The Hunter

CHAPTER 44

Paris, France

Monday

10:07 CET

Rebecca returned to her apartment with a bag of groceries. She locked the door before walking to the kitchen, where she placed the bag down on a work surface, poured herself the last of the coffee from the pot, and drank it bitter and lukewarm. In the lounge she stood in the gloom for a moment before opening the drapes to let some light in. Outside, Paris was grey and depressing. Her hair was wet and lank from the rain. She knew she looked awful without having to look in the mirror.

Paranoia made her check that all the windows were closed and locked. The apartment was old, the walls, floor, and ceiling thick. Little noise found its way into the space and the quiet unnerved her. She took a breath in an attempt to control her anxiety. No one knew about the apartment. It wasn’t hers. It had belonged to her uncle and was now the property of one of her cousins. She’d stayed for a few weeks a couple of years ago when she was given a set of keys and told to stay whenever she liked. Her cousin lived outside the city and didn’t rent it out but was too sentimental to sell it.

She tapped the space bar on her laptop to get rid of the screen saver. She’d left it powered on continuously — with only a laptop’s processing power the code-breaking software she was using could take several days, maybe even weeks, to breach the cipher on Ozols’s memory stick. Unsurprisingly it hadn’t found the code yet. The software displayed an ever-increasing count of the combinations tried. Billions down, billions more to go. Maybe tens of billions. Maybe more. If so, they would never crack it. Rebecca would die of old age long before the password had been discovered.

She considered e-mailing her friend at Langley who worked for the cryptography department. He had access to supercomputers that could smash open almost any cipher in hours, if not minutes. But her nameless companion was right, doing so would put them too close to their enemies.

Rebecca had entered into the software every word she knew that might have significance to Ozols. As part of the operation she’d been privy to much information on the Latvian, which in turn she’d passed on to his killer. None of those words had helped. The code was probably something with no significance, a blend of numbers and letters for added security.

After making herself fresh coffee, black with sugar, she sat down on a small, creaking armchair in front of a second, recently purchased computer. A similarly new printer rested on the floor.

On the screen was the home page for a financial consultant in London: Hartman and Royce Equity Investments. The home page was minimalist, elegant, with an artist’s impression of the London skyline, at the centre of which was Canary Wharf, where the offices for Hartman and Royce were located.

Rebecca navigated through the site until she found a page listing the company’s executives with some biographical highlights and accompanying photos. She scrolled down and stopped at the name Elliot Seif in the middle of the screen. A click opened up Seif’s details, complete with a larger picture of the man.

She right clicked and saved the picture.

At a nearby phone booth she entered the dialling code for the UK, followed by Seif’s office number.

A woman answered in a polite but serious British accent. ‘Hartman and Royce, Melanie speaking, how can I help you?’

‘I’d like an appointment to see one of your financial advisors please.’

Five minutes later Rebecca left the booth with a next-day appointment booked to see a man called Brice to discuss private investments and her stock portfolio. The appointment would give her the perfect opportunity to get a close look at Seif and survey his offices.

She went back to her research. Already she had street maps of the Canary Wharf district in several scales, as well as photographs of the building and surrounding ones. She had a variety of CIA-supplied software on her computer that allowed her access, some legally but mostly illegally, to a number of useful sources.

Sharing a common language with the UK made things much easier than compiling dossiers on citizens of other European countries. She logged onto the UK electoral-register database to find Seif’s home address. He had homes in both Surrey and London, and a second voter was registered at the Surrey address by the name of Samantha Seif, who Rebecca assumed was Seif’s wife.

After a few minutes of clicking and typing, she had phone numbers and a credit history. Seif’s resume was next. A while later, she had surrounding area maps of the two addresses and a growing list of biographical information.

By the time her companion returned, Rebecca wanted to know everything about Elliot Seif there was to know. She glanced towards the other computer.

The software had stopped counting.