Stone pulled a sour face at that revelation. He politely indicated for Megan to continue. She began making changes to the laptop’s settings. Her fingers flew across the keyboard as she spoke. Stone was impressed by how easily she could type and converse at the same time. In his limited experience, even minor technological challenges required his full and undivided attention.
“Now, I’m going to change the settings in Firefox. First I am telling it that I do not want to be tracked any more… ”
“Next I am changing the policy on cookies, so that we no longer accept any from a third-party website. That should do for the moment.”
“Now I am going to revisit those same websites that I did earlier… there… and there… and there… good, that should do fine.”
“Mr. Stone, if we look at Lightbeam again, what do you think we should see?”
Like a schoolteacher, Megan turned towards Stone and raised a heavily mascaraed eyebrow as she waited for his answer.
“Well… ” he said with little confidence, “I would expect that the results should be zero.”
“A good guess — but wrong!” She pointed at the screen. “Now look here, Lightbeam shows that I was online for five minutes, and that I accessed the same seven websites. During that time, this computer still loaded seven cookies from those sites, and it also accepted another thirty-eight cookies from several other third-party sites; even though I told it not to.”
“So much for those ‘privacy settings’,” Stone said.
“Indeed! And even if I had gone for the most secure settings, I would still have been leaving great big fat footprints — only a few less than before.” Megan waved her arm expansively towards her computer systems. “In fact even I, with all of this kit, would leave some traces. It’s the same with banking, telecommunications, utility bills and pretty much anything else. You will always leave a trace.”
“I think I understand what you’re getting at. What you’re saying is that whenever we go on the internet, go shopping, or just breathe in and out, we leave traces — is that correct?” Stone asked, politely hoping to get to the point a little quicker.
“Yes, as such,” Megan agreed. “The thing is, even the best protected surfers will still leave some evidence. The most private and careful individuals cannot help but leave some digital footprints. If not a name, or an IP address, then there will be an invoice, or an accidentally created profile. There’s always something. Even if it’s just a vague shadow, there’s always something that I can follow.”
“Right, I understand,” Stone nodded, happy to reach the conclusion of the lecture. “So what did you find?”
Megan slowly turned her massive bulk until she faced Stone and Carter, before answering dramatically.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing — you found nothing at all?” Stone asked.
“Nothing, nada — not a damn thing.”
“Is that unusual?” Stone was confused as to where the conversation was headed.
“No, it isn’t unusual,” Megan said, leaning forward conspiratorially. “It’s impossible.”
“Impossible?” Stone asked. “How do you mean impossible? Like NASA’s ‘the impossible just takes us a little longer’ kind of impossible?”
“No, I mean the impossible kind of impossible,” she answered firmly, “the like me and Brad Pitt, kind of impossible.”
“Oh.”
“Oh indeed, Mr. Stone.” Megan ran her fingers through her brightly coloured hair. “These days you cannot go on the internet, live in a house, work from an office, drive a car, operate a checking account, or even buy food without leaving some trace that I can follow.”
“And yet you found nothing,” Stone recapped.
“Got it!” Megan banged her fist on the desk. “I found not one damn thing — nothing!”
“How can that be, Megan?” Carter spoke for the first time.
“There are two possibilities. Either the Wrecking Crew does not exist — and we know that they do, or there is someone very, very, very good, covering their footprints.”
“So are we screwed then?” Carter asked quietly.
“Not necessarily, even the lack of clues is a clue in itself.”
“How so?” Stone asked with genuine interest.
“There are very few people in the world who have the skills necessary to pull this off. There are a few government types, mostly in China, South Korea, and Russia, but I think we’re looking for someone who’s from the West. My guess is that it’s probably someone working privately.” She smiled wickedly and patted her capacious chest. “In all likelihood we’re looking for someone with experience just like mine.”
Megan could see from the blank expression on Stone’s face that he had missed the significance of her last comment. She gave a frustrated sigh and continued.
“A quick history — I’ve been immersed in the world of computers since the age of twelve. I founded an internet security firm at the age of nineteen, before selling up to join GCHQ as a forensic investigator. I left them just six years ago, to go back to working privately — mostly for this twat!” She said, pointing at Carter. He nodded politely in response.
“So it’s most likely that we’re looking for someone like me. Someone with my skills,” she said, her voice rising proudly, “and that, Mr. Stone, is a very small pool of names!”
“Right, I get it.” Stone nodded. “So what do we do next?”
“I’ll start searching for their computer ‘expert’. Now that I know what I am looking for, it shouldn’t take long to narrow down the suspects. I’ll ask around discreetly, I still have friends in the hacking community. Someone somewhere should know if a rising star has dropped off the grid.”
She pointed at Stone and Carter.
“You guys need to follow the money — there’s always money. Even if it was paid in cash, someone had to earn it, someone spent it, and at some point, it probably went into a bank. Find that bank and we’ve found them!”
Stone nodded. “Ed, do you agree?”
“Absolutely, it’s the way to go, and we begin with Anton Stephens. Jeffers gave us Anton Stephens. Just now, he’s our only substantial lead. Megan was able to find out a good bit about our Mr. Stephens. Megan?”
Megan picked up a sheet of paper from the desk and began to recite.
“Anton Stephens, born Birmingham, UK September 1969, only son of… skip that bit… quite intelligent… four A levels… did business studies at Uni. Had a couple of run-ins with the local constabulary, grievous bodily harm and possession of a class ‘A’ drug… got a suspended sentence for the drugs but the GBH never went to court. Apparently the victim suffered a nasty fall and then had a change of heart over his evidence.”
“After Uni, Stephens moved to London and started work as an assistant manager in a chain of night clubs. That’s probably where he got into the retail side of the drugs scene. Two years later he left the nightclub, along with a Ukrainian bouncer named Alexis Markov. They moved to Essex where, after a violent turf war, Stephens set up his drug distribution business. A couple of years ago, he started rolling the profits into moneylending and taking bets… ” Megan paused to check her notes.
“I checked the Essex police records through a friend,” Carter jumped in. “His name is like a bad rash, it pops up over and over — mostly related to drugs and violent attacks. They seem to specialize in really vicious, nasty, and excessive violence. Unfortunately, the police can never get any witnesses to testify. I don’t think the local cops will be sad to see the back of Anton Stephens and this Ukrainian bodyguard, Markov.”