Snow Storm (21 page)

“
So are they
Georgian as well?” he asked, motioning to the wall with his head as
it was the only thing not tied up. “The guys outside with the big
guns and the bad attitude.”

“
Georgian,
Ukrainian, Lithuanian, I think,” she said softly.

In another time, he
thought, he might well have been trying to chat this girl up in the
pub. Who was he kidding? In another time he was far more likely to
be too nervous to even speak to her at all. But right now all bets
were off. Wasn’t that what they said about the spirit of the blitz
and all that? It was the great leveller, brought everyone
together.

He wanted to ask again
what she thought they’d do with him but that would do no good. He
wanted it to be over, whatever the outcome, get the worst out of
the way.

Ania looked away towards
the darkness as if knowing what he was thinking.

“
And you?” he
asked eventually.

“
I don’t
know,” she said, “But I’m here. I have some sort of shot of making
a life. I think it might not be the life I expected but who can say
theirs is?”

“
I know what
you mean,” he agreed benignly, wishing he could say something more
constructive that might make everything ok. He wished more than
anything that he could fix this for both of them, for all of them,
because it was doubtful any of them deserved to be here. What could
you do that meant you did? Perhaps people trafficking, selling
girls into slavery once they’d paid you everything they had for a
chance of a life beyond what they knew, deducting their hopes,
dreams and dignity on top of everything else. Perhaps that meant
you deserved to be stored in a rotting shed, not knowing what was
going to happen next.

Gordon went to work
straight away. The lawyer had been despatched to get on with his
end of things, though it had to be noted, he didn’t look too
confident in it.

He talked a
good fight. Gordon would concede that. But “John Smith”? What kind
of alias was that? Not much of a one for thinking on his feet, this
stuffed suit, going on that basis. Setting that aside, it had been
fun being Jackie Chan, even if he didn’t have the fight skills or
the legendary tuxedo. It would be hard to find one to fit really if
he was totally honest with himself, which with regard to things
like his weight, personal appearance or personal hygiene, he seldom
was.

Denial was indeed, not
just a river in Egypt. In Gordon’s case it was an all-encompassing
life style choice. Things could get on top of you. That was just a
fact of life. It was something he’d learned from his mother. He’d
stopped going to see her after a while; after the madness had fully
kicked in.

Keeping his head down was
key. He’d done his research on the matter, after visiting various
security conferences, having hacked their systems and gained entry
as a delegate. The irony appealed to him and far outweighed his
distaste at having to be in a room with other people.

It was only
when the hits got big that your head was effectively above the
parapet and had a price on it, though as it happened that was what
had made him bigger in the first place, performing a bit of an
audacious hack on a Russian database he thought might have evidence
of the moon landings being faked. It seemed a long time ago now.
Other hackers had tried similar things of course, usually in the
US, and been well and truly busted. Gordon thought he would have a
go at Russian government files, figuring that they would probably
have an idea of what was going on with their main rivals during the
cold war and that their files might not be as secure as those of
the CIA or NASA, that he’d be less likely to be caught and, if
caught, less likely to be deported, the UK government being less
inclined to suck up to the Russians. The thought that it would be a
lot more hard core if he was deported did not escape him though.
Another factor was his ability to speak and more importantly read
Russian.

In the event, he’d
managed to turf up nothing. Or so he’d thought at the
time.

Late one night, the
following November, there had been a knock at the door. That was
how he’d come to know Oleg Karpov. It would be the first and last
time they would meet at his flat.

The Lithuanian had
explained very calmly in heavily accented English that he was well
aware Gordon had been keen to access the databases concerned. He
did look like a spy, not that Gordon had seen any outside the
realms of his extensive pirated film collection but this must be
what they looked like he assured himself; the kind of person you
wouldn’t notice in the passing. Other than the man’s undoubted
weight issues there was nothing to mark him out, and this probably
helped in the sense that people tended to underestimate the obese,
giving him the edge in terms of surprise if need be.

Gordon’s mind
ran riot, imagining worse case scenarios involving Polonium
sandwiches and Siberian salt mines. Karpov was “connected to” the
security services he said and threw Gordon by saying he admired his
work, a compliment he could not take lightly as he wrestled to stay
in control of his bowels and retain some façade of composure. He
felt like a duck in the water; all calm and tranquillity on the
surface as the feet manically paddled to keep everything in
order.

He’d always
known his reach would exceed his grasp one day but nonetheless he’d
kept on pushing through. It was an admirable quality, he’d told
himself. But how many times had he been lectured on the dangers of
hubris without it sinking in to any degree?

When Karpov made him an
offer, logic dictated he was unable to refuse. The Lithuanian had,
he explained, the contacts and knowledge concerning the use of
certain facilities that might be useful to “a young man starting
out in the information technology field.”

At first he wondered what
the old guy was on about. What did he see as the point to helping
him out? What was Karpov to gain from this? And more importantly
what did this guy know about computer systems? Karpov must have
sensed the doubt in the younger man and humoured him by explaining
in more depth. This would also be the first and last time this
happened.

It seemed Karpov had the
contacts and wherewithal to arrange access to certain networks
inside Mother Russia and the former Soviet Union at large; bot nets
that could be used to do one’s bidding from the safety afforded by
what was left of the iron curtain. These were Gordon’s to do with
as he pleased, within reason, in exchange for the odd “favour” now
and again and a certain cut, fifty percent it would transpire, of
Gordon’s take.

“
Cut of
what?” his younger more naive self had asked.

“
Whatever you
like.” Karpov had replied. “We in our organisation pride ourselves
on encouraging creativity. Think about it. If you have the power to
be protected from view, what would you do? Think perhaps, of being
the invisible man for the day. You have an entire network of other
people’s computers at your disposal without even their knowledge of
such a thing. Thousands of them and no chance of being caught. You
can crash web-sites. You can go more or less undetected wherever
you like with impunity and you have a degree of protection from a
country who, let’s face it, are not known for their handing over of
those who breach certain security networks or their willingness to
divulge information to banks, security agencies or, really anybody
in the west. What do you do? Your only limit is your imagination.
As I say, we will, of course call in certain favours, as will
Mother Russia. Naturally nothing too insidious. I doubt you’d mind
that. You are not, from what my information suggests, given to
strong convictions either moral or political.

Gordon shook his head
begrudgingly as he felt a chill in the room.

The old man smiled.
Knowing he’d got his point across and clearly knowing his new
associate was aware they owned him now, he attempted to lighten the
mood, accentuate the positive. “So what’s it going to be?” he
asked. “You’re the invisible man. What do you do?”

“
Probably spy
on girls,” Gordon replied, only semi-consciously.

Karpov laughed. “Girls
can be provided,” he boomed with a dismissive swoosh of the hand,
“if that sweetens the deal for you.”

And that had been how
Gordon managed to not only evade dying from polonium poisoning, but
also not die a virgin.

This
particular favour was nothing to him. As he set to work, he
wondered who would take over the running of the girls Oleg
despatched on a regular basis.

They were the kind of
human contact he could not do without.

Doc Brown was
enjoying the stress in some ways, he said, as he made his way down
to the business end of the mortuary. A friend of his had recently
died on the golf course, a month after retiring at fifty five from
a lucrative but stress inducing position in the banking sector.
Apparently the sudden lack of exertion and regular doses of
adrenaline had forced the man’s heart into a state of abject
confusion, whereby it really didn’t know what to expect at any
given moment. Being suddenly let off the hook in such a way had
forced his heart to go the other way and simply shut
down.

Jones thought
the closer the Doc got to retirement himself the more he seemed to
drift in and out of stories and theories on life. He seemed wistful
but less stressed out generally, with the notion of retirement
adding a spring to his step whenever the subject was broached. He
reminded her of her granddad. Same sense of mischief. Same hairline
too.

“
So what do
you know Detective?” he asked as they arrived at the slab, or
rather stainless steel wash down surface as they all were in this
day and age.

“
Oh this and
that,” she replied, noncommittally.

“
I bet,” he
said, raising an eyebrow in a way he must have spent time
practising. “I was referring specifically to our John Doe here and
his particular brand of maxillofacial surgery.”

Jones
regarded the victims face. “Not much if I’m honest Doc. Busy
morning all told.”

“
You and me
both. Someone’s intent on keeping heaven stocked up with fresh
souls.”

“
Full Metal
Jacket?”

“
Indeed. A
bit before your time though I would imagine.”

“
Before I was
born,” she confirmed, “But a classic nonetheless.”

The doctor
frowned hard at this, as though making some kind of mental note.
“Can’t go wrong with an ageing classic though,” he suggested with a
wink.

She wondered
why it was ok when he did such things but gave her the dry heave
when Campbell did the same. She supposed because one of them
clearly didn’t mean it.

“
Well, a
cursory examination of his face may allow you to overlook the
fairly minor seeming well healed scarring around our victim’s lower
jaw.” Brown produced some x-rays taken at different angles to the
victim’s skull. The Jaw showed several solid white patches. He
pointed these out with his pen. “Titanium mini-plates.” He picked
out the various points on the victim’s face, relating them in turn
back to the relevant x-ray. “Holding everything together. Not just
the lower mandible, but his left cheekbone as well.”

“
Hazard of
the job?” Jones suggested, wanting to suggest something useful in
some desire to prove that she was a good pupil.

“
And what job
would you suppose that to be?” he asked, raising both eyebrows in a
demonstration of just how craggy a forehead could
become.

“
Drug dealing
scumbag? Or maybe I’ll hedge my bets and go for generic organised
crime scumbag. Then again, there have been a lot of drug related
goings on around these parts of late.”

“
Perhaps if I
was to tell you that these injuries were not sustained by a
baseball bat to the face but rather by a blast. A bat would be
unlikely to create such damage. Look at the number of
plates.”

“
Bank robber?
Safe cracker? Generic scumbag who sustained multiple baseball bat
blows to the face?”

Brown
laughed. “The wrong kind of damage.” He pointed at the x-ray. “You
see the size of some of the fractures; tiny. There’s been a fairly
evenly distributed trauma to the side of the skull. With a bat you
would probably find bigger fractures at a specific, or indeed, as
you suggested, several specific points. This kind of injury is more
commonly found with the kind of specific shock trauma associated
with a blast.”

“
Wouldn’t
there be more markings on the face? Scarring say?”

“
You’d be
surprised. I’d say he wasn’t directly exposed to the blast, wasn’t
sitting in a bank vault when they blew the bloody doors off so to
speak.”

“
Don’t they
tend to pack explosives round safe doors, forcing the blast
sideways? That might shield your would be safe cracker from the
blast to a degree but create a shock wave.”

Brown laughed
again, like an indulgent parent. “It might, but it didn’t in this
case.” He paused, allowing her to think about this and probably
knowing what was coming next.