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Back A Shadow Intelligence Save as PDF
Chapters (58)
  1. Cover
  2. Also by Oliver Harris
  3. ONE
  4. TWO
  5. THREE
  6. FOUR
  7. FIVE
  8. SIX
  9. SEVEN
  10. EIGHT
  11. NINE
  12. TEN
  13. ELEVEN
  14. TWELVE
  15. THIRTEEN
  16. FOURTEEN
  17. FIFTEEN
  18. SIXTEEN
  19. SEVENTEEN
  20. EIGHTEEN
  21. NINETEEN
  22. TWENTY
  23. TWENTY-ONE
  24. TWENTY-TWO
  25. TWENTY-THREE
  26. TWENTY-FOUR
  27. TWENTY-FIVE
  28. TWENTY-SIX
  29. TWENTY-SEVEN
  30. TWENTY-EIGHT
  31. TWENTY-NINE
  32. THIRTY
  33. THIRTY-ONE
  34. THIRTY-TWO
  35. THIRTY-THREE
  36. THIRTY-FOUR
  37. THIRTY-FIVE
  38. THIRTY-SIX
  39. THIRTY-SEVEN
  40. THIRTY-EIGHT
  41. THIRTY-NINE
  42. FORTY
  43. FORTY-ONE
  44. FORTY-TWO
  45. FORTY-THREE
  46. FORTY-FOUR
  47. FORTY-FIVE
  48. FORTY-SIX
  49. FORTY-SEVEN
  50. FORTY-EIGHT
  51. FORTY-NINE
  52. FIFTY
  53. FIFTY-ONE
  54. FIFTY-TWO
  55. FIFTY-THREE
  56. FIFTY-FOUR
  57. FIFTY-FIVE
  58. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We were approaching slowly when a flame danced through the darkness ahead. Someone was crossing towards the spillage with a kerosene lamp. Joanna swore. That’s a naked flame. I was trying to decide whether to intervene or turn around when the place lit up, sudden as a camera flash, only the illumination held and I could see all their faces, the people who’d been hiding. The fuel was flowing down into the stream, igniting through the trees, the night suddenly wild like a storm. Then there was a scream: a girl with her clothes on fire was running. I couldn’t understand where she was running to. We were getting closer, Joanna unclipping her gun hopelessly, and I saw the girl running to the stream to dive in, only the stream was on fire.

Over the past six months I had thought of that night a lot. I had imagined the many places in the world Joanna might be, the many reasons it was best to maintain radio silence. No news was most certainly good news. I understood she would get in touch on her own terms.

Now she had.

EIGHT

When I woke the next morning there was a message from Evotec. They had accessed a recent internal directory compiled by Kaztelecom. The landline I’d been called from came up registered to Nurlan Pokatilov, Apartment 603, 9/1 Malakhov St, Astana 050059, Kazakhstan. It was listed online as a holiday rental.

The TutaNova address used for the Catalyst link had been set up just before the message was sent, on a machine with an IP address that belonged to a PC in Kazakhstan. Evotec had gone one step better: the PC itself belonged to a café going by the initials KS, on Kaldayakov Street, Astana.

The resolution of the clip conformed to several models of concealed camera. The level of compression suggested it had been copied twice. There was no form of watermark on the video clip aside from a time and date stamp. Like the newspaper, it had been set two weeks ahead. In terms of CGI, it wasn’t like anything they’d seen before.

I brought up a satellite view, found the street address. The café was on a back street. Nurlan Pokatilov’s address was one of many large apartment blocks in the north of the city. I tried calling his landline again but no one answered.

I sent new instructions to Evotec: Kazakh hospital records for the last week, plus recent arrests in Astana, then flight manifests in and out of the country for the days around the contact. My guess was that Kazakhstan’s bloated bureaucracy used outdated technology that wouldn’t prove too much of a challenge for the hackers.

I looked up routes to Astana.