2 The Dante Connection (18 page)

Vinnie’s mouth was slack. After two seconds of dismayed staring he shook his head. “Fucking unbelievable. But wait, if I used proxies, how did you figure out where I was? Where we were?”

“Oh, come on, Vin. Give a girl some credit. I’m good at this.”

Vinnie walked back to the kitchen still shaking his head. “A fucking cooking blog. Shit, that really makes me look bad.”

I stored this interesting and amusing bit of information about Vinnie. The realisation that I still knew so little about him, his background, his history, startled me. As a matter of fact, there was so much I didn’t know about Colin either. A frown deepened on my brow. I knew even less about Francine. Oh, I knew a lot about her behaviour, her sense of humour, her psychology. We had after all shared many lunch hours together. I was a deficient friend. I was going to have to work harder at finding out more personal information about these people.

I turned my attention back to Francine. The anger and fear that had been present all over her face since the attack disappeared whenever she teased Vinnie into an argument. When she looked at me, her eyes were bright and the tight lines around her eyes were gone. “Once I knew the whereabouts of Vinnie, I must admit, I was stunned. Flabbergasted. Right next door to you. They were so pissed at me when I wouldn’t stop knocking at their door. And then I was pissed, seriously pissed, when they didn’t want me to tell you about… about living next to you.”

“She knows,” Colin said when she started stumbling over her words, scared to reveal secrets. “I told her everything last night.”

“Oh, thank God.” Francine threw her hands in the air and nearly knocked a plate out of Vinnie’s hand. He glowered at her and walked around the table to put the plate in front of me. “I was wondering when you two idiots were going to see the light and let her in on what had happened over there. At least now she can understand the need for protection.”

“Sorry I didn’t tell you, Jen-girl.” Vinnie gently squeezed my shoulder. I wasn’t prepared for the physical affection and an involuntary shudder caused him to pull his hand back quickly. A quick flash of regret made me wince.

“Colin explained to me why he had decided not to tell me. Frankly I find many faults in his reasoning, but that is in the past.” I looked at Francine. “Who’s Sister Agnes?”

My quick change in topic brought shock to Francine’s face. She shifted in her chair. “Only because you are who you are will I tell you this. My mother is Sister Agnes.”

“Say what?” Vinnie grabbed a chair and sat down heavily. “I thought both your parents were dead.”

Francine snorted. “My family would like that to be true. My parents are such a scandal to the Lemartins. Personally I think it is a cool story. I love my mom and my dad, and visit them whenever I can. Ours is really not a normal suburban family. My dad is a priest and my mom a nun in Brazil. My mom went there out of rebellion against her family as soon as she could. When the two of them were young, they did the naughty and I was the result. They obviously never got married and my mom stayed on in the monastery. As a little kid, I thought that all the nuns were my aunts. I had a wonderful childhood growing up in a simple, but extremely loving environment.”

“Then how did you become a hacker?” I asked without censure.

“I was a teenager, bored in the monastery. I got onto the computers and found a wonderful world there. I taught myself to travel in this world and look into places that I wasn’t supposed to look into. That was how I found out who my father was.”

“How old were you?”

“Seven. No one realised until I was thirteen my studiousness was actually hacking.” She laughed softly. “I tried a new code and accidentally cut the whole village off from electrical supply and also caused all modes of communication to collapse. It was a dark day.”

Colin and Vinnie laughed in a manner that indicated she had said more than just the literal meaning of her words.

“Are you parents still…” Vinnie shrugged. “You know.”

“Eeuw. No. Dad heads a congregation a few villages away and Mom is still with her old monastery. She loves to hear about the family here, but never wants to be part of this again. Both of them are happy with their lives.”

I looked at this woman who was the epitome of elegance and exotic beauty. She exuded cultured class despite her childhood in a monastery. Or maybe because of it. What an interesting woman.

Vinnie was asking her increasingly personal questions. He seemed fascinated by her parental history. Francine tried to divert his attention by talking about online friends she made then and still had contact with.

“Do you have contacts in Kubanov’s area?” I asked.

She sighed in relief and gave me a grateful look. “I know some people who know some people.”

“You’re lying. You have direct contact with people there.” Her attempt at subtle deception amused and annoyed me. “Can you ask them to find out absolutely everything they possibly can about Kubanov?”

Vinnie stared at me in the same way as the other two. “What are you thinking, Jen-girl?”

“I don’t know yet. The personal aspect to this whole thing makes me think there might be merit in looking into Kubanov’s life.”

“I’ll give you everything I have on him,” Colin said. He pushed in a bit closer to the table and lifted his knife and fork. “Most of the intel we had been able to gather on him surrounds his professional activities though.”

“Above board and under the table,” Vinnie added.

“But so far we have not been able to get a lot of info on his childhood, friends, family or anything personal for that matter.” Colin pushed the scrambled eggs around on his plate. “It certainly felt personal to me when I was in that basement. I think you are right in delving deeper, Jenny.”

Silence fell around the table as we started eating and I got lost in my thoughts about finding the hacker, bomber and Kubanov. Francine might just have more success with gathering information on Kubanov than she was having with locating the hacker.

Loud knocking on the front door pulled me out of my thoughts. Another body in my already people-polluted apartment. Vinnie moved to get up, but Francine stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

“I’ll get it.”

Vinnie got up so fast, he scraped the chair on my wooden floors. I closed my eyes on a silent groan.

“Not to rain on your little feminist parade, Francine, but you are far from healthy enough to protect all of us if that is a bogey at the door.” Vinnie pushed Francine gently back in her chair. “I will get it.”

“It’s most likely Manny,” I said to Vinnie’s back.

Vinnie grunted. “Like I said, bogey.”

“Manny is not a bogey.” I turned to Colin and lowered my voice. “What is a bogey?”

Colin had lost his relaxed body language, reminding me about his revelations last night. Being a friend, what was I to do? Was I supposed to force Colin to confront Manny about the perceived betrayal? Was I supposed to stay completely out of it? None of the friendship books I had read covered this topic. I didn’t know what to do, so I studied Colin.

“Let it go, Jenny. I’m not dealing with this right now.” He was becoming increasingly adept at reading me. I didn’t know if I liked that.

“Okay,” I said softly. I didn’t want Manny to hear our exchange, but he and Vinnie were arguing on the way to the table, so I didn’t think he was paying attention. “I still want to know what a bogey is.”

“It’s a source of fear, danger or harassment.” Manny looked pointedly at Vinnie when he spat out the last word. Then he lifted his nose, inhaled and turned to the table. “Breakfast? Is there any left?”

Vinnie made a noise that sounded very much like a growl. But he went into the kitchen to get a plate for Manny. The older man sat down in Vinnie’s seat, next to Francine, and tilted his head at me.

“We checked out that list of scholarly types that you sent me. Nothing. Well, nothing worth mentioning. These people just read and teach.”

“What about the security companies’ computers?” I asked. “Have your people found anything?”

“Yes, it is just like you said.” Manny looked towards the kitchen. He was impatient for the food. “I forgot to tell you, but there was a virus in the installation program that created a backdoor for the hacker to have full access to the system. At least this is what I remember from a very long and confusing IT explanation.”

“And the forensics on the painting and the wrapping paper?” Colin asked.

“It’s clean. Not a single print. The lab guys also didn’t find any strange components on the painting. All a dead end. What about you, Doc? What have you got for me?”

It cost me a lot to not inquire into his motivation for provoking Vinnie by taking his chair. I managed to control myself and launched into the lengthy explanation of what Colin and I had uncovered in the early hours of the morning.

“So now we know that this emailing bomber is literate.”

“More than literate,” I said before Manny had a chance to say more. “His language patterns in the email and then in this code both show superior understanding of the nuances of the language. I would put his education level at higher than a simple university degree.”

“Simple university degree.” Manny rolled his eyes. “Some people don’t think it’s simple to acquire a university degree.”

I waved away his comment. “Combined with the intricacies of the clues, he has a higher than average intellect, but is by no means a genius.”

“That doesn’t really help me, Doc. A face or name would be much better.”

“You of all people should know how important profiling is while investigating a crime. It could very well be the profile that eliminates hordes of suspects and leads us to the true perpetrator.”

“Is there any reason why we are not suspecting Kubanov?” Vinnie asked from the kitchen.

“We are,” I said. “Personally, I don’t believe he is sending these emails.”

“I agree,” Colin said. “This would be a direct link between him and the crime, something he doesn’t do. No, he’s using someone to hack computers and somebody else to build the bombs and send the emails.”

“It fits that he would orchestrate such an elaborate plan,” I said. “He would ensure that it is executed without a flaw, but there would be at least one, preferably two layers of people between him and the crime.”

“So who the bloody hell is hacking computers? And who the bloody hell is sending emails and bombs?” Manny started counting on his fingers. “We know that the emailing bomber is educated and that he might or might not have a daughter who might or might not have some terminal disease.”

“She might be dead already,” I said, ignoring Manny’s glare. He was angry even though we had so much more than we had had the day before. “Her death might have been the trigger that caused his mental devolvement.”

“Still too many mights and might nots, Doc.” A smile threatened at the corners of Manny’s mouth when Vinnie threw a heaped breakfast plate down in front of Manny. “We need more than all this guesswork.”

“Not guesswork, Millard.” Colin spoke before I could express my utter disgust at having my careful analysis of data diminished to mere guesswork. “You know how Jenny’s mind works. I would stand behind all of this as gospel.”

Manny only huffed and continued eating. A few moments later he asked past a mouth full of scrambled eggs, “So what has your knickers in such a twist, Doc? What’s not adding up for you?”

“There isn’t another email,” I said. I was too bothered by this to be worried about my apparent transparency. Or Manny’s reference to my underwear. “After the last package, the painting, there was that email that took us to the bomb.”

“You think there will be another bomb?” Manny quickly swallowed his food and glared at me. “Well?”

“Stands to reason, yes.” I sighed. “Something’s missing here.”

No matter how hard I tried to figure out why there was no email and what the bomber or hacker’s next step might be, I couldn’t reach any other conclusion. It had to be another email.

“Jenny?” Colin’s insistent call brought me back to the conversation around the table. I lifted an eyebrow at him. “Francine asked if you checked your spam.”

“Of course not. Why would I do that? All those offers for penile enlargements and quick money are most aggravating.”

“I changed the spam control settings for your email,” Francine said. “When I was working on your computer, I strengthened the filters to send any email to the spam box if your computer didn’t recognise the sender’s address.”

Francine was still busy explaining when I rushed to the far side of the table. I sat down in front of my computer. A few clicks later and I had my spam box open. I scanned past the Viagra and gambling offers. My breath caught when the email jumped out at me.

“It’s here. I got another email. From Dante.”

Chapter SIXTEEN

Everyone with the exception of Colin jumped up to stand behind me. I was hard pushed to not swat at them. At least Colin maintained his distance, even though he was leaning in to have a good view of the computer monitor. The concept of my privacy when it came to my computer and emails had long disappeared. It had only required one illegal, malicious hacker and one friend, Francine, for me to feel that computer protection and internet privacy had been a total illusion all along.

I sighed and enlarged the email for everyone behind me to read. Manny must have decided we needed to hear it out loud. “‘The fulminant vengeance of the betrayed will visit upon those of false hope where the hogs, vocalist and weald abide.’”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Vinnie looked at the computer screen with total disgust. “Does this person not know how to speak normal English?”

“We have already established that he has a higher command of English than most users, Vinnie,” I said. “This is just another code.”

“A code with hogs, a vocalist and weald?” Vinnie snorted and moved back to his chair. “What the hell does ‘weald’ mean in any case?”

“A forest,” I said. “It is an Old English word, related to Old Saxon.”

“Okay, Doc.” Manny straightened. The look he aimed at me conveyed expectation and urgency. “What do you make of all this?”

I looked back at the monitor and stared at the cryptic words while sorting through the influx of information. “Firstly, I think it is safe to say now that he is following a pattern. He sends a package which contains a clue, then he sends an email with another clue. The last clue led us to a bomb.”

“Do you think it is the same here?” Manny asked.

“Yes,” Colin said through clenched teeth. He was also staring at the monitor and I knew which word he was focussed on. “The bastard has set another bomb.”

“How can you be so sure, Frey?”

“Fulminant,” Colin said. He pushed his chair away from the table and got up. “You explain to him, Jenny. I’m making coffee.”

“Fulminant means something occurs suddenly and or with great intensity. It can sometimes be used as a synonym for explosive in certain contexts.”

Manny thought about this while looking at the email. I watched his thoughts pull at the
frontalis
and the
orbicularis oculi
muscles in his face. When the latter muscles narrowed his eyes and his nostrils flared, I knew he had come to a decision.

“Fuck! Fuck it all to hell!” He walked a few feet to the front door, returned, walked away again and returned again. “I have to phone GIPN again. What do I tell them, Doc? Where should we go?”

He didn’t give me a chance to answer. His smartphone was already in his hand and he was tapping at the screen. He raised the phone to his ear and looked at me. “Well? Where the fuck should we go?”

“Millard!” Colin stormed from the kitchen straight for Manny. He stopped so close to the older man that their torsos were almost touching. He looked ten centimetres taller and much broader in the chest. These were physiological changes that took place when a man became the aggressor in a conflict. His voice was low and cold when he spoke. “Don’t you fucking dare put Jenny in danger. You don’t get to push her. You don’t get to use her for your own agenda.”

“Stand by,” Manny said into the phone without taking his eyes off Colin. He lowered the phone and moved in so that their noses were almost touching. “Stand the fuck down, Frey.”

Vinnie got out of his chair, his fists clenching and unclenching. I wanted to groan, sigh and grunt in disgust, but mostly, I didn’t want to have to deal with these people. Where was Phillip with his people skills and his calming presence? He would have known exactly how to defuse this situation.

I got up and warned Vinnie off with only lifting my hand. He didn’t look happy about it, but he stopped and waited. I stood next to the two men facing off. Colin’s nonverbal cues showed me he was on a hair trigger. The smallest mistake and there would be a physical altercation in my apartment.

“Colin, please let it go. Manny is just feeling the pressure of knowing that there is a bomb somewhere in the city.” Nothing. No reaction from either of them. Logically I knew they had to hear me, but I had no indicators that this was true.

So I did what I almost never did. I put my hand in Colin’s. “Please? Manny is not putting me in danger, Colin. He was rude, yes. But it’s only because he wants to protect innocent people who might be in danger right now. If the bomber stays true to character, the bomb might be in a museum or a gallery. This is the type of place visited by a lot of people, especially families on a Saturday. We need to find out if there is a bomb and we need to find where it is.”

Colin’s hand tightened painfully around mine. He glanced at me and I took full advantage of it. I allowed all my emotions to express themselves on my face, knowing he would see it, understand it. “We can’t spend this time fighting each other. If you want to protect me, you will help me figure out what this email means so that Manny can find the bomb. That way I won’t even have to leave the apartment.”

Some tension left his body. “Promise me you won’t leave your apartment.”

I tried to pull my hand back, but he wouldn’t let go. “I’m not going to make such a broad promise. But I will promise that I will not go looking for any bombs.”

He studied me for a few seconds before he turned to Manny. “Watch the way you speak to her, Millard. Be respectful.”

“Are you done now with your little hissy fit? Should we hug before we continue?”

“Manny, your behaviour is provocative and unnecessary,” I said and forcefully pulled my hand out of Colin’s. “We are wasting time while you two are posturing.”

That stopped Manny. He acknowledged this with a nod and brought the phone back to his ear. “Daniel? Yes, listen. We might have another bomb like we did on Wednesday. No, we don’t know where it is yet. I was thinking that you should get your team and the bomb squad ready in case. Hm-mm. Yes. We are working on it now. As soon as we know, we’ll give you the location.”

He swiped at the screen and put his smartphone in his pocket. “So? How are we going to figure this out?”

I sat back down in front of my computer and stared at the words again. “He’s talking about where the hogs, singer and forest abide. It must be somewhere that includes all these elements.”

“A pig farm?” Francine frowned. “But that doesn’t include the singer. Wait, let me go get my tablet. I can search for things much better with that.”

I was glad she didn’t want to use my computer. She got up with only a slight wince and walked to the front door.

“Where is she going?” Manny asked when she closed the door.

“Next door.” I was surprised at the gasp coming from Vinnie. Then my shoulders sagged a little bit with the realisation. I looked at Vinnie until he started shifting from one foot to the other. “I am not lying to Manny. He will find out later in any case.”

“Find what out?” Manny sat down and glowered at Vinnie as he also took a seat.

“Colin bought the flat next to mine. Francine and Vinnie are staying there at the moment.”

Manny’s eyes flashed in surprise. “Well, that might be a good thing. At least everyone is contained.”

I was not the only one who took exception to Manny’s phrasing. It would seem, however, that I was the only one who wanted to stay on topic. “Let’s try to keep our focus on this email for the moment. You can argue and insult each other all you want at a later time.”

“She’s right,” Colin said as he sat next to me. “Let’s try to figure out where this bomb is.”

Francine came back and joined us at the table with her tablet. She was swiping and tapping away non-stop. “I’m thinking that it might be a Communist-themed restaurant.”

“How on earth did you get there?” I asked. The ideas that stemmed from her paranoia usually amused me.

“Two words, honey.” She held up two fingers. “
Animal Farm
.”

A few times during our lunches, Francine had talked at length about the George Orwell book. She loved the writer. His work resonated well with all her conspiracy theories. “I can see where you would get pigs in there, but where would you get the singer and the wood?”

“Well, there are a few restaurants here in Strasbourg that have singing waiters. If the restaurant is one of those rustic ones with wooden décor, we have a match.” She tapped away on her tablet, frustration evident on her face. “But I can’t find anything like that here. Not a Communist-themed restaurant with singing waiters.”

Manny was staring wide-eyed at Francine, his lips slightly parted in shock. Vinnie and Colin were smiling. I had grown used to Francine’s outrageous theories that seldom were grounded in fact. I shrugged. “It was a theory. Let’s try to look at the sentence as a whole.”

“Okay,” Colin said. “The bomber must feel that he is betrayed.”

“Was,” I said. “Looking at the code and the other email, I think something had happened some time ago that started all this. It was only something more recent that triggered him into action though.”

“Maybe the person or persons who gave him false hope,” Colin said.

“That would be too far a leap in logic for me. It is a feasible theory though.” I tried to see beyond the words, but there was so little to work with. “Taking these large leaps is not comfortable for me, but I’m willing to try. In that way I would dare say that the bomb is his revenge on whoever he feels betrayed him. Where could hogs, a vocalist and weald be found together?”

“Surely it won’t be somewhere in the forest. This guy wants visibility.” Manny rubbed the back of his neck.

I closed my eyes, calling up the Andantino of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 14. Maybe that would bring some clarity to my thoughts. I was only eight measures into the Concerto when I opened my eyes. Colin was moving around restlessly. It was distracting.

“What?” I asked when he sat down hard in the chair next to me.

“Could it be a painting?” He shifted closer and reached for my laptop. “May I?”

“Move it? Touch it? Work on it?” I threw my hands in the air. “Sure. Why not?”

He pulled my computer and I bit hard on my teeth at the sound of the rubber feet under the laptop dragging across the polished wood of my table. The laptop was now between the two of us, his arm in my personal space while he entered some words into a search engine.

“Look at this painting. It is a painting by John Singer Sargent, painted in 1908. It is titled Ilex Wood at Majorca with Blue Pigs. Here we have the hogs, the vocalist and the weald, but in different words. Pigs, Singer and Wood. Could this be it?”

I stared at the painting on the computer monitor. It was in definite impressionist style, a landscape with two girls in the foreground. Along the sides leading to the back were trees and the girls were surrounded by pigs one could argue were dark gray, gray or blue. It was, for the lack of a better word, pretty. Not something I wanted to hang in my apartment.

“Where is this painting?”

“It is usually in the US. At the moment it is on loan to the Museum of Modern Art here in Strasbourg.” Colin sat up and started talking faster. “It is for the American-French Impressionist exhibition. The grand opening of the exhibition is tonight.”

“Bloody hell.” Manny was already tapping on his smartphone. “Daniel, we’ve got it. It’s the Museum of Modern Art. Fifteen minutes? I can be there in five. Fine, fine. I’ll meet you there.”

It felt like there was a large piece of dry bread stuck in my throat. I didn’t understand why I felt so strongly opposed to Manny going to the potential site of a bomb. Logic dictated that it was part of his job. “Do you have to go?”

“Of bloody course I’m going.” He started for the door. Francine was out of her chair and in front of him before he had taken five steps.

“One minute. Just wait one minute.” She pushed with the palm of her hand against Manny’s chest for a second. Then she ran out of my apartment. It was not an elegant run, she was still favouring her side.

Manny turned to look at me. “Now what?”

I lifted both shoulders. “I have no idea. It seems important.”

“Well, I can’t stand around here all day. I have to get to the scene.” He started walking to the door, straight into Francine. I got up and walked to them.

“Here we are. Let me put this on for you.” Francine held out something that looked small and plastic. It was a clip-on camera. She took a step closer and before Manny could complain, clipped the camera on his jacket. “You won’t even know it’s there.”

“You are not recording this.” Manny lifted his hand to remove it and gave Francine a very angry look when she slapped his hand away.

“It is a brilliant idea. That way we don’t have to worry about you, because we know exactly what is happening. We could also be of assistance if there are some other clues or maybe a trap in the museum.”

Even I was impressed with Francine’s reasoning. “She’s right, Manny. It is a good idea. You can use your smartphone’s headset to keep in contact with us. Your hands will be free.”

“And you will be in my head. I don’t think it’s a good idea.” He shook his head. “Not a good idea at all.”