Night Life

'That's sick.' Terri said, not feeling well.

'At least we got a picture.' Milo said pausing the video to take screenshots of the woman and copy then to his mobile. 'Let's go. I'll ask Rolf at the office to identify her.'

He took the laptop with him and they walked back to the car as casually as they could. Ahmin drove off as soon as they got in and was told what happened.

'I don't want to, but now I'm thinking it could have been me if you hadn't shown up first at my place.' he said stroking his throat.

'Go to the river.' Milo said. 'We have a small office there which is only used by people who need a quiet place to work on their projects.'

***

'There's a stash of instant food if you're hungry.' Milo said unlocking the door to the top floor of a two story building.

'What's downstairs?' Terri asked.

'Bootra. A small company trading in rare books.' he said placing the laptop between other hardware on a shelf. 'They're occasionally at the office but mostly on the road.'

'Dibs on the couch.' said Ahmin.

'Be my guest.' Terri said. 'I can't sleep now anyway.'

He propped up a pillow. 'It's better to get sleep when you can. You'll have more energy for when you need it.' he said and tried to get comfortable.

'I'm going to call the office.' said Milo. 'Ahmin's right, try to close your eyes and count your breathing for a while at least.'

'You might have to make me.'

'We've got a couple of thick operation manuals here.'

'Want to read me to sleep?'

'No, smack you unconscious with them.'

He ducked into another room to avoid the couple of pens she threw at him.

'Milo here.' he said after getting through to Rolf on the phone.

'Hey. Not at the office?' Rolf asked.

'Yeah. Busy with a case and need your help. Can you pull info on a picture right now?'

'Yeah, no problem.'

'I need anything you can find on her. The tiniest thing might be important.'

'VIP?'

'Something like that. Thanks Rolf, talk to you later.' Milo said and sent the pictures.

He returned to the room and smiled as he saw Terri crawled up in one of the large chairs. 'Told you.' he said, set the alarm on his phone and made himself comfortable in another chair.

Chapter 04

The call from Rolf woke Milo up.

'Your request triggered some flag. The boss wants to talk to you.' he said, then handed the phone over to director Meyer.

'Milo, you've got caught in something. We need to discuss this in more private.'

'I can get to Studio 66 in about an hour.'

'Good.' Meyer said and disconnected.

'Good news?' Ahmin asked who had woken up as well.

'Not sure. I'm going to meet up with the director.' Milo said, stretching to chase away the tiredness. 'You can stay here and get some more rest.'

'Can he be trusted?' Terri asked.

'I see no reason why not so far. He's been open with me on every case we had, even the confidential ones.'

'Okay. But you could reach Studio 66 in less than half an hour. Isn't that misleading him?'

Milo smiled. 'I'd like time to freshen up and eat something before I go.'

***

Milo was glad the instant noodles were high quality when Milo arrived at the studio, otherwise he'd feel his stomach protesting by now.

The studio was a professional photographer front for the department. Here they had all the equipment necessary to handle visual data like video and photos, and expertise from the field. They could extract and insert data in feeds, create and examine fake ones.

He recognised the director's car a little further down the road and walked to the side of the building to enter it there.

'Milo.' said the bearded older man in grey suit as he walked in. He held out his hand.

'Sir.' Milo said and shook his hand.

'Looks like you caught the attention of our colleagues.' Meyer said leaning back into his chair.

'You've heard?'

'Sending in an extraction team wasn't very smart. Now we've got some footage to leverage them if need be.'

'You haven't told anyone about it.'

Meyer shook his head. 'We'll keep it a surprise.' he said and leaned forward. 'So, tell me the whole story.'

Milo recalled finding Terri, her discovery of a link to Ahmin, the firefight, warning the other departments after guessing what was going on and finding Cathy dead at her home.

Meyer leaned back again, pondered for a while and scratched his beard.

'You didn't tell anyone else after the incident at the office, right?'

'Yes. Too risky.'

'Good.' Meyer said and tapped the table. 'First we must secure the witnesses, don't want them end up shot or sliced as well. Then we need to get our hands on that piece of software before anyone else.'

'Have you seen the info I asked Rolf for?'

'Eevi Mustonen. Very low profile. We're still trying to get data from other sources.'

Milo nodded.

'Go get your witnesses and bring them to this address.' said Meyer, pushing a note to Milo. 'I've arranged a safe house there.'

'Right.' said Milo, getting ready to leave. 'Agents at the site?'

'Yes, you'll be taken care of there.' Meyer said and shook Milo's hand. 'Good work.'

'Thanks.' Milo said and left.

Back in the car he called Terri.

'Hello?' she asked.

'Milo here. leave the office right away. The director's tainted.'

***

'What happened?' asked Terri when Milo picked them up a few blocks away from the office.

'The director knew how Cathy was killed.' Milo said. 'I hadn't told him her throat was slit.'

'Could he have gotten it from another source?'

Milo shook his head. 'He would have told me.'

'Shit.' she said and pondered about the consequences. 'We have to dump our phones. If yours is compromised then he knows mine.'

'Ahmin's probably too just for being close.' Milo said and turned from the highway into a tunnel.

'I know someone who builds his own phones.' Ahmin said. 'He could get us some which are unregistered.'

'Good, thanks.' Milo said and halted at a service entrance. 'Give me your phones. We can dump them here in the storm drain and they won't know which exit we've taken out of this tunnel.'

They gave their phones and Milo threw them down the grate in the middle of the road, then drove to the address Ahmin had given him.

***

'Here.' Ahmin said as they drove through a narrow street in one of the old neighbourhoods of the city. 'The red door.'

Milo parked at the closest free spot. Ahmin knocked at the door and after a while a voice from the other side called out to him. 'Ahmin. Who are they?'

'Friends. We need secure comms.'

They heard several bolts before the door opened and a bald old man appeared. 'Come on in.'

They entered the dimly lit hallway and the old man closed the door, securing the bolts. He led them into the first room and gestured to the chairs.

'You in trouble?' he asked Ahmin.

'Yeah, probably from all sides.'

The old man whistled. 'I'm not going to ask.' he said and opened a couple of drawers.

'You build all of this stuff, mister..?' Terri asked looking at the array of transceivers, portable radio equipment and things she recognised as part of mobile networks.

'Just call me Coot.' the old man said with a giggle. 'I'm keeping up the appearance of one anyway for safety.'

She grinned. 'I like that.'

He pulled out three phones looking twenty years old. 'Need more?'

Ahmin looked at Milo who shook his head. 'No.'

'These work by mimicking mobile network equipment. No traceable mobile numbers. Complete access to any mobile provider. Just don't use them too much because that might leave patterns in the logs.'

Milo took one. 'How long on battery?'

'About several weeks with normal use. About two days on full data streaming.'

'Perfect. How much do you want?'

'You wouldn't happen to have one of those new mobile interceptors?'

Milo smiled. 'One of the latest models rigged to deceive even the latest scanners for false towers? Why would you think I know something about that?'

Coot leaned closer. 'That suit just screams government agency.'

Milo put the phone in his pocket. 'What address?'

Coot grinned and handed him a note. 'Through this courier will do. More confidential stuff disappears there, intentionally and not.'

'Thanks.' Ahmin said as they left.

'Be safe. And say hi to your mother when you see her.'

Milo and Terri nodded as they left for the car.

'Your mother?' asked Terri on the way.

'They had a thing together for a while when she was young. Then adult life happened.'

Terri nodded.

***

'So, what now?' asked Terri when they got on the road again. 'I had a look at Cathy's laptop, found some interesting stuff on this distributed key and the systems it gives access to.'

'I suggest we head back to Joan's and take it from there.' Milo said. 'I want to stop using her car before it's linked to us.'

***

At this time of the day the music was mellow at the club. Another bunch of IT geeks occupied the booths.

'Thanks for the car.' Milo said as he handed the keys to Joan.

'No problem. Did you make any progress?'

'If by that you mean find more adversaries, yes.'

She poured them a refreshing drink. 'Deep shit, eh?'

'You can say that.' Terri said and emptied her glass. 'We're looking at an organisation that hired specialists to work on individual parts of a program to retrieve the full decryption key that keeps several defence and security service departments safe.'

She pulled out Cathy's laptop and placed it on Joan's desk. 'I managed to get access to notes Cathy took while working on her part. Looks like she suspected something already. There's more but I would need better systems to possibly crack it.'

'I can't trust the department so we need an outside party.' Milo said, leaning back in his chair, sipping his drink.

Joan tapped her desk with her finger, then leaned forward. 'I might know someone.'

***

"This is so cliché." Terri thought as she entered the coffee shop.

This one had less trendies and more default folk getting their coffee, tea, and snacks, but she still hated these.

She got herself a normal tea and sat down at a table in the middle.

Not long after she sat down, a girl her age sat down at her table with tea and cake.

'Hi. Did you wait long?' she asked, fixing her flashy clothes with a maximum in clashing colours.

'No?' Terri said, feeling this meeting could get tiresome quickly from the look of the perky girl with rodent features. 'You're the pigeon?'

She looked straight at Terri. 'So, you want their help?'

'If you can decipher and analyse data very quick, yes.'

'And why would they help you, seeing you are linked to an agency involved with snooping and abusing the grid?'

'You know?'

She nodded. 'They know you work with someone which they do not like.'

'Maybe. But this involves national security threatened by criminals.'

'They are criminals themselves.' the girl said nibbling on a cake. 'So unless you have a good reason for them to assist, you're on your own.'

'Mind if I discuss this?'

She nodded and Terri called Milo.

'Do you have something to convince them to help?'

'Money? hardware?' he suggested.

The girl shook her head.

'Anything else?' Terri asked.

Milo sighed. 'Tell them Karl will fly them to Pegaso.'

'You're shitting me!' Terri said startling the girl.

'Don't ask, just tell them.'

Terri told the girl.

'They have left.' she said after a moment. 'We're finished then.'

Terri watched her finish the last bite of her cake and leave the shop. 'Now what?'

'Come back here for now.' Milo said and Terri left the shop.

She hardly reached the corner of the street when someone pushed a note in her hand as he passed her. She read it a little farther down the street and called Milo. 'They want to meet face to face.'

***

Terri, Milo, and Ahmin followed the instructions on the note and found themselves at a car rental place in a quieter part of town.

'Can I help you?' asked the female assistant behind the counter.

'We're here to pick up the car for Mrs. Saunders.' Terri said.

'Ah, yes. We just got a call you were coming.' she said and placed key and papers on the desk. 'Everything's been taken care off. I hope you have a pleasant trip.'

'Thanks.' said Terri taking the keys and papers and walked with Milo to the car park where Ahmin waited.

There they found the minivan and a note with another address inside.

'That's just down the road.' Milo said.

'They paid for it so might as well use it to get to the next corner.' Terri shrugged and drove onto the street.

At the end of the road they stopped at a garage and a young man knocked on the window.

'Switch.' he said and gestured to the side. 'You're going that way.'

Milo looked at the alley he pointed at. 'Well, this has been a fun ride.'

'Right.' Terri said and got out.

The young man drove off and Terri, Milo, and Ahmin went into the alley. A bit farther down a door opened and they followed a woman down into a cellar. Several people were waiting in the dark.

'Someone mentioned dead people.' a female voice said.

'Dead people got awoken.' Milo said.

'What do you know?'

'The runway could have been longer. It was barely enough.'

'Bull.' said a male voice.

'The captain liked the tacky bobble head dog in the cockpit.' Milo said.

After a few seconds the lights came on. A middle aged woman stepped up to Milo. 'You're not kidding?'

Milo shook his head. 'I say this now because telling what I know about you and the collective would only bring distrust.'

'I think I believe you.'

'Hang on,' Terri said. 'I'm a bit lost. Are you talking about the time the president's plane landed at Pegaso when there were hostilities between the countries?'

'Our government had plans on disrupting that country to get a better deal on their mineral deposits.' the woman said. 'Those highly classified plans were seen by someone who didn't like bullies and greedy corporations using politics to get richer. He then managed to plant a device on board to take control of the plane and landed it at Pegaso airport, a day before the execution of the plan to cripple that country. They never found the one who called himself Karl.' She smiled at Milo. 'Either you're good at faking, or you're a ghost.'

'A bit of both perhaps.'

Terri looked at Milo. 'Hiding in plain sight.'

He nodded.

'And here I thought you were just a two bit hacker finding adventure behind a government desk.'

'It has been a relaxing, quiet time.'

'Come. Tell us why you need our help so desperately.' the woman said and invited them to follow to the next room.

'We need to know anything related to the info found on this laptop.' Milo said. 'The ones who tried to kill us for it are good at hiding, so we need to know who we're dealing with, and to crack the encrypted partition which probably holds more info. All we know is that they commissioned experts to grab the key to access any high level communication. And not for a good cause.'

The woman nodded. 'We can feed the encrypted data to our cluster to chew on it. The rest is probably standard procedure.'

They took the disk out of the laptop, hooked it up to a multi port device next to a server rack and it started to flash light out of a slit.

'This is how we feed it information. We stream the data across a high frequency screen which is read by a scanner and fed into the cluster. This way there's never any physical contact and risk of exposure to hidden malware on a device.'

'Clever.' said Ahmin.

'Just not as fast. But it's good enough.' she said. 'The rest will be fed to our search engine so all we have left is waiting for the first clue. You can watch or get some rest down the hallway. We have entertainment and beds for those long hacking days and nights.'

'Thanks.' Milo said and shook her hand. 'I'd like to get some sleep.'

'You're welcome.' she said.

'Thanks indeed.' said Terri. 'Ehm?'

'Call me Theresa. That's my nickname. We never use real names here, even if we know them.'

'Call me UV. Or you already knew that?'

Theresa shook her head. 'No, although better said, not yet.'

'Just don't go digging into my school years.'

Theresa laughed. 'I guess we can skip those periods for everyone at that age.'

Terri followed Milo and they found a couple of quiet rooms with simple beds. Milo took off his jacket, tie, shoes and socks, then unbuttoned his shirt partly before lying down.

Terri took off her light coat and laid down on the bed next to his. 'So, how did it feel to control that plane?'

He closed his eyes and smiled a little at the memories. 'Thrilling. Powerful and scary at the same time. To know I controlled the plane with the president and staff on it, to know I had the responsibility of the lives of the people in my hands. One mistake and I could have had the biggest regret in my life.'

'Why do it?'

'To save innocent lives threatened by the greed of certain people. It was a regular people versus corporation thing. After I managed to force a stop to their plans I knew I had to disappear. They would find me in time if I continued.'

'So, what are you going to do after this? If there is an after.'

'No idea. I'll think about it when we get to that.'

Terri looked at the ceiling. 'Yeah, maybe for the best.' she said and tried to get some sleep.

Chapter 05

'We got something.'

Milo and Terri watched the screens on Theresa's desk showing photo's of Cathy's killer with others.

'Meet Eevi Mustonen.' Theresa said. 'Born into a successful criminal family, kept a low profile until someone killed off most of them. She disappeared only to turn up suddenly years later. In the meantime several members of rival families had also disappeared.'

'Nothing linking that to her, of course.' Terri said.

'Yes. We know little about who she works for now, except that she visited several possible fronts they might own. We're looking into those right now.'

Milo read the list. 'I've heard of a couple of them. Nothing that has been on our radar though.'

'Looks like they diversified a lot. Electronics stores, software studio, hardware dealer, garage, transportation, car dealers, builders, infrastructure, private security.' Terri said.

'It means they have a legitimate reason to have specialists and the right equipment at all times.' Ahmin said behind them and yawned. 'I'll go get some sleep now.'

'Thanks for your help.' Theresa said. 'This will be a good boost to our capabilities.' They watched him leave the room. 'He tweaked our hardware and algorithms, giving about a ten percent speed-up.'

'Nice.' Terri said.

'Indeed.' Theresa said. 'We'll run it here as a test for a while, then we'll implement it at the other sites one by one.'

'You have more than this?'

Theresa nodded. 'Independent clusters so we are always redundant. There's a reason why we're on several most wanted lists. But so far they have no idea who we are because we all look out for each other. At the slightest threat a group moves or disbands.'

'Safety before anything.' Milo said.

'With people like you working for them we need to.'

'Sorry.'

'Nothing personal because I think we can trust you, but the departments have always abused their powers for their own gain, or anyone who paid.'

He nodded. 'True. Which is why I hoped I could prevent serious harm by being on the inside.'

'So, did you?' asked Terri.

'I'm not at liberty to say.'

She smiled. 'Thanks for what you might or might not have done then.'

'If I had done anything, which means I'm not saying I did do something, I'd say you're welcome.'

She chuckled. 'Bureaucrat.'

'Heyy..'

'Anyway, any plans on sniffing out those fronts?' Terri asked Theresa.

'Yes, we'll start with the usual low level stuff by visiting them, see if we can get at their network or equipment.'

'This takes me back.' Milo said as he looked through the list once more. 'Let's divide the list.'