The Sirani Connection

by Estelle Ryan

  “Ooh!” She started, then smiled at me. “Didn’t see you sneaking up on me there, girl. Don’t worry about Evel. I got into Doctor Novotný’s system.”

  I sat down on the sofa next to her. “Have you had time to look around?”

  “Nope. Just got in this very second.” She grabbed an unfamiliar tablet and held it out to me. When I leaned away from it, she snorted. “It’s not going to bite you. It’s brand new and I’m the only one who’s touched it. If you put your grubby hands on it now and take it, I’ll quickly clone Doctor Novotný’s tablet onto that one and you’ll have what I have.”

  “I don’t have grubby hands.” I took the tablet. “I just bathed.”

  She stopped and looked at me. “Right now, I’m a little jealous. The ugly kind. A soak would be heavenly right now.”

  “You can indulge in spa treatment later.” I knew she wouldn’t consider taking a break to rest. Not at this moment. The information we could get from this tablet was too important. “I will give you another voucher for that spa you like so much.”

  “And this”—she shook her index finger at me—“is why you are my bestest bestie in the whole wide world.”

  “Have you cloned the tablet yet?”

  She laughed at my irritated tone and shook her head at me. Then she started tapping on Doctor Novotný’s tablet. “You know I love you, right?”

  “Yes.”

  She laughed again. “Glad we’re clear on that.” She raised her hand and dramatically tapped the tablet screen. “There. You now have everything I have on this tablet.”

  I swiped the screen and started looking through the files stored on the tablet. I exhaled in relief. Doctor Jan Novotný had been organised. He had a few apps that organised his folders under different headings. Within a folder, the files were clearly named and when I opened the files, their names correctly indicated the content.

  Five and a half hours later, Francine was in the kitchenette making another cup of coffee and I was staring at the tablet screen. We’d divided the content and I’d finished working through my folders. And had found nothing of significance. Everything I’d looked at was related to his work in Prokop Industries and his work on the cure for opioid addiction. There were also a lot of his personal thoughts on deep learning, machine learning and artificial intelligence.

  “Here you go.” Francine handed me a mug. “Maybe this coffee round will give us something.”

  “Not in any of the folders I’ve been through.”

  “Nothing?” She winced. “Damn.”

  “How far are you with yours?”

  “I have another”—she looked at the tablet screen—“three to go.”

  “Which ones?”

  She gave me the names and I took the largest folder. She worked through the first one and again found nothing. I was two-thirds through my folder when Francine jerked. I looked up. She was staring wide-eyed at the tablet screen. “That wily old scientist.”

  “What did you find?”

  “He named the folder ThisIs and the file TheKey. Open that document.”

  I found the file and opened it. It was a word document with only one line written on it. “What does this mean?”

  “It’s the address to a cloud folder.” Francine’s fingers flew over her laptop keys. “It’s an extremely secure cloud storage in the internet—one of the best. I know quite a few hackers who use it because they’ve not been able to hack it.”

  “You’ve hacked it.” I’d seen it on her face.

  “Of course.” She winked at me and returned her focus on her laptop. “Aha, here it is. Okay, now we have his account name. We need a password.”

  “His hip,” we both said at the same time. Her smile was wide when she entered the code into the allocated place and pressed enter. She shifted so it was easier for me to see her screen.

  It took two seconds before a new window opened on her laptop screen, listing seventeen documents. She frowned. “This is not a lot. This cloud has room for much, much more than this.”

  She clicked on one document. It opened to a spreadsheet with a lot of technical data, a lot of medical terminology and scientific terms I’d not come across before. “We need Roxy.”

  “In a mo.” Francine opened another document, but returned to the listing. “Wait. Look at the date stamps on these documents.”

  My eyes widened. “These were uploaded in the last two weeks.”

  “Updated. Not uploaded.” She turned to me. “You know what this means, right?”

  “I have a theory.”

  “Oh, let me just come out and say it. Doctor Jan found a way to link Shahab’s computers to this cloud network. All Shahab’s stuff is here. All the work Doctor Jan did for him.”

  “We don’t know this.”

  She pressed her index finger against her chest. “I know this. Give me ten minutes and I’ll prove to you this came from Shahab’s system.”

  “Before you do, send those documents to this tablet so I can go through them.”

  She did that and I opened the most recent document. One glance at it told me it was a journal. Each section started with a date and a time, followed by paragraphs of writing. It would appear that even in captivity Doctor Novotný continued his wordiness. I started reading.

  “Jenny?” Colin’s hand on my forearm jerked me out of the focused space I’d been in. I looked up and saw everyone dressed and seated on the sofas, including Daniel. Vinnie was in the kitchenette making coffee.

  “Where’s Ivan?” I asked.

  “Checking in with his team,” Daniel said before Colin could answer.

  “Francine updated us.” Roxy had a tablet on her lap. “I’m going through the medical data now. There’s a lot here.”

  “It’s not good.” It was clear on her face.

  “No.” She pushed the tablet to rest on her knees, away from her. “I would have to confirm my findings, but I’m quite confident that Doctor Novotný successfully developed a drug similar to Kolokol-1. It’s an opioid analogue and seems even stronger than carfentanyl. He finalised the delivery system and it seems ready to be used.”

  “What delivery system?” Manny asked.

  “Aerosol. It can be sprayed from a normal spray bottle that you use to spray house plants or it can be placed in a pressurised can to release on a timer.”

  “Oh, hell.”

  “Hmm-mm.” None of Roxy’s usual good humour was evident. “This is lethal. Kolokol-1 was developed by the Russians as an aerosolisable incapacitating agent—a sleeping gas. This one has no such benevolent uses. Looking at the chemical structure Doctor Novotný uploaded here, this is deadly. Completely deadly.”

  “He tested it.” The words came out hoarse and I cleared my throat. “I’ve been reading Doctor Novotný’s journal. He’s been extremely thorough in detailing everything Shahab made him do.” I swallowed. “And everything Shahab did to him.”

  “Oh, hon.” Roxy’s expression conveyed her sympathy. “That had to be hard to read.”

  It had been. “I only have three more pages to read. Doctor Novotný started journaling a week after he started working for Shahab.”

  “That’s peculiar wording.” Daniel was sitting next to Phillip. Not only had I not heard anyone move around, I also hadn’t heard Daniel join us. “He wasn’t kidnapped like we thought?”

  “No.” I remembered the distressing phrases Doctor Novotný had used. “Shahab contacted him and blackmailed him into taking a sabbatical and starting the work on this weapon.”

  “Blackmail?” Roxy asked. “How?”

  “No, wait.” Francine held up her hand. “First finish telling us about the testing.”

  “Shahab started testing Doctor Novotný’s weapon a month ago. The first time didn’t work as fast as Shahab wanted and the doctor had to change the formula. Then it worked fine.”

  “Bloody hell.” Manny closed his eyes for a moment. “How many people?”

  “Doctor Novotný wasn’t sure, but he wrote that Shah
ab had told him he’d killed one person at a time for the five tests they’d run. Shahab didn’t want to attract attention by killing more than one person. One overdose victim found by the police didn’t raise much suspicion.”

  “He’s right,” Roxy said. “I contacted my colleagues here in Prague and they told me that there were fewer than fifty opioid overdose cases last year. One more wouldn’t raise any eyebrows, but a cluster at the same time would.” She rubbed her upper arms as if she was cold. “How did Shahab blackmail Doctor Novotný?”

  I’d read this on the first pages of the journal. “He had a long list of threats. Shahab laid out to Doctor Novotný how he had set up fake accounts in Doctor Novotný’s name. Bank accounts that received a lot of bribe money, social media accounts with a lot of racist, homophobic and politically radical and very divisive rants. This went back years and Shahab had assured Doctor Novotný he would change the social media accounts’ settings to public so everyone could see it. That would destroy him and his life’s work.

  “Shahab had done the same with Patrik—fake accounts, rants and bribes. He knew Doctor Novotný’s colleagues didn’t know about Patrik. He was going to use that to make his colleagues doubt everything else Doctor Novotný had told them. He threatened to use the social media manipulation against Doctor Novotný’s nephew if he did not have full cooperation. He kidnapped Patrik and held him hostage, but wanted Doctor Novotný to voluntarily take the sabbatical and go to Shahab’s laboratory.” I shuddered at the memory of that page. “Doctor Novotný seemed to have suffered greatly from guilt for doing this and not going to the police.”

  “Why didn’t he?” Colin looked at the tablet on my lap. “Did he say?”

  I nodded. “Arrogance. He admitted as such. He thought he could outsmart Shahab. Doctor Novotný was highly intelligent and often these individuals put themselves above everyone else. Two months ago, he admitted Shahab was much more intelligent than he’d had originally thought. The doctor tried to work in a code that would diminish the effectiveness of the chemical weapon he’d created. Shahab found out and showed Doctor Novotný a video where he broke all Patrik’s toes and the small bones in his feet. Shahab promised to do worse if Doctor Novotný didn’t produce his absolute best work.”

  “Bloody hell.”

  “To answer Colin’s question, at first Doctor Novotný was worried about his reputation and thought he could stop Shahab by quickly creating something that wouldn’t work, but that Shahab wouldn’t know. Two months in, he realised that wasn’t going to happen, but it was too late to contact the police. Shahab was controlling Doctor Novotný’s day completely. He had no access to a phone or anything that wouldn’t alert Shahab.”

  “But he managed to have access to the cloud.” Phillip looked at Francine. “How did he do this without notice?”

  Francine looked at me. “Did he say?”

  “Yes. In the last month Shahab disappeared sometimes for a few hours. It was one of those times that Doctor Novotný used his knowledge of artificial intelligence and computer technology to set this up.”

  “But why not contact the police then?” Daniel asked.

  “I would also like to know that,” Manny said.

  “He didn’t explain his reasoning for connecting these few folders to this cloud storage.” I had wondered about this as well. “He also didn’t explain why he didn’t connect Shahab’s entire computer network, why he didn’t alert the authorities about Patrik’s abduction or the many other questions I have. Some of his actions appear clearly thought out and logical and others don’t make sense to me at all.”

  “Did he write any details about his work?” Roxy glanced at Francine’s laptop. “It would be helpful to compare the data I have here with his thought process.”

  “He was quite detailed about his work.” I didn’t understand all the science, but had determined that he’d been successful in creating exactly what Shahab had asked of him.

  “Is there any actionable intel, Doc?”

  “Doctor Novotný didn’t know what day and time Shahab would execute his plan. He also didn’t know what the plan was exactly. He did know that Shahab is planning to kill as many people as possible.” I thought back to everything I’d read. “Eight times Doctor Novotný wrote that Shahab said this was for Chabar.”

  “Chabar?” Roxy’s frown pulled her brows down low over her eyes. “Who or what is that?”

  Francine’s fingers were flying over her laptop’s keyboard. “I’ve got nothing here.” She spelled it. “Like this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Hold on.” Daniel leaned back and scratched his shaved head. “This might be Chabahar. It’s Iran’s most southern city and the port is a free trade zone.”

  “Ooh, let me check.” Francine typed a few commands, then leaned closer to her screen. “Daniel is right. This is not a large place at all. Only around a hundred thousand residents. Ooh, there’s a mangrove forest nearby and a lot of beautiful beaches.”

  “Now how the holy, bleeding hell does this fit in with everything else?” Manny rubbed both his hands over his face. “This is the first time we’ve heard about this city, right?”

  “Yes.” I had not come across it in any of our intelligence-gathering about Shahab.

  “As far as we know, Shahab has no connection to this place,” Francine said.

  “We now know different.” I pointed at the tablet on my lap. “Doctor Novotný connected Shahab to Chabahar. If indeed this is the correct interpretation of the word or name Doctor Novotný heard Shahab say.”

  “Okay, let’s put that aside for only a sec.” Again Roxy’s lips pulled into a thin line. “We know the kind of weapon Shahab has created. But we don’t know when or where it will be used.”

  And we didn’t know the why.

  No one answered her for a few seconds, everyone lost in their own thoughts.

  I jerked when Daniel’s phone rang. He lifted it and swiped the screen. “Ivan, I’m putting you on speaker.”

  “Oh, okay.” He paused for two seconds. “Can I speak?”

  Daniel chuckled. “Yes, we are all here.”

  “Well, good morning, everyone. Did you learn anything from Doctor Novotný’s tablet?”

  Daniel gave Ivan a summary of what I’d shared.

  “Hmm.” Ivan cleared his throat after a pause that had Daniel and Colin exchanging wary looks. “Well, I would like for you, Daniel, to bring Genevieve, Colin and Manny to the police station. Tomas Broz has been asking for John Dryden since four o’clock this morning.”

  “So early?” Daniel asked.

  “Yes. And that made the officers suspicious, so they checked his cell and found a smartphone. The only calls were to and from his lawyer, which means the bosses are not firing anyone. Not yet anyway.” He paused. “But I need you to come as soon as you can.”

  “We’ll be on our way within five minutes.” Daniel looked at me for confirmation and I nodded. “Five minutes.”

  “Okay. See you soon.”

  The call ended and Roxy leaned forward. “Am I the only one or did that sound very... secret-ey?”

  “Secretive is the correct word.” But I hadn’t heard that in Ivan’s tone. I would’ve needed to see his face to ascertain that.

  “Yeah, I heard it too.” Francine pushed her fingers through her long hair. “While you guys go and find out what secrets Ivan has, I’m going to jump in the shower.”

  “I need three minutes to finish reading Doctor Novotný’s journal.”

  “You can do that in the car, Doc.” Manny got up and waved his hand impatiently. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  Chapter SIXTEEN

  “MISTER DRYDEN!” TOMAS Broz’s pupils dilated in pleasure and his shoulders relaxed. “Thank you for coming.”

  Colin stepped into the interview room and waited for me to be seated before he sat down. He groaned as he lowered himself with effort onto the steel chair.

  This time Colin’s deception didn’t dis
tract me as much. I was more interested in the severe change in Tomas’ appearance. His shirt was rumpled, his hair appeared unwashed and uncombed, his nails bitten to the quick. Gone was his nonchalance as well as his easy confidence bordering on arrogance.

  The fear he had managed to hide previously—albeit not always with great success—was now on full display. His hands were trembling, his shoulders hunched and his blinking increased. “Will you help me? I need you to help me.”

  “What kind of help?” Colin asked quietly, studying Tomas until he shifted in his seat and bit on his thumbnail.

  He realised what he was doing and hid both hands under the table. “I want protection. I want to make a deal.”

  Colin leaned back in the chair and stared at Tomas for several seconds. “Tell m-me about the phone you had.”

  “My lawyer gave it to me. I needed it.” Words tumbled from his mouth. “When I was first arrested, I asked my lawyer to contact my... uh, my friend. This man is able to get all kinds of information.”

  “What kind of information?”

  Tomas put his elbows on the table and leaned towards Colin. “I needed to know what was happening in my case. When we spoke three days ago, I told you everything I knew. I needed to know more.”

  “You’re lying.” I had no trouble discerning those markers, not with his fear hindering his ability to mask his deception.

  “Huh?” He blinked a few times, then closed his eyes and slowly shook his head twice. When he looked up, he appeared completely defeated. “I told you almost everything I knew. Since then I learned a few more important things.”

  “Why d-don’t you start with what you d-didn’t tell us before?” Colin said.

  He opened his mouth, then slammed it shut and shook his head. “No, I want a deal first.” He pointed at his torso. “Look at me. I’m not made for a place like this. I won’t survive in a prison. I don’t know why, but they are still keeping me locked up in a private cell on this floor. It’s not too bad, but I’ve heard talk that they want to transfer me. I won’t make it. I can’t do that.” His fear was genuine as he leaned even closer to Colin. “You have to help me.”