Page 59 of Savage Redemption

She doesn’t ask why, just does as I ask. A couple of minutes later, I’m looking at an image of our mystery entrepreneur. From there it’s a simple enough matter to feed that into my international facial recognition program, another of my little inventions, and set it to search.

“What’s happening now?” Eva prompts. “That’s some sort of reverse image search.”

“That’s right, but my version is more… thorough. It doesn’t just rely on Google. If our Mr di Santo has appeared online in any way, shape, or form, anywhere across the global web, this will identify him. Might take a while, though.”

Eva lets out a low whistle. “This is sophisticated. Are those military records?”

“Yup. I can also check on criminal records, education, medical, the lot. If it uses the internet, then I’m in. If nothing turns up, I’ll try an age regression program to get an image of him as a younger man, even a boy. He’ll be there. Somewhere.”

She shakes her head in disbelief. “I’m impressed. How long will it take?”

“Well, as you can imagine, there’s a lot of data to process. A couple of hours, perhaps. Shall we go grab a drink?”

“I’d rather stay here, if you don’t mind. Watch the genius at work.”

Flattery indeed, coming from her. “Okay. While we’re waiting, I thought I might run my Dosh Digger system on Kris Kaminski’s Cayman Islands account, see if that turns up anything of interest.”

“I thought those accounts were meant to be impregnable.”

“Nothing’s impregnable, Professor. You and I both know that.” I set the scan to run and watch the results flash up before me. “Ah, here we are. His payroll. Now, let’s see if di Santo is one of his employees.”

A few minutes are enough.

“He’s not there,” Eva mutters.

“No. The cash transactions are all one way. I’d say they’re more like debt repayments.”

“Why does di Santo owe Kaminski money?”

“Maybe Ethan needs to ask him.”

“Won’t that cause… problems? If Kaminski realises we’ve been spying on him?”

“That’s Ethan’s problem. I think—” I pause as results start to churn out of my mug shot program. “Holy fuck!”

Eva leans over my shoulder. “Have you found him?”

“Yes, and our Mr di Santo is not what he seems. In fact, he’s not Carlos di Santo at all.”

“Then who is he?”

I enlarge one of the images identified by my system, a press shot from nearly three years ago of di Santo being arrested. Except, the caption below identifies the prisoner as one Adan San Antonio, head of one of Madrid’s foremost Mafia families, being taken into custody for alleged money laundering.

Eva recognises the name and pales. “He can’t be…”

“He is. Check this out, it’s a perfect likeness.”

“That’s the man who trafficked Rosie. He held her prisoner, a slave.”

“Well, that explains why di Santo didn’t exist until just over a year ago. That must be when San Antonio created his alter ego.”

“But what’s he doing here, now? I need to talk to Rosie, to warn her.”

“I think you’ll have to join the queue.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, Rosie went to the clinic. She saw di Santo, or San Antonio. She spoke to him, in Spanish. She definitely recognised him but said nothing. Ethan will want to know why.”

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