47
CALIFORNIA, WEDNESDAY EVENING
The Man listened to the recordings, care of his remotely downloaded store-and-forward device. Freidland was paranoid, though as was true for many paranoiacs, he had good reason. The Man would not have put it past Freidland to sweep his house for bugs, and so he had chosen a device that did not emit a signal that could be intercepted or tracked. It could be detected by very high-tech scanners that flooded the room with radio waves and analyzed the bounce-back patterns, but he doubted that Charles Freidland would have the seventy grand to spend on that or would know where to go to get hold of one.
The beauty of this device was that he could connect to it remotely at a safe time of his choice then download an actogram—a graphical picture which showed when conversations were taking place. This allowed him to download and listen to only parts of the actogram that were clearly conversations, not vacuuming or washing up. It was a time-consuming process, but it was a necessary insurance policy, one he was to become very glad he had taken out.
He had also—cleverly, in his mind—downloaded via the wireless LAN in Freidland’s house. As it worked over the GSM system, it could be monitored anywhere in the world. If he’d been forced to use Bluetooth or the radio link, its range would have been only fifty meters for Bluetooth and about five hundred meters for the radio link. He smiled to himself. The beauty of technology.
He sat in his office, swigging black coffee, putting in the hours. He couldn’t afford not to. The CDs which housed the recordings were stacked in a cascade system, allowing for days of recordings to be saved. When one was full, the next in the cascade took the recordings. He hadn’t listened in for over a week and now he paid the price: hours of recordings to listen to.
He sat up sharply when he heard a familiar name. He listened to the woman’s questions, to the man’s answers, listened to the woman as she made her bold and oh-so-foolish declaration, unwittingly tightening the noose around her own elegant neck.
The Man looked at his watch. Morning in the Middle East. If Sheikh Ali were there. With his fleet of boats and planes he could be anywhere.
He rang, waited, completed the encryption process while the Sheikh completed his side.
“Yes,” said the lightly accented voice a little while later.
“We’ve got a problem.”
“What kind?”
“Freidland’s been talking.”
“Old man’s crazy.”
“He’s convinced someone he’s not.”
“Who?”
“Someone who works for Falcon. The forecaster.”
“The Oracle?”
“Correct.”
“She knows all about Zeus. Deal with her. Immediately.”
“I have to be careful. As you said a few days back, the body count is climbing. We don’t want to attract attention. I need to make it look like an accident.”
“Do that. But if it looks like she’s going to talk to the cops, the press, anyone, then kill her as soon as possible, accident or no accident, just silence her.”
“I will. I’ll stick close, keep an eye on what she does, who she talks to.”
“Don’t make her suspect you.”
“Don’t worry. She has no idea who I really am, no reason to suspect me.”