He removed the flash drive from his pocket, powered up the burner, and placed a call to England. He wanted answers.
“Vikram, it’s Simon Riske.”
“Why are you calling from a Thai number?” asked Vikram Singh. “I only answered because I thought it might be my cousin. Did you happen to see him?”
“No time. Listen, I have an emergency. It’s a long story, but I need you to hack into a password-protected flash drive.”
“I can’t do that.”
“You can’t? I thought—”
“I’m a hardware man,” said Singh. “I don’t play with software, at least not in a way that I’m not permitted. It is illegal, you know.”
“I wasn’t asking you to…well,yes, I was. The drive belonged to a friend of mine. He wanted me to look at the information he stored on it. He was killed before he could give me the password.”
Singh answered with marked calm. Twenty years at MI5 had left him inured to talk of murder and desperate circumstance. Panic was the enemy’s best friend. “And you? Are you all right? You sound, well, a little crazed.”
“Not having my best day. I’m in trouble. A lot, actually. I wouldn’t have bothered you otherwise. Anyhow, I’m sorry…forget I called.”
“Hang on there, Simon. I saidIcouldn’t help you. Let me find you someone who can.”
“You know someone?”
Simon noted that Singh had placed his hand over the receiver. Then, muted, though no less clear: “Arjit! Come down to my lab. And be quick about it.” The hand lifted from the receiver. “Just a minute. Arjit is on his way. He’s been hacking all manner of devices since he was eight. The little bastard got into my BMW last week, reprogrammed my entire music library. He replaced my Tom Jones with Rick Astley. I was ‘Rick-rolled’ by my own son.”
Simon smiled, appreciating Vikram’s effort to make him feel better.
“Hello, Simon. It’s Tiger,” said Arjit Singh.
“Hey, there, Tiger. Heard you’re causing your dad some problems.”
“Have to keep the old man on his toes.”
Simon explained that he’d come into possession of a friend’s flash drive that contained important information, but he did not have the password to unlock it. In no uncertain terms, he added that the information should be considered dangerous and that several men had died because of it.
Arjit possessed his father’s sangfroid. The mention that the information stored on the drive might put him in peril did not appear to faze him in the least. “Is that what you do?” he asked. “Are you some kind of secret agent?”
“Hardly,” said Simon. “I was helping a friend out of a bind. Things went sideways. Listen to me, Arjit, this is serious.”
“The first rule of hacking, Simon, is to keep your identity anonymous. You do know that?”
Simon reminded himself that he was speaking with a fifteen-year-old whiz kid who’d just finished his first year at Caltech, one of the world’s foremost temples of science and technology. Invincible, at least in his own mind. “I guess I do.”
“Here’s what I need you to do. Plug the flash drive into your laptop. I’m going to send a piece of software to your email. Download it immediately. I’ll walk you through the installation. After it’s activated, I’ll be able to take control of your laptop and access the flash drive. Then it’s a question of cracking the password.”
“And you’re sure no one will know it’s you?”
“Only you.” A pause. “We’re not talking about nuclear launch codes, are we?”
“No, Arjit. No launch codes.”
As soon as Simon received the email, he downloaded and installed the software. “And now?”
“Let me go to work.”
“Any idea how long it might take?”
“A while,” said Arjit. “An hour. Maybe more.”
