by Will Jordan
‘Second layer’s gone,’ his friend said. ‘Shit, they’re at the last line. We’re down to seconds, Alex.’
But Alex wasn’t listening any more; all his attention was focussed on the task at hand. That was all that mattered now. Bringing up the massive database of user identities, he hurriedly scrawled through, searching for the one allocated to Anya.
A bead of sweat trickled down his temple, but he paid it no heed as his eyes flitted from line to line, his brain surging ahead.
‘It’s about to go!’
There! He had it. Highlighting the alert-flagged ID, he delved straight into its database entry and with a single mouse-click disabled the alert.
‘Did it work?’ he asked, his muscles tight, his heart pounding.
Several tense, anxious seconds passed while Landvik consulted his screen. ‘I… I think so. All activity in the firewall has stopped.’ He looked at his friend, a slow smile growing on his face. ‘I think we did it.’
Letting out a breath, Alex slumped back in his chair, mentally and physically drained.
‘So what happens now?’ Anya asked.
Alex nodded slowly, wiping the sweat from his brow. ‘We’re in. No user ID, no restrictions, nothing. We can access anything, anywhere on their network now.’ He glanced up at her, weary but proud. ‘The only question now is what you want to look for.’
Anya exhaled, and for a moment her mask of self-control slipped aside. Alex saw elation and relief, and something else. Trepidation. She was afraid of what she was going to find.
‘One file,’ she said, leaning in close. ‘The name is D1189.’
‘Doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue,’ Landvik observed, as Alex inputted the details and turned his search engine loose on the vast network.
‘It is just a reference number,’ she explained, her attention focussed on the screen. ‘The file was created in November 1989.’
‘What does the D stand for?’ Alex couldn’t help asking.
With his back to her, he could feel rather than see her eyes on him. ‘Deniable.’
Alex paused for a moment, then went back to work.
‘I need a smoke,’ Landvik decided. ‘Call out if you need me.’
Neither Anya nor Alex looked up, which Landvik took as tacit acknowledgement of his intentions. Saying nothing more, the young man backed out of the room and left them to it.
‘It’s about you, isn’t it?’ Alex said, once his friend’s footsteps had disappeared down the corridor. ‘This file you’re looking for. It’s yours. What are you expecting to find?’
‘Just concentrate on your work,’ Anya advised him, the tension in her voice unmistakable.
Alex knew better than to argue.
*
In the open-plan living room nearby, Landvik was pacing back and forth as he pondered what to do next. The stunning views that the room’s full-length windows commanded over the nearby lake and woodland beyond were lost on him. All his thoughts were now focussed on finding a way out of this situation.
He may have been willing to give Alex the benefit of the doubt, but the woman was another matter entirely. He’d seen the look in her eyes, the way she carried herself, the constant wariness. She was a stone-cold killer, as sure as day.
He had to do something now, before it was too late. For all he knew, he might end up as a hostage once Anya had gotten what she wanted here, or a ‘suicide’.
His mind was racing, desperately considering his options. All the doors and windows in the house were locked. Anya had confiscated all cell phones and disabled the landlines, making it impossible for him to escape or call for help even if he’d harboured such thoughts.
He could try to take her down first. His father kept a hunting rifle and a supply of ammunition in a cupboard under the stairs. But a heavy rifle wasn’t much of a weapon for fighting in a confined space like this, and with only a couple of half-hearted shooting lessons under his belt, he was barely competent in its use.
Even if he was somehow able to retrieve it from its storage cabinet and load it without attracting her attention, he doubted a fat computer hacker with an old bolt-action rifle would present much of a threat to someone like her. No, confrontation was out of the question.
Another option was to summon help. Anya might have taken his phones, but there was another way to make contact with the outside world. His father, keen to protect the house he’d invested so much money in, had made sure the place was fitted with a top-of-the-line security system. Motion sensors, concealed video-entry system, and most importantly for him, a silent alarm.
There were hidden triggers in every room, meaning they were always within easy reach in the event an intruder made it inside. One press of the button would put trigger an automated phone call to the security company managing the system, who would in turn contact the police.
The drawbacks to this were obvious however. The moment Anya saw police cars approaching, she’d know what he had done. She might take him hostage, or panic and kill him. Either way, he had no desire to be caught in the crossfire.
In his mind, the best option was simply to get the hell out of here.
But he certainly wouldn’t make it far on foot, even if he could find a way out. He was a good sixty pounds overweight, and he hadn’t done anything approaching strenuous exercise in nearly a decade. Someone like her could run him down before he’d made it a hundred yards.
If he was going to do this, he needed a vehicle.
His father’s weekend car, a Mitsubishi Outlander, was safely parked in the house’s integrated garage. Anya had made sure to take the keys, but she had missed the spare set hidden away in a metal tin in one of the kitchen drawers. With so many possible exits and escape routes to secure, he could only assume that she had simply overlooked it.
That was his play.
Almost before he was aware of it, he was heading towards the kitchen area. If he could get to the vehicle and force open the garage doors, he’d be out of here in under a minute. He felt bad for leaving Alex behind, but what else could he do? Playing hero was a quick way to get killed.
The sound of soft footsteps in the hallway alerted him that Anya was on her way, probably to check on him. Cursing the bad timing, he abruptly turned around and recrossed the room, heading for the balcony that lay beyond the living-room windows.
His only thought was to get outside, away from her.
‘Are you all right?’ he heard her ask.
‘Fine,’ he lied without turning around. He was moving towards the glass door leading outside. ‘Just going onto the balcony for a smoke. My dad won’t let me do it in here.’
He was just reaching for the handle when she called out to him again.
‘Gregar?’
He closed his eyes as his stomach knotted with panic. What did she want? Had she guessed his intentions? Forcing himself to stay calm despite his wildly beating heart, he slowly turned to face her, wondering if he’d find himself staring down the barrel of a weapon.
Instead he saw Anya standing by the kitchen counter. She was holding out the lighter and packet of cigarettes that he’d left lying there.
‘You will probably need these,’ she said.
Gregar let out a nervous laugh. ‘Good point. My mind’s been all over the place today,’ he said, which was certainly true.
Quickly crossing the room, he reached across the counter and took the packet, hoping she couldn’t see the tremor in his hand as he reached beneath the counter and hit the silent alarm trigger. However, she tightened her grip on the packet as he tried to take it, her eyes locked with his.
He froze, his body tensing up. He could almost feel the beads of sweat forming on his forehead.
‘You should try to cut down,’ she advised, glancing down at the cigarettes. ‘These are bad for you.’
Such was his relief, it was all he could do to keep from bursting into nervous laughter.
‘Yes. But they keep the weight off.’ He managed to flash a wry grin.
‘The doors are locked. You smoke in here, or not at all,’ she instructed, turning away to go back to the bedroom.
*
‘We’ve got them!’ Argento said, having just taken a call from the National Security Agency monitoring station back at Menwith Hill. ‘NSA just intercepted a call from a Norwegian security company to local police. One of their clients near the town of Drammen just hit their silent intruder alarm.’
Hawkins immediately looked up from his computer. ‘Give me a reason to get excited about that.’
‘The house is fitted with a video entry system that logs all new arrivals. We were able to intercept the image the security company forwarded on to the police.’
Saying nothing more, he spun his laptop around, allowing Hawkins to view the slightly grainy black-and-white image that had been sent through. Sure enough, it showed a young man and a woman standing at the front door.
Their features were unmistakable. It was Yates and Anya.
‘You got a location?’
‘Drammen, about thirty miles south-west of here. By the sounds of things, local police have requested an armed response unit.’
Hawkins practically jumped out of his seat. ‘Call NSA and have them put a false alarm call through to Norwegian police, and have them vector in any drone or satellite assets we have to that location. I want our chopper fuelled and ready to lift off in three minutes. Everyone else on me. Move!’
Chapter 25
A ping from the main terminal announced that the search engine had found a result. Swinging his chair back around, Alex stared at the screen.
‘Yes!’ he cried, clapping his hands in excitement as he surveyed the results of three hours of solid work on screen before him. ‘We’re in business.’
Just as she’d said, the search had returned a single file, buried deep within a hidden directory set apart from the main file structure. It would have been invisible to anyone using the system with standard access, but Alex’s unrestricted access allowed him to see what others couldn’t.
Anya was by his side within moments, leaning forward to survey the screen. ‘What happens now?’
‘Now we download this bastard,’ Alex said, as he carefully highlighted the file and hit download.
Download in progress…
Whatever the file was, it was big. According to the on-screen status bar, it was going to take several minutes to download in its entirety.
The woman glanced at him with a raised eyebrow, but didn’t pass comment. ‘How long will this take?’
‘Well, it’s pretty big, and the connection here isn’t great. Five or six minutes at most.’
She nodded, her face a mask of tight self control. She wouldn’t crack open the champagne until the file was in her hands.
‘Can the Agency trace this?’ she asked.
Alex shook his head. ‘Nope. This one’s below their radar.’ He grinned. ‘See what I did there? Thought you might appreciate the military lingo.’
She didn’t, and her expression made it clear.
In search of a more appreciative audience, Alex turned towards the door. ‘Hey, Gregar! Come here and take a look at this, mate. This is poetry in motion!’
There was no response.
‘Gregar!’ Alex called out. ‘Now’s a bad time to be taking a shit!’
Still there was no reply. Frowning, Alex looked at his companion.
‘Keep working,’ Anya instructed, drawing the automatic from the back of her jeans.
‘Wait. What about—?’
‘Just do it!’ she hissed. ‘Let me know as soon as the file is downloaded.’
Saying nothing further, she turned and vanished from the room, leaving Alex to it.
Swearing under his breath, Alex turned his attention back to the download task bar, curious why the file seemed to be taking so long to download. A quick check of the system’s network activity soon revealed the answer. The download was being directed to more than one place.
One stream was feeding into Landvik’s computer, while the other was being beamed off to an IP address he didn’t recognise.
‘What the hell are you up to?’ he mumbled, clicking on the link.
*
In the garage, Landvik was fumbling with trembling hands to get his key in the ignition of the big Mitsubishi 4x4. However, panic-stricken haste made his task a great deal more difficult than it should have been, and the keys slipped from his grasp.
‘Fuck!’ he hissed, bending down to retrieve them. Every second he delayed increased his chances of being caught.
Snatching them off the floor, he sat up, then let out an involuntary gasp at the sight that confronted him. Anya was standing directly in front of the vehicle, her weapon trained on him. At such close range she could hardly miss.
‘Get out of the car,’ she instructed. ‘Now.’
‘Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck,’ he groaned, reaching for the door and pushing it open. ‘Please, I was only trying to—’
No sooner had he stepped out onto the concrete floor than she rounded the vehicle, gripped him by his t-shirt and hauled him forcefully back into the main part of the house, keeping the barrel of the weapon pressed against his head.
As soon as they were in the living room, the weapon was withdrawn. He felt an instant of relief, then suddenly something struck him on the back of the neck, sending lightning forks of pain radiating out through his body. A kick to the back of his left knee was enough to finish the job, and he went down with a cry of pain and terror.
Struggling to see properly, he heard the sound of footsteps on the hardwood floor circling around in front of him, and managed to focus on Anya as she stalked into view. She had a gun in one hand and a knife in the other, and he didn’t doubt for a second that she was prepared to use both weapons on him.
‘What have you done, Gregar?’ she demanded, her voice flat and cold. Only her eyes revealed the anger she felt. ‘We were getting ready to leave. Why try to escape now?’
He couldn’t help what happened next. He felt a sudden surge of damp warmth between his legs, followed by the acrid stench of urine as it soaked into his jeans.
Landvik shook his head, realizing with a fleeting sense of shame that he was crying. ‘I didn’t… I can’t…’
She took a step forward. One booted foot shot out and planted itself firmly in his flabby abdomen, sending another wave of pain through him. He felt his stomach constrict as if tying itself in knots, and immediately doubled over as a stream of bile and vomit flew out of his mouth and over the expensive flooring.
‘Don’t make me ask you again,’ she advised him, taking a step back. ‘Tell me what you have done.’
‘I…’ He sniffed, knowing what it would mean when he told her. ‘I set off the silent alarm. I’m sorry! I thought you were going to kill me.’
The sound of footsteps in the corridor announced the arrival of the third member of their group. Landvik watched as Alex skidded to a stop at the room’s threshold, staring open-mouthed at the scene that confronted him.
‘Anya, what the fuck—?’
‘Stay out of this!’ she warned, rounding on him. ‘Your “friend” has betrayed us to the Norwegian police.’
Alex’s eyes turned to Landvik, who was still lying curled up on the floor. ‘Mate, tell me she’s wrong.’
Landvik said nothing, merely shook his head.
Alex’s eyes opened wide in shock as the truth sank in. ‘Gregar, what have you done? You fucking arsehole, we were almost finished!’
Anya’s attention was focussed on the prisoner. ‘When did you do it?’
‘About… ten minutes ago.’
Her stern gaze wavered for a moment as a new threat manifested in her mind. Straight away she turned to her companion, pointing back towards the bedroom.
‘Get
back to work, Alex. We’re leaving as soon as you have the file,’ she said, striding forward and hauling Landvik to his feet. It was no easy task given his sizeable frame. ‘I’ll take care of this.’
Alex hesitated, his eyes flitting between the woman and his friend, hurt and cowering in terror. ‘You can’t kill him,’ he pleaded, perhaps sensing her intentions. ‘He’s an arsehole, but he doesn’t deserve to die for this.’
‘He won’t,’ she promised. ‘Now go. Hurry!’
Alex was just turning towards the hallway when a sudden noise overhead caught his attention. A loud, rhythmic beating, accompanied by the high-pitched whine of aircraft engines.
His gaze drawn to the open expanse of lake beyond the living room’s full-length windows, Alex stared in silence as a helicopter suddenly descended into view, its blades scything the air, the downwash from the main rotors whipping up a storm of wind and spray on the calm waters. He hadn’t even been aware of the helicopter’s noise until it was almost upon them, and now here it was not more than fifty yards away.
The sliding door fixed into the side of the aircraft was open, and he could see movement inside. He caught a glimpse of something long and gleaming angling towards them, followed by a sudden flash as if a camera had just taken a snap.
‘Get down!’ Anya shouted.
The tinkle of shattered glass was followed by a curious wet crunch, reminding him of an egg breaking. He felt something warm splash his cheek, and out of the corner of his eye spotted a sudden spray of red that seemed to coat the room.
Failing to comprehend what he was seeing, Alex looked over as Landvik slumped to the floor, falling like a puppet whose strings had just been cut. But he didn’t look like the Landvik he remembered. He seemed to be missing most of his head, exposing broken skull and the delicate organ that was supposed to be contained within. The blood-soaked remains of his blonde ponytail hung loose from a piece of bone and skin that had almost detached.
