Raiya knew what the answer would be. But she asked all the same. ‘Have you found anything on Ebon Standford?’ Jannson swivelled round from his chair to give her the briefest of glances.
‘Sorry, Dr Fortenski.’
Jannson was always about protocol. She thought of saying: ‘just call me Raiya’, but imagined that it would somehow unsettle him.
‘So was he using some kind of stealth technology?’
‘It seems so. There were no ancillary traces beyond the EM disturbance. Security are working with the police to track down his movements but it’s almost as if he was never there.’
‘But he was,’ she said firmly.
‘Well, he’s good,’ Jannson couldn’t hide his admiration for someone clever enough to evade the security system he had helped to set up. It was as if the fabled gauntlet had been thrown down before him. Perhaps this challenge was just what he needed. It seemed everyone in this building knew about his difficult divorce. He’d spoken to her, more as a friend than a client, unusually breaking from his formal manner. Well actually she’d spoken to him when the rumours had spread to her. And she felt obliged to offer some unofficial counselling. At least today he seemed to be more animated.
‘Can you run an incoming message stream monitor, back-time from this morning?’ she asked.
‘Of course.’ He looked at her as if in hope she would divulge the reasons, but he was far too professional to ask, or even speak of her request to others.
‘I may need some assistance a bit later.’
‘Always happy to oblige.’
‘And most appreciated.’
In her office Raiya waved open her console, the oblong base image blossoming from its cuboid point. Text told her fourteen messages. She sifted through the usual case related docs to one flagged as unknown origin. Her system would already warn her not to open it until it was security verified. No Trojans, or any type of virus preventing it from being filtered. She read it. Further to our meeting last night. You must be at these coordinates at exactly 7:15pm ... alone with no recording equipment.
They were simply coordinates, no named place. Do I tell Jannson? Jannson: strong, dependable, protective, against the darker forces. Huh, his thoughts. She imagined he’d want to be there, rather than a distant observer informing the authorities – who in any case this uber-spook Standford would be ready for.
Raiya ran a scan of the entire file-set, searching for any encrypted, hidden, data.
Negative.
Still, she couldn’t be sure her console just wasn’t adapted for something deeply hidden. Possibly Jannson’s system would find something, but couldn’t risk involving him.
Torbin Lyndau, like so many case studies, believed the government – or those in charge – had a hidden agenda for which their minions would be unwitting players; a belief that the population were treated as children, not yet ready for the harsh truth of what was truly out there preparing to take over. The more extreme end: the paranoiacs, the schizophrenics. Often highly intelligent, creative; their imagination turned against them. Neurological malfunction, correctable with medication. Normalizing them – according to standard psychiatric opinion.
Torbin was somewhere on that scale, but she couldn’t decide whether he was at the mild paranoiac end or insane – which was possible. After all, it’s the price some pay for genius. But someone was taking him seriously, and she couldn’t bring herself to read the next file. She made a copy.
***