Connected (29 page)

This
Dream-Zone file is encrypted.
You have 24 hours to unlock it or create new one.
If you don’t – next picture not so pretty!
Remember Dmitri!
Send file to this email!
And no police!

Doug got up to leave.
“What are you going to do?” asked Brian.
“I’m going to ask Peter what the fuck he knows about this and then I’m going to
try and give Markov what he wants.”
“How can you be sure it’s Markov?”
“Who else could it be? And for that matter, what difference does it make?”
“I think you should call the police.”
Doug looked at him a moment. “Not sure about that. What if Markov finds out?”
“This isn’t the movies, Doug! The same guy we think just beat a man to death
has now kidnapped Nadia. You have to report it. Let them do whatever it is they
do.”
“And risk getting Nadia beaten to death – I don’t think so.”
“And what about those thousands of Chinese gaming nerds?”
“I couldn’t give a toss about those sad fucks right now. I just want Nadia back
in one piece.”

“Come on Peter, pick up for Christ’s sake!”
muttered Doug, leaving the student union bar and walking briskly back towards
the towers. The call was diverted to voicemail. “Peter, this is Doug. Call me
back urgently. You need to tell me how you know about Nadia needing help. Also
– have you combined the files yet? If you have, I desperately need a copy of
the video.” He returned the phone to his pocket, paused, then took it out again
and dialled Becky’s number.
“Doug, what’s up?” came Becky’s voice.
“I need to talk to you urgently, can you come round?”
“Well – I – I suppose so – what is it?”
“I’ll explain when you get here, please, it’s important.”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“Thanks, appreciate it.”

Becky sat on Doug’s bed in stunned silence while
he brought her up to speed on Dream-Zone, Markov and Nadia. “Without knowing
the pass code, it’s very unlikely we’ll be able to decrypt this thing within
twenty-four hours,” she said finally.
“Can’t you hack the code or something?”
“The binary? You’ve got to be kidding, it’d take days to make sense of a file
this size without access to the source code. We don’t even know what language
it was written in. If you ask me, I think you should go to the police.”
“Can’t you at least try? I’m pretty sure it was Dmitri who wrote it. Perhaps
it’s written in the same programming language as the key-logger he installed on
my laptop.”
“Not necessarily, most of those things are available as off-the-shelf malware -
you just download the basic template and then customise it to your needs.” She
paused. “It might give me some clues though. I’ll give it a try.”
Doug forwarded Markov’s email to Becky’s address and showed her out. “I really
appreciate this Becky, if there’s anything you need, just let me know.”
“The key to the encryption would be nice!”
“Yeah right! Unfortunately that died along with …” Doug stopped. “The key! The
car key!”
“I don’t follow,” said Becky.
“Dmitri, before he died, said the words ‘car key’. I thought he meant the key
to his car, but what if the key was his car – the word ‘car’?”
“Unlikely to be a three-letter word from the dictionary – too easy to crack -
but we can try it.”
They returned to the PC and ran the programme file. Once again it popped up a dialogue
box requesting the passcode. She typed the word ‘car’.
Passcode Invalid!
“Try Subaru Impreza,” said Doug excitedly.
Passcode Invalid!
They tried various other combinations using both upper and lower-case letters,
but to no avail. Doug thought for a moment. “Nadia said it had a name – some
female character from a video game.”
“There are hundreds of those – Lara Croft?”
“No, it began with ‘K’, Kylie or something like that.”
Becky ran a search. “There’s a ‘Kitana’! Seems to be the only one listed here
under K. Let’s see!”
Passcode Invalid!
“Shit!” said Doug with a sigh. “I was certain that was going to be it. Oh well
– it was worth a try. Looks like we’ll have to do it the hard way, unless I can
get the raw video from Peter that is.”
He walked her to the lift and bid her good night. It was getting late and his
body was ready for bed, though he doubted sleep would come. He lay on the duvet
looking up at the ceiling and thought of Nadia. How the hell had Peter known
she was in trouble. How did Peter even know who she was; he was certain he
hadn’t mentioned her to him. He grabbed his laptop and logged into Twitter
again. Peter’s tweets over the past few hours fell into two categories: physics
and non-physics. Doug scribbled the non-physics ones onto the back of an
envelope:

Help Nadia

White van

Sewage treatment!

Wooden shed

Pain

Nadia in trouble

As Doug looked through the list again to see
whether he might have missed one, a new entry suddenly appeared:

Doug Help!

Suddenly Doug’s mobile rang. “Peter! What the
hell’s going on?” cried Doug, seeing the caller ID.
“Sorry, I only just realised it was to do with you,” came Peter’s voice.
“What was?”
“Dream-Zone! The thoughts entering my head.”
“You have Dream-Zone? Why didn’t you send it to me?”
“It’s amazing, Doug. All knowledge is there – the theory of everything – it’s
all connected – I’ve written a paper – sent it to all the major scientific …”
“Yeah – yeah – tell me about that later. How do you know about Nadia?”
“I don’t know, I was in the Zone and these thoughts just jumped into my head. I
don’t know where they came from or how they got there, but I think I can read
minds. I think we’re all connected – it’s the same thing you see - the extra
dimensions of space-time are not just curled up into tiny little hyper-bundles,
but…!”
“Peter! We don’t have time. Nadia is my friend and she’s in danger. Can you
tell me where she is?”
“I don’t know where she is.” Peter’s voice sounded stilted and distant. “She
was in a van – it was dark – countryside I think – and the smell – like sewage
– like a sewage treatment plant – and she can’t move – she’s tied and it
hurts.”
“And a wooden shed? Is that where she is now?” asked Doug.
“Yes – I think so.”
“I need you to send me a copy of the Dream-Zone video.”
“Yes, okay, I’ll send it over. Sorry – it’s just so incredible – all the laws
of physics…”
“Please! Just send me the fucking file!”
“Yes, yes of course, sorry,” said Peter, still sounding distracted.
Doug waited impatiently at the laptop, clicking on the refresh button for his
email. Eventually it came. He watched as the attachment downloaded. Could this
one file really have caused so much trouble – three deaths and now a
kidnapping?

Download Complete.

He hesitated for a moment. Although Peter did seem
to have gone a little nuts, he was hardly suicidal. Elated was a more accurate
description – euphoric even. Placing the cursor over the filename, he
double-clicked. The media player opened and the familiar patterns of his
evolving fractals started to dance across the screen. At the same time,
Martin’s strange music blared from the laptop’s speakers, but something was
different. He could hear the individual tones and structure of the sound in a
way he had never before been able. Even the fractals lacked their former
mesmerism. The whole experience was totally flat. It was interesting to watch
and listen to – beautiful even - but completely devoid of any hypnotic power.
It was less potent even than the individual audio and visual components from
which it derived. He plugged in his headphones and tried again. There was no
difference. He dialled Peter’s number, but it went straight to voicemail.
Whatever this file was, it was not delivering the experience that had so
captured the minds of Martin, Kal and Peter.  What was more, it would not
save Nadia.

Without the encryption key, or a working version
of the raw video, there was nothing left but to call the police. Markov’s email
would almost certainly be untraceable, but what about her mobile phone? In the
movies, the authorities always seemed to be tracking people through their cell
phones. Maybe even Becky would know how to do it. He dialled her number again.
“Becky, I’m sorry to call you so late,” he said, “but I was wondering if you
knew how to trace someone’s mobile.”
“Nice idea, but you would need access to it to set it up. There are several
websites offering the service, but after you submit the phone number you want
to track, it sends a text to the device asking their permission. So unless you
have the person’s phone at that precise moment – to provide a permission
response and then delete the request - the person you’re stalking is going to
know.”
“You sound like you have personal experience of this,” said Doug with a nervous
chuckle.
“Doug, I’m sorry to say this, but you’re being an idiot! The police wouldn’t
have to get permission. Call them! Even if Nadia’s mobile is switched off,
they’ll be able to determine its last position to within a few hundred yards.
The sooner you do it, the better your chance of finding her.”
“But Markov told me no police!” said Doug, realising as the words came out, how
pathetic they sounded.
“Of course he would say that, because he knows that the police would track him
down and arrest him.”
She was right of course. As Brian had pointed out earlier, this was not a
movie. This was not a world in which detectives of Sherlock Holmesian intellect
were pitted against the insane genius of criminal masterminds. This was a world
in which villains, usually of low to medium intelligence, made stupid mistakes
and were eventually out-plodded by the persistent grunt-work of similarly
gifted policemen.

Doug dialled Bullock’s number, left a message, and
waited. He was just deliberating whether to try emergency services as well,
when the inspector returned his call. Twenty minutes later a squad car arrived
at the foot of the tower to escort him to the local station. Bullock met him in
the entrance and led him to a small office somewhere in the depths of the
building. To Doug’s surprise, the inspector already had a copy of the
statements made in London that afternoon.
“To be honest with you,” said Bullock with a sigh, “I didn’t believe your
earlier stories about this ‘Dream-Zone’ computer file, but this latest turn of
events does seem to corroborate it to at least some degree.”
“You thought I was just making it all up? Why would I do that?” asked Doug,
affronted.
“Markov is known to us for his involvement in the sex and drug trades. With the
current economic downturn, the bottom appears to have fallen out of the sex
part – no pun intended – which just leaves drugs.”
“And you think students have enough money to pay for drugs?” said Doug.
“Drugs are different. If there’s any correlation between usage and wealth, it’s
an inverse one; some of the heaviest users are among the poorest.” As he spoke,
he was watching Doug’s face intently as though looking for a reaction that
might confirm his suspicion that all students are potheads. “Of course,
economics does play a role. Since the financial collapse, we’ve seen less of
the high-end stuff like heroin and cocaine, but to counter that, there’s been
an upsurge in cannabis.”
“Look, this is all very interesting, but I don’t see what it has to do with
finding Nadia,” said Doug, starting to feel frustrated.
“The reason I mention this,” said Bullock, “is because significant quantities
of home-grown have started flooding the streets and its almost ten times the
potency of the imported stuff. We don’t know for sure who’s behind it, but
there seems to be a strong Russian connection.”
“So?” said Doug. “I still don’t see…”
“So – are you sure there isn’t a side to this story that you’re not telling
me?” asked Bullock, raising his voice. “I realise from this message,” he said
picking up Doug’s mobile and studying the photo again, “that this Dream-Zone is
important in some way…”
“It’s the only thing that’s important right now! That and finding Nadia!” cried
Doug. “What the hell is the matter with you?”
“So why have you never mentioned this girl before - who just happens to be
Russian - who is known to have links with Markov? Call me old-fashioned, but in
the thirty years I’ve been doing this job, I’ve noticed two things: First,
people very rarely tell me the whole truth, and second, nobody’s ever been
killed over a damn computer file!”
“Look!” said Doug with a heavy sigh, “believe what you want, but I know
absolutely nothing about the drugs. I don’t even fully understand what
Dream-Zone is. All I know is that this girl, whom I happen to care about
deeply, is being held by the same man who, this afternoon, beat his own cousin
to death. Now, in order to prevent him doing the same to her, we need to either
give him what he wants, or find out where he’s holding her and arrest him.
Since I can’t seem to find a way of decrypting the file, I’ve come to you in
the hope that you can trace her mobile, find her, and lock him up.” Bullock
regarded him for a moment, his hairy face characteristically devoid of
expression. “We’ve already put in a request for a trace on the mobile. The
result should be in shortly. We’ll also look into the email you received, but
that’s less likely to get us anywhere.”
“So we just wait?”
“Unless you have anything more to tell me, there’s nothing else we can do.”
For a moment Doug considered mentioning Peter’s uncanny premonitions.
“Anything at all!” said Bullock, spotting the hesitation.
But what could he say – that some screwed up guy in Bracknell had somehow
received thoughts directly from Nadia’s mind? And that he thinks she is being
held in a wooden shed near a sewage treatment plant? Whatever credibility he
might still have in the eyes of this inspector would surely evaporate the
moment he said such a thing. “No, it’s nothing,” said Doug.
Bullock continued staring at him for a few seconds, and then got up from his
chair. “Okay, well, I’ll get a car to take you back to campus. You should get
some rest. I’ll call you as soon as we know something.”

Doug made some coffee and took it to his room. He
lit a cigarette and opened the laptop. No email – no new tweets. It was almost
midnight and fatigue was finally getting the better of him. Reluctantly, he
stripped, brushed his teeth and got under the duvet. He picked up his phone and
looked once more at the photo of Nadia’s beaten face glowing in the darkness.
She was staring into the camera lens with a mixture of confusion and fear. He
imagined Markov’s cruel face staring back. Again, the image of Dmitri flashed
before his eyes. He pushed the thought away and kissed the phone’s display.
“Hang in there beautiful! I’m going to find you!”