The Facebook Killer (14 page)

“No. Not there. Somewhere he has never been.
I have to be very careful now.”

“I agree Sir. You’re very famous at the
minute.”

“Do you know the tunnel under the Thames at
Greenwich?”

“I am not familiar with it but I can find it,
Sir.”

“Meet me there at four o’clock this afternoon
and please, bring your man with you. I need this done today.”

“We will be there but I warn you Sir, you
will need to bring some pictures of the Queen with you. Oh and by
the way, how will I know you?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll recognise you.”

“But we have never met before?”

“I have seen the video Kalif made of you
during negotiations. Don’t be afraid, he said we can trust you
implicitly anyway.”

Serge was silent. His honour had been put
into question.

“My friend. Believe me, what you have done is
nothing compared to what I have seen back home. Anyway I have the
same blood on my hands, I am the one that supplied Mr. D. Remember?
”

“I will meet you at Greenwich. Four o’clock
and by the way, don’t tell your man anything.”

Serge laughed out loud.

I remember being dragged through the Thames
tunnel once when I was a young boy. I was terrified,
claustrophobic. I thought it was never going to end. My father
could only laugh at my plight. I felt like I couldn’t breath. The
echoes made things even worse. When we eventually got to the Isle
of Dogs at the other end, I felt so silly for being scared. I swore
there and then that I would do the same walk again one day and
today was the day. The day to bury those demons.

Serge was five minutes early. He had with him
a gentleman probably in his mid thirties. Well dressed, looking
every bit the city worker with his suit and briefcase. Norman
approached them and shook both their hands.

“Oh good afternoon gentlemen. The apartment
we have for sale is just on the other side of the river. It’s much
easier to park here and walk through the tunnel. Follow me if you
will.”

They followed Norman through the cast-iron
tunnel, not a word was said between the three of them. Norman would
stop every few hundred feet and watch the pedestrians behind him,
to make sure none of them stopped at the same time. He could feel
the childhood memory of fear returning but this time he knew that
there was only a short distance left before they reached Island
Gardens.

Upon arrival at their destination, Norman had
an overwhelming feeling of success. He had just done something that
he had been promising himself for forty odd years and now he had
something else in which he must succeed.

The three of them sat on a park bench looking
all the world like three colleagues taking time out from their
hectic, air conditioned office lives, breathing some fresh air and
enjoying the park.

“What is it exactly that you need me to do?”
asked Serge’s man. No introductions, no pleasantries, just
business.

“I need you to hack into a Facebook page and
delete it. Delete every trace of it and everyone that was ever part
of it.”

“I don’t quite understand,” his voice still
had the faint trace of Eastern European influence, “you say you
want me to delete a Facebook page and what? Remove all history
linked to that page? Yes? “

“That’s exactly what I want and I need it
done now.”

“But this can take a very long time. We need
the user ID and then we have to storm force the password just to
get access. That’s before we even start to erase everything.”

“Serge. I thought you promised me the
best.”

“My friend he
is
the best. Nothing is
secure from him. He has worked for us in the past but like he says,
it takes time and I don’t want to be rude but I don’t think a
public park is the best place to do this,” Serge
replied.

Norman acknowledged the fact and stood
up.

“Come with me please gentlemen. Let us find
somewhere more…appropriate.”

They walked for five minutes, again in total
silence. Norman knew the area well. He guided them between the
luxury apartment blocks, up hill and down dale as his mother used
to say. They finally came to an Italian restaurant Norman had
visited in a previous life.

“Wait here for me please,” he asked Serge and
his nameless hacker.

Norman went inside. The minimalist décor
indicated expensive. He remembered a time when this sort of
restaurant would have been an innovation in London, now they were
everywhere. Expensive-chic.

“Can I help you sir?” enquired the
jolly-looking headwaiter.

“Do you have any tables for tonight?”

“Oh ho, how many would you like Sir?” he
joked.

“All of them!”

“I’m sorry, Sir?”

“I said I want all of them. All night until
we are finished.”

“But Sir we have tables reserved for this
evening.”

“In that case unreserve them.”

“But Sir what you are asking is…”

“Get me the manager please, no better still
get me the owner.”

The not-so-jolly-now fellow went to the house
phone behind the maître d’s desk and started to dial.

“Ah! I’m sorry to bother you Sit it’s
Giuseppe here. I have a small situation here. There is a very nice
gentleman who wants to book the whole restaurant for tonight. I
have explained to him that we have reservations already….”

He thumbed through the large diary.

“Twelve, Sir…OK I shall tell him. Just one
moment,” he lowered the receiver from his ear, “Sir. The booking
fee for the exclusive use of the restaurant would be twenty
thousand pounds, excluding food and drinks. Only ensuring
privacy.”

Norman handed him two envelopes. Giuseppe
started to count it on top of the diary. He put the receiver back
to his ear.

“Erm. The gentleman has just paid me in full,
Sir. What should I do now…OK…OK. Leave that to me, Sir. I’m sorry
for disturbing you.”

He hung up the phone and turned to
Norman.

“OK sir, everything is arranged. I must just
point out though that we are only six people in the kitchen so
there will be a waiting period between serving the courses. One
hundred and twenty meals will take some time to prepare at such
short notice.”

“There are only three of us.”

“Sorry Sir? There are only three of you?”

“Yes. That’s what I said. All we will need is
the door to remain locked and the curtains drawn. You can send most
of the staff home. Just keep the chef, yourself and the bar
open.”

“Very good, Sir.”

Norman, Serge and the nameless one took the
table in the far corner of the restaurant, furthest from the
kitchen and bar. The hacker started to empty his briefcase onto the
table. Hard drives, cables, discs and his laptop.

“Excuse me but we haven’t been introduced.
I’m Norman,” he said offering the hacker his hand.

“Bill,” he replied giving a limp handshake,
“now can you please open the webpage which you would like erased,”
he said sliding the laptop across the table to Norman.

Serge had walked across to the bar, admiring
it’s black granite counters and more importantly it’s fine array of
imported vodkas.

Hamid’s Facebook page was open.

“Who is this Charles Gray?” Bill asked.

“Oh. Nobody that’s the account I used to get
access. That has to go as well.”

“No problem. Now what I must first do is try
and log in as this Abdul Hamid. He right clicked Hamid’s user name
and the properties gave him the ID number. I hope it’s his username
and not email address. Do you have that by the way?”

“No I couldn’t find it sorry.”

“It’s not a problem,” Bill connected one of
his hard drives up to the laptop and proceeded to attack the
keyboard at lightning speed, “Ah! Good, his login is his user name.
Ok so all we have to do now is brute force the password.”

“Come again?” said Norman.

Bill was attaching a second hard drive. Serge
was still drooling over the bar.

“Hallo!” called Bill, “any chance of having
some drinks over here?”

Serge struck the counter-top bell and
Guiseppe came running from the kitchen, followed by a crew of
smiling employees, grateful for the night off.

“What we are going to do, Mr. Norman, is

use this software to enter every possible
password. This hard drive here will try what is called
“dictionary”. It does exactly what it says; it enters every word in
the English dictionary, one at a time, at a rate of two thousand
per hour. The other device is what we call “Brute Force” it is an
algorithm it will enter every possible password known to man at a
rate of ten thousand per hour. You will see I have six of his pages
open now; this should cut down on the time it takes. This way each
system is attacking three times faster.”

“How long will it take?” Norman asked.

“Oh anywhere up to eight hours. But I don’t
think his password will be to complicated. His page is public after
all. All we can do now is have a few drinks, maybe something to eat
and wait.”

Serge brought a bottle
of
Russian Stolichnaya
Elit to the table along with three small glasses.

“
This is
the very best vodka my friend,” he told Norman, “eighty percent
proof. My friend, some people back home would kill you for
this.”

Serge poured
the drinks, just like he had done for Kalif. They clinked glasses
in the air and started on the bottle.

“
Anyway, Mr. Norman, I’m
sorry,” said Serge, “but we haven’t discussed the price for this
service.”

“How much?” asked Norman.

“If Mr. Bill can do this for you we believe
it’s worth…no. Let me stop there. You have already spent a large
amount of money with us. How much is it worth to you, Sir?”

Norman was taken aback slightly. Jesus it was
worth a million or more to him. It would eradicate the list. It
would hopefully stop the police in their tracks and allow us to
finish the job unhindered.

“Fifty grand,” Norman said unabashed.

“For fifty thousand, I stop now,” said Bill.
Placing his briefcase back on the table.

“Ok. One hundred and fifty?” offered
Norman.

“Let’s have another drink and we can all
think about it,” Serge suggested, refilling the glasses.

And so it went on. They got drunker. The
price went up. Giuseppe brought them the meals, which they
eventually ordered, and eventually the laptop made a pinging noise
like a microwave. It was 9:30pm.

“We have it!” announced Bill.

“Are we in?” Norman asked.

“Oh yes.”

“What was the password?” asked Serge.

“Oh my goodness. You will never believe
this.”

“What?”

“Guilty_as_Charged.”

Norman looked between Serge and the
hacker.

“Why do you find that so unbelievable?” he
asked, “He knows doesn’t he? Serge! You told him what this was all
about.”

Serge put his hands in the air.

“I watch the news Mr. Norman,” Bill said, “my
usual employment is hacking hi tech security systems, banks,
prisons etcetera. So when someone asks me to hack a Facebook
account. I can put two and two together.”

He stared Norman in the eye.

“We are all on the same side here Mr. Norman.
We are in this as deep as you are. You have to trust us.”

“I told him everything Mr. Norman,” said
Serge, “that is the way we work. That is the way we have always
worked. We are here to help you.”

“Let’s get back to work,” Norman snapped.

Bill was typing away. Pages opened over
pages, over more pages. He remained silent as he worked. Five
minutes maybe more passed.

“Maybe this is a reason for you to trust us
Mr. Norman.” Bill said eventually.

“What do you mean?”

“Did you create an account under the name of
Steven Neilson?”

“Yes.”

“I see that you used an anonymous IP system
to do so but entry into their database shows that you were within a
triangulation point in the King’s Cross area when you did this. Is
that correct?”

Norman nodded.

“If I was the police I would be looking at
the hotels in that area right now, I would also having a team
checking all CCTV footage over the last few weeks. I would have a
court order to seize all private footage as well,” he tapped away
again, starting to nod his head, his lips curling into a smile,
“and there we have it Mr. Norman.”

He turned the laptop around. It was clear
video footage of Kalif getting into the VW camper and leaving the
hotel car park.

“Where the hell did you get that from?”

“Courtesy of the Metropolitan Police, camera
number….let me see,” he squinted at the screen, “1109B. Now Mr.
Norman. It will take me five minutes to eradicate this Facebook
page and all trace that it ever existed but let me ask you this. Is
that enough? Or do you want me to erase your entire careless trail.
Give you a fresh start as it were.”

“How much?” Norman asked.

“For three hundred thousand pounds Mr.
Norman. I will set you free. I will place a worm in this page
before deleting it, that will very quickly find it’s way to all of
the related sites and within three hours every page linked to this
one will be gone without a trace. Now this may sound like a lot of
money but bear in mind some of the things I will have to do are
verging on treason. By tomorrow morning. You will never have
existed.

“Will the police know that these things have
been erased?” Norman asked.

“Of course. That’s the fun part. I can even
leave messages for them if you like.”

“No thanks,” Norman paused,
looking towards the London skyline, “on second thoughts. Leave them
this message, “
It is close, the day of
their ruin, their doom comes at speed.”

Chapter 19