Dead Cat Bounce (26 page)

He went into Finder and clicked on “applications.” Again, all the usual suspects, but nothing that indicated a link into the servers in Amelia’s Boudoir. He looked in the documents folder, but that was empty. He checked the contacts. That was empty as well. The calendar offered the same story. Jonah knew that it was possible that
the link was through the Hellcat system, but he didn’t want to go in there yet in case it alerted someone. And anyway, the trades had to be
outside
the Hellcat interface. Hellcat had already investigated those trades and come up with nothing.

Okay, Baron
, thought Jonah,
I am going to take your laptop to pieces bit by bit. I will find it if it is there. And it is here. I know it is. We’ll start at A for address book.

When David came back with the burgers and coffee, Jonah explained the situation. Upon hearing of his son’s lack of progress, David opened his hands. “I can be of no help, I’m afraid. I wouldn’t even have gotten as far as you have. Do you mind if I get some sleep?”

Jonah was fine with that. Having someone sitting on his shoulder would be irritating anyway. “Okay by me. You stick to your hotel floorplans and elevators; I’ll do the clever work.”

The Baron and
Scrotycz had finished their dinner and were in a private club in Soho that provided “company” in the form of young ladies without many clothes on. There was a bar and a dance floor with a series of dark, secluded booths located around its perimeter. If you saw a girl you liked, you asked her to join you for a drink. She would request champagne at hugely inflated prices and give the buyer her undivided attention. Depending on the buyer and the quality of the champagne, the level of that undivided attention would vary.

For the Baron and Scrotycz it was now
mano a mano
—one on one—two alpha males competing over their capacity for alcohol and their attractiveness to women. Of course, the game was loaded. The three stunning Eastern European girls draping themselves over Scrotycz had been prepaid for by Hellcat.

The Baron was in the company of a striking Chinese girl. She was also on the Hellcat payroll, but the company’s arrangement
with her was different from the way that it usually hired strippers. Her job was to flirt with Scrotycz, or whomever the Baron happened to be wining and dining, and keep the vodka and champagne flowing, to make it a party. She had worked with the Baron for nearly a year now, specially selected by Amelia, and was a genuine courtesan—beautiful, witty, and intelligent. In the morning when Scrotycz woke up with his hangover and his one, two, or three blonde bimbettes, he would be a happy man. But still he would think of Kim, the girl who he’d believe had gone home with the Baron. Of course she wouldn’t have—the Baron didn’t do hookers—but Scrotycz would be hung over and jealous enough to think otherwise. It was a straight power game, convincing him that the Baron had something he couldn’t have.

That was some time hence though. For now it was a game of who could drink the most vodka. Scrotycz had to win this one. That was the only way that the Baron could extract the information he wanted from him. But he had to believe he had won it fair and square. Again, normally this was fairly easy to engineer. After a bottle of vodka even the most hardened drinkers would struggle to have any grip on reality. Scrotycz, however, was a whole other level of drinker, and the Baron was struggling, despite the fact that Kim had arranged for every other shot of his to be water. His phone rang as Scrotycz called for the third bottle of ice-cold alcohol.

The Baron staggered to his feet. “I must take this call. New York office,” he lied and went out to the street and its relative silence.

“There is nobody at the girl’s flat or at Lightbody’s house,” Amelia said bluntly.

“So where the hell are they?” This was not what he wanted to hear.

“I don’t know. Yet. What news from Scrotycz?” she asked, deftly moving the issue away from her own lack of success.

“Scrotycz is an animal, and as far as his dealings with Lightbody or the boy are concerned he’s been as tight as a gnat’s arse. I can’t seem to get anything out of him. I’m beginning to wonder if we need Kim to go above and beyond her normal duties. It might, at the very least, get me out of the third bottle of that rocket fuel you imported.” Amelia had seen to it that the vodka Scrotycz had been given was his most favored brand from his homeland in a remote valley in the Ural Mountains.

“My God, darling, I only have three behind the bar, you poor, poor dear. I’m sure Kim will oblige. I will solve.”

The Baron went back inside and stood at the table, swaying slightly, feigning total inebriation. “Scrot … itch, I must depart. It has been a most magnifishent evening,” he slurred, going for maximum effect. “But I must … bid you … adieu. I have an issue in the USh that needs my attention.”

Scrotycz remained seated, a blonde on either side and one on his knee. “My dear Baron, magnifishent is an under … statement. I have never … ordered a third bottle … before. I would get up if I could … but I am not sure it will be posshible.”

“Shcrot. Kim here”—she tucked herself under the Baron’s arm—“can help anyone up. I shuggesht that you enlisht her help.” He winked theatrically, and Scrotycz’s eyes lit up despite the effects of the vodka. “She fanshies you more anyway.” He lifted his arm up to release her.

“I feel that we will … work well together,” slurred Scrotycz. He raised his glass, saying something that sounded to the Baron like “ypa.”

“Ypa to you too, Scrot mate,” said the Baron raising only his hand. He turned and made his way to his waiting car and slumped into the back seat, one thought raging in his mind:
Where the hell was that boy?

“That boy” had
finally staggered into bed, exhausted, at about three in the morning, no wiser as to the link that would take him into the Baron’s private files. He was woken by his father at eight with coffee and croissants and was immediately back at the laptop. His dad was visibly very tense, and it wasn’t helping. Jonah could hear him in the background, keeping himself busy by organizing the car and flights for the afternoon. Still, every five minutes he would ask for a progress update. It had been better when he’d been asleep. Jonah decided to shut him out with music. He extracted the new iPod Touch from his briefcase, discarding the fluffy blue casing, and plugged noise-reducing headphones into his ears.

In London the Baron and Amelia both received a message at the same time. It was the one they’d been waiting for, from the Global Positioning control center in Greenwich. They now knew that Jonah was in Amsterdam. They even had the address of the hotel.

The Baron was practically salivating as he ushered Amelia and Kim the stripper into his study—they were there to update him on Scrotycz—and dispatched Jez from IT to the sitting room to sort out his laptop, which had crashed when he’d switched it on this morning. He sat himself down at his desk across from the two women. “So what’s the story with Scrotycz and the boy?” he asked Kim, leaving all pleasantries aside. Part of him wondered whether she actually had any clothing on under her mid-thigh-length fur coat. There was no visible evidence to suggest this was the case.

“The boy is in a tough spot. Probably scared witless,” Kim said as if reporting some minor change in the weather. “Scrotycz has told him and his father that he will kill them if they don’t give him one hundred million dollars in thirty days.”

Well, that would explain the boy’s disappearance
, thought the Baron. One hundred million dollars in thirty days was an impossible ask. No wonder the boy was on the run. The big question was whether this was the only thing he was running from. “Do you think he
would
kill them?” he asked.

“Definitely,” came the instant reply. “He is not a nice man. He likes to hurt people.” Kim shook her head as if remembering a detail from the night before that was too painful to discuss. Amelia leaned over and placed her hand on the girl’s knee to comfort her, and Kim hurriedly added, “No, no not me. He was nice to me. He wants me to go to a football match with him today. It was the other girls he was not so nice to.”

“He wants to spend time with you, does he?” The Baron ran his fingers thoughtfully through his mustache. “Has he said for how long?”

“No, but it will be as long as I want it to be. It always is.” She smiled sweetly.

“Naturally.” The Baron grinned. “Stay with him if you would be so kind, and feed back anything else you find out.” He turned to Amelia. “Make sure Kim is properly rewarded for her troubles, will you?” He didn’t want to run the risk that Scrotycz might somehow start paying her more and therefore cause her to switch allegiances.

“Of course,” said Amelia. “Thank you, Kim. Let me show you out. Ask the concierge for a car to take you to wherever you want to go.” She stood up and escorted Kim out of the study while the Baron formulated his next move.

When she returned, the Baron began barking orders her way before she had even sat down. “We need someone watching that hotel
now
. We need to find out why he is there and who he is with. If Scrotycz finds out he’s run, he might go after him. And we can’t have him being killed.” The Baron paused as he thought about how attached he’d grown to the boy over the years. He took a deep breath. He couldn’t let his personal feelings impact the mission. There was too much at stake. He resumed his tirade. “If his death comes so quickly on the heels of Clive’s, we are going to have the police crawling all over us.”

“Yes, darling,” Amelia said with a sigh. “I already have some muscle organized. They’ll be at the hotel in”—she looked at her watch—“the next …”

There was a timid knock on the door. The Baron put his finger to his lips, signaling for Amelia to be quiet. “Come in,” he called, and the man from IT pushed himself through the door, holding the laptop. “All sorted?” asked the Baron brightly.

“This isn’t your laptop,” the man replied.

The Baron’s face froze for a second, and Amelia swung around in her chair. “What do you mean?” he demanded.

“It’s not your laptop,” Jez repeated. “The serial number is different. I checked. This is a brand new computer. There’s nothing on it except a bug that makes it crash as soon as it’s switched on.” As an afterthought he added, “And if you used your password to get into it, then whoever’s got your laptop also has your log-in.”

The Baron sat impassively at his desk, trying to keep his anger in check:
The boy wasn’t just on the run from Scrotycz; he had stolen the laptop! He had turned!

“What can they do with that information?” he snapped.

“They can get into the Hellcat trading system pretty easily. And they could theoretically get into your personal servers, although the security on that is rather imaginative, so it’s less likely,” Jez replied.

The Baron grunted. “Well, you’d better change my access to the trading system immediately, and we’ll need to do the same with my personal files. Can you do it from here?”

“I can do the Hellcat changes from here, but not the personal ones,” said Jez. “I’ll need to go back to the office for that. I can only do it by plugging a laptop straight into the servers.” He looked at Amelia. “I’ll need you to let me into your office.”

Amelia nodded. “Why don’t you sort out the Hellcat issues while the Baron and I finish off? We won’t be long.”

“Okay,” said Jez, and he closed the door.

The Baron waited a couple of seconds for Jez to be completely out of earshot and then snarled through clenched teeth. “They’re
together. We’ve been outsmarted by a Drizzler, a boy, and a bimbo.” He channeled his anger into single-minded focus, still in shock that
he
of all people had been so clearly betrayed—and by a child. “Everything is on those servers. You and I are going to Amsterdam to bring them back. Get a plane and do it fast and put a rocket up the arse of that muscle in Amsterdam. They must not lose them.”

“Yes, dar …” Amelia started, but the Baron cut in, pointing his finger at her.

“And Kloot doesn’t need to know. Okay? He’ll only get overexcited and complicate things. We can sort this out on our own.” The last thing the Baron wanted was for the Flying Dutchman to discover that the boy
he
recruited had morphed into Apollyon’s greatest liability.

“Of course, darling. Let me go and let that Jez boy into your servers, and I will call you with flight details. Stay calm. We’ll have this all cleared up by this evening.” She stood up, blew him a kiss, and marched out of the study. By the time she had reached the car, she had a private aircraft organized to depart from Northolt Jet Center, only twelve miles away from the Carstairs Hotel. They would be in the air in half an hour and on the ground in Amsterdam fifty minutes after that.

“iTunes! It must
be iTunes!” Jonah exclaimed, suddenly remembering something Amelia had told him that day in her Boudoir:
The Baron’s hard drive … he likes me to look after it for him
. She had said that on it was the Baron’s complete music collection
amongst other things
. What other reason could there be for her to manage it?

David jumped up from the bed in surprise. “What’s going on?” he asked.

Jonah twisted and looked around at him, pulling the earphones out of his ears. “The link’s in iTunes. It has to be. He downloads music from the servers in Amelia’s office to his laptop. iTunes is the access route.”

“Go on then,” David urged, “look.”

Jonah opened up the music library on the laptop again. He had marveled at the extent of it last night, even though he knew it only represented a fraction of the Baron’s holdings.
Where was the link hidden?
He scrolled down the menu.

There were fourteen thousand songs on the library taking up sixty-six gigs of memory, one hundred videos taking up forty gigs, and one app taking up a whole gig of memory. Jonah paused, his hand hovering above the track pad.
That couldn’t be right!
Apps took up megabytes not gigabytes.