He grabbed his bag, threw it on the bed and started shoving his clothes into it.
“Get your stuff together,” he said with urgency and more raw emotion than Gary had ever seen. “I’m going to use the computer down in the lobby to check that email address. I’ll ask one of those chaps that McIntosh assigned to us if we can use his phone.”
“Where are we going?”
“That I don’t know. What I do know is that we aren’t staying here with Ginger and Gwyn in danger.”
Gary didn’t move a muscle. His eyes were closed. There was a look of intense concentration on his face. Gilbert finished scouring the room, and then unplugged his cell phone charger and laptop adapter from the wall and started putting them in his computer bag. Gary finally spoke.
“Gilbert, leave your stuff here.”
“What?”
“This doesn’t add up. None of it adds up.”
“Are you talking to yourself or do you think that statement is a novel thought? None of this has made sense from the beginning. We have a one-thousand-piece puzzle in front of us, and we can’t even find the corner pieces.”
“We have to start where we are,” said Gary pacing back and forth across the room.
“Listen, a policeman just delivered a note saying that Zeki is not the bad guy. I’ll bet you McIntosh didn’t send him and knows nothing about it. If he did, then he would’ve had one of the chaps downstairs come up and tell us that Gwyn was safe, and they were mistaken about Zeki. McIntosh wouldn’t send a typed note. That means the guy who delivered the note was not a policeman, but had to look like one, so we’d trust him. He had to deliver a typed note because that is the only form of communication that wouldn’t be intercepted. Whatever the case, it’s easy to test.”
He walked briskly over to the phone and rang reception.
“Hello, this is Gary O’Brien. Have you seen a uniformed policeman walk through the lobby in the last fifteen minutes? No one?” Without pausing Gary continued, “Can I speak with the plain clothes officer in the lobby please?” He covered the phone with his hand and whispered to Gilbert. “You saw the backpack. Another change of clothes, maybe?”
“Hello Sergeant. I just wanted to know if you have received any word about my sister. No? Okay, thank you, Sergeant.” He hung up the phone. “They haven’t seen a uniformed policeman enter the building.”
“This doesn’t sound like Gwyn,” said Gilbert doubtfully. “She’s not that paranoid and calculating. Besides, who would she know in London who has a police uniform hanging in their closet?”
“If she’s alive, then she has just narrowly escaped death. That could make her a bit paranoid, but I agree with you. This isn’t Gwyn. It has to be Zeki. Let’s do a little intel-gathering of our own.”
“Whoa. Slow down man,” Gilbert protested. “Why don’t we just call McIntosh and tell him what has happened?”
“If Gwyn is alive, she could’ve called the police herself. If she’s chosen not to, there might be a good reason. Let’s operate on the assumption that the note is genuine and eliminate doubt systematically. Remember, McIntosh said Zeki was a suspect in the murder of our father and the note says Zeki saved Gwyn. Both of these ideas cannot be right.”
“You don’t think we can trust McIntosh?”
“I don’t trust anyone,” Gary said flatly. It was a simple statement pregnant with meaning. “Does your laptop have an internal webcam?” he continued.
“Yes, why?”
“Perfect. We need to leave, but we cannot take anything because we want to give McIntosh’s men the slip and use this room as bait. That will only work if they think we’re still here. There are only two men on duty at a time. One is in the lobby and the other is at the service entrance in the back. They aren’t expecting us to try and loose a tail so that part should be easy. You run interference for me in the lobby and then tell him you’re going to grab a bite to eat. The kitchen has an exit on the side street that no one will be watching. Where is a good place to meet around here?”
“Remember the Internet café on Rupert Street in Soho?” asked Gilbert.
“Yeah, vaguely. You took me there back when you were a hacker.”
“It’s easy to find. Everyone knows the place. Just ask when you get there. Use the tube. The nearest station is at Russell Square. Take a left on Boswell when you leave the hotel. Then, turn right on Theobald’s Road and right again on Southampton. You will run right into it. Take the Piccadilly line and get off at Leicester Square. I’ll meet you there.”
“Fine. The first thing we need to do is call someone who can get in touch with Ginger.”
Gilbert clenched his jaw. “I’ll make that call from the lobby phone before I leave.”
“Good. Then, we can check the email address in the note from Gwyn. I assume someone in your line of work has their hard disk encrypted with something as good or better than PGP and that you have a VPN set up with a secure tunnel so that we can access your computer remotely?”
“Of course, but I still don’t understand what you are doing. And, how in the hell, would you know anything about a VPN and an anonymizer, Mr. I-don’t-even-have-a-cell phone?”
“Remember what Dad used to say, ‘You’re minimum wage from the neck down, son. Never forget that.’ Well, I never did. Do you also have a recent back-up of your data? We’ll probably lose the computer.”
“No problem. All they will get from this computer is a dead hard-drive.”
“Put an encrypted folder of several megabytes on a thumb drive and insert it into the USB port. Make sure the encryption is fairly weak. Do you have a worm?”
Gilbert’s fingers were flying over the keyboard. “What kind of worm?”
“Well, preferably one that can duplicate itself across a secure network.”
“You have to be kidding. Hell, the FBI can’t even do that. Any sophisticated security program can detect that sort of propagation. About the best I can do is a simple key-logger that captures keystrokes and sends the data to
a remote location. Our company developed one for industrial espionage. Of course, I am bound to deny that should any accusation ever be leveled against me. It’s damn good too. As far as we know, nothing can detect it.”
“We’ll have to make it work. I assume you can attach it to Word as a macro or something. Oh, and I need you to leave your Blackberry here on the table in front of your computer. Make sure it is charged and make sure the laptop is plugged in and left on.”
Gilbert listened in amazement as his brother continued to explain his on-the-spot improvisation. It was simple, yet ingenious. Five minutes later, they were walking out of the elevator on the ground floor.
“Hey, what’s the book?” asked Gilbert pointing to the leather bound volume Gary was carrying.
“Oh yeah, I forgot to mention this. Remember Thursday when Mrs. Askwith stopped by? Well, she said that on Tuesday night dad asked her to hold on to this. I didn’t think anything of it until now. But maybe he forgot to give it to Gwyn, and so he gave it to Mrs. Askwith for safekeeping. It’s a diary written in the 1730s belonging to George Sale.” Gary stopped and pretended to admire a fabulous painting of a desert caravan. “We’ll talk about it later.”
Gilbert nodded and kept walking. He crossed the lobby and went straight up to the Sergeant.
“Good afternoon, Sergeant.”
“Good afternoon, Mr. O’Brien”
Gilbert moved toward the window overlooking the street, forcing the Sergeant to turn his back on the lobby.
“I’m really sorry you have to sit down here reading magazines all day just for us. It must be awfully boring. I appreciate your chief’s gesture though I’m not sure it is necessary.”
“With all due respect sir, if the Superintendent thinks there’s reason to be cautious, then we mustn’t let down our guard. Besides, if I weren’t reading a newspaper here, I’d be pushing a pencil in the office or staking out suspected radicals in Newham or Tower Hamlets.”
“Aren’t those predominately Muslim neighborhoods?”
“Yeah, and it gets a little hairy in there sometimes.”
Gilbert paused for a moment sensing a bit of irritation in the man’s voice.
“Well,” Gilbert said, “I think I’ll grab a bite to eat and then head back up to the room and check on my brother, but first I need to make a phone call. The battery on my cell phone has run down and I forgot to pack the charger.” The sergeant nodded towards a small alcove near the front door.
“There is a lobby phone over there. You can have it charged to your room.”
“Thanks, Sergeant.”
By the time this conversation was over, Gary was already making the first right turn on Theobald. Gilbert walked over to the lobby phone and dialed the number for his assistant.
“Hi Kiyomi. Listen, I hate to call you on a Saturday, but I need you to do me a favor.”
“No problem. What do you need?”
Her voice betrayed the fact that he had woken her up.
“Can you call Ginger for me and have her call me back at the hotel. I’m in the lobby so I’ll just take the call on the lobby phone. Do you have a pen and paper to take this number down?”
“Yeah, just a sec.”
He heard the sound of a drawer opening and Kiyomi rummaging around for a pen.
“Go ahead. I’m ready.”
“020 7242 2829.”
She repeated the number back to him and then asked, “I’m happy to do this for you Gilbert, but would you mind telling me why you don’t just call her yourself?”
“It’s complicated and I really don’t have time to explain. Just tell her that she needs to call me back right away.”
She could feel the tension in his voice. She had never seen him rattled before.
“Anything else?”
“If you can’t reach her, call me back at the lobby right away.”
“Got it.”
There was a click on the other end. Gilbert walked over and sat on the couch wondering who would be on the other end of the phone when it rang. He felt helpless, hamstringed and harried. He was a doer. His job and the company he worked for were about making things happen and keeping clients happy with stellar results. He had a whole department full of the best resources in the world that, normally, he could call in on any problem, and here he was trying to figure out if he could even use his phone. He was not a patient man, but in less than ninety seconds, the lobby phone rang. He leapt to answer it.
“Hello, Ginger?”
“No, it’s me, Kiyomi. Ginger must have her cell phone off. It went straight to voicemail.”
There was only silence on the other end of the phone.
“Gilbert? Are you there? Is something wrong?”
“Yeah. I’m here and right now nothing seems right. Listen, can I ask for another favor?”
“Sure.”
“First, I need you to write down this email address—[email protected]. I may be contacting you from address, and you need to set up an email that is [email protected]. Do you have that?”
“Yeah, but . . .”
“Second, I want you to call my Blackberry in exactly one hour and leave a message. Jot this down, so you don’t forget. The message I want you to leave for me should say simply, ‘Gwyn wants you to go through the files on the thumb drive from your father. It has a copy of the document and the names of two people you should give it to. She said she will meet you in Seattle at Tim’s house.’ Did you get all of that, or do I need to repeat it?”
Now there was silence on the other end of the line. Gilbert waited, assuming that she was writing the message down. Finally, Kiyomi spoke and her voice had a knife-like sharpness, “Look, Gilbert, you don’t have to tell me what’s going on, but at this stage in my life and career, the last thing I need is to be mixed up in something of questionable legality.”