Chapter Twenty Five

Echo stepped onto the escalator, tried not to look too conspicuous. She had problems with that.

As her escalator moved down, each man on the other escalator, moved up, checked out Natasja, just five bodies ahead of Echo. Most of them couldn't believe their eyes.

A woman like that on their tube.

Each one wished they'd shaved closer that morning, made an effort with their hair and given her a nonchalant smile rather than their usual all-purpose commuter scowl.

They tried to adjust their attitudes. And then their eyes found Echo – the knee knocker with attitude.

But each lusty glance away from Natasja drew attention to Echo. When the PA finally stepped off the escalator she couldn't help but look back.

Echo had prepared.

Like many modern women, the handbag she carried had more space than a squaddie's rucksack. But mysteriously, no matter what was placed inside, its contents always became a trashy magazine, emergency make up, purse, bottle of water, smokes, a small armoire filled with Sauvignon Blanc, and a chain mail pashmina for those spontaneous nights out.

She pulled the trashy magazine in front of her face. Long enough for Natasja to get sucked along with the wave of people from adjoining escalators and corridors.

Echo stalked the PA along the platform, Natasja's legs and behind appeared perfect in a tulip shaped pencil skirt. Office sexy. White shirt, two buttons open, pointed collars, dark skin beneath, and jacket over her shoulder.

Nice look, Echo thought.

Echo wore a tailored trouser suit with a black shirt in the same configuration. They could have been shopping buddies. Echo's looks were becoming a problem.

Savage had told her about going grey. But she doubted he'd ever had to deal with men's lust.

Change your look often he'd said. Small things, subtle things. If they've never been trained to spot a tail it's unlikely they'll connect the long haired woman in the t-shirt with the one in the tracksuit top and baseball cap or the French braid and business shirt, even when it's the same person.

Echo packed her magazine away and took out her sunglasses. With a graded tint and silver frames they were designed for indoor chic and could pass for glasses at a glance. She joined a queue to get on the train one door up from her subject.

Natasja studiously ignored those around her.

Echo tried to do the same, then, when the train finally arrived, Echo pushed her way to the front of the queue, to the grumbling dissatisfaction of those around her. The doors closed behind her and sealed her in.

At London Bridge she popped out from the grip of commuter armpits and stewed misery and followed at a distance. Out in the open Natasja re-arranged her long luscious locks into a perfect pony tail.

Echo did the same, grabbed a free paper and took her jacket off. Not the most foolproof disguise, but who takes more than a glance anyway?

She followed Natasja out into the sun, along the South Bank of the Thames, through Borough Market and into one of the many wine bars and old-world pubs scattered along the lanes to the river.

Natasja took a table in the courtyard, called over a waiter and ordered a bottle of wine. It was a locals' bar rather than tourist, and, as she was already outside, she took out a pack of Marlboro Lights and lit up.

A few moments later the wine appeared in an ice bucket with two glasses. An older woman, mid-thirties or thereabouts, arrived. The women embraced. Echo recognised the older woman. She was refined, elegant and even from where Echo watched, a force to be reckoned with. Her clear focused eyes gave all their attention to the fiery glare of the PAs.

If Echo had had a hippy upbringing she may well have talked about vibes, not bad exactly, but—

An old school tring-tring of a dial phone. Her phone. Too loud.

Heads turned.

Echo's heart raced to beat the other organs to her throat. She turned away from the two women.

A private number. No ID.

'Yes,' she said.

'Ms Smith. This is Officer Jones, MI5. We need to talk.'

'Now's not a good time officer.'

'That is a shame Ms Smith.'

Silence. The hole opened up, beckoning.

'Why?'

'Because I'm right behind you.'

*

Vi had a very maternal thing going with her favourite geeks. With two girls and no more kids possible she'd begun to fuss over them a couple of years ago and, once she'd started, found herself unable to stop.

She watched them bicker through her office window.

She even allowed their workspace to look like a teenager’s bedroom. In their small corner section the normally rigid office layout gave way to a sofa, mountains of screens, books, magazines, and electronic devices in various states of disrepair. There was always a fight over whose musical taste would be the theme tune for the day.

She advised Ryan on girlfriends – geeks tended to try to be nice guys all the time and pander to the whims of tough city women.

Clothes – Chris even wore shoes occasionally and if the others couldn't manage corporate school-uniform smart, they did at least turn up clean and ironed in their cool and casuals.

Smells – Stefan, a Czech database genius and all round good egg, had never been taught by his parents about underarm hygiene. So she stepped up.

That's the thing a man like Savage wouldn't necessarily understand, she thought.

Savage thrived on working alone, he didn't need or want family. Maybe it was all a hard-man act, but Vi knew, for her, one of the hardest things about escaping London would be to leave her geeky little boys behind.

They were also the three original developers from Six Degrees, they knew it best.

She'd set them to work on the unofficial Six Degrees investigation. She'd warned them that it was decidedly underhand. But they loved their matriarch and jumped at the chance.

Ryan had taken on tracking the funds. Chris and Stef were applying their many talents to the log-in. Vi on the other hand was twiddling her thumbs.

She stared out of her office window for another ten seconds and then decided she'd couldn't wait any longer.

She walked over.

'Haven't I told you kids about keeping your room tidy?'

Smiles all round. 'Sorry ma.'

'I'll let you off if you tell me something good. Ryan, you first, where's the money?'

'Aw, no fair,' Chris whined from the other desk.

'Shush Chris.'

Ryan cleared his throat. He pulled up a management system on the screen.

'This is Tommy, or Automatom, our payment management system.'

On screen there were pages and pages of transactions both internal and external. 'Watch,' he said. 'We just needed to refine what we were looking for.' He clicked the filter for internal transactions then, sort by department. 'Okay, this is where we see all the transactions that all departments have to pay. Most of them are pretty obvious. IT support and the like.'

'Charlatans. How can they call that support?' Chris said.

Vi held a finger to her lips.

'But these two,' he pointed at the screen. 'These departments lead to nowhere, or not strictly nowhere, the investment arm. I don't have access there of course.'

'But, as Head of IT Strategy across the entire bank, I do,' Vi said.

'Exactly, so I used your log in—'

'You did what?

'Please,' Ryan said, deadpan, 'No time for histrionics.'

'You have my log-in?'

'We,' he spread his hands to indicate the IT department, 'have everyone's log-in,' he said. No sense of humour or irony.

'Point taken. Histrionics in check. What did you find?'

'Well, on their own, neither department's numbers fit.' He showed her the figures on screen. He clicked a function button on top of the window, 'But add them together—'

'—and there's our missing money.' She beamed. 'Excellent job, Ryan. Bloody well done.'

'Thank you. But my brilliance doesn't end there.'

He gave nothing away but a slight kink of the eyebrow.

He clicked another button. 'Here's the sign off.'

One name. Sutherland.

'And look at this,' he said. The mouse pointed to the line of code under the name. 'To anyone else this looks just like a barcode number or randomly generated piece of mindless gubbins right?'

'Right?'

'But look at the last two digits? What do they represent?'

Vi thought for a second. 'The year the fund was created?'

'Correct.'

'What do you see?'

'Ryan, don't mess me around.'

'Okay, okay, look, the year of creation is one year before Sutherland joined us.'

'And?' she said, arms folded, impatient now.

'And if you run a search to see who signed it before him—'

Another name flashed up. She slapped his shoulder. 'Ryan, that really is brilliant.'

'Oh mama bear,' Chris preened, 'If you think that's good, grab a spoon and come see what we've got for you.'

She'd have to talk to Chris about his campness. He'd never get a girlfriend if—Oh.

She tried not to smile. Boy, had she missed the obvious.

Chris didn't notice. His inner geek was in charge and bulldozed on, oblivious to the needs of mere mortals who weren't him.

'For the log-in,' he said imperiously, 'Stef here was insistent we try a standard dictionary attack while working on their footprint, scanning their ports and finding ways to access all areas with Metasploit Framework, Nmap, and all the usual tools.'

'Okay. Did it work?'

'If we'd have followed through, of course,' Stef said, arms crossed, scowl in place.

'Yeah, but then we'd still be here next month. You heard Vi, this is important. Toot-sweet, chop-chop, schnell schnell, rapidooo,' he said making faces at Stef. Who punched him in the arm.

'But we're not in,' Stef said.

'Yes, we are.'

'No, we aren't.'

'Only if you're a bloody perfectionist.'

'Children,' Vi said. 'Are we in or not?'

*

Savage had the driver drop him off at an out of town train station. He then walked up a flower-basket high street in the twee garden of England burg and into the only men's outfitters.

Moments later, wearing a new shirt, he flagged a taxi and had it drive him to Heathrow Airport. There he jumped on the Heathrow Express and was in town in twenty minutes.

Take two for his arrival into London.

When he'd first arrived in the land of Uk he'd been maudlin and depressed about who he'd become. All he could think now was that the person he'd left behind in London hadn't been thorough enough and the person he'd become in the Middle East lacked finesse.

You trained to keep your panic reactions down in live situations. Stress inoculation for the inner child.

Then you visualised how you would succeed.

He realised he didn't need permission to use the skills he had. Just switch on, switch off.

The good guy for the brainy stuff, the bad guy for the physical. You cannot be Mr Nasty in a lover's embrace or Mr Nice in a fight. Ever.

And he wasn't sure he should have let either of those men live.

When he finally escaped the constant TV advertising pumped to the captive audience on the Express, he dialled Echo.

No answer. He checked the GPS tracker. Found Natasja's name in the system, brought up her location.

South Bank and moving.

The same result with Echo's phone.

He thought about dialling her number again, but then if he was on the job, the last thing he would want is her bugging him. Should he follow her? She was knew to this? His phone rang before he could finish the thought.

'Vi?'

'You're not on our system. Where are you?'

'Paddington.'

'Well get back here. You need to see this.'

*

'These are my boys.'

'Hello boys.'

'Yo,' Chris said.

'Okay,' Vi couldn't hold back the grin,. 'First, we've got the money.'

He grabbed her and kissed her cheek.

'Oooh,' the boys chorused.

Vi turned on them, cheeks burning up.

'I knew you'd come through,' Savage said.

She took a moment. 'It's two service charges, the Innovation Inventory and the Executive Support function both routed through something called Transitions in the investment arm so that no one would ask too many questions. Guess who's in charge of it?'

'Sutherland?'

Savage saw Ryan's crest fall.

'Hey, just a hunch,' Savage said, 'but, now you've proved it, it's way more than that.'

Vi gave Savage an encouraging look. More was expected.

'Superb work, that man.'

'Thanks,' Ryan said.

'Now,' Vi pointed, 'show him who created it?'

Savage looked at the screen. Then at Vi.

'Michael?' Savage's thoughts span off in a direction he couldn't quite control. 'But if Michael set it up—'

'What does it mean?' Vi finished for him.

'Wait. We still don't know what it is that he set up. Ryan, can you tell me how much money has gone through those accounts?'

He beamed. 'In a heartbeat.' His fingers clicked keys, he looked up when he'd finished.

'Seventy two million in three years,' Savage read from the screen. 'Jesus. That's motivation enough for anyone. But for what?'

'Well, we know they're not taking everything out of it, there's still twenty million plus in the pot.'

'Ahem,' Chris said.

'Oh yes, Savage. You might want to sit down for this one. Show him Chris.'

The young man stretched his fingers and motioned for Savage to join him in front of his terminal.

'Watch,' he said. 'Our friendly neighbourhood log-in.' He clicked through Sutherland's image and the log-in prompt popped up.

'Our current user name. We don’t have Sutherland’s yet.'

He typed: Michael.

'And our password.'

'We found this through a dictionary attack,' Stef said. Savage nodded, he knew what they were.

'It's just so twentieth Century,' Chris said.

He typed: Joanna76.

'I mean, his girlfriend's name,' Chris sighed, 'How lame is that. Nobody does that any more do they? I mean do they?'

Savage was breathless, 'Show me what it is.'

A list of names appeared, several hundred whizzed by until the screen filled with the most recent set of ten. They each had the format: John XXXXXX.

'The surname is anonymised and each name has a dollar amount next to it,' Savage said.

'We've been watching them. It's like a task list, the ones in green are live. The one's in red are dead or waiting to go live.'

'Have you any idea what it is?'

'Well based on the work we did on the algorithm I'd say it's a list of names based on the linking criteria we were asked to define.'

'You mean people who bear grudges, have dark secrets and lots of money?'

'Basically, yeah.'

'So, let's see who's there.'

'We can't,' Stef said. 'It's limited access only. You need another log-in entirely, Sutherland’s most likely, but, its cut off from this front end.'

'Could you run the algorithm yourself?'

'Sure, but we've no idea what set of data they've applied it to,' Ryan said. 'It could take us years to find the right combination of datasets, or never.'

'Vi,' Savage rounded on her, 'you need to get me in there.'

'We're working on it.'

'Wait a minute,' Savage said. 'We know it’s accessed from the executive floor twice a week, yes?'

'Yes,' they said as one.

'Well worst case scenario we just wait until the next log-in and you can track them there, no?'

'Maybe.'

'Why only maybe?'

'We've no idea how you log-in to the next stage, it might not even be something we can see.'

'Yeah?' Savage gave them a smug grimace. 'Well I've got some early Christmas presents for you boys.'

Savage logged onto his VPN via their system. He showed them how to find the access points for the cameras on the executive floor. He kept the key-logger to himself, for the moment.

'I think he's one of us,' Chris said.

'We'll keep working on it,' Ryan said, 'See if we can take it further.'

'I didn't doubt it for a second.'

'John,' Vi said. 'How's our girl doing?'

'Damned if I know. Where is she now?'