life if you’re not at the top of your game.”
Since then she had eaten two full meals, although it was clear she hadn’t enjoyed them.
The past six days had seemed like an exercise in futility. Every plan they had conceived had run into a morass of technical difficulties. Berg & Tempel AG, the target bank, was a tough nut to crack. Any hope of tapping into their communications without making a physical entry into the bank itself had been lost in the spaghetti of optic cables that ran beneath Frankfurt’s streets. And Berg & Tempel’s ornate, nineteenth-century stone building sat squarely amidst the towering steel-and-glass monoliths of the banking district, where the underground electronic labyrinth was at its most complex.
“I spent the day eating pommes frites in the Jürgen-Ponto-Platz,” Niko said, taking a seat. “I learned more than I want to know about the murder of Jürgen Ponto, and if I never eat another fried potato, it will be too soon. But it was worth it.”
“Yes?” Renate asked. She was in no mood to play the game of twenty questions. “So what did you learn?”
“Berg & Tempel is right across the street, at the corner of Kaiserstraße and Westendstraße,” Niko continued, as if unaware of the tart tone in her voice. “I was able to watch their comings and goings all afternoon and into the evening. They’re good, but they’re also lazy.”
“How so?” Lawton asked.
“It’s a private bank. No lobby. Customers visit by appointment only.”
“Right,” Renate said impatiently. “We know this. This is what makes them so difficult to penetrate.”
“On the contrary,” Niko said. “This is what makes them easy to penetrate. Their security is very lax. They probably don’t have a vault, or if they do, it holds no cash to speak of. Most of their work involves shifting investments around and sheltering their clients from taxes. There is little to attract thieves, and thus little reason for the kind of tight security you would find in an ordinary bank. I was able to walk right in, under the guise of delivering a parcel. What’s more, once I got past the front desk, I was able to wander the building for fifteen minutes before someone saw that I looked lost and gave me directions.”
“So Lawton could make his entry as a Fahrrad-Kurier,” Renate said. “A bicycle courier.”
“Yes,” Niko said. “Easily, in fact. And that’s not all. I checked out the internal security. Unless they’re very good at hiding cameras, there aren’t any except at the front door. The computer room uses key cards, as do the senior executives’ offices, but beyond that, anyone in the building can go just about anywhere.”
“Nighttime security?” Renate asked.
“A guard at the front desk,” Niko said. “Unless there were other guards that came in by other entrances, he’s the only one. He looks to be a college student making some extra money by working as a night watchman. He locked the doors after the employees left, and twenty minutes later he was drinking coffee with his head buried in a textbook.”
“Key cards,” Lawton said. “If they have key cards, they probably log entries automatically.”
“Right,” Assif said, “but those logs would be kept on their computers. Once I know what system they use, I can tell you how to modify the log files.”
“This could work,” Lawton said, nodding. “I go in just before close of business and disappear into a men’s room or closet. Once everyone’s gone, and assuming I can get a key card, I’m into the computer room, with comms to Assif, in the utility tunnel below the bank. He tells me what to do to send a SWIFTNET message, so he can tap the correct line, and tells me how to erase my key card entry from the log file. Then I hide out until morning, wait until things are busy, and leave as if I had just dropped off the parcel. It’s simple, and clean.”
“Yes,” Assif said. “That can work.”
“If we can get a key card,” Renate said. “And if we can get Assif to the right utility junction box.”
“And don’t forget the bicycle,” Niko said.
Lawton looked at him. “I don’t understand.”
“The couriers lock their bicycles at a rack outside the bank,” Niko said. “Someone will notice if it’s there when they leave and still there in the morning. So one of us will have to pick up the bicycle without looking as if we’re stealing it, then return it the next morning.”
Renate walked to the whiteboard and began to write. “Lawton in the bank. Assif in the utility tunnel. Niko, you will handle the bicycle, and be on watch when Assif enters and exits the tunnel. I’ll be here, monitoring our communications and the police scanner.”
Lawton nodded. “So we need to find the utility junction box and get a key card. Then, I think, we’re good to go.”
Renate looked at Niko. “I need you to go back to the Jürgen-Ponto-Platz and watch the bank employees as they come to work. We need to identify those who work in the computer room.”
“And how am I supposed to identify which employees work in the computer room?” Niko asked.
“I’ll go with you,” Assif said, breaking into a smile. “I can spot a fellow geek from a kilometer away.”
“Good,” Renate said. “Then we start surveillance on the computer room employees. One of them is sure to be single and male. And I will get the key card from him.”
Her tone left no doubt that she would do anything, anything at all, to achieve the downfall of those who had killed her family. Whatever conscience she might once have owned had been blown away by a bomb in a simple church.
Vienna, Austria
Yawi Hassan had spent the day in a café on the Gellerplatz, watching the apartment house two blocks down Quellenstraße. Three hours earlier, laughing children had streamed from the Catholic school across the street. Yawi was struck by the irony: terrorists who had murdered thousands of Catholics on Christmas Day were hiding out in an apartment house two blocks from a Catholic school.
Now a last group of students, young teenage boys, Yawi guessed, freshly showered after an athletic practice, approached him. With his limited German, Yawi realized they were asking him to settle a dispute over which Austrian football club would be strongest that year. Although he knew nothing of Austrian football, Yawi chose from among the team names the boys pressed upon him.
“Rapid ist sehr gut,” Yawi said.
“Ja!” answered the boy who had offered that club. “Rapid wird immer dominieren! Die san leiwand!”
As the boy broke into a wide grin, the other boys objected. Much to Yawi’s relief, for he had not understood the boy’s reply, they took the disagreement with them as they walked to the tram station. He smiled and shook his head as they left. In whatever language, in whatever culture, boys would be boys.
Now alone again, Yawi reviewed the plan in his head. All the pieces were in place. The last of their seven targets had returned to the apartment only a few minutes before, after a quick stop at a corner market. Even now, Yawi knew that his men were moving into their final preassault positions.
The target was a third-floor
