‘I didn’t think computers were your thing, Paul?’
‘They’re not,’ Richter replied, ‘but this guy Baker back at Hammersmith has been giving me a crash course. We’ve just done basic security. I’m a fast learner and I’ve got a good memory.’
Six minutes later Richter had everything connected up on the corner of Westwood’s desk. He tried the Nokia mobile first, turned it on and watched the screen. There was no request for a SIM or phone password and the phone merely displayed the signal strength and battery level.
‘So far so good,’ Richter said, and pressed the power button on Murphy’s Toshiba Satellite Pro. A light illuminated to show that the hard drive was working, and the opening screen appeared. Then it all stopped and a BIOS password request box popped up in the centre of the screen.
‘Shit.’
Westwood didn’t seem fazed. ‘I’ll get one of our IT guys out here to bypass it,’ he said, and reached for the phone.
‘On a Sunday afternoon?’ Richter asked.
‘I carry a fair bit of weight around here, Paul,’ Westwood replied. ‘Of course I can get somebody out on a Sunday.’
The technician arrived just over an hour later. He didn’t look like a computer nerd – he was around thirty, clean-shaven, wearing blue jeans and trainers, white button-down shirt and a red sweater – and he was carrying a large aluminium briefcase.
‘Is this it?’ he asked, before sitting down in front of the open laptop. Westwood nodded. ‘Do you know the name of the owner?’ the man asked.
‘Mike Murphy,’ Westwood said.
‘OK,’ the technician muttered, and began pressing keys. ‘What programs do you want to access?’
‘It’s essential we get into his email client software,’ Richter said, ‘but we’d prefer to be able to access everything.’
Six minutes later the technician stood up and picked up his case.
‘Is that it?’ Westwood demanded. ‘What was it?’
‘Always try the obvious first. His name was Mike Murphy, so I tried “MikeM”, “MMurphy”, “MikeMurph” and so on. It turned out he was using “TheDoubleM”. It was about the twentieth option I tried. I’ve checked the other programs and none of them are password-protected. The dial-up networking script and the email client – he’s using Outlook Express – both have their passwords stored, so you shouldn’t have any other problems.’
By the time Westwood had closed the front door behind the technician, Richter had already opened up Outlook Express and was scanning the contents of Mike Murphy’s inbox.
‘Here we go, John,’ he said. ‘There are three messages from McCready in the inbox, the last sent on Friday, advising him of the rendezvous near Platanos at fifteen twenty on Saturday afternoon. I’ll just check his sent messages now… OK, nothing of great interest, just acknowledgements of what McCready has told him. Ah, this one’s different: he’s just confirmed that Krywald has been dealt with at Chania, which at least bears out what Stein said.’
Richter switched on Murphy’s mobile phone again and made sure that the data cable was firmly secured at both ends. He turned to the computer and accessed the dial-up networking script. The default option was a telephone number in the United States, but the name Murphy had given the connection wasn’t what would have been expected if it had been one of the major ISPs like AOL. He’d just called it ‘Crete’, which suggested it was only a temporary connection.
‘This is probably it, John,’ Richter said, and clicked ‘Dial’. The mobile phone dialled the number as the two men watched the screen. About half a minute later, the computer broke the connection once the single message on the server had been downloaded.
‘Bingo,’ Westwood said. ‘Just the one message, but McCready’s getting restless,’ he added, as he scanned the text.
‘OK, let’s put him out of his misery,’ Richter said, and began composing the message they’d agreed to send. It was fairly long, and they made several changes to try to make it as authentic as possible.
‘Are you happy with that, John?’ Richter asked, as Westwood read the finished text for the third time.
‘I think so. He’s possibly going to smell a rat but I’m betting that he’s so desperate to retrieve the evidence that he’ll still agree to a meet. After all, this’ – he gestured at the screen – ‘could have happened.’
Three minutes later, Richter clicked ‘Send and Receive’ and watched the screen as the message vanished.
‘And now?’ Westwood asked.
‘And now we wait,’ Richter said. ‘The ball’s in McCready’s court.’
Chapter 27
Monday
Nicholson hadn’t expected a response from Murphy or Stein after such a long silence, being fairly certain that both men had been either killed or captured. But when he checked his email a few minutes before going to bed just before midnight on Sunday he immediately saw the read receipt for the message he’d sent to Murphy, and also a reply from him.
Murphy sounded flustered, and as he read his message Nicholson could understand why. The killing of Stein had gone badly wrong. The police had turned up almost as soon as he’d pulled the trigger, and Murphy had had to run for it, barely getting away with the steel case, and being forced to avoid police pursuit by heading up into the hills, missing the rendezvous with the helicopter. He’d apparently had to sneak onto the ferry up to Kithira and make his way from there to the Greek mainland before he could catch a flight out of Athens to Amsterdam and from there to New York. But the message confirmed he had in his possession the steel case, the Ultra Secret file and everything else that Krywald and Stein had been able to retrieve.
After reading the email half a dozen times, Nicholson leaned back in his seat to consider his options. He was quite certain that the message had been sent from Murphy’s laptop, simply because of the read receipt, but that didn’t necessarily mean that Murphy had sent it.
On the other hand, the events described in the message were certainly plausible, and would explain why he’d heard nothing further from Stein – because he was already dead – and why Murphy himself had been out of contact for so long.
For a few minutes he toyed with calling Murphy’s mobile phone, just to see if he could confirm the man’s identity from hearing his voice, but then rejected that idea, because whether Murphy was alive and waiting to complete the last phase of his contract or dead or languishing in some Cretan jail didn’t actually make too much difference.
What Nicholson knew was that whoever had sent the email, whether Murphy or somebody else, knew far too much about CAIP and that meant that he really had no choice. He had to meet him, find out who he was, and then eliminate him. Nicholson spent a few minutes deciding exactly how to respond, and in particular where he should specify as a rendezvous, then clicked ‘Reply’, and quickly typed his message. He read the text twice, then pressed ‘Send and Receive’, shut down the computer and went to bed.
Richter woke suddenly at four-thirty in the guest bedroom of John Westwood’s spacious house, staring at the unfamiliar surroundings and wondering not merely where he was, but also, for a brief moment, who he was. Some people suffer from jet-lag flying east to west, others vice-versa. Richter belonged to the rather smaller group that suffered it whichever way they flew long-haul, and this had ruined another night’s sleep.
He knew from past experience that there was no point in even trying to get back to sleep, and he didn’t think Sally Westwood would appreciate him blundering around the house in the pre-dawn darkness. He switched on the bedside light, padded across the room to the low bookcase beside the door and scanned the titles. They seemed to be mainly Aga sagas and chick-lit, and Richter guessed that the room was usually occupied by Sally’s female
