In The Hague, Netherlands, Skull climbed carefully off an express train from Paris. He moved awkwardly, dragging a large wheeled piece of luggage. He leaned heavily on a cane to disguise his height, and to sell the appearance of a lame foot.
He’d learned long ago that people felt uncomfortable around others who exhibited any sort of disability, a deeply buried biological imperative that overrode higher thought. The handicap also made him seem less threatening, and if anyone did remember him, they remembered the handicap, not the man.
Limping slowly down the train platform, Skull caused an open space in a sea of humanity, the crowds parting around him. People came close to him, and then noticed the cane. Without even thinking about it, they looked away from his face to avoid eye contact.
He waited patiently outside for an available taxi as people on bicycles filled the streets. In a nation without mountains and with hardly a hill to its name, the inexpensive and eco-friendly bicycle, not the automobile, was a citizen’s primary transportation.
Eventually hailing a cab, Skull told the driver to take him to the Kurhaus Hotel, where Larry Nightingale had stayed before disappearing.
After checking in and making his way to his room, Skull opened his laptop and utilized a hacking tool. Within moments he’d burrowed through the flimsy firewall of the hotel server and had gained administrator access.
Like most establishments these days, the hotel found it cheaper to set up partitions on one network instead of running entirely separate networks for guests, employees, and their security department. It took him less than a minute to pull the historical logs and find out what room Larry had been staying in, under the name Alex Crester. He pulled up the security footage of the hallway outside Larry’s room, as well that of the main entrances and exits.
It took some time to filter through it all, but when he saw the image of his former comrade-in-arms, he couldn’t mistake it. The giant could have likely passed for just about anything except a diplomat.
What was Cassie thinking? He answered himself in a whisper. “She was thinking she had no one else to trust. Not for something like this.” A guess only, but the one that seemed most reasonable.
Skull saw Larry check into his room, and then after about an hour leave the hotel, presumably for dinner. He wasn’t one to miss a meal, even before the Eden Plague. Skull had heard, though, that Elise Markis and her team had cracked the hunger problem recently, genetically modifying the virus to be more efficient. However, it would obviously take a long time for the new version to spread and replace the old.
Skull hoped for Larry’s sake he already had the new one.
Larry had come back later that day. Except for dinnertime, he’d stayed in his room that night, no visitors or anything else unusual.
The next day, he’d gone to breakfast, come back for a time, put on his overcoat and then left – and never returned. The Do Not Disturb sign remained on the door, so no maids visited his room.
The next day several men in suits, accompanied by police officers, entered the room and took away all of Larry’s belongings.
They didn’t look as if they were investigating his disappearance. Rather, they seemed to be covering it up, sanitizing the room. So, some sort of government job, with the complicity of local law enforcement.
Checking the phone logs, Skull saw that Larry didn’t make or receive any calls on the landline, but that wasn’t surprising. He’d have used his mobile phone. His internet activity showed him only checking news and sports, except for periods that seemed to have no record. Skull was no tech wiz, but he figured Larry had used some kind of special software to cover his tracks. Presumably, that was when he’d communicated with the people he’d come to see. Unfortunately, it also suppressed any clues.
Skull looked out the large windows at the cold North Sea. Sitting transfixed for a time, he watched the waves blown into heavy whitecaps by the stiff breeze. The scene helped to clear his mind and he allowed his imagination to wander.
A government job, he thought again and closed his eyes. He mentally filtered through the list of useful contacts he’d memorized and pulled out a U.S. Homeland Security Liaison Officer who worked at the Europol headquarters in The Hague.
Maybe he could shed some light on why the Dutch were interested in Larry. Maybe they could tell him something that would lead to where Larry was now. And maybe he’ll give me a nice fat target so I can take care of two birds with one stone, thought Skull, checking his weapons.