I got on the net and said, “Knuckles, what’s the status?”
“You’re good. He’s at an outdoor café eating steak. About a ten-minute walk from you. I’ll give you warning. What do you have?”
“Nothing. He’s either got the drive on him, or he’s created some hiding spot that will take peeling back the floorboards to find. My bet is he has it on him. Probably sleeps with it.”
Shoshana came on and said, “Keep looking. Check his computer again.”
I rubbed my face, knowing it was a waste of time. Jennifer said, “Can’t hurt to look.”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
We went to his small desk, opened a late model Apple MacBook Pro, and were confronted with a password screen. Which wasn’t a problem, because the Israelis had already cracked it with their Mossad magic earlier. I typed in the password they’d given me—Jennys#, believe it or not—and the screen magically cleared. I began going through the files, but knew it was a waste of time. I pulled up the steganography program only to find just the program itself. It had no saved files or other history to exploit.
I looked at Jennifer and said, “Let’s go. We’re getting nothing from this and increasing our risk every second we’re here.”
She was staring at the screen, her eyes scrunched up. I said, “What?”
She leaned over me and said, “He’s using Apple’s Time Machine backup.”
“So?”
“So let’s go back in time.”
I’d spent enough effort with our own hacking crew to have a healthy appreciation of computer network exploits, and I saw exactly where she was headed.
I got on the net and said, “When did we engage Professor today? What time was that? When did he exit?”
Shoshana said, “He left the building right around 1240. Why?”
“Stand by.”
Jennifer got behind the keyboard and pulled up Time Machine, saying, “This thing keeps a backup every hour for twenty-four hours, but it also takes a snapshot every fifteen minutes when the computer is being used.”
I said, “Damn good thing you have a Mac.”
The time machine opened up, a sprout of windows retreating back into the screen like a bad Pink Floyd video, starting with “right now,” then scrolling backward at specific intervals that seemed random. She pulled up 1248 and loaded it, then the steganography program. It looked the same—empty. She repeated the procedure for the next available time, 1232. The stego program came on the screen, only this time it had two pictures in the load spots and a box of text below it.
I said, “Holy shit. You are a genius.”
She smiled and said, “No, we’re just incredibly lucky. Time Machine took a snapshot at the exact moment he was working the program, saving everything just like it was when he was using it.”
My earpiece came alive. “Pike, Pike, Professor is done with dinner. You have about ten minutes.”
I said, “Roger that.” I took a picture of the screen, then said, “Load back to today. Don’t let him know we were here.”
She began to do so when we heard the front door lock being manipulated.
What the hell?
On the net I said, “You have Professor? I got someone coming in.”
“We have him in sight. I say again, we have lock-on.”
Damn it.
I looked at Jennifer and motioned to the computer, telling her to keep working. I went to the door and put my eye to the peephole, seeing a maintenance guy in a uniform. He was working one key after another into the lock, trying to find the right master for this apartment. He was probably the maintenance man for every different apartment company in the building and had masters for them all.
Decision time. Take him out and flee? Bluff our way out? If I took him out, it would most definitely alert Qassim that something was up when the police arrived. But bluffing our way out would also leave a gaping compromise. But it was probably our best bet. We’d simply have to pray that the maintenance guy never talked to Qassim.
I hissed to Jennifer, “Are we good? Is it back like it was?”
Her eyes wide, knowing we were about to be compromised, she said, “Yeah, we’re back like when we entered.”
I moved to the right of the door and said, “If he enters, I’m going to try to bullshit him. Give him a story. You check the back. See if there’s another way out. Now.”
She sprinted into the bedroom and I heard her opening a window. There was a pause, and then she hissed, “Pike, on me. We can get out here.”
I heard one more key enter the lock and sprinted to her, finding her outside the small window holding on to the sill, a back alley three floors below her. I glanced up and down, then said, “Are you nuts? What are you going to do? Climb down the bricks?”
Jennifer was a little bit of a freak when it came to climbing. I was pretty sure if she spit on her hands she could, in fact, climb down the bricks, but there was no way I was going to try to do that.
She said, “Follow me,” and swung out to the left, letting go of the sill, and clamping on to an old-fashioned iron gutter pipe about four feet away. She began scampering down it like a monkey, and I cursed, thinking I’d just clock the maintenance guy in the head. I’d rather have the police find him instead of me splattered on the pavement.
I heard the bolt-lock turn, raced to the bedroom door and closed it, then crammed my frame out of the window going feetfirst. I slithered down until I was hanging by my hands, then glanced at the pipe a mere four feet away. It looked to me more like four hundred, and if I missed, I was going to have a serious impact with the pavement. I swung a little bit right, then violently left, pushing off the wall with my feet and releasing my hold in a dynamic move.
I gave it way too much energy.
I slammed into the iron pipe hard enough to clock my skull, clamping my hands around it like it was life itself. Which it was.
I cleared my head, then began scampering down to the earth, landing between a row of trash cans, Jennifer waiting on me.
She touched my forehead, a bruise starting to form, concern on her face. I let her take a look and said, “Do you do that shit just to make me look bad?”
Confused, she said, “What?”
I grinned and said, “Nothing. Let’s get out of here, spider monkey. You just saved the day, in more ways than one.”
Chapter 24
Back in our Israeli paid-for Hyatt Regency high-end hotel room, we discussed what the next steps would be. We now knew beyond a shadow of a doubt this guy was somehow involved in the killing of the Ramsad, but we still had no proof of who his masters were—Iran or otherwise—which was the mission.
The text box—which was presumably embedded within the photo on the thumb drive that Qassim had used to send via ProtonMail—was asking about a linkup in Bahrain, and mentioned that the money would be coming with the man to pay for the next “operation.” He was apparently some sort of badass from Bosnia, and had impeccable credentials for unspecified skills. It didn’t say what, but I assumed it was for killing. Included, of course, were the usual bowing down to Allah and proclaiming the world would be free of the infidels, In’shallah. Meaning if God willed it.