Rules of Deception

45

By ten o’clock that morning, the task force had scored its first easy victories.

Von Daniken had pinned down the Banca Popolare del Ticino as the institution where Blitz conducted his banking. Copies of all account transactions-deposits, withdrawals, payments, wire transfers to and from-were due within the hour. Additionally, he’d learned that the Villa Principessa had not been rented or leased, as suspected, but had been purchased twenty-four months earlier for three million francs by a shadowy investment trust domiciled in the Netherlands Antilles. All paperwork had been handled by a fiduciary agent in Liechtenstein. Von Daniken had dispatched emissaries to Vaduz, the capital of the tiny mountain principality, to interrogate the executives who had handled the transaction.

Myer had likewise struck gold, establishing a list of twelve phone numbers called by both Blitz and Lammers on a regular basis. Several belonged to manufacturing concerns with whom Robotica did business. Subpoenas were being issued to force the companies to divulge the names of those who were recipients of the calls. The other numbers were mobile designations belonging to foreign telecoms. It would be necessary to work through the embassies in France, Spain, and Holland to obtain subpoenas granting them access to the records.

Krajcek was in Zurich, debriefing several informants and had not yet reported back.

Only Hardenberg was frustrated. As for locating the van, he’d so far managed to narrow the list to 18,654 owners of Volkswagen vans in the country. He was waiting on word from rental car companies and from the cantonal police authorities regarding stolen vans that fit the description.

“What about ISIS?” von Daniken asked, taking a seat on the edge of his desk.

“I’ve put in my request,” said Hardenberg. “White Volkswagen van with Swiss plates. We’ll see what comes back.”

“Try centering the search on Germany first.”

“Already did. I set Leipzig as a primary target, and all cities in a fifty-kilometer radius as a secondary. We should get some hits.”

Cataloguing warrants and maintaining a database on individuals deemed of interest to the government formed only one part of the ISIS system. Another tied into the hundreds of thousands of surveillance cameras located across Europe. Every minute of every day, these cameras snapped photographs of whatever vehicles (and people) happened to cross their lens. The license numbers of every car photographed automatically fed into a system linking the databases of intelligence agencies of over thirty countries. It was a kind of “criminal Internet.” Each database would then run the license numbers against any stolen or otherwise suspected vehicles in that country. All over Europe, warnings were continually dispatched that a car stolen in Spain had been seen in Paris. Or a truck used in a jewel robbery in Nice had been spotted in Rome. It was policing without policemen, and it resulted in thousands of arrests each year.

The downside was that the process was painstakingly slow. With the sheer volume of photographs-millions per day-there was nothing like real-time results.

“Keep at it,” said von Daniken. “Let me know the moment anything turns up. You have my number.”

Hardenberg nodded and set to work.

Satisfied that things were starting off on the right foot, von Daniken took the elevator to the ground floor and left the building. Once in his car, he drove directly to the autobahn, where he joined the A1 in the direction of Geneva. He’d have to hurry if he intended on being at the headquarters of Doctors Without Borders by noon.