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Owen Keating marvelled that the price of his daughter’s freedom, perhaps even her life, could weigh so little as he carried the briefcase from his study to the library. When he got there, he pushed the troubling thought from his mind and focused on what mattered, ensuring the ransom could be tracked once it was collected by Alice’s kidnappers.
He stood to one side and watched while a small device, no bigger than a ten pence piece, was slipped into the middle of one of the stacks of money – the stack was selected at random to decrease the chances of it being found by the kidnappers if they made a cursory search of the money. Though he had been given a brief demonstration earlier in the day, he found it hard to believe that something which looked as if it should be given out in change b
