Brian Freemantle - The Namedropper

‘But France still happened,’ said Alyce.

‘But not until after you’d sent me, in a letter with a date on it, in an envelope with a French postal date on it – both of which I’ll submit as evidence – instructions to file for your divorce. As far as you were concerned, your marriage was over. It wasn’t when your husband had his two admitted mistresses?’

‘Isn’t that covered – excused – by all the caveats you explained earlier in the criminal conversation statute?’ cut in Jordan.

‘Depends how I argue it,’ insisted Reid.

Maybe there was a benefit to the meeting after all, thought Jordan. He said, ‘What about after France? Do you think Appleton would have had the surveillance maintained?’

‘It might be something to pursue when we get to court,’ said Reid.

‘I don’t see the point or purpose of continuing the expense,’ said Beckwith. ‘He had his evidence by then, didn’t he?’

It wasn’t the reassurance he’d wanted but realistically there was no way either lawyer could say any more, accepted Jordan. ‘If he has he’ll know Alyce and I have met again, here today.’

‘In the presence of your lawyers, both of whom have legally attested the meeting in the without prejudice documentation,’ Beckwith pointed out. ‘It can’t be used in any court hearing to any benefit to Appleton, which is why it was drawn up.’

‘In the presence of your lawyers,’ echoed Reid, to emphasize his following point. ‘Just in case there is continuing surveillance, I don’t think it would be a good idea for you and Alyce to get together in anything other than in our presence.’

‘With which I fully concur, ‘ said Beckwith.

Alyce snorted a derisive laugh. ‘One of the few things that we can be assured of at this stage is that the likelihood of that being on either of our minds just doesn’t exist.’

‘I agree. To everything,’ said Jordan.

‘I’m still waiting, though,’ said Alyce, openly challenging Jordan.

‘I really am sorry for the way I behaved earlier,’ said Jordan.

‘I wish I believed you,’ said Alyce.

It was just after nine that night when Reid’s home telephone jarred in his den but he was still there, waiting. He said, ‘I was beginning to get worried wondering what had happened to you.’

‘There were delays at your end and then we got stacked at La Guardia,’ said Beckwith. ‘It was a goddamned awful trip back.’

‘How’d you think it went?’

‘Better than I thought it would, after the rocky start. I certainly don’t think they knew each other, before France.’

‘Neither do I,’ agreed Reid.

‘I hope we don’t get Pullinger.’

‘I’ll keep on the case until we find out for sure.’

‘I think they’ll do well in court.’

‘I was worried about Jordan, as you know. I thought he did OK.’

‘I thought Alyce did, too. Can’t have been easy for her, as Jordan said, talking about her as if she wasn’t there.’

‘Cute little gal. I envy him France.’

‘We need Appleton’s medical report,’ insisted Beckwith. ‘If he’s infected we can both blow Appleton out the water.’

‘I’m worried about that,’ admitted Alyce’s lawyer. ‘It’s too obvious a weakness in his case. I wrote to Bartle after you left, demanding the production of a specific report, as well as the medical history. And to Leanne Jefferies. I don’t imagine she’s going to be so fond of Appleton now that she’s going to be sued for criminal conversation.’

‘You think Appleton could have an actual mental condition, as Alyce intimated? It could help as much as the proof of chlamydia. And should show on his medical history.’

‘If I don’t get what I want from Bartle I’m definitely going to file for a pre-court hearing,’ assured Reid. ‘Jordan really make that good a living from gambling?’

‘Seems like it,’ said Beckwith.

‘I thought your guy made a good point about surveillance,’ said Reid. ‘I wish my people had produced as much on Appleton as his people did on Jordan and Alyce in France.’

‘There’s still time. We don’t have a court date yet.’

‘I’m glad we’re working together.’

‘So am I.’

‘Let’s keep in touch.’

‘Let’s do that.’

H arvey Jordan decided there was no reason for him to have considered as wasted time the frustrating day he’d spent in the Carlyle suite waiting for the results of the American venerealogist’s examination. He would have been distracted then, not devoting his absolute concentration upon what he wanted to do and the preparations necessary to do it. And the trip to Raleigh had been a useful interval to think things through as well as the opportunity to put things right between himself and Daniel Beckwith.

Today was the moment to start putting into practice the several decisions he’d reached and become pro-active: to start to work, in fact, with just the slightest variation from normal. Not wanting to risk being followed to all the places of public record and reference that he might need to visit – despite having so much useful information already available from the legal exchanges between the lawyers – Jordan’s first priority was to resolve the surveillance uncertainty. How to do that had come to him during the Raleigh meeting.

The most compelling reason for staying in grand hotels was the comprehensiveness of their services, which he utilized by having someone from the Carlyle’s guest assistance go out to buy the laptop he needed, which had the double benefit of him not being seen to make the purchase if he were still being watched and further distancing him from it by having its purchase price registered against the hotel and not charged by name against him, personally. It took Jordan the entire morning to configure the machine and put it on-line, not through an American provider but through the British Telecom Yahoo broadband server. He set up his payments through England, too, from the Paul Maculloch account at the Royston and Jones private bank.

From his previous lawful career Harvey Jordan had brought an unrivalled computer expertise to his new illegal career, in which phishing was essential. The first requirement for successful hacking was never to initiate a direct intrusion into another system, but to work through an intervening, unwitting ‘cut out’ server. The reason for such caution was twofold: computer protection had become extremely sophisticated since its inception, with many preventative systems utilizing tracing facilities to identify the source of a detected illegal entry attempt. It was this unknowing ‘cut out’ buffer computer system that showed up if Jordan’s cyber burglary got ensnared in a firewall, not Jordan’s laptop. The second advantage was that Jordan only got charged for the cost of accessing his cut out. Everything he did through it was billed against the unsuspecting host. Having penetrated the host system, like an intrusive cuckoo, Jordan then installed what in the self-explanatory vernacular of the trade is known as a Trojan Horse.

Over his years as an identity borrower Jordan had successfully stabled his Trojan Horses in a number of illegal sites throughout the world unknown to the genuine owner and while he religiously destroyed the individual computers he only ever used for one identity stealing operation, he’d left his secret entry doors open to all the host sites, creating a bank upon which he could draw without having to hack in to a new system. That day he chose to return to a long term cuckoo’s nest in the mainframe of a beer-distributing company in Darwin, Australia, that he hadn’t used for five years. He still worked as carefully as he always did, with every new job, alert for the first indication that his previous presence might have been discovered during a virus or illegal entry sweep during his absence, but there was no tell-tale hindrance or unexpected ‘entry denied’ flash on his screen and the 12,000 mile connection was made in seconds.