I was growing confident that we’d covered all the bases and were prepared for anything. No matter what happened, we’d know where the money and the van went.
Mo-bot superglued tracking beacons that looked like machine-bolt heads in the spaces above the wheel wells and slid other, waferlike versions of the trackers deep in the stack of money. The devices were called slow-pulse transmitters.
Rather than emitting a constant, and therefore more detectable, transmission, the devices could be calibrated to send out a location at specific intervals. Mo-bot had them set on a thirty-two-second and then a forty-second cycle, and she would shut them down during the actual transfer.
Now all we needed was a meeting point.
Wise climbed into the driver’s seat. I returned to a black BMW X5 parked down the alley and got into the passenger seat. Tavia was driving. Cherie Wise sat in the back.
“Is my husband’s beeper thing working?” she asked.
“Sci?” I said.
“Sending a clear, strong signal,” he said.
“Told you we had it covered,” I said. “I’ve even got them tracking this car.”
Cherie checked her watch, said, “How long until they make contact?”
“Depends how much they want the money,” I said.
“Don’t be surprised if they make us stew awhile,” Tavia said. “Get us tired, a little disoriented, you know?”
Tavia was right. We sat and dozed in the alley until three a.m. with no contact made. Cherie was starting to make noises about returning to the Marriott where she could wait in bed when her cell phone buzzed an alert. A text coming in.
She looked at it and burst into tears. “It’s from Alicia. Or it’s coming from her phone, anyway.”
“We have a trap on Alicia Wise’s cell?” I asked.
“Pulling it up right now,” Mo-bot said.
“What’s it say?” Tavia asked, twisting around in her seat.
“An address. I think it’s in Leblon.”
“Give it to me,” I said, pulling the car alongside the van. I read out the address to Wise.
“Okay,” he said, putting the van in gear. “Let’s go bring our girls home.”
Chapter 40
AT FIRST, DELIVERY of the ransom payment went down the way I’d thought it would. The kidnappers routed Andy Wise to one address and then another in Centro, and since it was largely vacant at that early hour, Tavia and I and the two other cars manned with Private agents had to stay blocks away, watching the digital trackers’ updates on iPads and staying connected in real time over the radio and cellular links.
We never bothered to close the distance and instead paralleled Wise in the white van with four or five blocks between us, shutting down the trackers as he neared each address. After he got to the third, there was no new text message for almost five minutes.
Then my cell buzzed. The pairing between my phone and Wise’s was working. I had a text on my screen from Natalie Wise’s phone to her father’s.
This can be simple. You follow directions, you get your daughters back. In a few minutes we’ll give you a location where you are to park the van. You will see your daughters from afar, and you are going to walk away from the van. Someone will pick it up. If you do everything right, the girls will go to you, and our business is done. Simple. Agreed?
Agreed, Wise responded a moment later.
Go to the northeast corner of Rua Frei Caneca and de Mar?o. Park where you can see to the north. Wait.
“Northeast corner of Frei Caneca and de Mar?o,” Tavia muttered as she got us turned around. “That’s gotta be—”
She floored the accelerator of the X5, said into her microphone, “Andy, you’re going to be parking next to the Sambadrome. It’s where they have the big samba contests during Carnival.”
“Never been there, but I know what it is,” Wise said. “Describe what I’ll be seeing, please.”
Tavia thought, said, “Think the grandstands at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and then think twenty times the size of those grandstands and lining both sides of Fifth Avenue for roughly half a mile. You’ll be looking up a wide, empty concrete street. Park where you can see the entire length of the parade route, but expose yourself and the van as little as possible. Does that make sense?”
“I guess I’ll know it when I see it,” Wise replied.
Cherie unclipped her seat belt, shifted so she was behind and between me and Tavia. She stared through the windshield and slowly, gently, moved her hands against each other as if she were washing them.
“This is going to work,” Cherie said in a wavering voice. “I’ll have them back in my arms soon.”
“That’s the plan,” I said.
“I want us taken to the jet immediately afterward,” she said. “The hell with the Olympics. We’re just not staying. The girls will understand, I’m sure. And Andy, well…there are some things in life not worth fighting about.”
Tavia and I exchanged glances but didn’t join the conversation our client was having with herself. After a while in our business, you learned that people did and said strange things when there were lives on the line.