Part Three:
Secrets
1
Nobody was talking.
Cahill tried Scott Boston again at the Secret Service in Washington. Couldn’t get his call taken. Boston dodged him every time.
It was the same for Tom Hardy’s contacts. They had all clammed up. Not that they had been talkative that morning. But it was worse in the afternoon. As though a communications smart bomb had been detonated. Don’t talk about Tim Stark. It was working.
Hardy even tried to see if he had could get anything via their contacts in the British Government. Same story.
‘I’m going for a walk,’ Cahill told Hardy at four-thirty. ‘Clear my head.’
Hardy watched him go. Didn’t say anything. Knew that there was nothing that would calm Cahill.
Cahill sat on a stool by the window of a café on Buchanan Street. A teenager walked by nodding his head in time to music on his iPod, oblivious to all around him. He had long hair and wore a vintage AC/DC T-shirt advertising a tour from 1984. The kid wasn’t old enough. Probably bought it on eBay. He reminded Cahill of Bruce, CPO’s resident ethical hacker and IT director. Bruce had a quite astonishing collection of rock band tour T-shirts. All of them purchased at a gig on the tour. Cahill couldn’t remember the last time he saw Bruce wearing anything to work other than jeans and a tour T-shirt.
‘Yo,’ Bruce answered when Cahill called him.
‘It’s me.’
‘Boss. What’s on your mind?’
‘Can you run a check on the names Tim Stark and John Reece for me?’
‘Sure. Are there likely to be flags on the names already? I mean, if I run a search will it come back at us?’
‘They’ll be flagged.’
‘Uh …’
‘I kind of want it to get back to us.’
‘I get it.’
Bruce paused.
‘You want me to check it out on any, eh, official sites?’
‘No.’
‘Good. When do you need it?’
‘I’ll be back in the office in ten minutes.’
‘I’m on it.’
What Bruce meant by ‘official’ sites was law enforcement sites. And not the publicly available ones. The ones that required hacking. Cahill was wary of that. The firewalls and security systems on those things were good. Bruce was better, but the risk of accidentally tripping up was too great. Even being on such a site was a serious criminal offence.
Sometimes such an approach was necessary. This time, Cahill thought that staying on the right side of the law would be enough.
Cahill walked back to the office and straight to Bruce’s room.
Today’s T-shirt – ZZ Top.
‘Old school,’ Cahill said, pointing at the T-shirt.
Bruce puffed out his chest.
‘Best live band I ever saw,’ he said.
Bruce started playing an air guitar and making a noise with his mouth roughly approximating a ZZ Top riff. Cahill thought he recognised it, though he was no fan.
‘“La Grange”?’ he asked.
Bruce stopped his elaborate air guitar histrionics.
‘You the man, boss.’
Cahill nodded.
‘Results?’ he asked.
Bruce turned to one of five computer monitors in his room and tapped it meaningfully with a finger. There was an archived news story from the States about an FBI investigation several years ago. Stark was mentioned as one of the agents.
‘Okay,’ Cahill said. ‘Why are you showing me this?’
‘That’s all I can find on the guy,’ Bruce said, sweeping hair behind his ears.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Archives. Old stuff. Nothing recent at all. I’d normally expect something to show up even if it’s a simple Google search, you know. But this is it. I mean, unless your man is a schoolteacher from Manchester with a Facebook page extolling the virtues of bondage?’
Cahill said nothing.
‘Coz that’s all I got,’ Bruce went on. ‘Strictly weirdos and normals.’
‘What does that tell you?’
‘That there may have been some kind of recent effort to hide your boy’s activity. Law enforcement types usually show up somewhere.’
Cahill looked around the room. It was exceptionally clean and organised. Most people assumed from Bruce’s external appearance that he was a slob, expecting his workspace to be littered with McDonald’s wrappers and empty Coke cans.
Nope.
‘You want anything official looked at now?’ Bruce asked.
‘No. Thanks, Bruce.’
Cahill went back to his office and slumped in his seat. He stared at the paperwork in front of him but found it hard to concentrate. He knew that his singular nature was both his biggest strength and weakness – his inability to change his focus once he had zeroed in on something.
And he had zeroed in on Tim Stark now.