Royal Heist

6

Tony Driscoll arrived home from his holiday, tanned, jet-lagged, and exhausted. He contacted David Lyons’s office straightaway and spent two hours on the phone. He was sitting in a stupor, staring at the walls, when Liz barged in.

“Tony, have you unpacked?” she asked.

“You know I haven’t,” he snapped.

“Well, you can’t skive in here. You have to put out your dirty laundry for Mrs. Fuller. I’m not going to do it.”

“I’ve got a few business problems to take care of.”

“Can’t they wait? We only just got home.”

“I guess they can,” he said, standing, but when she left the room he sat down again. Until now he had maintained a positive attitude, sure that some money could be salvaged. Having been told bluntly by Lyons’s assistant that there was no hope of recouping a cent, he felt sick.

James Wilcox had discovered the same thing. The family had arrived home in Henley only to learn that his basement was flooded. Now he stared at the mounting bills. His numerous maintenance checks to his ex-wives were months overdue. Rika, irritable from the long journey, kept asking him to arrange a grocery delivery from Tesco, but he couldn’t think straight. One minute he had been worth millions, the next peanuts. He had not anticipated it would be this bad.

Rika slapped the grocery list down in front of him.

“This is gonna cost a fucking fortune, Rika. We’ve got eight different types of cereal here!”

“Vell, that is vat they eat!”

“From now on they’re all gonna eat the same one.”

Rika glared at him and slammed out of the room.

He was in real trouble. He had even remortgaged the house to throw more money into leadingleisurewear. He began to contemplate how he would react if de Jersey suggested another heist. It had been easy to agree with Driscoll to walk away, but now-with six kids, four ex-wives, a Ukrainian mistress, and only a garage full of vintage cars as collateral-he was heading for bankruptcy. If things got any worse, he would be hard-pressed to say no to anything de Jersey suggested.

De Jersey told his wife he would be away for a couple of days on business, staying at his club. Soon he would have to make his plans from a new location; it was too dangerous to work at home. He flew by helicopter to London, and by midmorning he was seated in a student lecture hall attending a computer-programming seminar. Afterward he approached the young lecturer and asked him to list some books that would assist in his training.

Armed with two bulging carrier bags, de Jersey went to the St. James’s Club and sat in the lounge reading the complex manuals. Realizing that he still needed assistance, he hurried off to St. Catherine’s Church for the lecture suggested by Elvis in the chat room.

The hall was small and freezing, inhabited by a clutch of nerdy figures with plastic coffee cups and cling-wrapped sandwiches. A plump blond girl munching on a Mars bar collected five pounds from each of them and handed out a computer printout of the evening’s agenda; the session was to be conducted by someone called Raymond Marsh. “You been here before?” the blonde asked de Jersey.

“No.”

“You got a contact who got you here?”

“Yes.”

“The name? I’ve got to fill in the attendance list.”

“Elvis,” De Jersey said, feeling rather foolish.

“Okay, then. Sit down. He won’t be long-baby-sitter didn’t show up. What’s your name?” She was ready with her pen.

“Philip Simmons,” he said.

By eight thirty, sixteen people were hunched in thick coats over tiny laptops as they waited on plastic chairs. De Jersey glanced to the rear of the hall; he saw a strange apparition. This was Raymond Marsh, but it was clear he was known otherwise as Elvis. As Marsh reached into the cardboard box and pocketed the cash, de Jersey deduced that the blonde was his wife.

It was hard not to stare at Marsh’s thin, pointy face, with its protruding chin and slanted cheeks. The hair, combed in from both sides to form a quiff, was held in place by thick layers of lacquer. He wore a worn black leather jacket, skintight drainpipe trousers, and winklepickers. He checked that the computer was running correctly through the overhead projector. “Right. We’re all set. I’ve done some printouts that should answer yer queries from last week, right? I gorra bit worried about last session, so any questions needin’ going over like, now’s the time to do it.” He had a thick Liverpudlian accent.

A tall, thin man in the front row put up his hand. “We were talking last week about hacking techniques being employed to protect computer systems rather than for criminal purposes. Could viruses ever be used for protection?”

Marsh swept a hand over one side of his head. “Well, there has been talk of creating good viruses in the future that, as with human diseases, will increase the host’s immune system.”

When a large, jolly-looking woman asked a question about the approaching DEFCON conference in America, Marsh launched into an enthusiastic description of the underground hacking convention. Much of what was being discussed was alien to de Jersey. He paid close attention to Marsh; he obviously had a high IQ, but his manner of speaking and delivery seemed to suggest low social skills. De Jersey wondered if the man worked in the information technology industry.

Raymond Marsh was employed as a telephone engineer but hacked and explored the Internet in his spare time, so de Jersey hadn’t been too far off the mark. He was so deeply immersed in his analysis of the man that he jumped when he heard another audience member asking about identity protection and creating fake identities on the Net.

“Of course, mate, it’s stupid to use your own details,” said Marsh. “You can build up all kinds of identities in loads of countries and create plausible histories for all of ’em. One of my own Net IDs is an Australian schoolboy. He gets up to all sorts! This morning I hacked into a school in Adelaide, registered him, and created school reports for him. Gave him straight A’s. I’ve traveled all around the world under dozens of different names, but I’ve never even left the country. I’m a grandmother of five in Russia, an S & M enthusiast in Ireland, and a fish farmer in Alaska. And there’s no way they can catch me because I have a satellite linkup courtesy of work, which I use whenever I’m on the Net so I can easily break the link. Working for a telecommunications company comes in handy when you’ve got this hobby!”

Everyone in the audience chuckled, but de Jersey sat mesmerized. This was perfect for his needs. He had to draft Raymond Marsh to help. The question was, Could he trust him?

At the meeting’s end, de Jersey slipped out, mind reeling. It was pouring, and he caught a taxi. Back in the club, he sat in the reading room going over the handouts from the meeting, which included Marsh’s e-mail address, home phone number, and address.

The next morning, when he phoned, a rather laconic female voice replied, “He’s at work.”

“Is there a number I can contact him on? It’s important.”

“His work don’t like him taking personal calls. If you gimme your number, I’ll get him to call you, or he’ll be home about six.”

“I’ll call later, thanks.”

It was almost six o’clock when de Jersey took the Tube to Marsh’s home in Clapham. It was a small semidetached house with a bright pink Cortina, sporting two large, fluffy dice in the windscreen, parked outside. De Jersey walked up the path and rang the doorbell. The blond woman from St. Catherine’s Church answered.

“Is he back yet?”

“You the bloke what called earlier?” she asked, glancing back to where a baby was screeching.

“Yes. I’m sorry if this is inconvenient.”

“Well, it is a bit, he’s not home yet.” Suddenly she looked past de Jersey and waved. “Tell a lie, he’s behind you.”

De Jersey turned as Marsh, wearing an overall under a thick tweed coat, walked up the path. “Who’s this?” he asked.

“Dunno, come to see you.” He kissed his wife before she ran to the baby.

De Jersey passed him one of his Philip Simmons’s “Computer Electronics Inc.” business cards.

“What’s this about then?” he asked de Jersey.

“A job you may be interested in.”

“Already got one, mate.”

“I need information and help with a project I’m working on.”

“Information? I got plenty of that. My mind’s full of it, but dunno if it’s the stuff you’re looking for.”

“It would be helpful to know your experience,” de Jersey said.

Marsh settled himself on the doorstep. “I work as a phone engineer now. Got into phone hacking in the early eighties, phoning everywhere long distance for free. Then I progressed to computers. This company hired me out to local firms to set up their networks, but the job bored me rigid. So me and my wife packed up, came to London, and I went back to phones-all legit now, of course. It’s all computerized anyhow. Like to keep the computer hacking for my spare time. Is this the kind of stuff you want to know?”

“Yes. Go on.”

Marsh was obviously not going to invite him in. “You wanna sit with me in me car?” he asked.

Marsh leaned back in his seat, stroking the Cortina’s white leather steering wheel. The more he talked about himself, the more arrogant he became. An undercurrent of danger hung about him, an anger whose source de Jersey couldn’t determine.

“So, Mr. Simmons, what is it you’re after, then?” he asked.

“You,” de Jersey said.

“Well, I don’t come cheap.”

“I didn’t think you would.”

Marsh took another look at the business card.

“I was there last night at St. Catherine’s. I’d like you to help me build a fake identity and make it seem as real as possible.”

“Anything’s possible, mate.”

Acting on Marsh’s detailed instructions, de Jersey withdrew 130,000 pounds from his depleted accounts. He set up a post-office box and topped up the account in the name of Philip Simmons. From now on he would carry out all his financial transactions on-line.

While the bank assessed his details, de Jersey waited, and when everything was cleared, he rented a flat in Kilburn on-line. The company sent his keys to his post-office box, and de Jersey arranged for the domestic bills to be paid via the Net.

Two days later he returned to London, collected the keys, and traveled by bus, an experience he hadn’t had in years, to Philip Simmons’s new abode. The flat was two flights up and as seedy as he had expected for the price he was paying. It had that stale-food smell and orange-colored, foam-filled furniture. At least the bathroom and kitchen were clean and in working order. He had purchased two mobile phones in the name of Simmons, via the Internet, and another computer. The deliveries arrived within half an hour of each other. Now all de Jersey needed was a link to his own computer that could be destroyed at a moment’s notice. For this he would have to have more help from Raymond Marsh.

By the time de Jersey returned home, Christina was in bed. He got in and nuzzled her neck. “Sorry I’m so late. It’s been another day of meetings. David Lyons certainly left me in a mess.”

She turned sleepily. “Tell me about it in the morning.”

“I love you,” he whispered.