They’d arrived that morning and spent the next four hours keeping watch. Butcher, in the back seat, used his laptop to delve deeper into the building’s shroud of secrecy.
“Any chance of a sandwich?” the young tech asked, furiously clicking away. “I’m starving back here.”
Heidi regarded Pang. “You hungry?”
“Quite.” The CIA man jerked a nod. “I could eat.”
“Good.” Heidi crossed her arms. “Grab me a cheese and steak sub while you’re there.” She nodded at a café across the road.
Pang glared at her for several moments before sighing and exiting the car. Their relationship hadn’t gotten any easier. The journey from Mexico to Italy had been completed mostly in icy silence with Butcher ignoring the frostiness and concentrating on his job.
“He’s hardcore, huh?” Butcher asked.
“Worse,” Heidi said. “He’s a company man. Are you a company man?”
Butcher looked up from his screen. “I know what you’re asking and, no, I won’t follow anyone blindly into the breach. I do have my own thoughts.”
“Ah, but can you question orders?”
Butcher looked down. “So far the issue hasn’t arisen.”
“Just stick with us a few days,” Heidi told him. “It will.”
Pang returned five minutes later and handed out sandwiches from a plain paper bag. He’d brought three bottles of water too, which Heidi accepted with a nod. As they ate, Butcher spoke.
“This building... it’s a front, but not in the usual meaning of the word. It’s a dummy; office space through which a skeleton staff manage the businesses of several dubious clients. They oversee agreements made across computers, maintain the workstations, and deal with any issues that may pop up. It’s a fake address, one used by reprehensible companies all over the world through which data is sent. The companies are faceless, mysterious entities but... where there’s activity, there’s a link to something. To someone.”
“Can you find the link?” Pang asked.
“Yes, but there’s a problem.”
“And what’s that?” Heidi asked around a mouthful of sandwich.
“It’s a closed circuit.” He nodded at the building. “Everything’s inside and I’d have to get into the mainframe to access the computers.”
Pang frowned. “You’re saying you need to get inside the building? if so, why don’t you just say that?”
“How long would you need?” Heidi asked.
“As long as you can give me,” Butcher said. “There’s no telling what firewalls they’ve set up.”
*
The industrial estate started clearing out between 6:00 and 7:00 p.m., workers and bosses heading home in a stream of traffic. For some reason, the people that planned these busy little estates couldn’t figure out a way to allow everyone to leave around the same time without creating miles of standing traffic; or maybe the planning councils just weren’t that bothered. Heidi didn’t know for certain but had her suspicions.
Night fell. The estate grew quiet, the silence broken only by the occasional wannabe racer testing his brakes, tires and insurance limits. Heidi saw the lights in the security kiosk flick on, and two men moving inside. They took turns patrolling the estate. Pang had parked up after dark in a dealership forecourt, hidden amongst other vehicles, and he grunted as they watched the men disappear.
“Time to go,” he said.
Together, all three exited the car, gently closing the doors behind them. They crossed to the shadows of another building. Here, they all drew down full-face masks and donned gloves. Their bosses would be unhappy if any trace of this operation leaked back to them.
Pang led the way to the building’s side door and checked the lock. It was top quality, as expected, but it wouldn’t stop a man with full access to the CIA’s resources. He mated a processor to the door’s keypad and had the code in less than sixty seconds.
“No cameras here,” he said. “But be prepared for plenty inside. This is gonna be messy.”
Heidi already knew it. If they were doing this properly, the operation would take days to plan and involve a dedicated computer hacker with the ability to fool or take out the surveillance system. Butcher was probably capable of that, but they didn’t have the time.
Pang slid the door open. A small room opened out before them with a desk at the far end. Pang crossed to it with Butcher at his back.
“Which way?” Pang asked.
In typical gung-ho-hero fashion, Pang hadn’t bothered to check the blueprint Butcher had downloaded. “If you’d bothered to—” Heidi began.
“That way.” Butcher pointed at a door, the expression on his face one of a long-suffering teenager dealing with his bickering parents.
Pang cracked the door open. A man stood in the dark on the other side, a brown-shirted guard lounging against the wall and flicking idly through his phone. Pang reached out, grabbed him and pulled him harshly into the room. The phone went flying, screen up. Heidi saw what he’d been looking at there alone in the dark and frowned.
“That’s disgusting.”
The man’s face was a picture, not knowing whether to defend his internet browsing choices, attack Pang, or worry for his job. Pang put him out of his misery with a well-placed blow to the temple, then stooped to tie him up.
“Go,” he told Heidi and Butcher.
They rushed into the corridor, ran to the far end, and opened another door. Heidi had already seen two cameras by the time they reached the end of another corridor, Pang now at their side.
“There,” Butcher said, pointing at a door to their right and at a sign that read: Server Room.
Pang tried the door, found it locked, and booted the hinges until they gave way.
Heidi stood back, watching out for the inevitable influx of guards, not sure whether to be bemused by the sight of Pang breaking down
