The Prisoner's Gold

16

John Sylvester was a talented detective; so talented, in fact, that he had been on Seymour Duggan’s payroll for nearly three years, which was pretty much the biggest compliment that someone in his profession could get. Based in Orlando, a tourist city in the middle of Florida, Sylvester’s area covered the entire length of the Sunshine State.

Shortly after being hired by Cobb in Wales, Duggan had arranged for Sylvester to track Jean-Marc Papineau upon his arrival at his coastal compound in Florida. The property itself was practically untouchable — the private drive from the gate to the house was covered by surveillance and protected by an electric fence — so Sylvester had focused his efforts elsewhere.

He had placed cameras in the trees along the main road, allowing him to monitor the turnoff that led through the swampy marsh to the mansion. He had rented a fishing boat to take him a mile down shore from the compound’s small stretch of beach, and he had planted a camera there too. A few of the more pliable locals had informed him that the yacht parked on Papineau’s pier was mostly for show; it had barely left its slip in more than a year. That meant that if his target needed to travel somewhere, he would most likely fly out of the Fort Lauderdale — Hollywood International Airport, which was only a few miles away.

Knowing this, Sylvester set up shop in a nearby diner.

He watched his camera feeds from there.

The diner was a little on the grubby side for Sylvester’s taste, but he had seen worse. Despite the grime and the terrible coffee, the diner was perfect for his needs: the food was tasty, the Wi-Fi was free, and the location was perfect. Anyone driving from the compound toward the airport would need to use the road out front, and he would see them coming from far away. This would give him enough time to hop in his sedan and pull out ahead of them. People always suspected a tail when a car pulled out behind them, but they would hardly think twice about a car that was on the road up ahead — even if it ended up tailing them for miles.

Sylvester knew this from experience.

He had just finished soaking up his last bit of grits with a homemade biscuit when he noticed movement on his beloved laptop. A nondescript, white Hyundai hatchback had turned off the dirt road and was headed his way.

‘Is that you, Frenchie? What, no limo today?’

He stared at his camera feeds until he was positive it was Papineau. ‘A Korean rental? How disappointing! You could have done so much better and still remained incognito.’

Sylvester laid a crumpled twenty on the table, wiped his mouth with a paper napkin, and closed his computer. He paused by a mirror near the front door and admired his square jaw and thick brown hair. For a man in his forties, he still looked to be in his twenties, and he often used those good looks to his advantage. Sylvester exited the blissfully cool air-conditioned diner, trading it for the thick, soupy air of south Florida. He started his sedan, which had built-in Wi-Fi, and opened the laptop on the passenger seat.

He cranked the vehicle’s AC to high and relaxed, knowing it would be a few minutes, even if Papineau was speeding. When the Hyundai showed up on the video feed in the lower right corner of the laptop’s screen — the final camera that Sylvester had placed along the road before the diner — he shifted into DRIVE and eased his sedan onto the road. He headed south with a constant eye on his rearview mirror. The Hyundai finally appeared a minute later. The small car followed him for a mile before passing him, steering west onto highway A1A toward the airport.

‘Where ya headed?’ Sylvester asked aloud as he turned to follow.

As if in response, Papineau suddenly spun around and drove back in the opposite direction.

The U-turn both surprised and impressed Sylvester. It was called a Surveillance Detection Route, or SDR. He knew that the Frenchman would perform a series of seemingly random turns, attempting to notice any vehicles following him. An SDR might only amount to a few minutes of detour, or it could take hours. In any case, Sylvester couldn’t turn to follow or he would be spotted. He had no choice but to continue west toward the city.

Fortunately for him, Sylvester had planned ahead.

He had cameras positioned along every road that led to the airport.

If that’s where Papineau was headed, he would see him again soon.

A mile later Sylvester pulled into a gas station to wait. He parked in front of one of the pumps, but didn’t get out. Instead, he simply sat there, flipping through the feeds on his laptop until he caught sight of the Frenchman nearly twenty minutes later.

‘There you are.’

Having completed the unpredictable driving of his SDR, Papineau felt confident enough to approach his final destination. Sylvester quickly caught up to his target and watched Papineau pull off a busy street and head toward a private terminal for small aircraft. Lacking the appropriate gate pass, Sylvester continued on toward the cargo terminal before circling back with a cover story to gain access to the private facility.

He told the guard at the gate that he was interested in renting a private hangar for one of his Learjets, and the hint of money prompted a call to the general manager. Sylvester had long ago discovered his clean-cut good looks lent themselves to role-playing a wealthy young businessman. A few minutes later, a paunchy man named Wilson was giving him a tour.

During their twenty-minute conversation, the general manager explained the operations at the small terminal and spoke convincingly about the obnoxious aspects of commercial air travel and security — all in an attempt to lure prospective business. But the only thing that Sylvester cared about was the tour of the hangers. All it took was a fleeting glimpse of Papineau’s private jet and the lone security guard standing by it for Sylvester to memorize the aircraft registration number on the tail of the plane. With that, he could determine where the plane had been, where it was scheduled to go, and the name of the registered owner.

In short, he had everything he needed.

After thanking his host and indicating that he might be back to tour the facility again, Sylvester excused himself on the pretense of a business meeting in Miami. He promised to have his accountant get in touch within a week.

Instead, he returned to his rental car and pulled up the online database for FAA registration. He entered the tail number that was fresh in his mind and began his trace of the aircraft’s ownership. It took him ten minutes to sort through the layers of shell companies, and ten minutes more to scour the log of flight plans, but he eventually found what he was looking for.

He pulled out his phone and dialed Duggan.

Seymour picked up on the first ring. ‘Yes?’

‘I have a destination.’

Eight hours later, Duggan’s phone rang again in his opulent room in the Phoenicia Hotel in Malta. He checked the display and saw it was another of his operatives: Jerry Westbrook.

‘Tell me you found him?’ Duggan asked calmly.

After receiving the tip from Sylvester in Florida, Duggan had phoned Westbrook, his best man in California, to drive to San Diego to tail Papineau from the airport to his final destination. Duggan had used Westbrook, a part-time actor and full-time private investigator, on a number of cases in the past. They had never met face-to-face and Westbrook, like Sylvester, knew Duggan only by the alias of ‘Harry Reynolds’.

In Duggan’s line of work, it paid to keep things close to the vest.

He liked Westbrook, but that was no reason to compromise his own security.

‘Yep. I got him, Mr Reynolds. A private limo picked him up at the airport and took him up to a swanky estate in Castillo. Big security. I had to park about a mile away to make sure I wasn’t made. Nothing but sprawling estates out there. Place looks like a damn castle. Want me to keep on him when he leaves?’

‘Hmm,’ Duggan said, thinking it over. ‘I’d head down the road a ways. He’ll most likely be going back to the airport tomorrow. It would be nice to confirm.’

‘No problem.’

‘In the meantime, why don’t you ask around a bit? Maybe one of the locals will know the name of the man who owns the estate. At the very least, get me a street. I can do quite a bit with a mailing address.’

‘Consider it done,’ Westbrook bragged.

Duggan smiled, glad that everything was going so smoothly.

Unfortunately, it was the last thing Duggan would ever hear him say.