I can’t copy and paste the emails from this phone directly into Translate because I can’t let it go online, and I definitely can’t forward them to my email account and do it from there.
I turn to the hotel computer and load Google Russia and type in the email provider that the emails have been sent to. It’s the Russian email provider Yandex. The landing page means nothing to me; the writing is a mess of angular nonsense I don’t understand, but in the top right-hand corner is a familiar box, containing space for a username and password. I type the email address on the phone into the first box and click the illegible squiggles below the password. Password reset. I fill it out and wait. I stare at the phone.
Oh bugger.
I’m not going to be able to get the reset email, obviously! What a fucking moron. I’m not online. The reset email won’t get through. Why the fuck didn’t I think of that? Idiot.
Okay.
Okay.
Hang on…I can turn Wi-Fi on while still in airplane mode. Of course! Mark showed me how to do that on the flight over so we could use the inflight Wi-Fi. Then I won’t pick up any network signal. It won’t be traceable. I can connect to the hotel Wi-Fi on the phone, collect the reset email, and then reset the password. Yes!
I run through it quickly, connect the phone to the hotel Wi-Fi network, and wait for the reset email to arrive. A batch of thirty-one messages download onto the handset, my password reset email being the last one to arrive. Nobody is missing these people yet. Nobody has accessed this account for days.
I reset through the email link and choose the password G650. It seems apt. Holding my breath, I wait for it to confirm. It works. Now only I can access their emails.
I scroll through the emails; the Google banner at the top of the page reads: This page is in Russian. Would you like to translate it? I click Translate.
I read.
Most of them appear to be statements or receipts of some sort. Some are meeting itineraries. Locations, times, and people. Some of the emails are spam. Funny that criminals get spam too. But none of the emails seems to be personal. No names in the emails. I see Aegys-Mutual Consultants referenced a couple of times. Another corporation, Carnwennan Holdings. Transactions between the two. Another called Themis Financial Management. I stop reading. I need something more, a person’s name, something. I commit a few of the company names to memory; I’ll look them up later.
I delete the emails created by my password reset and sign out of the email account; I clear the browser history on the hotel PC and sign out of the guest page.
Now text messages. I’m pretty sure I’ll find something in the text messages. The green message icon shows there are forty-two new messages. I don’t think I’ve ever had more than ten unread texts in my life, but then I suppose these guys aren’t alive, are they? That can cause an unnaturally high buildup, I’d imagine.
I tap on messages. The phone has no saved numbers, so the messages all appear under phone numbers. I Google them. The +1 codes—America; +44 codes—UK; +7 codes—Russia; +352 codes—Luxemburg; and a +507 code—Panama. The Luxemburg number’s text chain seems to be mainly written in French and German. The Panama text chain is in Spanish with the occasional English word cropping up. The American and Russian numbers seem to be purely English. Whoever this phone belonged to spoke a lot of languages and had a lot of balls in the air. So to speak. I tap on the first message, the most recent one, the American number. I read the chain:
THEY HAVE AGREED. THEY WILL EXPEDITE THE TRANSACTION. SAFE FLIGHT
INFORMATION NOT RECEIVED AS ADVISED
IS THERE A PROBLEM? WHERE ARE YOU?
CONTACT ME
THIS COULD TURN UGLY, ADVISE
I go back to the message menu. Choose the next message chain down. The Russian number:
MEETING LOCATION SET FOR TODAY
PICK-UP SET FOR 22:30 AT HELIPORT.
FLIGHT REDIRECTED? WHAT IS YOUR CURRENT LOCATION? IS THERE A PROBLEM? CAN WE ASSIST?
THEY DID NOT RECEIVE. WHERE ARE YOU?
WHERE ARE YOU?
WE NEED TO TALK, RESPOND AS SOON AS YOU RECEIVE THIS.
RESPOND
Suddenly a dotted typing icon appears underneath. Oh my fucking God! Shit.
I forgot about the Wi-Fi connection. The three gray dots blink up at me. Someone is there. And then I remember, remember that iPhones send read receipts to the sender unless you specifically change the settings. And these messages have been marked read.
I scramble to turn it off. What if they’ve traced everything I’ve done? What if they find out who I am?
But they can’t. There’s no camera in here. I’ve used a public computer to read the emails. Anyone in the resort could have done it. There’s no way they—whoever they are—could know it’s me. But what if they’re coming? What if they come here and review the CCTV footage and see me coming in from the lobby at this time? I know there are security cameras in the lobby, in the hallway. Shit.
Okay, but realistically, Erin, realistically. Even if they know where the email account was accessed from, it takes at least a day to fly to Bora Bora from almost anywhere. A full day. And then they’d have to break into the hotel’s security system and view the footage and then they’d have to figure out it was me from that footage. Would they do that? They don’t even know I’ve seen the emails, do they? All they know is that their text messages have been read.
I need to read what they’ve written. I need to check.
I inhale deeply and push the power button again.
White screen, Apple icon, home screen, one unread message.
I tap it.
WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?
They don’t know I’m not whoever it is. Should I type something? Should I? Maybe I should tell them we found the bag?
No, I don’t think that’d be a good idea. No.
Maybe I should pretend to be them? Should I? It would stop them looking for me, right? Send them off on a different track. Oh God. I wish I’d thought this through before. I can’t think straight now. Okay, think. Think.
The three gray dots appear again. Shit! I have to say something. I tap on my text box. My text cursor pulsing.
Three gray dots will be appearing on his screen now. He’ll know there’s definitely someone there. Someone on the other end. I type.
REDIRECTED FLIGHT. UNAVAILABLE FOR TRANSACTION.
That seems okay, right? Fairly opaque. It should buy us enough time to get out of here before someone comes to find us. I press send. Gone. Off into the ether.
That seemed okay. Yeah. They might think the plane people are lying low or something, right?
And then reality hits me.
Lying low? What the actual fuck, Erin? What the actual, stupid, fuck are you doing? Lying low is not a thing. This is not The Third Man. You have absolutely no idea what you are doing right now. You are a film school graduate on your honeymoon. They will find you and they will kill you. You are going to die, Erin.
And then something very, very bad happens.
WHO IS THIS?
The gray dots pulse.
Pulse. Pulse. Pulse.
Oh no.
I stab the power button on the phone.
Oh God.
* * *
—
On the way back to the room I try to think of a good spin on what I’ve done. Some way to put it to Mark that doesn’t make me sound like a liar and an idiot; but to be honest, at this stage it’s fair to say that I am both those things. I just want his help. I’m scared. I need him to help me fix this.
“You did what?”
I stare at him. What can I say?
“Are you completely insane? Why on earth would you do that? Why did you lie? I don’t…These are real people, Erin. Real dead people and real living people. We have no idea who they are or what kind of resources they have. I cannot believe you could be so stupid! Why? Why did you do it?”
I say nothing. I just stand there. I know! I’m an idiot, he’s perfectly right, but we do need to fix this now. That’s all I care about. I just want to fix it. I don’t want to die.