“Let me hear your voices,” Egdod commanded.
James, Csongor, and Marlon all reached for their headsets and slipped them on. Meanwhile, Egdod was explaining: “I’ll go through with the transaction just as I said. But first I want to hear everything you know about Zula.”
“I know nothing,” James announced, and a moment later Thorakks said the same thing in a different voice.
“I’ll deal with you later, Seamus Costello!” Egdod thundered.
Csongor, Marlon, and Yuxia all turned to look at “James,” who was blushing vividly.
Marlon knew more than Seamus, but he was still too taken aback—and perhaps exhausted—to speak coherently. He looked across the café at Csongor.
“Okay,” Csongor said. “The story so far.” And he launched into an account of what had transpired in Xiamen two weeks ago. Richard Forthrast (for Csongor had googled Egdod and learned that the owner of this godlike character was none other) knew a surprising amount about the safe house that Ivanov had set up in Xiamen and about the cast of characters. Csongor couldn’t guess how he might have come by that information and did not want to interrupt the narrative to ask. Until, that is, Richard said, “You must be the Eastern European hacker.”
“We think of ourselves as Central European,” said Csongor. “How did you know of me?”
“Zula mentioned you in her note.”
This silenced Csongor for long enough that Seamus had to break in and explain, “We’re still on the line, big guy … he’s just taking that in.”
“You have heard from Zula!?” Csongor finally exclaimed, exchanging a wild look with Marlon and Yuxia.
“She wrote a note,” Richard said regretfully, “before it all went down. Nothing since then, unfortunately.”
Having allowed his hopes to rise, Csongor had now to observe another silence as his spirits plunged. He looked up to see Seamus giving him a knowing look. “Well then,” Csongor finally said, and he went on to relate a brief account of the storming of the apartment building, Zula’s trick with the fusebox, and how that had all played out.
Richard listened in silence until a certain point in the story when he said, “So Peter is dead.”
“Yes,” Csongor said gently.
“You’re sure of this.”
“Absolutely sure.”
“Well, that is a shame,” Richard said, “and sooner or later I’ll get around to feeling like crap about it. But right now—focusing on practical matters—it is a problem for me because it prevents me from pursuing the only independent lead I have.”
“What lead is that?” Seamus demanded.
“Peter had surveillance cameras in his apartment. They probably recorded video of what went down there the night Wallace was killed and Peter and Zula were abducted. Unfortunately, those files were erased. Later, though, someone came back—probably an accomplice to the original crime—and got caught on video. I have a copy of the file. Unfortunately, it’s encrypted. I was hoping I could get the decryption key. But if Peter’s dead—”
“Hold on for a moment,” Csongor said. For Ivanov’s leather man-purse was sitting on the floor between his feet. The money had been stolen from it, but Peter’s and Zula’s wallets and other personal effects were still in there, sealed up in Ziploc bags. In a few moments, he was able to get Peter’s wallet out and find a certain compartment, sealed behind a tiny zipper, with a scrap of paper inside.
Something moved on the screen, and he noted that they had been joined by another character named Clover—apparently an invited guest of Egdod’s.
Five lines had been written on the paper. Each began with what was apparently the name of a computer and ended with what was obviously a password.
“Do you have a hostname or something for the system you are trying to crack?”
Clover answered: “This was not a server per se, just a backup drive on a network.”
“Brand name Li-Fi, by any chance?”
“The same.”
“Then here is the password,” Csongor announced and read out the corresponding series of symbols.
“On it,” said Clover, and then became still, a sure sign that its owner—whoever he was—was tending to something other than playing T’Rain.
“Pray continue,” Richard said, and so Csongor went on telling the story. He got some assistance now from Marlon, who was able to relate parts of it that Csongor had not seen or during which he had been unconscious. But just as they were trying to explain the explosion, and Marlon’s rescue of Csongor from the cellar, Clover woke up and interrupted: “That was the correct password. I was able to decrypt the file.”
“Can you email it to me?” Richard asked. From which Csongor inferred that Richard and whoever was playing Clover were not in the same place.
“I did it on your server,” Clover answered. “The files were already there. All I had to do was send the command.”
He rattled off the name of a directory.
Csongor and Marlon now resumed the narrative, a bit uncertainly as they sensed that they no longer had Richard’s full attention. This suspicion was borne out a few minutes later when Richard broke in: “I can see him.” His voice was husky and he spoke slowly, as if mildly stunned. “This guy finds a way to break in. I can’t hear anything—it’s all just body language—but let me tell you that I have hired a lot of guys in my time, and this guy is a schlub. A palooka. An epsilon minus.”
Csongor did not know the meaning of any of these terms, but Richard’s tone of voice was easy enough to read.
“I was half hoping it might have been Sokolov,” Richard explained. “But I guess that’s impossible—you guys were all in Xiamen by this point. A day later he goes missing off Kinmen.”
Csongor looked at Marlon and Yuxia, who both threw up their hands. “You think Sokolov survived the explosion?” he asked.
“We know he did,” Seamus announced.