Troubleshooter

Chapter 20 - Mr. Schwartz's Nightcall

           

BRADY LISTENED to a silent house. Picking the lock and deactivating the alarm had been easy. He had put some white cotton overshoes over his street-dirty winter boots and had made sure that the legs of his trousers had been clean. He had entered from the back door directly into the kitchen.

While Brady had been driving to his hotel, he had been contemplating. He considered Paul a friend, as far as friendship went in this job. But in Brady's mind, Paul had grown a bit soft in his private sector days. Bugging the office was one thing, with the blessing from the CEO himself maybe even plausible and a first step in the right direction. But the consequential second step had not been on Paul's radar. So Brady had decided to start a little private reconnaissance mission to speed things up. His original plan had been to start hitting the homes of the management team during the workday, when the inhabitants were away. But then he had thought about how convenient it was that the Head of Engineering Mr. Kendall was out traveling, so he had decided to pay it a visit right away.

Brady studied Kendall's kitchen; everything looked neat and orderly. According to the file they had received, Mr. Kendall had divorced a while ago. His kids lived with the Ex, and he had no new current girlfriend. Most likely a cleaning lady made sure that the house was tip-top. Brady opened some random drawers, just to see what the household was all about. There were no particular smells, again, most likely due to the cleaning lady. And Kendall probably had no time to cook anyway.

Brady walked into the front hallway and saw one staircase going up and another behind a door, going down into the cellar. On a sideboard Brady found the collected mail of a few days, partially unopened. Personal affairs, advertising, subscription journals, nothing out of the ordinary.

It took Brady half an hour to get his first find. Houses have three main hiding places: in the clothing wardrobe, behind the desk drawers, or on a bookshelf. The wardrobe did not give up anything, but the desk in the study did. It was an antique writing desk made of wood with two rows of deep drawers left and right. The lower left drawer slid open and Brady rummaged through it. Nothing. However, on second look: The bottom of the drawer was slightly higher than the previous ones he had looked into. He slid it out completely and emptied the contents carefully on the dinner table in the living room to be sure to put it all back as before. Then he removed the false bottom. It was almost predictable: a passport under a different name, a set of credit cards from the major services and three packs of Sterlings, Euros and dollars and some gold coins, carefully arranged so that it wasn't thicker than a few millimeters.

Mr. Kendall had been preparing for an exit!

The Asian Man's Controller had asked two trusted contractors to be on the lookout at the house, just to watch and report. The contractor on the back side of the estate was a patient thickset man in his forties, who looked as if he was just waiting for his wife to come out of the next house. His cover was impeccable, as he was browsing a tabloid paper and all. He had a fantastic memory for people, so his brain gave a little tug when it registered the same person walking the same street twice. This unknown man was not interested in the Kendall home, so it appeared. But twice in a row with no apparent explanation made his appearance suspicious. The man did not return a third time. If in doubt, report. He dialed a number on the burn phone.

"Wilkes here. I am going to check the house out; an unknown man has passed it twice."

He heaved himself of the car and walked over to the garden path, took to the shadows. If the suspicious man had indeed been interested in the house, he most likely had gone around the block of houses and then had made his way through some of the gardens. Wilkes let his eyes adjust to the darkness of the garden after the street light glares.

The man was nowhere to be seen. The house was dark and Wilkes approached it carefully. The back door looked unmolested but that didn't mean that no one had opened it. He took out a handkerchief, spread it carefully on the glass window, which he knew belonged to the study and put his ear down to listen. Scraping. Not loud, but there.

Wilkes shadow-walked back to the street and pressed call-redial. "Wilkes here. He is in the house. Understood, I'll wait for you. If he leaves earlier, I follow."

The rest of the Kendall household brought up nothing suspicious. There was an older PC in an office-converted second bedroom but it appeared not to have been used on a regular basis. Judging from the last update of the antivirus software, it hadn't been started for two months. And Kendall had taken his company laptop with him on his travels. The Brazil travel didn't fit into Brady's discovery yet. If Kendall had planned to skip the country under a new identity, why hadn't he taken the new identity papers with him? Or was he planning to come back and then do the real vanishing act?

Brady glanced at his watch. He had been already in the house for forty-five minutes. Time to move on. Should he take a glance into the cellar? He gave himself five more minutes and went down. The cellar was completely utilitarian, garden stuff, old furniture, some boxes from previous moves, a workbench, some bookshelves with old books and knick-knacks. There was a food storage room with preserves, canned goods, boxes of soft drinks and beer plus a deep-freeze. Brady carefully opened the deep freeze; he once had found a dead body in a similar model. The surprise had rattled him for months, especially as the Russian spy bastard had put an apple into the mouth of the poor sod that had met his end.

But nothing suspicious in there. Pizza, some meat, some frozen fruit. Underutilized.

Time to leave.