Page 36 of A Very Happy Thanksgiving
“Normally, I’d agree with you, but I think he’s telling the truth.”
“Maybe I could have five minutes to ask a few questions?”
“We already gave Mimi five minutes. Look, I’m trained in RTI, and I’d tell Mimi everything.”
RTI was resistance to interrogation, and the training covered a sliding scale of torture techniques, from those considered legitimate to those condemned by every civilised nation. Think hooding, sleep deprivation, noise, starvation, sexual humiliation, good old waterboarding, disorientation, and pain. You lost all sense of time in those sessions, and every minute seemed to last a year. The only acceptable response to questions was silence.
“I’ll make Mimi look like an amateur,” I snarled, dropping my nice-girl act for a moment.
Emmy started laughing. “Trust me, you won’t.”
Ugh, so much for starting to like her.
“Wanna bet on that?”
She ignored me. “Heath, did we get anything useful?”
“Wild Roots has a base in West Papua. Somewhere along the coast where they could get a boat in.”
“Can we narrow it down?”
“Ricky doesn’t know the exact location—claims he’s never been there—but apparently, they found the place on Couch2Castle.”
I could practically hear Heath’s eye-roll. Terrorists had rented their lair from an upstart competitor to Airbnb?
“So we can get a list of possibles? How many coastal properties are listed in West Papua?”
“There are two hundred and thirty-two properties in total, and one hundred and ninety-seven are on the beach or close by.”
Damn. And we didn’t have the manpower to check them all ourselves, not in the given timescale. We’d have to use Kopassus, or worse, the local police. Emmy might claim Sinaga’s team was competent, but trust didn’t come easily to me, and where Marc’s safety was involved, my appetite for risk was lower than a kneecapped dachshund. Oh, and I should probably make sympathetic noises about Serena too.
“How are they communicating?” I asked. “Can we get Ricky to check in and trace the call?”
“They use the Ether app and a VPN.”
Ah, Ether, beloved of criminals everywhere and an endless source of annoyance for Echo. Messages self-deleted shortly after being read, and there was no way to get them back.
“We can get the messages, but the VPN is a problem,” Emmy said.
What? How could she get the messages?
“That’s what Mimi reckoned,” Heath replied. “We’re getting satellite maps, and we’re going to do an initial analysis to see which of the properties would be suitable as a base for the tangos. Jezebel and Sinaga are working on the logistics.”
At least Jez was monitoring the locals.
“Keep us updated. We’re still working on the Lonnie issue, but I’m hopeful we’ll have a solution soon.”
Emmy hung up, peeled off her top, and tossed it into the trash. “That stinks.”
“Which part? Your clothing or the Couch2Castle thing?”
“All of it.”
I had to ask. “Ether? Your team found a backdoor?”
“In a manner of speaking. There is a door, but you need the key.”
“The encryption key?”
