Hide Me

She awarded him a mental thumbs-up. A hacker would work up quite a sweat trying to power-drill his way through that one.

Light bounced against the wall. Riva’s mugshot flickered back into focus, and Harry noted from the information bar that they’d reached slide four in a total of fourteen. She snuck a glance at her watch. Zubiri hadn’t struck her as the show-’n’-tell type. Just how many mugshots did he have?

He hit a key and Riva vanished, replaced by McArdle’s post-mortem shot.

‘We’ve managed to identify four members of Chavez’s crew. McArdle you already know.’ Zubiri flipped ahead to the next photo. ‘And this guy too, though maybe not his name. Washed-up actor called Clayton James. Also known as James Clay and Jimmy Clayton.’

Harry stared up at the sweaty, florid face and the greying thatch of hair. It was the American who’d collected the crew’s winnings at the casino.

‘We’ve run him through our databases, the FBI did the same.’ Zubiri switched in another shot, this one showing Clayton drinking in a bar. ‘Compulsive gambler, dumped by his wife and kids, left the movie business thirty years ago and turned to forgery, theft, embezzlement and serious fraud.’

Harry took in the man’s breezy smile, and the eyes that didn’t quite share in the joke. Zubiri moved on to the next shot, one that Vasco had already shown her: the thirty-something brunette with the stage-make-up look.

‘Virginia Vaughan, known as Ginny.’ Zubiri cued up another slide, showing the brunette standing on the steps of the Gran Casino. ‘She travels on an Irish passport and doesn’t have a record. We think she’s close to Chavez, but we don’t know for sure.’

Harry studied the woman’s striking face. Despite the showgirl pancake, there was something chic about the exotic planes and angles of her face.

Zubiri moved on. Another photo. Vasco had shown her this one, too: a man in his late forties, red-gold hair cut like a Marine’s; straight, bleached brows.

‘Name’s Gideon Ray.’ Zubiri switched to a shot of the man crossing a sunlit plaza. He looked tall and lean, his freckled face creased in laugh lines at some kids kicking footballs through the archways. Belatedly, Harry realized he was in the Plaza de la Constitución. She glanced at Zubiri.

‘Is he another conman?’

Zubiri gave her a level look. ‘All we know about Gideon Ray is that he kills people.’

Harry’s breath caught in her throat. Slowly, her eyes crept back to the smiling man in the photo. ‘Who does he kill?’

‘Drug traffickers, terrorists, an occasional arms dealer.’

‘Why?’

‘We don’t know.’

Harry hesitated. ‘Did he kill McArdle?’

‘They work on the same side, so we don’t think so.’ Zubiri shoved his chair back, stretching out his stocky legs. ‘There might be others in the crew, but if so, you’d meet them when you went inside. Along with Chavez.’

Harry’s brain suddenly felt swamped, the reality of the situation hitting her like a landslide. If she took this job on, she’d have to mix with these people. Talk with them, work with them, do what they do. She’d have to blend in and fool them into thinking she belonged. Harry’s pulse accelerated. She looked up at Gideon Ray’s smiling face; recalled Ginny Vaughan’s glamour-girl mask, and Clayton’s phoney warmth. A part of her wondered what was behind all the camouflage, but mostly she intended never to find out.

Zubiri fixed her with a stern look. ‘Don’t forget, just because you’re undercover doesn’t mean you try to be something that you’re not. If you don’t drink, then don’t drink. If you don’t take drugs, don’t start now. And never say you’ve been to prison if you haven’t.’

Harry nodded, her head still reeling. Zubiri went on.

‘These people are lifelong criminals, and you’d be part of their world. But remember: you can’t commit a crime when you’re undercover. It’s a strict rule. If you do, the department will not support you. Under any circumstances.’

Harry studied his intense, deep-set eyes, the unruly curls, the rumpled shirt, and couldn’t help comparing his bohemian image with Vasco’s slick efficiency. She cocked her head to one side.

‘Did you follow that rule when you worked undercover?’

He blinked once, but didn’t look away. Eventually, he said, ‘Attack is the best form of defence. Always answer a question with a question, and if you have to lie, look up at the ceiling.’

Harry felt her eyebrows knit together, and for the first time, Zubiri smiled.

‘I learned that one from the RUC in Northern Ireland. If you’re asked a question, you usually picture the answer in your mind’s eye, so you look up for it. When you lie, there’s no picture, so you look down. They used it when interrogating terrorists.’

‘You worked undercover in Northern Ireland?’

‘I worked undercover in a lot of places.’

‘Inside ETA?’

The smile faded. ‘For many years. Some of my superiors worried I was really with ETA, working undercover as a cop.’

‘Was Vasco one of them?’

Zubiri blew a characteristic pfft through his lips. ‘Vasco, he’s just a handshaker. Doesn’t know shit about undercover work. Doesn’t even speak Euskara very well. Me, I’ve spent a lifetime hunting criminals, and I’ve found them, too. Some were even wearing the same uniform as me.’

Harry contemplated his large, slab-like face. He returned her look, as if trying to reassess her. That happened to her a lot these days.

Suddenly, he seemed to make up his mind about something. He snapped the laptop shut, then got to his feet, slipping a phone from his pocket.

‘I have a call to make.’

Harry sat upright in her chair. ‘What, no more slides?’ By her calculations, they still had three more to go.

‘None that concern you.’ He shot her a challenging look. ‘Or so my superiors tell me.’

He held her gaze a shade longer than necessary, then turned and headed for the door. She stared after his blocky, shambling frame as he disappeared into the corridor, leaving the door slightly ajar. Harry’s eyes slid back to the laptop.

Three slides left.

None that concern you.

A charge whispered down the back of her neck.

Slowly, she reached across the table and clicked the laptop open.

Chapter 9

Breaking into a laptop was like picking a lock: all you needed was time. Harry shot a glance at the half-open door. Right now, time wasn’t on her side.

She edged around the desk to get a better view. The laptop was locked, password-protected. Her skin prickled as she tuned into Zubiri’s voice outside in the corridor. He was drilling quick-fire Basque at someone on the phone. She eyed the projector, then reached out to switch it off. No sense in magnifying her snooping to wall-sized proportions.

The projector hum died away. The room darkened to a charcoal dusk, somehow intensifying the silence. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard.

Infiltrating a cop’s laptop had to be a crime, whatever way you looked at it. Computer intrusion, property violation, data theft. On the other hand, the police wanted to set her up as a decoy. Surely that gave her dibs on all the facts? Harry shook her head, shelving the debate. Rationalizing her morals was a luxury for later. Right now, she needed information.

She pulled up a chair and thought about Zubiri’s password. She could acquire it any number of ways, but the important thing here was speed. Mentally, she raced through her options.

If she knew more about him, she’d probably hazard a guess. Most people chose easily remembered words, no matter how often you warned them. The dog’s name; maybe the wife’s. Perhaps with a couple of digits appended, as if that would be enough to confound the bad guys. Harry made a face. Zubiri didn’t strike her as the type to care for dogs or wives.

She drummed her fingers on the table. Simple brute force often worked best. Take a crowbar to something and eventually it had to cave in. Her sledgehammer of choice was usually a dictionary attack, a program that stepped through thousands of words hoping to jimmy the lock open with one of them. Trouble was, Zubiri’s password had looked long and complicated. Hitting the right word and number combination could take her several hours. Besides, if there was one thing she’d sensed, it was the man’s fierce national pride. She was willing to bet his password was in Basque, and while her attack program incorporated most foreign dictionaries, his ancient ancestral language wasn’t among them.

Harry stirred in her chair. Zubiri’s voice ramped up outside, his consonants growing harsher. As far as she could tell, he was only a few feet from the door. Her heart cantered for a beat or two. She had one option left, but it was far from ideal. It would leave telltale tracks, unmistakable footprints that would lead directly to her. She darted another glance at the door, then hauled her laptop bag onto the table.

She ripped open the front Velcro pouch, rummaging inside for a USB memory stick, which she jammed into the side of Zubiri’s laptop. Then she stabbed at the power switch and rebooted the machine.

The laptop hummed. She fixed her eyes on the screen, tracking the startup messages. Outside in the corridor, a copier stuttered to life, its mechanical clacking drowning out Zubiri’s voice. Harry kept her gaze on the laptop. Then she hit a key, interrupting its routine, redirecting it to follow orders from her programmed USB stick. The laptop whirred. Sniffed at the stick. Then it swallowed her program like a dog with a biscuit, blithely passing control of its own innards over to Harry.

Her fingers rattled across the keys. She bypassed the rest of the startup grind and instead hooked into the bowels of the hard drive, probing its recesses till she found the list of users permitted to access the machine. There were two: Zubiri and the familiar Admin account, the built-in user that administered the computer. Both had passwords. Both were encrypted. No time to unscramble either one of them now.

But then again, she didn’t need to. Why go to the trouble of decrypting cyphertext when she could erase the password altogether? Remove the lock, and you were left with an open door.

With a few deft strokes, Harry blanked the Admin password, leaving Zubiri’s intact. Then she whipped out the USB stick and rebooted the laptop one more time.

Her spine buzzed. Leave no trace. That was the cardinal rule for delinquent snooping, but in this case she’d had no choice. The next time an Admin user tried to access the laptop, they’d know its security had been breached. And it wouldn’t take them long to trace things back to Harry.

She closed her eyes briefly, then refocused on the screen. This time, she let the bootup drill run its course, until finally the logon prompt appeared. Username: Admin. Password: Who needed it? The laptop sprang to life and she was in.

Immediately, she keyed in a search for slideshow files. Then she leaned back to wait, straining for sounds of Zubiri over the clatter of the copier outside. For all she knew, he could have finished his call and was on his way back to the room. Her armpits felt damp. Maybe she was wasting her time. After all, what did she expect to find?

The search threw up a single slideshow file. She flipped it open and stared at the words on the opening slide:

TCO NETWORK

TCO. What the hell was that? The slide was dated 5th March, and was accredited to one Chief Inspector Eli Vasco. Harry had been right. Zubiri had borrowed the slides from his boss. She noted the English words and wondered about the intended audience.

She jumped to the next slide, the first photo of Riva Mills, then flashed through the procession of now-familiar faces: the adolescent Riva; Stephen McArdle; Clayton James; Ginny Vaughan; the smiling Gideon Ray. Finally, she reached the last three unseen slides.

The first was a list entitled ‘Criminal Sectors’. Harry’s eyes widened as she scanned down through it: drug trafficking, armed robbery, sex trade, extortion, corruption, human trafficking, smuggling, tax fraud, arts fraud, cybercrime, forgery, gunrunning, commodities fraud.

Harry’s brain reeled. She raced ahead to the next slide. Two lists, the first headed ‘Transnational Criminal Organizations’.

Harry blinked. TCO.

She flashed down the first column, her skin turning clammy: Colombian cartels, Chinese Triads, Japanese Yakuza, Russian Organizatsiya, Italian Mafia. Her vision blurred. The list went on. Jamaican Yardies, Bulgarian Mafiya, Albanian Fares, Mexican Federation, Nigerian organizations.

Jesus. Her eyes darted to the second column: ‘Terrorist Organizations’. Another long list. Japan’s Red Army, Peru’s Shining Path, Colombia’s FARC, IRA splinter groups, Islamic Jihad movements.

Something cold slid into Harry’s stomach. The list read like a roll call for murder and mayhem.

The copier outside juddered to a halt. She jerked her head up. Zubiri had gone quiet. Her gaze shot to the door, but she couldn’t get a fix on him. A torrent of adrenalin drenched through her veins. She flew ahead to the last slide, caught her breath as she took in the single line of text. Then she powered the laptop off, snapped the lid shut and two-stepped back to her seat.

Blood pounded in her ears. Behind her, she sensed Zubiri entering the room. She wiped her palms along her thighs, the last slide still scorched on her retinas like afterimage burn-in:

Criminal Proceeds for last six months: $900 million.

Chapter 10

‘So you still told them no?’

‘Of course I told them no.’ Harry’s initial flash of pleasure at receiving Hunter’s call was definitely starting to wane. ‘Why would I do otherwise?’

‘Exactly. One dead hacker’s enough. No sense in offering up two, right?’

Harry swung her legs off the bed, biting back an unreasonable urge to bait him by saying she might still change her mind. She pictured him at his desk, the phone wedged into his shoulder, his sandy hair spiked up from shoving his hands through it. She flung aside the map she’d been studying when he’d called, then closed her eyes, relenting slightly. Hunter was only concerned for her safety, after all, and if she was honest, her frustrations had nothing to do with him.

It had been a couple of days since she’d talked to Zubiri. She’d left his office, thanking him for his time and firmly declining his proposition. Then she’d walked away, expecting to feel relieved, but instead she’d felt oddly empty.

Her gaze roamed her bland hotel room, sliding over its neutral tones of greys and creams. She felt aimless. Directionless. Soon she’d terminate her arrangement with Riva, and after that, she’d have nothing. No client, no assignment. No reason to stay on in San Sebastián. She fingered the map on the bed beside her, tracing the route she’d marked out in thick red pen. No professional reason, anyway.

‘Harry?’

‘Sorry, you’re right. It’s too risky, I’d be a fool to do it. But I can’t help feeling involved.’

‘Because you found McArdle’s body?’

Harry shrugged. ‘I’d just like to know what happened to him, that’s all.’

‘Your pal Zubiri doesn’t know?’

‘If he does, he hasn’t told me.’

She flashed on Zubiri’s slides: drug trafficking, armed robbery, Colombians, terrorists. Proceeds of $900 million. The scale of it was staggering, but in her humdrum hotel room, the whole thing seemed frankly unreal. She was tempted to relay everything she’d learned to Hunter, but she’d given Zubiri her word that their discussions would remain confidential. Though right now, she wasn’t sure she owed him anything.

Hunter cleared his throat. ‘Look, I know you told me not to go digging, but to hell with that. I went out on a limb and did it anyway. Hold on a second . . .’

She heard the quick snap of pages being turned, and imagined him frowning, his tie probably loosened and his collar undone in the manner of a man who couldn’t abide restrictions.

‘Got it,’ he said. ‘Okay, Stephen McArdle. You know his background: hacker from Belfast, paramilitary connections. Did you know he wanted out?’

‘After eighteen years?’

‘Word is, he was spooked. Turning paranoid. He knew too much about the organizations he worked for. Maybe someone back in Belfast thought so, too.’

Harry recalled what Zubiri had said: Try to leave and you end up dead in a ditch.

‘So you’re saying he was killed by paramilitaries? Which ones?’

‘Take your pick. He seemed to work for them all at one time or another.’

‘Where’d you hear this?’

‘I poked around. Stepped on a few toes, exceeded my jurisdiction.’

‘I thought you were meant to be keeping your nose clean.’

‘I am. But somehow, you keep getting in my way.’

Harry bit her lip. Hunter’s career had almost imploded the previous year after he’d had an affair with a suspect in a fraud case. He’d worked hard to toe the line ever since, but playing by the rules didn’t suit him any more than it did Harry. They’d knocked heads on the case that had taken Harry to Capetown, but he’d seemed inclined to trust her in spite of the lies she’d spun. That hadn’t played out well with his superiors.

He never spoke about the fraud case or the woman he’d slept with, and Harry often found herself wondering what she was like. Someone once said Hunter had a weakness for women who told lies. When she’d put it to him, the look he’d turned on her had been speculative and intense.

Pages crackled on the other end of the phone. He was probably rummaging through a jumble of files, his shirtsleeves rolled up on lightly tanned forearms. She’d told him more than once he should never have been a cop. A demolition expert, maybe, or a war correspondent. Something that required helmets and nerve and a healthy dose of rage. He hadn’t disagreed.

She smiled into the phone. ‘Thanks for digging, Hunter. I mean that. But don’t get your ass in a sling on my account.’

Hunter grunted, barely listening. His first name was Jack, but for some reason Harry never used it. That alone should have told her something about their arms-length relationship. If a relationship was even what they had. Sometimes she wondered if the electricity between them was mostly being generated by her.

‘I lucked out on Chavez,’ he said at last. ‘Couldn’t find anything on him. But I did get hold of some background on your client, Riva Mills. Seems she has a juvie record.’

‘So I’m told.’

Hunter clicked his tongue. ‘You have a real talent for picking crooked clients, you know that, Harry?’

‘Hey, don’t get too sanctimonious. Your track record for sound judgement’s no better than mine, remember?’

He let that one slide. ‘Her home life was no picnic. Mother moved around a lot, ended up in a place known as The Bottoms, some hard-knock neighbourhood along the Ohio River. Riva slept rough half the time, whenever the mother was on the rampage. Got picked up on a couple of minor charges.’ He paused to digest a little more. ‘Jesus. Mother sounds like one crazy bitch. Arrested for assaulting Riva with a meat mallet. Christ.’

Harry’s eyes widened. Could a mother really hate her daughter that much? At least with Miriam, it wasn’t hate. Indifference was more her style.

She recalled suddenly how she used to sit next to her mother as a child, watching her sister claim Miriam’s lap. Somehow, it was never Harry’s turn to be cuddled. But Amaranta was different. Mothered and motherly. She used to complain that Harry was no good at playing dolls, but the fact was, Harry didn’t know how. How could she mother a doll when she’d had no role model to copy?

She listened to Hunter whipping through his report, and wondered why she always pulled away from him. Her lessons about love had come from her mother, and she’d grown up confused about how it was meant to feel. As a child, love had seemed like something angry and cold. Something painful. The psychobabble would have you believe she preferred men who echoed her mother’s low opinion of her. Harry rolled her eyes. Not everything could be her bloody mother’s fault.

Hunter’s voice cut back in. ‘That’s as far as I’d got on Riva. But you don’t need this now anyway, do you?’

Harry picked at a fraying thread on her duvet. ‘I suppose not. But I’ve got a few more names. If you had the time, it might be interesting to find out about them.’

‘What for? You said you weren’t going to do it.’

‘And I’m not. You were right, one dead hacker’s enough. But it doesn’t stop me being curious.’

Hunter was silent. The line crackled with unspoken suspicion, and Harry rushed on, giving him the names of Chavez’s crew.

‘Zubiri doesn’t seem to know too much about them. I shouldn’t really tell you any more, but if you can find anything out, I’d be interested.’

The silence stretched on, like a taut rubber band straining to snap. Eventually, Hunter said,

‘How long will you be out there?’

Harry wound the fraying thread tightly around her thumb, choking off the circulation till her fingertip turned white.

‘Only a few more days.’ She glanced at the map on the bed beside her, eyeing the red-inked route. ‘There’s just something I need to do before I leave.’

Chapter 11

‘I just cannot understand what you’re doing over there. It’s totally bizarre.’

Harry, resisted the urge to make faces into the phone. Her mother had uncharacteristically initiated the call, and so far had used the word ‘bizarre’ three times.

‘I mean, San Sebastián, Harry. Why on earth?’

‘I’ve already explained.’ Harry rounded a bend in the path, her calf muscles knotting against the steep climb. ‘I’ve taken a job here.’

‘In your father’s hometown?’

‘Is there a problem with that?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

Harry heard the testy snick-snick of a lighter as her mother fired up a cigarette. She pictured her mouth puckered like a drawstring purse around it, the sunken cheeks accentuating her dramatic bone structure. Her mother was one of the few people who could still smoke with an air of vintage Hollywood.

Harry tugged her map out of her jeans. She’d been walking uphill for the past half-hour, and by her calculations she had to be almost there. She glanced over her shoulder. The road wound away from her in serpentine loops, the traffic now a distant sigh. She continued along the climbing path, the morning sun toasting her bare arms.

Her mother exhaled a hard, impatient puff. ‘It’s quite a coincidence, though, wouldn’t you say? Ending up there, of all places?’

‘Maybe.’

‘What kind of answer is that? Is it a coincidence or isn’t it?’

Harry winced, and considered dodging the question, but what would be the point? Like a bullet from a machine gun, there’d be plenty more where that one came from.

‘The job’s just one of the reasons I came here,’ she said.

‘Oh?’

Harry closed her eyes briefly. The urge to duck the conversation was overwhelming. She tightened her grip on the phone.

‘It’s really not a big deal, Miriam.’

She’d been calling her mother by her Christian name since the day she’d turned eighteen. Her mother had never objected. In fact, she’d seemed relieved, as if she’d never really liked being called Mum. Not by Harry, anyway.

‘If it’s not a big deal,’ Miriam said, ‘then why all the secrecy?’

‘There’s no secrecy. Look, I just thought I’d take the opportunity to do a little digging, that’s all.’

Miriam sucked hard on her cigarette, the line almost crackling with the hiss of flaring embers.

The Martinez lineage never had much airtime when Harry was growing up. Her mother had always managed to sideline the topic, and oozed disapproval whenever Harry and her father spoke Spanish around the house. Not that it happened often. Her father’s long absences and his stint in prison had turned Harry against him for a while, and until recently she’d been more focused on shutting him out than on embracing his family tree. But now all that had changed.