Butterfly Stomp Waltz

Chapter 28

28

Sir Jack Noah has the corner office in his own home. Square shadows loom throughout the room, backlit by the patio pole lamps beyond the two walls of bulletproof glass. Beyond the pole lamps, though, the Portugal night transforms trees to vaguely menacing haystacks and the sky to a deep lightless bowl.

The ceiling can lights flicker on as I cross the threshold, flipping the windows to mirrors. The mahogany panel on the other walls probably costs more than everything I’ve ever owned. Gold-framed awards and certificates make a neat array on one wall, opposite the low wooden filing cabinets. The tightly woven wool carpet sinks under my feet. There’s only one chair, behind the desk, a leather throne on wheels. You come to see Noah, you stand before him. Glass-fronted bookcases display tomes meant to advertise how well-read Noah is, but I doubt he’s actually read many of them. Everything I see is more expensive than the last. Noah’s probably got cocaine on tap somewhere in here. The whole place stinks of expensive brandy, hand-rubbed leather, and that special kind of decadence that comes with too much money.

Once Jacka stumbles in, the smell of blood covers up most of that. Jacka’s usually pale face has faded to an albino mask, lips bleached pale pink. His own blood drenches the right side of his green-and-gray camouflage shirt. A grotesque gauze-and-duct-tape bandage covers his right shoulder. He’s quivering with the effort of staying on his feet.

Rob follows Jacka closely, closing the weighty door behind him. The lock clicks back into place. “Will leaning do?” Rob whispers to Jacka. “Here, try the door.”

Jacka puts his good shoulder against the door and relaxes just a little. The trembling fades but doesn’t stop.

No time for sympathy. The best thing I can do is get us out of here. I see what I’m looking for, right on top of the vast glass-topped desk: a computer terminal.

No—two computer terminals.

Rob nods at me and begins searching the room.

I dash up to the desk and push the luxurious leather chair aside to get at the keyboards. One is a pretty standard consumer system, the other a commercial-grade Unix workstation. Both computers are on, both show a login screen. Each monitor is connected to a separate computer tower beneath the desk.

Swinging my pack off my back, I get to work. The Unix workstation with the corporate network login screen is tempting, but what we want is personal.

I recognize the login screen on the PC. The machine’s hard drive is encrypted, with software that actually works. If I kill the power, if I crash the system, the only way that computer will boot again is with Noah’s passphrase. No, not password. Noah probably has to type a couple paragraphs to bring this machine up. Software like this protects the machine when it’s off.

But like most execs who use encryption products, Noah didn’t bother to shut down his machine when he was done using it. He wants to start each day easily.

That gives us an opening.

Sliding under the desk, I carefully flip the decorative panel on the front of the PC open to expose the ports. USB, yes, headphone jack, but—there. A high-speed data interconnect port.

People think that those special ports are for really good video. That’s correct, but many of those ports give access deep into the core of the machine—not just the software, but the actual hardware.

Maybe I can’t log in with the monitor and keyboard, but I can twiddle the computer’s brainstem until the keyboard lets me in.

Or until the computer crashes, making this whole night irrelevant.

But, hey. No pressure.

I slide the proper cable and my tiny laptop out of my pack. Hook everything up.

Push Jacka’s pained breathing out of my mind.

Ignore Rob.

Everything narrows down to me and the computer and my fingers dancing across the cramped keyboard.

Noah probably spent fifteen, twenty thousand dollars on software to secure this machine.

Call it ten thousand dollars a minute. Because in less than two minutes of rapid work, the login screen disappears and all Noah’s files are spread out before me like a Roman banquet.

I don’t study the machine. I hit the keys to dump all Noah’s documents straight to my computer, still plugged into the high-speed port beneath the desk. The little umpteen billion files remaining box appears, the progress bar groaning across the screen.

Six minutes to copy everything.

It could be worse. At least Noah didn’t keep a bunch of pirated movies on his computer. Those things take forever.

Jacka’s still leaning against the door. His breath has turned to hurried panting. Rob’s helping him sip a bottle of water. Without facing me Rob says, “Time?”

“Six minutes, computer time.” Which meant anything from three minutes to six days.

Rob nodded. “Bradley, the moment Beaks has everything, get us an exit.”

Bradley answers in my earpiece. “Ack.”

Seeing Jacka strain to swallow wrenches my conscience. Deke, that whole crew, dead thanks to Noah. Noah had taken out a couple of gunmen Rob had asked to join us. Dominic Jacka wasn’t my favorite person, but I didn’t want him to die taking Noah out. The only one I want to hurt is Noah.

I leave the computer alone. Poking around the system will only slow down the copy. Extract the data, get out of Portugal, and I can scrutinize the files at my leisure. Figure out how to hurt Noah. Hurt him bad.

Behind the agonizingly slow copying files progress bar, Noah’s desktop shows grassy hills leading to steep but stumpy mountains. Kind of Asian looking. The left side of the screen has a neat column of program icons, while the right features many more columns of icons representing files. The programs he’s left open are at the bottom of the screen, like you’d expect.

The only thing Noah’s left running is his email. Noah doesn’t read his email in a web browser—he downloads it to a computer, where he can control it. Probably has it downloaded to multiple computers, though. This one here, a laptop, something in a corporate office. It’s still more private than letting Google handle it, sure. But each computer is an access point. My email only lives on a machine that travels with me.

Noah’s email is already active. Bringing the program to the foreground won’t slow down the copy.

And I can’t stand listening to Jacka’s pained heaving for air.

The subject lines fill the screen: tax planning, contract evaluations and proposals, acquisitions—

A message from two days ago bears a subject latest Eckhart data.

My blood turns to ice.

Everybody knows my real name is Billie Carrie Salton.

But not many people know that Deke’s real name wasn’t Deke. His first and middle names were Donald Edward. His last name?

Eckhart.

I can barely breathe. Fresh sweat sticks my shirt to my back and makes the thug’s blood soaking my clothes even more gummy. Had Deke been personally targeted? Had Noah staged the original Newcastle raid just to murder Deke?

I go to open the message. My hand is shaking so badly I get something on Myanmar taxation instead. I empty my lungs, refill them, and concentrate on getting the right message.

I have to read the first line twice to understand it.

Mr. Don Eckhart’s enthusiastic cooperation continues unabated.