“I’d find a way to bust loose. From what I’ve read, most kidnappers are fairly unsophisticated. I mean, they’re probably not highly educated,” Zegna said.
“You don’t need a PhD to put a nine-millimeter round into someone’s head. If you attempt an escape, you’d better be damn sure you won’t be recaptured. Otherwise, your captors are likely to make an example out of you to keep other hostages obedient. Focus on the endgame, which is your survival. Most kidnappings don’t result in loss of life or permanent injury, so it’s usually smarter to find a way to endure the captivity and allow the experts to negotiate your release.”
Kidnap prevention, negotiation, and extraction were all services offered by Quantum. Sometimes high-risk companies hired QIS to mock-kidnap executives to demonstrate what would be involved in being a hostage, to help the execs develop the skills needed to survive. Zegna could benefit from one of those programs. He was the type of client who ignored any and all advice.
Fatigue clawed at Thea, battling with the caffeine she’d ingested twenty minutes ago. She’d just returned from an intensive stay in Iraq, working a journalist’s kidnapping. It’d been a tough one. The ransom cases were often simpler, more direct, than the political ones. Sadly, terrorism, worldwide economic recession, the proliferation of inexpensive weapons, and the globalization of organized crime had all contributed to making kidnapping a billion-dollar-a-year business—and that figure only included the reported cases.
Handlebar Mustache raised his hand again. But before she could field his question, her boss signaled to her through the glass wall of the conference area that he needed her in the situation room.
“Take a ten-minute break, and please help yourselves to coffee and pastries,” Thea told the physicians. “I’ll be back shortly.”
She hurried down the long hallway, the walls covered in breathtaking nature photos her employer had taken during his yearly vacations. His principle used to be that kidnappers didn’t take statutory holidays, so neither would he. But when his cardiologist suggested that, ironically, he had become his own hostage, Hakan Asker had started exploring the rain forests of the world, snapping artful photos at his usual workaholic pace.
Thea herself hadn’t had a chance to breathe over the past few weeks, jetting off to Iraq right after Nigeria, then returning to the home office in London only two days earlier. Sleep was a luxury in their business, which had no regular hours and operated in every time zone of the world.
And with Papa’s party coming up, she still had to finalize his gift.
The situation room’s steel entrance door had no windows. She stared into the retinal scanner on the wall, allowing it to map the blood vessels behind her eyeballs. After a sharp beep, a green light signaled she could enter, and concealed hydraulics swept the door aside.
A large electronic display on the right side of the room listed all of QIS’s ongoing cases. Some hostages’ names had been up there a few days, others a couple of years. Several large video screens covered the longest wall: one showed a news feed; another provided a secure videoconference display for response consultants working around the globe; yet another showcased a map of the world, blinking red dots signifying clients wearing subcutaneous tracking devices.
When clients had to travel on business to dangerous or politically volatile locations—say, Syria or Egypt—they could take comfort in the knowledge that QIS’s situation room was manned 24/7. If they sensed trouble brewing while abroad, they could make contact with Quantum agents at any hour of the day or night, and Quantum could instantly muster a network of black-book contacts to reach them anywhere, anytime, with pinpoint precision.
QIS owner and director Hakan Asker was a strong leader with an air of absolute authority that came from twenty-seven years in the field. These days, he spent most of his time in the office, doing research and managing clients. An elite-response consultant’s fieldwork demanded the sacrifice of any semblance of a personal life, and Hakan had more than done his time.
Thea smiled at her boss. He was hunched over a workstation, typing quickly, using one of the Quantum encrypted e-mail accounts their analysts had designed. When he saw her, Hakan beckoned her over, his hawkish features narrowed in concentration.
“Give me a sec to finish this e-mail. The CFO of Beltrain Communications just called. One of his guys in the Sudan was grabbed. I put Freddy on the job.” Hakan’s jacket bore his trademark elbow patches, giving him a mildly professorial air. Still, she’d trust him to watch her six any day.
“Family?” She always asked for the details, even if she wasn’t the one assigned to the case.
“Poor bastard has five kids and two ex-wives.”