Invasion of Privacy: A Deep Web Thriller #1 (Deep Web Thriller Series) (65 page)

“He’s in there?” clarified Jenny, pointing through the window at the long rows of computer racks.

“Yeah, he’s behind the fifth set of racks. I’ll take you to him.”

“You stay here,” asserted Jenny. “We’ll get him.”

She looked at Fiona. The blood was pumping through her veins now. “You ready?”

Fiona nodded, offering a grim smile. Jenny knew she was thinking the same thing. That Da Silva had just made a huge public mistake. And, after his behaviour towards Jenny, perhaps it was one that they could capitalise on. She knew she probably ought to call for backup before going through. Fuck it: she wanted this to be their collar.

Jenny held her pass up to the security sensor. The outer door of the tube began to rotate open.

“Don’t forget your mobiles,” said Peggler, his voice even higher.

“Seriously?” 

He held out his hand in emphasis. Jenny reached into her back pocket and dropped it in his hand. Fiona did the same.

She stepped into the tube and the door behind her slid to a close. When it was completely shut, there was enough of a pause for Jenny, in her heightened state, to become concerned that she was trapped. But then the door in front slid to one side. She stepped into the computer hall. It was colder in here and the hum of noise from the industrial air conditioning and the computer equipment was very loud. She waited for Fiona to go through the same rigmarole, furtively looking around in case Ronald Keeble suddenly appeared.

Once they were both through the security tube, Jenny said, “You take the far wall. I’ll take this one. We’ll check each row one at a time. You at the bottom, me at the top.”

“Sounds good to me.”

Fiona headed for the other end of the first set of racks. Jenny waited at the top. She gave the thumbs up and they quietly made their way to the corridor behind the first set of computer equipment. As expected, it was empty. Fiona was at the other end. This time Fiona gave the thumbs up, ready for the second corridor between the racks of computer equipment. 

Synchronised, they appeared at top and bottom of the second corridor. Again it was empty. They repeated the process for the next two corridors, both empty. It was the next one that Peggler had referred to. Jenny took a deep breath, gave the thumbs up to Fiona and rushed around the fifth rack to the corridor behind it. 

It was empty again. 

Jenny came to a stop. Fiona did the same at the other end of the corridor. She held her palms out to signify her confusion. Jenny shrugged her shoulders in answer and then pointed to the next one. Perhaps they’d miscounted. They repeated the process but again the next corridor was empty. There was only one more, but yet again there was no one there. 

There was nowhere else to hide.

“This is fucking weird,” said Fiona who had jogged up the last corridor to join her. “There’s nowhere to hide … unless he’s climbed inside one of those computer racks?”

“Good thinking.”

Together, they sped up and down each corridor, checking every rack in turn, always keeping an eye on the circular tube exit from the computer room, just in case Keeble made a dash for it. Each rack had transparent doors on the outside and so they could see the layers of computer equipment within. Eventually, they made it back to the open space between the first rack and the exit.

He was nowhere to be found.

They headed back to the exit. 

Peggler wasn’t there.

“You go first,” said Jenny, still looking behind them in case they’d somehow missed Keeble.

Fiona nodded and raised her pass to the security sensor. It beeped red.

‘Eh?”

She tried again. Same result.

“Try yours.”

Jenny did.

Red.

And then they both stared at each other in horror, registering that something was very amiss.

Through the glass wall next to the tube exit, they saw movement. 

Peggler appeared from the CCTV control room and walked to the glass window, carrying a bag. He was belly laughing as he approached.

“This is no fucking joke,” shouted Jenny, banging her fist on the window for effect. It was completely solid. “Let us out of here. Now.”

He shook his head, almost apologetically, still laughing. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” cried Jenny, anger bubbling up inside her.

He bent right down, beneath the line of the glass window. She could only see his back. The wall blocked whatever he was doing with his hands.

And then, suddenly, he raised himself upright.

“Recognise me now, bitch?” His voice was suddenly deep.

He’d put on a black cap with an embroidered Adidas logo on it and dark sunglasses. 

Even without the fake beard and moustache, Jenny now recognised him. She’d last seen that disguise while hanging six floors up in the Flexbase atrium in Windsor. 

“Fuck.”

CHAPTER 23

The bang, when it came, was much louder than Brody had expected.

Through his knees, he felt the whole apartment shake.

Then he heard multiple shots from right behind him, with the corresponding sound of bullets hitting the walls opposite, and shrapnel ricocheting in all directions. Suddenly smoke appeared in the room, followed by another almighty bang. Realising something altogether different was going on, Brody dived sideways onto Leroy and Danny, who fell backwards to the floor under his weight. 

A cascade of bullets hit Yakov behind them and he was thrown backwards onto the wall, knocking the framed Vorovskoy Mir poster off its hook. It landed on top of his prone body. Blood splattered the wall behind. 

“Alpha, clear.”

“Bravo, clear.”

 And from further away. “Charlie, clear.”

Brody felt himself being dragged away from his friends. 

“You all right, son?” The helmeted armed response police officer stared at Brody from behind his goggles.

“Yes, I’m fine.”

Suddenly a howl shook him to his soul. It was Leroy, crying out Danny’s name in anguish. “Nooooooo!” It was the most forlorn noise Brody had ever heard.

Through the clearing wafts of smoke, Brody could see Leroy trying to shake Danny awake. But half of his head had been blown off. Most of it was spread across the living room. Leroy wailed Danny’s name again, over and over. 

Brody sat there, immobile. Uncomprehending. 

Slowly, Leroy stopped shaking Danny. He turned to face Brody. His tear-covered abject face turned furious.

“Why not you?” he shouted. “This is
your
fault! All your fault. It should be you. Not . . .” He choked on his words and the fury left him. “ . . . Not my beautiful Danny.” He turned and flung himself across Danny’s prone body, bawling.

Brody looked around helplessly.

He saw the tablet PC, still on, still standing on the chair, despite everything. Blood and guts were splattered across it. The outraged face of Contag10n filled the screen. 

Brody reached out and grabbed the tablet, so that his face filled Contag10n’s screen. As he pressed two buttons together on the tablet, he spoke the warning with all the menace in the world. “Know this. I will hunt you down and destroy you. You are a dead man.”

Brody flung the tablet across the room and watched it smash into the wall, flicker and die.

Sometime later, Brody sat at his dining table, shell-shocked at the events. Everything was a blur.

The armed response team had secured the apartment and retreated, only to be replaced with a more normal-looking set of police detectives and crime scene officers. Leroy had to be forcibly removed from Danny’s body. As he passed Brody, Leroy charged at him like a rabid dog, but the officers held onto him. Their calm words fell on deaf ears as they led him out to an ambulance, still howling.

Another officer walked calmly through the chaos, making a beeline for Brody. He was tall and massively overweight. His suit was ill-fitting and his shoes scuffed. He was chewing gum.

“Not quite what I expected.” He looked Brody up and down. “But I always knew you weren’t Australian.”

Brody grunted a nod of resigned comprehension. “Doc_Doom.”

“I always wanted us to meet in the flesh but,” he surveyed the wreckage, “not under such circumstances.”

“I have you to thank for saving my life?”

“Yes. I’m just sorry we couldn’t get here any quicker. The armed response unit moved as fast as they could.” He looked over at Danny’s body. “Not quickly enough, though.”

“No.” 

He held out his hand. “My real name is Victor Gibb.”

Brody limply accepted the handshake. “Brody Taylor.”

Brody shook his head as he worked out what was going on. “So are you police, MI5 or MI6?”

Gibb sat his massive frame down opposite him. “Neither. GCHQ.”

“And all this time on the CrackerHack forums as Doc_Doom you’ve been trying to gain my trust. Why?”

“To recruit you. The GCHQ needs your skills Brody. There’s a cyberwar brewing. State funded. China. Russia. The Middle East. We could do with someone like you on our team.”

“Me?” Brody couldn’t believe it.

“Look, I appreciate this isn’t the time or place to have this conversation. But I have waited an awfully long time to have it. You’re not exactly easy to get hold of in meatspace.”

“Well, today seems to be the day for it. Crooner42, Contag10n and now you, Doc_Doom.”

“You can thank Crooner42 for Contag10n. He’s the one who outed you to Vorovskoy Mir.”

“Well, right now, Crooner42’s in police custody.”

Gibb raised his eyebrows in surprise but didn’t ask. With his resources, he’d be able to find out anything he wanted. 

At length, Gibb explained how Crooner42 had somehow gained access to Fingal’s identity information and provided it to Vorovskoy Mir yesterday evening over their secure website. GCHQ picked up the resulting chatter this morning, keyed off the keyword ‘Fingal’. The hit instructions had made their way through Russian Mafia channels. Fortunately it had ended up with Yakov, someone that MI5 had under surveillance. Only by following him were they able to track down the specific details. Gibb had been kept informed in real-time and the minute Yakov had entered Brody’s apartment, he’d ordered the armed take down. 

“So if you’d have taken him down before entering my apartment, none of this would have happened?”

“True, but the police needed reasonable suspicion before we could act. Observing him break into your apartment gave us that. It took a good half-an-hour to get the unit here and ready to act. In the meantime, you showed up. Good job you didn’t arrive earlier. Yakov would have been in and out before we got here.”

Brody remembered his thought about the fates telling him something, making him to park on the other side of the road, which had resulted in him choosing to go into Bruno’s before coming home. Just that small decision had saved his and Leroy’s life. 

But not poor Danny’s.

Brody stood up and walked over to his friend’s dead body, not really sure what he wanted to do or say. He felt that he needed to apologise, but no words would make it through to Danny now. Instead, he just stared at the sorry mess that was once his best friend’s partner for life. 

One of the crime scene officers was taking photos. 

The flash caused a reflection from the ring on Danny’s finger, his multi-coloured rainbow ring that had been a present from Leroy. The colours were meant to signify the six colours of the gay pride rainbow flag. 

And immediately a new connection formed in Brody’s mind.

He turned and ran.

* * *

Brody burst into Bruno’s coffee shop, the door swinging back violently and crashing on the wall. As one, the lounge’s patrons pivoted their heads to see what the commotion was. Not caring, Brody vaulted a table and then the sofa he’d been sitting on earlier. He scanned the coffee table, but his computer was no longer there. 

“Stefan?” he shouted at the top of his voice, not seeing the head barista anywhere. “Stefan!”

He’d left the computer behind when he’d rushed over the road to warn Leroy and Danny that they all needed to make a fast exit from his apartment and never return. The threat from Vorovskoy Mir had always been very real to Brody, and he had prepared for the eventuality of his identity being discovered by having replacement ones lined up. As long as they never discovered the existence of Leroy or Danny, then they could all regroup in a few weeks when Brody set himself up under his new guise. It would have cost Brody his apartment and computer equipment, but that was nothing that he couldn’t replace. He had no personal possessions.

But he hadn’t been quick enough. Or, more accurately, Crooner42 had leaked his identity as Brody Taylor without any fanfare, and so Brody hadn’t known he’d been compromised until it was already too late. Danny had paid the price of Brody’s failure with his life. 

It was unbearable.

Stefan stepped out from behind a door marked ‘Staff Only’. “Ah, Mr Brody, Mr Brody.” He pulled up short when he saw the bandage on his head and the blood splattered all over Brody’s shirt. “What has happened? Are all the police out there for you?”

“My computer, Stefan. Where’s my computer?”

The door swung open and Victor Gibb strode in, out of breath. 

“Is here, don’t worry Mr Brody.” Stefan stepped behind the counter, reached underneath and pulled it out. “Here you are.”

Brody sat at the nearest spare table. He unfolded his tablet PC.

“Do you mind telling me what the fuck is going on?” asked Gibb.

As Brody connected to the Internet, he explained. “Have you heard the news this week about the meeting room killer?”

Gibb nodded. Brody connected to SWY control console using the administrator access that he’d uncovered earlier that day at Harper’s apartment in Docklands.

“I’ve been helping the police track down the killer. The website he was using to learn all about his victims so that he could set up his lures was SecretlyWatchingYou.”

“The same site Crooner42 got you to pentest this week.”

Brody searched through the user database for Ronald Keeble’s details.