TUNA LIFE (22 page)

“There’s no serial killer. It’s all bullshit. Some story invented by a journalist with bigger imagination than skills,” the Chief of Police snarled.

“It doesn’t matter what it is or isn’t,” the mayor said. “Reality is created by the media, and they’ve jumped on this story like flies on manure. You need to find some dirt on this journalist. Destroy his credibility so this story goes away.”

“Will do, boss,” the Chief of Police replied in a sarcastic tone. He didn’t mind the new mayor, he was better than the last one, but the Chief of Police didn’t like to be told how to do his job. He was the one who was responsible for the safety of the people living on the coast. The Mayor just attended fancy dinners. No one should doubt who was really in charge.

48

They were sitting in Richard Smith’s office. It was as different as it could possibly be from Andrew’s goldfish bowl office. It almost looked like Richard had ripped out a page from an IKEA catalogue, and then copied it furniture by furniture. It was impossible to read Richard or attempt to understand his personality based on how he had decorated his office. It was totally devoid of personality.

But perhaps that was the intention? Richard dealt with young and aggressive growth companies. He needed to be seen to understand their markets, even though he had passed fifty, had lost most of his hair, and preferred to spend the evenings reading a good book rather than playing Bioshock III with his virtual friends on the internet. Even the family picture on his bookshelf, behind his desk, looked like it was mass-produced; a beautiful brunette, wind blowing in her hair, standing in front of three teenage girls.

“Your wife?” Andrew asked.

“Yes,” Richard replied with a smug smile. It was obvious that the wife and daughters were the pride of his life.

“We’ve got three girls. The oldest one is due to start university next year,” he said pointing at the picture. He rattled off the daughters’ names, but Andrew didn’t register any of them. He had more important matters to attend to than getting to know Richard and his family. He did, however, feel a bit embarrassed that this was the first time he had ever asked Richard a personal question. They had known each other for almost half a year.

Andrew was stressed. The pills didn’t work as they used to. He had sent the list of IP addresses to a contact at Telstra. A contact he could trust. The contact had checked the identity of the persons using Telstra as their mobile and broadband provider, they were the only ones he could check on Telstra’s systems.

The list had turned up some interesting names. A couple of Melbourne-based Russians, Scott Davis – the journalist from Gold Coast Times who had attempted to interview Andrew, and Marissa Soo – the girl whose arm and leg had washed ashore at the Spit three months earlier.

Andrew couldn’t find any immediate connection between the names. Two Russians, a journalist who wrote about businesses on the coast, and a girl who either had drowned, committed suicide or been the victim of something criminal.

He studied the list again. Scott Davis had brought a younger colleague to that interview in Main Beach, the one he had said was still in training. What had he said his name was? Mark something, Mark Moss. Wasn’t that the same guy who had just made a monumental blooper at the paper? Published a speculative article about a possible serial killer on the Gold Coast? But what was the connection?

Andrew Engels stared at the piece of paper in front of him. It was a list from RP Data, a search over which properties were registered to Frank Geitner.

“So Frank owns both these properties?” Andrew asked.

“Yes.”

“But why did he want to start a company with Ken and me? As far as I can understand the guy is rich enough to never work again.”

“It appears so,” Richard Smith said. “At first I thought he could be in financial trouble. That he might have overextended himself, borrowed too much and got in trouble with his bank. But then I checked the titles. There are no mortgages registered on either of the two properties. Frank owns them outright.”

Andrew whistled. “So where does this leave us? He’s obviously got resources to hire top lawyers if he wants to contend the restructure of Tuna Life, and attempt to get his shares back.”

Richard shook his head.

“He signed the documents. I don’t think he’s got a good case.”

But Andrew could see on Richard’s face that he didn’t like what he had just found out. Frank Geitner had the resources to make life very difficult for Tuna Life and Roman Bezhrev. He owned two luxury properties, and had no debts.

“Did you find anything else?” Andrew asked.

“I should probably have done this earlier, but I found a whole lot. Frank Geitner isn’t really Frank Geitner.”

“What do you mean?”

“Frank Geitner is dead. Died in 1989. The Frank Geitner we know assumed his identity a few years back, and then travelled to Australia on an investor visa. An investor visa means that Frank handed our government a million dollars to show that he can support himself. He’ll get the money back when his residency permit is finally approved, but it tells something about his resources.”

“What do you mean he’s not Frank Geitner? I’ve googled him. There are several articles about him.”

“Fake,” Richard Smith said.

“What?” Andrew stared at Richard, shocked at what Richard had just told him.

“Where does he come from?” Richard asked.

“He told me he was from Hamburg, Germany.”

“First lie. He’s from The Netherlands, from Amsterdam.”

Andrew’s eyes widened.

“What education does he have?” Richard asked.

“He said he was trained in computer science.”

“Second lie. He didn’t even finish high school,” Richard said. “Search up that article about Frank on the Gold Coast Times.”

“Why?”

“Just do it. Everything will be much clearer afterwards.”

Andrew keyed in Frank Geitner in the search field of the Gold Coast Times’ website.

“It says no matches found.”

“Exactly. The article was removed less than twenty-four hours after being published.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“I believe it means Frank has hacked the Gold Coast Times site, and removed the article. I googled him before we invested in Tuna Life. Everything looked ok, so I didn’t dig any deeper. But I printed all the searches I completed on you, Frank and Ken. When I did the same searches today, I found nothing on Frank. He seems to have erased himself.”

Andrew looked at Richard. “Or someone else has erased him.”

Richard understood what Andrew was getting at. He was wondering whether Roman Bezhrev was involved. That Roman had removed all traces of Frank to avoid a scandal.

“He’s done the same thing before,” Richard said. “His earlier life in the Netherlands has been deleted from the net as well. I contacted a newspaper in Amsterdam, to check if they’d heard of him. The reporter recognised the name, and remembered she had written two articles about him, back when he went by his real name, his birth name Frank Voser. When she tried to locate the articles she discovered that they were gone. Someone had hacked their server, and deleted the articles. Who does something like that?”

“Someone who has something to hide,” Andrew said.

“Correct. But what? What did Frank do in his previous life? Why does he go to extraordinary lengths to stay invisible?” Richard left the question hanging in the air.

“What did this reporter say about Frank? Who was he before?”

“She said that Frank had been a child prodigy when he grew up, an IQ that flew off the scale. Probably closer to 190. But he never flourished. He was one of those child prodigies who never reached his potential. At first, it had all been well. He had moved quickly through the school system. But he was constantly bored; arguing with teachers who he felt had nothing to teach him, picking fights with other students whom he considered beneath him. He was expelled from school after school, and at some stage he just gave up – and the system gave up on him.”

“He quit school?”

“Correct. Frank doesn’t have a Master in Computer Science. He never even finished high school.”

“But how did he manage to write the code for Tuna Life, how does he have 190 in IQ if he didn’t finish high school?”

“IQ isn’t a measurement of how smart you are. It’s a measurement of how good you are at solving IQ tests. Frank may have an IQ of 190, but he is still an asshole. That’s the reason he was expelled from all the schools, and that’s the reason he never reached his full potential. I believe that even if he had continued at school and ended up with a Ph.D. he would probably never have succeeded in the world of academia. It’s highly unlikely that those who received Nobel Prizes in the 1970s would have received them in today’s world. Richard Feynman with his crazy antics and peculiarities wouldn’t have stood a chance in a world where it is more about interpersonal skills and political correctness than scientific breakthroughs. Frank wouldn’t have lasted a week in today’s academic world.”

“He didn’t really last that long in the business world either,” Andrew said. He remembered Frank’s Twitter-rant that had started the whole thing. “But it still doesn’t make any sense. Why did he move to Australia? Why did he live with a fake identity?”

“This is where it starts getting interesting,” Richard said. “It turns out Frank Geitner, or Frank Voser which is his real name, is wanted by the Interpol.”

Andrew’s jaw dropped three floors. “Wanted by the Interpol? For what?”

“Even though he wasn’t officially enrolled in any high school, it didn’t mean he stopped learning stuff. He went to local libraries and read up on everything from philosophy to advanced maths. And he taught himself to program. Towards the end of the 1980s he was part of a renegade gang of computer-literate nerds who hacked most of the large intelligence agencies of the western world. They never stole any money, and they never spread any information like Julian Assange and WikiLeaks have done. But they broke in and poked around in the systems. Frank was convicted, in absentia, to thirty years in prison. If he is ever caught and extradited to the US he will spend the rest of his life in prison.

Andrew whistled. “No wonder he got nervous when we started attracting attention with Tuna Life. But what do we do now? Do we contact police?”

“No,” Richard said firmly. “Nobody can ever know Frank Geitner and Frank Voser is the same person. Not even Roman. It would destroy Tuna Life. Frank has managed to stay hidden for two decades. He is now out of the company, and there’s little risk anyone will ever figure out who he really was. We’ll just have to let time help us. It will be like he was never here.”

Andrew nodded. He understood the gravity. If some reporter discovered who Frank really was, then he could most likely sink the company. The problem was that Andrew knew something Richard didn’t know. There was a virus embedded in the Tuna Life app, a virus that had been discovered by one of the employees, Fabian Svenson. Fabian was now dead. Hit by a car less than twenty-four hours after he had discovered the virus.

And there was more.

Someone had used the virus to access mobile phones and computers belonging to Tuna Life users, including the dead woman, Marissa Soo, and the journalist from the Gold Coast Times, Scott Davis. Was Frank something more than a simple hacker? Was he a serial killer?

Andrew stroked his hand through his hair. He was just thirty, but he had already started to find grey strands of hair. He had pulled out three this morning. The pills Richard had given him had helped against the stress, but the body started to show signs that he was pushing himself too hard. “Why had the reporter written about Frank?” Andrew asked.

“There was something about a tragedy in the family. He lost his wife and daughter within a short timeframe, while still being on the run.”

“Did he have a wife and daughter?” Andrew asked, slapping his own thighs in surprise. “Why has he never mentioned them?”

Richard looked at Andrew with disappointment. “Andrew, Frank has gone to extreme lengths to conceal his real identity. I think we’re best off assuming that nothing he has told us is true.”

Andrew nodded. “But why did he move here? Why did he move to Australia? There must have been something that made him move here.”

“Or he was fleeing from something. You can’t come much farther away from Europe than Australia.”

Andrew leant back in his chair, and closed his eyes. He needed to locate Frank, but how was he supposed to find a person who had managed to stay hidden from the Interpol the last twenty years? How was he, a simple accountant who due to a string of coincidences had become successful, how was he supposed to do what the Interpol had failed to do all these years?

It was probably a hopeless task, but he had to give it a shot. There was no point checking the second property on Richard’s list. Andrew knew he wouldn’t find him there. His house had been cleaned out, hell, he had even lied about the cat.

Of course Frank knew someone would find out about the properties. It wasn’t exactly hard to do a property search.

But Andrew knew there was one thing Frank hadn’t lied about.

Frank’s little weakness.

Suddenly Andrew knew exactly where he would find him.

49

A long-legged ibis landed at the neighbouring table. Gently it started nipping at the napkins and crumbs left by the guest who had just left. Scott Davis swore. Was it that difficult to clean up after yourself? The garbage bin was less than two meters away. Probably smokers, smokers didn’t have the same attitude as normal people. They were probably so used to everybody else cleaning up after them, as they dulled their way through life, throwing cigarette butts and spitting chewing gum on the street. For an extended period Scott had made a deliberate attempt to reform some of these walking environmental disasters, he had asked them to pick up their cigarette butts and throw them in the ashtrays like normal people. Two metres of baldness and muscles, had mostly done the deed, but in the end it had required too much effort. There was no way one could reform them all, their actions were as ingrained as the ugly tattoos they wore on their shoulders. He glanced over at Mark Moss, who was standing in the line at Zaraffa’s Coffee Bar, at the Easy-T Centre in Robina. Scott had offered to pay, but Mark had insisted. He hadn’t lost his job as a consequence of the speculative article about a possible serial killer on the loose, but it had been a close call. He had been relieved of his present duties on the crime desk of the paper, and for the next month or so he had to report to some guy running the internet edition. Mark apparently had to learn how the systems worked so he never made the same mistake again.