For Mayhem or Madness
9
Side Trip
MAIZI AND I had been gone a little over a month when we stumbled back to Seattle in the middle of the night. I’m not sure which of us was happiest to see the big bed in my upstairs apartment. I know that I hadn’t been in it long enough when Maizie jumped on me with her leash in her mouth. I managed to get my eyes open a slit and see that it was already past eight in the morning. I got out of bed a little stiffly and dressed in jeans and a T-shirt.
We walked down to Tovoni’s to see Jackie and saw the sign on her door that said ‘Closed Sunday.’
“Well, Maizie girl, I guess we don’t get a cookie and coffee from Jackie today. I might as well go back and make a cup myself. How about we go visit Grandma?” I said as the little dog trotted to keep up with my long legs. I reached down and scooped her up in my arms.
I’ve had a standing date with my mother ever since my dad died fourteen years ago. We go to brunch, talk quietly about the latest news, and comfort each other for our losses. Then I take her to the Swedish-American Center where she chats with her friends. It gave me an idea of what I needed to do. She was seventy-five years old and still alert and active.
She hadn’t met Maizie yet, but it was a beautiful day and I was sure we could get outdoor seating at the Wharf. I called ahead to make sure.
“Mom, I’d like you to meet Maizie.”
“Oh, my! What a precious little dog. I thought you were a myth and he was trying to keep a new girlfriend secret,” Mom laughed as she petted my girl.
We got fastened in my car and I lowered the top. I wouldn’t be going fast enough to blow Mom’s hair and it was already nearly eighty degrees out. She held Maizie on her lap.
“Mom, what would you think about visiting your sister?”
“Oh, I think about it often. But, really, it’s too expensive. We write to each other,” she said. I’d met my Aunt Carina years ago when she visited Mom and Dad. She insisted on the Swedish name, Moster Carina. She was as adamantly Swedish as my mother was American. It was comical to watch them interact, argue, and obviously love each other dearly.
“I’m thinking of paying a visit and thought you’d like to come along.”
“You’re going to visit Sweden?”
“Yes. I need to go to Europe for business and thought it would be fun to stop off and meet my cousin, Stig. I’d have to keep going, but you could stay for a couple of weeks or even a month if you want, as long as you are okay flying home alone,” I suggested.
“I’m a big girl now, Dagget. I will behave myself on the airplane.”
“You’ll go?”
“My son is offering to let me visit my sister again before we die. Of course, I’ll go.”
That was the first major hurdle.
I went to my office Monday morning after Maizie and I stopped at Tovoni’s and had coffee with Jackie. The business was doing well and she was busy, but she still took time to come around the counter and pet Maizie. I’d been settled in at my desk long enough to check my systems and see if anyone was trying to contact me when Jordan walked into my office.
“You’re making it hard on me,” he said.
“You’re not supposed to be following me,” I answered.
“I knew they’d keep some record going, but I didn’t think I’d be called on the carpet for your gambling. Forty thousand dollars? Please tell me there was a purpose to spending forty grand of the government’s money at casinos.”
“Money laundering. I’ll have a full report for your people that will accompany my final report on Hacker X.” I carefully did not say the hacker’s name. This was my case now and not the government’s.
“What does money laundering have to do with the hacker?”
“Your agency is always concerned about how people who deal in large amounts of illegally earned cash convert it to legitimate deposits. But how does a person convert a large amount of legitimate deposits and monetary instruments to untraceable cash? Hacker X was a perfectly ordinary guy who would never be looked at twice by the police or FBI. He had a job and paid his taxes. Then one day he disappeared. Without a trace. To do that, he had to convert his bank accounts, stock options, retirement funds, and savings into untraceable cash. How did he do that?” I explained. The fact that it was me who was disappearing went unmentioned.
“I see. Interesting.” Jordan was simply waiting for me. I could play that game. I returned to making flight reservations for Mom and me to Sweden. Using one of their Amex cash cards. “Okay. I’ll bite,” he said at last. “You’re disappearing. Does that mean you know where he is?”
“I know who he is. And I have his online DNA. I can’t have you looking over my shoulder the whole time or he’ll spot me. He’s going to spot me anyway, but I’d like to be nearby when he does.”
“We want him.”
“Not my problem. You told me to stop him, not to bring him in,” I said.
“Orders change.”
“Find him yourself then. I’ve gotten further in three weeks than you have in chasing him for the past year. I’ll stop him, but I won’t make him one of your minions.”
“There are a lot of agencies involved in this, Dag. I’ll do my best to stop the surveillance and get people off your tail but having you on the case doesn’t mean any of the other guys have stopped their search as well. You know how these games get played.”
“Yeah. The EFC guys have continued to follow me online for five years. It keeps me sharp.”
After a long chat, I gave Mrs. Prior a credit card and an ATM card for my personal account. She was to take care of Maizie while I was gone, including grooming appointments, vet bills, and food. My rent would be auto-deposited, and my normal bills were set to pay automatically from the bank. She’d collect my mail and sort it, plus check on my office with Maizie once a week. A second deposit from the company would be made to her accounts as my employee. She even agreed to take my car out for a long drive with Maizie on Sundays while I was gone and be sure to fill the tank and wash the car, using the credit card to pay. I’d found a treasure in Mrs. Prior, even if she did think my dog talked to her—and me.
Mom and I flew to Sweden and were met at the airport by my cousin Stig, Moster Carina, and Stig’s slightly hyper thirteen-year-old daughter Teresia. “Kusin Dag,” Stig exclaimed. “Välkommen hemåt an Sverige!” I hadn’t prepared any Swedish phrases to answer him with.
“It’s nice to meet you Cousin Stig,” I said. “And you Miss Teresia.”
Not all Swedes are blond like I am. Certainly, the dark-haired girl excitedly talking to her great aunt from America harkened to the North Sweden roots of her mother. We were treated to a good dinner and then shown to bed. Mom stayed with her sister and I was invited to Stig’s guest room.
“Always be careful of what you share online,” I said, concluding my computer safety lecture to Teresia. We’d been in Sweden for three days and my first cousin once removed had become my almost constant companion, functioning as an interpreter and guide. It seems she already had a bit of hero-worship going on before we arrived and I discovered my mother had been telling stories of my career via her monthly letters to her sister for years.
“I will be careful, Dag,” she said. “But you must be careful, too. You are going after a very big evil.” Of course, I’d had to tell them a little about my case and why I’d be leaving in the morning.
“I don’t know that he is evil. If I were a law enforcement officer, I would be concerned only with whether he broke a law. But I am an investigator. I must decide if he is good or evil. Either way, he is a dangerous man.”
“I am going to be a dangerous woman,” Teresia said. I wasn’t sure that the message got across.
I gave Mom an Amex card and PIN that still had a couple thousand on it and encouraged her to use it every day while she was in Sweden. I’d withdrawn eight grand from it and the full ten from another to convert to Swedish krona. While there is a limit to how much cash you can carry without declaring it when you leave the US, the same is not true in Europe or Asia. Mom looked at me and sighed as we stood waiting for the call for my train to board.
“Subterfuge,” she sighed. “Is there anything else you need?”
“Um… Could you visit Maizie when you get home and tell her I’m all right?” I asked. Even being gone for the week we had so far, I found I missed my companion.
“Of course I will! That will be something to look forward to when I get back,” she said. They called the boarding signal and Mom turned all serious. “I know you need to disappear for a while, Dag, but remember to come home. We’ll miss you.” I kissed her on the cheek.
Stefan Nilsson boarded the train. I was no longer Dag Hamar.
I was pretty lost in Sweden where all the spoken language sounded the same to me. That would be one of the hardest parts of traveling with a Swedish passport. At any time, someone could speak to me and I wouldn’t understand a thing that was said. But Denmark was worse. Not only could I not understand what was said, I couldn’t read the signs. They had a bunch of strange characters in their alphabet and they didn’t mean the same as what I thought. Nonetheless, I managed to find the train in Copenhagen that would take me to Hamburg and then to Frankfurt and then back to Amsterdam. Mostly, I said as little as possible.
I wished I could take time to sightsee, but now that I had created a distraction, I wanted to put as much distance between myself and anyone following me as I could. The trains were comfortable and I wondered if I should stay on them farther south before I made my next jump but I wanted to get to Asia as soon as possible. That turned out to be an odd combination of flights.
It’s more difficult to buy an airline ticket with cash these days than in the past, but it can be done. I knew what flight I wanted based on my online research. I bought a Dutch SIM card for one of my disposable phones and used it to talk to several different agencies and ticket counters. I found a travel agent who could book my flight and was willing to take a cash payment. I booked the ticket out a week in advance to make sure the transactions had all cleared and picked up the ticket two days later.
My next task was shopping. I was headed to Asia during the rainiest season of the year. And it would be near ninety degrees as well. I bought new clothes that would stead me as a backpacker. I bought a new roll-aboard suitcase that doubled as a backpack. The bonus was that it had a daypack that could be strapped to the roll-aboard. That would be perfect for carrying my computer.
Having learned my lesson at EFC the last time I changed my appearance, I took all the new clothes to a wasserette and checked each item for labels and tags before washing everything and packing it. The slacks and short sleeved dress shirts were all permanent press. I was as casual as I ever dressed.
By the time I caught my flight for Singapore, I was just a gawky, middle aged Swedish guy off to sightsee through Asia. In the airport, I bought a black fedora to cover my blond hair. It actually helped that the suitcase looked new. I looked like an old guy on an adventure.
I had to change planes in Frankfurt, but that bit of backtracking saved two thousand dollars on my ticket. Go figure. Flying non-stop from Frankfurt to Singapore cost nearly three thousand dollars. Connecting to the same flight from Amsterdam cost eight hundred seventy-five.
All the cash I’d withdrawn in Sweden was in krona. Sweden doesn’t use the Euro. So, I exchanged most of it for Euros in Amsterdam. I was taking a hit every time I exchanged money but found that it is cheaper to exchange cash at small currency exchange shops than at the big companies at airports. By exchanging cash in small increments, it was putting one more step between me and being traced.
No visa is required for Swedes visiting Singapore, but like most countries, they want to see that you have a ticket out of the country before they let you in. My round-trip ticket to Amsterdam was refundable and changeable. I found the Thai Airways ticket counter and bought a round-trip ticket to Bangkok. Here’s a strange thing. If you cross into Thailand by land from Malaysia or Cambodia, you can have a fifteen-day visa. If you arrive by air, you can have thirty days. When I boarded my plane a week after I’d arrived in Singapore, the clock started ticking.
I needed to find Terry Whiteman.
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