19
Hackers hack other hackers all the damn time,” Gavin Biery said to Ding Chavez over the encrypted cell phone. Chavez had him on speaker so Clark and Adara, who were also in the rented car, could hear. Dom, Jack Junior, and Midas were in the car behind them, driving on Highway 3 out of Boston toward Plymouth. It was late evening and the divided four-lane was a river of taillights. A quick check of Ackerman’s apartment had shown he’d left in a hurry. His coworker had disappeared in Indonesia over something they’d been working on, so it was a safe bet that he was trying to lie low.
Biery, IT director (and guru) for Hendley Associates and The Campus, continued to explain how he’d found the engineer’s possible location for Ackerman. The guy was spooky-talented when it came to all things computer. Had he been the dishonest type — a black hat — he could have been a millionaire many times over. But he was a white hat of the first order, driven to use his impressive array of skills to help the good guys. He looked for any opportunity to join the others in the field, but he was on the roly-poly side, so Clark and Ding tended to have him conduct his side of the business remotely.
“It’s a badge of honor,” Biery said. “I mean, who doesn’t want to upload a remote-access Trojan or install a keystroke logger on one of their friend’s computers without them finding it?”
In the car, a thousand miles away, Ding raised his hand but said nothing.
“So back to our guy, Ackerman,” Gavin said. “The site he used to buy his fake passport was hacked about three months ago. I’m not finding any phone. I’m betting he used cash to buy a prepaid.”
“A known fake passport,” Clark said. “So he’ll get caught at Immigration if he tries to travel?”
“I doubt the authorities have the list,” Gavin said. “I mean, they will after I get it to them, but you have to know to look for it. A little bitcoin will buy you hacked sites on the Dark Web. To make a technical story less so, once I had Ackerman’s fake name, and Dillon Reese is a pretty cool alias, by the way—”
“Gavin,” Clark prodded — a single word from him usually did the trick to move things along.
“Sorry, Boss,” Biery said. “Anyway, once I had the alias, I found the prepaid credit card. He thinks he’s anonymous running Tor over a VPN, probably because he wants it to run faster, but that configuration is not nearly as anonymous. Some of the nodes are visible. The VPN host can see his real ISP and—”
Ding coughed into his hand. “What were you saying about being less technical?”
Biery heaved a sigh on the other end of the call. “He didn’t cover his tracks as good as he thought. It was short work to find out the specifics of his credit card, and from there, the cottage he’s renting. He used the same card to buy a ticket on Air New Zealand a couple of hours ago. Leaving tomorrow.”
Adara drove past the address Gavin had given them, stopping a half-block down the quiet street. She wasn’t driving because she was the most junior member of the team in the car. She was a natural behind the wheel. Midas turned at the next intersection and made the block after getting a good look at the cottage, parking at the other end of the street so as not to arouse suspicion from any one group of neighbors.
The house was dark when they arrived. It was early for Ackerman to be in bed already, so he was likely out somewhere.
Clark and Adara went to the front door and knocked, looking like run-of-the-mill visitors — standing on either side of the door to keep from catching a shotgun blast in the chest, in case Ackerman was the touchy sort. Ding waited in the car to watch the street. Jack and Dom went to the back and quietly let themselves in while Midas pulled overwatch from their end.
“One dead.” Jack Junior’s voice crackled over the radio. “Dom and I are clearing the house.” His face was grim when he opened the door a moment later and let Clark and Adara in the front.
“Midas,” Clark said. “You stay frosty out there. Ding, get in here.”
Chavez came in to find Todd Ackerman’s body splayed on the carpet beside his bed. Dressed only in his underwear and a T-shirt, he was still wearing his removable casts. He’d been cut once on each side of his neck, like gills, severing his carotid arteries. Blood on both hands indicated he’d been conscious enough to try and stop the bleeding, awake enough to know he was dying.
It was a professional hit, with no trace of who or how many assailants. Whoever had killed Ackerman had taken all his personal property, including his computer and phone.
Ding took out his cell and hit the speed dial for Gavin. He spoke over the radio while he waited for the IT director to pick up. “How we lookin’ out there, Midas?”
“All clear, Boss,” Midas said.
Gavin came on the line.
“Hey,” Ding said. “I need you to get me a list of every site this guy has visited on his computer. Except I don’t have his computer.”
“I’ll get you what I can,” Biery said. “He’ll tell you where it’s at. You guys have some talent in the persuasion department if I remember correctly. If he tossed it, sunk it in water, did anything short of burn it, I can probably recover some of the data.”
“He’s not talking,” Ding said. “Ever.”
“Ah,” Biery said. “So someone killed him and took his computer.”
Clark gave an absentminded nod, unseen by Biery at the other end of the line.
“Looks that way,” Ding said.
“Any sign the killers tore up the house?” Biery asked.
Dom and Jack both shook their heads.
“No,” Ding said. “Just one dead dude.”
“Ackerman was a computer guy, right?” Biery said. “Into enough secret stuff to get him killed. I’m betting he had a second computer with all his secret shit on it. All the stuff he was using to anonymize his Web searches show he was paranoid as hell.”
“You found him,” Ding noted.
“I said he was paranoid,” Biery said. “Not talented. Anyway, he was a computer guy, so there’s no way he only had one laptop. I’m betting he’d keep another computer hidden somewhere in the house except when he was actually using it.”
“Look under the towels if there’s a linen closet, places like that. It won’t be anyplace that would damage the hard drive.”
Dom closed the freezer door and shrugged. “So not in here, then…”
“Got it,” Jack said, pulling apart the top of the dining room table and taking an HP laptop out of the space meant to store the extra leaf. A slip of paper fell out when he opened the computer.
“Looks like a phone number,” Adara said, doing a quick search on her phone. “Sixty-two is the country code for Indonesia,” she said. “And 431 is the city code for… Manado, wherever that is.”
Ryan read the number out loud so Biery could hear.
“Now we’re cookin’,” Biery said. “I’m sure I’ll be able to get you something as long as I have control of the computer, even remotely.”
“We’ve been here too long already,” Ding said. He moved his finger in a circle over his head. “Let’s get on the road,” he said over the radio, for Midas’s benefit. “We’ll link up at the hotel and let Gavin do his magic. In the meantime, bud, see what you can dig up on that number.”
“Copy that,” Biery said. “I’ll be here waiting to hear from you.”
Clark was already on the phone ordering up the plane when Ding ended the call. With Lisanne on leave, he spoke directly with the chief pilot.
“Hey, Helen,” he said. “John here. I need you to get the Gulfstream geared up for a possible trip… Good chance we’re heading for Indonesia. A place called…” He squinted to see the screen on Adara’s phone. “Manado.”