Chapter 12

Chapter 12—The call Jack was waiting for

11:05 p.m., Sunday December 25

Jack held out his hand to Reginald requesting silence. “Handler here,” he said.
“You’ve got something we want,” the man said.
“Put my daughter on,” Jack calmly commanded. “I’m not talking to you until my daughter tells me she is okay. Put her on the phone.”
“You will do what I say,” the man said.
“Look, you deaf sonofabi**h. I told you to put my daughter on this phone. I’ve got nothing to say to you until I talk to her. Put her the hell on. Right now!”
Jack listened intently, as he detected the man muffling the phone against his chest. “Go bring the bi**h up here,” Jack heard him telling someone who was with him. “Handler won’t talk to me until he hears from her. Go get her.”
For the first time since the ordeal began Jack was starting to think that he just might be able to gain the upper hand. The information Reginald provided filled in some of the blanks. Now he knew what the kidnappers were after, and how he might bargain for Kate’s safety. Then, when the men holding Kate obeyed his command, Jack further sensed a slight shift. He was, however, still far from confident.
Jack also gleaned an important bit in information from the caller when he told his buddy to bring Kate “up.” That means Kate was most likely being held in the basement, because it is unlikely that the kidnappers would base their operation on any level but the main level, as that would make it too hard to defend. That info would be valuable when it came time to rescue Kate.
Jack continued to listen intently. For nearly a full minute the only sound he could hear was that of the man’s breathing, and the beating of his heart. “Amazingly steady—about sixty beats per second,” Jack thought, “this guy is relaxed and confident. I must be more relaxed and more confident.”
 Finally Jack heard the man giving orders to someone he assumed to be Kate. “Tell your dad that you are fine, and that he should give us what we want if he ever expects to see you again.”
After a few more seconds, the weak voice of his daughter squeaked out of the phone. “Dad, you there?”
“Hi Kitten, you okay?” Jack made certain to exude an aura of confidence when he talked to his daughter. If he allowed her to think he was at all panicked, it would weaken her resolve.
“I’m okay. But they said that you …”
“I heard what they told you to say,” Jack interrupted. “I want to know if they’ve hurt you.”
“Not really,” Kate answered. “It got a little rough in the beginning, but I’ll heal up okay …”
With that, the man holding Kate grabbed the phone away from her.
As soon as Jack knew his daughter’s abductor was back on the phone, he returned to his original posture. “You listen to me, you bastard, if you know what’s good for you, you will open the door and release my daughter. Right now. Let her walk outta there. The longer you hold her, the worse I’m gonna make it for you and your family. I promise you that I’ll track you down and kill you. You need to cut your losses, now, and take my advice.”
“Cut the chatter, Handler. I’ve got what you want, and you’ve got what I want.”
That was what Jack was waiting for. Now the negotiations could begin. Up to this point it had all been rhetoric.
After pausing a few seconds, Jack inquired, “What the hell do you think I’ve got?”
“You’ve got the message—the puzzle. Kate gave it to you. We saw her hand it to you in the coffee shop, so don’t mess with me. Now, Handler, my friend, you must understand that we’re not animals. We’re just businessmen, like you. We are not interested in hurting your daughter. We just want the message. Your daughter is blindfolded—she can’t identify us. We are protecting your interests. We can release her if we choose to do so. And we will do just that, once you have given us everything she gave you. You know what I’m talking about.”
“How will I know my daughter is safe?” Jack asked, beginning to think that there might be a solution to the problem. He noted that the kidnapper had a solid mastery of slang and idioms. “He’s grown up in the states. He might be Mossad, but he’s been in the states most of his life,” Jack surmised.
“We do not need to hurt her, if you do what I say,” the man declared. “All we want is the piece of paper she gave you earlier today—the one with the puzzle on it.”
“Then this is what you do,” Jack said. “The two of you—Kate and you—take a cab to my hotel. You already know where I’m staying. When the two of you get here, I will come down to the lobby and meet you. I will give you what you want, and you give me my daughter. That’s pretty simple. You do that, you get what you want, and I let you live.”
Again Jack heard the caller attempting to muffle the phone. “Put her back in the … bedroom, and tie her up.”
Jack was relieved that Kate’s abductor did not deny that he knew what hotel Jack was staying at. That strongly suggested that he was associated with Ice Pick Man. That pleased Jack, because it meant that he might be dealing with a single entity.
Jack also caught the hesitation when he ordered Kate to be returned to the bedroom. “He started to say ‘basement,’ Jack reasoned, “but thought better of it.”
After a few moments, the man again talked to Jack. “Jack, it’s okay if I call you by your first name, right? Jack, can you imagine what your daughter’s hands will look like in an hour, or two hours? It’s pretty amazing what a wire tie will do to blood flow, if it’s tight enough. I’ll bet by morning, her hands will be cold and purple. How long does it take for gangrene to set in? Do you know anything about that?”
“I hope you’re not that stupid,” Jack interrupted. “You know better than to harm her. You’d better pay attention to what I’m telling you.”
“No, Jack, you listen to me. You need to hear this,” the kidnapper said. “Sometimes amputation can save a person who has gangrene. So maybe she will live, if someone finds her soon enough. But I’ve heard that it’s a very painful death. Now, Jack, is that what you want for her? To die up here alone. She’s brave now, but that will change. Once she starts to feel the pain in her hands and arms; once the fever of infection sets in. Then delirium. Then more pain—more pain than she can handle. More pain than anyone could handle—even more than the great Jack Handler could handle. Finally, merciful death. And she will welcome it. She will pray for death. Is that what you want for your daughter? For your beloved Kate? You will find her curled up in a ball in a cold room. You will see the pain in her dead eyes …”
“I hope you’re too smart to hurt her,” Jack told him. “I don’t give a damn about you. But I do have pity for your family.  Some of them are probably nice innocent people. They don’t even know what a miserable failure you are, do they? I will take no joy in whacking them. There’ll be nothing in it for me, except revenge. Just know that if my daughter is hurt in any way, I will invest the rest of my life hunting down your entire family, and destroying them in the most vicious way I can imagine. I have a hunch you know more than a little about me. If you do, you know what I’m capable of.”
“You can say what you want,” the abductor interrupted. “I don’t care. I’m not worried. But you need to think about what you do. I’m giving you the best opportunity you will ever have to save your daughter. You need to be smart.” He paused for a second before pushing the button that he knew would trigger a reaction in Jack. “You killed Kate’s mother, … Beth, your wife. Isn’t that right? You didn’t actually pull the trigger, but it was your fault. Well, now I’m giving you a chance to be smarter. Kate does not have to die. You can save her life—if you want to. This is what you need to do. And I really hope you do it. I would like nothing better than to see you and your very beautiful daughter reunited. And unharmed. Isn’t that what you want?”
“What the hell is it that you want?” Jack demanded of his daughter’s kidnapper.
“I told you, I want the information the detectives removed from your friend’s contact at the State Department. That’s it. Bring that to me, all of it, everything she gave you, and you get your daughter back. How simple can I make it?”
“Tell me exactly how we make the exchange,” Jack said. “Nothing happens without my daughter coming back first.”
“Of course,” the abductor told Jack. “I would have it no other way. This is what you do. Bring everything Kate gave you down to the lobby of your hotel at exactly 12:45 a.m. Don’t come down any earlier. I will walk in with your daughter. There will be another man with us. Your daughter and my friend will wait in the lobby, just inside the doors, and I will approach you by myself. Hand me the envelope. I will examine it, and if it is what I am expecting, I will leave. My friend will go with me. And Kate will stay.”
Jack realized that the kidnapper had the stronger hand, so he decided to take a different approach. “You won’t hurt her. You know that she won’t be able to recall the whole puzzle. And certainly not the solutions. But I have the entire puzzle, and I have the solutions.”
There followed dead silence, for an uncomfortable length of time. For just a moment, Jack considered giving the kidnapper more to think about. He had just revealed a pair of aces, no need to show his whole hand—not right now. “The next person who blinks, loses,” Jack was thinking. So, he remained silent.
Finally, Kate’s kidnapper broke the uneasy silence. “You’ve deciphered it? The whole thing?”.
“Damn right, I’ve cracked it—all four lines.”
“Then tell me what they are, and I’ll release your daughter right now.”
Jack pretended he did not hear what Kate’s abductor had just said. “I suspect you’ve already got the third line,” Jack said. “The third line is “Hawaii to China in fifty.”
The voice at the other end remained silent for a moment. “Your daughter gave us that line. What else you got? Give me the rest and we’ve got a deal.”
“Alaska to Russia in fifty,” Jack said. “That’s one of the other lines. Now, that’s all you get until I get my daughter.”
For the first time since this conversation began, Jack felt like he was making substantial progress. It was obvious to him that the kidnapper was getting some information from Kate. But Jack knew she had only that one line to give up. When he provided the solution to the other line, suddenly the kidnapper was more cooperative. Besides, Jack knew that even the most callous among killers did not want to see their own family harmed. He felt that Kate’s kidnapper must know enough about his reputation to take the threat seriously. Jack figured the kidnapper was at least to some degree concerned about that.
 “I’ll be there,” Jack said. “And my daughter had better be there too—and smiling.”
With that the kidnapper hung up.
Jack sat back in his seat, and stared at his phone.  “Reg, we’ve got our hands full with this. We’ve got to decipher the other two lines, without keys. … Unless you know what the keys are. How about it? What exactly do you know?”
“Not much more than I’ve already given you,” Reginald said. “Tell me all you know. Tell me everything Kate told you about it. Maybe there’s a clue in it somewhere.”
“Kate said the original was on a computer ticket, for a Knicks game,” Jack said.
“A Knicks game,” Reginald repeated.
“Right, the code was written on the blank side of the ticket.” Jack said. “But she didn’t say anything was highlighted or underlined, and there was no additional writing.”
“I think the clue to the remaining keys would have something to do with the fact that it was on a ticket, an NBA ticket,” Reginald responded, deep in thought. “Do you know who they were playing?”
“Lakers,” Jack said. “Kate said it was a Knicks-Lakers game.”
“How much time do we have?” Reginald said, checking his watch. “We’re going to have to get awfully lucky to solve this in time.”
“What the hell do you normally do?” Jack asked, his impatience growing more obvious.
“Usually he would leave a voice mail for me, and it would give the keys,” Reginald answered. “But, as a precaution, he would always put his messages on a piece of printed matter containing the keys, or at least something that would allow me to figure out what the keys were. That’s where I would look now, if I had a chance. Without more information, I’m not so sure if we have long enough info to figure it out.”
“The first two were pretty simple,” Jack said. “Why would the rest of it not be just as simple?”
“Because the meat of the message will be contained in the other two lines,” Reginald said. “It’s all important, but if there is some particularly sensitive information, it would be in one or both of the two lines you have not yet deciphered. Sometimes the keys for the remaining lines would be buried in the plaintext of the easier cryptograms.”
“What are our chances of solving this in the next hour?” Jack asked.
“We would have to be very lucky,” Reginald said.
“Can’t count on that,” Jack answered. “This is what we do. I will come up with some bogus plaintext solutions for the two remaining lines—something that these fellows will hopefully buy. It will have to make sense. These guys do not know whether or not we have the keys. They apparently do not have all four lines of the puzzle.  Kate may have a second copy with her, but it doesn’t sound like she gave them anything—only what she could recall. But they are not going to do any more work on a solution, not if they think they are going to get it from us. So, if I can give them something that looks legit, they just might accept it.”
“And, in the meantime, I will see what I can do to decipher it.” Reginald said.
“Exactly,” Jack answered. “It’s our best shot.”