MMORPG: How a Computer Game Becomes Deadly Serious (27 page)

“There’s no end to the references to Orchids. People in France are called Almaud, a rapper uses the name, there is a castle in Spain. Hell, we’ll never know what the word means.”

Robert lay stretched on the bed, his hands behind his head. “Maybe there is no meaning,” he said. “It could be just that. A word.”

“Nah, I don’t believe that. There must be a meaning. It might lead us to his password.”

She typed something in the search bar and hit Enter again. By her expression, he could see she had hit another blank wall.

“What did you try now?”

“I typed
What is the meaning of the word AlMaud
.” She shrugged. “Doesn’t really shed any light. Listen to this search result:

Rose Mkamth the Almaud Love, love leaves. Why not preventing and responding
...
Requests blessings beloved meaning. You HE filled life. All souls who HE
...

Disgusted, she pushed the mouse away and swiveled around to face him. “We’ll have to wait until Khalid returns, then we’ll find out soon enough. It’s just that I’m a bit impatient.”

With a grunt Robert heaved himself up from the bed and came over to her. He took the mouse and flicked back a few of the pages she had been watching. Suddenly, something clicked in his brain.

“Do you still have that text message I sent you?” he asked.

She gave him an uncomprehending stare. “Sure. What for?”

“Just get it.”

After some searching in her inbox, she presented him the phone with the text message on the screen.
Account: AlMaud
he read.

“I’m not sure that’s right,” he said slowly. “Maybe I made a mistake. I think it was written differently, with a T at the end.”

He reached over and typed
What is the meaning of the word AlMaut
. After he hit enter and the results came up, they were both silent for a few heartbeats, digesting the information. Rebecca was the first to speak: “Well, that settles it, I guess. An account name with a meaning!”

“Just like you thought,” he replied. With his index finger he tapped the screen, indicating the very first search result:

Alamut is from the Arabic word almaut, meaning death. Notice the closeness of the Latin and English mort with the Arabic maut.

“Did you read the fifth one?” Rebecca pointed a little lower:

19 Mar 2003
...
The meaning of Jihad Dictionary of Islam defines Jihad as: "A religious ... He and his followers captured the hill fortress of Almaut in ... According to it, Jihad is "the most glorious word in the vocabulary of Islam .
..

He just nodded and didn’t reply. They were both reading the various excerpts from web pages unearthed by the search engine in response to their query. Exactly at the same moment, they arrived at the bottom of the screen. “Holy shit!” Robert exclaimed loudly.

Rebecca just whispered, “I’ll be damned.”

The header read
Pedestrian Infidel: Islam's twelve Steps to Destroy Dar al-Harb (Land.
..
and was followed by one of the characteristic short jumbled texts. It was there that they found it:

31 Oct 2005.
..
in Iran one by one, and finally
Almaut
itself fell in twelve-hundred fifty-six.
..
World
of Warcraft Gold, do you know they have the same
meaning
, Both of.
..

Impatiently, Robert clicked on the link. The screen went blank and, after a long wait, they were presented with an error message:
Oops this link appears to be broken!

Two days later they got a call from Ernest Fitzgerald. They had nothing new to tell him. After some prodding, Fitzgerald grudgingly divulged that the car in which Khalid had driven away in Antwerp was a dead end. “Leased by some postbox company from Dubai, paid for in advance,” he explained.

“It does prove that he’s not just an innocent Art History student on an exchange program,” Robert interjected. “Normal people don’t drive around in cars rented by front companies in the Gulf.”

“That’s right, usually they don’t.”

After promising to notify him as soon as Khalid returned, Robert ended the call.

“At least, that settles it,” Rebecca said. “We were right from the beginning. That Fitzgerald should show some gratitude. Without us, they’d still be in the dark. Now, thanks to us, they have something to work on.”

~~~

Chapter XXIV

Khalid
came back sometime during the night. It was Rebecca who noticed. She went to the bathroom early in the morning, and out of habit she checked the tiny woolen thread they had attached at the bottom of their neighbor’s door.

Her gentle prodding forced Robert to open his eyes. His sleep clogged mind didn’t take in what she was trying to tell him at first. All he registered were her tousled curls and deep brown eyes that were far too close to his face for comfort. The second thing he noticed was her smell, the unrefined fragrance of her body, just roused from sleep and nothing but pure Rebecca. He smiled, and his spirit leaped out of his eyes, reaching out to her. His reaction was so genuine and coming from so deep within, it seemed to take her by surprise. Involuntarily, she withdrew a little.

The intensity of the hurt he felt surprised him. He cursed himself for laying his feelings so bare to her, for making himself so vulnerable. Again, he promised himself to take some time alone to examine his feelings for this girl, and determine what he should do. He was obviously attracted to her, had even fallen in love with her, but what were her feelings for him? Her attitude toward him swung from intimate to distant and sometimes to businesslike. It suddenly occurred to him that their relationship had been easier while she was still in Scotland and they only met each other in the virtual world. Now that she was sleeping no more than a few feet away from him every night, he felt more tension than before. He definitely needed some time to think things over. He didn’t want to lose her friendship, but it wasn’t easy to consider matters of the heart when there was a dangerous terrorist lurking at the other end of the hallway.

A hot shower helped to shrug his heartache off. When he returned fully clothed, Rebecca was behind her own computer, staring intensely at the screen. He stood behind her and shared the view of Khalid’s room. It was dark in there, and very little could be distinguished. Rebecca panned the camera all the way to the left, but Khalid’s bed was just out of range.

“Weird to be spying on someone in this manner,” she remarked absentmindedly. “Maybe it’s a good thing we can’t watch him in his bed.”

“You’re right. Could you put the camera back in the neutral position, else he hears the whirring.”

They had bought the camera with the quietest electrical motor available, but it still made a little noise when activated. They had tested it beforehand, and both agreed that it was highly unlikely that he would hear it. Now that it was all for real, he felt it was better to avoid any risk. Suddenly, fear gripped him. They were dealing with a ruthless terrorist organization, with people who killed as easily as he swatted a bug.
As easy as I kill other people in WoW myself
.

“Shouldn’t we call our friends at the AIVD?” he asked.

“Nah. It’s not even six o’clock in the morning. Let them sleep.”

“Are you sure?”

She looked at him as if daring him to admit he was afraid. “I’m not sure. But nothing is happening. He’s asleep. Besides, they’re probably watching this house already.”

A sudden insight flashed in his mind. “You don’t really want them involved, do you?” he asked. “Honestly?”

This time, it was Rebecca who looked away. It took some time before she answered. “I don’t know. I mean, it was our investigation. It was, still is, exciting to be on the trail of something big. I’m not sure I want it to end.”

Before Robert could answer, she hastened to add, “I do want it to end. I really do. I mean, the killing must end! But I must admit I like what we’re doing. It gives a purpose.”

He considered what she’d said. What she tried to express wasn’t entirely unlike his own feelings. “All right. But we’ll make the call at nine o’clock.”

Half an hour later, the lights in the other room went on. They were alerted by the sudden brightening of Rebecca’s computer screen. While Robert and Rebecca hurriedly seated themselves on the front row, Khalid walked into view. He was barefoot and only dressed in boxer shorts and a T-shirt. They watched him light a cigarette and sit at the desk. For a second, he looked straight into the camera. They both held their breath, but there was no reason to worry. He reached behind him and heaved a bag onto his lap. He unzipped the bag and got his laptop out. He put it on the desk, exactly at the spot they had chosen as the focus point of their little camera.

“Yes!” Rebecca cried out, immediately putting her hand for her mouth. In her enthusiasm, she punched Robert on the arm.

“Ouch!”

“Don’t be a sissy. Come on, let’s concentrate!”

They both sat forward, eyes glued to the screen, and witnessed how Khalid booted the machine. Not surprisingly, he launched World of Warcraft.

It went fast. With the practiced movements of one who had entered the same information in the same box countless times, he rapidly punched in his password. It was done quickly, there was no way they could decipher the word nor the combination.

The information was duly verified by Blizzard and the character selection sheet came up. Khalid immediately hit the Enter key, making it impossible for them to distinguish exactly how many different characters he had, or what they were called.

The other computer made a sound. Robert looked over.
Drimm has come online
the text box announced. The social window told them he was in Dalaran. Indeed, at the same time, on the other monitor, they saw the level eighty hunter appear right in front of the entrance to Sunreaver Sanctuary.

Rebecca pushed the computer with WoW away and turned her attention back to the one showing Khalid sitting behind his desk, now steering Drimm to the side garden with the fountain, all part of the secluded Horde section in Dalaran. Here were the portals to all the major cities on the other continents.

“He’s going to Silvermoon City,” Rebecca said immediately. “The portals to Undercity, Ogrimmar and Thunder Bluff are on the other side.” True to her prediction, Drimm emerged in the home city of the Blood Elves. They watched how he proceeded along the endless corridor like streets.

“He’s going to the auction house,” Robert said.

She nodded. “That figures. He’s been offline for several days, so checking the status of his trading business is the logical first thing to do.”

They watched Khalid a few more minutes. When it became apparent that nothing more was happening, Rebecca ended the current recording and started a new one. That done, she opened the explorer and looked up the file that held the images on the hard disk.

The quality of the recording was exactly the same as the live images they had just been watching. By using some special program, Rebecca managed to add more light and brightness and to enhance the detail level. She fast forwarded to the point where Khalid gave in his password, freezing the recording at the moment that the log-on screen appeared. Everything on Khalid’s computer was clearly readable, including the account name.

“You were right, the account name is AlMaut and not Almaud,” she said. “It’s a pity that the password is protected from prying eyes like ours. Anything you type is shown on the screen as an asterisk.”

Robert sat forward. “Yes. But we can watch the strokes on the keyboard.”

“That’s right. Now let’s see if we can decipher his password. I’m going ahead real slow, so pay attention!”

The video played at a speed of one frame rate per second. They watched Khalid’s right middle finger descend excruciatingly slow onto the keyboard. The first letter he hit was the G.

“I told you it started with a G,” Robert said smugly. “The next letter is an E, and there’s another E in the word as well. It ends with 3-2-1.”

“Just watch,” she replied, writing down the first letter on a scrap of paper.

The second letter was indeed an E, entered with the index finger of the left hand. At the third letter, it became more difficult. It was done by the right middle finger again, but it was hard to distinguish exactly which letter it was.

“It could be the G again, but I’m not certain,” Robert said. “It may be that he shifted his hand a little.”

Without answering, Rebecca picked up the mouse. A few clicks later, they were looking at the same motion again.

“It’s still not clear. It could be a G, but also an H. Maybe even a B or a N.”

“I agree. This is harder than I thought. It’s a pity that his hand is blocking the view of the keyboard.”

Robert nodded. “Can you show it again? Even slower?”

“Sure. I can even zoom in a little more at the keyboard.”

On the screen, Khalid bent over a little and started typing. Rebecca froze the motion. “No doubt about it. That’s a G. Notice how he really punches the letter. The poor keyboard must hurt.”

She clicked again, and the jerky movements continued. They could clearly see the man enter the second letter: E. Instantly, he was frozen again.

“Now concentrate on the hand, not on the finger,” Robert advised. He nodded for her to continue.

Before their eyes, from one frame to the next, Khalid’s hand made a slight movement to the right. It seemed that he moved a little to the bottom as well. Robert stared at the keyboard, looking at the position of the keys and thinking. “My guess is as good as yours. It could be another G, even money on an H, but maybe a B or a N.”