by S L Shelton
“What are you doing?” She asked.
I smiled at her as I handed her one of the cups and one of the bags. I didn’t want to have to explain in front of others and frankly, I was focused on reaching the other machine without being obvious about it.
I meandered lazily over to the back-to-back ticket vending machines across from the dead cluster of cameras, peering down the track as if anxious to catch my train. We stopped and loitered there, munching on muffins and drinking our coffee while waiting for the Paris train.
“Pull up a seat,” I said, grinning as I pointed to the floor next to the vending machine and then set my bag on the ground beside her.
“What are you doing?” she asked with a curious grin.
“Waiting,” I replied as I wandered around to the “dark” side of the electronic ticket vendor, out of sight of any active cameras. As soon as I scanned the area once more, confirming that I was in the blind, I quickly took bills out of my wallet and procured two tickets to Dusseldorf.
The train to Dusseldorf was already sitting on the track two platforms over, scheduled to leave in just five minutes. The Paris train was late, but I could see it moving slowly down the track in our direction—the timing was going to be tight.
I motioned for Kathrin to prepare to board. “Come on,” I said. “We have to get on the Paris train as soon as it gets to the platform.”
“I don’t understand,” she said, but smiled in revelation as I discreetly held out the two tickets for Dusseldorf.
I looked her in the eye and asked, “Are you sure you want to do this? This is your last chance to abandon me before we leave.”
I wonder if she even woke her friends to say good-bye. The Paris train pulled to a stop in front of us, and she looked up at me nervously.
After a couple of beats, she nodded confidently. “I’m in.”
“Did you say anything to anyone?” I asked, smiling at her decision. “Your friends?”
“I left a note,” she replied, and a strange expression rippled across her features for a split second.
“You didn’t tell them where you were going, did you?”
She shook her head sharply. “I didn’t know where I was going.”
I winked as the doors on the train opened. With only two minutes left before the Dusseldorf train was scheduled to depart, we pushed our way onto the Paris train. Curses in French and Dutch assaulted our rude entry as the travelers began to exit.
We pushed through the crowd and then to the other side of the train through a closed but unlocked door that opened onto the tracks. Before exiting, I spied an access panel with a fire extinguisher inside.
Kathrin stopped when I jerked the door open on the glass covered cubby. “What are you doing?” she asked, tugging at my arm.
“Ditching my phone.”
I reached into my bag, retrieving my original phone—the one the CIA had no doubt copied last night—before jamming it in behind the extinguisher.
“Come on,” she urged, tugging at me again.
I pushed the panel closed on the extinguisher box before opening the door to the tracks.
“It’s getting ready to leave,” Kathrin whispered, tipping her head toward our train to Dusseldorf.
I nodded before looking both ways down the track. It would suck to draw our adventure to a premature end by kissing the front of a speeding train.
Holding Kathrin’s hand in mine to make sure she followed safely, we leapt to the tracks below. I felt a sudden stirring of warmth in my chest as her fingers curled around mine.
I quickly dismissed the unwelcome emotional intrusion as I gently tugged her along. We paused once to cross another set of tracks between us and the Dusseldorf train which was preparing to leave. She squeezed my fingers as we arrived at the door.
I pounded on the window, drawing a conductor to the opening. He seemed upset with us, but he opened the door, saying something angrily to us in Dutch.
“I’m sorry,” I replied sincerely as I showed him our tickets. “We were on the wrong side of the track.”
He looked at our tickets and handed them back to us scowling, but he let us in. With a dismissive wave of his hand, he sent us into the car, gesturing and mumbling angrily. Kathrin chuckled at the response.
We found two empty seats just as the train moved forward and sat with a sigh of relief. Kathrin burst out laughing as she tucked her backpack into the seat next to her.
We sat for a while, enjoying the rest of the muffins, and I explained to her why I had done all that I had to get us on the Dusseldorf train.
“I assumed the bills were tagged with something that could be tracked. Something that didn’t come off when touched, or they’d be chasing ghost signals all over Amsterdam,” I said. “The tickets to Paris were purchased with those bills. I bought them one at a time so I could get clean change from each transaction.”
She reached into her pocket and fished out the change before handing it to me.
“I did it in full view of the cameras in case security footage was checked,” I said, slipping the change into my pocket. “I left my phone on the Paris-bound train because the government is tracking it. I have a backup anyway.”
She nodded her understanding.
“What happens if they were tracking you and they find the phone once it arrives in Paris?” she asked.
“They’ll assume I got off earlier and start to look for security footage of us getting off the train,” I replied with a knowing grin. “We know they won’t find it.”
In reality, there were a few other reasons I’d ditched that phone. First, I had no use for it now that my special apps had been erased. Second, the government now knew I was looking for Barb and could use my number to track me, and third, they’d had my phone in their possession for hours. It could also be infected with spyware, and I didn’t have time to scan it to be sure. At that point, it became a more effective decoy.
“How often do you run off with strangers in the middle of the night when on holiday?” I asked with a grin.
“More often than I probably should,” she responded, mirroring my smile.
“Your friends won’t be worried?”
She shook her head and then looked out the window as we moved slowly out of the station. “They’ve come to expect me being unpredictable,” she said—and there was that flash again. Something…private.
Trust her, my other voice said.
I mentally shrugged. I didn’t have time to question her motives or my new mental co-pilot. She was German, she wanted to help, and I didn’t speak the language as well as I needed to in order to do what had to be done.
As soon as we had finished our muffins and hydrated, I pulled my prepaid burn phone out of my bag and checked the GPS signal from the numbers I had given Storc. There had been several new hits on them.
There was one hit on the number that the Serb had previously called only once, and four new hits on the one that had been called multiple times. The last one had been three hours ago, and it was still in Dusseldorf.
I then checked my messages. Bonbon had sent me one letting me know there had been new attempts to crack the encryption and router path on communications. It read:
They are persistent, but still aren’t any closer to finding origin. I have to admit though...it’s making me nervous.
I wrote back and told her to get with Storc. I typed:
Prolly won’t see any more attempts. Had to wipe my phone. Am on new 1 now. They have no way of knowing about it. But, JIC, add a couple more dynamic switches and send me the sync file before he activates it.
I checked the news and the weather in Dusseldorf before tucking the phone back into my bag.
When I turned back to Kathrin, I saw she was asleep, her head leaning against her rolled up jacket, pressed against the window. I watched her for a moment, admiring her beauty and wondering why she was helping me. The simple act of asking the question made me tired, and I quickly shoved it to the back of my mind, not having t
he excess energy needed to solve the minor mystery. In fact, I was so grateful for the assistance, I don’t think I really wanted to know. Denial—such a lovely tool when one is in need.
I put my head against the window and tried to mute the inner workings of my constantly cascading brain flow so that I could catch a few minutes of sleep as well. The rhythmic clacking of the tracks helped push me over the edge, and soon I was in a free fall of light sleep where I dreamed of Barb.
“This is your fault, Scott Wolfe,” she said in my dreams.
“I know,” I replied. “I know.”
**
Kathrin shook me about two hours later as we pulled into the station in Dusseldorf.
“We’re here,” she said gently, touching me on my shoulder.
I wiped the sleep from my eyes and stood, grabbing my duffel bag and jacket from the overhead. She looked at me curiously out of the corner of her eye as she hefted her pack, but then she turned down the aisle rather than asking me the question that was clearly lingering in her mind.
We slowly made our way to the door and then out onto the platform. Once free of the crowd, she stopped, adjusted her straps, and asked, “What next?”
She looked like a soldier standing at attention and waiting for orders. She didn’t look old enough to have been in the military and be out already, so I asked her about this. “Boots, uniform trousers, standing at attention…were you in the military?”
She laughed at me. “You Americans and your powerful sense of individuality,” she said, shaking her head. “School children in some countries march to classes, stand at attention when waiting, and do not speak unless spoken to.”
I shot her a look of disbelief.
“Okay. Boarding schools. I was what you would call a ‘troubled’ child,” she said with a sly smile. “So my parents sent me someplace to give me ‘discipline.’”
“Did it work?” I asked as we walked toward the ground transportation exit.
“It disciplined my actions, not my ‘attitude’. As far as I’m concerned, it made me more dangerous,” she replied, winking. “After all, I’m keeping company with a fugitive.” She flashed a toothy smile in a quirky, disarming manner that made me feel very much at ease with her.
I laughed with her as I pulled my phone from my bag and then pulled up the map display. The target tags showed up near the Rhine River.
“There,” I said, pointing at the mark on the map. She reached over and pinched the image with her finger, zooming in closer. She then moved the screen to the left and then the right to see the surrounding labels on the streets.
“Okay,” she said confidently and then set off ahead of me toward the taxi area with me following close behind.
We stepped into the cab and she said, “Stromstrassa. Rheinturm, Bitte,” and we were on our way.
When we arrived at the tower Rheinturm, we set out on foot toward the river walk, which followed the Rhine.
“What are we going to do once we find them?” Kathrin asked me quietly as we approached a large, elaborate suspension footbridge across a protected harbor.
I found it interesting and comforting, that this little adventure now included a “we.” I have to admit, I felt more confident with a partner in crime. “We have to find out what’s going on,” I said as I scanned the scene. To our right was a bend of the Rhine River, and to the left were several man-made coves trenched into the point of the bend.
“We have to figure out as much as we can about what’s going on without being discovered,” I said. “The only thing I know for sure is that we don’t know anything yet. Before we do anything, we have to know everything.”
“How can we know everything?” Kathrin asked as our feet echoed on the wooden planks of the bridge.
“We can’t,” I replied. “Which makes it that much more important to try.”
We continued along the trail until we were near the marker placed on the map.
I looked at the signal once again to verify the location before looking up to get my bearings. The mark seemed to be centered on one of a handful of warehouses along the water’s edge. I could make out the high windows and metal roofs just beyond a small, fenced scrapyard next to the footpath.
“The signal is coming from over there,” I said, glancing to my left.
Kathrin nodded her acknowledgment, but we kept moving along the path. Once we had gone beyond the line of sight from the building, I paused.
“I saw a metal building with no windows at ground level,” I said.
“That’s what I saw as well,” she replied. “And a fence that goes to the water on the other side.”
“I’ll have to climb the fence if I want to get closer on this side,” I said. “I’d rather not be that obvious if I can avoid it. Especially in the daylight.”
She nodded. “Let’s take a closer look at what’s on the water side,” she suggested.
I nodded before turning around to go back the way we had come, pausing at the foot of the bridge so we could see the buildings facing the warehouses from the other side. I noted a Hyatt Regency hotel on the point, and on the finger of land beyond that was a German sports shoe manufacturer.
“Cameras,” I said.
“Huh?” Kathrin replied and then looked where my eyes had gone. “Oh. On the hotel?”
“And on the sneaker factory,” I said, nodding toward the other building.
“Ja,” she said quietly.
We walked back across the bridge and sat in the small park at the other end. While we ate our sandwiches, I pulled my phone from the bag and tested for Wi-Fi signals. We were on the far edge of the signal for the hotel, but one bar would be enough for what I wanted to do.
“We’ll need business attire,” I said as I stuffed the wax paper into the trash. “And we need to find an electronics store...one that takes traveler’s checks.”
She nodded without any sign that would be a problem.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked.
She looked genuinely hurt that I would even ask. “Are you having second thoughts?” she asked.
“I’ve had second thoughts since I decided to get on the plane,” I replied with a grin. “But no. No second thoughts about you.”
“I’m in,” she said with a smile and nod. “Stop asking.”
I pulled out my tablet and sent a text to Storc, requesting assistance getting into the hotel and the shoe factory. I typed:
I need to be on the ‘invitation’ list for both the hotel and the shoe company as a security specialist. Can you arrange for them to have an immediate need for one? It would be most helpful if they needed one desperately.
A few moments later he texted me back: One tech emergency, coming up.
I smiled at the rapid reply to the affirmative.
“Come on,” I said, standing to depart. “Let’s go shopping.”
We spent the rest of the afternoon making our purchases. Clothes, briefcases, routers, an additional prepaid phone, a multi-tool, binoculars, duct tape—anything we thought we might need was purchased with traveler’s checks. Once our shopping was complete, we checked into a small hotel near the university so we could prepare for our “business”.
“How will we get the hotel and factory to give us access to everything?” she asked as we unpacked our purchases in the room. “Won’t they be suspicious of tech support showing up so quickly?”
“The bigger the emergency, the less attention the client pays to detail,” I replied, laying out our business attire. “Storc will make sure they are more concerned about getting back up and running than about who showed up to fix it.”
She nodded and held up her business suit, wrinkling her face.
“Not my usual style,” she said.
“You have to look the part,” I said with a wink. “You are the respectable one.”
She grinned. “That’s not usually my style either,” she said and then turned to strip off her shirt and put on her blouse.
I turned my back
quickly, startled by the lack of modesty. As I pretended not to notice there was a beautiful blonde German girl stripping behind me, I pulled up my messages on my iPad. There was a message from Storc:
Both the hotel and the shoe company have experienced sudden and unexplained difficulty with their networks. It is affecting operations. They are expecting a network security technician sometime in the next twelve hours. Both companies requested expedited service.
Attached to the message were details about the security company they were expecting a visit from, including a blank badge image with a place for an employee photo and security verification letters.
“How do I look?” Kathrin asked behind me.
I turned to see her in her blouse, but she was still wearing the military-style trousers. I grinned just as another message chimed through, and I held up my finger for her to wait just a second.
It was another message from Storc. It read:
I have no doubt you could find and easily squash the little bugger, but I assume you have other reasons for wanting access.
Attached was a script to hunt down and kill the virus he had infected the systems with.
I turned back to Kathrin. “How attached are you to those piercings?” I asked.
She immediately began removing them. As soon as she was done, she pulled her hair back. “How is this?” she asked.
“Perfect,” I said, holding up my phone to snap a picture of her.
I then pulled a copy of my badge photo from my images directory and transferred both images to a memory card.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” I said. “If you’re hungry, go grab us some food. Don’t use a credit card.”
She nodded.
I took the information about the security company and went to the copy center down the street while Kathrin finished assembling our clothing and picked up some food.