“That’s near where Lammers’s company is located, isn’t it?”
“Not far,” said Myer. “A couple kilometers away. Look at the rear window. There’s something very big inside the van. We analyzed the photos and came to the conclusion they’re large steel boxes.”
“The drone?”
“No idea. But whatever it is, it’s big and it’s heavy. Look at how low the chassis is riding on the suspension. Compare this picture to the others. We’re estimating that in the second photo the van’s carrying a load of at least six hundred kilos.” Myer chose another photograph from his pile and handed it around. “The last one we got was in Lugano on Saturday.”
Lugano, just thirty kilometers away from Ascona, where Blitz lived. Von Daniken had been right about the paint chips he’d found at Blitz’s house. The van had been parked in the garage. “So Gassan picks up the explosives in Leipzig, turns them over to Blitz along with the van, then he hightails it to Sweden. Blitz takes the van to Zurich and picks up the drone from Lammers’s factory.” He studied the pictures a moment longer. “Is that it?”
“That’s all we’ve got on the white van.”
Von Daniken shot Myer a glance. “What do you mean on the white van? Is there another one you haven’t told me about?”
“He’s driving a black van now. He painted it.”
“How do you know?”
“We don’t know where he got the white van originally, but we do know that the plates it carried were stolen from an identical van in Schaffhausen. Most people don’t bother reporting this kind of thing to the police. They think it’s a prank and report the loss to the motor vehicles department. Gassan and his buddies think they’re smart doing this. But we’re smarter. I guessed if they stole one set of license plates, they might have stolen another. I drilled down and checked for any reports of missing or stolen license plates. The owner of a black VW van in Lausanne reported his plates were missing two weeks ago. Not the van, mind you, just the plates. I ran the numbers through ISIS. Look what I found.”
Myer passed around the last photograph. An 8 x 10 of a black Volkswagen van moving at speed through an intersection. In the background were a billboard advertising Lindt chocolate and the sign of a well-known furniture retailer.
“The photo was taken yesterday at five p.m. on the outskirts of Zurich.”
“But how can we be certain it’s the same van?”
“Compare the front bumpers of the two vans. Both have a noticeable dent beneath the headlight. And both have a pine-tree-shaped air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror. One might be a coincidence. But both? Never.”
“Call the city police,” said von Daniken. “Have them put out a warrant for the van. Run a check on every picture of every vehicle taken in the eastern half of the country over the last twenty-four hours.”
“You got it.”
Von Daniken brought the picture closer. “Who’s that driving? It couldn’t be Blitz. He was dead by then.” He showed the photograph to Myer, who frowned and put on a pair of bifocals. “Something’s off here. He doesn’t look normal.”
“Let’s get the photo to the crime lab. They can blow up the picture and send it to Interpol to run through their facial recognition software.”
Myer shambled out of the room.
Von Daniken spun in his chair and directed his attention toward the two men still in the room. “So much for the eastern front. Any progress in the west?”
It was Klaus Hardenberg’s turn to talk. Hardenberg, the pudgy, whey-faced investigator who’d abandoned a lucrative career with an international accounting firm in Zurich for the rough-and-tumble pastures of law enforcement.
“Blitz did his banking at the Banca Popolare del Ticino. We got the bank’s name from Eurocard, which identified it as the bank of record for Blitz’s account. The average monthly balance on the account was twelve thousand francs. As for payments, it’s mostly the usual. Household items. Credit card bills. Gas. Electric. The man took a weekly cash withdrawal of five hundred francs, always from the same automatic teller in Ascona. All in all, a modest lifestyle for a man driving a luxury automobile and living in a multimillion-franc villa.”
“Unless the villa isn’t his,” said von Daniken.
“My thoughts exactly.” Hardenberg smiled thinly. “The first thing that caught my eye was a wire transfer that hit the account a week ago for exactly one hundred thousand francs. The note on the payment instructions read, ‘Gift to P.J.’ The next day, Blitz withdrew the entire amount in cash over the counter at his branch in Lugano. All on the up-and-up. He called ahead, spoke personally with the bank manager and explained that it was the down payment for a boat he was building in Antibes.”
“Did anyone find the money at his home?”
“I checked with Lieutenant Conti. Nothing turned up.”
“Who transferred the hundred k to Blitz?”
“Ah,” said Hardenberg. “Here’s where things get interesting. The money came from a numbered account at the Royal Trust and Credit Bank of the Bahamas. Freetown branch.”
“Never heard of it,” said von Daniken, whose experience had brought him into contact with most meaningful financial institutions under the sun.
“It’s a small bank with just under a billion in assets. It doesn’t keep a brick-and-mortar space. It’s a paper entity. If you’ll permit me, though, I’d like to stop with Blitz for a moment and move on to Lammers.”
There were nods all around. Hardenberg fortified himself by guzzling a half a can of Red Bull and lighting a Gauloise.
“As I was saying, our attention now falls on Theo Lammers,” Hardenberg went on. “His business was on the up-and-up. All accounts are at USB, which is a first-rate shop. I ran his numbers. Nine months ago, he received a two-million-franc wire transfer from none other than the Royal Trust and Credit of the Bahamas.”
“Two million from the same bank?” Von Daniken slid to the edge of his seat. “If it came from the same people who wired Blitz the hundred thousand francs, we’ll know precisely who’s financing this racket. What was the money for?”
“I took the liberty of calling Michaela Menz at Robotica. The funds hit the receivables account. That meant the two million francs was for work completed. The problem was that there was no invoice number attached to the transfer. She doesn’t know what the money was for.”
Myer looked at von Daniken. “It was for the drone.”
Von Daniken nodded. Now they were getting somewhere. “Did the money come from the same account number at the Royal Trust and Credit?”
Hardenberg shook his head. “That would’ve made our lives too simple. It came from an unrelated numbered account. At least, unrelated on the surface. The chance that Blitz and Lammers are doing business with the same hole-in-the-wall in the Bahamas is a million to one. I relayed these feelings to Mr. Davis Brunswick, the bank’s chief executive. He was not forthcoming. At first, I tried charm. Then I told him that unless he gave me some information on who the accounts belong to, he would find his bank on the weekly black list circulated to over three thousand institutions across Switzerland and shared with every law enforcement agency in the Western world.”
“Did it work?”
Hardenberg shrugged. “Of course not,” he admitted. “Everyone’s a tough guy these days. I had to revert to plan B. Happily, I’d done a little homework on Mr. Brunswick before our conversation. I’d discovered that he maintained several personal accounts in our country to the tune of some twenty-six million francs. I gave him my word that unless he coughed up information on who was behind these accounts-and any others that might be related to them-I would personally see to it that every last franc of his money would be frozen for the rest of his natural life.”
“And?”
“Mr. Brunswick sang like a baby. Both numbered accounts were set up by a fiduciary firm that’s a subsidiary of the Tingeli Bank. It’s the same firm that executed the purchase of the Villa Principessa on behalf of the Netherlands Antilles holding company.”