Chapter 30: 30: The Hacker

Some days, you just know are going to be messed up from start to finish.

You wake up and you can feel it in your bones. It’s in the air. You can taste it.

This, your gut tells you, is going to be one of those days. A perfect storm of screwed up situations that conclude, at least in my case, with yet another brutal and bloody battle for my life.

The Sunday following my visit to Victoria’s sanctuary was most definitely one of those days.

On the plus side, I started to find out what the hell was going on.

So, you know. Silver linings.

Things got off to a weird start first thing in the morning when an anonymous hacker took over my laptop, claiming he ‘just wanted to talk’.

The hack itself was simple, and the kind of thing even your grandparents know not to fall for by now. It was the old ‘never click an attachment from an unknown source’ trick. Yeah, I fell for it. The first thing I did that Sunday after I’d woken up was flip open my laptop to find an email waiting titled ‘Re: Murder in Bussage, spot the difference.’

Only half awake, I assumed the email was from Jess or Forrest. Clicking on the attachment revealed two local newspaper photos of groups of people. One of the pictures was connected to a recent music festival in Chalford Hill and had been lifted from a news website. The other, dated thirty years earlier, was about a vegetable growing competition.

So far, so mundane.

On both photos, however, the head of a man standing in the crowds had been circled, along with his name in the caption below. Robert Maugham. It was the name of the guy who’d been murdered on Halloween in Bussage. The same guy that Jess and Forrest thought was somehow linked to the demon hound that Victoria had captured.

Here was the odd thing, though:

Despite the thirty-year gap between the photos of Robert, there wasn’t any sign of his ageing. In both pictures, he looked to be in his mid-fifties. Same thinning hair, same bushy eyebrows, same droop around his eyes.

As I was studying the two photos, my laptop went black. I was expecting a reboot message. Instead, text appeared on my dark screen:

> Hello Ethan, please don’t be alarmed. I’ve secured your laptop so we can talk with no one eavesdropping.

I stared at the words for a few seconds, not following what was going on.

> Who are you? I typed back.

> An ally, came the response.

> Can you be more specific?

> I can’t. I need to protect my identity. Sorry. You can call me Sam. I’m on your side and I want to help you.

I wasn’t even aware I had a side, but I let that go.

> Help me do what? And why? And why should I even trust you?

> Look, I don’t blame you if you don’t trust me, Ethan, so please just listen to what I have to say. I’ve found out some things you need to know.

I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, tried to orientate myself. Whoever had sent me the email knew something about the recent events or why send me the photographs?

A memory flashed through my mind: Had I really beaten Major Wilson last night?

I had.

Wow.

No wonder I’d slept so deeply. That was the first night in over a week that I hadn’t woken up in a cold sweat and a panic.

I shook my head, focused on the situation at hand.

> How did you take over my laptop?

> The email I sent you. It had a worm attached. Don’t worry, it’s harmless.

> Why are you talking to me?

> I’ve been monitoring you since the demon hound attack. Section 13’s tech guys were fast, but I caught some of the mobile phone footage people were posting. After that I saw you at Section 13’s base and at the Pryces’ mansion.

> You were there?

> Remote access to their camera feeds. Not in person.

I frowned.

Yeah, okay, there had been some cameras dotted around the base below the mansion. I supposed it wasn’t impossible for someone to have accessed them.

> Right. What do you want?

> I just need you to listen right now. Please. As I said, I’ve found out some things I think you’ll want to know. Important things.

I could have closed my laptop and walked away. I didn’t.

Whoever this person was, they didn’t present any immediate threat and they might have useful information. If I didn’t like it, there was nothing to stop me from ignoring them. It had occurred to me by now that there were a lot of things going on that I didn’t understand. Aside from what I was, there were mysteries to be solved. Where had the demon hound come from? How was this Robert person connected to it? What had the attack on Section 13’s base been for?

Was I surprised a hacker had contacted me?

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After the events of the previous nine days?

No, it was just another average day in my crazy new life. I think I’d have been more surprised if there hadn’t been an anonymous hacker thrown into the mix.

> Okay, what have you got?

The hacker - ‘Sam’ - told me what he’d found. He’d dug around various databases he shouldn’t have been digging around in. He’d looked into the identity of the dead guy and discovered via property records that ‘Robert Maugham’ had been living in Bussage since the end of the Second World War, eighty years ago. Okay, so far so standard.

The thing was, according to pension records, Robert had retired there in 1945. He’d lived in the same small house for eight decades, a house that had been provided by the government.

The two photos Sam had sent me indicated that Robert hadn’t aged a day in the last thirty years at the very least, and by any reckoning should be at least 120 years old, maybe more.

> So what we seem to have is some kind of immortal, or at least very slowly ageing person, living on the British Government’s bank account since World War Two.

> Okay, that’s pretty weird.

I was getting more intrigued the more ‘Sam’ told me.

So the first obvious thought was that this was a vampire, right? But the last time I checked, the British Government wasn’t big on pensioning off vampires, or in fact any supernatural creatures. Shoot-to-kill was Section 13’s policy, and that came straight from the top.

So why would they be putting up a vampire in a quiet little cul-de-sac in Gloucestershire? It made no sense. I relayed this to Sam. Sam agreed.

Whoever Sam was, he was clued up about the supernatural.

> Yeah, but this is where stuff gets interesting: He isn’t the only one. There are two more exactly like him.

> Go on.

Sam had discovered that Robert was one of three people who had been receiving the same pension for the last eighty years. The remaining, not-murdered, two also had houses provided for them at the end of the World War Two and they still lived there. One of them was a man in High Wycombe, just outside London. The other was a woman in Christchurch on the south coast.

> How did you find all this out?

> Bank records, government servers. Some stuff from GCHQ and security services.

> How do I know you’re not just making all of this up?

> You don’t.

Fair enough.

> The other thing I connected it to was an operation on Section 13’s database, referred to as Operation Blackstar. There’s nothing more than the name and date of the operation in mid-1945, and three names. Two men and a woman. I think those were the original names of these three improbably long-lived pensioners. I think Robert Maugham used to work for Section 13. Without the actual paper files on the operation, though, it’s impossible to be sure. If they were put into an early version of the witness protection program in 1945, they would have been handed over to MI5. I haven’t been able to make a direct link though.

> Ok. Assuming any of this is true, why are you telling me all this?

> Because I think something is going on. Something big. And I think you should look into it. Section 13 is a mess right now and the Pryces are busy with their own problems.

> Why don’t you investigate this if you think it’s so important?

> I can’t. I would, but it’s complicated. That’s why I’m handing this over to you.

> That still doesn’t explain why me.

> Okay. At the moment, you’re not affiliated with any one side or the other. You’re a free agent and I think you want to know what’s going on as much as I do.

Sam had a point there. As the mysteries increased, so too did my need to solve them. Partly I guess it was because who doesn’t love a good mystery or puzzle? But also it was because I felt that if I could unravel everything that was going on, I’d also find out some answers about myself.

Answers that I keenly wanted now.

>Also, maybe because I figure that if I give you something now, you’ll be able to give me something later. Does that make you feel more trusting?

Oddly enough, it did. At least there was no pretence involved.

> An information exchange? I can work with that.

> Good. Write down these names and addresses. It’s the two other people on the government’s very long pension scheme.

I made a note of the names and addresses as the hacker typed them out.

> Okay. I’m going to leave you with this for now. If I were you, I’d visit one of these pensioner/immortals. If you want to talk to me again, hit F9 on your laptop.

My laptop rebooted, and the hacker was gone.

So that was how my messed up Sunday began; being contacted by an anonymous hacker and handed what a detective would call A Major Clue.

Not a terrible start, right?

Things went downhill from there.

Fast.

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