Point of Contact

53

She dashed toward the ten-story cylindrical building in the drenching downpour beneath her big black Nike golf umbrella. Her glasses steamed in the cool air. She was shrouded in a fashionably flowered purple hijab, the one immodesty the childless widow allowed herself. Beneath her rain gear and traditional clothing she cradled a small package wrapped in paper and twine. She had retrieved it from a post box just thirty minutes before. It came with instructions.

Sania Masood ignored the furtive glances of the men and Western-styled women entering and exiting the glass doors to the BMKG, the Indonesian Agency for Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics.

She wiped the steam from her glasses as she stood in the security line, careful to keep her gaze directed away from others, especially the shameless women. The line was longer than usual. Of all mornings, she told herself. The one morning she could not be late to work.

Inshallah.

When Sania neared the security desk, the uniformed guard recognized her instantly — they both attended the same mosque, just fifteen minutes south of here. She flashed a badge. The guard nodded slightly and with a nonchalant hand waved her around the magnetic metal detector so that she need not pass through it. This had been arranged.

Now all she had to do was get to the fourth floor.

In the heavy rain and jammed traffic, it took Jack and Paul twice as long to make the short drive from their guesthouse to Dalfan HQ. The radio news reported that the big tropical storm in the Java Sea had stalled. Meteorologists had originally predicted it would head west, skirting far below Singapore but crashing into Jakarta. That stalled storm kept dumping rain on Singapore, however, and the streets were starting to flood, snarling traffic even further.

They arrived at Dalfan, Paul’s limp worse than ever. Everybody was anxious and distracted by the storm. Jack and Paul were waved through security with a perfunctory check. Paul required a bathroom stop on the way to their offices. Bai wasn’t in yet — that was a lucky break. Paul fell into his chair and jumped onto his desktop, Jack leaning over his shoulder. Paul entered his randomized passcode and logged in. For the next twenty minutes his chubby fingers sped across the keys, aided by the occasional mouse click. He opened file after file at blazing speed.

“You know your stuff,” Jack said, checking around to see if they were being watched through their glass wall. So far, so good.

“Well, that’s a great big chocolate banana.”

“What?”

“The file is gone.”

“The QC file you found before?”

“Yup. It’s flat-out gone.”

“You sure you’re looking in the right place?”

Paul turned his head. They were practically nose to nose. “Seriously?”

“Maybe somebody moved it.”

“More likely deleted it. I’ve already done a global search. It’s gone.”

“Couldn’t it just have been renamed?”

“I did a search for files in the folder. Key words, you name it. Nothing.”

Jack stood. “We need that file. It’s the last shred of evidence we have.” He paced around for a moment. “Wouldn’t Dalfan have some sort of a backup system? To protect against data loss?”

“Yeah, sure. Good idea. Gimme a few minutes.” Paul tapped keys furiously.

Jack decided to do some nosing around himself. He crossed over to his office and logged on to his computer and did some searching on his own. After twenty minutes, he gave up. He couldn’t find anything. He returned to Paul’s office.

Paul scratched his comb-over, frustrated. “I found the backup system they use — it’s hardware, located in this building, not cloud-based. Near as I can tell, they keep the previous thirty days available on their backup drive, then probably download anything before that and put it in some kind of permanent storage somewhere. That file should’ve been in the thirty-day backup, but it’s not. Somebody used a bot or some other automated sniffer to find every version of that file and destroy them all.”

“Then we’re screwed.”

“Whoever built the file originally did it to keep track of the transactions. It’s not likely they’d want to lose those records — otherwise, why keep them in the first place?”

“So whoever deleted those files made a hard copy before they deleted them?”

“That would be my guess. I can’t tell you who or where, but at least there’s the possibility — a remote one, I grant you — that you can someday recover the data.”

About that moment, Bai came into view, beelining for Paul’s office. Jack heard his phone ringing in his office next door. Only Yong or Lian had ever called him. Might be important.

“I’d better grab that.” Jack dashed over to his desk phone.

Paul was grateful. He had clandestine work to do this morning, and he didn’t want Jack snooping around while he did it. Unfortunately, Bai wasn’t going to give him much room to maneuver, either. There was still more than twelve hours to pull this off, but suddenly that didn’t seem like such a long time.

Bai shook his raincoat off and hung it up on the coat rack next to Paul’s, still dripping wet. “Good morning, Mr. Brown.”

“Hello, Bai. How was your evening?”

“Not good.” Bai dropped into his chair, exhausted. “Didn’t sleep very well.”

“The storm?”

“Yeah. And my mother. She’s very worried. She thinks the storm will turn into a big typhoon that will come hit us.”

“The weatherman doesn’t think so.”

“But she does. And she’s a wu.”

“A what?”

“A wu. Eh, maybe ‘witch’ in English. She tells fortunes, sees the future. For fun, mostly. But she’s pretty good.”

“You’re serious?”

“Yes.”

“And she sees a big storm coming?”

“Huge. She’s very scared.”

Paul smiled at the young man. “I think you’re the one who’s a little bit scared.”

“I’m worried for my mom. My dad is dead. No brothers or sisters. So I look out for her.”

Paul watched Jack hang up the phone, then head back to Paul’s office.

“Everything okay?”

“That was Lian. She wants to see me.”

“About what?”

“Turns out a Dalfan van was stolen and wrecked last night.”

Paul feigned surprise. “Really?”

“Yeah, crazy, eh? There we were, you and I, watching the local news together and then going to bed, and while we were sleeping, all of that happened.”

Paul nodded his understanding of Jack’s coded alibi. “Yeah, crazy.”

“A stolen van?” Bai said. “I don’t believe it. Cars don’t get stolen in Singapore.”

“Even Oz has its flying monkeys,” Jack said.

Bai frowned. “Excuse me?”

“Never mind.” He turned to Paul. “She’s waiting for me on the third floor. I’ll talk to her, then come back here so we can pick up where we left off. Okay?”

“Take your time. I’ve got plenty to do.”

Jack nodded and headed for the elevators.

Now Paul had to deal with Bai.

But how?