Thirty minutes later, Harry entered the Cafe Risoux. It was long and narrow, given the illusion of space by large wall mirrors at strategic points. It wasn’t yet lunchtime, and held a mixed clientele of young women shoppers, elderly tourists and a few suits, and two men with American accents who were collecting bagged snacks to go. Rik was hunched over a table at the rear, close by the fire exit and staring at the screen of a tiny laptop.
‘All set.’ Rik waved him to sit. ‘I’ve done some tracking already; he’s not as clever as he thinks. I’ll be two ticks. Can you get coffee? Americano — four sugars.’
‘You’ll get nervous and fat.’ Harry went to the counter. While his order was being prepared, he checked the street outside. He’d been careful on his way here. The likelihood of being spotted by someone from MI5 was remote, but fate had a habit of turning and biting you when you least expected it.
When he got back to the table, Rik was looking pleased with himself.
‘I’m in,’ he breathed, and checked the nearest customer, a student type using a laptop two tables away. He pulled a chair round and nodded for Harry to sit, blocking the man’s view. Then he bent back to his keyboard.
‘What I’m doing,’ he explained softly, ‘is accessing Clarion, then checking all the outgoing lines to see if I can spot a pattern or a name which looks good. It might take some time.’
‘Time we have,’ said Harry, and hoped he was right. ‘But is it safe?’
‘Sure. Unless I trip any of the numbers.’
‘How will you know when you’ve got the right one?’
‘By a process of elimination. I reckon he’ll have been using the same number all along. It’s his set-up, and I bet he didn’t share it with anyone else or change his settings.’
Harry drank his coffee while Rik worked, and kept an eye on the room via the wall mirrors. No sign of anyone who didn’t look natural.
‘Got it.’ Rik sounded quietly triumphant. He’d been scribbling numbers and codes on a notepad, and underlined one of them.
‘You sure?’ Harry read the number. It was an alphanumeric string and made no sense to him at all. ‘What the hell is that?’
‘It’s our way in. But we need to take a chance.’
‘Great.’
‘Have you got a spare throwaway?’
‘Yes.’ Harry took it out of his pocket. It was unused.
‘Cool. We need to ring the number in the middle of this string.’ Rik jabbed the digits he’d noted down. ‘It looks like a mobile number, but it’s the only one that stands out among the regular callers. I think it’s the mobile Bellingham calls from to access Clarion and pick up messages from Red Station.’
Harry glanced sideways. The student sitting two tables away was looking at them. He must have picked up the air of excitement emanating from Rik. When he saw Harry looking, he ducked his head.
‘What if this doesn’t work?’
‘Then we go the other way, into Clarion. That’s when we might need to be quick on our feet.’
‘Why not do that first?’
‘Belt and braces. If we get confirmation it’s Bellingham, we know we’re on to it. He won’t know my voice, and I doubt they’ll have it on the voice recognition database. I’ll call and pretend to be a misdial, and you listen in case he speaks.’
‘But I don’t know what his voice sounds like. If he doesn’t say his name, we’re no further forward.’
‘Shit.’ Rik looked crestfallen. ‘I didn’t think of that.’
‘Doesn’t matter.’ Harry handed him the mobile. ‘Do it, anyway. We can’t sit around here all day.’ He checked the mirrors again. The customer turnover was regular, with no-one staying for long. The student was just getting up and leaving.
Rik finished dialling, then plugged in a small pair of earbuds and handed them to Harry.
The number began to ring.
Harry checked the mirrors and adjusted the earbuds. The student was at the counter, talking animatedly to the manager.
They turned and looked at Harry and Rik.
The number kept ringing.
The student scurried out of the door with a backwards glance. The manager picked up a mobile and dialled.
‘We’ve got to go-’
‘Bellingham.’
SIXTY-SEVEN
‘ This will do.’ Rik stopped in front of a doorway and motioned for Harry to follow. It was a small independent coffee bar in a side street. It carried a notice advertising wireless facility. They were both breathless after leaving the Risoux Cafe, hurrying past the manager who was shouting into his phone. Harry had heard enough to realize that the man had called the police.
Grabbing a passing cab, they had jumped out near Charing Cross Road, amid a tangle of cafes, restaurants and bookshops.
Rik set up his laptop at a spare table at the rear and dialled the access to Clarion. ‘OK, this is where it gets touchy,’ he said, flexing his fingers. ‘Can you time me for five minutes?’
‘OK.’ Harry glanced at his watch and kept one eye on the door. He turned and saw a fire escape notice above a narrow stairway in one corner. It would be their escape route if they suddenly got company.
‘I’ll go in as far as I can,’ said Rik. ‘But I might trip an alarm. If I do, depending on the level, we’ll have anything up to twenty minutes before they come and kick the door in.’
‘Do it.’
Harry didn’t bother watching the screen as Rik worked; it would mean little to him until Rik accessed the message files — if they still existed — and he didn’t need to clog his brain with unwanted information. If they got the messages, it would prove a link between Bellingham and Clarion. What it wouldn’t prove was that he had sent Latham to Red Station with instructions to kill. But it was better than nothing. At the very least, it would be enough to put a scare into Bellingham and start an internal enquiry.
‘Got it,’ Rik hissed. His fingers flew across the keyboard. He was breathing like an athlete, eyes fixed on the screen, and Harry could feel his excitement. It was a small insight into what made hackers tick. ‘How are we for time?’
‘Edging on four minutes.’ He was amazed by the passage of time.
Rik muttered to himself and carried on tapping away before taking out a data stick and plugging it into the side of the laptop. He hit a series of keys then sat back.
He was smiling.
‘What are you so happy about?’
‘I recognize some of these messages. Mostly from Mace.’ He tapped the keyboard. ‘Here’s one I sent last week. Seems weird being back here now.’
The front door of the cafe rattled open and two office workers strode in. The sound of a police siren drifted in behind them, distant and fading.
‘Christ!’ Rik sat forward, jerked out of his bubble of concentration, and reached for the data stick.
‘Easy,’ cautioned Harry. ‘It’s moving away.’
Rik relaxed and breathed out. ‘If you say so. How much shall I copy?’
‘As much as you can… names, dates, subjects, whatever proves we were there and that Bellingham was running the operation.’ He had a thought. ‘Does it include Mace’s report about Stanbridge?’
‘Yeah, I just saw it. How are we doing for time?’
Harry checked his watch. ‘Six minutes gone.’
‘We’re pushing it.’ Rik looked annoyed with himself and explained, ‘I may have tripped an alarm on the way in. It’s not easy to tell.’
Outside, a car blew by with a roar of a powerful engine. There was a squeal of brakes and someone shouted. The crackle of a radio voice echoed along the street.
‘Let’s go.’ Harry didn’t want to push their luck. They had enough to use and he knew they were on borrowed time.
Once they were clear of the area, they stopped off for Rik to copy the files to a second data stick, and for Harry to buy a small jiffy bag and scribble an address on the front. He placed the stick inside with a note, then sealed it and stopped to speak to a motorcycle courier perched on his bike and eating a sandwich. A quick exchange of notes and the courier nodded and dumped his sandwich.