The Swiss Suitcase (LSD, #1)

5. Jumping Jack Flash

Jumping Jack Flash

I knock on the door of suite 2409. No reaction. I open the door and look inside. It's empty. I scan the room for papers, laptops, or phones. Nothing. I'm wasting my time. I go back to the reception, hoping Sabina can help me, and perhaps give me another one of her smiles...

"Hi, Sabina. You told us about that Englishman who was at the dinner party. We just tried his room, but there's nobody there. Do you have any idea where we can find him?"

"Mister Parker? I saw him go to the terrace, to have his breakfast, about ten minutes ago. It's a tall, pale man with glasses. He's at the wrong end of fifty, light blond hair, but hardly enough to cover his skull. If I remember it well, he's wearing a grey tie and a white jacket."

"Thanks, again. You're a dear.", I smile. I walk through the lobby and the bar to the back entrance, take a quick glance at the terrace, get an idea that might grow into a plan and I hurry back to my room where I left Rostov: "The name of our Englishman is Mister Parker. What else do you remember about him?"

Rostov frowns: "Mister Camponelli called him Jack... The Frenchman made a joke about the terrible weather in Liverpool that forced all those poor CEOs taking regular trips to the sun. Does it mean he's from Liverpool?"

"It means he's a CEO from Liverpool with the name Jack Parker, which might be enough for The Nerd, I mean, for my colleague #2, to give us some extra info."

I alert my spiPhone and tell it: "Lovely Sweet Dear." (That's how I activate my spiPhone: the first letters of the password stand for LSD and the phone checks the sound of my voice to identify me). "Record Message. To. #2, The Nerd. Start Message. Request social report. Subject: Mister Jack Parker, CEO, probably of a major bank that has its main office in Liverpool, U.K. Urgent. Stop Message. Send Message." The voice recorder changes my spoken orders into electronic commands and sends the message.

Quickly, I give myself a little fake tan on the face and the hands, not as dark as Rostov, just coffee with lots of cream. I change my clothes into Casual Friday, a grey suit with a grey tie and grey shoes, glasses with a steel frame, a tiny Mexican moustache and a wig that gives me short, black hair. Meanwhile, my spiPhone announces the receipt of the requested info. I put it on the speaker to hear what the LSD-files have about our English friend.

"Mister Jack Parker. Born on the 22 of November 1963. Length: 1 metre 90. Married to Susan Parker-Boyles in 1986. Three children: Charles, born in 1989; Emma, born in 1992; Margaret, born in 1994. Lives in Liverpool. Profession: CEO and shareholder of the First English Bank since July 2013. Occupied important positions in lots of other companies, usually less than two years. Switched employers when another company offered a higher financial reward for his services. This job-hopping countenance gave him the nickname of Jumping Jack. He votes conservative. He supports Liverpool FC. He plays golf. He bets on the horses. He reads English detective stories."

"Cool... Do you have information about everyone? Do you have a file about me too?", Rostov asks.

"It's nothing special, Rostov. We have small pieces of software, robot programs; they scan the Internet, gather information and add it to our database. Mister Parker will probably have a Linked-In-account, perhaps an account on an online gambling website, he might be found in the local library or in bookshops. Also, we scan his credit card and get info from his bank accounts. We filter what's interesting. Google does it, Facebook does it, WhatsApp does it, and every government and secret service does it. When you get a client who wants a loan, don't you check his data first to find out if he's trustworthy? This is the twenty-first century. If you want to be sure about something, you check the Internet, his bank, his employer, his school...