Déjà Vu: A Technothriller (23 page)

“Some might disagree with you, but go on,” said Hannah.

“Second, he has never sent an encrypted transmission. True?”

“Dunno,” said Besson. “But he could send coded emails pretty easily using an undisclosed email address and check his email from any computer worldwide in complete anonymity. There are probably over a billion email addresses used for that purpose worldwide. And, of course, there’s physical mail.”

“That is correct. Now, let us hypothesise that Proctor did not intend to encrypt this transmission.”

Besson became pensive. Hannah snorted and folded his arms. “Eh?”

“Tell me: who sent the transmission?”

“Who? Proctor.”

“Fine, Scottie. Why do you say that?”

“Well –”

Besson clicked his fingers. “You’re right. We grabbed the transmission on the basis of a surveillance tape of Proctor talking in his car. The timing was verified, we worked out the service provider, then sent a request to acquire the raw data. We don’t know who initiated the call. We know nothing. We just have several gigabytes of scrambled crap that was received and transmitted by Proctor at that time.”

Hannah looked at both of them. “What are you saying? Someone sent a message to Proctor?”

Saskia nodded. “My gut feeling, Scottie, is that Proctor would not have waited until he reached the West Lothian Centre –”

Hannah groaned and pointed at Besson. “And you can forget you heard that, too.”

“Natch.”

“– My point,” Saskia continued, “is that he knew he would be under surveillance. It is a former government installation with a security breach. Why would he encrypt a transmission and then allow people to see clearly that he is making it? This would counteract the goal of encryption: concealment. But if he had made the call on the way to Edinburgh, nobody would know.”

Hannah nodded. “OK, I’ll buy that.”

She paused to work out the likely meaning of his idiom. “You are too kind. So,” she said, raising her voice so that everyone in the room could hear, “we need to determine the names of any individuals, perhaps of a mathematical persuasion, who may have contacted David Proctor, an Oxford professor, at that time of transmission. Full personal details on each.” She pointed at the woman called Charlotte. “You look for family.” She pointed at the tall man with the pony tail. “You check for friends.”

Hannah gave her an approving nod. Saskia smiled. Perhaps Jobanique’s faith had been well-placed after all.

“What shall I do?” asked Besson.

“Keep trying. You may become lucky.”

Saskia stood with Hannah under a huge glass awning at the front of the building. It was raining. Before them, a great lawn spread out either side of a gravel path. It led to some steps, and then down to a road where the traffic was gridlocked. She had no idea what part of Edinburgh they were in. The rain became a downpour.

Hannah broke the silence. “This is September. Monsoon season.”

She nodded. “Do you have a spare cigarette?”

“Aye. Could you not buy your own?”

“No. It would shatter the illusion that I do not smoke.”

He took out a packet of cigarettes and knocked two examples into his hand. He offered one to her. She touched it and –

The lighter.

The feeling that returned: déjà vu.

Where had she seen that lighter?

She saw a long thread, glistening as though it had been oiled. She saw a pair of scissors yawn around the thread and then stop. She felt a deep longing to protect the thread. It was too precious to cut. Once cut, never remade.

She saw a hawk.

The hawk that returned.

Her eyes closed. The scissors and thread vanished.

She heard laughter. She smelled cigarette smoke. The flick of a card being laid on a table. More laughter. And then the laughter stopped. The smoke changed from the thin blue wisps (cigarettes) to thick black plumes (furniture, wood, the office, my gift, the mannequins).

“Saskia?”

She opened her eyes. Hannah was holding her shoulders. She heard the rain again. The cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth. “What happened? Are you alright?”

“Yes. I felt...dizzy.”

“Migraine?”

“No. It is not that.”

“Do you want something to eat?”

The questions forced her to take a step back. “No, Scottie, I’m fine. Give me a cigarette.”

He did so and lit it. She glanced tentatively at the lighter but it was just a lighter. Its power was spent. The power to trigger hallucinations.

No. They were memories.

‘Your personality isn’t overwritten by the wetwire chip. It’s kind’ve knocked sideways,’ she heard Frank Stone (who had killed a Polish fisherman) say.

They watched people walk in and out of the building, watched them curse the rain, hunch themselves, and run. After a moment, Hannah said, “You muttered something.”

“What?” Her fingers were trembling. She took a drag and held the smoke.

“Sounded German: ootah.”

Ute.

“A girl’s name.”

“Mean anything to you?” he asked.

“No, Scottie.”

Hannah nodded. His eyes were narrow because of the smoke. “But you know she’s a girl.”

At 10 a.m., Saskia called a meeting. They sat in a circle. Hannah stood outside it, leaning against a desk. Saskia crossed her legs and nodded to Paul Besson who, like Charlotte and Henry, the man with the ponytail, seemed tired and distant.

“I’ve got nothing so far,” said Besson. “The computer could run for ten years and not crack the code.”

“Fine.” Saskia turned to Charlotte. “What about Proctor’s family?”

“His parents are dead. He has an uncle living in Australia that turned up after a fairly invasive search. I’d bet that they don’t know of each other’s existence. His daughter, Jennifer, left for America four years ago, aged sixteen. She attended a school for gifted children in New York and graduated aged eighteen with two undergraduate degrees: theology and physics. Her current whereabouts are unknown.”

Hannah stirred. “What do you mean, unknown?”

Charlotte folded her arms and said, testily, “Exactly that, sir. She has no bank account, passport, no American social security number, insurance of any kind, no bonds or shares, nothing. Her records would lead anyone to the conclusion that she died aged eighteen. Except that there is no death registration.”

“That’s unbelievable. I couldn’t wipe my arse without a computer somewhere going ‘beep’.”

“Indeed,” said Charlotte to Saskia.

Saskia nodded. It made perfect sense. “What about Proctor, Charlotte? From 2001 to 2003. Are there any similarities with his daughter’s situation?”

Charlotte did not need to examine her notes. “Yes. During that period every record of Proctor’s comings-and-goings are blank. Just like his daughter.”

“In that time,” said Saskia. “Proctor was the member of a high security establishment. The West Lothian Centre.”

Charlotte said, “Hmm,” and Hannah made a quiet wounded sound.

“So, you think we have a daughter who entered her father’s profession,” he said. “You think she came back to England?”

“Well, she could still be in America,” said Besson. “You know, they’ve got these secret research places everywhere. Area 51 is most likely. That’s in Nevada.”

“Thanks,” said Hannah, heavy on the sarcasm.

Saskia ignored him. “Good. I think we should concentrate on the daughter.”

“Are you sure?” Hannah asked. “We should cover all the evidence. Poor Henry here hasn’t even spoken yet.”

Henry opened his mouth, but did not utter a word. Instead he pointed to Hannah and nodded. Everyone but Saskia laughed.

“Yes,” she said loudly. “This is what I want to do. If we run down a ‘blind alley’, then we can retrace our footsteps. But I want to emphasise, that speed is primary. Proctor is moving. He is going somewhere, perhaps to a rendezvous. We need to go where he is going and I am certain that this transmission is critical.”

Hannah shrugged. “Fair enough.”

“Right. Who is the best media analyst?”

Nobody moved. Slowly, heads turned towards Besson. He raised his arm. “Me,” he said.

“Good. Everything is clear. Charlotte and Henry, I want you to locate Jennifer Proctor. You have one hour. Paul, Scottie – I have an idea.”

It was lunchtime. Paul and Saskia sat in front of large computer with two displays. The left-hand screen showed a complicated array of image processing tools. The other, nearest Saskia, displayed the image of Proctor’s car. After three phone calls to Colonel Garrel, who was now in London, Saskia had finally obtained permission to review the Park Hotel surveillance tapes. Hannah was impressed. He had already tried and failed.

“Army types. They must trust you more than me.”

She shook her head and thought of Jobanique. “I have powerful friends.” She sipped her coffee. It was her third. On the desk lay an uneaten sandwich. She had not known what the word ‘sandwich’ really meant until Hannah had dropped this specimen, triumphantly, in her lap. She had peered through the cellophane at the soggy white toast-bread and decided that she would remain ignorant.

“Not hungry?” asked Besson.

“No. Are we ready? Come sit, Scottie.”

Hannah sat down behind their and ate his sandwich. He sounded like a man struggling through mud. “What are we looking at?”

Besson said, “This is the tape of Proctor arriving at the West Lothian Centre, last Sunday, the 10th. I’ll start it from the beginning.”

Using the complicated software on the left-hand screen, he started the video. Saskia and Hannah watched intently. Hannah kept eating. She turned her ear towards the picture but could not hear the ambient noise. “Scottie, your food is already dead.”

Hannah stopped mid-chew. “Sorry.” He gulped the mouthful away.

“I’ll turn up the volume,” said Besson.

They viewed the video from beginning to end. It was unremarkable: a wide-angle shot that encompassed most of the car-park and a corner of the hotel’s west wing. It was a low-definition video, barely VHS. The audio was almost exclusively bird song and wind. The story was simple: a car drove in from left of frame and stopped; its driver, Proctor, opened the door and closed it again without getting out. He opened it a second time about five minutes later, then walked out of frame to the right. During those five minutes he had made the transmission. For that period, the windows remained opaque with reflected sky.

Saskia sighed. “Any ideas?”

Hannah gestured with his sandwich. “I don’t know about ideas, but there is an odd thing: the door. Why did he open it twice?”

“Yes. The door. He is the only person in the car. What model of car is that? Does it have an advanced computer onboard?”

Besson shook his head. “That’s a Merc. An expensive model with hands-off driving module, but the computer is thick. Course, Proctor may have installed a computer himself. It could interface with the car, control it. Anything’s possible.”

Saskia checked against the notes on her recorder. “Garrel mentioned that Proctor had a personal computer. A very miniature one. Perhaps the computer handled the communication. Picture it: Proctor arrives, he opens the door, then the computer calls him back in. He closes it again and receives the transmission.”

Hannah grunted. “Maybe the computer said who’s calling.”

Saskia snapped her finger and thumb. “Maybe. You will make a fine FIB Detective one day, Deputy.”

“Gee thanks. Am I allowed to eat my sandwich now?”

“No. Paul, can we see a visual of the sound at that point?”

“Yeah. Hang on.” Besson spun the dial on his mouse anticlockwise and the video began to reverse. Proctor walked backwards to the car and opened the door. “That’s the end of it the transmission.” He wound it back still further. The door closed. He kept cuing. Thirty seconds later – for Proctor, five minutes earlier – the door opened again. “Right,” Besson said. “Here’s the visual of the sound. There are two waveforms because it’s stereo.”

The image was replaced by two graphs. They were flat but for a little peak in the middle of each waveform. Despite the cold, they reminded Saskia of lonely, Pacific islands. “Play it,” she said.

“Way ahead of you,” muttered Besson.

He played it. It sounded like the wind. Somewhere far away she heard an irregular sound. It might have been a footfall, a snapping branch or a voice. “There is definitely something,” Saskia said.

“I agree. Let me get this cleaned up. I’ll filter out the noise and have the computer make a guess. It’ll take about an hour.”

It took forty-eight minutes. Hannah’s phone rang as he and Saskia were finishing their fourth cigarette under the awning. They had been discussing the facts of the case. Hannah had said, “What do you reckon to Proctor then?”

Saskia thought for a moment – primarily to infer Hannah’s intended meaning – and then said, “I think he may be innocent of some crimes. At least, not guilty in the way we think. I don’t trust Garrel.”

“A stitch-up?”

“A conspiracy perhaps. Trust me, it happens.”

And then Hannah’s phone rang: ‘Scotland the Brave’. It was Besson.

“I have it,” he said, and hung up.

Saskia and Hannah jogged back up and found Besson sitting triumphantly before the computer. Leaning over his shoulder were Charlotte and Henry. Hannah wheezed to a halt and Saskia looked at Besson’s finger, poised over the mouse button.

“Do it,” she said.

Besson did it. Over the speaker, with some digital distortion, a woman’s voice said, “Professor Proctor, it is your daughter.”

Everybody laughed. Saskia clapped Besson on the back and Hannah elbowed Henry in the ribs. “Not too shabby, eh, Henry?” Charlotte nodded with pursed lips.

“Good work, Paul,” said Saskia. She stood back and let her smile fade. “Now, I want a complete analysis of every electronic communication between Proctor and his daughter. Everybody work on it. Divide the labour according to three equal periods of time since her tenth birthday.”

Charlotte said, “You know, it would save us some time if we had some access to the GCHQ files.”

“Explain.”

“The General Communications Headquarters. It is part of the UK government intelligence apparatus. It monitors electronic transmissions. Sifts through emails, too, if the person is flagged for surveillance. Do you think Proctor is flagged?”