Page 127 of King’s Ransom

‘Is that a tracker?’ The tiny ball of lint-like fluff couldn’t have been more than a centimetre wide. It looked like a super-tiny dandelion: fluffy, delicate and white.

‘Yuh-huh. Full RFID and GPS capabilities. Slip that onto the cuff of their jacket or their jeans, and they won’t even notice. Then follow them on Google Maps on your phone.’

‘Amazing,’ I said.

(I knew bugs had gone nano, but not at this level. I needed to up my tracking game as well.)

‘My clients love this shit,’ Monty said. ‘All the James Bond gadgets. They wouldn’t know the first thing about coding or hacking, but a little spy camera hidden in a bedside clock, they dig that the most. I had a woman who thought her housekeeper was stealing her jewellery. The clock-camera revealed it was her stepdaughter.’

‘And the pen?’ I asked.

‘Very effective at catching office workers stealing stuff after hours. Put it in a coffee mug filled with other pens, then just sit back and watch in 2K with full audio.’

(I shook my head. I needed to up my surveillance game, too.)

Monty guided me into his inner office.

They say a visitor can see more in your house or office in sixty seconds than you can see in sixty days.

We get used to our messiness, our decorations, our knick-knacks. But a visitor sees them all immediately.

I could see a lot about Monty Woods in his office.

First, there were lots of computers in it.

Eight screens ringed his desk, some showing the regular internet, others showing the darknet, and one showing rows and rows of plain green code which was some exotic computer network I didn’t know.

Racks of servers rose up one wall.

Snaking clusters of thick Cat-9 cables—the fastest ethernet cables in the world—connected them all.

Nestled within the most networked building in America, Monty Woods was networked to the hilt.

I also noted the Dungeons & Dragons dungeon-master books on a bookshelf—neatly arranged in chronological order—an expensive figurine of Goku (the hero from Dragonball Z) and a very expensive figurine of the Mandalorian in a cool battle pose.

In other words, Monty Woods was a total geek who, beyond his detective work, lived in a world of computers, D&D, anime and Star Wars.

‘So what have you found?’ I asked.

Monty made a face.

‘Be careful what you wish for, dude. You may not want to know.’

Monty opened a window on his main screen.

‘All right. You asked me to check out a couple of things: one, who would want the QuantumSpeed-7 chip? And two, a darknet “problem-solving” business called Modern Alchemical Solutions. Turns out, they’re connected.’

‘Go on.’

Monty nodded at his screen. ‘Okay. So this window is the darknet, or the dark web as it used to be known. And this is the website of Modern Alchemical Solutions Inc.’

On the screen was a splash page.

Green text on a black background:

Monty said, ‘Like I said to you on the phone, this is a creepy fucking business, so I did some very light digital surveilling of its communications. Turns out, Modern Alchemical Solutions uses EnigmaUltra to communicate with its clients.’

‘What’s EnigmaUltra?’ I’d never heard of it.