“I’m not talking about their money. I’m talking about making them pay.”
“Well, that’s wonderful,” he snapped. “Let’s go on back to Utah and make a frontal assault on their ranch house. Maybe we could rent a tank and an armored personnel carrier. I’m sure it’s never occurred to them that we might retaliate. And I’m sure that the FBI thinks they’re perfectly safe now and won’t have anyone watching them.”
“Being cheeky doesn’t become you, Nikky. Don’t make me slap your face.”
He turned around in his swivel chair to face her. “Okay, I’m sorry, Mama. But we have to face reality here. I am in total agreement that we go after the McAllisters for playing us the fools. But not yet. We’ll wait six months. Maybe even a year. Let them think they’re safe. Let the FBI think it’s over.”
He could see that she didn’t like it but was still rational enough to see he was making sense. He went on quickly, “Here’s the bigger problem. In all of our plans for our ‘retirement,’ we counted on the twenty million dollars from the Canadians and about ten million we’d get for the ore we sold to the Russians. But we didn’t get the twenty million, and we only got seven million for the ore. Getting thirty million in gold was the answer to our problems. With that, we could have invested and lived handsomely off the income for the rest of our lives.”
He blew out a long breath, massaging his temples with his fingertips. “But we don’t have it now. We have a seven-hundred-thousand-dollar mortgage on the villa here. We have a staff of twelve now, if you count the security guards. We also have to start on our plastic surgery right away. That’s going to cost us about two hundred thousand each. We needed that money.”
“All the more reason to go after them and make them pay.”
“They can’t pay in money, Mama! That’s what I keep telling you. There’s a score to settle, but it’s not going to put us back on solid footing again.”
“So what will? What are you suggesting? Are you talking about more kidnappings? Maybe rob a bank or two? Hire us some highly sophisticated hackers and undertake some major identity theft schemes?”
“And double or triple the risk of both of us going to prison? You know that’s not the answer.”
“Then sell the castle. Sell the château in San Moritz. Sell the beach house in Barbados. We’re not going back to any of them again.”
“They’re already up for sale, Mama,” he said wearily. “But houses like that can take a year or more to sell. And altogether they’re worth no more than seven or eight million.”
“You keep telling me what we can’t do,” she exploded. “Tell me something that we can do!”
He gave her a thin smile. Finally, he had gotten her to ask the right question. “Between your shares and mine in Von Dietz Global, we have nearly fifty million dollars.”
“No, Niklas!” She was out of her chair and glaring at him, her fists clenched, her nostrils flaring. “We swore to Nana. Von Dietz Global is off-limits. We won’t put Anina and her children or any of the extended family at risk. We will not.”
“And what if I could promise you that nothing that is theirs will be taken or put at risk? The fifty million is our money, Mama. We’re not stealing from anyone. We just don’t have access to it.”
“That’s the way you set it up. And you did that for a reason.”
“Yes, I did. But this is a whole new game. We are up against the wall. We need cash, and we need it now. And since I’m the one who set it up, I know how to get it out. I know how to do it without leaving any kind of a trail or bringing even the whisper of a scandal upon our family.”
“I don’t believe you,” she said, but he could tell she was interested.
“Then come over here and I’ll show you,” he said, pulling up another chair. “Remember, I’m the one who set up our whole security system. I made sure of that when we first decided to upgrade.”
Niklas had his mother convinced in under five minutes. She sat back, her face troubled but excited. “And you’re absolutely sure?”
“Ninety-nine and nine-tenths percent,” he said.
“Not good enough.”
“I know. That’s why I’m sending for Heinrich Müller.”
“Head of Internet Security at Von Dietz Global?”
“The same.”
“Is that wise?”
“He’s been on my payroll for the last two years. He has been instrumental in setting up several of our operations. He’s one of us.”
Her brows lowered. “And you never told me?”
“As a member of the board of directors, you needed to have plausible deniability.” He hurried on before she could say more. “We need his expertise to eliminate that one-tenth of one percent.”
“He’s not married either, is he?”
“No. Like me, he enjoys the company of beautiful women too much to settle on just one quite yet.”
“How soon can he be here?”
“That’s what I’m going to find out.”
Villa del Sol, Mina Clavero
December 16, 2011
“Niklas?”
He looked up from the Argentinisches Tageblatt—the Argentine Daily—the country’s largest German-language newspaper. “Yes, Heinrich?”
Gisela, working on an intricate needlepoint pattern, looked up, but her fingers kept flying.
“There’s a man at the door. He says he is the mayor of Mina Clavero.”
“He’s what?”
The needlepoint was instantly forgotten. “The mayor?” Gisela blurted.
“Yes. He’s got a staff member with him and a journalist with a camera.”
“No cameras,” Gisela hissed.
“I already told him that,” Müller said. “He told the man to put it away.”
“What does he want?”
“He wants to talk to you and Lady Smythe. The butler let them in. They’re waiting in the entryway. He seems very excited to meet the two of you. He kept telling the butler what a great honor it would be. He apologized for not calling first, but said they didn’t have a phone number.”
Mother and son exchanged looks, then Niklas shrugged. “Bring the mayor in. Leave the others out there for now.”
Mayor Javier Roberto Fernández de Arroyo was a short man with a thin, pencil mustache, glistening black hair slicked straight back, darting brown eyes, and an enormous sense of energy about him. As Heinrich formally introduced him to Lady Giselle Mary Elizabeth Smythe and Lord Roger Carlton Smythe the Third, he was effusive in his response. He kissed Gisela’s hand, not once but twice. He bowed and bobbed his head as he shook Niklas’s hand and apologized over and over for intruding on them without an invitation. He asked his hosts if they preferred him to speak in English. Niklas said yes, not wanting to reveal that his and Gisela’s Spanish was near fluent, thus keeping up the idea that they were from England.
Finally, when they had him seated in a chair facing them, with Heinrich standing discreetly in the background, he got to the reason for his coming.
“This is a great honor, Señor and Señora Smythe. A great honor.” He took a sheaf of papers from his briefcase and set them on his lap. “As you may know, our fair city has recently undertaken a campaign to honor some of our citizens. We are very civic minded and seek to encourage service to our community and to the world.”
“Oh?” Gisela said slowly, not sure where this was leading.
“Yes. Our campaign is going very well. So, when we received this in the mail yesterday”— he reached down and patted the papers—“we immediately decided that, with your permission, we would like to publicly acknowledge your generous contributions to others. You are an example of the kind of Christian charity that we are all encouraged to practice.”
“Christian charity?” Niklas said very slowly, wary now, wondering if this wasn’t some huge misunderstanding.
/> “Yes.” He lifted the cover sheet and looked at the paper beneath it. “For example, we have here a woman by the name Célina Chastain Morneau, of Strasbourg, France. Former member of the Resistance during World War II.” He held up the sheet and showed them a color photo of a woman in her eighties. “Ms. Morneau had a recent tragedy in her family when two of her grandchildren were falsely accused of possession of illegal drugs. She paid out thousands of Euros to clear their names, even though she was not a woman of means. She recently received a donation of some two hundred thousand Euros in a most generous effort to restore her to financial independence, and—”
He stopped. “Is something wrong, Lord Smythe?”
Niklas managed a fleeting smile and held out his hand. “May I see those, please?”
“Si.” He handed the whole packet across to him. Gisela leaned in as he turned to the next page. Here was a black-and-white photo of a balding man with white hair. He read softly. “André Villeneuve from Bordeaux, France. A few years ago, his supermarket burned to the ground. Recently received €750,000 in compensation for his loss from an anonymous donor.”
He turned to the next page. “Étienne Giroux. Falsely accused of embezzling from his company. Served eighteen months in prison. Abandoned by his wife and family. Later proven to be totally innocent. Swiss bank transferred in €500,000 two weeks ago.”
“It is incredible,” the mayor gushed. “In every case, these poor souls were wronged in terrible ways. Now, years later, they are receiving these marvelous gifts.”
Niklas barely heard them. He was staring at the opposite wall, a dazed expression on his face. Gisela took the papers from him and continued, moving swiftly now. “Jacques Rousseau. Kidnapped and held for two million Euros ransom. Contribution? Two million Euros. The late Manfred Hoffman, of Munich, Germany. Large contribution to his widow and children for services rendered to refugee families during the war.”
She lowered the papers, searching her son’s face for some sign of what to do. She didn’t even register in his vision. Taking a quick breath, she closed the papers and handed them back to the mayor. “I am terribly sorry, Mayor de Arroyo, but I fear there has been a mistake here. What we see before us is quite remarkable, and I wish I could tell you that we were the ones responsible. But we know none of these names.”
The poor man was shocked deeply. “But, Madame Smythe, the person who sent this—”
“Was wrong. I am deeply touched that they thought it was my son and me, but it was not. This will inspire us to undertake a similar program of Christian charity, as you call it, but the credit belongs to someone else.” This last was said grimly.
She stood. “Thank you so much for your effort in coming out. We wish you the best of luck in finding the right people so that they can be properly honored. Mr. Müller will see you out. Good day. And thank you again.”
The entry door had barely shut before the three of them were at the computer—Heinrich at the keyboard, Gisela and Niklas standing right behind him. His fingers flew over the keys, and one window after another popped up and then disappeared. Several times he swore under his breath as he worked. Finally, he sat back, then looked up at them. “It’s gone,” he said.
“What’s gone?” Gisela cried.
Niklas collapsed into a chair. “The seven million Euros we got from the Russians.”
“Gone? How can it be gone?”
Niklas dropped his head and covered his face in his hands. “Because they took it.”
“Who took it?”
He looked up, the bitterness twisting his face. “Who do you think?”
“Somehow they knew all of our passwords and user names,” Heinrich explained.
With that, a stricken Gisela sank down into one of the chairs. “How much do we have left?”
Heinrich slowly shook his head. “I’ll have to check to make certain, but it’s under two million, I’m pretty sure.”
Niklas got to his feet. “Change all of the names and passwords. Now! And no more waiting on the von Dietz money. We go for it this afternoon, as soon as the offices in Europe close.”
“How long will it take to get it out?” Gisela demanded.
Heinrich shook his head in frustration. “With this amount, as much as several days. We can’t take it out in one lump sum or they’ll be onto us in an instant. We’ll have to create several accounts. We can use the weekend to get it all set up, then start moving the money Monday as soon as things get busy and it won’t be immediately noticed.”
CHAPTER 44
“Aha!” Heinrich cried, leaping to his feet. “That explains it.”
Niklas got up from the desk and came around. “What?”
“Someone installed keylogger software on your machine.”
“They what?”
“Do you know what keylogger software is?”
“Of course I know what it is. And what it does. I thought you swept the computer for spyware.”
“I sweep it every week. But this is a highly sophisticated program. I mean, top-of-the-line sophistication.”
“What is?” Gisela asked as she came into the room from the hallway. Heinrich took a quick breath and then plunged. He told her quickly what he had found and what it did. “I couldn’t figure out how anyone could get access to our user names and passwords. Most of those have at least three levels of security, some four.”
“I don’t understand.”
“They can monitor all activity on our computer from their own computer via the web. They didn’t need to crack the names and passwords because we gave them to them every time we entered them into the system, including each time we changed them.”
“Why didn’t you find it earlier?”
He swallowed hard twice. “I have been scanning the system every day and it’s never showed up. This afternoon, I specifically went looking for how they were getting the passwords.”
“How long has it been on there?”
“That one is easy. It shows that it was installed on Saturday, October 22, at 5:03 p.m.”
Gisela and Niklas looked at each other. He spoke first. “Saturday afternoon. That would have been at the villa. It was about the time that Danni got out of her cell.”
“But surely she couldn’t have done it,” Heinrich said. “This is pretty sophisticated stuff.”
“Sophisticated to install?”
He shook his head. “No, not really. That wouldn’t be too hard if you could get access to the computer’s operating system.”
“It wasn’t Danni,” Gisela said flatly.
Both men turned and looked at her. “Why do you say that?” Niklas asked.
“Because she was in our custody from the hotel in Caen on. We searched her thoroughly. She didn’t have it. And therefore she didn’t do it. He did.”
“He?” Heinrich asked.
“Jean-Henri LaRoche. Grandpère. We know he was in the building later that evening. I’ll bet he was there earlier.”
The men looked at each other; then Niklas’s head bobbed. “It makes more sense than Danni.”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” she said. Then, in a very low voice filled with hate and menace, she added, “And if it’s the last thing I do, I am going to kill that man. Once and forever, he is going to be dead.”
If anyone in the Smythe/von Dietz household was aware of the fact that Christmas was coming fast upon them, they gave no outward evidence of that fact. There were no Christmas decorations. No special holiday dinner. No gifts. A group of carolers came to the front gate and rang the bell, but when no one answered, they sang one verse of “Silent Night” and went away again.
Gisela brought in a tray of sandwiches and black coffee to the three men working in the study, then joined them as they ate. No one said much. They ate silently, each lost in their own thoughts. On the surface, none of those tho
ughts seemed to be centered on Christmas. Heinrich asked Jean-Claude where he had lived in Belgium, but when he gave a one-word answer—“Brussels”—they fell silent again.
As they were finishing, the computer chimed softly, the signal for an incoming email message. Heinrich started to get up, but Gisela was faster. “I’ll get it.” A moment later, the entire atmosphere in the room changed when Gisela yelled out and shot to her feet. “What? What is this?”
The three of them were up and gathered around the computer. She had leaned in to peer at the screen and was blocking their view. Niklas reached out, took her shoulder, and gently drew her back. “What is it, Mama?”
She couldn’t speak. All she could do was point. Niklas nearly choked, then fell into the chair next to her and began to read. “It’s from Von Dietz Global, Department of Internal Security.
Dear Valued VDG Clients:
We regret to inform you that the VDG financial systems have experienced a serious breach of security from unknown, hostile hackers. All systems have been shut down while the source of this breach is discovered and full security is restored. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. At this point we cannot say how long we will be out of service. Clients should be prepared for as much as two to three weeks.
“Two to three weeks!” Heinrich cried. “They can’t be serious.”
Niklas went on without comment:
Clients in need of immediate, emergency access to funds should contact any regional office of VDG Financial. Please bring at least two forms of government-issued identification. Clearance of funds may take up to three working days. We shall keep you informed of any progress or further developments. Thank you for your patience and understanding,
Ernst von Blankenburg
President and CEO
Von Dietz Global Financial Enterprises
Even before Niklas had finished reading, Heinrich snatched up the phone and stabbed at the buttons. Gisela shot out of her chair. “What are you doing?” she shouted at him.