End of Days (Pike Logan #16)(36)

She nodded and we continued going through the drawers. They gave us nothing. The apartment was small, with a kitchenette adjacent to a tiny den, and a closet-sized bedroom in the rear. It took us no time to go through the major places for hiding a thumb drive, to include the refrigerator, stove, wall vents, bottoms of drawers, and other secret spots.

We’d both had instruction from DEA and ICE on the various ways criminals hid stuff—you’d be amazed at the ingenuity—but all of our tricks came up empty. We found nothing. I was beginning to suspect he had it on him, or he’d hidden it in a place that would take wall-penetrating radar to find.

I got on the net and said, “Knuckles, what’s the status?”

“You’re good. He’s at an outdoor café eating steak. About a ten-minute walk from you. I’ll give you warning. What do you have?”

“Nothing. He’s either got the drive on him, or he’s created some hiding spot that will take peeling back the floorboards to find. My bet is he has it on him. Probably sleeps with it.”

Shoshana came on and said, “Keep looking. Check his computer again.”

I rubbed my face, knowing it was a waste of time. Jennifer said, “Can’t hurt to look.”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

We went to his small desk, opened a late model Apple MacBook Pro, and were confronted with a password screen. Which wasn’t a problem, because the Israelis had already cracked it with their Mossad magic earlier. I typed in the password they’d given me—Jennys#, believe it or not—and the screen magically cleared. I began going through the files, but knew it was a waste of time. I pulled up the steganography program only to find just the program itself. It had no saved files or other history to exploit.

I looked at Jennifer and said, “Let’s go. We’re getting nothing from this and increasing our risk every second we’re here.”

She was staring at the screen, her eyes scrunched up. I said, “What?”

She leaned over me and said, “He’s using Apple’s Time Machine backup.”

“So?”

“So let’s go back in time.”

I’d spent enough effort with our own hacking crew to have a healthy appreciation of computer network exploits, and I saw exactly where she was headed.

I got on the net and said, “When did we engage Professor today? What time was that? When did he exit?”

Shoshana said, “He left the building right around 1240. Why?”

“Stand by.”

Jennifer got behind the keyboard and pulled up Time Machine, saying, “This thing keeps a backup every hour for twenty-four hours, but it also takes a snapshot every fifteen minutes when the computer is being used.”

I said, “Damn good thing you have a Mac.”

The time machine opened up, a sprout of windows retreating back into the screen like a bad Pink Floyd video, starting with “right now,” then scrolling backward at specific intervals that seemed random. She pulled up 1248 and loaded it, then the steganography program. It looked the same—empty. She repeated the procedure for the next available time, 1232. The stego program came on the screen, only this time it had two pictures in the load spots and a box of text below it.

I said, “Holy shit. You are a genius.”

She smiled and said, “No, we’re just incredibly lucky. Time Machine took a snapshot at the exact moment he was working the program, saving everything just like it was when he was using it.”

My earpiece came alive. “Pike, Pike, Professor is done with dinner. You have about ten minutes.”

I said, “Roger that.” I took a picture of the screen, then said, “Load back to today. Don’t let him know we were here.”

She began to do so when we heard the front door lock being manipulated.

What the hell?

On the net I said, “You have Professor? I got someone coming in.”

“We have him in sight. I say again, we have lock-on.”

Damn it.

I looked at Jennifer and motioned to the computer, telling her to keep working. I went to the door and put my eye to the peephole, seeing a maintenance guy in a uniform. He was working one key after another into the lock, trying to find the right master for this apartment. He was probably the maintenance man for every different apartment company in the building and had masters for them all.

Decision time. Take him out and flee? Bluff our way out? If I took him out, it would most definitely alert Qassim that something was up when the police arrived. But bluffing our way out would also leave a gaping compromise. But it was probably our best bet. We’d simply have to pray that the maintenance guy never talked to Qassim.

I hissed to Jennifer, “Are we good? Is it back like it was?”

Her eyes wide, knowing we were about to be compromised, she said, “Yeah, we’re back like when we entered.”

I moved to the right of the door and said, “If he enters, I’m going to try to bullshit him. Give him a story. You check the back. See if there’s another way out. Now.”

She sprinted into the bedroom and I heard her opening a window. There was a pause, and then she hissed, “Pike, on me. We can get out here.”

I heard one more key enter the lock and sprinted to her, finding her outside the small window holding on to the sill, a back alley three floors below her. I glanced up and down, then said, “Are you nuts? What are you going to do? Climb down the bricks?”