The Four Corners of the Earth

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

Karin took, what was for her, an immeasurable amount of time before even showing the flash drive to a computer terminal. She was well aware that somebody of Tyler Webb’s wealth and reach could have installed all manner of tech on his computer — especially the one containing every dirty little secret he’d garnered through the years.

So here she was.

A girl. A computer. A flash drive.

How many names have they monickered me with in the past? Data Girl. Web Head. HacKaz. Long ago, far away, but still relevant.

Dino and Wu stood looking on, surveillance around the house already as good as it was ever going to get. They had sensors at every approach, and plans with backup strategies for both hard and soft evac situations. All three soldiers were currently at a low ebb — battered, bruised, healing slowly from the San Francisco jaunt. They were also hot, hungry and lacking funds. On Karin’s guarantee, they had gambled everything on this. Right from the very beginning.

“Time to prove your worth,” she said.

The early years never left her, the long duration she’d turned her back on the world. Self-destruction was one way to redemption.

“We believe in you,” Dino said.

She smiled grimly as she inserted the flash drive and watched the large screen. She’d designed everything to work as fast as it was able and now there was absolutely no lag as a prompt flashed up onto the screen:

Continue?

Damn right.

She sat down and got to work. The keyboard rattled, her fingers flashed, the screen flickered. She didn’t expect to find or even understand it all immediately — there were many gigabytes of information — and that was why she’d made everything as ultra-secure as she possibly could before booting the drive up. She’d also prepped several offshore accounts and a couple of Los Angeles based ones, where they may be able to deposit some quick cash. Of course, she remembered everything from her time at SPEAR; it was what had happened since Webb’s death that may throw a wrench into the works.

Ignoring the bland but ominous title Documents for now and focusing on Finance, she made her fingers and the screen a whirlwind of information. Dino gasped as she fought to keep up.

“Sheeyit, and I thought I was a whiz at Sonic. I bet you get that prickly little fucker shooting all over the place, eh?”

“You know Sonic? From the Master System or the Mega Drive? Aren’t we all a bit young for that?”

Dino looked blank. “PlayStation, dude. And retro is better.”

Karin shook her head, forced to smile. “Oh yeah, that’s totally retro, dude.”

Delving into the finance file, she soon brought up account numbers, sort codes and key commands. She found source banks, most of them offshore. She found over seventy five different accounts.

“Unbelievable.”

Dino pulled up a chair. “Yeah, I have trouble keeping track of two. And they’re both empty!”

Karin knew she didn’t have the time to investigate every account. She needed to whittle it down and cherry-pick the best. Cleverly, she’d already written a simple program that would trawl through a file and highlight the accounts with the highest numbers. She unleashed it now and waited five seconds.

The three flashing blue bars looked promising.

“Let’s have a look at you.”

The first account flashed up. It was based in the Caymans, unused, and showed a balance of thirty thousand dollars. Karin blinked. You have to be joking! She’d been aware that Webb had cut ties at the end in his reckless quest for the treasures of Saint Germain — he’d gone it alone and used massive funds to stay out of sight and enlist an army near the end, he’d paid off thousands to call in every last favor — but she hadn’t expected his accounts to be this badly depleted.

In any case, she quickly sent the thirty thousand to a local LA bank account she’d already set up.

Risky, but if we’re quick we can withdraw and take the cash. If anyone was monitoring the account, which seemed unlikely given its low balance, they should be able to make it happen before they caught on.

She moved on to the next account, saw a balance of eighty thousand dollars, and had to admit that was better. But nothing like the millions she’d been expecting. At her side, Dino remained silent. She took the cash and held her breath as she clicked on to the final account.

Bloody hell. Fifteen thousand?

She was forced to run through the remaining accounts, netting by the end a sum of around one hundred and thirty thousand dollars. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t lifelong security type money. This was taking time, and she was wary of staying plugged in any longer, but the scarcity of the pickings so far made the next step a necessity.

“Blackmail fodder,” she said.

“I ain’t comfortable with that,” Dino said.

“Depends who it is,” Karin pointed out. “And what they’ve done. We can expose the properly evil bastards — maybe through some kind of new, dedicated website — and discuss what we might do to those that could stand to lose a few quid.”

Wu shook his head. “What?”

“A few dollars. Centarinos. Wonga. Shit, where do we start?”

The new file contained pages and pages of names, each highlighted in bold and accompanied by a photo and date. Karin scrolled down the list. “Right, well, they’re in alphabetical order. That’s something, at least. Any preferences?”

“I don’t know any rich guys,” Dino said. “Let alone any to blackmail.”

“I recognize some of those names,” Wu said as Karin scrolled steadily from A-C. “Celebs. Sports stars. TV personalities. Jeez, who was this Webb guy?”

“Who was he?” Karin felt the hatred rekindle. “One of the worst, creepiest and most altogether powerful creatures that ever lived. Evil incarnate, with the influence to touch any life on the planet.”

“I could name a couple of those right now,” Dino said.

“Yeah, so could anyone. But those are exactly the assholes whose radars we want to stay underneath.”

Karin checked her system’s firewalls, looked for any early warning signals that someone else was sniffing around. Nothing presented itself, but she wasn’t conceited enough to believe somebody out there wasn’t a whole lot smarter than she.

“Check the entire place,” she said, removing the flash drive. “We need to monitor everything for a day or so from site B. Then, we’ll see.”

It was all part of her careful set up. If anything did go wrong and they were seen, captured or killed it wouldn’t be through lack of preparation. Karin had used every trick in her considerable arsenal and every ounce of her immense intellect to safeguard them.

And my plan. My tiny retribution.

Dino, Wu and she removed themselves from their house in the desert and retired to a small shack they’d found in the middle of nowhere. It had taken weeks of methodical searching, but once found it proved the ideal place to act as a backup hideaway. Wu spent twenty four hours watching the house through CCTV. Karin and Dino drove to LA, withdrew a stash of money and deposited what remained elsewhere, whilst periodically testing her network’s firewalls, its toughness, and the state it was in. Again and again she saw no sign that it had been tested in any way.

Methodical and careful, though; this was the only way they would stay free.

It was a whole thirty hours later when they returned to the house. More checks, and then Karin was ready to work on the flash drive once more.

“Checked the cameras?” she asked.

“Yeah, just do it.”

It took just a few seconds and then, once more, she was scrolling through the list of names. After C of course, came D.

There was no Matt Drake listed.

But there was a separate section for SPEAR. Drake’s name was on the list. So was Alicia Myles. Hayden Jaye and Mano Kinimaka she’d expected. She saw Bridget McKenzie — no surprise. Lancelot Smyth? Hmmm. Mai Kitano. Lauren Fox. Yorgi. Interestingly there was no link to Torsten Dahl.

But there was a link to Karin Blake.

She stared at it for a moment, then chose to ignore it for now. Other links associated with the SPEAR team and added to the foot of the front page were those belonging to Kimberly Crowe, the Secretary of Defense; Nicholas Bell, the prisoner; and a whole sub menu entitled Family/Friends.

Holy shit, this guy really went to town on them.

Good.

The first click just had to be on the name: Matt Drake.

Her gaze flickered, flinched and then started to widen; her eyes widened to the size of saucers.

“Fuck me,” she whispered fearfully. “Oh. Fuck. Me.”