Gabriel drew the blinds. “I think I’ll go downstairs for a proper café crème.”
“Mind if join you?”
“Not at all,” said Gabriel, and followed her out the door.
30
Rue d’Antibes
Downstairs, they bade the clerk a pleasant morning and walked out. Gabriel went to the café next door, and Ingrid crossed the street to the entrance of the apartment building. She punched the eight-digit passcode into the keypad on the intercom panel, and the dead bolt opened with a thud.
Entering, she was relieved to find the foyer deserted. She stood stock-still for a second or two, listening, then headed toward the staircase. Her ascent to the third floor was swift and soundless. Apartment 3B was on the left side of the landing. She slid her bump key into the lock and gave it two firm taps with the grip of the screwdriver. The lock surrendered at once.
She turned the latch and slipped into the apartment. The air was stale and reeked of tobacco and curry. Closing the door behind her, she once again stood motionless and listened. The only sound she heard was Gabriel’s voice in her Bose earbuds.
“Checking in.”
“I’m still here.”
“Anyone else at home?”
“It seems not.”
“How’s the alarm?”
She checked the wall-mounted system panel. The status lights were blinking green. “It appears as though someone has disabled it.”
“I wonder who that could have been.”
The entrance hall emptied into a central corridor. Ingrid swung to the right and went into the sitting room. It was awash in the radiance of computers. They were arrayed on a long trestle table. With the exception of a threadbare couch, the room was otherwise unfurnished. As Ingrid had predicted, blackout shades covered the windows.
“Seen enough?” asked Gabriel.
“Probably. But I think I’ll have a closer look before I go.”
She walked over to the trestle table. He was no amateur, that much was obvious. There were six large monitors, three monitors for each of the high-end Lenovo desktops. All six of the monitors showed evidence of a hack in progress, perhaps more than one. His two laptops were open and illuminated with activity. From one of the devices came the sound of two men conversing in English.
Ingrid raised the volume. “Do you hear that? He’s listening to someone’s phone.”
“Time to leave, Ingrid.”
“If you insist.”
She lowered the volume on the laptop to its original setting and photographed each of the six monitors, along with the screens of the laptops. Just then one of the hacker’s phones shivered with an incoming text message. She quickly photographed that, too.
“May I ask what you’re doing?”
“Gathering intelligence.”
Next to an overflowing ashtray was an old-fashioned steno pad. The hacker, it seemed, was a native speaker of French. Ingrid leafed through the pages, snapping photographs.
“That’s quite enough,” said Gabriel.
“Let me finish.”
“There isn’t time.”
“It won’t take but a minute.”
“You don’t have one,” said Gabriel. “Thirty seconds, maybe. But certainly not a minute.”
* * *
But even that estimate proved optimistic. The hacker, observed Gabriel, was clearly a man in a hurry. He was once again approaching from the east but had nothing in his hands to show for his brief expedition into the real world. No shopping bags or baguettes, only a phone. If he maintained his current pace, Gabriel calculated he would arrive at the entrance of the building in twenty seconds or less. There was a good chance he would bump into Ingrid as she was leaving. If nothing else, he would spot her as she stepped from the door.
Gabriel could hear her footfalls. “Where are you?” he asked.
“On my way down.”
“It’s too late. Turn around and head up to the fourth floor. Wait on the landing until our friend is back in his apartment.”
The hacker was about twenty meters from the café. He passed within a few inches of Gabriel’s table, then headed diagonally across the street toward the apartment building. At the residential entrance he reached a hand toward the intercom panel, but a sudden noise made him swing his head to the left before entering the passcode. Gabriel heard the same noise. It was the roar of a high-performance motorcycle racing along the rue d’Antibes.
A look of fear swept over the hacker’s face. He reached for the keypad a second time and in his haste entered the passcode incorrectly. The bike was perhaps fifty meters away and closing fast. Gabriel slid a ten-euro banknote beneath the remnants of his café crème and stepped calmly into the middle of the street. The motorcyclist sounded his horn and applied his brakes, slowing his speed only marginally. Gabriel looked at the hacker and in French shouted, “Five, one, seven, nine, zero, two, eight, six.”
This time the hacker entered the passcode correctly, and the dead bolt snapped. Gabriel pivoted toward the motorcycle bearing down on him and saw the helmeted man atop the saddle draw a gun from the inside of his leather coat. The weapon had no suppressor. Silence, it seemed, was not a priority.
The motorcyclist pointed the gun in the direction of the man standing frozen with fear at the entrance of the apartment building. Gabriel held his ground for another second or two, then stepped from the path of the speeding machine and shoved the hacker through the unlocked door. They came to rest in a heap in the foyer. Outside, the motorcycle sped past the building without slowing. The engine note faded and a moment later was gone.
