if they took the risk and just torched the car? He shook the thought off.
“Take care.” he said.
// George
The convoy was safely on the top level highway, which gave them a good chance of getting all the way to the fun palace.
It had been more than a week of running the vacuum cleaner on SciTec. They had high expectations. That a direct dump of everything would give them some deep insight. It was a torrent, a bit like wishing for a drink and being knocked over by a flood. They had everything, but they had nothing.
In a sense having everything was a bit like having nothing. They were hardly likely to find an email directing the drone with the syringe. Or even anything discussing it. For so long the assumption had been that if it is in digital form, then somehow it will leak.
They were left with the strategic overview stuff, and miscellaneous stuff. It was like having a frame from a movie every twenty minutes, and trying to fill in the missing bits.
“Chinese developers.” George said.
“Almost all of the housing developers are Chinese.” Alice said. “You have to look at each one. Yes, some of them are quite aggressive. They don’t wait for each house to sell, they get in there and encourage a bit of movement.”
Steve brought an animation up on the wall.
“This shows the growth of the aggressive side. They start out slowly in 2015 and grow steadily. Now about 50%.”
“They fund the Peregrini?” George asked.
“Yes. Indirectly.” Alice continued. “The money trail goes through several intermediaries.”
“Relationship between SciTec and the aggressive developers?” George asked.
“Not good. SciTec are aligned with the softly softly developers.”
“The victims? Any common threads in their work?”
“All of them had looked at Defigo closely.”
“So. What are we left with?”
Alice continued.
“It could be Defigo. It could be the aggressive developers. Or it could be an internal dispute in SciTec.”
“This is very interesting.” Alan said. He brought up a set of connections over time. It made no sense to George at all.
“You better translate for me.” he said.
“Connections versus time. There are normal stuff. I’ll mark that green.” The display changed, with almost all green, but a smattering of red. “Red lines are break-ins.”
George turned.
“Internal break-ins. One employee hacking another?”
“Exactly.”
“Do we have the content he is chasing?”
“Yes. I’ll get a sample.”
Alan went back to the keyboard.
“Xu’s school record, childhood.”
George looked puzzled. “And?”
“Photos. Family. That sort of thing.”
“They are friends?”
“If they were friends then he wouldn’t be breaking in to get this stuff.”
“Anything else?”
“Tollway systems.”
“As in traffic systems?”
“Yes.”
“Idle curiosity?”
“If you say so.”
// Mia
As always, there was another task awaiting. A message drop to negotiate, a goal to complete. She thought back to that meeting in the cafe where they had laid out the two alternatives. Work for us, or we throw you to the wolves. Maybe she should have taken her chances? After all, there was always the possibility of escape. In a sense this was everything she had run away from in the first place. She scanned the Melbourne skyline, the commuters bustling. Did she really feel a part of this?
This time she had to get the tram to St Kilda, and sit on a bench facing the sea. Make the bluetooth connection. Get a message. But this time the message was incredibly cryptic. It was just an IP address, a login and a password. With the message there was a tablet stuck to the under-side of the seat. She reached underneath, trying not to make it too obvious just in case. Luckily it was close to the edge, and not difficult to dislodge.
Rattling back towards docklands, she thought about Oscar and Michael. Wondering why the backers had changed their mode of operation. Wondering who they were. Thinking how long she could continue this life of obedience. Of being a cog in what seemed like a very large machine.
An IP address. A login. A mobile phone. She could guess. That it would be two-factor. Even with the login the phone was needed to validate. Sure enough. ‘Login:’, ‘Password:’ then ‘Code:?’. It stopped. She waited, and then she almost jumped out of her chair as the phone bleeped, and the code appeared.
But where was she? Logged in somewhere. Where to start? She had a prompt, on a terminal. So that was something. She listed the files in the directory. Piped every file to a command line editor, skipped over the binary files, looking for a text document. Or a document that could be viewed in text
// George
Li Xiu was hovering. Like the kid in the class with their arm in the air, reaching for the ceiling. As if she had the answer to the question and couldn’t wait to blurt it.
“Anything?” George said, ignoring the body language.
“Lots.” she said. “Have a look at this.”
At first the video footage was a bit vague. It just seemed to show a small blur. But enhanced and cut, it showed a drone about the size of a dinner plate hovering near an air intake duct. But even better it showed the moment. A white puff of dust, only just visible.
“Great stuff. You’ve done really well.” George said.
Li smiled.
“There is more.” she said.
She swung the video into virtual 3D mode. To a view that was constructed from all of the relevant cameras. It wasn’t actual 3D, as there were some gaps. But enough to show a trail. It was marked in black.
“Trail of the drone?” George asked.
“Trail of the person who launched the drone.” she said.
He swung around. Looked straight at her. Like a kid who has just discovered there is an extra present under the Christmas tree that he missed on the first run through.
“Seriously?” he said.
“Seriously.”
Now they all gathered. As if watching a maestro in action. Which in a very real sense they were. Again it was a 3D view, from at least twenty cameras. Back along the street, all the way to the subway station. A hooded figure, with a bag. A bag big enough to carry a micro drone. Still, it followed him. He descended the escalator, looking around, trying to make sure if he was being followed.
Then, he pulled back the hood.
Absolute silence. George, Alice, Steve and Li Xiu stood in front of the wall, with a twenty metre by twenty metre still image of his face.
“Shit. You are a dead set genius.” George said. Speaking for them all.
With a face, there were a whole range of things the wall could do. Search for every location that it had seen the face over a period of time. Everything the internet knew about the face. His friends, his financial transactions. Pretty much a full picture. Too much in fact. The real challenge was to narrow it down.
“Last month. City map. Traces.” George said
A set of spidery lines made it’s way through a map of the city streets. We can arrest his barista, George thought. Not really expecting any great revelations. But if he is careless enough to show his face on a train, who knows what is possible.
“Weighted by number of visits.” George modified the map.
Now it showed as darker, the more times he visited a location.
“Look at this.” he said to Alice and Steve.
The screens flipped to the convoy, as it made the last exit, and slowed to approach the fun palace. Timing when they went outside to meet them. George found himself nervous, fidgeting. Then standing at the roadside, scanning the traffic.
The three black cars pulled up, and Alex, Michael and Oscar were standing there. She walked hesitantly towards him.
“Alice, this is Alex.” he said, thinking, of course, she knows how this is. “Steve.”
They milled about, then the group moved inside. Leaving George and Alex. Standing.
“I’m sorry.” Alex said.
“For what?” George said.
“Running off. I should have trusted you.”
They were walking now, with no real destination in sight. A coffee place on the left. George gestured, and they entered. A long, a painfully long silence. Both of them looking down at the table, as if frightened to look at what they had become.
“Michael will be ok. He’s a good kid.” George said.
“Yes.”
which left another silence.
“I can...” George stumbled.
Alex smiled. This was far from the self-propelled George. It was George struggling.
“Us.” she said.
“Is there an us?” he said, hesitantly.
“If you want there to be an us, then, yes, there is an us.” she said, still smiling.
“But..”
“I should have left it all years ago. Decades ago. It’s an edifice. Held together with duct tape. A facade. A farce if you like.”
“We can go somewhere. Anywhere.” he said.
She looked skeptical.
“You could really leave it all behind?” she said.
“This? Yes. Pretty soon they will eject me anyway.”
// Mia
Oscar was grateful to be back in the apartment. For a while they just sat. No welcome from the backers, nothing. Finally Mia spoke:
“George put it to me that it was the backer’s disposing of us. Past our expiry date.” she said.
Oscar turned.
“Possible, I guess. In the absence of anything, assume the worst.”
Michael just looked puzzled. As if it hadn’t occurred to him.
“Maybe it’s time we learned more
Murder in the Fabric Page 20