Conviction

9

The next morning Fisher pulled to a stop in a parking lot overlooking the Our River and shut off the Range Rover’s engine. Vianden had just jumped onto Fisher’s retirement list above even Bavigne. Situated in a shallow valley along the Our River, Vianden and its fifteen hundred residents lived in what looked to Fisher like a Grimms’ fairy tale come to life, with gingerbread-style homes in muted pastel shades, cobbled river walkways, and arched stone bridges. He could see castles rising from the mist atop several nearby hills, their lower reaches shrouded in trees. Fisher shook himself from his reverie and got out.

The night before, after picking up the cache outside Bavigne and meeting with Hytönen, Fisher had first stopped at the airport to retrieve the USB flash drive Vesa had left for him, then checked into the Hilton Luxembourg on rue Jean Engling. He spent an hour going over Vesa’s information. Everything he requested was there: the encrypted frequencies for the Hansen team’s OPSATs; the makes and models of their cell phones; and the team’s rules of engagement—apprehend, maximum priority; lethal force authorized as a last resort. Either Ames had a low threshold for “last resort,” or his live fire at the Esch-sur-Alzette reservoir had been a mistake.

Next Fisher had turned his attention to the cache and found no surprises. A standard equipment loadout: subvocal transceiver; OPSAT; Trident goggles equipped with night-vision, infrared, and electromagnetic settings; SC pistol; SC-20K AR MAWS (Modular Assault Weapon System) with all the goodies, including ring airfoil grenades, Sticky Shockers and Cameras, and gas grenades; Mark V Tactical Operations RhinoPlate suit; and six grenades (three XM84 flashbang, two M67 fragmentation, and one AN-M8 HC White Smoke). He checked each piece for damage; field stripped, cleaned, and reassembled the weapons; then ran internal diagnostics on the OPSAT and Tridents. Everything was operational; everything felt familiar. It felt good to be back in the saddle, as it were.

The scooter shop was two blocks away, beside a restaurant whose patio jutted over the river’s slowly churning waters. Having called ahead, Fisher found the proprietress, a matronly gray-haired woman named Vima, ready for him. She spoke Luxembourgish and a little stilted German, so their conversation was limited, but she beamed and nodded as Fisher inspected the sky blue Vespa scooter, then paid cash for a day’s rental. Within minutes he was puttering down Vianden’s main street, which took him northwest out of town along a series of switchback roads. Twenty minutes later he was descending again, the trees alongside the road giving way to farmers’ fields; the dirt was coal black.

Ernsdorff’s estate sat on the western side of a kidney-bean-shaped lake a few miles out of town along with four other mansions, each one occupying a section of the southwest and southeast shorelines. Fisher tooled around the lake’s perimeter, occasionally stopping to take pictures, taking care to get plenty of shots of Ernsdorff’s acreage. Even from the opposite shore, almost two miles away, Fisher could see glimpses of the Challenge Discovery Park: labyrinthine rope courses, wooden bridges, vertical climbing walls, and, jutting from the treetops like multicolored circus tents, rainbow-striped tree-house roofs.

Fisher spent two hours exploring the lake, using his watch’s timer function, his camera, and the Vespa’s odometer to stake out angles and distances he would use that night. Aside from a chest-high, rough-hewn brick wall running along the perimeter of the grounds and a wrought-iron driveway gate set on motorized rollers, he saw no physical security measures. The trees were thick enough, however, that his Canon’s zoom lens could penetrate only a few hundred yards into the grounds; if there were guards, dogs, or more fencing, they were closer to the house itself. These were bridges he would cross when or if they arose.

Shortly before 11:00 A.M. Fisher saw a white panel van come down the driveway through the trees and stop at the gate, which rolled back to let the van pass. As it turned south, heading back toward Vianden, Fisher zoomed in and snapped a dozen pictures. He called them up on the LCD screen.

On the van’s side in red letters were the words DATA GUARDIANS INC.

He returned to town and, after having lunch at the restaurant next door to the scooter shop, Fisher followed Vima’s directions to Scheuerof, a neighboring village a mile to the north, where he found a family-owned KOA-style campground. It was empty save for a mid-twenties blond couple in red, green, and yellow Rastafarian knit caps, swinging from a pair of canvas chairs suspended from a tree beside their tent. They gave him a wave; he waved back, the brim of his baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. He found a suitable site at the campground’s northernmost boundary. Hemmed in on all sides by thick trees, and accessible by only two footpaths, it lay within a half mile of the bridge Fisher had spotted earlier on Google Earth.

He set up camp — a tent, lawn chair, cooler, and a clothesline from which he hung a few items of clothing — then called Vesa Hytönen’s apartment, got the machine, demanded that “Heinrich” pick up immediately, then cursed, and hung up. Next he used his iPhone to log into the Lycos e-mail account, typed up his query, and saved it as a draft.

While waiting for a response, he went for a hike, using his handheld Garmin 6 °Cx GPS unit to time himself and mark waypoints. From his campsite to the lake it was 1.32 miles — forty minutes at a leisurely pace. He added 30 percent to that figure to account for darkness and another 30 percent to account for potential pursuers. So, roughly two hours and fifteen minutes round trip. He saw only three other hikers, none of them equipped with anything more robust than a lumbar pack. Day travelers. In all likelihood he’d have no company on the trail later.

He checked his watch. Eight hours until nightfall.

He spent the remainder of the afternoon at his campsite, sitting by the fire, eating hot dogs, drinking beer (non-alcoholic to keep a clear head), whittling, and generally behaving like a normal camper until six o’ clock, when he climbed into his tent and closed his eyes. He was awoken ten minutes later by his iPhone’s incoming e-mail chime. It was Vesa:

Data Guardians Inc. (DGI) a privately owned Luxembourg company. Specializes in home networking, information security, and storage. Our mutual friend investigated. According to internal company records, DGI installed IBM System x3350 server two months ago; routinely scheduled maintenance call logged this date. Service-fee schedule suggests special-needs installation. Details, countermeasures, penetration software available no later than 2100 local time via uplink. Remote penetration problematic; physical link required.

Fisher mentally translated Vesa’s message: DGI designed and installed a beefed-up file-storage server for Yannick Ernsdorff. Fisher’s OPSAT would be updated with everything he needed to do the hack, but he had to be plugged into Ernsdorff’s server first.

He slept for five hours, waking shortly after eleven. He strolled to the bathroom/shower shelter at the center of the grounds, then walked back. No one else had checked in during the day. His neighbors, the blond couple, had retired to their tent for the night, and he could see their silhouettes in the yellow glow of a lantern.

Back at the Range Rover, he carried the Pelican case into the tent. He powered up the OPSAT, waited for it to run through its self-diagnostics, then called up the COMMS screen and initiated the uplink. As promised, the update was waiting. He watched the progress bar crawl across the screen until it reached 100 percent, then waited as the OPSAT recycled. He took a moment to review the package, which included a spec sheet and schematic of the IBM System x3350, then read through the hack instructions. Next he called up the map of the area and punched in the latitudes and longitudes he’d recorded throughout the day; they appeared on the OPSAT’s screen as pulsing red pushpins. He tapped the one representing his campsite and the screen zoomed and recentered: WAYPOINT 1 RECORDED. He set the OPSAT to STANDBY. He donned his tac-suit and gear, then returned the case to the Range Rover and locked up. Finally, he scanned the campgrounds with NV and IR and found it still empty, save for his Rastafarian friends, who appeared to be asleep, their prostrate forms coming through in infrared shades of blue, yellow, and red.

Fisher ducked onto the trail and headed out.