The Trade (A Hans Larsson Novel Book 2) (16 page)

T
he
next morning Mouthwash Man entered the corridor.

“Get into bed,” Jessica hissed to Holly, and scrambled into
hers.

Mouthwash Man walked into the cell carrying a foldout wooden
chair. He set it up, took off his jacket and hung it over the backrest, then
sat down.

Jessica pretended to emerge from slumber, yawning, sitting
up and leaning against the wall. Unusually, he didn’t give her breakfast or a
pill.

“Maria, I have a question for you,” he asked softly.

Staring at her feet poking out of the blanket, Jessica wasn’t
fooled by his tone. She gave a purposely timid nod.

“Do you want to live, or do you want to die?”

“Live,” she mumbled.

“Then it is like this. We have found you a new place to live
and a new mother and father,” he lied. “Do you know where is England?”

“Uh-huh.” She nodded. “I’ve been there before.”

“Good!” The man leant forward in the chair. “Now, I am going
to tell you about your new home and your new family and your new school. And
you will remember what I say, you understand?”

“Yes.”

The man reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of
pruning shears. Then, grabbing her hand, he forced her to stretch out a finger,
clamping it between the blades of the vicious tool. “Now, your new father, he
is called David – David Dennis. If you give him any problem, he will cut off
your fingers one at a time like this.”

He clenched the grips just enough for the blades to pierce
Jessica’s skin, making her scream.

“Do you understand?”

“Uh-huh.” The little girl nodded in terror.

“And if you do not remember what I tell you, then I will cut
off your fingers, then your ears, then your nose. Do you understand, Maria
Dennis?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

David Dennis was the alias on the many forged passports of
the fixer – a man connected to the dark syndicates making up Europe’s extensive
pedophile network. The fixer adopted a common English surname because it was
easy for children he trafficked to spell and remember. It was the surname on Jessica’s
expensive fake passport, and they would travel under the guise she was his
daughter. The fixer always invested in top-quality documentation, costing a
considerable amount of money and taking time to prepare, a precaution that had saved
him from a lengthy jail term on numerous occasions. He only dealt in English-speaking
white children fitting with the cover story of a Brit or American holidaying in
Europe with his child.

“Maria Dennis” wasn’t destined for England, though. A
high-speed launch would take her and the fixer north to the Canaries, liaising
offshore with a crew from Algeciras in southern Spain. From there the fixer
intended to travel overland, exploiting Europe’s nonexistent borders to deliver
the kid to a pedophile gang in Belgium.

The fixer provided kidnappers with an identity the child
needed to remember. If a child in his possession couldn’t recall these details instantly,
the fixer would see to it the kidnappers didn’t receive payment. However, this was
only a part of the reason Mouthwash went heavy on the brainwashing – he also
enjoyed inflicting pain.

“What is your father’s name?” he demanded.

“David Dennis,” Jessica replied without hesitation,
imagining the moment her papa would burst through the door and bust this guy’s
head.

“What’s your name?”

“Maria Dennis.”

“Okay. Dennis is spelled—”

Mouthwash Man’s cell phone rang. He groped in the inside
pocket of the jacket draped over the chair and retrieved it. “
Ola
. . .
S
í
, s
í
. . .
Luego
,
luego
.”

He replaced the phone and resumed the lesson. “Okay, Maria,
Dennis is spelled
d
,
e
,
n
,
n
,
i
,
s
.
Spell it for me.”

“
D
,
e
,
n
,
n
,
i
,
s
.”

“Say ‘My name is Maria Dennis, and my father is called
David.’”

Jessica obliged.

“You live in Tottenham in North London
and
you go to a school called . . .”

And so the indoctrination continued, four
times a day every day, Jessica suffering torture and food deprivation when she
got the details wrong.

“Y
ou
need some sleep,” said Penny, peeling back the duvet.

“Agreed,” said Hans, exhausted from his swim.

“Lights off?”

“Yeah.” Hans’ phone rang. “Odysseus, what you got for me?”

“The names from Hertz’s booking system. Dumb administrator
still hasn’t found the backdoor I programed into their database when I infiltrated
them four years ago. Hell, I coulda dumped fifty thousand credit card numbers
and sold ’em on the black market for a fortune.”

“And risked more jail time,” Hans reminded the young
reprobate. “So shoot.”

“The rental agency has two
E-Class
Mercedes, both rented out
at the time in question. One to a David Segal,
a forty-seven-year-old Portuguese national. I done some digging, and he’s senior
safety inspector for the Sana hotel chain. Flew business class from Lisbon two
days earlier.”

Despite his fatigued state, Hans managed a smile. There wasn’t
much Jonah couldn’t dig up when he set his mind to it.

“The other was to an Emmanuelle Viton, a thirty-six-year-old
French businesswoman, who, going by her Facebook, is on vacation with her mom.”

“Did you background-check Segal and Viton?”

“Yes, Orion.” Jonah let out an audible Aspergic tut. “I’m
not stupid, you know.”

“Anything?”

“No, they’re both on the level. Besides, they’re foreign
nationals with no significant connection to the islands.”

Hans wondered if one of them may have lent the car to
someone else but knew he was clutching at straws. It meant the vehicle that
tailed him couldn’t have been a rental – least not from Hertz, as the yellow
license plate tag may have suggested.

“I also got a bunch of stuff on Logan,” his fellow operative
continued. “Guy’s a regular Al Capone. I’ve hacked his personal and business
bank accounts and uncovered an investment portfolio totaling one point seven
million US structured by an offshore bank in Panama. Every three months between
twenty and thirty thousand euros get deposited in the fund’s holding account, as
well as random smaller sums. The entries have the identifiers Criancas and Tapas
on the bank statement. I’m guessing Criancas, ‘Children,’ is profit from
trafficking, and Tapas, the smaller amounts, is money skimmed off Chico’s to
avoid the tax man. I’ve put all his online banking details, including usernames
and passwords, in the file I’m emailing you.”

“You breached his computer?”

“Yeah, I called Chico’s pretending I was organizing a vacation
for a football team. Said we wanted to hire the whole venue for a night and
would pay whatever so long as they decorated it in our team colors. Emailed him
a zip file containing photos of the football kit—”

“Which
I’m guessing cloaked some kinda computer
wizardry.” Hans chuckled.

“Yes.” Jonah replied deadpan, the compliment lost on his
literal mind. “An SUI – stealth upload installer. Basically, a few lines of script
bundled inside an innocent media file and delivered as an email attachment. When
the recipient clicks the link to open the file, they’re unwittingly installing a
malware application that modifies the PC’s operating system – to stay hidden
and wipe all traces of its activity from the log files. At the same time it backs
up the user’s personal data to a remote server over an encrypted connection
before uninstalling and erasing all traces of itself a week or so later.”

“That doesn’t explain how you hacked into his bank accounts.”

“And phone records and Facebook and email,” Jonah stated
matter-of-factly, pausing to take a drag of his spliff. “The program also
records and uploads a log of browsed websites and a chronological transcript of
every character typed on the keyboard. You cross-reference the two to pinpoint the
security protocols.”

“So if the log says Logan visited his online banking webpage
at, say, 4:00 p.m. yesterday, I check the corresponding keyboard entries to see
what username and password he typed.”

“Yes.”

“What if he were to copy and paste his details in from, say,
a Word document?”

“You’ve got a backup of his personal data, remember. You
just have to trawl through his folders to find the Word document.”

“Of course.” Hans kicked himself. “And how can I access this
data?”

“It’s stored on my server. You can preview the documents and
files online via a secure interface I’ve set up and download the stuff you
need. The web address and your security details are in the info pack.”

P
enny awoke the next morning to find
Hans hunched over his notebook computer, set up on an antique writing desk with
a spectacular sea view from the bedroom.

“Honey, did you sleep?”

“I got a few hours,” Hans lied. “I’ve been finding out a lot
about Logan, and none of it’s good.”

“Let me make some coffee, then I’m all ears.”

Penny put on one of Karen’s brand-new bathrobes and went
into the kitchen, returning minutes later with two double espressos.

“Go for it.”

“Jonah’s done a first-class job. He’s set up a secure online
site where I can access the info he’s hacked from Logan – a bit like Dropbox,
only it doesn’t show up in search engines. I haven’t had time to sieve through all
of it, but this is what I’ve got so far.” Hans stretched and downed his coffee.
“Every three months or so Logan makes a debit card payment for the equivalent
of four thousand US dollars to Enaport, the company that manages the island’s harbors.”

“Charges for mooring fees?” Penny suggested, squeezing beside
him on a green-leather-upholstered piano stool.

“That’s what I thought, but looking at Logan’s Facebook page
it appears he lives in a luxury cliff-side villa with its own dock. So I figure
the money must be outlay to fuel his speedboat, and he’s paying Enaport because
they own the diesel pump at the harbor.”

“If it’s not for a berth, then it has to be for fuel,” Penny
agreed.

“But here’s the thing – four thousand dollars would completely
fill the tanks on a speedboat that size, and every skipper knows for
performance and economy you never carry more diesel than necessary. In fact, he
often buys far smaller quantities of gas. It’s just this big three-monthly
purchase that doesn’t change.”

“So it’s obviously for one hell of a long trip. We’re
talking fifteen hundred miles or more.”

“Exactly!
Enough to deliver a kidnapped child to the
African mainland or further.”

“Hmm.” Penny frowned, nodding in agreement.

“Let me show you something else.” Hans opened a PDF file in
which Jonah had saved screenshots of Logan’s offshore bank statements dating
back monthly for three years to when the account was opened. “You see this
deposit?”

“Twenty-seven thousand US.” Penny eyed the sum.

“Converted from euros and transferred to the Panama account through
a partner bank here in Praia. They’ve listed the exchange rate and the local
bank’s eleven-digit identifier. BANA stands for Banco Nationale.”

“Didn’t Jonah say a similar amount has been paid in every
three months?”

“Yeah, I’ve highlighted them all. But get this: the transfer
always takes place within three to four days of Logan’s big fuel payment.”

“Whoa. That can’t be coincidence.”

“My guess is that Logan delivers these kids to the next handler
in the chain – somewhere in a seven-hundred-mile radius – and earns his blood
money for doing it.”

“Do you think he traffics more than one child at a time? I
mean, twenty thousand euros seems a lot of money, especially if they’re being
sold in Africa.”

“I don’t think that’s the case,” Hans said quietly. “The
Canary Islands lie seven hundred miles away. It’s the ideal location to transit
kids onwards to the adoption market in Europe.”

“And that’s big money.”

“Sure, and there’s something I haven’t shown you.”

Hans opened a web browser and signed in to Logan’s Facebook
account.

Penny fought back tears. She could see how much this
nightmare had taken out of the man she had met less than a year ago. He still
hadn’t regained his regular bodyweight, his skin had lost its healthy tanned
sheen, and his hair was noticeably graying. Yet still he persisted, unemotional
and focused, on the job of getting his daughter back, putting her welfare above
his own. She felt the urge to tell Hans how much she loved him but instead placed
her hand on his thigh and studied the computer screen.

“It’s a photo I found.” Hans’ features strained as he
scrolled down the page. “He hasn’t uploaded many, but this one’s the smoking
gun.” He turned the notebook toward her.

“No!” Penny’s mouth fell open.

It was a shot of Logan and a blond woman surrounded by
grinning local children in front of a ramshackle building. A faded sign nailed
to the shack’s weathered wooden planking had one word written on it:
Orphanage
.