Headhunters

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Ziggy Penn had entered the state of Zen calm he always enjoyed when he did his best hacking. His fingers flashed across the keyboard, code spewing forth almost as if his hands and brain were disconnected. The Starbucks shop was as cookie-cutter as all the other branches he had ever been in. It could have been Seattle or Chicago or London, such was the bland sameness of the décor and the coffee and even the other customers arrayed around the nearby tables.

As it happened, Ziggy was in Gangnam, an upmarket suburb of Seoul. The coffee shop was a short walk from the apartment that he had just visited. It was available for lease, was furnished to a high standard and, most important of all, came with a blazingly fast one-gigabyte-per-second Internet connection. It was also correspondingly expensive with a deposit equivalent to six months’ rent required before it would be removed from the market. Ziggy needed an injection of funds to make the payment, so he had taken a quick detour.

It was an easy hack. A local restaurant that he had visited the day before was lax with its data security, and he infiltrated their servers and copied the credit card details he needed. He would sell those details online. The purchaser would make five or even six figures if he or she was careful; Ziggy would settle for ten thousand bucks.

He paused for a moment and cracked his knuckles.

Ziggy’s leg was still sore, but it was healing well. Matilda had taken him to a hospital in Brgat, where his injury had been treated. There had been no point in trying to disguise what had happened to him. The doctor had identified it as a gunshot wound immediately and had made it clear that the police would have to be called in order that he might be interviewed. Ziggy had not put up any resistance to the suggestion, but, as soon as the man had left him alone to rest for the night, Matilda had smuggled him out of the ward in a wheelchair and then driven him away.

They had travelled north to Zadar and then crossed to Ancona by ferry. From there they had driven north through Italy into Switzerland and on to Bern, where they went their separate ways. Matilda had said that she was going to return to Australia. Ziggy decided upon Korea. He knew what Milton would have advised him to do, and had completed the last leg of his journey in as low-tech a way as possible. He had no cell phone, and he limited his time online to when he could be sure that his activity could not be tracked. He had avoided airports, travelling instead by bus and train to Vladivostok. The trip took nine days and included stops and changes in Basel, Hannover, Berlin, Frankfurt, Brest, Moscow and, eventually, Vladivostok. From there, he took the Eastern Dream ferry to Donghae.

Milton had been uppermost in his thoughts during his long journey. Both he and Matilda had debated whether they should stay in Dubrovnik in the event that he hadn’t died, but, eventually, they had agreed that it was pointless. Milton was dead. He had to be. Matilda had watched him and Bachman topple over the edge and disappear into the sea below. They knew Milton was resourceful and tough, but there had been no sign of him or Bachman. Even if Milton had survived the fall, the current was hungry and strong and it seemed impossible that he could have beaten it.

Staying in the city would have been dangerous, too. Ziggy had given the Rabins enough doubt that they had allowed them to leave, but there was no way of knowing how their orders might evolve now that both Milton and Bachman were dead. Victor Blum might call Ziggy’s bluff. They needed to get away, put as many miles between them and the Rabins as possible.

Ziggy wondered about Matilda. She wasn’t going to hide, and he knew there was no point in trying to persuade her that she should. She was going home and damn the consequences. She would be easy to find. Ziggy admired her courage, but thought she was foolish. He would make himself much more difficult to find.

Milton had bought both of them the opportunity to slip into obscurity. Ziggy knew that, and he was going to take advantage of it even if Matilda was not.

So far, Seoul had been everything that he had hoped it would be. It was friendly, the economy was booming, and the weather was pleasant. It was teeming with people, with more than enough ex-pats that another Westerner could be absorbed into the morass without attracting attention. The apartment he had found was luxurious. The women were attractive and his early forays had suggested that the Internet dating scene was vibrant and, even better, it was ripe for a little optimisation. He thought that he would fit in very well here.

He finished inputting his code, pressed return, and stared at the screen. The data would start to flow within the next few minutes and then he would use it to start to build his new life. He would be sensible, stay out of sight, hack only when he had to — and even then, he would take no chances.

He knew he could be happy here.