Avenger by Forsyth Frederick

Author:Forsyth, Frederick [Forsyth, Frederick]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Transworld
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

PART TWO

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The Photo

Since the attempt by the FBI to unmask him six years earlier, Dexter had decided there was no need for face-to-face meetings. Instead, he built up several defensive lines to mask his location and his identity.

One of these was a small one-bedroom apartment in New York, but not the Bronx where he might be recognized. He rented it furnished, paid by the quarter, regular as clockwork, and always in cash. It attracted no official attention and neither did he when he was in residence.

He also used mobile phones only of the type using pay-as-you-talk SIM cards. These he bought in bulk out of state, used once or twice and consigned to the East River. Even the NSA, with the technology to listen to a phone call and trace the exact source, cannot identify the purchaser of these use-and-jettison SIM mobiles, nor direct police to the location of the call if the user is on the move, keeps the call short and gets rid of the technology afterwards.

Another ploy is the old-fashioned public phone booth. Numbers called from a booth can, of course, be traced; but there are so many millions of them that unless a specific booth or bank of them is suspected it is very hard to pick up the conversation, identify the caller as a wanted man, trace the location and get a police car there in time.

Finally he used the much-maligned US mails, with his letters being sent to a ‘drop’ in the form of an innocent Korean-run fruit and vegetable shop two blocks from his apartment in New York. This would be no protection if the mail or the shop was targeted and put under surveillance, but there was no reason why it should be.

He contacted the placer of the advert on the cellphone listed. He did so from a single-use mobile phone and he motored far into the New Jersey countryside to do it.

Stephen Edmond identified himself without demur and in five sentences described what had happened to his grandson. Avenger thanked him and hung up.

There are several giant newspaper-cuttings libraries in the USA and the best-known are those of the New York Times, Washington Post and Lexis Nexis. He used the third, visited its New York database and paid cash.

There was enough to confirm who Stephen Edmond was, and there had been two articles concerning the disappearance years ago of his grandson while a student aid worker in Bosnia, both from the Toronto Star. This caller seemed to be genuine.

Dexter called the Canadian back and dictated terms: considerable operating expenses, a fee on account and a bonus on delivery of Zilic to US jurisdiction, not payable in the event of failure.

‘That’s a lot of money for a man I have not met and apparently will not meet. You could take it and vaporize,’ said the Canadian.

‘And you, sir, could go back to the US government, where I presume you have already been.’

There was a pause.

‘All right, where should it be sent?’

Dexter gave him a Caymanian account number and a New York mailing address.

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