Egress Point

Chapter 20

"Nick!" Arebecca said.

He stood up and sheepishly She wanted to hug him but remembered the trouble he had caused. She settled for a smile. The second man was taller, and perhaps a little older than Thomas, but that still only made him 20 at most. He was blond with a few day's worth of stubble covering the bottom of his face.

"And Patey," Em said as she walked in behind Arebecca. "Enjoying your vacation?"

"Well, the entertainment's first class," He pointed at the computers on the far side of the room. "But the bedding could do with a refresh. It's good to see you Em."

"Wish I could say the same," she said with a shake of her head. "Care to tell us what is going on?"

Max stepped in, leaving the door open. Arebecca looked back and saw a new man with a gun waiting in the corridor outside. She moved away from the door and closer to Nick.

"I caught these two creeping around a couple of days ago," Max said. "They are quite the nuisance. But they are smart, and now they are helping my, my new team, with our latest project."

"Max here is a carder, and a bit of a script kiddie too," Patey said. "A card-thief of the cyber kind. He's found a fantastic cache of credit cards from all over Europe. He's been siphoning the data for months now, tens of millions of card numbers that can be sold for hundreds of millions of dollars. But there's just one hitch, isn't there Max?"

"There is no hitch, just a small problem. One which Nick and James here have agreed to help us with. And you two can either help them, or I'll hand you over to Georgy and Ilia to play with."

"Oh, you've met the chuckle brothers have you? Ilia's a nasty piece of work." Patey said. "They work for Max's boss."

"He's not my boss!" Max didn't look happy. He put his hands in his jeans pockets. "It's just a contract. And we'll meet our deadline with or without your help!"

With that Max stormed out and Arebecca heard the sound of the padlock being snapped shut.

"What was all that about?" Arebecca said. "And how come you didn't warn me? I thought you must be dead!" She gave Nick a dark look. One she'd learned from her Italian father.

"I, er, well, we, er. We couldn't." he sighed and looked down at his feet. "We're in a difficult position here," he managed.

"You mean you've been outwitted by a bunch of Russian carders?" Em said with scorn in her voice. "They caught you and you couldn't escape, and now you have to do their bidding?"

"No," Patey said. "Not quite. The security here looks the part, but it would be fairly trivial to escape. We've obeyed their rules because there's more at stake than a few million credit card numbers and a carder gang."

"If it's trivial, can we just leave now please?" Arebecca was not sure how easy it would really be to escape. More than that, she really did not like the look of the bedding. Nor did she relish the thought of being handed over to the Russians.

"Er, not yet, but very soon." Nick said. "I'd really hoped to have all this worked out before you got into any trouble. And you Em, I had no idea you might get involved."

"Didn't you?" Em said. "I figure this is all part of Patey's plan. I think I know why you need me here."

"Why?" Arebecca asked. She still wasn't sure why Em thought that Patey had manage to orchestrate everything when he was clearly captured himself. "Oh, is it to work out Max's problem. What even is his problem?"

"Encryption." Patey, Nick and Em all answered at the same time. Arebecca looked from one to the other and shook her head. The two men nodded to Em and kept their mouths closed.

"The data these thieves have been aggregating is encrypted," Em began. "They've found out some security holes, amassed a ton of data, but it's locked up so securely it's worthless to them."

"You know those files you translated about encryption strength," Nick continued. "Well, it turns out that's one thing that the Bancaire Nationale, and a whole bunch of other banks, did really well. They de-valued the data. So even if it was stolen --which it was-- it would be worthless."

"But you don't need me for decryption," Em said, shaking her head.

"No, we really didn't expect to see either of you," Patey said, moving over to one of the computers. "The keys to all the encrypted card data are here in Berlin. This is where the banks send it to get the plain-text card numbers back so that they can be used to process transaction. Max's group is going to steal the keys from the decryption environment, here in Berlin."

Arebecca felt better. If Patey really hadn't asked Nick to trick her into enlisting Em, then perhaps it was just unlucky they were all there. Though looking around the place, it had all worked out very neatly. No, it couldn't all be part of a grand scheme. She and Em hadn't needed to travel to Paris, or Berlin. They'd chosen to do that, Patey had nothing to do with it.

"So why are you guys helping Max out?" Arebecca asked. "Why didn't you find a way to get me a message?"

"As you've seen, Max has a bit of a temper. It's not a good idea to annoy him," Patey moved a mouse and a screen came to life. "He's got this place thoroughly locked down. He listens to us, he monitors the network traffic, he's got keyloggers running on all these machines to record everything we do in real-time. Watch."

He waved them over to the screen. Arebecca moved over and leaned in. Em came closer to look too. Patey pulled up a browser and typed: gmail.com. He didn't hit enter. Then he started to count out loud.

By the time he'd got to 23, the door was thrown open and Max burst in.

"I told you!" he screamed. "If you even attempt to communicate, I'll hand you over to Vadik! See how you like his accommodation! You'll be begging to be back here with me!" He stamped over to Patey and lifted him up out of the seat by his t-shirt collar. "No email!" he roared in Patey's face. "No communication!"

"Hang on Max," Patey was calm and confident. "I need these two to understand the rules too. Otherwise you might have more than an attempted connection on your hands. Calm down, we're all on the same page. We need the decryption keys as much as you do."

"Are you playing games with me!?" Max dragged Patey over to the door and continued to shout at him. Patey didn't try to stop him.

Nick bent down and whispered to Arebecca and Em.

"He listens to everything too -- there's microphones in the walls. We're going to steal the keys and then escape. We can get around his security, but he'd notice in the end, and that would be bad. Really bad."

Max finished shouting and slammed the door. Patey straightened out his t-shirt and sat down on a bunk. He shook his head.

"If we could have got a message out to you we would have, we really would. If we work with Max to steal the decryption keys, we'll be in the clear. I promise. Then we can make all of this," He gestured to the room. "And any trouble you are in, go away."

"So, if you really don't need our help, then we can just wait here until you've solved Max's problem." Em said, sitting down at one of the computers.

"Well, er," Nick began. "Kind of. Once Max found out you were snooping around, he asked us who you were." Nick said this while touching his ear. "We initially told him that you weren't important. But when you showed up in Berlin, we had to tell him the truth: that we couldn't work the plan without you."

"You did what?" Arebecca said. "No wonder they were looking so hard for us! Go and tell him we're not necessary!"

Nick and Patey both held their fingers to their lips. Arebecca noticed that Em was doing the same.

"We really need your language skills for this," Thomas said quickly. "And if you weren't necessary, Vadik would have killed you here in Berlin, not captured you for Max."