Gen left Olmstead there to guard them, warning the sergeant and the cops on duty there to take care; it was at least possible that the kidnappers had stuck trackers in them and might try to grab them back, or worse. She ordered thorough scans for such devices, then left and piloted the cruiser back down to the Central Park north dock, and walked to the federal building behind the big police docks at Fifth and 110th.
By this time it was sunset, and the sunlight was lancing through the great towers to the west, silhouetting them like a dragon’s back against a bronze sky. Gen walked into the fed building, got through security, and went to the office where the federal department of immigration, the FBI, the NYPD, and the Householders’ Union had combined to create a human smuggling task force. Here she found an old acquaintance from her first days in the force, Goran Rajan, who greeted her cheerfully and poured her a cup of tea.
Gen described the situation with her two rescued ones.
“Only two?” Goran repeated.
“That’s right.”
“And they were kept for eighty-nine days?”
“That’s right.”
Goran shook his head. “So this isn’t smuggling, it’s some kind of kidnapping. Was a ransom demanded at any point?”
“Nothing. No one involved seems to know why it happened.”
“Not the victims?”
“Well, I haven’t debriefed them fully yet. They lived in my building and were abducted from it, so I’ve been taking a personal interest. I’ll give them a ride home tonight and ask more questions.”
“Good that you take this over. Because we often find a hundred people in one of those containers. Your guys are not really in our realm.”
“I understand, but I was hoping you would check through your harbor surveillance data and see if you can spot anyone visiting this container to feed these guys. It was probably twice-daily visits.”
Goran sipped tea. “I can try. If they were coming from the surface, we’ll probably see it. If it was being done by robot subs, less likely.”
“How many cameras do you have deployed now?”
“It’s a few million. The limiting factor these days is the analysis. I’ll try to figure out some questions and see what I find.”
“Thanks,” Gen said.
“Remember, the kidnappers will know their hostages are gone. They’ll probably leave the area.”
“That might not be a bad thing,” Gen said.
“No. May I ask if you are expecting me to find anything in particular?”
“I’ve been finding stuff that makes me wonder about Pinscher Pinkerton.”
“Okay. They’re big. They have all the drones and subs you’d need to do the visits automatically. It’s possible this whole procedure was done remotely.”
“Still, you might at least see the drones.” Gen finished her tea and rose to leave. “Thanks, Goran. When can I expect a report?”
“Soon. The computers answer the moment you finish your question. So it’s a matter of having the questions to ask.”
Gen thanked him and went back to her cruiser and headed back to the Frederick Douglass station. There she found Muttchopf and Rosen ready to leave, and she and Olmstead escorted them onto the cruiser and headed down the East River toward home.
The two men sat in chairs on the bridge beside Gen as she stood piloting, looking at the city like tourists. The tallest towers behind them still reflected some of the glow of twilight, though it was night overhead, the clouds a noctilucent pink. The lights of the dusky city bounced and shattered in the wakes on the water.
“You must be kind of blown away,” Gen supposed. “Three months is a long time to be locked up.”
The two men nodded.
“It was a sensory deprivation tank,” Rosen said. “And now this.”
Muttchopf nodded. “It’s beautiful,” he said. “The city.”
“It’s cold,” Jeff added, shivering. “But it smells good.”
“It smells like dinner,” Muttchopf declared. “A New York seafood dinner.”
“Low tide,” Gen pointed out. “But we’ll get you something to eat when we get home.”
“That sounds good,” Rosen said. “Finally. I’m finally beginning to get my appetite back.”
At the Met they got off on the dock, and Gen had Olmstead run the cruiser back to the station. Vlade greeted them, and he and Gen escorted the two men to the dining hall. They were weak. In the dining hall they were offered the chance to sit and be served, but both of them wanted to go through the serving line and choose their food. They heaped their plates high, and poured themselves glasses of the Flatiron’s red, and as they ate and drank, Gen sat across from them asking questions about the night of their abduction. They nodded, shook their heads, shrugged, said little; then, with a look around, Muttchopf said to her, “How about you come up with us to our place when we’re done here.”
She nodded and waited for them to finish.
Eventually they said they were stuffed, and Jeff was looking sleepy. They took the elevator up to the farm floor and went to the southeast corner. There they found two hotellos, a smaller one next to the larger one. Mr. Hexter came out to greet his new neighbors. The two men shook hands with him politely, but clearly they were beat.
They ducked into their hotello and looked around dumbly.
“Home sweet home,” Rosen said, and went immediately to his cot bed and lay down on his back.
Muttchopf sat on the chair by his cot. “I see our pads are gone,” he noted, gesturing at the single plastic desk.
“Ah,” Gen said. “Anything else missing?”
“Don’t know yet. We didn’t have much.”
“So,” Gen said, “you seemed to be indicating that there was something you wanted to talk to me about?”
Muttchopf nodded. “Look, the night we were snatched, Jeff here activated a covert channel he had inserted into one of the high-frequency trading cables of a company we’ve worked for a few times. He sent off some instructions. He was trying to amend the trading rules and the, the state of the world, I guess you’d say, by a direct fix. Shunt some information and money to the SEC, do some whistle-blowing. I’m not sure what else. He had a whole program, but the point bite was probably what caught someone’s attention. It coulda looked like an ordinary theft, or maybe whistle-blowing. Anyway, very soon after he pushed the button on that, as far as we can remember, we were knocked out. It was almost too fast to be a response, but then again, my memory of it is fuzzy. Maybe it was a couple hours, who can say. But for sure that same night.”
“And who were you working for when this happened?”
“No one. We lost our jobs, we were gigging.”
Gen took this in. “You weren’t working for Henry Vinson?”
Rosen looked surprised at this. “He’s my cousin. We worked for him before.”
“I know. I mean, we saw that in your records.”
Muttchopf spoke when it became clear Rosen wasn’t going to. “We did work for him, yeah. And that was where Jeff put in his tap, in his cousin’s company’s dark pool diver. And that’s also who he did a little whistle-blowing on. But we weren’t working for him that night. We were fired before that.”
“He has always been an asshole,” Rosen said bitterly.