“Is a marine,” Andy muttered as he slowly shook his head and rubbed his eyes, which were beginning to feel like they’d been sandblasted. “Telford’s going to love this.”
Only when Andy had weaned everything of value out of Tommy and Susan’s assistant about the black box that had been pulled from the wrecked Town Car did Andy send him and Oklahoma off to find a quiet spot, a place where they could get rid of all the evidence that they had ever seen the damn device. Though Andy didn’t ask, as he was stifling a yawn, he could tell from the look in Tommy’s eye that the little bag of thermite was probably going to be involved in whatever it was he had in mind.
With that taken care of, he turned to Susan G. “I didn’t realize what I was dragging you into. I’m sorry.”
“So it’s just like the good old days, say what?” Again the half smile accompanied by a slight lift of eyebrow reminded him that Susan G. hadn’t really changed.
“As much as I’d love to call it a night and go back to the hotel, I need to send something to the UK pronto. The trouble is,” Andy quickly added as he looked back at the table where the two police reports sat, “given what we’ve just seen, I really don’t trust any of the gear I came with. Any chance I can lay my hands on a clean, preloaded data SIM card and a GSM dongle at this time of night?”
Susan G.’s smile grew broader as she dropped her chin a smidge and gave him one of her “get real” looks. “You do realize you’re in New York?”
“Yeah?”
“The city that never sleeps?” Only when she saw the cogs turning painfully slowly and remembering Andy was probably suffering from jet lag did she finally take pity on him. “Grab your coat, old bean. We’re going shopping.”
By the time Tommy and Oklahoma got back, both grinning like schoolkids and smelling faintly like a bonfire, Andy was pecking away at a battered secondhand laptop with a brand-new GSM dongle plugged in.
“Telford?” Tommy asked as soon as he had managed to persuade Oklahoma that what he really needed was a cup of tea that she was more than happy to go off and fetch.
“Yep,” Andy muttered without bothering to look up from his typing.
“Unencrypted?”
“Not a cat in hell’s chance. I had Spence make a bootable USB preloaded with GnuPG and a set of one-time public and private keys before we left.” With a grunt, he hit the Send button and leaned back to review his last instructions, hoping he had struck just the right balance between instilling caution and not scaring the hell out of the girl.
After printing this message out on that ancient dot matrix machine of mine, you’re to personally hand the message to Edward Telford. Before handing it over to him and no one else, ensure he knows he is to return the message to you once he has finished reading it. Shred and burn the message, encrypt any questions or response he may have that I need to follow up on this end, and send it to this address via the same route. Then forget about this (and reimage the machine you’ve used).
Webb
Tommy flopped down in the chair opposite as Andy dropped the lid of the laptop. “So what now?”
“We wait,” Andy muttered dryly.
“For what?”
“If we’re lucky, a thanks from Ed for a job well done and a strongly worded suggestion that we hurry home.”
“Or?” Tommy ventured when he saw the worried expression Andy wasn’t able to keep in check.
Having no wish to go into that, Andy drew himself up. “I daresay we owe Susan and Oklahoma dinner. If you’re up to it, I say we wrap things up here, head on out, and pay up.”
Realizing he wasn’t about to get a straight answer from Andy, Tommy nodded. “Sounds good to me, provided you’re paying.”
“I’m not paying. Some nameless bureaucrat back in London is.”
“All the better,” Tommy beamed.
5
Having followed Andy’s instructions to the letter and having received no questions or comments from Telford that she needed to encrypt and send back, Spence sent a quick text from her mobile to let Andy know the package had been delivered. Then, having faithfully followed her instructions to destroy the original and trash the old laptop she had set up for communications, and knowing there wasn’t anything to eat back at her flat that struck her fancy, she treated herself the way she often did when she wished to take a break from her usual routine. While dinner at a decent little pizzeria she frequented followed by a film might not have struck most young women her age as a big night on the town, for Spence, it was as close to lavish indulgence as she ever went.
The serenity of a stress-free evening spent out and about on her own was shattered the second she opened the door of her flat and discovered it had been ransacked. Pausing in the open doorway, she hesitated but a second as she wondered if it would be best if she backed out and called the police or ventured in to see if things were as bad as they appeared to be. Ordinarily, she would have done what most sane and rational women would have and gone with the first option. It was what she’d done earlier and the nature of the message she had carried to Telford that caused her to appreciate straight off she just might be dealing with something that was anything but ordinary.
It was the presence of her flat-screen television and the absence of a trio of computers that clued her in this had not been a job committed by a run-of-the-mill thug. Whoever had been through the place, she concluded, had either been the world’s most discriminating thieves or had been very selective in what they took. With that thought in mind, Spence laughed slightly manically at her own joke. If it was the latter, going to the police might be almost as dumb as going back to Telford and demanding to know what in the hell was going on. Dealing with that arrogant prick was something she decided was best left to Andy.
Having settled on what she hoped was the wisest course of action, she made her way into her flat, closed the door, and took to assessing the situation even as she was pulling out her mobile and calling the number to a second mobile Andy always kept close at hand that only she and Tommy had the number to.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to go with you, boss?” Tommy asked as he watched Andy stuff his clothing into his carry-on with more vigor than the task called for.
Andy didn’t bother looking over to where Tommy sat perched on the edge of his hotel room bed. “No, definitely not. The last thing I need is an irate taffy at my side when I meet with Telford.”
“I’d have thought that would be the first thing you’d want, given what he’s done to Tinker Bell.”
Looking up, Andy paused as his eyes met Tommy’s. “We don’t know Telford was the one who ordered the brute squad to toss Spence’s flat.”
“Give me a break, will ya?” Tommy muttered dismissively. “Even if he didn’t give the order himself, just by passing on what we’ve found to whoever it was that set this show in motion makes the bastard as guilty as the nasty little shites who tossed Spence’s flat. You know that as well as I do.”
In no mood to argue, Andy sighed. “Just do me a favor and don’t follow me, not until I give you an all clear.”
“And what exactly am I supposed to do?”
“You’re always talking about trying to beat the house with that system you’ve been working on these past few months,” Andy suggested as he went back to packing. “Why don’t you go out to Vegas and give it a whirl?”
In the twinkling of an eye, Tommy’s face lit up. “Yeah,” he murmured as he took to considering Andy’s proposal. “Yeah. I think I’ll do that.”