The Devil's Ransom by Brad Taylor

Author:Brad Taylor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-01-24T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 33

Branko heard glasses clanking in the kitchen, rolled over on the couch, and groaned. He sat up, seeing Rodavan making coffee. Pushka came out of the bedroom, saw him, and said, “Did you sleep okay?”

Branko couldn’t tell if he was kidding or not. He said, “No, not at all. I’m not staying here tonight. I’m headed to the safehouse.”

Pushka smiled and said, “Not nearly the amenities we have here.”

Branko stood up and said, “At least I’ll have a bed.”

Rodavan brought him a mug and said, “Sorry about that, but you’re supposed to be at the safehouse anyway. I wasn’t going to give up my bed just because you were too tired to drive north.”

Pushka and Branko had finally arrived at Split’s old town—known as Diocletian’s Palace—and he’d parked the vehicle in a lot just outside the palace walls. He’d planned on only going up to their operational headquarters and using the T1 internet trunk to wipe his iPhone out of existence, but once that was done, he was too tired to walk back to the car and drive the thirty minutes north to the safehouse. He’d simply crashed on the couch.

He went to the window and looked out at the ancient cobblestone streets, seeing the tourists already starting to move about. Pushka was right about one thing: this location had much better amenities than the old house in the middle of the hills.

A long-term Vrbo rental, paid by Andrei, it had been picked for two reasons: One, it was inside the old town, which meant no vehicles were allowed, with the majority of pathways too narrow for a vehicle to traverse, something that would make escape easier if the authorities ever closed in. They had a network of IP cameras and proximity alerts for early warning, and a plan of escape that involved climbing down a pipe on the outside terrace should the worst ever happen.

Two, this Vrbo was the only one offering high-speed internet in the entire old town, a necessity for the purposes of their work. The whole of the den was blanketed with laptops, all connected via a VPN to the World Wide Web, and all of it designed to be broken down and moved at a moment’s notice, with a self-destruct feature wired into the hard drives should packing up become untenable.

It was but one of the operational locations for Dark Star, with others spread throughout Croatia all the way down to Dubrovnik, but Branko only allowed one cell to operate at any one time. The others were dormant while the Split cell was active.

Branko said, “I’m going to head up north to the safehouse and check on the guys. I’ll be back later.”

“Do you want your laptop?”

Branko thought a moment, then said, “No. I’ll be back in the afternoon. First thing I have to do is get another smartphone.” He held up his burner phone and said, “These things are shit. I’ll contact you once I get it to let you know the number.”

Branko

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