MMORPG: How a Computer Game Becomes Deadly Serious (34 page)

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They swore the same oath simultaneously. “How are we ever going to find them again?” Robert asked desperately.

She grimaced. “By investigating the entire haystack. We know the needle is in there, and we know what it looks like.”

With a frown, Robert asked, “Do we?”

“Yes, we do. Assuming that they formed a new guild on their destination server, we should be able to find them. We know their races and classes and we know what gear they’re wearing. We need to be quick about it, because they’ll start playing again and level up to eighty-five. That means they’ll upgrade their gear and weapons, making it a lot more difficult to identify them. Probably even impossible.”

“Their high-end gear is going to be the giveaway,” Robert mused.

She snapped her fingers with renewed energy. “Exactly! Because they’re such super heroes, they’re wearing vastly superior stuff. It’ll probably take until they actually reach level eighty-five before they’ll substitute the final items with new ones. Until that time, we can identify them by their gear.”

Frantically, she started to rummage in a stack of printouts balancing precariously on the window sill. Cursing because she didn’t find what she was looking for, she went through the papers again, slower this time.

“Yes, here’s one!” she suddenly exclaimed. “And one more!”

Robert craned his neck to see what she was holding. Noting his interest, she handed one of the papers over. It was a screen print of the Armory file of Drimm they had made an eternity ago.

“We know that the gear they’re using now is still exactly the same as the gear they had when we first looked at them. That may be enough to find them. I hope.”

~~~

Chapter XXX

The
hunter who used to be called Drimm was still marveling at his new perspective on the online world. He had been a member of the Horde since the beginning. Khalid never felt the compulsion to start an Alliance character simply to see what the other side was like. The Horde side suited him. He preferred its often rough and primitive towns to the neat and polished cities of the Alliance.

Sylvanas was a PvP server, allowing the players of the opposing factions to attack each other at will. He had certainly killed his share of Alliance players. Together with his achievements in battlegrounds, his count of so-called Honorable Kills was a little over 65,000 Alliance players.

Now, thanks to a relatively new feature of Blizzard, Drimm had switched sides and had become a member of the Alliance himself. Considering his past, it was a good thing he had changed his name as well.

His former Tauren appearance had been replaced by that of a sleek Night Elf. His reputations had been transferred as well, only now reflected his standing with the states, cities, and races of the Alliance that were the counterpart of their Horde equivalent. Suddenly, he was welcome in the Alliance cities of Stormwind, Ironforge, and Darnassus, the capital of the Night Elves.

For now he remained on familiar ground. Dalaran was open to both Horde and Alliance. However, the Silver Enclave where he’d been ordered to go, was a secluded area where only members of the Alliance were welcome.

The Beer Garden was there, off limits to the Horde, at the back of an inn called A Hero’s Welcome. As most people were discovering the new opportunities of Cataclysm, Dalaran was nearly deserted. Lively streets and squares that had been thronged with people only days ago, now looked desolate and sad. Even the Beer Garden was empty except for the two of them. They were seated next to each other on one of the long wooden benches. The table in front of them was empty. Looking around, he saw that it really was a garden. On television he had seen impressions of such places during the
Oktoberfeste
in Germany.

Khalid barely suppressed a smile. Wasn’t it funny, meeting in a place like this? His religion forbade the drinking of alcohol, and even his WoW characters abstained as much as they could. He only used to make an exception for Rumsey Rum Black Label, back when having a Twink still was fun and worth the effort.

He looked at his companion again. Oddly enough, he had no idea who he was talking to. He had simply followed the orders he had been given, changing faction and renaming his character, then leaving the place where he had lived for the last few months. At Amsterdam central station he went through the rehearsed routine to shake off anyone possibly tailing him. Now he was staying at a hotel just across the German border. The room had been paid for in advance. As promised, there had been a clean laptop computer waiting for him. The World of Warcraft software had already been installed. He had used it to come to this meeting.

“We wait,” the level eighty Gnome deathknight repeated. Khalid made his character nod. Right at that moment, a motion drew his attention. He turned around and saw a Human warrior emerge from the arched doorway that separated the inn from the garden. He approached their table and sat on the opposite bench. At the same instant, the presence next to Khalid shimmered and vanished. There were just the two of them now.

“Pharad?”

“Don’t ever use that name again. It doesn’t exist anymore. He doesn’t exist anymore.”

Khalid swallowed. Much had happened during the last few days. Not being singled out for the operation in Belgium, the subsequent loss of several members of their team and most recently, the sudden transfer to this hotel room in Germany, not to mention the order to effectively destroy Drimm, the character that had been with him for nearly five years. Drimm had many friends and acquaintances outside the Hammer of Grimstone. His sudden disappearance had been an act of dying in its own way. He wondered what people would think. Were they talking about him, wondering what had happened to him? Only now, he looked at the name of the warrior on the other side of the table. He was called Malak. Angel. He grimaced.

“Why?” he asked.

“We’ve been compromised,” Malak answered. “My place was under surveillance. By professionals. They were good, but not good enough.” He laughed. “I think they’re still staking out the place!” It remained silent for a few moments. “Are you sure you weren’t followed?” he continued.

Khalid nodded. “Yes. Hard to tell if anyone was on my tail in Leiden. I assure you I was clean when I left Amsterdam. I exited at two places in between to make sure. Negative.”

“Good. Now, I want you to think about the last few weeks. Did anything happen,
anything
, that could explain how our cover was blown? Anything out of the ordinary that might have given us away?”

“I will. Please tell me, why did you make me change faction?”

“Because of something you said. Do you remember when we were at the Tower of Eldara? You told me the next day that you saw a player near us? A Horde player, watching us?”

Khalid nodded.

“I chose that spot because nobody ever goes there. Nobody. Ever. What were the chances that someone else would be there at exactly the same time?”

“Well, it could happen. People do try to discover the world.”

“Right. They do. But who gets it into his head to go to Aszhara? Who would ride all the way to that deserted and utterly pointless location? Besides, everyone knew that discovering that zone was a waste of time anyway, because it was going to be completely overhauled with the launch of Cataclysm! The all-important question is, why would a Horde player hide? That’s the main concern. Sure, if it had been an Alliance, hiding from a dozen hostile level eighties would have been a sensible thing to do. Not for a Horde.”

Khalid shrugged. “It could be. It could be nothing.”

“Indeed. But I have this feeling. The feeling of being watched. Inside World of Warcraft. I never had it before. The problem is, I can’t pinpoint it. Don’t you know how you automatically learn to recognize the names of players and guilds that cross your path? The regular players? I mean, there are always other players around, and you just
take notice
. Well, let’s say that I’ve been seeing the same name out of the corner of my eye just a little too often.”

Khalid thought about that. He didn’t share the feeling of being followed. Still, he knew enough of Pharad, now Malak, to trust his instincts. He was alive because of them.

“Anyway, nobody knows who we are now,” he replied.

“Indeed. For now. There’s no telling how long WoW will remain secure to us.”

“We only need five more days,” Khalid interjected. “Then it’s all over one way or the other. Afterward, we can build new characters on new accounts. Or maybe even in another game, like Everquest.”

Malak stood from the table. “Correct. First we’ll make the world tremble. And we’ll make the people who betrayed us pay. In blood. So keep your eyes open. And think carefully about what I asked you.” With that, the other man traded him a document, giving the details of their next rendez-vous. Then he turned away and walked out of the garden.

Sixteen hours and nineteen minutes later, special assault teams simultaneously hit the addresses in Rotterdam and Gouda. Road blocks had been set up in the area, snipers were on the roofs of surrounding buildings. Even though nobody had seen the subjects leave, both houses were deserted. Not a scrap of useful evidence had been left behind. The Hammer of Righteous Justice had slipped through the net.

The raids were witnessed however, by ordinary looking men wearing inconspicuous clothing. They watched from among the inevitable crowd of curious onlookers, swaddled in huge shawls to protect their faces from the bitter cold. They left before any of the other people did.

~~~

Chapter XXXI

Rebecca’s
suggestion to ransack the database of the Armory for the Hammer of Grimstone didn’t work out. The interface wasn’t suited for the kind of search they needed to undertake. Nevertheless, they tried for many hours before finally admitting that their efforts were futile. They were never going to find them this way.

To make things worse, with every second that ticked away, the chance that one or more of the members of the terrorist guild acquired new equipment became bigger. The entire effort was based on the assumption that the Grimstone’s gear was so superior that they wouldn’t substitute all of it until they actually hit level eighty-five. They were coming across an increasing number of people who had reached the new pinnacle by now. There was no sense in keeping up the search of the haystack, if they didn’t even know what the needle looked like anymore.

***

They weren’t the only ones to swallow bitter defeat. Frustration and anger rose with each level that the matter, and thus the failure, was kicked up the chain of command. What had started as an internal issue of the Dutch was now a priority of the international anti-terrorism community. With the identification of Muhammad al-Moutti as the commander of the Hammer of Righteous Justice, it had become more than just a blip on the radar of Homeland Security.

Accusations and recriminations flew across the Atlantic. The Dutch resented the way in which they were held responsible for the failure to apprehend the terrorists. There was no doubt however, that the entire handling of the Hammer of Righteous Justice had been a cock-up from the start. While the investigation was going nowhere, the input of the English student had been dismissed out of hand. Only much later had it been acted upon, and even then only halfheartedly. Most criticism however, was directed at the decision to leave the important task of investigating the doings of the terrorists in the virtual world to amateurs. Somehow, they must have made a mistake that had put the terrorists on alert.

Robert, Rebecca and Andy were told in no uncertain terms that they were off the case. This happened after they had been taken to a modern office building in the nearby city of The Hague, where they were questioned for over six hours. From the unexpected appearance of three men in dark suits at his door, to the end, it felt like an arrest.

They were separated during the questioning. Robert was taken to a medium-sized conference room. He was seated at a large table and made to wait for twenty minutes before two men and a woman entered. They took him slowly through everything that had happened since the moment he first laid eyes on Khalid. This was frustrating, because all this information had already been shared with Broerse and Fitzgerald. When he thought they were finally finished, they started all over again, right from the beginning. At some moment he asked for Broerse and Fitzgerald, but they dismissed his question completely.

After several hours, he was faced with two new people. They asked a series of specific questions, presumably to verify some of the details that had been divulged by Rebecca and Andy.

By the time they were reunited again, it was nearly midnight. Robert was the last to be brought to a deserted cafeteria somewhere in the building. His friends were already sitting at a square table. Andy was slumped in his chair, his eyes downcast. Rebecca was stirring some hot substance, presumably coffee, in a styrofoam cup. She met his eyes briefly and winked. His spirit lifted.

The next day, a computer expert came to Robert’s place to verify that their camera hadn’t made any recordings of Khalid’s last hour in his apartment. He didn’t say much beyond introducing himself, but managed to convey his disdain for their set-up by much sighing and shaking of the head. The man was their age, maybe a little older, but he carried himself with the air of an accomplished professional. He sported a slim little pointed beard, much like a pirate out of a movie. The tip of a tattoo on his wrist peeked out from underneath the sleeve of his shirt.