Zero days, p.15
Zero Days, page 15
‘And Neo. The hacker handle of one James Timothy Edwards, from London. He didn’t have your luck, Vika. Or the weapons you call legs. He was in Berlin. Looking to invest his Bitcoins. To cash out. We were watching him. And maybe Dmitry was too. Because you know what? He took a dive from the sixth floor of a Kreuzberg squat. Made a real mess of the sidewalk.’
She looked up slowly. If she recognised the name, she didn’t show it. Just sat, sipping her coffee, saying nothing. She looked beyond Drayton, towards the road, and began to squeeze one of her ears between a finger and thumb, pulling at the pierced lobe. With her other hand she put the coffee cup back on the table. Was her hand shaking, ever so slightly? It was hard for Drayton to tell. But the news about Neo seemed to have pierced that cold veneer.
‘What were you doing in Bagan, Vika?’
Then, when she didn’t answer, Drayton said, ‘Let me tell you what I think. You hacked Richard Pendleton’s pacemaker. You were controlling him, holding him hostage. But why? Why would you do that?’
She leaned forward, slowly bringing her face close to his. ‘Maybe Dmitry likes Buddhas.’
‘Enough to kill for?’
She snapped the laptop shut and rose angrily to her feet. ‘Do you think I had a choice, Drayton? You think I had a fucking choice?’
‘You don’t look like the sort of person who likes to do as she’s told, Vika.’
‘Well, maybe that’s why Dmitry tried to terminate my contract.’
She moved towards the door, and then turned back to Drayton. ‘I tried to save him. I tried to fucking save him.’ Then she stormed out to the street.
Drayton followed her, but by the time he was out front, she was gone. He followed one narrow street until it reached another, and then another, all looking the same. It took him an hour to reach his hotel, even then he nearly missed it, the place looking a little different from the other buildings lining the street.
‘Mr Day-toon. Mr Day-toon,’ came the calls from the two uncles, shouting and badly mangling his name, when they spotted him passing.
The first thing he noticed when he entered his room was the smell. A kind of incense this time. Then he saw something glowing like blue touch paper beside his bed. A mosquito coil.
‘You’ve got a serious mosquito problem, Drayton. What kept you?’ Vika was sitting on his bed, under his mosquito net. She had her computer open in her lap. ‘Razor,’ she said. ‘Razor could lead us to Dmitry.’
Drayton pulled back the net. ‘And how’s Razor gonna do that?’
She said Dmitry had sold a package of surveillance tools to the Thai military government, so they could keep tabs on their opponents. It was a standard off-the-shelf package he’d sold to several clients, some government, some corporate, to take control of opposition computers and smartphones, to track and listen to them, read all their stuff.
‘It all went fine at first, but the Thais wanted more, including voice and face recognition tools. So that the surveillance could be far better targeted. They claimed Dmitry had given them second-rate kit. So he sent Razor to Bangkok to give them an upgrade.’
‘So who exactly is this Razor who does spyware upgrades?’ Drayton asked.
‘Razor’s the handle of a British hacker called Matt Dobberman. Brilliant. An obsessive and a creep, but one of Dmitry’s favourites. The Thais kidnapped him, put him under house arrest and refused to let him leave until he upgraded the tools to the spec they wanted.’
‘Why a creep?’ Drayton asked.
‘I didn’t like his browsing habits.’
‘Which are?’
‘Use your imagination, Drayton,’ she said, a look of revulsion on her face. ‘And he was sloppy, very sloppy.’
She took a sip of water from a plastic bottle beside the bed.
‘Dmitry told everybody to keep a low digital profile, to take care even with dark web forums. And no social media. But Razor didn’t seem to care. He was good, one of the best, and Dmitry needed him. They were close. And he may still be in Bangkok. The Thais aren’t going to let him go anywhere until they’ve got their upgrade, and my guess is that he’s still in touch with Dmitry. He’ll know how to find him.’
An Instagram account in the name of MadDog, an ugly mutt for a profile picture, a play on Dobberman’s name, was open on her screen.
Drayton climbed onto the bed beside her, so they were both looking at the screen.
‘It’s a long shot,’ she said.
Most of the posts were old. Well before Razor had come to Asia.
Then Drayton said, ‘Hey, hang on. What’s that?’
He was pointing at a photograph with a backdrop of a wild sky, a big storm. In the foreground, wind and rain lashed a small food stall in which two women sat using upside down woks for rain hats. It was a good photo, simply captioned ‘Downpour in Asia’. But Drayton and Vika weren’t looking at the photo, but at the date it was taken. Just one week ago.
‘He’s still there,’ she said, raising her hands in triumph. ‘Yes! The creep’s still in Thailand.’
She clicked on a line of squiggly Thai words above the picture and just below the account name MadDog and the profile picture of the dog. A map opened with a locator in a narrow street in downtown Bangkok.
‘I don’t believe it,’ Drayton said. ‘He hasn’t switched off his location data.’
‘I told you he was sloppy,’ Vika said.
*****
Vika left for Bangkok ahead of Drayton, saying they should travel separately. When he asked where they should meet and how they’d keep in touch, she just said, ‘Don’t worry, Day-toon,’ parodying the way the uncles mangled his name. ‘I’ll find you.’
Drayton spent much of the next day and a half clinging to the toilet. Praying to that porcelain god. The sickness hadn’t crept up on him, it had hit him with the force of Vika’s formidable legs. At least that’s how it felt. When he wasn’t sitting on the toilet, he had his head down it. The pain in his guts came in agonising convulsions. He was dizzy, his head ached, and he was soaked with so much sweat that he felt like he was melting.
Most likely it was something he’d eaten. Or maybe something spread by that gluttonous mosquito he’d found inside his net. Now he didn’t even have that shelter. He was curled up on the toilet floor, terrified that if he left the room, he’d never make it back in time. He pawed pathetically at passing mosquitoes.
When he saw the rat poking its head out of the hole near the door, looking at him, he was sure it was smirking. He tried to yell, not having any ammunition at hand, but the yell came out as more of a muted moan. The rat didn’t look impressed, but left anyway. Maybe the stench and mess of the toilet was too bad even for rats.
Drayton stuffed the rat hole with wet toilet paper.
Uncle number two was sympathetic in an amused sort of way, and brought Mr Day-toon some water with a noxious potion that he drank, but then immediately threw back up. He found some antibiotics in his medical kit, and some other anti-diarrhoea tablets. He took both. Then when the convulsions began to lessen, he crawled back to his bed, secured the mosquito net and slept. He was out for fourteen hours solid. Maybe more. And when he woke he felt better, but drained.
He powered up his laptop and was surprised to find a message from Anna. She said she was sorry they hadn’t been able to meet at the Berlin coffee shop that night. That it would have been good to talk, to explain why she felt she needed to move out. She said she hoped they could meet when he got back from his trip. That in the meantime things were going really well for her. That Efren Bell had asked her to help with some projects. And wasn’t that simply amazing? There were then a whole bunch of exclamation marks and smiley faces.
He deleted the message. He’d been enjoying it up to the bit about Efren Bell.
Then he went to log in to the Berlin Group’s shared email account. It rejected his credentials. He tried again, and was rejected again. A third time too. The password had been changed. Vika had locked him out.
CHAPTER FIVE
Razor (the Creep)
Bangkok, Thailand
Drayton was four days behind Vika by the time he left Mandalay for Bangkok, without a clue how to find her.
But she knew how to find him.
As he exited the aircraft in the Thai capital, he was greeted by a woman in a tight purple skirt and jacket, a big orchid in her carefully set hair, standing with a board in her hand with the words, ‘Siam Pro-Golf International’ and the name Chuck Day-toon.
‘Mr Day-toon?’ she said. ‘This way please.’ She led him to a little electric buggy. ‘We can use the VIP channel.’
The buggy zig-zagged down long airport corridors, around groups of languid holidaymakers on their long trek to immigration. The orchid woman took Drayton’s passport to be stamped. He gave her his American one, in his own name.
A big BMW was waiting for him outside. She held open the rear door for him and wished him well with the tournament. ‘I bet you’ve got quite a handicap,’ she said, smiling.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Tell me about it.’
She handed him a brown envelope as he climbed into the car. ‘This is from your agent.’ she said.
The envelope contained an old Nokia phone, which was clean, with no record of calls or messages and no contacts. He’d have to wait for Vika to call him. The limo dropped him outside a tower of glass and steel, a concierge welcoming him with another smile, ‘Please sir. This way to reception.’ A bell-hop took his bag, ‘If you’ll allow me, sir.’ A cold face towel was dangled in front of him. The lobby was all wood? and marble, with fierce air conditioning. Modern art on the walls, but mostly stylised elephants and Buddhas. Big mirrors alongside them. A cold drink waiting at check-in. ‘How are you? And how was the journey?’
Only they could find no reservation for a Day-toon, or even a Drayton.
‘I’m afraid we don’t seem to have any record of you,’ the check-in girl said.
Then the old Nokia rang.
‘So you made it,’ said Vika, giving him instructions about how to get to another hotel. The one where she was staying. And where Drayton would be too.
‘Get real,’ she said. ‘You think I’d book a place like that.’
‘I kinda got my hopes up.’
He followed her instructions, taking a series of back streets. He arrived at a group of food stalls with yellow plastic stools and tables, food sizzling in big spitting woks. It looked familiar, except the big women at the stall were cooking in the woks and not wearing them, as they had been in Dobberman’s Instagram photograph.
The smell of spice was so powerful it stung his nose.
A narrow alleyway led to something called ‘The Best Guest House’, a four-storey place painted in garish red, a boutique experience according to a plaque beside the door. He crossed a small carpeted lobby. There was no elevator, so he climbed the stairs to the top floor.
Vika had taken a corner room, windows on two sides. Two queen-sized beds. It wasn’t like the place around the corner. No way. But a good deal better than Mandalay.
‘Nice to see you,’ she said, opening the door, no longer a nun.
She was wearing blue jeans with designer rips and a white T-shirt. The rings and studs were back in in her ears, eyebrow, nose and lip. The shaved nun’s head giving way to a carpet of blonde stubble. ‘What took you so long?’ she asked.
He tapped his stomach. ‘I was hugging the toilet.’
Vika wrinkled her nose in disgust.
‘Thanks for organising the ride,’ Drayton said. ‘I was kinda looking forward to the golf. How did you arrange that?’
‘Trade secrets. But it’s not difficult to access airline passenger lists. And there is a big golf tournament coming up. The organisers have lousy security on their website. Even worse on their database. So I entered you for the competition. I had great fun with your bio. Day-toon is now one of the world’s greatest golf players. And they had VIP transfer from the airport.’
He said he’d never been so sick as in those last days in Mandalay, that on the very last day he’d woke up with two large cockroaches in his bed.
‘Well, we all make mistakes Drayton,’ she replied, having a laugh at his expense. Drayton laughed too. It was pretty funny. She was loosening up, and that was good. But then he remembered the email account.
‘So you locked me out,’ he said, no longer smiling.
‘I changed the shared password. Basic security, Drayton. And don’t worry, there’s been nothing urgent. I sent a short note to Schoenberg saying you’d found me, together with the new password. Or rather you sent it.’
Drayton threw his bag hard onto one of the beds. ‘We have to trust each other,’ he said, but realised immediately how stupid that must sound. In cyberspace, trust died a long time ago. ‘What else have I told him?’
‘That’s about it. He replied pretty quickly. Just a short note. A man of few words, Herr Schoenberg.’
‘Saying what?’
‘Saying, “Stick with the girl.” So top marks again Drayton.’
She handed him a pair of binoculars and pointed down the street to a compound surrounded by high walls topped with embedded glass, the wall broken only by a security post beside a big metal gate. In the middle of the compound, two squat wooden houses were surrounded by tall trees, a pair of satellite dishes to one side.
‘That’s where the creep’s under house arrest,’ she said.
‘We need to access his laptop,’ Drayton said. ‘Something that seems to come naturally to you.’
‘Forget it,’ she replied, ignoring the sarcasm. ‘He always leaves it in the compound, and getting into that place would be tough. Security is tight. And even if we did get in, we’d need to get to the laptop while it’s awake. That’s maybe a one minute window, depending on his settings. As soon as it goes back to sleep, it’s locked. Enter a password incorrectly three times and all data is deleted. And in any case, his files will be encrypted. It’s basic stuff. Standard security.’
‘How do we know that? Look at his Instagram account. The location settings. That was stupid security. Suppose he’s just as sloppy on his laptop.’
‘I doubt that. And anyway, it’s not worth the risk. Believe me, Drayton. Accessing his laptop will be a whole lot tougher.’
She paused, taking the field glasses back from Drayton.
Then she said, ‘We need to go after his phone.’
She had a plan, which she began to outline as Drayton angrily paced the room. She’d thought it all through. What she was suggesting was risky, but he had to admit that it made a lot of sense.
The plan was good. Very good.
*****
It was well after dark when Vika’s laptop made a loud claxon sound, like a submarine about to dive. The screen came alive to show two large video windows, each displaying a black and white image. One of a yard, the other a road.
‘The creep’s on the move,’ she said, throwing a pillow at Drayton, who was sleeping on one of the room’s two queen-sized beds.
Drayton joined her in front of the computer, still sleepy. It took him a while to realise what he was looking at. The images were from two surveillance cameras above the gate of the house where Dobberman was being kept. One was pointing at the compound; the other gave an outside view. Both had been hacked by Vika. As had a motion detector, which triggered lights on the gate – and also the alarm on the laptop.
Two figures crossed the compound.
‘That’s him,’ Vika said, pointing to the shorter of the two men. Short and dumpy. Though it was hard to see too much detail in the grainy video image. The other man was taller and leaner. Vika said he was a cop. The creep’s minder, who’d usually stay with him for part of the evening.
‘He also wears an electronic tag on his right ankle,’ she said. ‘So they can keep tabs on him when he’s out on his own.’ It was a simple GPS tracker. And she’d hacked that too.
Dobberman and the cop left the first screen, and then appeared on the second, beyond the sliding electric gate, the image showing their backs this time, as they walked up the road, away from the compound.
‘Get yourself ready, Drayton,’ Vika said. ‘You’re going to work.’
They left the hotel five minutes later, Vika saying the creep had followed the same routine for three of the last four evenings.
‘He hangs out in a go-go-bar,’ she said. ‘He stays there for two or three hours before taking a girl, maybe two, to a short-time place around the corner, where rooms are hired by the hour. The cop usually leaves the bar early. But the creep always comes back to the house on his own before midnight, as if that’s his curfew time.’
They reached a narrow road, crowded and brightly lit. All neon and thumping music. Bar girls stood around in groups, wearing skimpy bikinis, shouting and grabbing at passing men, trying to entice them inside the bars.
‘Let’s go through this one more time,’ Vika said. ‘The girls names?’
‘Lek and Noi,’ said Drayton.
‘And the mamasan?’
‘Meow. Khun Meow. What sort of name is that, anyway?’
‘It’s a nickname Drayton. The Thais like nicknames and some are pretty stupid. That’s not important. But she is. Very. The mamasan controls the girls. She manages the place. She was worried about the plan, at least at first, but I’ve reassured her that it won’t come back to hurt them.’
Vika said it was Lek whom the creep mostly took to the short-time hotel, but sometimes he took along her friend Noi too. She said that both were scared of him. That often he didn’t pay them, and he was rough. He’d push them around. Hit them sometimes, when he was drunk.
‘So why do they go with him?
‘They wouldn’t if they had a choice. They know he has some sort of connection with the police. They’re not sure precisely what. But they see the guy he comes in with, and they can tell a cop when they see one. And the cops control the bars here. Everyone pays protection. Sometimes the cops own the bars. You don’t cross them. At least not openly.’
Vika reached into her pocket and pulled out a small piece of foil, folded several times, and handed it to Drayton.
