The John Milton Series Boxset 4

by Mark Dawson

  Ziggy spoke quickly, punctuating his words with little jabs with his fingers. He was animated, too, as if Hicks’s failure to secure his data, or the question of how Ziggy might have discovered so much about him, was a personal affront. He was not a physically impressive man, but the routine way with which he dissected Hicks’s life was unsettling.

  “You bank at Santander. You have six thousand pounds in a savings account and a little under two thousand in your current account. Your mortgage is with Lloyds. You bought your house five years ago, and the repayments stretch you a little.”

  “So you hacked me,” Hicks said with a tight little smile. “Well done.”

  “I wouldn’t be so grand as that. It wasn’t difficult enough to call it a hack.”

  Hicks had always believed that he was an easy man to get along with. He was relaxed and laid-back, and it took a lot to rile him up. He could see, though, that Ziggy Penn was going to challenge his patience.

  The satnav indicated that he would need to come off the Skyway at the next junction. He indicated and turned off when he saw the signs for Taguig.

  “How do you know Milton?” Ziggy asked.

  “So you couldn’t find everything out?”

  “Not everything.”

  “We’ve worked together.”

  “But not in the Group? I would’ve known that.”

  “No. Milton was Number One when I was put forward. He turned me down.”

  “That’s awkward,” he said.

  “Not really. I wasn’t cut out for it. He could see that. I wouldn’t have been very good at what he did. He did me a favour.”

  “So?”

  “Our paths crossed again a few months ago. I was in a sticky situation and he helped me get out of it. And then he helped my family.”

  “Your wife?”

  Hicks realised that Penn was referring to the cancer. The same glib way he dispensed that most personal piece of information was very irritating. “We won’t be talking about that,” he warned.

  Penn frowned, as if struggling to understand the sudden flare of anger, before he gave a little shake of his head and said, “I’m sorry. That’s personal. I don’t mean to pry. Force of habit. I’m a careful person. I don’t fly halfway around the world to meet someone I don’t know without doing my research. But I don’t mean to cause offence.”

  “Forget it,” Hicks said. “He did help with her illness. He helped us find the money for the treatment that she needed.”

  Hicks decided not to go into too much more detail about that. The money that they had used to save his wife’s life had come from the illicit deals arranged by an ex-Regiment man with whom Hicks had been working. Hicks had been desperate and had made a terrible decision; Milton had intervened and had extricated him, most likely saving his own life as well as Rachel’s.

  “That’s one thing we have in common,” Hicks said.

  “What?”

  “We both owe Milton.”

  Ziggy shuffled a little uncomfortably. “He told you about me?”

  “He told me you worked together when he was in the Group. There was a time in New Orleans, during Katrina?”

  “I was badly hurt,” he said. “Hence the limp. Milton got me out.”

  “And then you got into a mess in Tokyo?”

  Ziggy waved a hand in the air. “I’ve made a few mistakes.”

  Hicks could see that the conversation was causing a little discomfort and, much as he found that he enjoyed putting the shoe on the other foot, he decided to relent. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I only know a little. Much less than you know about me.”

  Finally, Ziggy smiled. “You don’t know the half of it.”

  THE ADDRESS that Josie had given Hicks was on Labao Street. It was a budget B&B with a sign outside that declared it as the Napindan Castle. It was painted a garish orange, and the crude crenelations atop the wall were a clumsy stab at giving the building a feature to befit its name. Hicks pulled up on the street outside and, as they had arranged, he took out his phone and called Josie’s number.

  She came out of the hotel and checked the street left and right. Hicks flashed the lights and watched as Josie hurried across to the car. She opened the rear door and lowered herself onto the seat.

  “Is everything okay?” Hicks said as he put the car into drive and set off.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I didn’t go to work again today. I said my son was still ill.”

  “Your boss?”

  “I didn’t speak to him. But he must know something is wrong now.”

  “This is the man I told you about,” he said, inclining his head at the front-seat passenger.

  Hicks watched in the mirror as Josie looked forward at Ziggy.

  “What’s your name?

  “Ziggy.”

  “I’m Josie Hernandez.”

  Hicks had hoped that Ziggy would show a little less attitude, and was pleased when he turned to look back at her to return her greeting.

  “Are you going to help?” she asked.

  “That’s the plan. Can we go to the prison now? Hicks says we need to hurry.”

  “I won’t be able to get you inside,” she said.

  “I don’t need to go inside.”

  Hicks saw Josie give a little shrug. “It’s fine.” She looked at her watch. “If the traffic is okay, we can be there in an hour and a half.”

  55

  THE IRON gates had been rolled across the entrance to the prison compound and Josie said that there would be no way for them to get any closer to the buildings without arousing suspicion. Hicks pulled over to the side of the road. It was a little after seven, and the light was beginning to fade.

  Ziggy pushed the sunshade up and looked out at the buildings beyond the gate. “Have you scouted it?” he said to Hicks.

  “I went inside when I saw Milton,” he said. “I couldn’t see anything that looked like a weakness, but I didn’t get to see all of it.”

  “There won’t be an easy way out,” Josie said. “The jail this one replaced was very bad. Men escaped all the time. This is more secure.”

  “What’s the technology like inside the prison?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “What about the network? Is it low tech or high tech?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Do they have Wi-Fi?”

  “I’ve never needed to find out.”

  “Well, we’ll need to know. Here.” He handed her a phone from his bag.

  She took it, looking down at it dubiously. “I already have one.”

  “Not like this,” he said. “This one is special. You need to take it into the building.”

  She handed it back to him. “Not unless you tell me what it’s going to do.”

  “The phone and my laptop are linked. I can control it from here. I need you to take it inside so that I can analyse the network. I need to know where the vulnerabilities are.”

  “Will the guards be able to tell what it’s doing?”

  “No. It’ll look and act just like a normal phone.” He offered it again and Josie took it. “What happens when you go inside?”

  “What you’d expect,” she said. “They put your stuff through an X-ray machine. You go through a metal detector and if it goes off, they pat you down.”

  “The phone? Do you have to leave it there?”

  “They have locked drawers. You put the phone in a drawer. They note down which one it’s in and give you a receipt.”

  “But you can leave them switched on?”

  “Yes.”

  “That ought to be okay. I should be able to get what I need from the network connections in the guardhouse.”

  “How long will you need?”

  “I can’t say. Not long.”

  She looked anxious. “What is it?” Hicks asked.

  “There’s no reason for me to be seeing him. I’ve already been in two times, and then I came back with you. If it gets back to Mendoza—”

  “W
ho’s that?” Ziggy asked.

  “My commanding officer. If it gets back to him, he’s going to be more suspicious than he already is.”

  “Is there another way?” Hicks asked.

  “Someone has to take that phone into the guardhouse,” Ziggy said. “I can’t do it. I doubt you can.”

  “You can’t,” she agreed. “It has to be me. When?”

  “I can’t do anything until I know what the network is like,” he said.

  “So we do it now.” She swallowed. “Tell me what I need to do.”

  JOSIE WALKED to the gate and showed her credentials to the guard. The man was armed with a rifle, but he carried it with the lackadaisical air of a man who had no real idea of how to use it, nor any expectation that he would have to. He glanced at her badge, gave a surly nod, and opened the smaller gate that was reserved for pedestrians. Josie thanked him and walked through.

  She could feel the shape of the phone in her pocket. It was larger than her own, and she suddenly felt certain that it was going to give her away and betray her purpose. She reached across her body with her right hand and tapped her fingers against it. She tried to find her balance again. It was a phone. It looked just as it should. There was no reason why it should arouse suspicion.

  She crossed the lawn and entered the main building. The late hour meant that there were far fewer members of staff in the lobby than had been the case during any of her three earlier visits. There was a clerk behind the Plexiglas screen, and she went over to stand before him.

  “Hello,” she said into the grille.

  “It’s late, Officer. What do you want?”

  She smiled through the man’s bad temper. “You have a suspect here. A man involved in a case I’m investigating.”

  The clerk was distracted by a TV that was out of sight.

  Josie knocked on the glass. “Excuse me?”

  The man scowled as he looked back at her. “What?”

  “I want to see one of the inmates.”

  “Too late for that.”

  “I’m sure an exception can be made. Do I need to speak to the governor?”

  The man cursed under his breath. “Who is it?”

  “He’s English. John Smith.”

  “Smith,” the man said, tapping at his keyboard. “What about him?”

  “He’s been moved into solitary.”

  The man looked at the screen. “That’s right. Two days ago.”

  “Why?”

  “He attacked other prisoners. Slashed them with a shank. He killed one and put two of the others into the infirmary.”

  “I wasn’t told—”

  “No reason why you would be told, Officer. Smith is our responsibility now. He isn’t under police jurisdiction.”

  “He also hasn’t been tried.”

  “You’re based in the city, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you should have called before you drove down here. You’ve wasted your time and now you’re wasting mine.”

  “I’m sorry. I need to see him.”

  “Not tonight.”

  “Tomorrow, then. First thing. Can you arrange that?”

  “What for?”

  “Police business.” She found the right amount of annoyance. “I’ve had enough with your attitude. I’m serious. I’ll speak to the governor if I have to. What’s your name?”

  The clerk made no secret of his own exasperation, rolling his eyes theatrically. “Fine. What’s your cell number?”

  The mention of her phone gave Josie a flash of alarm that she was afraid she wasn’t able to mask in time. Her heart skittered and she felt the clamminess of cold sweat on her palms. She looked up at the clerk, but, if he had noticed her reaction, it wasn’t obvious. He was scrabbling around his desk for a piece of paper.

  Josie recited her number and waited as he finished jotting it down.

  “Fine,” he said. “I’ll speak to the warden. Someone will call you tomorrow.”

  56

  JOSIE WAITED for the gate to be opened. It was all she could do not to run back to the car as soon as she was beyond it.

  She saw a faint green wash across the interior as she drew closer and, as she opened the rear door and slid back onto the seat, she saw that Ziggy had opened his laptop and was scrolling through a page of incomprehensible data.

  He didn’t look away from the screen as she closed the door behind her.

  “Did it work?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Did it work?”

  “Ziggy,” Hicks said when he didn’t reply.

  He rested the laptop on the dashboard. “Sorry,” he said. “Yes. It worked. You did well.” He paused. “But that doesn’t mean this is going to be easy.”

  Hicks frowned. “Meaning?”

  “I thought that the network security would be basic. It’s not. I used the phone to sniff the Wi-Fi. They’re using WPA2 encryption. That’s the standard level, and it’s very secure.”

  “You can’t hack it?”

  “I could, but getting a handshake could take weeks. And it doesn’t sound as if we have weeks.”

  “We don’t,” Hicks agreed. “He’s bought himself time in solitary. As soon as they take him out, he’s going to be beaten again.”

  “So we have to get in another way,” Ziggy said.

  Hicks encouraged him to go on. “And you’ve thought of that?”

  Ziggy grinned. “I have. As Officer Hernandez waited in the security building, the phone picked up another signal. A Bluetooth connection. It’s for a keyboard or a mouse—probably a keyboard. Every Bluetooth device has a unique hardware identification number. If I can learn the number for the keyboard, I can spoof it to my own keyboard dongle. Then I can transmit from my device to the computer in the security building. If I do it right, the computer will think the keystrokes are coming from the keyboard it’s been paired with, only they’re not. They’re coming from me. And chances are that the computer is networked into the prison’s system with a static, always-on connection. Which all means that if I can get into the laptop by spoofing the keyboard, I can get into the prison network. If I can do that, I might be able to start causing trouble. You know, opening doors, setting off fire alarms, that kind of thing.”

  “I’ve said I’ll go back tomorrow.”

  “Can you get it ready in time?” Hicks asked.

  “It’s not easy,” Ziggy said. “I’ll have to rig up just the right kind of payload. But…” He shrugged. “If I work overnight, it should be possible.”

  “You’re sure it’ll work?”

  “I can’t say for sure until I’m inside. I’m assuming that the control network for the internal prison security—the doors, the CCTV, their alarms, that kind of stuff—is on the same network as the standard systems.”

  “Is that likely?”

  “Maybe. If we were in America, there would probably be separation with air gaps, firewalls or VLANs. But even there, I’ve seen cases where everything is on a flat network, completely open. Shit like this goes down all the time. And those kinds of places are given decent systems funding. The network guys here aren’t going to be playing in the same sandbox. I’m guessing they didn’t have the time or the funds to set up anything funky.”

  Hicks waved his hand impatiently. “What do I need to do? Practically.”

  “It’s not you,” Ziggy said. “I think it has to be Officer Hernandez.”

  “Go on,” she said.

  “You need to get close enough to the computer in the security building so that I can access the Bluetooth.”

  “How?”

  “The phone. Same again. This time, it’ll connect with the computer and make it think it’s the keyboard. And then I’ll be in.”

  “As simple as that?”

  “You need to stay close enough so that I can access the connection.”

  Josie shook her head. “If I go through security, they’ll take the phone and put it in the storage cupboard.”

 
“That might not work. Is it near the keyboard?”

  “No.”

  “And you need to be close to it.”

  “For how long?”

  “Hard to say. A minute. Maybe a couple of minutes.”

  “So you want me to small-talk the guards?”

  “Whatever you need to do.”

  “It’s going to look weird if I have to stay there for long. They get people in and out as quickly as they can.”

  “I’ll be as fast as I can.”

  Josie took a breath. “Fuck,” she said.

  “You did good just now,” Hicks said. “And this is similar. Right, Ziggy?”

  “Exactly the same.”

  Josie was thinking about what would happen if the plan they were seemingly concocting on the fly went wrong.

  She let that thought play out a little more: what would happen if it all went right?

  “I need to get home,” she said. “I want to see my son.”

  57

  JOSIE SLEPT in Angelo’s bed, clutching her son close to her. Her rest had been fitful and when she woke she had bleary eyes and a fatigued ache in her bones. Her mother noticed that something was bothering her, and Josie dismissed her concern with a brusqueness that she was unable to avoid, but one that she had immediately regretted.

  “What are you doing today?”

  “Work, Mother,” she lied.

  “When will we be able to go back home?”

  Her mother’s concern was entirely appropriate, but Josie did not want to get into a prolonged discussion about why a bullet had been pushed underneath the door and why they had had to leave. To do so would have forced her to confront the threat and then to explain what she was doing to make it go away. Her mother would have been even more frightened than she already was, and, more than that, Josie knew that if she thought for too long about the plan that she had allowed herself to be drawn into, her doubts would get the better of her.