Chastity Flame (6 page)

"Excellent," Chastity said, looking at
the pass hanging from the blue lanyard. "No picture? Will that be a
problem?"

"Actually no," Amélie shook her head.
"Turn it over. See? There's a chip in it. Pictures are easy to
fake. The chip was created by the organizers."

Chastity chuckled. "They seem to be
well organized for outlaws."

"They certainly are—which is what
makes them a challenge to deal with, of course. Ah, here are the
omelets. Wonderful!"

They were indeed. Chastity enjoyed the
fresh flavors of the savory delight, just as she enjoyed the lively
wit of Amélie, who bounced from topic to topic with ease and
enjoyment, moving with easy grace through the wandering topics. She
spoke with great fervor for her homeland and an almost embarrassed
pride for her hometown, Leuven. "It's a medieval city, so you can
feel the dreams of years gone by in every street. Yet we are
completely modern in our outlook, like the rest of Belgium. We have
the best of old and new."

Presently it was time to make their
appearance. Just as they got up, Chastity's phone rang in her bag
and she picked it up. "Yes?"

It was Monitor, of course. "Don't
worry if you don't connect with the hacker tonight. This may be
only an opportunity to get a foot in the door.
Understood?"

"Yes."

"We have to be circumspect with this
one. He can be skittish. We need to know who he's working for—and
we have to be willing to take the time to find out."

"Understood," Chastity repeated. This
was payback for correcting the other client too soon. She swallowed
her irritation.

"Is the contact proving helpful?"
Monitor quizzed.

Chastity looked at Amélie and smiled.
"Most helpful. A delight, in fact."

"Excellent. Check in after the
rendezvous. I want an update even if it means no real news other
than initial contact made."

"Yes, of course." Chastity hit the end
call button and dropped the phone back in her back. She looked over
at Amélie. "Shall we?"

"The adventure begins."

Chapter Four

"Passes,
s'il vous plaît
! No one enters without
a pass," said a tall man stood at the door to the ballroom.
"
Je moet een pass. Sie müssen einen Pass
haben
."

Chastity and Amélie showed their
passes, had them scanned, and were waved inside with the admonition
that they wear the lanyards around their necks. Once in the
ballroom, they found the room pullulating with a strange assortment
of mostly darkly-clad young people. Looking around at the various
knots of people, Chastity began to feel quite old. Some of them
looked far too young to be out on a school night, but appearances
could be deceptive. Most had some kind of handheld device, busy
texting someone or other, or perhaps live blogging about the event,
as Amélie said she would be doing.

"I regularly write on these topics and
they track people who track me," she said as they walked over to
the hotel. "Everything moves so fast. It's impossible to keep up,
but we try."

Distracted by a young girl with a blue
mohawk and a bright orange jumper, Chastity found herself
completely enraptured by the mad swirl of activities. The hackers
gathered around small tables, or in front of screens where
projectors duplicated laptops' images demonstrating complex coding
which looked like gibberish to her, or showed pictorial guides to
taking apart cell phones to replace their interiors with new
systems. At last she shook her head—it was all too much. "How do we
find our guy?"

Amélie pointed to a big crowd gathered
around a podium with a big screen behind it. There was a loud
techno beat coming from that corner and fast moving images flowing
behind the speaker. "He's just known by his screen name, madcap,
but we have information suggesting he may be a Roger Keith of
Trumpington."

"A Roger Keith?"

Amélie shrugged. "It may also be a
case of identity theft. We don't have enough physical evidence to
weigh. Part of my task."

Chastity smiled. "What are you going
to do? Clip his nail?"

"I'll do what I have to do. Let's get
closer."

They worked their way forward to get a
glimpse of the hacker. He was talking animatedly as the images
flashed by from his laptop's projection. Chastity could see no
connection, but at times he seemed to gesture to specific images,
in fact stopping the flow once to point meaningfully to the frozen
picture. If the music were a little quieter, she could have made
more of his comments, but he seemed to forget that he was leaning
away from the mic. The crowd around him appeared to be following
the talk, however, nodding in time with the beat as they gazed up
at him or the screen.

He was a strange-looking creature,
wearing a sort of faux retro outfit, fringed jacket and silk scarf
over leather pants. A couple of necklaces ringed his neck, the
white pukka shells of one matching the paleness of his skin. His
hair, however, was black and curly, although it might well have
been a perm, bushing out wildly as if a sudden wind had caught it.
He looked like a Sixties throwback, although his eyes seemed right
out of rave culture, blackened and wide, bloodshot and a little
wild. Chastity wondered if all hackers looked this
wired.

She tried to focus on what he was
saying, but it was completely useless. Maybe Monitor should have
invested in some training for her. Amélie tugged at her sleeve and
they wormed their way closer to the podium. We must stick out like
sore thumbs, Chastity thought, but perhaps there was a usefulness
in that. She thought that the hacker's eyes flicked her way, then
back again for a slower look. Maybe he was just registering her
oddness in that arena. Perhaps with luck, though, it was a little
more and she might get a little closer in her guise as a
journalist.

Abruptly, the presentation ended and
the crowd broke into a grudging applause, as if they weren't quite
willing to admit that they had been impressed, but couldn’t quite
avoid tipping their hands. The hacker was immediately swarmed as he
closed his tiny laptop and tried to move away from the podium for
the next speaker.

Amélie caught Chastity's eye and
wagged her head in the direction of the nearest exit. Likely that
was where he was headed, too, so they made their way across the
stream of people toward the eruption into the hallway. They
actually beat the hacker and his entourage of admirers out the
door. Chastity waited, and gradually the press of ghostly
hangers-on dispersed and the hacker seemed to drift in their
direction, his eyes seeking her own.

"You're the journo, ain't
ya?"

Clearly he expected her to be
impressed. She supposed the chip alerted security. "Yes. Mind if I
ask you a few questions?"

"Aw, you're English. I thought you'd
be American." He looked considerably less interested now, his kohl
black eyes drifting over to check out Amélie and then moving on,
unfocused.

"Only half English," Chastity
prompted. "Our readers are really excited to hear what you have to
say. We've already got lots of hits on our site just with the mench
of it. Everyone pelted me with questions to ask you."

"Well, all right," he said, sighing.
"Let's sit. Who's this?"

"Amélie. I've been an admirer of your
work for a long time." Chastity marveled at the way she gushed
believably, reaching for his reluctant hand. Appealing to his ego
seemed to be a predictably safe route. "When Pauline was looking
for a subject for her piece, I suggested you
immediately."

"I'm really not that savvy about the
inside information," Chastity added. "I'd love to know how you
choose your projects. You must have to say no to a lot of
people."

The hacker grinned. "You wouldn't
believe how many. People are really gutted when I tell them I can't
help them with their problems. I'm only one person, I can only do
so much," he said, with falsely mocking modesty.

But she had a job to do. "So how do
you choose? Do you just get a feeling for the particular person or
do you invest in their ideology?"

"Ideology?" he laughed. "No, I don't
believe in anything. People are all deluded. I just go with the
highest bidder."

Ah, the mercenary, Chastity thought.
Simple to deal with after all. "Do you ever get concerned about the
impact your work has on other people? I mean, if you're just going
with the highest bidder, what if they're terrorists or, I don't
know, investment bankers? Do you feel any
responsibility?"

He shrugged, looking a little
irritated. "Not my problem. They're going to hire somebody, so it's
going to happen, it’s a done deal. If it weren't me, it would be
someone else. Whatever."

What a prince. "How did you
get into hacking?" Chastity asked, struggling for another line of
questioning to pursue. Was there going to be a way to get him to
open up and betray something more substantial than his
laissez-faire
morality?

Just as she was beginning to feel a
bit impatient, he finally drawled, "Oh, that's a long story. Maybe
we should talk about it over drinks." He had his phone out, texting
something to someone before she even agreed to it.

"You don't mind if Amélie comes too?"
Predictably, he shrugged.

"There's a great little café not too
far from here," Amélie said, falling into step beside Chastity as
they walked down the exit hall. "The food is quite
sensational."

"Do they have English food? I don't
like foreign food," the hacker said, sniffling a little and still
texting furiously as they went out the glass doors.

Amélie looked nonplussed. "They have
hamburgers, I think."

"What do I call you, by the way?"
Chastity interrupted, wondering if things were about to roll off
track. "I can't just call you 'madcap' can I?"

He looked up at her, eyebrows drawn
together. "Why not?"

"All right, madcap." Chastity shrugged
too. "Do you travel a lot?"

"Hey, what the fuck?!" He had stopped
in the middle of the pavement, staring at his phone
intently.

"What is it?" Chastity tried to peek
at the tiny screen.

He looked up at Chastity with a frown.
"Who are you really?"

"What do you mean?"

"You're not a civ. You're some kind of
law enforcement or something."

Chastity feigned disbelief. "I don't
know what you're talking about."

"Your phone. They scanned it. My guys.
It's got more security than ours and we made ours ourselves. Fuck
off! I'm not telling you anything." He turned on his heel and
started to stalk back toward the hotel. Amélie exchanged a glance
with Chastity, suggesting they follow him, but Chastity gave a
quick head shake. Thinking fast, she summoned up a look of
irritation of her own.

"What the hell are you talking about?
I bought this phone at the airport because I found out my phone
doesn't work here. I don't even know what it is!" He waved her off,
ignoring her pleading words, but she wasn't willing to give up yet.
"My editor is going to kill me if I don't come back with a story on
you."

He stopped and looked over his
shoulder back at her, uncertain. Then his gaze shifted, his eyes
went wide and he turned and ran. Chastity whirled around and Amélie
followed suit. Two men in black were making their way purposefully
toward them. Without a word, Chastity and Amélie crouched down and
the four operatives met with silent efficiency on the empty street.
The blows fell hard and fast. Chastity landed a couple that
connected, one to the knee, another to the shin of her opponent.
She sidestepped a blow to her chest and retaliated with a slash to
his windpipe, staggering him a little. Amélie dropped her adversary
with a move so fast that Chastity could not tell where she hit him,
just that he was suddenly on the ground and still. The two of them
turned on the other, and in no time had him groaning beside his
comrade. Amélie dug through her shoulder bag and came out with some
nylon restraints, handing a set to Chastity, which she slipped
around the arms of the man in front of her.

Amélie was already phoning for a pick
up, speaking rapidly into her mobile in French, then snapping the
clamshell shut. "They'll be here in seven minutes."

Chastity nodded. She rifled through
the pockets of the op but found nothing. She looked over at Amélie,
who had also found nothing of note. "Who do you work for?" The guy
blinked up at her, his brain still chugging at a snail's pace from
the blows, head lolling. Amélie's bloke was still out cold. I'm
going to have to learn that move, Chastity thought with
envy.

"They're here," Amélie said under her
breath. "Shall we ramble on?"

Chastity looked back toward the hotel.
A few attendees were staring in their direction, vaguely
interested. The hacker was nowhere to be seen. Had he scarpered
because he knew who the ops were? Or because he thought they were
after him? There was no way to know. "Yes, let's go."