by Toby Tate
* * *
After an hour or so, Gabe and her father grew tired of watching Heinrich and decided to take a walk around the grounds. It was a beautiful day, but Gabe was feeling anxious about whether or not the expert code-cracker would actually come through.
“Do you think he’ll be able to break the encryption?” she asked.
Her father smiled. “I think he’ll do his best. But if anyone can do it, it’s Heinrich. I’ve known him for years, and haven’t seen a wall yet that he couldn’t tear down. Relax.”
“I was lucky they only sent Olivia after me and not a whole army. I think they figured one of them would be enough to track me down and take me out.”
“Well, looks like they were wrong about that, weren’t they?”
“I need to know what’s on that drive before they realize I have it and move up their timetable for whatever it is they’re planning.”
As if on cue, her cell phone vibrated. She yanked it out of her pocket and checked the number. It was Heinrich. “Do you have it?” she asked.
“Yes. I have accessed the contents. I’ll be waiting.”
In seconds they were back in Heinrich’s office.
“Mind if I take a look?” Gabe asked, coming up behind him. He promptly moved from the chair and she took his place in front of the computer screen.
There were several folders on the flash drive, all with acronyms she didn’t recognize. She clicked on one. Just as she suspected, most of it had to do with share trading. There were several graphs with trend lines showing the dominant trends of the share process for specific companies. By the looks of the data, they had been investing in what was known as swing trading, which was nothing more than short-term investing. That meant a bigger payoff in a short amount of time.
Was that what she had been doing? Playing stock broker for these guys?
In another file were transactions for several land acquisitions, some electronic equipment, and huge amounts of black granite.
Why the hell would someone buy this much black granite?
None of it made sense. She couldn’t remember a thing about what she had been doing.
“Well? Any luck?” her father asked, breaking through her wall of concentration.
“It looks like they were using…or I was using…fake corporations, fake names and accounts, untraceable cell phones and IP addresses, making ridiculous amounts of money in swing trading, then using it to buy land, electronics and granite. It makes absolutely no fucking sense.”
“Where is the land?”
“All over the Middle East and the Mediterranean. They also purchased an island somewhere in the Aegean Sea.”
“The Aegean Sea? That’s between Greece and Turkey. There are thousands of islands in there.”
“I know.”
She pulled the drive from the computer and thanked Heinrich as they left the room.
She glanced over at her father. “I’m sorry, but it looks like I’ll have to cut my visit short, Dad. I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”
He winked at her. “We’ll be fine. Just go do your thing and save the world.”
She smiled and put an arm in his as they walked out into the parking lot.
“I don’t have to leave just yet, though,” she said. “Let’s go home and have another Tooheys.”
About the Author
Toby has been a writer since about the age of 12. Inexplicably drawn to all things dark and macabre, he began penning short stories and publishing his own movie monster magazine.
An Air Force brat who never lived in one place more than five years, Toby joined the Navy soon after high school and ended up on the east coast of the U.S. He has since worked as a cab driver, a pizza delivery man, a phone solicitor, a shipyard technician, a government contractor, a retail music salesman, a bookseller, a cell phone salesman and a recording studio engineer.
After earning his English degree, he became a full-time graphic designer and newspaper reporter for five years and published hundreds of stories with the Associated Press and his local paper. He has since been published in The Pedestal Magazine, Voluted Tales magazine, Famous Monsters of Filmland, Scary Monsters Magazine, and websites like eHow.com.
Owing to the inspiration of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ray Bradbury and Stephen King, Toby became an author of what he likes to call "high-octane sci-fi, fantasy and horror" and has published several books.
Toby is also a songwriter and musician and lives with his family near the Great Dismal Swamp in northeastern North Carolina.