Rat Runners (10 page)

Nimmo also found a WatchWorld ID card. But WatchWorld did not employ ex-convicts. The name on the card was Frank Krieger. He put all of the items into his own pockets.

A small pouch strapped to the man’s belly under his shirt held several tiny bugs in plastic cases; microphones and cameras with miniature transmitters. They were still switched off. No doubt they were to be planted around the apartment. The pouch went into his backpack. Then he went back into the bedroom, clicked out of the crash alert that was displayed in the middle of the computer screen, switched it off properly, and put both data keys in his pocket.

The man was regaining consciousness, letting out a soft groan, then looking around in alarm as he discovered he was bound, gagged and blindfolded. He struggled until Nimmo started speaking in a near-whisper.

“You shouldn’t be here, but then, neither should I. I’m gonna leave. I presume you won’t give me answers unless I ask hard, but I don’t have time. I suggest you leave too. You’re in the hall near the door. Your penknife will be on the stairs, on the fifth step. Use it to cut yourself loose, and then get out of here. If you’re smart, you’ll clean up any sign that either of us was here. I’ll give you five minutes before I make a call to security, and send them down here. Don’t bother tryin’ to come after me. By the time you free yourself, I’ll be long gone.”

He was.

FX HAD A quizzical look on his face as he stared at the central screen on his computer desk. It wasn’t often that he went online and ended up with more questions than answers. He had been working for more than three hours, fueled by mug after mug of milky coffee. There were coffee rings on his desk beside his keyboard, and Scope, who was sitting at a much smaller, less sophisticated PC on the other side of the room, was itching to tell him to wipe them up. Or just clean them herself. To her eyes, his workspace was disgusting.

There were faint traces of spills and stains everywhere. FX was obviously careful to prevent dust getting into his machines, but she wondered when he had last swept or vacuumed the floor. The room—his ‘Hide’—was equipped with enough servers and screens to run the traffic control for a small airport and, situated in the very center of their film studio home, it had no windows and only one door. Some of the technology was there for online access, but most of it seemed devoted to protecting FX from the perils of the web in general and WatchWorld in particular. Scope was no chimp when it came to computers, but even she could only wonder what half this stuff did.

FX was the fidgety type. Much like a pigeon whose feet could not walk without making its head bob, he clearly could not use his brain without moving some other part of his body at the same time. Scope was not normally prone to wild displays of emotion, but the constant tapping of FX’s pen on the edge of his desk—possibly due to agitation or caffeine, or both—was threatening to drive her to violence.

Her own investigation into Brundle’s work wasn’t providing many answers, and she watched FX’s growing state of bewilderment for a while before her curiosity got the better of her. She stood up and came across to him, placing her hand on his improvised drumstick.

“OK, what?” she asked.

“I’ve been checking out this guy, Nimmo,” he said. “I just wanted to know who we’re working with, yeah?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be digging up stuff on Veronica Brundle?”

“Yeah, I’ll tell you about that in a minute,” he said, waving towards another file he had open on-screen. “That’s a whole other kind o’ strange. But this guy … I mean, the more I look, the more confusing it gets.”

“This is not the job, FX. We’re not supposed to be digging up dirt on each other.”

“Yeah, yeah. But me an’ Mani don’t like workin’ with people we don’t know. So I’ve been checkin’ him out. There are loads of hits for ‘Nimmo’ on the web, but nothing to do with him that I could see. I had to get hold of something I could use to check his ID. Like his iris scan.”

“And how exactly did you scan his eyes?” Scope demanded.

“Remember in the workshop, I had that laptop? It showed the view from the camera in the alley, over our front door?” FX replied, gesturing towards the laptop that now sat to one side of his desk.

“I spotted that camera over the door,” Scope said. “You couldn’t have got a scan off that. Nimmo was wearing shades. Besides, he didn’t look straight into it—neither did I. Just reflex.”

“No, but he did look at the
screen of the laptop
when he came in. Everybody does, to check out the angle of the camera—at least, if they’re a player. That’s a reflex too. I’ve a camera—an iris scanner—set into the top of that screen.”

“You mean you have my iris too?” Scope was scowling at him now.

“It takes the picture automatically, but it’s not like, y’know … we use it for anything.” He shrugged. “We’re just bein’ careful, y’know? Gettin’ reesed is an occupational hazard, Scope. We just like to know who everyone is.”

Scope felt uneasy about this. They lived in a suspicious world, and even if she didn’t know much about Nimmo, she felt she knew his character. Nimmo was sound. The iris of a person’s eye was unique, like a fingerprint. These were used increasingly for the purposes of identification. Scanning Nimmo’s eye without him knowing was an invasion of his privacy, even if the WatchWorld cameras did it as a matter of routine as you walked along the street. The four members of this team were supposed to be working together.

“Maybe you should let this go,” she said to FX.

“No, listen to this,” he said, holding up his hand. “Just listen. I got into the national insurance system and compared his iris scan with the files. Nimmo’s scan came up with an English guy named Charles Ulrich Farley. The photo matches—he’s the right age, right size, right description. I’ve checked Farley’s school records, his membership of sports clubs, his national insurance number and all that, right? Every detail is there, it looks like this is our guy. Except on file, he’s a real underachiever—low IQ, poor academic record, nearly illiterate, no registered address. His parents are dead. I did a pretty thorough search here.”

“OK, fine. He’s not book-smart, but maybe he’s a natural-born thief. So what?”

“So most people would stop looking right there,” FX told her. “But I used an analysis of his photo to do a search on databases in other countries …”

“Jesus, man!”

“No, listen! I found two more identities that came up a match, both of whom
also
look like our guy. One Irish and one American. The Irish one lists his age as nineteen, which I’m bettin’ is fake. The weird thing is, his
biometric
files are different. The fingerprints and iris scans don’t match on the different IDs. He’s got no criminal record, he’s not listed on the WatchWorld database, but he’s got a PPS number from Ireland and a social security number from the States. And he’s got registered addresses and schools for both of the foreign IDs. And I’d bet my back teeth he hasn’t been to school in years.”

“So, he’s thorough,” Scope said. “That’s good, isn’t it?”

“You don’t get it,” FX said. “These are just the ones I’ve found in the
last hour
. If I didn’t know he was connected, I’d have stopped looking when I found the English one. And the deeper I look into each identity, the more I find—school records, summer jobs, social networking sites. These aren’t just false IDs, these are proper
legends
.”

“What do you mean? What’s a legend?”

“A complete false life, covering every recorded detail right back to the birth certificate,” Manikin said from behind them. “It’s how the intelligence services set up the agents they put into deepest undercover. The cops use them too, when they’re infiltrating the mob. Just creating
one
is hard. You hardly ever hear of someone who can switch between different ones. That’s serious tradecraft. I mean MI6,
secret agent
level of serious. He can’t have done it on his own.” “Yeah, like … who is this guy?” FX exclaimed. “I mean, he’s our age, isn’t he? He’s too young to have a mysterious past.”

“I don’t know,” Scope muttered. “That’s the problem with having access to so much information sometimes—if you look hard enough, you can find anything. You’re not focusing properly here. You’re not finding what we’re supposed to be looking for. I think we should—”

“All I know is, FX has checked this guy out,” Manikin said, “and we still don’t know who we’re working with. And now, because you gave him the thumbs-up, we’ve let him into our home. That makes me nervous. The Irish or American thing would fit with that accent of his—it’s subtle, but the way he rounds his ‘Rs’ is a giveaway. Nimmo … that’s a handle that could suggest lots of things. Could be from ‘pseudonym’—you know, like the false name a writer uses? Or from ‘nemo,’ which means ‘no one’ …”

“Or it could just be
his name
,” Scope said firmly. “D’you know what makes
me
nervous? A psychopath Oompa-Loompa with a bunker full of guys who think with their fists. We’ve got a job to do, and we’re on a deadline. How about we stop pokin’ around Nimmo’s underwear drawer and get back to work?”

The brother and sister regarded each other for a moment and nodded.

“You want what I’ve got so far on the girl?” FX asked.

“Save it until our lord and master returns,” Manikin replied. Her black hair was scraped back over her head and pulled into a tight ponytail. She pulled on a navy suit jacket over a white shirt and a gray skirt that stopped beneath the knees, and put on a small, stylish pair of rectangular spectacles. She had used make-up on her hands and face to give her skin a paler color, and even some freckles on her cheeks. Scope noticed her eyes were now blue. Tinted contact lenses.

“I’m going out,” she said.

“Nimmo said to stay here till he got back,” Scope reminded her.

“It can be our little secret,” Manikin told her. “Or you can tell him, if you like. Whatever. Move-Easy said they’d checked Brundle’s apartment, but I want to talk to his neighbors, see what I can find out.”

“OK, cool. I’ll go with you,” Scope said. “I’m not getting much here. I need to have a look at his lab.”

“No offense, Scope, but I want to keep this low key,” Manikin said. “You kind of stand out, y’know? Got a pretty distinctive look goin’ on there.”

“You might want to hold off on that anyway, sis,” FX said to her. “We’re not the only ones with eyes on Brundle’s daughter.”

“No? Who’s cuttin’ in on our dance, then?”

“Still trying to find out. But it could be official.” He opened a minimized window and pointed to a page of code. Scope only understood some of it, and Manikin even less. He ran his finger under some of the lines. “Her computer and MyFace page are loaded with spyware. Nimmo switched on her PC while he was in the flat, started downloading the contents of her hard drive. Naturally I did too. He got cut off before he could finish, but I was faster. The drive was riddled with worms. I had to be really careful to hide the fact that we’d both accessed it. And see this? That’s part of a Trojan horse—”

“You going to be getting to the point anytime today?” Manikin asked.

“What, you want the dummy’s guide, like usual?”

“Yeah, ’cos I don’t have time for a conversation with
bloody Wikipedia
. What’s the bottom line, short-arse?”

“Someone’s running an operation on her, and they’re professionals,” he said sourly. His sister rarely showed any appreciation for his skills. “Everything’s been hacked. Her computer, her phone, her mother’s phone, her MyFace page, her school’s server, her mother’s work computer. This is more than just dataveillance. I’d be surprised if there weren’t mikes and cameras in the flat too. This is no kludge—it’s high end. Some of this is definitely WatchWorld code—I mean, hackers rip that stuff off all the time, but it could be a covert unit.”

“OK, so the police could be eyeballing her too,” Scope muttered. “We need to get this finished before it starts getting too crowded.”

“Then the sooner I do my rounds the better,” Manikin added. “Scope, give me what you’ve got on Brundle’s work. Let’s see why his daughter’s suddenly so popular.”