Ada and Lukas sat in the kitchen of the Barbican apartment, each with their face buried to a laptop, typing furiously. The narrow room looked like the mess of a sailboat, and not by accident. The original 1960’s kitchens of the brutalist complex were designed by a boat company to maximise the utility of the small spaces. The Barbican estate had been designed by architects who had been given free hands to imagine what the future of living could look like, and what they had come up with was depressingly accurate: People shoved into tiny boxes. But there was so much they weren’t able to predict, such as the Internet, or computer-controlled infrastructure. If the quiet pair of Estonians slaving away on their laptops couldn’t figure out a solution, soon the future might actually be one without either.
Rob had messaged Ada: It wasn’t Zee. This put them back into square one. The only lead they had was the dead drop channel Lukas’s client used in communicating with him. Ada and Lukas had decided to try to divide and conquer, each working on a small part of a puzzle. The security measurements Lukas’s client had in place were paranoid beyond imagination, not to mention cutting edge. They were making progress, but painfully slowly, and every time they cracked a part of the communication chain they found a new lock to open.
“So, what’s going on between you and William?”, Lukas asked.
Ada and Lukas had been friends for a long time, and although they hadn’t spoken much for years, their relationship picked up exactly where they had left off: with straightforward, total honesty. They had been roommates in college, before Ada became Ada. Lukas had been the first person she told about
“I’m not sure”, Ada replied. “Do you remember that autumn I came back home? I came back to start a new life, to get away. We were supposed to do it together.”
“Oooh, that was him! You never told me the whole story.”
“Yes. Then I don’t hear from him for years, and now he’s suddenly back. I have… mixed feelings. I’m not sure if we are really a good match for each other, it’s hard to see what it was about him then that made me want to drop everything. Maybe Starr was right, I was in over my head and William was my escape. But now that he’s back, I think, what could have been, you know? And now here I am again, completely in over my head with this mess I’ve created, and he… feels safe. Everything with William is simple. Simpler than this life.”
“Do you ever speak to Starr?”
“No, not since he went to prison. I have been trying to reach him. I think he could help. He has that special knack to come up with creative solutions, and he knows the blockchain network better than anyone… also right now, I could really use his help cracking this damn VPN hop. This looks like something Starr eats for breakfast.”
“I might have a way to get in touch with him.”
“You do? I thought he was completely unreachable.”
“He isn’t online. But I know where he is.”
“Really?”
“Yep. He’s in The Doughnut”, Lukas said, referring to the Government Communications Headquarters’ building, the UK’s equivalent of the Pentagon.
“Really? I didn’t even know they keep prisoners there.”
“They don’t. He’s not being detained. He’s working for the GCHQ.”
“Pfffft —”, Ada spit a mouthful of herbal tea on her laptop. She got up to get a rag from the sink and wiped her screen, digesting what Lukas had just told him.
“You can’t be serious. Aron Starr? Working for the government? That is pretty much the antithesis of what he believes in. The only thing I’d be less likely to believe would be him working for JP Morgan.”
“Beliefs are sacrificable when you have no other options”, Lukas shrugged.
“I find this very hard to believe. How did you find out?”
“A little bird told me.”
“Lukas…” Ada took a stern motherly tone.
“It’s a girl I used to see. Laurie. She’s an analyst at the HQ.”
“And you trust her? It’s not a plant or some kind of convoluted counter-op?”
“She didn’t tell me. I… uhh… snooped on her computer.”
Ada thought about it. Out of all of the revelations of the past few days, this one surprised her the most. Although Ada’s and Starr’s paths had diverged, she still respected him for believing in what he believed in — or so she’d thought. What could the government have on him that was worse than what they’d already locked him away for? It seemed inconceivable that he would sell out his principles just for a reduced sentence.
“What is he doing for them?”
Lukas spread his arms wide. “Who knows? All I know that he was registered as a superuser in the GCHQ database, with a last registered login IP address in The Doughnut.”
Ada wasn’t sure if involving Starr would be a good idea in the light of the latest revelation, but she wanted to have all the cards on the table. “So hypothetically, how would we get in touch with him?”
Lukas grinned. “I can make a booty call.”
Next chapter coming soon.
Meanwhile, participate on GitHub.