The Pandora Key aka The Hostage Room

19

IF YOU DIDN’T KNOW OTHERWISE, YOU WOULD NEVER guess the people talking and laughing at the Paris Hyatt were former hostages gathered to commemorate their hijacking. Considering the outcome, perhaps gathered to celebrate the fact that they were there at all. Nine of them, plus eight hijackers, hadn’t come back.

I took a few minutes at the door to review the scene. Straight in from the airport, I’d taken time to shower in my room and change my clothes. Then I’d ordered a room-service breakfast and eaten, so I was feeling all right. I’d put some heavy-duty concealer over the cut on my forehead, pulled my bangs down as camouflage, and come down early to the ballroom.

The room was just beginning to fill. People gathered around twelve round tables with white tablecloths set for brunch. Each table had a bright bouquet of spring flowers as a centerpiece, which struck me as optimistic, given the cold and damp early-spring weather outside.

As people filtered in, I spotted the one man who looked to be in charge. I got close enough to read his name tag. He was the contact Dan had set up for me.

“Dr. Wilson.” I offered my hand. “I’m Alex Shanahan from Majestic Airlines.”

“Oh, indeed. You’re the researcher from Boston. We had a call that you were coming. Welcome.”

There wasn’t much on Dr. Wilson’s tall frame except his suit, and his voice was almost as wispy as he was, but there was substance in his eyes. He seemed to be someone you could count on.

“Thank you,” I said. “I feel privileged to be here. I know you don’t let a lot of people in.”

He shifted his drink from one hand to the other and put the free hand in his pocket. It allowed him to lower his head without appearing to be whispering. “This is a smart thing your airline is doing. Salanna did a very poor job in the area of customer support. We were scattered all across Africa with no money, no passports, and only the clothes on our backs. Everything was taken from us. We had no cell phones and very little information. You never realize how important your identity is in this world until you stand without it in a hostile country.”

When I hadn’t been sleeping on the flight over, I had been studying the information I had on the passengers, trying to match names on the manifest to stories in the various articles. I knew Dr. Wilson had diabetes. He had been let off the plane early with a group of women and children. His being from Portugal and considering how the ordeal ended, his disease might have saved his life. “You were one of the hostages?”

“We prefer to be called survivors.” He gestured to his name tag. It said it right there: “Survivor.” Mine said “Guest.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean-”

“Not at all. How would you like to approach this? Shall I introduce you to some of our group?”

“I know this seems xenophobic,” I said, “but would it be possible for me to start with the Americans, since Majestic is a predominantly domestic carrier? Domestic to us, anyway.” I pulled out a picture of Roger and showed him. “How about this man? I’ve been told that he would be a good one to start with. You know, lots of complaints to air.”

“Ah, Mr. Fratello.”

“Yes, Mr.-” Wait, he wasn’t supposed to know that name. “What did you call him?”

“Your American FBI showed me a picture of this man. They have a different photograph, but it is, naturally, the same face. The agent told me this Roger Fratello is or was a notorious criminal in the States. Is it true?”

“I have no idea.” I pretended to dig through my bag, as though I might find the answer in there. I should have figured the FBI would be doing exactly as I was trying to do. I looked around at the growing crowd. “Is the FBI here?”

“No. I was interviewed in Lisbon.”

“This is embarrassing,” I said. “I thought his name was Gilbert Bernays.”

“Yes, so did we all.” He handed the picture back.

“Whatever his name was, he was on this plane, right?”

“I’m told he was.”

“You don’t remember him?”

“The takeover happened within one hour of our departure. We were immediately separated on the aircraft into small groups. Much of the time, we were bent over in the crash position or blindfolded. Beyond my own group, the first time I met most of these people was at our first reunion.”

“I see. I’m going out on a limb and assuming Gilbert Bernays has never been to any of your reunions.”

He laughed. “That’s correct. I don’t believe anyone-at least, none of us-has seen him since the ordeal ended.”

We were being increasingly interrupted as more guests arrived and made a point of saying hello to Dr. Wilson. As he was greeting someone, I pulled out the manifest Dan had given me.

“The other American men who survived”-I checked my notes again-“Voytag, Plume, and McGarry. Are any of these gentlemen here?”

“I’m afraid Peter Voytag died last year.”

“That’s too bad. How did he die?”

“Very sad. He survived the inferno, only to be felled by prostate cancer. He was young, too. But Frank and Tim are scheduled to be here. Perhaps we can find them.” He stretched his body up like a Slinky dog and checked around the room. “I don’t see them yet.” He was about to comment further when a young woman rushed up to him with the distressing news that a reporter was at the door, agitating to come in. A voice of authority was needed.

“Is it Mr. Kraft again?”

“No,” she said. “It’s someone different.”

Dr. Wilson turned to me. “I do apologize, but I must take care of this matter.”

“Who is Mr. Kraft?”

“He’s a reporter. Actually, he insists on being called a journalist. An investigative journalist.”

“Really?” That was very interesting. My cyber pen pal had made the same self-reverential distinction in our chat. “What’s his first name?”

“Max.” I wrote the name in my notebook, on the off chance that I had just stumbled over the Mr. No Comment in possession of Roger’s computer. We were still on for our meeting in Paris, but I had no idea when or where. He had all my contact information. I had none for him.

“What does he want?”

“He’s been agitating for a list of names and numbers of the survivors, and I won’t give it to him.”

“There’s no reason you should.”

“I agree. I feel an obligation to protect these people.” He looked around the room. “We didn’t ask to be hijacked. None of us did. We shouldn’t have to talk to reporters if we choose not to.”

“Is he doing a story?”

“So he says. You must excuse me, but I’ve told people you would be here, so you shouldn’t have any trouble.”

“No problem. I can find my own way around.”

He apologized again and rushed off.

I surveyed the crowd. A group of seven or eight was gathered around a nearby table. Some were sitting. Some were leaning in with hands on the backs of chairs. With a range of skin color and dress, they looked to be from an array of different countries and cultures. Checking name tags, I saw that many were marked as survivors. I introduced myself as the researcher from Boston. There were several nods of recognition, which made everything easier.

“I’m looking for this man for a project I’m doing for Majestic Airlines. Have any of you seen or heard from him? I believe his name is Gilbert Bernays?”

I handed the picture of Roger to a woman in a sari. She shook her head and passed it on. The group validated a few things Dr. Wilson had told me. First, that no one had seen or heard from Fratello-Bernays since the hijacking. Second, that the group, on the whole, made for very unreliable witnesses. At the time of the hijacking, they had been scared and in shock. Now, four years removed from an event they wanted to forget anyway, they mostly recognized each other from the reunions and not the hijacking.

The same was not true, however, of Frank Plume and Tim McGarry, the two American survivors I stumbled upon in a corner. They were chatting with another survivor named Helene. I introduced myself and listened in as they talked about their meetings with the State Department.

“I got back three pages of an old expense report and my wallet.” Tim was crisp and angular, with wire-rim glasses, an efficient haircut, and a pale pallor. “I had a flashback moment when I saw it. It was like this list of things I did on the last day of my old life. I don’t even have that job anymore. Hell, I’m not even in that business. After I got back, I quit and started my own-”

“Pictures of my husband were still in mine.” Helene didn’t bother waiting for Tim to finish. “He’s my ex-husband now, but anyway, my license and credit cards were gone. I asked them if they thought my ID had been used to make a fake one. Can you imagine if one of these people got into the country using my name? More and more of those suicide bombers are women now, you know.”

“Did you get any electronic equipment back?” That was Frank. Thicker and healthier-looking than Tim, he had coarse, curly sideburns and a comfortable grip on his highball glass. He also talked really fast. “You didn’t, didja? Me, neither. That’s because they took all that stuff, all the cameras and recorders and laptops, they took it back to that place in Afghanistan, and they reused it.”

“Who?” Helene sounded intrigued.

“The terrorists.”

“Reused it for what?”

“For whatever terrorists do with those things. They’re not living in tents, you know. They’re digital, just like we are. They send e-mails and get e-mails. They have Web sites, which they use to send coded messages. They talk on cell phones. They use video cameras for scouting targets. Just the other day in my neck of the woods, they caught a husband-and-wife team with a videocam on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel. They were taking shots from every angle. Bad things are going to happen.” He raised his glass to drink but ended up using it as a pointer. “You watch. It’s only a matter of when.”

His tone was ominous, but I couldn’t blame him. Something bad had already happened to him.

“Are you saying some of our belongings could have been used to set up an attack?” Helene seemed very interested in the idea that her possessions had gone on to participate in some meaningful event.

“That’s what repurposing means-using it for their purposes. That could have been your camcorder they were using.”

“Oh, I didn’t have one-”

“Or my laptop. Did you ever think about that? My laptop sending e-mails to sleeper cells in Detroit.” He raised his eyebrows and gulped half of his drink.

Here was an interesting concept, this idea that the passengers’ computers had been part of the Zormat stash. I had only been thinking about things like wallets and family photos coming out of the Hefty bag.

“Did everyone onboard have their laptops confiscated?”

Frank looked at me. “Who are you again?” I reminded him. Researcher from Boston, Majestic Airlines…“Oh, yeah. Sorry.”

“They took everything,” Tim said. “Every damn thing we had, they took. Socks. Pencils. Key chains. CDs. They got a big kick out of playing our music. That’s something I wish I could have back, my traveling music. A lot of those CDs were hard to find. A bunch of them were signed by the artists.”

“Have any of you heard about reporters ending up with these computers?”

Frank shook his head at me. “The government is keeping all that stuff.”

“Whose government?”

“Ours. No one would ever know, right? They would just say it all got lost.”

“Do you know that’s true?”

“Do you know it’s not?”

Tim chuckled. “Typical conspiracy theorist. All leading questions and vague accusations and an entire case built on proving a negative.” He looked at me. “Here’s the thing with the computers. They were in the house in Zormat. The military found them and called in the CIA. In the meantime, the villagers picked the house clean, which is what happens when you leave valuable electronic equipment lying around poverty-stricken, war-torn countries. All the laptops were gone when the spies got there, but there’s a reporter named Kraft who got in and got them. Supposedly, he bought them off a kid with a goat. He says he’s got a big story from one of them.”

Before I could jump on that one, Frank was into it. “Timmy, you talked to him, didn’t you? You told me you weren’t going to.”

“I changed my mind.”

I had to work hard to make my tone casual like theirs, because I wasn’t supposed to be asking these questions. It wasn’t easy, because it was pretty obvious Max Kraft was my guy. “What’s the deal with this Kraft? Everyone around here talks about him as if he’s not welcome.”

“He’s public enemy number one around here,” Tim said. “He tried to hack into Raul’s computer and steal the contact information for all of us.”

“Dr. Wilson’s?”

“Raul was not happy about that.” He looked pointedly at Frank. “That is the full and true story with the computers.”

“Okay, okay.” Frank was sounding a little desperate. “Forget about the computers. What about what happened that night, Timmy? You saw it, too. You can’t tell me there wasn’t something going on there.”

“All hell was breaking loose, Frank.” Tim glanced quickly at me. “I’d been thrown out of a burning airplane, bullets were flying, it was dark, and there was smoke everywhere. We were covered in blood. We all had heavy beards. My own mother wouldn’t have known me. I have no idea what I saw, and I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t go around telling people what you think I should have seen. Now, if you’ll excuse us…”

Helene didn’t seem ready to move on, but I was glad Tim took her with him. That left me alone with Frank. I moved a step closer. “He seems a little touchy on the subject.”

“Yeah, he doesn’t like to talk about it.” Frank was looking past me. He turned slightly and dipped his shoulder toward me. “Do you know that woman over there to my right? She’s wearing that raincoat kind of jacket thing. Be cool when you look.”

I glanced over. The woman he described turned away when I glanced her way.

“I don’t know her. Why?”

“She’s been staring at us.”

He could have been right. It could also have been the paranoia talking. Whatever it was, he was agitated. “Maybe we could go outside and talk,” I offered.

“Good. I could use a smoke. Who are you again?”

Since he couldn’t remember anyway, I dropped the pretense and just showed him the picture of Roger. “I’m trying to find this man. It’s important. If you have information that can help me, I hope you’ll share it.”

He already had a cigarette in one hand. He took the picture in the other and held it at arm’s length the way people do who are missing their glasses. “Gil Bernays? That’s who you’re looking for?”

Apparently. “Have you seen him or heard from him?”

“Nope.” He chuckled. “Not likely to, either. Gil’s dead.”

“What?” I stopped, but he had gone on. I caught him as he was leaving the ballroom. “Are you sure?”

“Hell, yeah, I’m sure. I watched him die.”