There it was: the camera. It was snugged into its padding in a far corner of the case. Wellstone lifted it up and, still wearing gloves, took great care when placing it on the duvet cover. This was what made the case so heavy, and this was what he’d come for: the instrument of his vengeance.
He repositioned his flashlight, then carefully felt around the edges of the device. It looked like an old Hasselblad 500C box camera, except it was larger and covered with a wooden inlay. The standard controls for focusing and exposure were visible, but there was also a row of unlabeled buttons. A small metal box had been retrofitted to the antique upper lid, most likely the Bluetooth apparatus Daisy had told him of.
But enough gawking: time to figure out just how Moller worked his scam. Wellstone slid his fingers around the flanks of the camera, trying to figure out how it opened while being careful to leave no signs of tampering. Damn, it was like a Chinese puzzle box…and then, suddenly, he heard a click and the lid sprang open. He must have accidentally pressed a hidden detent. His luck was still holding.
Now, adjusting the flashlight once again, he carefully opened the lid. The interior was even more complicated than he’d expected: a couple of circuit boards, what looked like RAM chips, and a microprocessor, in addition to the guts of a 6×6 camera. But he searched in vain for the hard disk or SSD drive he knew must be somewhere inside. In his coat pocket, he had a disk cloner that could create a bit-for-bit image in ten minutes, as well as a two-terabyte flash stick. But he couldn’t copy the disk if he couldn’t find the damn thing.
Muttering a curse, he picked up his flashlight and bent over the device, peering more closely. No hard disk or SSD array for storage…
It was then that Wellstone noticed, hidden under a ribbon cable, a line of identical black chips, each the size of a thumbnail and thin as a communion wafer. They had tiny labels, which bore equally tiny printing in German. What the hell were these?
He looked at some of the labels. GEISTER. HEXEN. D?MONEN. SKELETTE.
In an epiphany, Wellstone understood. Those small, identical chips were nonvolatile memory cards, such as one would find in a home security camera. And each held phony digital images. Wellstone knew enough German to translate the handwritten labels. Geister—ghosts. Hexen—witches. D?monen—demons. Skelette—skeletons. That bastard would snap a photograph, and then—by manipulating this camera—choose a fake from his miniature gallery to superimpose over the final. It confirmed what he thought.
There was no hard disk in the camera, after all—but this was even better. He could take one or two of the chips—he’d snag the ones at the far end—and Moller probably wouldn’t even notice for a while. No need for any time-consuming copying. Pushing the ribbon cable to one side, he fished his fingers into the device, preparing to pluck out the last two chips in the array.
But it wasn’t as easy as he expected. The entire row of chips was held in place by a steel rod that lay across their upper edges and snapped into place on the camera’s inner body. It should be a simple matter of lifting this retaining rod and removing the chips. But the rod seemed stuck in place, and he couldn’t see what was—
All of a sudden, he heard voices in the hallway outside the door.
Wellstone felt his heart freeze over as he recognized Betts’s argumentative voice. “Couldn’t it wait?”
“I don’t wish to leave it unattended.” This was Moller’s voice.
Wellstone crouched over the bed, paralyzed by surprise and dismay. What should he do?
“Hurry up!” Betts shouted petulantly, not caring if he disturbed the entire wing of the hotel.
“Eine Minute!” Moller called back irritably. Then, in a lower voice: “Die dumme Ames geben mir keine Ruhe.”
The voice was now directly outside the door. Wellstone yanked at the retaining rod, first gently, then violently. It wouldn’t give.
He heard the click of a lock disengaging, heard a rattling sound as the latch he’d partially set kept the door of the room from opening. Wellstone realized he had no choice. He couldn’t take the entire camera. He didn’t dare break it apart. Quickly, he reached for his phone, took a series of burst shots of the camera’s interior.
More rattling at the door. “Dieser verfluchte Schlüsseloch!” came the mutter from just outside.
Moving like lightning, Wellstone put the camera back into its foam nest; closed, latched, and zipped the case; placed it back on the floor; smoothed the end of the bed; put his phone in his pocket; made sure his tools—flashlight, mallet, chisel, drive cloner, and USB stick—were all accounted for; then walked backward until he felt the window curtains brush against him, all the while keeping an eye on the door.