forty-eight

James Ellworthy looked nervous. Maybe it was being out of the office, as if he were afraid the great outdoors was waiting to ambush him now he was away from his electronic toys and subdued lighting. He followed instructions and came in via the back garden like a ghost, and unfolded a neat laptop on the work surface. He eyed Gina with awe when he saw the butt of her semi-automatic showing under her jacket, and she smiled coyly and asked if he wanted coffee. He shook his head and focussed on the smart card, slipping it into a plug-in reader and waiting while it loaded.

“How much do you guys know about encrypted data?” he asked, generally.

“Me? Nothing,” said Gina.

“I’m a dunce,” Ruth told him. “Speak slowly and in simple words, otherwise I’ll get Gina to shoot you in the kneecaps.”

He blushed again and eyed Gina with a glint of respect. “Right. That’s good to know. Uh … how can I put this? I’ve got a high-spec decryption program on here; it unravels codes and looks for passwords and back doors into protected programmes or documents, like I think this might be.”

“Does it work quickly?”

“Pretty much, yes. If I can get the smart card to download without crashing, I’ll run it through the program and see what it comes up with. Shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.” He smiled “How’s that?”

“Awesome,” Gina murmured throatily. “No guns for you today.” She smiled when he went bright red and walked out of the kitchen, deliberately twitching her hips on the way.

“Wow,” he croaked, looking at Ruth. “Is she for real?”

“She is, but not for you,” Ruth warned him. “You’ve got work to do.”

Ellworthy hummed vaguely while waiting for the decryption software to do its tricks, then gestured for Ruth to take a look.

“It’s some kind of spreadsheet,” he explained. “Like Excel. Only this is something tailor-made. Some of the cells are individually encrypted—see the hashtags? I’m not sure I can punch through them without losing the data.”

Ruth studied the screen and scrolled down through line after line of numbers and letters, each in their own cells. Some were filled with hashtags, but enlarging the cell didn’t automatically reveal the contents as she knew the Excel programme would do. Neither did hovering the cursor over the cell. She tried to make sense of the blocks of letters, hoping they would form a pattern, but they were a meaningless jumble. “OK. What do you think this is?”

He shrugged. “I’ve seen this kind of thing before, so I’m only guessing. But you won’t like it.”

“Try me.”

“I did an exchange program a while back with the DEA—that’s our Drug Enforcement Administration. They’d liberated a ton of DVDs, flash drives and paper from a Mexican cartel. The stuff on the drives looked like this, only much bigger. It was transactional data used by the drugs gang listing sales by volume, product and market. It was huge—those guys deal in millions, maybe billions.” He flicked a hand towards one side of the screen, where some of the cells contained a series of abbreviations, like words in text messages. “The one thing they didn’t encode is this column here.”

He was pointing at a cell containing the alphanumeric HNDA650L, and another with HNDACG125.

“OK, thrill me,” said Ruth. “What are they?”

“Honda motorcycles. Small, fast, and Chinese-built.”

She stared at him. “How the hell do you know that? It could mean anything.”

He grinned. “My kid brother’s a bike freak. He races these things in indie meetings. Every time I see him he bores me to death with the numbers. It’s like he wants to race every two-wheeler on the planet.”

She scowled. “So this spreadsheet comes from a bike dealer? I don’t get it.”

“Me neither, but that’s what it says.” He pointed further down to where other cells contained the letters DUND606 and CONTTKC80. “And see these? They’re tyre makes. Tyres for motorcycles. I’m pretty sure they’re off-road models.” He indicated other cells. “And these look like parts numbers for spares.”

“If they are,” said Andy Vaslik, entering the kitchen and leaning over to take a look, “somebody’s been buying bikes and replacement parts. Big deal.”

Ruth took a turn round the kitchen, eyeing the laptop as if she wanted to hurl something heavy through the screen. What on earth was a bike dealer’s transaction record doing on a digital photo-frame? Was it simply a random error, picked up by mistake from another computer? Or something less innocent?

“Damn.” Vaslik murmured softly. He tapped a fingernail against the screen, watched by an anxious James Ellworthy, protective of his high-tech toy. “What if these aren’t bike parts?”

“Say again,” said Ruth.

“What if they’re code for something else? I mean, if the rest is encrypted like Boy Wonder, here, says, then why leave this column in clear?”

“It’s only in clear,” Ruth countered, “if you know about motorbikes.”

“Exactly. Which would be enough to put most people off the scent. But what if the transactions in this column are for bikes and parts … but others are for something else entirely?”

Ruth scowled. She was getting a glimmer of an idea and she didn’t like it. “Go on.”

“Well, we don’t know where this data comes from; it could be anywhere in the world where bikes get traded in large numbers.”

“Funny you should say that.” Ellworthy moved the mouse and placed the cursor on a cell adjacent to one of the parts numbers. A grey box appeared with the letters PESH in black type.

“Pesh?”

“Peshawar,” Vaslik said immediately. “In Pakistan.” He looked intense, as if they’d found a locked secret. “The Pakistanis use motorbikes. Lots and lots of them.”

“That’s right.” Ellworthy was nodding excitedly. “I’ve been there and they’re everywhere. You get whole families on one bike. It’s like, nuts. But why not? In cities the traffic’s a nightmare and in the countryside the roads are dirt tracks. The only way to get around is on two wheels. Jesus, I should tell my bro—he’d freak out.” He scowled at the thought, then turned and got ready to switch off the laptop. “Well, guys, it’s been fun but I have to get back. What do you want me to do with this stuff?”

Ruth looked at Vaslik, who shook his head. “It’s your call. But don’t quote me on any of this. It still might not mean anything.”

“Fine,” said Ruth, and looked at Ellworthy. “Send it on up the ladder. Talk to Aston—nobody else, you hear?”

“I got it.”

“Good. He’ll know what to do.” Something told her it was too important to hold onto. She didn’t know for sure what it meant, but there was too much going on for this to be overlooked. And right now, any lead was worth exploring.

“Anything else?”

“Yes. Great work. Forget you saw it and you were never here.” She was taking a risk on him keeping quiet, but it was all she could think of. She hadn’t got the resources to take this further, and for all she knew it could be a glorious waste of time. Aston, at least, would know who to consult. She just hoped he stayed well away from Martyn Claas, who would kill the thing stone dead on cost grounds alone.

Ellworthy looked uncertain. “What if I’m asked about it?”

“You lie.” It was Gina, speaking from the doorway. “If you don’t, I’ll track you down like a dog.” For added emphasis, she flicked back her jacket revealing the butt of the pistol. “You get me?”

Ellworthy nodded and swallowed, as if unsure whether to laugh or cry. He scooped up his laptop. “I get you. I won’t tell anyone.” He gave a weak smile and Gina turned and led him to the back gate.

Ruth watched them go before turning to Vaslik. “If those records are what you think they are, and this house is being watched by former US special forces, what does that say about Michael Hardman?”

Vaslik shrugged. “I don’t know. Seriously. There could be any number of explanations.”

“But if the spreadsheet is anything to do with him, why leave it on the photo card?”

“What better place? Who would look there?” He smiled wryly. “Apart from us, of course. But we’re security geeks.”

“Thanks. It still doesn’t explain what his connection is.”

“No. But I’m willing to bet one thing: Hardman ain’t no charity worker.”

An hour later Ruth had a call from Aston. He’d been briefed on the spreadsheet records by Ellworthy, but he wasn’t calling about mystery motorcycle parts or missing husbands.

“I’m coming over,” he told her. “You and Vaslik stay there; and keep Mrs. Hardman isolated. What I have to say is not for her ears.”