Is that what you think Russell was worried about?” asked Kate. “A weapon?”

“If it were a weapon, Robbie would have gone directly to the police. I know that much. This was different.”

“How?”

“He was primarily interested in learning how people got into and out of the plants. Who was granted admission, who wasn’t. If all vehicles were searched. If the plants maintained paramilitary forces to protect them. I couldn’t answer half of his questions. He was upset that he wasn’t able to figure things out. That’s why he was so desperate to speak with Mischa Dibner.”

Graves crossed the room and sat down facing Bella Lauren. “But how did Russell come to suspect an attack in the first place?”

“It’s what he did. He gathered information.”

“Yes, but from whom?” asked Graves.

“Who told him about Victoria Bear?” pressed Kate.

Bella Lauren looked up. “I don’t know, and I knew better than to ask. All Robbie said was that he’d been asking questions where questions weren’t appreciated. He told me not to worry. He said he’d done everything he could to make sure he was safe, but with these people there was always some danger.”

“Just who in the world are ‘these people’?” demanded Graves.

“I don’t know,” said Bella, looking into her lap. “But whoever they are, they killed him.”

   Den Baxter’s day was picking up.

At 9 a.m. a section of the axle bearing the vehicle identification number of the BMW housing the explosives was found. The VIN was sent to BMW Headquarters in Munich, Germany, together with a second, different, and presumably false VIN recovered from the engine block the night before, to determine where and when the car had been manufactured and sold. Both numbers were also forwarded to Interpol headquarters in Luxembourg to be checked against a registry of stolen vehicles worldwide.

At ten, the Laser Transit Surveying team completed their initial mapping of the crime scene. Using an electrodigital theodolite, a telescope mounted within two perpendicular axes—the horizontal, or trunnion, axis and the vertical axis—the team plotted the grid points of all evidence, creating a three-dimensional picture of the crime scene. Among other things, the electrodigital theodolite measured the volume of the bomb crater, compared it to the distance and location of the blast debris (including the scattered remains of body parts), and determined the weight and distribution of explosives used in the device.

Initial measurements indicated that 20 kilos of plastic explosives had been packed into the BMW and that a significant amount of unmixed cement used as a tamping agent had ensured that the charge was directed into the passing vehicle. Conclusion: the device was hand-tailored to destroy a specific target while causing limited collateral damage. As such, Baxter could assume with a high degree of certainty that the bomb maker had at some point received an advanced course in military explosives training.

At eleven, Interpol called back to report that the BMW had been reported stolen from Perugia, Italy, three months earlier. From Italy, the car had been shipped to Marseille before entering the United Kingdom in Portsmouth. It was the firm of Barton and Battle LLC, registered automobile importers, that had cleared the stolen vehicle two weeks before and released it to the custody of a Mrs. K. O’Hara, resident of Manchester.

And at twelve, Baxter received a call on his two-way radio that would significantly alter the pace and direction of the investigation.

“Boss, this is Mac. Have a minute?” Alastair McKenzie was one of his up-and-coming stars, a twenty-four-year-old bloodhound with glasses like Coke bottles and intuition that couldn’t be taught. “I found a little something at the site.”

“But we already covered the crater,” said Baxter, playing devil’s advocate. “We didn’t find spit.”

“I decided to have another look anyway,” said McKenzie. “Thought I’d give the Microviper a go.”

“Of course you did, lad. That’s why I love you. Stay put. I’ll be right there.”

Baxter dumped his piss-warm coffee into the trash and hurried down the street. He found McKenzie standing waist-deep in the blast crater. In his hand, the gangly policeman held a metallic cable running to an aluminum suitcase that sat open at his feet. At one end of the cable was a miniature camera that broadcast its images on a high-contrast screen set inside the suitcase. The device was called a Microviper, and was in fact a portable, nearly indestructible microscope capable of magnifying images up to 1000X.

“Have a look,” said McKenzie. “I found a piece of something fused to the underside of the asphalt. I’ve got it up on the screen.”

Baxter hopped into the crater and knelt by the Microviper.

“It’s a circuit board,” said McKenzie, pointing to the jagged piece of sky-blue plastic filling the screen. “Part of the phone used to detonate the bomb. I found other pieces here and there. I scanned them all and rearranged them so they fit together. Mind you, some pieces are still missing, but I think we’re getting somewhere.”

“Are those the serial numbers?”

“Four-five-seven-one-three,” said McKenzie. “We’re missing a few at the beginning. That piece must have been obliterated. Sorry ’bout that.”

“Got a maker?”

“Not yet. We need to send it to the lab. They can run it against their samples for similarities.”

To each phone a circuit board, and to each circuit board a serial number. Further study of the circuit board’s architecture would pinpoint the manufacturer. From there, it was a matter of tracking down where all phones carrying circuit boards with the last five digits 45713 had been distributed. The goal was to ascertain where the phone had been sold, the SIM card or phone number assigned to it, and, if you were lucky, the name of the villain who’d purchased it. It was no different from following a wounded animal back to its lair, thought Baxter.