Before: Sam Ireland Thriller Book 4 (Sam Ireland Thriller Series)

by Finn Óg

  “Well, can you ask that branch to find out? Or ask why they’re hunting for this phone?”

  “Not without raising flags we don’t want fluttering, or without giving away my interest in all of this, no. If that’s what you want, I can do it, but I’m back to barracks, and the truth is, you might not be any further forward. I’m no’ supposed to be here, mind? I canny stay on if they realise I’m moonlighting on something, and whatever happens, I canny be found in a foreign jurisdiction. They’ll think I’ve gone rogue – or mercenary.”

  Áine sat quietly for a while, trying to find the logic of what she was being told. “You don’t think we’re wrong, do you?”

  “About what?”

  “That maybe they are looking for Sam after all? That we’ve been hoodwinked?”

  “I wondered that. In all honesty, I can’t say for sure. But I don’t see how this would be the way to do it. Nightmare seems sure they’re trying to locate the device. If they’re looking for Sam, they’d want to locate Sam – not the device that contacted him.”

  “Yeah, but as you say, it’s part of an intelligence picture. If they’ve made that connection—”

  “Which is unlikely. It was a phone call to a foreign country and to a man reasonably well removed from Sam. Far as anyone else is concerned, Sam’s nowhere near this phone.”

  “But if they’ve somehow made the connection, and they know Sam has left the Caribbean, then the phone would be an obvious thing to monitor as maybe another call could place and locate him? Or maybe they think he’s coming to the phone?”

  “All of that’s possible,” Min conceded. “I’ve been kicking that around a bit too. But it’s more credible, I reckon, that whoever owns this phone is on a watch list, or the plods in some UK police force have made a request to trace the phone after a blackmail request. That could happen.”

  “So a detective investigating, say, the suicide of that kid in England, would ask for information on the phone?”

  “I don’t think the cops would have the capacity for cracking into this type of tech by themselves. They’d probably hand all the information they have on the blackmail to the National Crime Agency, who might hand it on to GCHQ and hope that it eventually climbs to the top of their in tray.”

  “And what would happen then?”

  “I honestly don’t know – it’s not my area. I imagine they’ll take a look, make an assessment as to whether they want to get evidential, or if there’s an intelligence opportunity instead.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look, this might be a bit tricky to get your head around, but their job isn’t about solving past crimes. Their job is about preventing future crimes. In all honesty, military intelligence and the security services could solve most of the big crimes already committed, but that’s no’ what they’re there for. Their job is about knowing what’s coming, building a picture of the networks involved and allowing them to play through their plans so they can get as accurate a picture as possible.”

  “But that’s criminal in itself!” Áine was on the cusp of a rant. “What about that poor suicide kid’s family? They deserve justice!”

  Min held up his paw. “It’s grim, I know, but think it through. If there’s an intelligence opportunity in something they find, they’ll take it.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like, I dunno – maybe there’s a link to some prostitute and some Russian criminal? Maybe the Russian criminal is in the pay of some oligarch with influence on a Kremlin staffer? Who knows what messages or pressure could be sent up the chain and what information could come down it.”

  “Are you serious? They’d let that kid’s family—”

  “You’re no’ being rational. Their job isn’t justice for some poor family who has lost a kid, their job is to keep their country safe from cyberattacks and dirty bombs and all sorts of other manipulation. There’s bigger fish tae fry for them.”

  “That’s scandalous.”

  “I’m surprised you’re surprised.”

  “I’m not,” Áine said. “Not for one fucking second. But I never thought Sinead would become collateral to this type of shit.”

  “She might not be. We don’t know what’s going on here. It’s interesting, though, that someone has asked for this phone to be traced. Chances are, it’s got absolutely nothing to do with us at all.”

  “Apart from the fact it’s sitting in the next room.”

  “Aye, maybe it’s just as well you didn’t spill the beans to the cops after all. We should have told them about the beating and the abduction, but I’m starting to think that your temper might just have done us a favour.”

  “Cos nobody official knows we have the phone?”

  Min nodded.

  “So what do we do next?”

  “Two things,” he said. “You can keep trying to place that bloody phone – find where it’s been, but there’s a risk in that.”

  “You’re worried this other interested party might see me looking.”

  “Exactly. We don’t want them turning their attention to you. I dunno what that might mean for any of us.”

  “But we need to find Sinead, so we deal with all of that later.”

  “Agreed. We concentrate on the biggest risk – which is to your sister.”

  “And what will you do?”

  “I need to book some leave,” he said, looking at her for a moment and almost smiling. “Then I’m gonnae give them what they want.”

  25

  Min peered out the window of the all but abandoned motor cruiser and stared at a plush, expensive Hallberg-Rassy yacht tied up diagonally opposite on another finger of the pontoon.

  It was Áine’s idea, but one to which he’d readily agreed. Setting up an OP on board a boat was glamorous compared to the hedges and hides of his younger years, and as the creak of his bones began to mirror the strain on the ropes holding his hide to Dublin Marina, he took comfort that he had what passed for a flushing toilet – no need for plastic doggie bags or cellophane for waste. As observation posts went, it was tolerable.

  At first Áine baulked at his plan to set the phone alight again, offering it to the satellites – location, data and all. Her face had dropped, her fear of further attack familiar to Min. Once beaten, forever afraid – the lot of a civilian, and many a new recruit. Some never got beyond their first enemy contact – nerves shredded and instantly useless. Medical discharge was not uncommon among the regulars.

  So he’d been surprised at how quickly Áine arrived at a suggested location. “The harbour,” she’d rallied, once he’d explained the plan. “It’s well covered and I can see everything.”

  “How do you know?”

  Áine hesitated then, looking at him for a while before sighing. “I did it for Sinead, before she was taken. It’s where Sam left from when he disappeared. We were trying to see what way his boat turned.”

  “Out the harbour, ye mean?” Min asked, almost scoffing.

  “Yeah, Dún Laoghaire.”

  “Sure, he could have turned any direction. That doesnae mean that’s where he was headed.”

  Áine bristled. “Well, it did actually. He turned south, which is where we found him next. So, Captain Pugwash, stick that up your smart arse.”

  Min laughed. “You are some prickly wee bitch,” he muttered. “So show me what you can see down there.”

  They’d bounced around the available cameras. Dublin Harbour was vast, with various yacht clubs and lots of quays and walls, many of which were occupied by large buildings, all overlooking the sea.

  “This isn’t great,” Min murmured. “Everyone seems to be overlooking the boats.”

  “Ah, but remember,” Áine held up a finger, “we’re in lockdown. And look at all these fancy yachts that nobody’s allowed to go anywhere near.”

  Min considered for a long minute. “Maybe it makes more sense than I realised,” he said absently. “If someone is looking for Sam through this phone, a boat will seem logical. He lives o
n a boat.”

  “But you’re not wanting to attract intelligence types, are you? You’re just trying to hook the people who took Sinead?”

  “Aye, I’m wanting the people who beat bells out of you, but whoever turns up is likely to take us one step closer. If it’s not the madam or her goons, then we might at least get a sense of who else is looking for that bloody handset.”

  Áine paused for a moment, alarm swelling in her. “Are you, not, like, worried about that?”

  “What?” He turned.

  “That some spooky people could come.”

  Min shrugged. “They’ll no’ know I’m there.”

  “They’re spooks. Of course they’ll know you’re there.”

  “How?”

  “I … I dunno. They just – well, they should, if they’re any good.”

  “No offence taken,” he said, smiling.

  “I’m not saying you can’t keep under the radar—”

  “I mean it, no offence taken.”

  Áine again found herself revelling at Min’s self-assuredness, realising that she found it, well, reassuring.

  “So what are the requirements?”

  “This isnae a tech project but I like your style.”

  “Tell me what you need and I’ll sort it. Brilliantly.” She felt the need to assert her own expertise into proceedings.

  “Well, whoever comes for the phone will need to be able to physically get to wherever we leave it. And it could take a long time for them to trace it, so it will need power to charge.”

  “A boat, so,” she’d said, dragging the map around the screen. “How about here?” She pointed to an isolated spit of pontoons.

  “Aye,” he said, reading. “West Pier. Looks more remote than the rest. Less eyes on.”

  “I can’t see how you get down to it, though.”

  “There’s no walkway.” He shook his head.

  “Surely that’s not a barrier to the likes of you,” Áine couldn’t resist poking.

  “But it might be to whoever it is coming for that.” He pointed to the case in which the offending phone was still wrapped.

  “Point taken. Well, next best option is the main marina. Here.” She clicked.

  “It’s well overlooked,” he said. “What’s that?”

  “Royal Irish Yacht Club,” she read off the screen, then did a search.

  “Looks more like a town hall or parliament building.”

  “Welcome to Dublin, Min. Once the most beautiful city in the British Empire, before we got rid of ye.”

  “I’m Scots, remember.”

  “Working for the Queen, all the same,” she scolded. “It’s closed. Members are advised that dining and access is temporarily on hold due to government restrictions.”

  “Good. And how about that?” He pointed to another large building.

  “That’s the marina office,” she said, typing. “Also closed – as in, access to the marina. So it’s all yours.”

  “And there’s power?”

  “On every pontoon,” she said.

  “Right then. Wipe that phone of all of its smut and especially the stuff with the young folks. Then we’ll dig in.”

  And so Min sat, freezing, inside a dilapidated boat while the phone rested snugly inside a beautiful yacht nearby, plugged into its electric supply and sending signals to the moon and back in a kind of cellular honeytrap.

  26

  “Pick me a nice one,” he’d said.

  She selected an abandoned metal heap lashed to the pontoon by ropes dripping with green weed, rust stains running down its sides. “That one,” she announced.

  “Why?”

  “It’s for sale and has been for four years.” She was running three screens at once, her hands rattling the keyboards as if she was playing a bodhrán.

  “Must be something wrong with it if it’s been for sale so long.”

  “Must be a kip. And nobody wants a kip. And nobody will be looking at an old, abandoned yoke like that, lockdown or no lockdown.”

  “I can see shore power cables from all the boats around it – but not that one.”

  “Does that matter?”

  “No heating on board.”

  “Want a hot water bottle?”

  “It’ll do well,” he ignored her wise crack.

  “How will you get to it?”

  “I’ll get spotted if I try to clamber over that fence. I’d better get the togs out.”

  Áine had stared at him. “You’re not going to swim to it, are you?”

  “If we want to fly low, it’s the best way. Anyway, if this is successful, I canny really just follow whoever comes to collect it by walking up the marina’s pontoons behind them, can I? That’s no’ very … what de ye call it?”

  “Clandestine?”

  “Aye. I’ll go when it gets dark.”

  “You’re mad. How will you dry your clothes? How will you keep the phone dry?”

  “I’ll take them with me in a dry bag.”

  “A wha?”

  “Doesnae matter. You stick tae finding any pings that bloody phone made in recent times and try tae map it out. The more information we have, the tighter the net. And then, if someone comes to the marina, you can keep an eye on them using the CCTV cameras in case I lose them, and guide me best ye can.”

  Min had been concerned that his body heat could cause condensation – a giveaway most people overlooked. He needn’t have worried. The rust bucket Áine had selected had so many cracks and gaps that the wind whistled through and dispelled any warm air immediately.

  He’d boarded the Hallberg-Rassy yacht on the opposite pontoon and switched on the madam’s phone with all its attention-grabbing data before plugging it into a twelve-volt socket by a chart table. His eyes fell to a thick sleeping bag on one of its bunks, which he rapidly liberated. Then he’d returned to the rusty, abandoned motor cruiser and sat, knees drawn to his chest, and waited. His own phone had only two full juice packs for recharging, so he switched it off while he was awake and powered it up only when asleep.

  He and Áine quickly fell into a routine. Before he dozed, he sent a message via an encrypted app she’d installed to say he was “on the blink”. She would then take over monitoring the cameras for any activity. And that’s how they operated. For three days.

  Min’s body began to fossilise, lactic build-up causing pain and weakness, so he used an overhead beam to perform a couple of pull-ups every few hours, and kept a regimen of squats and calf raises. Each time he rewarded himself with half a protein bar and tried to ward off the increasing concern that they may have overestimated their adversaries. They’d made assumptions that whoever was behind the blackmail scam had not only the desire to get the phone back at any cost, but also had the tech to track it. As the days and freezing nights wore on, Min began to doubt everything.

  Áine battered away at the data she had taken from the phone, searching for new ways of determining where it had been, and hunting for patterns. Late into the second evening she was lying on the bed when Min sent a message.

  On the blink.

  As she rose to fire up the monitors to begin her shift, her phone screen reoriented from sideways to vertical. Which made her think.

  She almost skipped through to the control room, shaking the mouse but not paying attention to the screens as she, too, had little hope that anyone would breach the security perimeter of the marina. The whole plan seemed like a lost cause.

  Her thought, however, about the sensors inbuilt to phone handsets, had intrigued her. She pulled up technical forums and hunted for a thread that might help her understand how to find and analyse the data, and over the course of the hour that Min was asleep she worked out a plan.

  But it would take time.

  Min had been back on watch and was nearly ready for another doze by the time Áine had extracted the information she wanted. It wasn’t as good as having the real thing in front of her, but she had downloaded most of the data from the madam’s device apart f
rom the images – that was not the sort of muck she wanted resting on her drives. The idea was intricate and she felt quietly pleased with herself for having thought of it, but acutely alive to the outlandishness of the notion.

  Before her was a maze of numbers relating to the sensors in the phone. She already knew that the normal tell-tales for any phone – its cellular data and location GPS, had been well managed by its previous owner, but there might just be other ways to map out its history.

  She pulled up the data, such as it was, on the phone’s non-location sensors; beginning with the accelerometer, which told her how fast the phone had been moving. Then the gyroscope – which had given her the idea in the first place because it tracks what way up the phone was being held and therefore which way to show the display. Finally, she looked at the magnetometer that, while nowhere near as useful as the GPS signal the madam had evidently disabled, was still a digital compass.

  There is lots of stuff here, she thought, but how the hell do I make sense of it?

  And then she got a message from Min: On the blink.

  She went back to the cameras.

  27

  By the morning of day four Áine’s increasing hopelessness had brought her close to tears. She reached for her phone, opened the app and typed Min a message.

  Know you’re sleeping but I think we should ring the Guards again. This has gone on too long and they can’t ignore us now.

  A reply came back immediately.

  Hold fire. Heads-up. Have contact.

  Áine’s eyes flicked up to the screens and scoured the feeds from the harbour’s cameras. It was dark and the imagery was in black and white with an occasional burst of green as an animal triggered a light sensor.

  What? Can’t see anything?

  There was a delay.

  Stand by. Need to cover screen. Do not message back.

  Áine realised he must be close to someone if he was being forced to conceal the light from a small device. She grabbed a biro and began gnawing its end. With her right hand she continued to scroll around the harbour estate looking at the camera above the marina gate that led down to the pontoons. It appeared undisturbed. She tapped into its drive, scrolled back ten minutes then watched at pace. Again, nothing.