“Copy that,” Midas said. “Eight minutes.”
Jack looked at him. “What do you mean eight minutes?”
Midas tapped his own ear. “Your comms are out.” He took the next twenty seconds to fill Ding and Caruso in on their present situation.
Ryan used the tip of his index finger to discover his earbud was missing, dislodged during the fight. He made a quick scan of the floor and found the flesh-colored piece of plastic along the baseboard just a few inches from Flat Nose’s elbow.
“…up in two,” he heard Ding say as he replaced the tiny device. “They won’t be far behind us. Get in touch with Gavin and see if he can image the laptop. Be best if we get it back in the room without da Rocha knowing it’s gone.”
Ryan helped Midas drag both Frenchmen to the stairwell before anyone happened out of a guest room or off the elevator, then trotted down the hall toward da Rocha’s room. There was a tray with a half-eaten room-service order on the floor three doors down the hall. Ryan pulled it over the bloodstains and broken glass from his fight, hoping da Rocha wouldn’t notice, and then called Gavin while Midas worked the lock on the room.
“Hey,” Biery whispered. Jack could hear another voice in the background.
“Are you in the office?”
“Intelligent Data and Security conference in Omaha,” Biery said. “I’ve never seen so many blond people in my life—”
Ryan gave him a thirty-second sitrep.
“You want me to image the computer remotely in six minutes?”
“Can you?”
“No,” Biery scoffed. “But you can drop in the malware from the thumb drive I issued everyone last month. You have it, right?”
Jack took out his keys and popped the endcap off a stubby single-cell flashlight attached to the ring, revealing the thumb drive concealed inside.
Ding got off the elevator, walking quickly to da Rocha’s suite.
“Caruso’s in the lobby,” he said. “He’ll give us a heads-up.”
Midas looked up from the suite door and smiled. “Got it.”
Ding remained in the hallway, walking slowly toward the elevator to keep watch while Jack and Midas slipped into da Rocha’s room.
Biery continued to give instructions. Ryan lowered the volume but put him on speaker so he could use both hands. “We’re gonna need his password.”
“That might be an issue,” Jack said.
“Maybe a birthday,” Biery offered. “An old pet, a girlfriend? Maybe he has it written somewhere near the computer.”
Jack looked around for the most likely spot for the laptop, hoping to leave the computer in the same location and condition Gaspard’s man had found it. If da Rocha was unaware of the encounter he’d continue to move forward, giving The Campus a chance to suss out more information about his deal with the Russians. The charging cord lay on the desk, still plugged into the wall. It was a safe bet Gaspard’s guy had snatched it from there. Ryan reattached the cord to the computer and picked up the aluminum briefcase from the floor. He used the clip of his ballpoint pen to shim the locks, feeling for the divot on each correct number as he rotated the drum. It took him less than thirty seconds to find the combination. Fortunately, both numbers were the same. Inside, he hit pay dirt with a little red notebook of ideas and passwords. It never ceased to amaze Ryan how many people went to the trouble of setting up an extra-secure password and then wrote it down on a notepad they kept in the computer desk or a locked briefcase, thinking that because it was made from aircraft aluminum and had two locks, it offered some kind of sacrosanct barrier. Ryan pitched the notebook to Midas while he booted up the computer.
“Read me that and then take a picture of it.”
Ryan typed while Midas read. He stopped looking at his watch, relying on Caruso and Ding to warn him.
The computer gave a soft chime when Ryan entered the correct password.
On the other end of the phone, Biery recognized the sound at once. “Insert the thumb drive and it will autoload.”
“Got it,” Ryan said. “How long will it take?”
“Three or four minutes.”
“It had better be three,” Midas said.
“Like I have any control over that,” Biery said.
“It’s working,” Ryan said.
“A GSM mic would come in handy right now,” the former Delta officer said, snapping photos of the notebook pages for future reference.
“No kidding,” Ryan said. There were lots of things that would have been nice — but pockets fill up quickly in tactical intelligence work. Often the only lockpick was a penknife and the only weapon little more than a steel pipe. Next to a flashlight, the item that got the most use was a credit card.
“A GSM mic,” Biery said. “Are you kidding me? Did you guys even come to the meeting? This malware is a thing of beauty, a phone-home masterpiece that hides as an innocuous system file and then calls us the moment he logs in and pops up on the network. You don’t need a GSM bug in the room. You’ll be able to take over the mic and camera in his computer. We’ll have keystrokes in real time, see what he’s seeing, read what he’s writing… You can even do things to his files when he’s not watching.”
“In the lobby!” Caruso said. “Heading to the elevator.”
Midas moved toward the door. “Time to haul ass, Jack.”
“I called both elevators to stall,” Ding said. “But that’s not going to buy you much more than a few seconds.”
“Thanks, Gav,” Ryan said. “Gotta go.” He slipped the phone into his pocket and then wiped a droplet of the Frenchman’s blood off the laptop as he watched the loading bar fill completely. “This room is full of intel,” he said.
“No time,” Midas said.
Midas pitched Ryan the notebook, and Ryan returned it to the aluminum briefcase, spinning the locks to the same numbers they’d been on before he tampered with them. Like Clark said, when it came to security it was all in the details. Overkill kept you alive. Ryan made a habit of noting where his combinations were when he left a briefcase unaccompanied, so he assumed everyone else was just as suspicious.
Ryan held up both hands, giving the workspace one last scan before ejecting the thumb drive and then closing the computer.
“Good to go,” he said.
“I hope we put it back in the right place,” Midas said. The door shut behind them and they turned to trot for the stairs.
“It was a best guess,” Jack said. “If we didn’t, maybe he’ll second-guess himself.”
Midas pulled open the door at the same moment the elevator chimed down the hall and the doors slid open with an audible rumble.
They’d just stepped over the bodies of Gaspard’s men when Ryan’s cell phone buzzed in his pocket. It was Gavin.
“Don’t forget to clear the ‘last device’ list.”
Jack kept his voice to a whisper, still moving down the stairs. “The what?”
“The computer keeps a record of devices and peripherals that are connected to it — video cameras, DVD players, thumb drives. He’ll be able to see you were on unless you delete it.”
“That ship has sailed, Gav,” Ryan said. “He’s already in the room and we’re out of there. How likely is he to notice it?”
Gavin was silent for a long time. “Depends,” he finally said. “On whether he’s more like you or more like me.”
“Okay,” Ryan said. “What does he have to do to see it?”
“Right-click the mouse,” Gavin said.
“Everyone good to go?” Clark said half an hour later, sitting at a sidewalk café on Avenida del Cid, approximately three blocks away from the Hotel Alfonso XIII. The thousands of people who’d attended the bullfights, mostly locals, had returned home but the streets around the Royal Alcázar park were still modestly crowded with tourists not quite wanting to give up on the vibrant Spanish nightlife.