Brain Storm (US Edition) (25 page)

The silhouette considered that. "What about private network access then? Have our people been able to trace any searches pertaining to any of our work or facilities or anything else that could indicate the next step the targets are likely to take?"

"Not as yet, sir. As usual there have been a number of hits on sites that pertain to you and certain of your interests. While we have no evidence that the targets are aware of your connection to this situation we have logged all of those hits and our people are tracing them to their sources. We also compiled a program to keep a check on the other keywords the targets could try a search on. So far we are still checking through them."

"Alert me as soon as you have something to report."

***************

Karl Grosset had obviously been quite well-off. He had lived in a small bungalow, only one bedroom but as he lived alone that was all he needed. The property was surrounded by a well maintained garden that isolated it from
neighboring properties. A shoulder-high hedge surrounded the garden making the bungalow seem even more cut off from the surrounding houses. There was a small hole in the base of the hedge just off to the side of the main gate. Given the high density population throughout all the States of the Confederation even this small amount of seclusion must cost him a number of credits.

Sara had made sure that she and Carla got past the private security officers, rent-a-cops who were either too old, unfit, or stupid to make it into one of the official security forces, who patrolled the
neighborhood. There were signs posted above all of the street names and on every third lamppost that declared this neighborhood to be under the protection of the Hawk-eye security firm who were authorized to 'handle situations that demand it with lethal force'. So far the Hawk-eye officers had proved to be less attentive than their name would suggest. Even the pair of security mechs Sara had spotted seemed to be less than competent. Either they had been programmed by an inadequate or else they were just cheap things with a minimum of intelligence meant to act as deterrents or to reassure the residents that the money they were paying for this protection was worth it.

More of a problem was the security system Grosset had around and inside his home. Sara would have been able to bypass any security system on the civilian market in seconds with equipment from ECSIS. The trouble was she had none of that with her now. And even if she had had the equipment she would have had to get close to the house to use it. Every building in the
neighborhood seemed to be fitted with security lights that lit up when their sensors detected motion. The sensors and lights were arrayed around the full perimeter of the bungalow. The Hawk-eye boys had to have been informed of Grosset's death by now so they would investigate it if the lights suddenly came to life around his home.

Carla caught her breath as the electrically-powered Hawk-eye security car, electric so that it was silent for when the residents were asleep they wouldn't want errant noises disturbing their peace, swept past them on another patrol. The dark branches and leaves were suddenly illuminated in a mottling of bright green and black shadows. The two women were laying under the edge of the hedge, Sara staring at the house as she tried to come up with a way for them to get inside and Carla looking out at the road making her feel useful again. The car carried on without slowing.

The two women weren't the only things laying there that had been disturbed by the lights of the vehicle. A black and white cat, more fur than animal, woke up out of its slumber and crawled from underneath a car on the edge of the road. It mewled and arched its back. It kept that shape, legs outstretched pushing the middle of its back as far as it could get from the ground with its tail up in the air, and shook itself awake. When that was done it walked over towards the two women, gave them a sniff and rubbed its body along their sides. Sara blew stray fur out of her face but was careful not to disturb the feline. Then it crawled through the gap in the hedge alongside the gate, walked directly across Grosset's sculpted lawn and cut through another gap into the property beyond.

Sara smiled to herself. The security lights outside Grosset's bungalow hadn't come on when the cat cut across the garden. She didn't know if that meant the sensors were only focused on things approaching that were above a certain height or if the whole system was switched off. She would have to treat it as though the system was still active.

"Follow me, and stay low."

Sara crawled out from under the hedge. Short branches clung to her but she pulled herself free keeping noise to a minimum. There was no indication that anyone was close enough to hear their noise but it was better to spend a little extra time and care now rather than be compromised because of complacency. Carla followed Sara's trail exactly and soon enough the pair were at the step leading onto the porch.

The lock, a simple key card reader mounted on the door frame at waist height, was of a make Sara was familiar with, and one that she knew she couldn't defeat without extra equipment. She crawled around the side of the house, always keeping to the side the cat had walked on because they were the only sensors she could be sure were blind to their movement. She stopped them again when she was directly below a small window. She rolled over onto her back, still keeping as close to the ground and the wall as she could, to check the window. It looked like she should be able to force it. The problem with that was that if Grosset's security system was still active, and she could think of no reason why it wouldn't be, it would be set off by such an entry.

In the end she decided to risk it. If the alarms went off she would let them be taken by the Hawk-eye security officers and take her chances with the place. They couldn't stay on the run forever and Grosset was the only lead they had. She stayed pressed up against the wall as she pushed herself into a crouch. The window was locked with a simple internal catch. There were no wires on the outside to indicate that the window was alarmed but they would only be visible if they were fitted by an incompetent.

Sara got Carla to stand up next to her so that they could both be inside quickly once the window was opened. "Hand me the knife I told you to bring."

She took a deep breath and used the knife taken from Carla's kitchen to get the latch undone. The window was open in the next instant and Sara slipped over the ledge and inside. She narrowly missed knocking a glass vase with faded flowers off a small table under the window onto the floor. She had to catch the vase when Carla caught it on her way in.

The window was closed again after being open for no more than a few seconds. The insistent beep coming from the direction of the inside hallway, just behind the front door, indicated that those few seconds had been enough.

"Shit! The alarm's been activated."

Sara and Carla rushed into the hallway. Again the keypad, waiting for the entry of a correct code before activating the alarms and security system proper, was one that would be simplicity itself to defeat with even the most basic of her usual equipment. As it was Sara was powerless to stop the alarm from sounding.

"Do something."

The expectation in Carla's voice that Sara would get them out of this mess as well showed how much she had come to rely on Sara. It wasn't an entirely comfortable feeling for her.

"There isn't anything I can do, other than punch random numbers into the keypad."

Carla looked into Sara's eyes and Sara watched hope switch to dismay and then almost immediately to defiance. The younger woman pushed herself up to the keypad and started hitting numbers. The beeping stopped without a cacophony of sirens replacing it.

Both woman froze in place barely believing their luck. Sara regarded Carla with suspicion. "You said you'd never been here before. I can't believe you got the right code without some prior knowledge of this system. There have to be millions of combinations."

Carla was still catching her breath recovering from their close call. "I haven't ever been here before." She went on before Sara could interrupt. "The code I entered was my birth date. For some reason Karl cared about me and wanted to protect me so I figured it was worth a shot."

Sara relaxed a little but gave Carla a lingering look before focusing on what they had come here to do. "Good thinking. Now let's have a look around. Remember no lights or noise."

Correct operating procedure for conducting a covert search of an area dictated that you leave the area in the exact same state as it was found. Nothing could be left out of place. Even trivial changes could indicate to someone familiar with the setting that there was something amiss. It didn't even have to be a change so noticeable to that person that they noticed it consciously. Sometimes it was the smallest of details that alerted a target without their even being aware of it. They would seem to instinctively know that something was wrong, that was their subconscious having noticed the change warning a person’s conscious mind.

When you were on the run from an unknown, well-funded and hostile group proper operating procedure went out of the window. Especially when the person who was most familiar with the scene was already dead. There was no need to be meticulous in the search.

Methodically they went through cupboards, draws, files and wardrobes. The expensive computer terminal and communications terminal were fixed into the back wall of a living room cum study beckoning Sara over to them. Initially she ignored their siren call searching instead for any hard copy information that Grosset could have had lying around.

She went to the side of the study first. There were half empty bookshelves in the back corner.  Some had heralded the dawn of the computer age as being the end of the old fashioned book but many people simply couldn't get used to reading from a computer display for long lengths of time. The defenders of books presented evidence that staring at a screen for too long would damage a
person’s eyes and so books were still very much alive. The pile of literature strewn on the floor by the base indicated that the shelves weren't usually so sparsely populated. Sara crouched down to look through the books and magazines on the floor. They were medical texts and journals. Some dealt with general physiology, others concerned genetics and there were some that were too complex and full of scientific names and weird diagrams that Sara didn't know what they dealt with.

These books were the only things out of place so either Grosset had tossed them onto the floor himself or else somebody had broken in, without leaving any sign of ever being there except for a pile of books on the floor, and they had known
exactly what they were looking for and where to find it. Sara's guess was that Grosset had left the mess, no-one would go to the trouble of covering up the fact that they had entered and left the bungalow, even going to the trouble of resetting the alarm system, if they were just going to leave so obvious a sign.

There was a metal waste basket at the side of the bookcase half hidden by the jumble of stray books. Sara moved closer to it and looked inside. In the bottom of the basket
was a selection of ashes. Fire had damaged the inside of the bin when the whatever-it-was was burned up. Sara couldn't tell anything about what had been in there just by looking at the ashes. A forensics team would be able to perform tests to discover the chemical composition of the ashes and from that could extrapolate what the items had been before the fire consumed them.

Without access to those kinds of resources Sara had to try to work it out the old fashioned way; by relying on luck. She scanned the area of the floor around where the bin had been, gradually scanning further away from the bin until her gaze rested on a triangular piece of paper. The paper was singed all along the longest side of the triangle. It had probably been floated out by convection currents in the air generated by the heat of the fire.

The bungalow was still in darkness, any light they put on inside would also be seen from outside and could trigger an investigation, but the ambient light was enough for the writing on the paper to be visible. On one side it said; 'therefore the codon sequence cytosine-thymine-aden'. Which Sara took to be something to do with genetics because on the other side in slightly larger type it said; 'ical Genetics. Dr K. Grosset'. Sara assumed that a string of letters followed the name to list the doctor's qualifications but fire had destroyed them.

She didn't know whether this was a clue, and if it was how it connected to the situation Carla and herself were in. She did have to wonder why Grosset had apparently been destroying articles he had written. But not for long. She stuffed the piece of paper in her pocket in case it turned out to be useful later, though she couldn't imagine how. A quick study of the texts that remained on the shelves showed them to be yet more medical books indistinguishable to Sara from the ones on the floor.

Carla had been looking through Grosset's wardrobes and drawers in the bedrooms.

"Found anything?" Sara asked entering the room.

Carla finished transplanting an armful of pale-blue, machine pressed shirts from the wardrobe onto the bed. Upturned drawers and other items of clothing were already there. "Nothing. No secret compartments. No diary in with his underwear. No keys or anything stuck on the bottom of the drawers."

Sara was studying the room when Carla asked how her search had gone.

"Also nothing," she admitted. "It looks like I'll have to try my luck getting into his computer system."