“I understand from the difficulty of tracking him, that he doesn’t use social media. Facebook, Twitter, anything else?” Jonathan asked.
“Ri-i-ight.” She drew out the single syllable and shook her head vigorously, probably to accentuate just how much. “His world is far removed from that kind of thing. There is no way he would join social media. Still, every day I find myself looking for him there. Isn’t that silly? But it’s the only way I know how to search for him. ”
“His is a very common name. Do you have his social security number? Or any other identifying details?” I asked.
“I never asked him,” she answered quietly. She lowered her eyes and bit her bottom lip. I saw the desperate pain in her eyes when she looked back up at us.
“Give me your social security number and telephone number,” Jonathan said, smiling reassuringly at her. “Maybe I will be able to find him some other way.”
Ashley smiled back at my nephew, and with that became a good American girl. Her sheer robe, the unmade bed, the scent of the men who had been there before -- all of it disappeared. She stood up with a renewed sense of energy and approached the plain desk near the window. On the desk stood three styrofoam heads and on them sat a red wig with curly hair, a straight black wig and a short brunette wig. Ashley wrote out the details she was requesting on a small piece of paper and gave Jonathan the note.
“Please be careful.” She rose on the tips of her toes, hugged him and kissed his cheek, “I don’t want to hear that you got into trouble again.” Jonathan blushed deeply.
***
“When you entered the apartment, I thought at first that you were my father,” Jonathan said as we got into the elevator.
“Why?”
“I hadn’t realized how much alike the two of you are.” He looked at me again and asked, “How come you seem so young, but he is so old?”
“He’s not ‘so old’...” I said, imitating the way he spoke. “He seems old to you because he is your father.”
I left Jonathan in the lobby and glanced outside again. The street was empty. If he had been followed, they hadn’t done a good job. I returned and signaled for the boy to follow me. A cold breeze greeted us when we left the building and he wrapped himself tighter in his coat. As we sat in my car, I noticed he was shivering. I chalked it up to tiredness and adrenaline and turned up the heat.
“Firstly, I‘d love to hear how you managed to sneak into the casino in the first place,” I said, once we were on our way and I was certain we weren’t being tailed. “Are kids your age even allowed in a place like that?”
“Fake ID’s.” Jonathan glanced at me, clearly frightened, and quickly added, “Please don’t tell my parents about this.”
“Listen to me,” I paused, I asked myself if I could make such a promise, but continued anyway, “Right now, your parents are the least of my worries. Once we get home, I want you to show me the files you found in the computer and what got you into trouble. Since we have another hour’s drive, I suggest you start telling me what happened there.”
“Okay,” Jonathan answered, and I knew he was agreeing not because he was afraid, but because he needed to share. I liked the fact that he seemed to think that I was the right person. It made me feel proud.
Jonathan said, “Jeremy found someone who makes fake driving licenses. We decided to try our luck at the casino and that’s it.”
“And that’s it?” I raised my eyebrows at him to show my dissatisfaction with the phrase. “How do you know Jeremy?”
“From our math group.”
“A group of good kids who decided to try their talent at counting cards in blackjack.” I glared at him. “Didn’t you think they would catch you in the act?”
“They didn’t pick up on us calculating the odds.” he answered, too quickly, “And my friends are okay… they made sure to lose most of the money they won.” He smiled apologetically. “They kept just enough to cover the cost of the gas.”
Smart kids. Still, I hoped for their sake that no one had picked up on their little trick. I carried on with my interrogation. “How did you find out that they were onto you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I asked. How did you find out they were looking for you?”
“Because, first of all, you don’t just gather information when hacking into a foreign site. After the gathering, the first thing one does is link up with the security system. In their case, I logged into the security system of the casino to figure what they are protecting their information against. I wanted to find their weaknesses and attack them. That’s how hackers work. We learn defense systems and then launch an attack. Because of that, I was able to read their messages about being hacked and saw the orders they received to search for someone with a laptop. Through their video surveillance cameras, I saw they had sent out people to start looking.”
I smiled. The cyber world was not so different from the world of espionage. This was the first time Jonathan had felt the danger of it all. “So what happened when you found out they were looking for you?”
“I put my laptop in my bag and hid in the bathroom. I tried to think quickly about where they were most likely not going to look for me and entered the women’s bathroom, which is where Ashley found me. I told
