2041 Sanctuary (Dark Descent) (18 page)

The man winked at her and then ran his eyes over her body, mentally undressing her and making her feel distinctly uncomfortable in the process. Thankfully, she was able to ignore him as it was her turn to have her ticket punched and passport papers checked. The Eurostar employee, apparently satisfied everything was in order, handed the documents back to her and she carried on through the gate and onto the platform. Boarding at the centre of the train, Jessica found her seat and removed her footwear with a great sigh of relief.

An hour later, the train sped through the dark Kent countryside on its way towards the Channel Tunnel and France beyond. The carriage had near half its seats occupied and Jessica’s paranoia had increased even further since she’d boarded. A few seats along from her own, in an empty section, a woman sat facing her. Jessica felt she had seen her before, but couldn’t place her, which made her uneasy. Able to adjust the lenses on her glasses to make them darker and lighter at will, Jessica altered them to their darkest setting, enabling her to keep an eye on the woman without fear of discovery. Every so often the passenger flicked her gaze at Jessica, far too frequently to be mere curiosity.

Jessica put her shoes back on, sat back down and then pretended to fall asleep, letting her head loll to one side, but all the time keeping the woman in sight. The train was now underneath the English Channel and some of the lights around her flickered and went out, sending areas of the compartment into dark shadows and yet leaving her own seat in bright light. Jessica, straining to see what the woman was doing, glimpsed movement in the half-light. Unable to see directly, Jessica switched her gaze to the reflection in the glass which produced a better angle. The woman, leaning down, fiddled with something in her hands. As she sat up Jessica realised with horror the woman now held a gun, a silencer screwed to its barrel. Instantly alert, Jessica grabbed her bag and rolled smoothly from her seat to hurry down the aisle and into the next coach. Reaching the end of the carriage she turned to see the woman had followed her. Sliding past a sleeping passenger, Jessica cowered down beside them to tear at her bag, desperately hunting for her own weapon without success. The woman, much taller than Jessica, strolled past. She didn’t have a gun at all but a hair brush and she disappeared into one of the lavatories further along towards the locomotive.

Heaving a sigh of relief, Jessica was about to apologise to the person who she’d squeezed in next to but the words caught in her throat. She looked into the face of the man she’d had the altercation with in the queue. He grinned at her and twisted in his seat, eager hands reaching out to touch her.
Crap!
Feeling like a fly trapped in a spider’s web, Jessica jabbed out her right palm, impacting the man’s nose with a sickening crunch. As he let out a yelp of pain Jessica made her escape. She almost felt sorry for him – almost. He must have thought it was his lucky day, except that Jessica had always enjoyed going to courses over the years, bettering herself, and she had excelled at self-defence classes; making use of her small stature had always appealed to her and it was nice to be able to put it into action in real life.

Sliding back into her seat, she indulged in a small smile.
Oh – that felt good
, she thought, her composure regained and a semblance of self reinstated. Outside the window she saw they had exited the tunnel and were now in France, the lights of distant buildings apparent in the darkness. She smoothed down her short skirt, trying without success to close the gap between it and her long socks in an attempt to hide the flesh on display. Part of her regretted opting for the sexy schoolgirl look, although it had done its job as, even when she had solicited the attention at the station, no one had twigged it was her, and she hadn’t even tried to alter her voice. Now that she was out of the country, however, she would make a point of putting on some jeans, not only to heighten her dignity but to increase her warmth as, according to weather reports, Berlin was in the midst of a snow storm.
Wonderful
, she thought, dreading the prospect while the train continued on.

Five hours later and Jessica, now feeling snug in her trousers, having changed an hour earlier, left the high-speed train behind and walked into the confines of Berlin Hauptbahnhof; the German capital city’s main railway station. Once more, Jessica passed through passport control without incident and she headed outside into the cold night air, her breath easy to see as she looked around to gain her bearings. The snow had stopped falling, but the roads were clogged with drifts, and ploughs were out in force clearing the streets. Unlike the armed forces back in London, the German military kept their heavy machinery in plain sight. Two large grey tanks dominated the area outside the station and a gun emplacement had been positioned on the other side of the road. Jessica skirted past a huddle of soldiers and on towards a taxi rank. She stopped next to the first car and the driver wound down his window.

‘
Kannst du mich an diese Adresse nehmen bitte
?’ Jessica asked the nearest cab driver handing him the address the hacker had printed out for her.

The man looked at it and nodded. ‘
Ja, das ist kein Problem
.’

Jessica entered the back, settling in for the ride. ‘
Wie lange wird es dauern
?’ she asked him, wondering how long it would take to get to the library

‘
Bei diesem Wetter? Zwei Stunden
,’ he replied.

Two hours in the snow, not as bad as it could have been
, she reflected, staring again at the printout.

Philological Library

Freie Universität Berlin

Habelschwerdter Allee 45

14195 Berlin, Deutschland

3.14

The five numbers were clearly the postcode; but on the scrap of paper that Martin had shown her she’d thought they looked like some kind of cypher, requiring decryption. The only numbers left were 3.14, which could have been a time, but if it was she had missed the meet by quite a margin.
No
, she decided,
the hacker would have known I wouldn’t have been able to make it, so it must pertain to something else … but what?
Unable to think of another meaning for it she abandoned her ponderings to soak up the snow-draped, floodlit sights of Berlin as the taxi crept along the icy roads.

The time soon drifted by, the driver bringing them to a careful stop outside the Freie Universität Berlin. Having left her computer phone at home, for fear of it being tracked, she had to pay with cold, hard cash, which she had procured back in a bureau de change in London. Stepping out of the cosy taxi and into the freezing street, Jessica pulled the zip on her coat up to its highest point to keep the sub-zero temperatures at bay.

Now glad of her thick-soled shoes, Jessica crunched through some virgin snow and onto a path treated with brown grit, which had helped melt the tiny ice crystals into a thick slush. Slip-sliding her way along, she found firmer footing when she entered a municipal building. A sign to the library guided her along a wide, carpeted corridor and then back outside into the cold once more. In front of her stood the Philological Library of the university, its black and white chequerboard dome exterior framed by the dark skies behind it. Hurrying along, she was soon inside and knocking off excess snow from her shoes on a thick fuzzy brown doormat.

Not having been to the library before, Jessica was surprised to see the interior layout. A third of the space in the dome was empty while in front of her two, three storey open-tiered floors dominated the rest; almost resembling a giant staircase, it was beautifully designed. Each level had a thick white surround supported by white cylindrical pillars. The stepped floors were also exposed to the dome’s interior and consequently, if you were so inclined, you could quite easily climb unimpeded onto a desk and drop down twenty foot to the wider tier below.

Moving forwards, Jessica passed over a large university emblem woven into the carpet itself and made her way into the right of the two mirror image structures. As she expected, the library was deathly quiet apart from the odd low mutterings and occasional rustle of paper emanating from its patrons. Up on the first floor a few students lined the continuous desk which ran around the outside of the level. Old-fashioned computer terminals interspersed the workspace, while the interior of the floor was lined with what one usually found in a library: books.

Feeling like she blended in well with her bug-eyed animal rucksack, horn-rimmed glasses, bright red hair and copious amounts of makeup, Jessica sauntered across the staircase and up onto the next tier. All the time she kept her eyes peeled for the meaning of the three digits, 3.14; but it soon became apparent that they didn’t fit in with the library’s classification system or the desk numbers either. Her frustration mounting at her lack of progress, she finished her round trip of the third and final floor and then traipsed over to the staircase joining the two tiers and on down into the second structure. Unable to see anything on this side either, Jessica slumped down into a vacant chair and stared out in defeat at the inside of the dome. The desk at which she sat had a computer so, flicking on the screen, she entered the term ‘3.14’ within the library’s in-house system and hit the search button.
Ergebnisse: Null
displayed on screen, Results: Zero.
Wonderful
, she thought,
I’ve come all this way literally for nothing
. Just as she considered her next options and a depressing trip back home, she noticed a small section of underlined text at the top right of the screen, which read,
Systeminformationen
. Moving the cursor up to the link using the quaint, touchpad interface, she clicked on it. A small drop down box on the screen appeared detailing the computer’s software, processor and hardware specifications. The thing that caught Jessica’s attention, however, was the single line at the bottom,
Terminal-Nummer
. Next to this were the digits
2.19
. Second floor, terminal nineteen! Jumping to her feet and garnering curious stares from some of the students, Jessica trotted back upstairs and went from computer to computer until she had located terminal 3.15. The next station along had to be 3.14 but there was a problem, it was occupied.

‘
Entschuldigung
,’ Jessica apologised to the slim young man sitting at the desk. ‘
Kann ich diesen Computer benutzen
?’ she asked him.

‘Use another one,’ he said in German without looking up. ‘There are plenty free.’

‘I have to use that one.’

‘Tough,’ he said, continuing his work.

Not in the mood to take insolence from some obnoxious man-child Jessica leaned over his shoulder and switched off the system’s power supply, sending the screen blank.

‘Oi, what do you think you’re doing!’ he said, finally looking round at her.

Jessica put one foot on the front edge of his swivel chair between his legs and leaned down to look him in the eye. ‘I’m taking this computer,’ she said with a smile and then bracing her right hand on the desk, shoved out with her leg, propelling the surprised student two desks along. Picking up his books and satchel, she strode over to him and dumped them down on his new desk.

‘
Danke
.’ She gave him a condescending pat on the head. The young man stared at her open-mouthed as she returned to the terminal she had just claimed, dragging another chair behind her to sit on.

Feeling a little too pleased with her acquisition, she turned the terminal back on and waited for it to boot back up. Now that she was on it, she realised there was little difference between it and any of the other computers lining the surrounding desks. Sitting there, she stared at it, unsure of what she should do to attract the attention of the hacker, if indeed this is where she needed to be. She typed her own name in the system and hit search. Nothing. She tried Martin’s name. Again, nothing happened. After entering combinations of her name, profession and Martin’s particulars, she gave up, letting out a loud noise of discontent which earned her a shushing from a librarian who had appeared to put some books back on one of the shelves behind Jessica’s desk. It was at this instant that her luck changed. The computer beeped. A small chat window appeared at the bottom of the screen and text crept across it.

Ms Klein. It’s nice to finally meet you. _

Jessica typed in response:
I wouldn’t call this meeting
.
Where are you?

Close by. I’m sorry about your friend, Martin. He was a good man. _

Yes he was. The best
.
We must make sure he didn’t die for nothing. We must meet and you need to give me the answers you promised.

Answers? There are only more questions. But I will do my best. I have noticed disturbing trends in the data I work with. Trends I have been following for some years. A mutual friend put Martin in touch with me so that I could attempt to get my findings into the public domain. _

Why didn’t you use someone in Germany?

Too risky, the German Government is stricter than most when it comes to censorship. I had to go outside of the country. I had hoped the BBC would have been strong enough to withstand outside influence. I was wrong. _

You were
.
Did you see my broadcast?

I did not. There were rumours about it on Deepnet but actual recordings were quickly hunted out by GMRC Hounds and deleted or corrupted. _

What is Deepnet?
She waited for the response onscreen.

Deepnet is what people call the hidden web. It has a number of other names Deep Web, Undernet, Invisible Web, Darknet. It is the name given to digital content and traffic that is hidden from mainstream indexers and regular commercial web constructs. Over the years it has evolved into a whole plethora of forms, consisting of many layers, each harder to infiltrate than the one above. _