Shock filled his face and his mouth dropped. “What the fuck?”
“Yeah I know, it makes sense. That’s why I’m here. I just figured since I was unsuccessful I could still help in some way. I figured if he’s right then that would be really bad.”
“Fuck, of course. It would mean Ethan got hired and got used as a chump. All of us.” He brought his hand to his head.
“Yes. All of us,” I agreed trying to tamp down the anger that stirred at the thought.
“Well let’s do this.” Wes grit his teeth.
We walked up to the door and rang the bell. A thin wiry-looking man with red hair opened the door. He wore thick rimmed glasses that made his eyes look bigger.
“Hello.” He beamed. I detected a hint of a Scottish accent. “I suppose you’re Xander and … Xander’s friend?” Yup I was right, he had a Scottish accent.
He looked from me to Wes and smiled.
I put out my hand to shake his.
“Yes. I’m Xander and this is my friend Wes. Great to meet you.”
“Same here.”
Wes shook his hand too.
We walked inside the house and it was clear that the classic homely look stopped at the door.
The house reminded me of being in The Pentagon but with a mixture of what Tony Stark’s place would look like, very, very high tech.
That was just the sitting room.
He led us to his office and it looked like it had been pulled from a scene in Iron Man. He even had robots.
“Jesus, what a place you have here,” I stated.
“It’s totally my kind of place,” Wes agreed with keen appreciation.
Dorian smiled. “Glad you like it guys. This is what you call years of design.”
I smiled at that. I could just imagine the years he must have put in.
Dorian took us over to a seated area. The computer was holographic and moved on a glass screen at the touch of his fingers.
“So, what can I do for you? Who are we spying on?” he asked.
I glanced at Wes then looked back to him.
“I’m not sure.”
“This isn’t gonna be one of those things where you can’t tell me what I’m looking for because of some breach of protocol or shite like that, are ya?”
“No.”
“Good, because I exist now outside of the system. I get the juice on things if the price is right. But some things I do for free. Like for friends like Jack. So this is a freebie.”
“Thank you. We’re looking for intel on the Ra. I think I want to see if we can find anything from somewhere, or someone in the CIA office or SMF that looks off. Maybe an email.”
He inclined his head to the side. “I get it. That’s deep shit though. You think there’s a double agent amongst them?”
“Possibly. The correspondence would have gone out around seven or eight weeks ago. The name that should pop up is Giovanni Marchesi. And blue prints. Some blueprints containing nuke designs were stolen from an envoy in transit to Arizona.”
“Okay. Let me see what I can find.”
He tapped a few keys, his hands moving so fast I couldn’t tell what he was writing out.
He tapped away and the screen populated with a lot of code. It was just programs he was hacking. Then I realized he was looking through a trail in the liquid file links.
It was a good thing Wes and I understood what he was doing because he wasn’t one to explain as he went along.
“I’m not seeing anything that stands out on email. I’m gonna search on the phones linked to people in charge. Maybe I can pick up a text or something.”
I raised my brows. “You can do that?” I hadn’t done that before. Didn’t have to. I’d mostly hacked government systems for information they were hiding.
“Oh yes. I can totally do that. I have this set up wired to give me all the juice. There is no tea spilling anywhere that I can’t find. The hard part is the search. If we had a name it would help.” He inclined his head to the side.
I was still impressed. It made me wonder what he’d done in his line of work.
“There’s shit loads of info here.” Wes stated.
There was a shit load. It was files Dorian had searched with the reference blueprints. That was just the last few weeks.
“Dorian, how about localizing to one department at a time. SMF is smaller. How about focusing on the senior team maybe.” There were five senior members of management.
Dorian looked more curious. “Got your focus on someone in particular?”
“Nah just trying to narrow the search. I was thinking that the information about the prints would have cascaded from the CIA. There may be something you can pick up there.”
“Good thinking.” He nodded.
“There’d be a lot of messages with the word ‘prints’ bouncing from Ethan however. Some to me, some to Wes. So don’t focus on him.”
Now he narrowed his eyes. “Xander, I leave no stone unturned. That’s just me. I don’t pussyfoot around shite or rule people out, it’s why I’m so good.”
“I get that but Ethan is clean.” There was no part of it that fit him.
Wes brushed my elbow. “Xander there’s no harm checking. Then we can rule him out.”
“Sure, of course.” It was true we could rule him out, even though I already had. Ethan had wanted to catch Balthazar as badly as me. In the past his orders were always to kill him on sight. No questions asked, just kill him if you got a clear shot.
Dorian scanned over the five members of the senior team. He brought up their files and the numbers associated with them that were listed. Each number was color coded.
“Right… so the red numbers are what we have on file for their business phones and personal phones. The yellow ones and blue are where my equipment goes a little further. Right now its tracked a cellphone number that has been used by each person over the last eight weeks,” Dorian explained.
I looked at each person. Of the five people there. Ethan and Gina Hawkes had the most yellow codes, but they were the only ones with blue codes.
“What does yellow and blue specifically mean?” Wes asked. He took the words out of my mouth. I really hoped Dorian wasn’t one of those people who just color coded all manner of unnecessary shit.
“Yellow is another personal number. I don’t usually flicker an eyelid at that because of privacy. We may have their listed personal phone numbers but they may give their spouse, partners, kids, or other family members another number. It’s common. I personally don’t see the fun in having so many numbers but each to their own. The blue numbers are my pool of curiosity.”
Okay, so it seemed like he wasn’t one of those people who color coded for nothing.
He pulled in a breath and continued.
“This is where it gets highly illegal boys. Do I care? I think not. It’s the reason why you’re here.” He laughed. Wes cast a curious glance at me. “Blue usually means the phone was only used a couple of times and disposed of.”
“I used a phone the other day that I had to get rid of,” I surmised.
“Why’d you do that?” He raised a finger.
“So I couldn’t be tracked.”
He grinned. “Yes Xander, get with the program.” He pointed back to the screen. “Let’s start with her, she just has one blue code.”