“I miss you,” she said again. The words slow and careful. From a script, Brian thought. “I want to see you again. Please buy two first-class tickets on the 21:23, Barcelona to Madrid.” The 9:23 p.m. train. Proof Kira was reading someone else’s words. She would never say 21:23. “Tony stays in Barcelona. You travel without escorts. You carry the money in a soft-sided bag. You do not carry weapons. No tracker or dye packs in the bag. You will receive further instructions on the train.”
Another pause.
“Follow these rules or you won’t see me again.” Her voice broke a little on the last words. “To accept this offer, send two male uniformed Mossos officers to walk three times around the Font de Canaletes”—she stumbled a bit over the Spanish—“at 1800 hours exactly. If you accept but do not yet have the cash, send two female Mossos officers. In that case you will have one more day. The price will be three million euros instead of two.”
A pause, longer than the others, the silence grinding at them.
The timer on the file showed the recording had a few seconds left.
“If you do not accept—”
The recording ended.
They were silent as Rebecca tapped her phone. “That’s it.”
They played the message a second time, and a third. But Kira’s words remained stubbornly scripted, her only message the one the kidnappers wanted to send.
“What’s the Font de Canaletes?”
“A fountain near the top of the Rambla,” CC said. “Always very crowded. No chance for decent surveillance. Why they chose it.”
“Anyway, you better send two men. We’re going to get on the train,” Brian said.
“You’re sure.” CC looked at Rebecca, like Brian’s opinion didn’t count.
“Of course,” Rebecca said.
“Then we need”—CC hesitated, looking for the word—“plainclothes officers on the train too.”
“You heard what she said.”
“Hundreds of people on that train; our men are good, they won’t know.”
“Not worth it.”
“I’m sorry, it’s two million euros and there’s danger for you too. If someone puts a pistol on you, takes the money, my men can see what’s happening, protect you.”
“Tony, you need to wait outside.”
Tony walked out, slammed the door.
“I didn’t want him to hear his, but let me be as clear as I can,” Rebecca said. “I want her free, and if that means taking a bullet I’ll do it. I’m sure Brian feels the same.”
Brian nodded. Though he was really thinking, Rebecca and her drama, Rebecca the avenging FBI agent, Rebecca the supermom… The truth, yeah, she wanted Kira back, but she hated not being in control. She’d been antsy all day, she didn’t like relying on these cops.
“No plainclothes,” Rebecca said.
“All right.”
Brian suspected CC would put the officers on the train anyway. “Tony,” he yelled. “Come on back in.”
Then he realized the kidnappers had made a mistake. Dropbox wasn’t Telegram or Signal, a service designed to frustrate government monitoring, with uncrackable end-to-end encryption. It was an American company that had helped the NSA in the past. At the least, it should give them the IP address from which the message had been uploaded. If the message had been uploaded directly from a phone or iPad or other mobile device, the agency and the Spanish police might be able to find it fast.
Brian wondered if he should keep his mouth shut. Maybe Irlov would be angry if they found Kira on their own. But the Russian had made his point. “Becks—Dropbox—”
“They’re a friend, right?”
So he didn’t even get to tell her. He called the duty officer at Fort Meade, explained what they needed.
* * *
Fifteen minutes later they had an answer. Though not the one they wanted.
The IP address routed to a hardline network, not a mobile device. And the locations of hardline nodes were less precise than those belonging to mobiles. Mobile carriers needed to know the exact location of the devices they served. Hardline Internet networks were just big dumb highways with endless on- and off-ramps. A single node could serve a big neighborhood or a small city.
Nonetheless, the address provided a clue. It routed to central Zaragoza, a city of over seven hundred thousand people in northeastern Spain. Zaragoza lay almost exactly halfway between Madrid and Barcelona, and the 9:23 express from Barcelona to Madrid stopped there.
The kidnappers had been careful so far. Still, Brian doubted they would have driven too far from their base to upload this message. Most likely they were in Zaragoza, or close.
“Is there any practical way to narrow it?” Rebecca said when Brian finished the explanation. “If they did it at