When Logan reached the van, Peter and Nelson were hanging around the back of it. They were supposed to be keeping an eye on whoever approached. Peter was solid enough but Nelson looked queasy and smoked a cigarette that jittered between his fingers.
It meant that Elias and Brad were inside with Seoc. Logan pushed the door open and stepped inside. Elias and Brad had their backs to him but straightened up to check who was coming in the door.
Brad visibly relaxed but Elias’ expression grew grimmer. “I can’t make a lick of sense out of him.” He stepped aside, making way for Logan.
Seoc was sitting in the secretarial chair Nelson had been using and his arms were strapped to the metal frame at the back, using someone’s leather belt. Apart from a small drop of blood on the corner of his mouth, he showed no sign of suffering. But he was slumped in the chair, his long legs askew, like he was about to pass out.
When he saw Logan, Seoc’s eyes rolled in their sockets and he grinned. It was a sickly expression. Some of his teeth were stained red. “Señor Wilde. I am a real player now, yes?”
“What’s the communication channel, Seoc?” Logan demanded. “Did you set it up?”
Elias cleared his throat. “He’s had no formal training. We could use just about anything on him and rip it out inside fifteen minutes but if he hasn’t set up the channel, we’re all screwed.”
“I know,” Logan shot back.
“If you hadn’t insisted on being a hero, we could have let him go his merry way. Get the channel set up. Then take him.”
“I know,” Logan repeated, watching Seoc’s eyes. The man wasn’t listening to them at all. He was in his own little world, somewhere far away.
“You’ve potentially lost to the west the world’s greatest scientific and political breakthrough.”
Logan turned on Elias. “For chrissake, you think I don’t know that?”
“Such a beautiful woman….” Seoc whispered.
“What?” Elias shot back.
“So beautiful. So tragic. How does she allow herself to live like that? I must make sure, make sure, he will—” Seoc halted and looked at them, his eyes rolling again.
“Who’s he?” Brad growled, leaning over Seoc. Intimidation—both psychological and physical—was his specialty. “Who are you working for, you long locust?”
“He’s snapping in and floating out,” Elias explained with a sigh. “Don’t think it’s chemical, though.”
“Stress. Adrenal overload,” Logan judged. “You’ve seen how civilians react to this sort of stuff before. He’s really just a civilian with privileges.”
“Privileges? Not anymore.” Brad spread his legs and pushed up his sleeves. “You hear that, maggot meat?”
Seoc’s wandering gaze found Logan and focused on him. It was as if he hadn’t heard Brad’s threat at all. “She didn’t know me. Not at all.” He swallowed and Logan knew the man would be suffering severe thirst right now. The worst case of dry mouth in his privileged life. “I was always respectful, yes? Why does she treat me so? You were there to protect her.”
Logan realized with a sinking feeling that because he had come to the woman Sahara’s rescue, Seoc was now utterly convinced that Sahara was actually Micky in disguise.
He couldn’t help looking at Elias, who stared steadily at him, not letting him off the hook.
He swallowed. Dry mouth.
Fuck.
He turned and headed for the door, the sick feeling sweeping through him. Behind him, he heard Elias’ soft order, “Find out what the channel is, first. Then go after who he’s working for. We must have the channel and fast.”
Logan pushed out into the early evening air. It was damp and breezy. Nelson was standing ten feet away, watching traffic pass the far end of the alley they had pulled into. There were thick trees on either side, which meant they were well hidden, but anyone sneaking up on them would be just as hard to see.
Peter was twenty yards down the alley, his head bent, listening for sounds inside the trees.
Elias climbed down out of the van a few seconds later, his big weight making the steel steps groan and the whole back end of the van dip. He beckoned with his finger and Logan followed him to the front end of the van, out of sight of Peter and Nelson.
Elias rested against the grill with a barely audible sigh, the first sign of jet lag Logan had seen. “When you left Seoc in the park, it was eleven minutes past eight, right?” he asked Logan.
“Right. By the time I got back to the woman’s store, nearly ninety minutes had elapsed.”
“During which time, he trailed you down Noriega, saw the woman—saw what he thought was Micky—went and got himself a gun and came back to hold up her store.”
“Came back to confront her with her masquerade,” Logan corrected. “Seoc saw her die too and not just on an Mpeg file.”
Elias glanced at him sharply, assessing. But his voice was level when he spoke again. “That leaves about fifty minutes unaccounted for. He could have set up the channel as well as find the gun.”
“Shit, he might have had the gun on him the entire time. I didn’t pat him down,” Logan growled. “Would it have occurred to you to check him for weapons?”
“Probably not,” Elias conceded. “We’ve all got used to the idea of Seoc.” His big barrel chest lifted with a gusty inhalation and dropped at the forceful exhalation. “Brad has to get the channel out of him. That’s what it comes down to. We have to have it. Whatever Seoc gives us after that is bonus material. This’ll be quick and dirty.”
Logan swallowed again. “What if he doesn’t have it? What if he didn’t get it set up before he went and held up the woman’s store?”
“Man, I don’t even want to go there,” Elias breathed.
Tiffany clenched the top of the taxi’s door and backed up a step. Their eighty minutes had evaporated down to twenty by the time Tiffany woke from her adrenaline-surge-induced nap.
Sahara tried hard not to think about how she had been cheated of even a nominal few moments with her best friend in the whole world.
“Are you sure you’re sure, S’ara?” Her voice was still hoarse.
“I’m sure I’m sure.” Sahara pushed gently at Tiffany’s shoulder. “You have to go. So go. Go on, get in. You’ll miss your flight and Billabong will be mad at you and I’ll be mad at you too, for shooting your career in the foot.”
“But you were held up, man!”
“I told you, it wasn’t a hold up. That Logan Wilde guy will make sure it can’t happen again.”
“You’re really sure you can get through the summer without me?” Tiffany’s eyes were troubled. “I know how close to the wire you’re running the money.”
“I’ll survive,” Sahara assured her as breezily as she could manage.
Tiffany just stared at her.
“So I’ll keep longer business hours and go without sleep a bit. Honestly, Tiffany, if you don’t get on that plane, I’ll break all your boards in half with a sledgehammer.”
Tiffany sniffed. “You’d only ding ’em with a sledgehammer, anyway.” She hugged Sahara, got into the cab and unwound the window. “I’ll be in Britain until June 25, then I’m on to Hawaii. All the usual spots. Call me, if you want to talk, okay?”
Sahara waved and watched the yellow vehicle move out into the traffic on Noriega. Then it was gone, swallowed up by the congestion.
She moved back into the store and found her hand was smoothing itself over the plate glass of the front door almost convulsively and her eyes were aching with the build-up of tears.
She bit her lip. “Screw everyone,” she whispered and yanked the sign that showed hours of business off its suction hook on the back of the door and let the door slam shut with a brassy jangle from the cowbell.
There was a magic marker in the drawer beneath the cash register. She’d change the hours right now. This moment. Howard and everyone could go to hell.
When Brad finally emerged from the van, night had closed in around the four of them as they waited restlessly.
Logan tried to ignore the blood on the man’s knuckles and clothes as Brad held out a sheet of paper. “You’re to call this number at eight thirty p.m. local time.”
Nelson delved into the Big Mac meal he’d just brought and grabbed a handful of fries. “He wouldn’t be lying, would he?” he said, concentrating on the contents of the bag.
Logan shook his head as he glanced at his watch. “Too easy to verify. If Malik doesn’t contact us in thirty-three minutes, Seoc knows Brad is going to head right back into the van with him.”
He looked up, his attention pulled by the silence and saw Nelson drop his fries back into the box and push it away. He brushed the salt off his fingers carefully, not looking at any of them.
“Brad has to go back in there, anyway,” Logan added.
Brad answered, in his soft voice. “We’ve got time to go at it more delicately now. Who Seoc is working for is merely a side issue.”
“No, it’s not. Not now.” Logan lifted the sheet. “You think for a second that Seoc didn’t tell his master about this, days ago, when Malik first hired him to set up the meeting? Seoc knew what was in the notebook. He understood the gravity of it. So would his master. Now if he’s just running for the CIA or MI5 or another friendly, then we don’t have a major problem. But if it’s the Chinese or, god forbid, someone like the Iraqis or North Koreans, then that presents a severe complication, because they’ll sit back and watch us ferret out the notebook, then kill us all. I’d rather know it’s coming and plan around it, wouldn’t you?”
Elias jerked his head toward the van. “Go,” he told Brad.
The man took a breath. Let it out and nodded. Then he climbed back up into the van.
“Nelson,” Logan said, as gently as he could. “I’m going to need a secure cell phone—or as near as you can get to secure in thirty-three minutes.”
“No such thing as secure when you’re talking about cell phones,” Nelson said, watching the door that Brad had just closed behind him. He sounded miserable. “Anyone with fifty bucks worth of gear from Radio Shack could pick up the conversation if they know where to point the gear.”
Elias crossed his arms. “Then do what you can. Move it, Nelson! Thirty-one minutes and counting.”
Nelson jumped like he’d been goosed and looked at them both. “Right.” He blinked. “Best cell phone to have is one they don’t expect you to have. I’ll see what I can do.” He looked at his watch. “I’ll be back.” And he trotted into the night, heading for the mouth of the alley.
“What the fuck is he going to do, steal one?” Elias groused.
Logan hid his smile. “I think he’d call it a temporarily loan.”
Nelson was back with three minutes to spare, carrying a plastic shopping bag that glowed white in the deep darkness. He produced a battered, grimy slide-phone model with a scratched screen. “Guy didn’t even miss it. He was just tucking into his appetizer, so chances are I can get it back before his dessert and he won’t even know it’s gone.” He was swiftly pressing buttons with both thumbs as he spoke, watching the screen. “Here’s the number, if you need it. It’s 555-0194.”
“What’s in the bag?” Elias asked.
“Speaker phone system for the cell phone, so we can all hear the conversation. I got a digital recorder I can hook into it, so we can keep a record and play back later too.” He dug into the bag.
“Who the hell did you steal that from?” Elias asked sharply.
“I bought it.” Nelson looked up and grinned. “Radio Shack. There’s one just up the street a little.” He was hooking together wiring and electronics, moving confidently despite the darkness.
Logan glanced at his watch. “Ninety seconds.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Nelson said coolly. He stood up and thrust the phone at Logan. “Ready to rock and roll. I dialled the number. You just have to hit the green button there—” He pointed at the right button. There was a wire plugged into the side of the phone, running to an eraser-sized plastic box. From there two wires emerged. One led to an earpiece and voice pickup combo that Nelson was holding out to Logan. The other wire ran down to what looked like a small pair of computer speakers. Sitting between them was a flat square black box, showing red and green LEDs glowing softly at the front of it.
“You’re going to have to keep the voice pickup facing away from the speakers, or he’s going to hear himself speaking and know something weird’s up. ’Kay?”
“Right,” Logan said heavily, inserting the ear bud.
“Ten seconds,” Elias warned.
Logan rested his thumb over the green button, then hit send when Elias nodded. He made a quarter turn, so his shoulder was shielding the phone from the speakers.
The electronic beeps and warbles seemed to go on forever, before finally there was the sound of ringing. It was a familiar ringtone. “Somewhere in Europe,” he murmured.
“It’s a cell phone number. Europe’s just where the phone came from,” Nelson said, crouching over the flat box between the speakers, pressing buttons. “He could be sitting in Saskatoon, for all we know.” He sounded calm, in control. This was his area of expertise, where he was master.
The call was finally answered, after what felt like a couple of years. “Speak,” came the single command. It was a light male voice, with a strong accent that distorted the single word almost beyond recognition.
“This is Logan Wilde.” He realized the pounding of his heart was echoing in his ears.
“Set up a Hotmail account. Use the address ‘freedom for Payam at Hotmail dot com’. Do it now. You have three minutes.”
Then there was nothing but the flat monotone of a disconnected phone.
“Fuck!!” Nelson screamed, scrambling backward and trying to regain his feet. He lurched for the van. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” He wrenched at the door to the van and stumbled inside. Logan hurried after him, leaving Elias to trail and Peter to stand watch.
“What? What was that all about?” Elias demanded.
Nelson thrust Brad aside, ignoring him and Seoc. “Out of my way!” he yelled, pulling down a keyboard and slamming it on the monitoring console. He started stabbing keys, staring at one of the monitors. “Fuck!” he repeated. “Hurry up!”
“Will someone tell me what the panic is about?” Elias complained. His grasp of electronics was almost nonexistent, so Logan explained.
“He has to set up a free email account in three minutes, so that Malik can send a message to that account.”
“Yeah, that I got,” Elias said. “Magic boy here could set up the account in a nanosecond, so what’s making him green around the gills?”
“It was a cell phone call, Elias. If anyone knew the call was going to take place, they could have arranged to listen in. If they beat Nelson into setting up that account, then they would get the message instead of us.”
Elias looked at Seoc, who was sagging in the chair, his face bloodied and his lips swollen. There were dark red spots that would develop into spectacular bruises later. Seoc seemed to shrink even further into his chair at Elias’ look.
Nelson was typing at machine-gun rate, totally focused on the screen. He hit “enter” and held his hands above the keyboard, waiting, his breath frozen.
Then he let it out and his shoulders relaxed. “Got it,” he murmured. “The address wasn’t taken.”
“This is a wireless internet connection, isn’t it?” Logan asked, suddenly aware of how open and vulnerable their communications were at that moment.
“Yeah but I have a feeling this guy knows that,” Nelson said. “He got off the cell phone in seconds.” He crouched, as there was no chair left for him to use and finished setting up the account. “There it is,” he murmured, as a new email appeared in the in-box window.
“The address?” Logan asked, peering over his shoulder. “The New York Public Library?”
“It’s a blind,” Nelson assured him. “Any two day old hacker knows how to mask their real IP address. This guy is a genius, right?” He opened the email and he and Logan read it together.
The drink of desire?
“Open code?” Elias speculated.
“He’s asking for credentials,” Nelson said. “That’s the next step. Confirming Logan is who he says he is.”
“It’s not code, it’s a straightforward question—for me it is, anyway,” Logan said. “Desire is the name Countess Desideria Leggièri would allow her closest friends to use. Malik knew her and knows I knew her enough to know her favourite drink.”
“Their family’s private label wine, or champagne,” Nelson guessed.
Logan saw in his memory a glass of neon green liquid in the countess’ hands, her long French-polished fingernails stroking the stem. “Green apple martini,” he said. “The foulest drink on earth.”
“Green…apple…martini,” Nelson repeated, typing. He hit send and stood up, stretching his back. “The next move should be a cut-out of some sort.”
Elias considered the monitor. “He’s a wily little scientist, isn’t he? All the right moves. Almost like he’s been trained in our business.”
“He’s been hiding from the entire world for nearly a year. He’s been trained in the school of hard knocks,” Logan said. “What payoff would there be, if this was a set up?”
“Depends on who was doing the setting up,” Elias growled.
“You’re being paranoid,” Logan told him.
“Damn right.”
“Reply is here,” Nelson murmured and hunkered down again. He opened up the message.
Delete this account. Open Messenger under your public address. Wait.
“There’s the cut-out,” Nelson said, typing furiously. The screen went blank and he opened the Seurat’s public network interface and brought up the log-in screen. He stepped back. “Log in,” he told Logan.
“He knows I’m with the Seurat,” Logan said, typing in his password.
“It’s probably the reason he picked you,” Elias pointed out.
“Of course it has nothing to do with who I was once married to,” Logan said sourly.
Nelson opened MSN Messenger and quickly set up an account under Logan’s password. Then he stood back and waited. Three minutes elapsed by Logan’s watch but it might as well have been three years before a chat window opened up with a quiet chime.
Logan?
“It’s Celia,” Nelson murmured, sounding puzzled.
“You’re at the keyboard,” Logan told him.
Nelson bent over again. C? It’s Nelson. Wozzup.
Someone opened our backdoor FTP site. Inserted Word file. Top of file says give to Logan via MSN.
Nelson looked at Logan over his shoulder. “FTP. Probably the most secure way of handing over anything electronic. It’s directly computer to computer and if he’s using a landline, no one can pick it up midair.”
“Can we get it from Celia securely?” Logan asked.
“Sure. Now we’re on our network, it’s as secure as Fort Knox.” He typed in. Can I have it, please, thanks, gotta go.
There was a minute pause, then the program asked if they wanted to accept a file. Nelson hit “yes” and watched as the file downloaded, then shut down the program and logged off the network. “I’m going to shut down the wireless router before we look at this sucker,” he added, hitting more buttons with the mouse.
“Just print it,” Elias growled.
Nelson blinked. “Yeah, I could do that too, couldn’t I?”
Logan held back his laugh and reached up to the high speed printer bolted to a shelf up near the roof, as two sheets spat out of its maw. He glanced at the dazed, sagging Seoc. “Nelson has to get the cell phone back and I’d kill for coffee. Let’s find a diner somewhere, huh?”
He glanced down at the sheets and the world halted around him as he processed the phrase that seemed to leap out at him from the rest.
You and Mrs. Wilde will move on to Los Angeles and have your picture taken by the paparazzi on Thursday night, so I may—
Mrs. Wilde.
Micky.
Malik wanted Micky to pick up the notebook.
“Logan!” Elias said, using a tone that told Logan it wasn’t the first time he’d said it. When Logan looked at him, his eyes narrowed and he tugged the sheets out of his numb fingers and read it.
“Oh, mother Mary….” Elias breathed.
“What? What’s up?” Nelson asked.
“Not here,” Elias said. “Let’s find that diner.”
“Why? What’s wrong?” Nelson demanded.
“I said, not here!” Elias tugged on Logan’s jacket sleeve, pulling him into motion, forcing him to stumble from the van. He kept the suede bunched in his fist all the way to the diner. Logan didn’t protest. He knew it was the only way he was going to force movement from his body.