‘Exactly.’
Armstrong’s phone rang and he flipped it open. ‘Yes?’ There was a long pause and Hask leaned forward in his seat, but he couldn’t make out any of what the speaker at the other end was saying.
‘Thanks.’ Armstrong looked at Ramsey. ‘Draper’s dead. He’s on the Strain II list.’
‘When?’
‘Last week.’
‘Shit.’ Ramsey thumped the steering wheel.
‘I guess,’ Hask looked out at the grey city, ‘he outlived his usefulness. Or perhaps this mysterious employer simply didn’t want his servant outliving him.’
Chapter Seventeen
Cass waited for the fresh coffee to bubble through the expensive machine. It was only eight in the morning but he’d already showered, and he felt more refreshed and awake than he had done in months. In the two days since Brian Freeman had grabbed him, Cass had continued to heal surprising quickly. Although there were still dark smudges of purple and black bruising under his eyes, the swelling on his face from the beating had gone down almost overnight. Freeman had laughed at his men – both Steves, and therefore known by their surnames, Wharton and Osborne – for having lost their battering skills, but Cass knew it was more than that. It wasn’t just his face. His shoulder felt better too. The constant ache had been replaced with an itch on the inside, as if all the damaged flesh was finally knitting itself back together. The first time he sat up in the morning had been agony, every inch of flesh and bone from his ribs to his neck screaming at him, but the past two mornings that unspeakable pain had been replaced by a dull throb that had passed within ten minutes.
He remembered the surge of heat he’d felt when they pulled the bag off his head in the garage. It had burned outwards and inwards, feeling like adrenalin and cocaine mixed together and then souped-up with something to give them an extra kick. His eyes had glowed; there was no other way he could describe the feeling.
The boys see the Glow! His mother’s long-ago words scribbled on the back of an old photograph echoed in his head. Was that what was responsible for this sudden improvement in his health, the glow that he was finding harder and harder to deny? Or was it just optimism: that not only did he have a plan, but it was actually moving forward, and, even better, he was no longer alone in his fight to find Luke, even if Brian Freeman did have his own agenda? Cass liked to think it was the latter. To acknowledge the Glow, especially to accept that it existed inside him, would be to admit that he and Mr Bright were linked by something stronger than circumstance or conspiracy, and he wasn’t ready for that, no matter what evidence to the contrary presented itself.
The dreams had also let him go, for now at least, and he’d had two solid nights’ sleep. That surprised him even more than his speedy recovery. Maybe it was all just too much to grasp – Mr Bright and Mr Solomon’s manipulation of Freeman and then Mr Solomon’s murder of Carla Rae. The Man of Flies had definitely had the last laugh over Mr Bright with that one, using people as pawns in their personal battle.
Cass poured a mug of coffee; the rich, nutty blend was a far cry from the muck they served in the machines in Paddington Green nick – and took it over to the patio doors. Good coffee and a cigarette: there was no better way to start any day. The wind was bitterly cold, but he didn’t mind; it helped his thinking.
Carla Rae’s pathetic naked corpse drifted to the front of his mind. Did Mr Bright and his Network have any respect for people’s lives at all? It didn’t look like it. So why had Mr Bright taken Luke? What had been so important about him – or was it what he represented? The Jones family? What had been so right about them compared with the other families who had had voided files in the Redemption directory he’d found on his brother’s laptop? What was in their blood, the Glow? It was all about the Glow; he knew that much, so what was so special about it? An unwelcome memory stung him: those wide, terrified eyes looking down the barrel of that gun, and the single thought: he has no glow.
When they’d met in that half-built block, Cass had shouted at the ageless man for setting him up, and Mr Bright had shouted back, ‘I set you free.’ That had been his answer – but free from what – and to do what? Memories of that day burned as hot as the air was cold. Cass pulled in a long, rebellious lungful of smoke. What had they done to Abigail Porter, the PM’s bodyguard who’d bought him time to get away? Something had happened to her eyes; he’d seen the universe in them, he was sure of that – although he’d left that detail out when he’d told Freeman his story. He didn’t need the old man to think he’d gone batshit-crazy over the past ten years.
‘Time to go.’
Cass jumped; he had been so lost in his own thoughts he hadn’t noticed Wharton appearing behind him. He flicked the butt out onto the perfect lawn as his heart picked up pace. The game was on.
If Cass had thought about the location for the meet with Freeman and the hacker, he didn’t think a crematorium would ever have featured in his list of possibilities.
‘You’re kidding me,’ he muttered as the car pulled through the gates and right up to the small chapel door.
‘Where else in London can several cars with tinted glass all arrive within minutes of each other and not arouse suspicion?’ Wharton grinned proudly. ‘Other than that other home of all great criminals, Downing Street, of course.’
‘You may have a point.’ Cass grinned as he stepped out and followed Wharton inside. There was a service taking place, but the two men slipped in through a side-door and climbed the narrow stairs to the offices above where Osborne was waiting. He nodded to his colleague, and Wharton opened the door. ‘In you go then, son,’ he said.
Cass did as he was told. The room was sparsely furnished with basic office chairs and a desk with a computer on it. The window had been pulled open slightly and a thin man in jeans and a Ripcurl sweater was sitting close to it, smoking. Cass looked at the ashtray, which was already half full.
‘If you can’t smoke in a crematorium, where can you smoke?’ he said with a smile.
The hacker smiled back. He was older than Cass had expected, early forties perhaps, his hair still full, but already grey. He leaned back in his chair, looking relaxed, that ease that comes only with being incredibly good at what you do, and having the money to prove it.
Cass looked from him to Brian Freeman and once again decided that the phrase ‘crime doesn’t pay’ was utter bullshit.
‘Cass Jones, meet Dijan Maric, just arrived from Romania. Dijan Maric, meet Cassius Jones.’ Freeman smiled.
‘Good to meet you,’ Maric said. His voice was all light-and-sunny California.
‘Likewise,’ Cass said. ‘Romania?’
‘My home from home – it’s great for anything computer-related. I figured I’d better use a name that matched. It’s not my original.’ He grinned. ‘But then I hear that you haven’t always been known as Cass, either.’
‘Ain’t that the truth, Charlie?’ Freeman laughed.
‘Sometimes a different name is necessary.’ Cass took the spare chair, and the three men sat huddled like gossiping women.
‘That I can understand,’ Maric agreed. ‘Now, I haven’t as yet agreed to undertake this work for you. First, I need to hear exactly what you want, get to know you a little, and then I’ll decide. I get a lot of offers and I take very few of them. I need to know if we’re on the same page, as it were – think of this as a kind of first date.’
‘It a bloody expensive first date,’ Freeman growled. ‘It cost enough to get you over here. I’m really hoping you’ll put out.’
‘Nice metaphor,’ Maric said; ‘I’ll add it to my spiel for the next client. Yes, this meeting is costly, but I value my freedom and travel is always risky. I’m wanted in four different European countries, and the US still have ants in their pants over that little incident with the defence network back in ’95. They have no sense of humour.’
‘I’m not without a few governmental and police problems either, trust me,’ Cass said. ‘And speaking of trust, how
can we be sure we can trust you with any information we give you?’
‘We are both men who could spend the rest of our lives behind bars – if we’re lucky enough to keep our lives – if we get caught. Trust is implicit, wouldn’t you say?’
Cass had to agree. ‘Okay, well, fire away. What do you want to know?’
‘You mentioned The Bank.’ Maric looked at Freeman. ‘I have to tell you now, if this is a straightforward bank robbery I’m not interested. You know my reservations about this sort of job: I don’t want to make my money by making the little people poorer. They’ve been fucked over enough by all our governments, wouldn’t you say?’
‘It’s true, the little people get fucked all the time, but they tend to survive,’ Cass said. ‘But you can put your mind at ease: we’re not after The Bank per se. Just one man. And there is money – a lot of it – but it’s not coming from ordinary people’s accounts.’
‘I should say that we have two agendas here,’ Freeman cut in, ‘but we both want to fuck with the same man.’
‘Go on.’ Maric lit another cigarette. ‘Is this man someone I’ve heard of? One of the founders of The Bank?’
‘Yes, he is, but he’s not one of the men you’re thinking of. He’s no public figure.’ Cass leaned forward. ‘My brother Christian worked for The Bank. He was headhunted. And then he was killed. After his death I went through his laptop, and I found all the usual stuff – but I found something I hadn’t been expecting: evidence of a second system running secretly underneath The Bank’s own network. Christian had copied over a folder of various files. I tried to copy them externally, but I couldn’t. What I need is access to the information in those files – as well as the information I need, there were also details of twenty bank accounts – identified only by an X and a number, one to twenty. There are vast amounts of money in them – I’m talking billions, not millions. You can take your paycheck from them, if you can get in and get it out safely.’
‘The getting in, well, we’ll see about, but the getting money out and hidden? That I’m an expert on.’ Maric grinned from behind a cloud of smoke.
‘There are transaction records going back a couple of hundred years, but the opening balances were huge,’ Cass continued. ‘Somewhere there’ll be paper records – there have to be.’
‘And this money is nothing to do with The Bank?’
‘There were some transfers between the two, but no – this is old money. This is hidden money.’
‘Interesting: the more hidden it is, the less noise people can make if it’s stolen.’
‘True, but be warned, these people won’t take the theft lightly.’
‘No one ever does – and I’m not so stupid; I’ll skim it, make it look like the money has been lost. You say there are billions there? I could take five million and it would be months before any notices. How much do you want from there?’
‘We don’t want that money,’ Cass said. ‘I want the information in that directory.’
‘What kind of information is it?’
‘Personal. This man we’re after, his name is Castor Bright. You could say he has an unhealthy interest in my family. He’s taken my nephew and I want him back. I am quite sure that there’ll be a file somewhere in that sub-system that will help me find him. Mr Bright is a meticulous man: he’s an analyst, a planner. My nephew can’t have just vanished into thin air. There will be a record somewhere of the money Mr Bright has spent to acquire Luke, I’m sure of it. Everything is an investment, a project; people are a game to him.’
‘He sounds interesting. I almost like him—’
The hacker’s words threw Cass for a moment. The idea that Mr Bright might be in some way likeable had never crossed his mind.
‘—but that’s irrelevant,’ Maric finished. ‘If I agree to the job and get into the system, then that information is yours to do what you want with. You say this sub-system is separate from The Bank’s?’
‘Yes, it even looked different. It wasn’t Windows-based for a start – at least, it wasn’t on the copy that Christian had made.’
‘And these twenty accounts, the X ones – do you know whose money it is?’
‘It’s a group called the Network, they’re the people really in charge of The Bank – and most of the world’s governments too, I wouldn’t be surprised – and Mr Bright appears to be in charge of them. I don’t know who they are, but I do know they are very powerful, and they’ve been around for a long time – too long. It sounds crazy, I know, but it’s the truth.’
‘So some shadowy conspiracy is behind the world’s largest financial organisation, and the man who runs it has taken your nephew?’
‘And set me up for murder. Twice.’
Maric let out a low whistle. ‘This is unbelievable.’
‘I don’t pay out fifty K just to get someone to my beautiful city on the basis of a fantasy,’ Freeman said.
‘I didn’t say I didn’t believe it, just that it was unbelievable.’ Maric grinned, the sparkle in his eyes dropping ten years from his age. ‘I’m tempted to take the job just to find out.’
‘I also want to drag this Mr Bright out into the open,’ Cass said. ‘People know about him, but only at the highest level, and no one will touch him. We want to knock him off his guard – make people lose their faith in him.’
‘In other words,’ Brian Freeman’s face cracked into a smile that added rather than subtracted years from his craggy face, ‘we want to fuck him over a bit. This is the second part of what we want from you. In order to draw attention to him, we need to do something public, and that’s going to have to involve The Bank. I’ve already got people working there.’
‘What kind of thing were you thinking?’
‘Stock dumping, shares fixing – things I can make a few quid at while we’re doing it, obviously. I’m not like Cass here – I have absolutely no objection to getting richer out of this. To be honest, this fella has fucked with my life too; whatever I get back I feel I’ve earned.’
‘I’ve already said I’m not touching ordinary people’s money—’
‘You won’t be. We’ll hit the big corporations, make some dodgy investments – arms and terrorist organisations, that sort of thing.’
‘There was a list of companies in that sub-folder,’ Cass cut in, ‘we’ll start with those. They must be Network businesses, so that will turn his own against him too.’
‘There will be ordinary people among the shareholders, though,’ Maric said thoughtfully. ‘I’m an information thief; this isn’t my normal thing. Hurting governments is one thing – people are different.’
‘The way I see it’ – Cass took a cigarette from the hacker’s packet – ‘is that this group, the Network, they won’t want the economy becoming any more damaged or unstable than it already is, because that would damage their power base. Whatever damage we do, they’ll rectify with money from the X accounts.’
‘We just want to make some waves around this Mr Bright,’ Freeman said. ‘And I’d like to make some money.’
‘And it will also work as a distraction while I’m looking for Luke. Mr Bright likes to have things under control; he’ll be going crazy while you’re fucking with him from the inside.’
There was a long moment of silence, and then Maric nodded slowly. ‘This might be even better than the defence system breach. I’ve never had a buzz like that since, and that was a long time ago.’
‘Do you think you can do it?’ Cass asked.
‘The Bank tried to hire me, you know. They offered me a lot of money. I turned it down, of course – twice. And then I had to change my identity and go into hiding for a year or more because they pointed several unfriendly government agencies in my direction. They told me that if I took the job, then my history would be cleared and I’d be taken off the wanted list – every wanted list.’ His voice was soft and thoughtful. ‘That’s power, huh? I didn’t entirely believe it at the time, but I think maybe I do now. The point is, they wanted me in, not out, an
d I take that as a clue that if anyone can get into their systems, then it’s me.’ He looked at Freeman. ‘You have someone placed in-house?’
The old man nodded.
‘And they can bring their laptop home without suspicion? And remote access?’
‘Yes. She’s working nights there on an international project. She’s been bringing her laptop home every day.’
‘Good. That will give me a chance to look around The Bank’s systems, get a feel for it. When we do it, it’ll help to know as much as I can about this man you’re so interested in. Systems tend to reflect their owners, so knowing him will help me decide the best way to break his security.’
‘Not a problem,’ Cass said. ‘I can talk you through what I know.’
The hacker smiled. ‘Okay gentlemen, consider me hired.’
‘Then I’ll arrange for someone to collect you tomorrow at twelve,’ Freeman said.
‘Tomorrow it is.’
The three men grinned, and then Freeman slapped his rough hand down on Cass’ thigh.
‘Time for us to get back. I’ve got a surprise arriving for you.’
‘What kind of surprise?’ Cass felt a vague unease. He hadn’t quite accepted that he and the old gangster were on the same team now; it was that same unease that made sure he’d locked his bedroom door, just in case Brian decided it was time to pay him back for that long-ago betrayal.
‘Trust me, son,’ the old man said with a wink, ‘you’ll like it. It’s something I thought might help us with our little venture.’
‘Let’s go then.’ Cass got to his feet. He was on this ride with Brian Freeman now, so there was no point trying to second-guess when the ride might fall apart.
‘See you tomorrow, then,’ Maric said with a smile.
‘See you tomorrow,’ Cass said as he opened the door. He hoped he would.
Chapter Eighteen
Her bones felt brittle, as if they would snap with even the slightest move, but she smiled as she squeezed the old man’s hand. His skin was so dry that sore cracks had appeared across his palms. He wanted to be home. She wanted to be home. They didn’t belong here.
The Chosen Seed: The Dog-Faced Gods Book Three (DOG-FACED GODS TRILOGY) Page 12