For Blood or Money
13. Redeye to Hell (with Connections)
I CAUGHT THE FIRST FLIGHT to Chicago that I could get a business class seat on. It was a red-eye at 12:20 in the morning. I swung by the office on the way to the airport to grab a few last minute things and write a note for Riley. The brief respite from the rain this morning had ended and I was pelted as I left the cab and moved as quickly as I could into the office.
Riley had found the information that I needed to follow up on, though even she didn’t know yet what I was looking for. Far East Exchange was located, not in Seattle, but in Chicago. It had an address of Wacker Drive near the river. I grabbed a GPS transmitter and programmed the server to broadcast and record my position. Of course, I couldn’t legally broadcast from a commercial flight, but I figured that I would entertain Riley by showing her where I was at any given time.
I didn’t want to just disappear and never be heard of again like Simon. This way, Riley would know where I was at all times. She knew how to “call in the cavalry,” as she liked to say, if there was an emergency. That possibility nagged at me; I could be headed into Mob HQ for all I knew.
She would be pissed that I took this trip without her. Hell, she’d be pissed that I took the trip at all. But I’m not going to play sick just because I’m a little sick.
The flight was comfortable and not too full. I stretched out my legs and considered sleeping. My head was splitting and I detected the change of air pressure as we taxied to the runway. I was getting a little woozy. The vibration of the engines, the movement of take-off, and my general exhaustion, and I was out like a light.
The next thing I knew, the flight attendant was standing over me shaking me by the shoulder and calling my name.
“Mr. Hamar? Mr. Hamar?” I pried my eyes open to look at her. “Sir, we’ve landed. You need to deplane now.”
Damn. It must be an unexpected side-effect of the heart medication. I needed to remember that the change of air pressure was going to affect me more radically than it used to. I gathered up my bag and realized that the plane was empty except for the flight crew, who were preparing to leave the craft, and the service crew who had moved on to clean it. I shook my head to clear it and left for the terminal. I had to pee so badly I was about to wet myself.
As I was leaving the plane the lead flight attendant smiled pleasantly at me and said, “Welcome to Houston, Mr. Hamar.”
I was on the jetway when that hit me. Houston? What the hell was I doing in Houston? There was no sense getting back on the plane. It obviously wasn’t going anyplace. It was 6:30 in the morning. First things first. I had to get to a bathroom or I’d burst right there.
It took longer than I expected.
When I dragged myself out of the restroom, I’d washed my face and brushed my teeth and run a comb through my hair. I looked almost human. Time to locate a service counter and find out why I was in Houston.
“Oh, Mr. Hamar,” the nice woman said. “You were supposed to connect here to a flight on to Chicago. I’m afraid you’ve missed that connection.” I looked at the ticket that I’d bought on-line as the first available flight to Chicago. Seattle to Chicago, connecting in Houston. Too bad I wasn’t collecting frequent flyer miles for this.
“When is the next flight you can get me on?” I asked. She consulted her timetable, tapped on her keys, and said “Hmmm” a lot.
“The first flight that I can get you on in business class is at 2:25 this afternoon,” she said. “If you want to change to coach I could get you out at 11:45.” She smiled at me waiting for an answer. I calculated the stress of waiting versus the stress of flying in a sardine can.
“I’ll take the 2:30 flight, please,” I said. I looked around at the terminal trying to figure out where I was going to hang out for six hours.
“Here you are,” she said handing me a boarding pass. “Gate C33 boarding at 1:45. If you’d like to relax, feel free to use our President’s Club lounge. It’s between gates C22 and C23. Just show your boarding pass.”
“Thank you,” I said.
I headed off down the concourse toward the distant lounge and discovered I had already passed it. I had to turn around and by the time I got there, I’d had to stop twice to rest. When I entered, however, I found a pleasant place with soft furniture and a continental breakfast spread out. It included a self-serve espresso machine. I looked around as if someone might stop me if I had a shot and then pulled it and went to sit down.
The last cup of coffee I had I’d spit out my nose. What a waste. This cup was not near the quality of either Eye of Dawn or Tovoni’s. But the aroma brought me further awake before I determined that the flavor was’t worth suffering for. I had breakfast and then went back to the reception desk. A young man greeted me as if he’d had to get up at 4:00 a.m. after a hard drunk the night before to open the lounge. Nonetheless, he promised to wake me in adequate time to make my flight if I fell asleep. I found a carousel desk, plugged my laptop in to recharge the battery, and logged into my virtual network.
I’d figured out the names and numbers had to be bank accounts, but I was still missing passwords. My first inclination was to search all Simon’s files for the account numbers, but that turned up a blank. Then I tried searching for the names whose initials spelled out the country in which the account was located.
I hit my desktop search button and entered Charles Hammond. Instantly an e-mail popped up, sent to Simon by himself. Subject: Flight conditions. Text: Charles Hammond 4178311. A phone number? Or could this possible be the password for the Swiss account.
I kept searching, this time for George Brown. GB was the country code for Great Britain. I had to wade through a lot of different files as Simon had not conveniently sent an e-mail message for George. It was buried in a business report followed by a string of numbers. When I reached Aldus Dominic, I found no match at all. I searched another name and got a hit, but the following name was missing. Continuing down the list, only two more of the names yielded results. It looked like I hit another dead end.
I checked my own e-mail for messages while I thought about what to do next. Half a dozen messages had been routed to junk mail and the rest should have been. I scanned through the titles in the junk mail and noted one advertising a popular male dysfunction drug. My junk filter had caught it, but the way it was written caught my eye: v i g o r m a l e. There were spaces between the characters. Of course the routines in the junk mail catch variations on keywords as well. I switched to my search program and entered A l d u s D o m i n i c. There he was, complete with code number. Finding the rest of the files if Simon had decided to mask the names was going to be a pain. But, if junk mail could find them, so could I.
I spent the next two hours adapting a hacking tool with a search algorithm that would include common variants, substituting numbers for letters, inserting asterisks and spaces, and generally looking for patterns instead of words. When I looked up, the male receptionist was looking down the row of carousels at me.
“Your flight is boarding, Mr. Hamar,” he said calmly.
“Boarding?” I said. “How much time do I have?”
“Oh if you hurry, you shouldn’t have any trouble.”
Damn.
I don’t do hurry all that well.
I shoved my computer in my bag and headed out the door. It was already almost 2:00. There was no way I was going to make this. I reached Gate C27 on my way to C33 with plenty of time. But that gate proved to be a dead end. Gate C33 was the opposite direction.
But that was where I got my first big break of the day. An electric cart was just leaving C27 and I flagged it down. It took me only a minute to explain to a competent man, who was apparently used to dealing with everyone else’s emergencies, that I was about to miss my plane because I couldn’t walk fast enough because of a heart condition, etc. etc. He looked at me, took my flight number and gate information and told me to hang on tight.
I’m sure there are speed limits for electric carts in airports, but when they heard the constant beep, beep, beep of the oncoming cart, people scattered and we reached the gate as the attendant was announcing my name and asking for immediate boarding. I slid into my seat and fastened my seatbelt as the door closed. I flagged the flight attendant.
“This plane is going to Chicago, isn’t it?” I asked.
“That’s right, sir. We’ll have you there in three hours.” I relaxed and when the plane taxied out onto the runway, I fell immediately asleep.
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