Page 61 of Blood Game

“They say, we're for St. Malo with the Yanks,” Callish whispered beside him. “One of the lads said they're eager to have the port, but the Germans have been holed up in the city.”

“Where did you hear this?”

Callish shrugged. “Overheard one of the Yanks.”

It made sense. With that many ships offshore, they needed control of the ports—St. Malo, Calais, and others along the French coast.

Callish gestured to a half dozen civilians gathered with the officers.

“French Underground. I overheard them speaking in French.” He shrugged. “My mother made me study the language. The boy says they can get us to St. Malo. They know where all the German roadblocks and checkpoints are. The girl is pretty, once you get past the men's pants and jacket, couldn't be more than fifteen or sixteen. What should we do?”

Paul Bennett looked around. There were a handful who wore the same insignia on their sleeves, but the rest of their unit was either down on that beach, or had gone ashore and were someplace else, and there was no sign of their group leader. There had been instructions—if they were separated, join up with the nearest unit until you reach a base camp, then re-group. Staying on that beach below or setting off attempting to find their unit on their own wasn't an option under the current conditions.

“Looks like we're headed for St. Malo.”

CHAPTER

SIXTEEN

PRESENT DAY, THE INTERNET CAFÉ, INVERNESS

The coffee was hot and strong. Innis had lost count how many cups as he scrolled through information, eyes raw from the cigarette smoke, and a gaming crowd that had stayed into the early hours of the morning.

It was always that way on game night, the café jammed with gamers in front of a dozen terminals, playing against each other and an additional unknown number who linked up off-site.

The competition had been intense, players in costumes appropriate to the game they were involved with, others in jeans and t-shirts.

He had Luna decorate the café for game nights, themes that went with the games so that it seemed like the players were stepping into a scene right out of the game—pirates, commandoes, zombies, that sort of thing, with food appropriate to the scenario for the night—skulls made out of French bread loaves with gummy eyeballs hanging out, meatballs in red sauce that looked like eyeballs swimming in blood, and an assortment of para-military gear, all plastic but so authentic looking that he had a visit one night from the authorities about having weapons on the premises.

Bloody cock-suckers! Innis thought. Now they wanted him to pay for a permit on game nights.

“Like bloody hell!” he muttered, with a glance to the entrance as a customer came in.

There was the usual glance around, those themed decorations from the night before still hanging on the walls and from the ceiling, Luna in full makeup of the living dead as she went about gathering paper cups and picking up empty energy drink containers, and an assortment of ash trays overflowing with cigarette butts and the stubs of other home-grown varieties in spite of house rules.

No drugs, not even the medicinal kind. Not that he was into telling other people how to live their lives, but the last thing he needed was the authorities storming the doors and busting his nuts because some little old lady saw or smelled something funny at his shop. He took a swallow, nerves humming as he skimmed through the banking information, financial statements, and other personal information.

Beyond the glass of the office window that looked out onto the main floor, business had slowed to the usual midday crawl, a couple of teenagers at gaming stations who'd ditched school, Night Crawler—his part-time employee who more or less lived at the café (another city ordinance violation)—presently assisting an older woman who reminded Innis of his grandmother. He concentrated on the screen in front of him.

He wasn't into freelance hacking; he left that to others. There was too much risk—you never really knew who the client was. He had done some work for a few select clients, mostly corporate types who preferred to stay away from the big well-known firms that were into security and provided 'cyber investigation' as a side benefit for some of the biggest names on the planet. Those clients preferred to stay off the radar, and rotated among some talented private individuals for some impressive fees. The crewin Paris did some work for others, who were over the edge and existed only in the shadows.

The fees for those one-offs had provided the seed money for the Internet Café. But this was different. It was personal. Cate had been a friend, and it bloody well looked like she'd been run off the road in the French countryside and left to die.

An unfortunate accident, the media called it, authorities looking into reports another car had been involved, then that whole fucking business in London the night before.

Terrorist attack?

Well looky here, Innis thought.

“Knock, knock,” he said with a sort of macabre humor, and keyed in a series of common codes. There were times it was too fucking easy.

“Let's see who's there.”

The hack was fairly routine, wait for a data upload, then slip in during the handoff to another bank of servers—child's play. Then, enter the information, play around with a few of the more common passwords. He shook his head at the passwords some people chose and a full screen display of information on Jonathan Callish—that he was undoubtedly certain was secure and paid an arm and leg for—came up on the screen.

“Everything you want to know,” he said with satisfaction. “Financial statements, banking, dining habits, several entries for club fees. Let's see what that is all about. Well, look what we have here,” he said to himself with a sort of perverse pleasure.

“You just never know about some people.” He linked up to other sites, pulling up government data, official records, city permits and licenses for the gallery, credit card accounts. Something caught his eye and he scrolled back.