The Locker (24 page)

forty-eight

James Ellworthy looked nervous.
Maybe it was being out of the office, as if he were afraid the great outdoors was waiting to ambush him now he was away from his electronic toys and subdued lighting. He followed instructions and came in via the back garden like a ghost, and unfolded a neat laptop on the work surface. He eyed Gina with awe when he saw the butt of her semi-automatic showing under her jacket, and she smiled coyly and asked if he wanted coffee. He shook his head and focussed on the smart card, slipping it into a plug-in reader and waiting while it loaded.

“How much do you guys know about encrypted data?” he asked, generally.

“Me? Nothing,” said Gina.

“I'm a dunce,” Ruth told him. “Speak slowly and in simple words, otherwise I'll get Gina to shoot you in the kneecaps.”

He blushed again and eyed Gina with a glint of respect. “Right. That's good to know. Uh … how can I put this? I've got a
high-spec
decryption program on here; it unravels codes and looks for passwords and back doors into protected programmes or documents, like I think this might be.”

“Does it work quickly?”

“Pretty much, yes. If I can get the smart card to download without crashing, I'll run it through the program and see what it comes up with. Shouldn't take more than a few minutes.” He smiled “How's that?”

“Awesome,” Gina murmured throatily. “No guns for you today.” She smiled when he went bright red and walked out of the kitchen, deliberately twitching her hips on the way.

“Wow,” he croaked, looking at Ruth. “Is she for real?”

“She is, but not for you,” Ruth warned him. “You've got work to do.”

Ellworthy hummed vaguely while waiting for the decryption software to do its tricks, then gestured for Ruth to take a look.

“It's some kind of spreadsheet,” he explained. “Like Excel. Only this is something
tailor-made
. Some of the cells are individually encrypted—see the hashtags? I'm not sure I can punch through them without losing the data.”

Ruth studied the screen and scrolled down through line after line of numbers and letters, each in their own cells. Some were filled with hashtags, but enlarging the cell didn't automatically reveal the contents as she knew the Excel programme would do. Neither did hovering the cursor over the cell. She tried to make sense of the blocks of letters, hoping they would form a pattern, but they were a meaningless jumble. “OK. What do you think this is?”

He shrugged. “I've seen this kind of thing before, so I'm only guessing. But you won't like it.”

“Try me.”

“I did an exchange program a while back with the DEA—that's our Drug Enforcement Administration. They'd liberated a ton of DVDs, flash drives and paper from a Mexican cartel. The stuff on the drives looked like this, only much bigger. It was transactional data used by the drugs gang listing sales by volume, product and market. It was huge—those guys deal in millions, maybe billions.” He flicked a hand towards one side of the screen, where some of the cells contained a series of abbreviations, like words in text messages. “The one thing they didn't encode is this column here.”

He was pointing at a cell containing the alphanumeric HNDA650L, and another with HNDACG125.

“OK, thrill me,” said Ruth. “What are they?”

“Honda motorcycles. Small, fast, and
Chinese-built
.”

She stared at him. “How the hell do you know that? It could mean anything.”

He grinned. “My kid brother's a bike freak. He races these things in indie meetings. Every time I see him he bores me to death with the numbers. It's like he wants to race every
two-wheeler
on the planet.”

She scowled. “So this spreadsheet comes from a
bike
dealer? I don't get it.”

“Me neither, but that's what it says.” He pointed further down to where other cells contained the letters DUND606 and CONTTKC80. “And see these? They're tyre makes. Tyres for motorcycles. I'm pretty sure they're
off-road
models.” He indicated other cells. “And these look like parts numbers for spares.”

“If they are,” said Andy Vaslik, entering the kitchen and leaning over to take a look, “somebody's been buying bikes and replacement parts. Big deal.”

Ruth took a turn round the kitchen, eyeing the laptop as if she wanted to hurl something heavy through the screen. What on earth was a bike dealer's transaction record doing on a digital
photo-frame
? Was it simply a random error, picked up by mistake from another computer? Or something less innocent?

“Damn.” Vaslik murmured softly. He tapped a fingernail against the screen, watched by an anxious James Ellworthy, protective of his
high-tech
toy. “What if these aren't bike parts?”

“Say again,” said Ruth.

“What if they're code for something else? I mean, if the rest is encrypted like Boy Wonder, here, says, then why leave this column in clear?”

“It's only in clear,” Ruth countered, “if you know about motorbikes.”

“Exactly. Which would be enough to put most people off the scent. But what if the transactions in this column
are
for bikes and parts … but others are for something else entirely?”

Ruth scowled. She was getting a glimmer of an idea and she didn't like it. “Go on.”

“Well, we don't know where this data comes from; it could be anywhere in the world where bikes get traded in large numbers.”

“Funny you should say that.” Ellworthy moved the mouse and placed the cursor on a cell adjacent to one of the parts numbers. A grey box appeared with the letters PESH in black type.

“Pesh?”

“Peshawar,” Vaslik said immediately. “In Pakistan.” He looked intense, as if they'd found a locked secret. “The Pakistanis use motorbikes. Lots and lots of them.”

“That's right.” Ellworthy was nodding excitedly. “I've been there and they're everywhere. You get whole families on one bike. It's like, nuts. But why not? In cities the traffic's a nightmare and in the countryside the roads are dirt tracks. The only way to get around is on two wheels. Jesus, I should tell my bro—he'd freak out.” He scowled at the thought, then turned and got ready to switch off the laptop. “Well, guys, it's been fun but I have to get back. What do you want me to do with this stuff?”

Ruth looked at Vaslik, who shook his head. “It's your call. But don't quote me on any of this. It still might not mean anything.”

“Fine,” said Ruth, and looked at Ellworthy. “Send it on up the ladder. Talk to Aston—nobody else, you hear?”

“I got it.”

“Good. He'll know what to do.” Something told her it was too important to hold onto. She didn't know for sure what it meant, but there was too much going on for this to be overlooked. And right now, any lead was worth exploring.

“Anything else?”

“Yes. Great work. Forget you saw it and you were never here.” She was taking a risk on him keeping quiet, but it was all she could think of. She hadn't got the resources to take this further, and for all she knew it could be a glorious waste of time. Aston, at least, would know who to consult. She just hoped he stayed well away from Martyn Claas, who would kill the thing stone dead on cost grounds alone.

Ellworthy looked uncertain. “What if I'm asked about it?”

“You lie.” It was Gina, speaking from the doorway. “If you don't, I'll track you down like a dog.” For added emphasis, she flicked back her jacket revealing the butt of the pistol. “You get me?”

Ellworthy nodded and swallowed, as if unsure whether to laugh or cry. He scooped up his laptop. “I get you. I won't tell anyone.” He gave a weak smile and Gina turned and led him to the back gate.

Ruth watched them go before turning to Vaslik. “If those records are what you think they are, and this house is being watched by former US special forces, what does that say about Michael Hardman?”

Vaslik shrugged. “I don't know. Seriously. There could be any number of explanations.”

“But if the spreadsheet is anything to do with him, why leave it on the photo card?”

“What better place? Who would look there?” He smiled wryly. “Apart from us, of course. But we're security geeks.”

“Thanks. It still doesn't explain what his connection is.”

“No. But I'm willing to bet one thing: Hardman ain't no charity worker.”

An hour later Ruth had a call from Aston. He'd been briefed on the spreadsheet records by Ellworthy, but he wasn't calling about mystery motorcycle parts or missing husbands.

“I'm coming over,” he told her. “You and Vaslik stay there; and keep Mrs. Hardman isolated. What I have to say is not for her ears.”

forty-nine

“Tiggi Sgornik's dead,” Aston
announced quietly. He loosened his tie and collar, a gesture that was as surprising as if he had suddenly announced a profound belief in aliens. It was accompanied by a pull of the mouth as if the words tasted bitter.

They were in the living room, with Gina keeping Nancy occupied upstairs. They had taken seriously Aston's warning that the news he had was not something she would want to hear.

Ruth and Vaslik were on the sofa, with Aston slumped in an armchair opposite. He looked beat, as if he had run a marathon, his usually neat, sharp edges slightly rumpled. Before speaking, he'd placed a small plastic box on the coffee table and flicked a switch, explaining that it was one of James Ellworthy's toys—a jammer to counter the listening devices in the house.

“I had to tell you in person,” he continued, “and I'll have to ask you to keep this from Mrs. Hardman for a while until more is known.”

“Will do,” Ruth agreed. “What happened?”

“Miss Sgornik's body was found late last night just below Putney Bridge. Early indications are she was beaten to death. The Serious Organised Crime Unit is involved and the Foreign Office wants answers.”

“What now?” Ruth felt numbed. Was this a precursor to Beth also being found dead, a grisly sign that the kidnappers had finally given up waiting for Michael Hardman and cut their losses?

“I'll come to that. We'd put out her name earlier as a person of interest and got the
heads-up
of her death from a contact in the Met. That gave us some leeway.”

“To do what?” This from Vaslik.

“Initially we're handing over everything to them.” At their looks of surprise, he explained, “If we don't and they find the link later on, they'll slaughter us. There are already questions being asked in the House about the involvement of private security contractors in criminal investigations. And since our guards went missing in Nigeria, we're under even closer scrutiny.” He winced. “It seems that along with the military nowadays, we're not supposed to lose people; as if it had never occurred to anyone before that fighting or protecting others in openly hostile areas is an inherently dangerous occupation. If we're accused on top of that of withholding evidence about a child abduction here in London, I doubt we'll survive the
fall-out
.”

“Not even with our new friends in Washington and Amsterdam to back us up?”

Aston gave a bleak smile at Ruth's acid tone. She was referring to Martyn Claas and Bob Zitterman.

“They won't protect us.” His voice was blunt. “If their investment is threatened in any way they'll drop us like hot coals. We're hardly in the same territory as Blackwater, but neither are we big enough to fight off a government enquiry unscathed. The publicity would rip us to shreds.”

Blackwater was a powerful American private security company, some of whose men had been accused of brutality and excesses in Iraq. With the suspected help of influential friends, the company had weathered the media and political storm, but had since changed hands and name. Aston was correct: Cruxys wasn't in the same league.

“How was the body identified?” Ruth queried. It seemed pointless to pursue it but she was curious to know what role Tiggi had played in Beth's abduction. Had she been an innocent caught up in the kidnap … or something darker?

“A label was found stitched inside the pocket of her jacket, believe it or not. It led to her father, a clothing manufacturer named Czcibor Sgornik. She was allegedly in the UK on an extended visit to improve her English, although there are doubts about that. However, she had a habit of calling her father once a week—his instructions, I gather. He was worried about her. When he hadn't heard from her for a few days he rang his embassy and got them involved. It seems he carries a lot of weight with the government, courtesy of making, among other things, uniforms for the Israeli police and army.”

Vaslik's eyebrows shot up and he exchanged a glance with Ruth. He hadn't missed the significance. “Israel? Is that where's she's from?”

“Yes. Czcibor's parents arrived in Israel from Poland sixty years ago. Tiggi was educated in Haifa. This is another reason we're having to step back from this: with the involvement of another country it's simply too messy. Let the police and security service sort it out.”

Ruth leaned forward. “Why MI5? Is there a spying connection?”

“Not as far as I know. They're playing safe, that's all. Hardman works in some very questionable, even threatening places; place that in connection with almost anything Israeli and the warning flags go up as a matter of course.”

There was a “but” in there somewhere; Ruth could hear it. Aston hadn't given up that easily, surely. “What about Beth? She's still out there.”

“I'm aware of that.” Aston met her glare with absolute calm. He tapped his knees and looked at them both in turn. “We probably have
twenty-four
hours to get this cleaned up. Find the kidnappers and bring Beth home. But,” he paused, “I'm giving you both an
opt-out
. If you want nothing more to do with it, I will understand. You can transfer to other assignments and we'll let the authorities do what they can. In fact, Claas is demanding it; he wants the publicity of being seen to be a responsible company. If that means you two disappearing into the background with a gagging order, all the better.” His expression was wintry, clear enough evidence of his feelings about the Dutchman's tactics.

“Everything goes to the police?”

“Yes. Briefings, data, the listening devices—even your reports and the briefing boards. Full disclosure.” He lifted his hands, wrists close together. “I have no choice.”

“What about the smart card?” said Ruth.

“No. Not that. At least, not yet.”

“Why?” asked Vaslik.

“It's a question of jurisdiction. This is a fair bit of supposition on our part, but the moment Ellworthy brought it back I sent it to a friend at Vauxhall Cross.” He was referring to MI6, the Secret Intelligence service. “It took them about ten minutes to crack enough of it to get excited. As far as I know they haven't yet shared that excitement with their friends along the embankment.” This meant MI5. “But they will have to sooner or later. I can put Claas off until tomorrow, but that's it.” He looked at them. “Are you in or out?”

“I'm in,” Vaslik muttered.

“Me, too,” said Ruth. She was damned if she was going to allow Claas to kick her off the job and leave Beth to God knew whatever fate awaited her without at least trying to find her. And if that meant risking bumping up against the police and the security services, so be it.

Aston smiled. “I was hoping you'd say that.” He reached in his top pocket and took out a slip of paper which he passed to Ruth. “Because of the information on the smart card there's somebody you need to talk to. I don't know if it will help find the Hardman girl, but it might explain why she was taken.”

“Do you know why?”

“I can only go by what I've been told, which is limited information only. All I can say is, talking with this man will answer a lot of questions, but it won't necessarily mean you'll find her. She may be beyond our reach. You'll have to judge that for yourselves. It might, however, influence what you do next. Be at this location in Hyde Park at six this evening. Sorry about the cloak and dagger, but he's flying out from Northolt immediately afterwards and it can't wait.”

“How will I know him?”

“You won't—but he will know you.”

The knowledge didn't reassure her. “Why are you letting me do this? It could be messy for Cruxys if it all goes wrong.”

“Because I trust you. Because you care. And I want to see an outcome for this, not for it to be swept under the carpet like a minor dust problem. But take great care, Ruth. Claas is watching you and we're dealing with some very ruthless people.”

“I will. Do I get any help?”

“Vaslik here, if he's willing.”

The American nodded. “Damn right.”

“You can also have Fraser if you think she's up to it. If I can get one of the specialists, I will, but don't count on it. We're a little stretched right now.”

“What if we tread on any toes?”

Aston's mouth curled. “What can I say—just make sure they're the right ones. And in that respect, I advise you to take precautions.”

Ruth blinked in surprise. Aston was talking weapons. It wasn't like him.

“Serious?”

“Just to be safe. Fraser will kit you out.” He studied the pair of them. “I don't like sending people out into the field unprepared; I never have and never will. But you know the rules.”

Ruth nodded. He meant no comeback. If they got caught carrying weapons, they were on their own. “I know.”

When Aston had gone, Ruth looked at Andy Vaslik. He'd been quiet throughout Aston's talk, content to stay in the background. But his demeanour worried her; something was going on that seemed to be distracting him but she couldn't put her finger on it. She didn't know him well enough to guess his mood swings, but she sensed a tension in him that she hadn't witnessed before.

“You're very quiet.”

“I'm just wondering where this is going.” He laid his hand out flat and waggled it from side to side. “The way he was talking, it could get heavy. Are you sure you want to continue?”

Ruth felt a tremor run through her, like a tiny charge of electricity.
Was he warning her off?
If so, what did he know? Or should that be what
else
did he know?

“Why do I get the feeling you aren't as blind here as you pretend?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

She waited for him to say more but he didn't. The silence in the room was intense.

“Does the American connection worry you?”

“Why should it?” His face was still, and that concerned her.

She waited to see if he would unload, but he remained silent. In the end she said, “No reason.” She checked her watch. It was going to be tight and she didn't want to be late. “Come on, let's go talk to a spook.”

“You think that's what Aston's friend is?”

“Of course. Didn't you know, London's full of them.”