At the Sharpe End

by Ashton, Hugh

  “Well, I had to, to lift up the bag and look inside, didn’t I?”

  “So your bloody fingerprints are all over everything? Oh, bloody wonderful. I’m going to have to tell Ishihara about this, you realise? I suppose the bag can be sanitised somehow before we tell him.”

  “Can you keep me out of it, then? I really don’t need any more hassle about this.”

  “God knows how, but we can try.”

  “We?”

  “Well, I’m going to have to tell the poison dwarf about this as well, you know. Major Tim bloody Barclay’s going to love the melodrama. He’ll probably wet himself with excitement. Oh, how absolutely thrilling,” he mimicked.

  “Again, keep me out of it with him. I don’t want to have any more to do with him if it can be helped,” said Sharpe.

  “I don’t really see how I can manage it.” Jon was thinking aloud. “I mean, how do I go about stumbling over severed heads in station lockers unless someone guides me there?”

  “A tall dark stranger presses the key into your hand as you get off the train at Tokyo station?” suggested Sharpe.

  “Come off it.”

  “All right, it arrives in your mailbox with a little note saying ‘Tokyo station’?”

  “Better, I suppose. Why the hell should I shield you, anyway? You’re hardly being co-operative with us.”

  “For very good reasons,” Sharpe pointed out. “My place gets turned over by a friend of yours, my girlfriend gets abducted,” Jon showed great surprise at this, “and I get beaten up last night. Where the bloody hell are you while all this is happening? And then, when I really need you lot like I need a hole in the head, you turn up.”

  “All right. There’s not that many of us, you know. We can’t provide twenty-four hour coverage for you. And what’s this about your girlfriend being abducted?”

  “Believe me, I really don’t want to tell you anything about this. How many of you is ‘not many’, then?”

  “Two or three,” Jon confessed, shamefacedly.

  “And that’s you and Tiny Tim and someone else when he’s not got anything better to do?” asked Sharpe. Jon nodded.

  “Why the hell don’t you two work with the real professionals in this game, if things get this rough? All right, so I’m sure there’s some stupid Whitehall reasons about turf and bailiwicks and whatnot. But wouldn’t it be simpler if you just got out of this and left me to it or handed it over to people who are more used to the idea of severed heads in coin lockers? I don’t see that you’re doing a lot of good, frankly.”

  “We need to stop the North Korean military getting hold of it, and we’re the best people to do that.”

  Sharpe sighed. “I’m not sure I believe that load of cobblers any more.”

  “Please yourself. I don’t have that luxury. Someone’s got to tell our lords and masters in London that Al Kowalski is no longer around to work his magic touch on the youth of Tokyo, and that the late lamented Katsuyama may well not be so late.”

  “Like I say, leave me out of it.”

  “If I can, I will. Now, I suppose I’m going to have to check out this story about Katsuyama still being alive.”

  “You’re not going to tell Ishihara about that, are you?”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  They left the table and dutifully dumped their rubbish in the cans provided, sorting out the paper and plastic as requested by the signs. Jon turned to look at Sharpe.

  “You look a bit better than you did,” he remarked. “Not that that’s saying that much, really.”

  A thought struck Sharpe. “Look,” he said. “You’re short-handed, you say. I need some extra work. Why don’t you take me on as a temporary or something?”

  “You’d have to sign the Official Secrets Act,” pointed out Jon.

  “Signed the bloody thing yesterday,” objected Sharpe.

  “And you’d have to come clean,” Jon added. “Tell us everything you know and hand over everything you have.”

  “Forget it,” Sharpe replied. “I’d probably be too expensive for you cheapskates anyway.”

  “You do believe in playing hard to get, don’t you?” Jon said. “But you might be right about the money, anyway. I won’t tell you about the pittance I get paid for leading my life of international glamour and mystery. It might embarrass us both. Look, I’m not going to be able to stay with you and make sure nothing else happens to you. But I will try to make sure that someone from the embassy keeps a quiet eye on your place, especially at night.”

  “Thanks. I’d appreciate that.”

  “In the little matter of gratitude, actions speak louder than words, remember,” Jon called out as they went their separate ways.

  -o-

  When he arrived home, Sharpe had no wish to continue with his everyday work. He had no doubt that he was now mixed up in some very dirty business indeed. It really would be a lot simpler to hand over Katsuyama’s gadget and software to Tiny Tim and Jon. Earn the grateful thanks of Her Majesty’s Government and all the rest of the package, which probably included a pair of concrete overshoes from North Korea. No thanks. After the previous night, Sharpe had no faith at all in the British government’s ability to protect him against any assault by Katsuyama’s family and friends. Or his enemies, come to that.

  In any case, he’d decided by now that he really did have a certain kind of liking for Katsuyama’s father-in-law, if he ignored the fact that he’d been hurt pretty badly by the man for almost no reason. There had been something about the man’s manner that seemed refreshingly honest. He wasn’t pleading any phoney-sounding cause of “national security” or patriotism. And he’d seemed decent enough once he’d realised that Sharpe wasn’t playing on the Japanese or the American side, and he hadn’t hurt Mieko, by the sound of it. Sharpe decided that he’d sooner throw in his lot with the mystery gangster than any of the other players in the game. He realised he didn’t even know his name, but he had no doubt that should he ever need to contact the man, it would be easy enough. Maybe Mieko would remember a little more about the building or something, which would make it easier to trace him.

  But to get on the good side of the man and his people, he’d have to find Katsuyama, and that was a real needle in a haystack sort of job.

  The phone rang, jarring him out of his thoughts. It was Vishal.

  “Listen, man. What was it that you were giving me the other night?”

  “I thought you’d worked it out. It recognises faces.”

  “Yes it does do that, as we saw, but there’s something there that you are not telling me. There is something very strange here. Meema is saying to me that a man has died because of this. I do not think I am wanting this thing in my house any more, you understand, Kenneth, my friend?”

  “I understand,” replied Sharpe. Damn, now he would have to find somewhere else to keep the board and software safely. And he’d probably lost Vishal’s and Meema’s friendship. He was wrong about that, though, as Vishal’s next words proved.

  “I am coming round to your house to help you with the furniture and all your things that were disturbed, don’t forget that. And then we can go back to my house where I can be showing to you the strange thing that I have discovered. And then you can be taking the damn’ thing out of my life and Meema’s life pretty bloody quick.”

  “Sure, Vishal. What time can we expect you this evening?”

  “Some time after seven o’clock. I will be calling you when I am leaving the office.”

  “Great. Look forward to seeing you.”

  Mieko came into the room. “Who was calling?” she asked.

  “That was Vishal. He’s coming to help pick up the furniture and get everything back in place.”

  “Oh good. Is Meema coming too?”

  “I don’t think so. He’s coming straight from work, a little after seven.”

  “Oh, I’d better make sure he has something to eat and drink when he arrives.” She scuttled off to perform mysterious tasks in the
kitchen and then popped her head round the door again.

  “What was in the locker at Tokyo? Did you find the right one?”

  “I did, but I’m not sure what last night’s friend was doing. It was only a bag full of rubbish.”

  “Strange, neh?” She disappeared back to the kitchen.

  Sharpe swore to himself as he realised that he still hadn’t bought a replacement hard disk for his computer. Finding Al Kowalski’s head in a locker had driven all other thoughts out of his own. He suspected there was a sick joke there if he wanted to make one, but he couldn’t be bothered. Looking at his watch, he reckoned he just had time to get to Akihabara, the electronics district, buy the disk and make it back before Vishal arrived. He grabbed his coat and a credit card and shouted to Mieko where he was going.

  “All right, make sure you’re back in time for Vishal,” she reminded him.

  Sharpe walked fast to the station. He was vaguely aware of someone who might or might not have been Jon following him at a distance. Quite frankly, he didn’t care too much. What did bother him a little more was that not one, but two, shadows seemed to have attached themselves to him by the time he reached the station to catch the train to central Tokyo. One of them seemed to be, from the little he could make out at a distance, one of the goons who’d escorted him to and from the car the previous evening.

  By the time he’d got on the train, and watched his two shadows get on the next carriage, he was sure of this. He still wasn’t sure of the other watcher’s identity, except that it wasn’t Jon. He wondered how long it would take before the two became aware of each other.

  As he arrived at Akihabara station, he decided to keep life simple, and not to play silly games with his trackers. He found the hard disk he wanted at the computer store, paid for it and went straight back to the station, rather than window-shopping through the store, which was his usual practice on such occasions.

  He was amused to see his shadows also apparently examining computer peripherals for the exact length of time that it took him to buy his hard disk, and decide that there was nothing that they wanted to buy at the exact moment he made his purchase and started to walk away from the register. By now, he told himself, they must have recognised each other. Maybe they would start co-operating with each other, taking shifts to relieve each other at times.

  Fat chance. As he travelled home, he noticed both of them in the next carriage, sitting opposite each other, studiously avoiding looking at each other and him, and they followed him back to his apartment, walking on opposite sides of the road, each about 20 meters behind him.

  Arriving home, he was pleased to see them stop outside the gates of the apartment building. He could always sue them for trespass if they entered private property. Probably get a judgement against them in ten years’ time or so, given the glacial pace of the Japanese legal system.

  Once he was back, he started to replace the hard disk and make a backup. He had watched the progress meter creep about halfway across the screen as he copied the data from the old disk to the new, when the doorbell rang.

  -o-

  He opened the door to Vishal, who was carrying his backpack.

  “Hi, there. Come in,” he said.

  Vishal kicked off his shoes and made his way to Sharpe’s office. “Have the bloody thing back, man,” he said, holding out a plastic carrier bag to Sharpe. “I thought that maybe I should bring it straight to you. Meema’s not being very happy with you right now, if you understand what I am saying.”

  Sharpe mumbled some sort of apology and opened the bag. Inside was the Hello Kitty box, and inside that were the Katsuyama card and the CD. “Thanks,” he said. “I’m really grateful to you for helping me out on all of this. Fancy a beer?” Vishal nodded, and Sharpe reached into the refrigerator beside his desk (tax-deductible as an office expense, it held beer, as well as the soft drinks and ice-cream vitally necessary for Sharpe to carry on his business in summer). “Here you go.”

  Vishal opened the ring-pull, chugged away at the can and belched. “That’s better. Thanks,” he sighed. “Kenneth, my friend, what are you not telling me? About all this, I mean?”

  “I don’t know how much I can tell you, but I was given this lot,” he gestured at the plastic bag, now lying on the desk, “by someone who wanted me to represent him. Later that day he was found dead at Shinjuku station. It seems he fell off the platform in front of a train.”

  “So what about your flat getting burgled? That is part of it, I am thinking?”

  “Right you are. It is. Someone else wanted this. But they’re now dead, as well.”

  Vishal shrugged. “I’m not really that surprised, I suppose. I found out something most interesting about all this, though.”

  “OK, what is it?” Sharpe popped the top of his own can, and leaned back in his chair.

  “Well, I found I was becoming more and more interested in how this worked, so I started to examine the source code very closely.”

  Sharpe nodded. Computers don’t speak human language, they talk to themselves in complicated sets of instructions, moving electrons around in chips. To talk to the machines, programmers use programming languages that are easier for human beings to understand. This is the “source code” that Vishal was referring to.

  “Well, it didn’t seem to me at the beginning as though there was anything very interesting there. All the really clever stuff was in pre-compiled modules which were on the disc.”

  Before a computer can run a program, the source code needs to be changed, or compiled, into instructions that computers can understand. Programmers often write and compile building blocks, or modules, of large programs, and then link the modules together. This saves the trouble of compiling the whole lot every time.

  Vishal went on, “So I started to have a look at the inside of some of those modules.”

  For a human being to read a compiled program is difficult, if not impossible, and needs a special kind of brain. Apparently Vishal was one of those people with such a brain.

  “Of course, there wasn’t very much I was finding in there that was obvious. But I found some ASCII strings in there which didn’t seem to be fitting what the program was all about.”

  ASCII (Sharpe couldn’t be bothered to think of the meaning behind the acronym right now) is a code used to translate letters of the alphabet to computer values. When Vishal said that he had found “ASCII strings”, he meant that he had found ordinary English text inside the code which even someone like Sharpe could read and understand, if he knew how and where to look. “Like what?” he asked Vishal.

  “Well one of them was ‘Bloomberg feed not connected’, and another was ‘FIX prices not available’. Do you understand what I am talking about?”

  “Of course,” Sharpe replied. “They’re market data feeds, the kind of information that traders have coming into their workstations round the clock. They cost a fortune for the brokers to install and maintain. Why on earth would they be part of a face-recognition program?”

  “That’s what I was asking myself, my friend,” replied Vishal. “So I am doing a little more thinking and a little more digging.”

  “And?”

  “And I discovered a long list of currencies. The standard three-letter abbreviations like EUR, USD, JPY, that sort of thing, all in ASCII again.”

  Sharpe thought for a few moments. “So it’s a currency-trading program pretending to be a face-recognition program or something along those lines?”

  “That’s what it looks like to me, man. What the hell have you been playing with? Who are your friends?”

  Sharpe ignored this. “So how do we fire it up?”

  “Well, to run the program, the card’s got to be installed in the PC. We found that out the other day, didn’t we?”

  “All right. Wait until I’ve finished backing up my data and then we can slip the card into this computer.”

  “But, Kenneth, remember that this is being a Linux disc and you will be needing a Linux system to
run this program. If I am remembering rightly, this is a Windows system alone?”

  “Oh, shit.” Actually, the disk that had been stolen was capable of being started in Linux or Windows, but he hadn’t bothered to copy the Linux side to the backup disk he was using now, since he mainly used it for experiments.

  “And I am guessing that you don’t have a Bloomberg feed here. Am I being correct in this?”

  “Damn’ right you’re being correct.” The market data feeds supplied to commercial houses cost several thousands of dollars per month for each trader using the service. Even if Sharpe played the markets, which he didn’t, there was no way that he could ever justify the cost of a commercial market data feed to his house.

  “Well, there’s only one answer to this problem, isn’t there?” Vishal grinned. “I take it into work and install it on one of our development machines.”

  Sharpe thought about it. It made a sort of sense. There was no way that anyone with the same sort of ideas as Al Kowalski regarding the ownership of Katsuyama’s hardware and program would be able to get through the high security surrounding the IT workers and equipment at Vishal’s bank. Only one problem.

  “Vishal, if you don’t mind, I’d like to be able to play with this system as well.”

  “No problem, man. I can arrange for you to come in as a consultant. We are needing someone to look at our compliance rules, so it’s real work for you at your usual rates. But it will mean that you have to spend some time in our development section. And if you happen to work late, well, that’s what you consultant wallahs are always doing, isn’t it?”

  “You’re a real friend, Vishal.”

  At that point, Mieko poked her head around the corner with a plate of rice crackers and tiny grilled fish wrapped in shiso leaves spread with umeboshi – pickled plum – paste. “Not as good as Meema’s samosas,” she apologised as she left the plate beside Vishal. “Sorry.” She turned to Sharpe. “Any beer left in the fridge?” she asked him. He opened the fridge door and wordlessly handed her a can.

  “Thanks,” and left.