I still had Mullins to take care of. I phoned him and said we had the password for the drive. We arranged to meet down the pub.
“You brought your PR tottie with the tits,” Mullins leered. “All this for little old me?”
“I’m just here to vet anything that might adversely affect our client,” Marcie said.
“And Benjamin here is our IT,” I said. “He’s got the password and will talk you through the steps.”
Benjamin opened his laptop on the table and booted it up.
“First round’s on me,” I said. “Vodka tonic, right?”
“Good memory,” Mullins said. “You’re not totally useless after all.”
I walked over to the bar and ordered Mullins’s drink, the vial I got from Mark hidden in my hand. As the barkeep handed over the vodka tonic, I tipped the liquid into it and slipped the vial back into my pocket.
I brought the drink over to Mullins, and he practically grabbed it out of my hand.
“Cheers! You lot not having anything?”
“Too early for us, dude.”
“Chin-chin!’ Mullins said, and downed it with one gulp.
He took Sandra’s thumb drive out of his pocket and brandished it like a wand. He was the cat that ate the canary, a bottom-feeder who thought he had the winning lottery ticket.
He plugged the drive into Benjamin’s laptop and waited for it to show up on the screen.
“Come on, then. What’s the password?”
“fuckface123,” Benjamin said.
Mullins dutifully typed it in with two fingers.
The drive didn’t open up its files.
“Or what?” Mullins muttered.
“Type it again,” Benjamin said. “fuckface123.”
Again, no change.
“Come on,” Benjamin said. “fuckface123.”
Mullins typed it again, stopped, and finally realized what Benjamin had been calling him.
“Are you taking the piss?” He glared.
“You must be typing it wrong,” Benjamin said. “fuckface123.”
Mullins’s face went red with rage.
Benjamin and Marcie burst out laughing.
“Right! That’s it!”
Mullins pulled the drive out of the laptop and got up to leave.
“Come on, mate,” I said. “Sit down.”
“I don’t know what game you think you’re running here, but you just proved to me this is a big fucking deal. And you are going to regret fucking with me.”
He started to storm off. Benjamin and I got up after him.
Mullins barely took two steps before Mark’s drug kicked in. His eyes rolled back in his head and his legs went wobbly. Benjamin and I caught him by the arms before he went down in a heap. As we guided him back to his seat, I reached into his jacket and took the thumb drive.
We left him unconscious at the table and walked out, nice and smooth. To all eyes in that pub, this was not the first time Mullins had passed out drunk at his table.
“Not the first time we drugged a journalist,” Benjamin said with a shrug. “Won’t be the last.”
Another first for me, though, and a totally shitty one.