Black List (16 page)

Half an hour later, and Alex was seated in front of Landvik’s formidable computer system, his fingers dancing across the keyboard as he scrawled through the complex encryption program now running from Anya’s memory stick.

He’d been right about Landvik’s system. The hardware amassed in this room made the average hacker’s setup look like a child’s playroom by comparison. Then again, Landvik’s father was a successful businessman who spoiled his only son rotten, and had no doubt bankrolled the entire thing without really understanding what he was funding. Even at university he seemed to possess nearly unlimited funds, while his fellow students lived on instant noodles and almost-expired milk.

Before starting it up, Alex had taken the precaution of disabling the system’s internet access, and had even physically disconnected the network cables as an added safeguard, ensuring there was no way the program could send out its digital cry for help again. No way would he trust it with internet access until he was certain he had it under control.

And he knew he could master it. No matter how clever or complex it might be, sooner or later he’d crack it and bend it to his will. He might not know anything about survival or navigation or any of the hundred other skills that Anya apparently possessed, but when it came to computers he was unmatched.

Pausing a moment in his work, Alex tore into the tuna and cheese sandwich sitting on the desk in front of him, washing it down with a can of Red Bull. He hadn’t eaten anything approaching a decent meal in nearly twenty-four hours, and had determined to put that right as soon as he set foot in Landvik’s house. What the hell – Landvik himself had food to spare by the looks of him.

Despite everything, he caught himself smiling as he tossed the empty can into a nearby waste bin. Marcel Proust might have found his childhood rushing back to him with the simple taste of Madeleine cake, but for Alex the combination of sugar, taurine and God only knew what other chemicals went into the energy drink was enough to evoke the world he’d once been part of.

A world of late nights and tight deadlines, of challenges and accomplishments, of camaraderie and friendship. A world where he’d finally felt part of something bigger than himself, something he cared about.

The sound of footsteps in the corridor outside interrupted his thoughts, and he turned around just as Anya walked into the room.

She approached his workstation and leaned over to inspect his progress, though it was clear from the look in her eyes that the raw computer code filling most of the screen meant little to her.

‘Interesting stuff, eh?’ he prompted.

‘How do you make sense of all this?’ She was still staring at it as if mesmerized.

Alex shrugged. ‘It’s a language like any other. Once you understand the key words, it all starts to come together.’

The woman glanced away from the screen, turning her attention to him. ‘I’ll take your word for that. What’s your progress so far?’

‘Well, I found the subprogram that got me in so much trouble at the internet cafe,’ he explained. ‘Took me a while to find it because it’s pretty well hidden, but basically it acts like a homing beacon every time you start it up – fires off a little burst of data to an encrypted IP address. It was a tricky little bastard to remove without making the whole thing fall apart, but I managed to snip it off.’

‘That sounds promising,’ Anya remarked, though her tone was guarded. She sensed a ‘but’ in there somewhere.

‘It is, but that’s the easy part,’ he confirmed. ‘The hard part will be fooling the CIA’s system into thinking this is still an active identity. If we tried to log in with it right now, it would probably trigger their security protocols, and we’d have half the US military on our doorstep before I could finish my sandwich.’

Anya nodded. No doubt she was well aware of this problem. ‘So how will you get around this?’

‘No idea.’ Alex flashed a grin at her. ‘But don’t worry, I’ve never come up against a system I couldn’t break. Right now I’m picking the code apart line by line. It’s tedious but it gets results. Once I understand how the thing works, I’ll crack it.’

Anya said nothing. No doubt she harboured her own thoughts on his chances of success.

‘By the way, where’s Gregar?’ Alex felt compelled to ask. He might have been a traitor and a dickhead, but he didn’t deserve the kind of tender mercy that Anya seemed to have no qualms about dishing out.

As if guessing his thoughts, she gave him a disapproving look. ‘In the bathroom, cleaning himself up. I secured the door, so he can’t leave. Apparently his nose is bleeding again.’ He saw a trace of an amused smile. ‘He thinks he might be a haemophiliac.’

‘He’s a twat,’ Alex informed her. ‘There’s no cure for that.’

She said nothing to this, though neither did she dispute his damning assessment. Instead she nodded to his right hand. The knuckles were bruised and swollen. ‘How is your hand?’

Alex flexed and clenched the fingers. ‘Hurts like a bastard, actually,’ he admitted ruefully. ‘I don’t think I’m built for this whole fighting thing.’

‘You’re quite an actor, Alex,’ she remarked, thinking about his earlier confrontation with his former friend.

He snorted. ‘Who was acting? He deserved everything he got. The only reason I didn’t kick the shit out of him is because I might need his help with this.’

Alex hardly considered himself a violent man, but in Landvik’s case his assault had been well justified. The man’s jealousy and greed had cost him two years of his life, his freedom and his future. A bloodied nose was scant recompense for such betrayal.

‘What happened between you?’ Anya asked.

‘It’s an epic saga,’ he replied with false grandeur. ‘One day they’ll write operas about it.’

She fixed him with the look of mild disapproval she reserved for when his attempts at levity weren’t appreciated, which was often. ‘I’m serious, Alex. You wouldn’t tell me before, and I can understand if it was difficult. But I need to know now.’

Alex sighed. She was right, of course. With Landvik now under the same roof as them, it was only natural she’d want to know what kind of man he was.

‘I told you before that the three of us had different ideas about what Valhalla should be used for,’ he said finally. ‘Gregar wanted us to go underground and chase the easy money – hackers for hire, or some bollocks like that. Arran and I both argued against it, told him it wasn’t why we’d gotten involved in this. He fought back, tried to get the others in the group to side with him, and we ended up expelling him. It was harsh, but we couldn’t think of any other way to deal with him. But he wasn’t finished with us.’

Alex had paused in his work, thinking over the final bitter act of revenge that had virtually destroyed his life. ‘A month or so later, I was trying to crack the encryption on a government firewall for Arran. We were working to prove they were spying on British citizens, and my hack was a vital part of the project. Then, all of a sudden, armed police come storming into my house while I’m right in the middle of it. Someone had tipped them off about what I was doing; someone with detailed knowledge of how and when I’d break the firewall.’

He laughed then. Not an amused laugh, but the laugh of a man replaying the punchline of a cruel joke. ‘I should have known he wouldn’t just let it go. We’d hurt his pride, humiliated him. And he got back at us the only way he knew how. Well, he got his revenge all right. I did a two-year stretch inside, Valhalla was no more, and everything we’d worked for was gone.’ He glanced at Anya. ‘Probably doesn’t mean much to you, but there it is.’

‘Why did you do it?’ she asked. ‘You seem like a smart man. You must have suspected you would be caught sooner or later. Why take the risk when you could have made an honest living?’

‘What? Are you here to give me a lecture on the evils of breaking the law?’ he asked, making no effort to hide the mockery in his tone. His admission of past mistakes had stirred up pride and anger, and he was in no mood for a sermon from someone who killed people with her bare hands.

‘I only want to understand.’

‘No you don’t,’ he retorted. ‘You just want something else you can use against me in case I get out of line. That’s what you do, isn’t it? Find a weakness in people, use it against them?’

Those eyes were focussed on him again, cold and clear and dangerous. ‘Alex, I—’

‘It’s because it was the only thing I was ever good at, okay?’ he snapped, blurting it out before he could stop himself. ‘That what you want to hear?’

He paused then, taken aback by the anger and resentment that had suddenly welled up inside him. Even he hadn’t expected to say it, to finally make that admission and face up to the truth about himself. And yet, now that he’d said it, he didn’t regret it. If anything, he wanted to give her more, to finally let out everything he’d been holding inside for so long.

‘Guess what? I’m not pretty and I can’t sing. I wasn’t in the football team at school and my chat-up lines suck. In fact, generally I’m pretty shit at most things. But not this. 
This
 is something I’m good at.’ He gestured to the computer hardware all around him. ‘It’s illegal and dangerous and probably stupid, but it’s all I had. And it made me feel good to know I could do things that other people couldn’t. That’s what you want to hear, isn’t it? Well, I admit it. I did this because it made me feel better about being me. I did it because I wanted to belong to… 
something
, I wanted to be with people who understood me and respected me for what I could do.’ He sighed and shook his head. ‘But don’t worry – I don’t expect someone like 
you 
to get it.’

He might have expected casual dismissal or even a scathing reprimand from a woman who had clearly put her life on the line more times than she could count, who had seen and done things he could scarcely imagine. Strangely, however, Anya seemed almost taken aback, as if his outburst had struck a chord with her.

‘You’re wrong about that,’ she said, her voice uncharacteristically soft and quiet. ‘I do understand. And if it means anything, I wasn’t looking for weaknesses.’

Alex let out a breath, realizing to his embarrassment that he’d gone too far. Simple curiosity didn’t warrant such an outburst, and considering her behaviour so far he was more than a little surprised she hadn’t threatened to kill him for it.

‘Take it you’ve found enough weaknesses already, eh?’ he remarked, hoping she would take it as a gesture of reconciliation. Instead however she opted to keep her thoughts to herself.

‘Anyway, now you know my dirty little secrets,’ he said, turning his eyes back to the monitor in front of him. ‘Shame I don’t know yours.’

She said nothing to this. Instead she did a slow circuit of the dimly lit room, eyeing the unmade bed, the posters of video-game characters on the walls – most of which were female and scantily dressed – and the rubbish scattered around the overflowing waste-paper bin. There were a lot of used tissues in there, and Landvik didn’t look like he had a cold.

‘Most people would take that as a hint to give something back,’ Alex prompted. ‘Maybe tell me something about yourself that I don’t know – like 
anything
?’

‘What would you like to know?’ Anya asked without meeting his gaze.

‘We could start with how you’re involved with the CIA.’

She sighed faintly, as if she had been asked that question many times before and was weary of giving the same answer. ‘I used to work for them.’

‘Hardly earth-shattering news, but fair enough,’ he conceded. ‘How did that come about? You sound about as American as I do.’

She gave him a look that he’d come to recognize when he said something that was plainly idiotic. ‘They employ people from many countries, Alex. Even yours.’ She let that one hang for a moment or two before going on. ‘In my case, they recruited me after I defected from the Soviet Union.’

Alex stared at her, his work temporarily forgotten. This was the first time she’d revealed anything substantial about herself, and he was intrigued by this strange, enigmatic woman who had been his sole companion for the past couple of days.

‘You’re Russian?’

She gave him what he could only describe as The Look. The kind of look his friend Danny, a Glaswegian native, had once given an Australian bartender who’d mistakenly called him English. ‘Lithuanian,’ she corrected him.

If Danny was anything to go by, it would be very unwise to question that one further. ‘So what did they want with you?’

The look in her eyes was difficult to read, but for some reason he was reminded of himself when he’d been talking about Landvik’s betrayal. ‘We each have our talents, Alex. Mine didn’t start with killing people. That only came later.’

‘So you were some kind of… super-spy?’

She shook her head. ‘A soldier. That’s what I believed, at least. A warrior, fighting for a noble cause. And I was very good at what I did.’

Alex rubbed his jaw, feeling the bristles of a couple of days’ growth. ‘So how come you’re working against them now?’

For a moment he saw the muscles in her shoulders tighten beneath the skin, saw her head lower and her hands curl into fists.

‘Because I was wrong,’ she said, her voice strained and tense. ‘I wasn’t a soldier. I wasn’t fighting for a noble cause, and I wasn’t serving worthy masters. I was exactly what they needed me to be. But by the time I realized how wrong I was, it was too late. Now I’m an outcast, a dirty secret to be covered up. They want me gone so they can pretend I never existed.’ She looked at him then, her eyes shining in the dim light. The look of grief and betrayal and barely suppressed rage in them was enough to make the breath catch in his throat. ‘Well, I won’t go quietly.’

And just like that, she blinked and the emotions vanished. She was herself again. Cold and detached and controlled.

Alex let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. He had no idea what to make of what he’d just heard. She had opened up to him more than at any point since they’d met, yet he felt like he had more questions about her than ever before.

‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled, looking away. ‘It’s none of my business.’