Foreign Influence_ A Thriller - Brad Thor [66]
CHAPTER 30
GENEVA
Harvath didn’t like flying blind. They should have had much more information before moving on Tsui. They didn’t even have a description. All Nicholas could tell him was that Tsui was Asian, possibly Taiwanese. That was it. He didn’t even have any idea how old he was, though based on their interactions, he believed he was young; mid to late twenties, tops.
He had tracked Tsui’s signature to the servers at the University of Geneva. Once through the university’s security protections, he narrowed the location down to a lab in the Computer Sciences department.
Tsui had been very careful in covering his tracks. If it wasn’t for the Trojan horse Nicholas had planted in his system, they never would have even gotten this close. There remained, though, one problem. “I can’t find a student or a faculty member anywhere in Geneva with the name Tsui,” said the Troll.
“First things first,” replied Harvath as Peio drove the van across the river toward the university. “Are you sure everything terminates in this lab? It doesn’t get routed out again to Taipei, or Shanghai, or something like that, does it?”
“No. That’s as far as it goes. Unless.”
The Troll’s voice trailed off. “Unless what?” asked Harvath.
“Unless it’s a digital dead drop.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning his traffic gets dumped onto a drive of some sort that gets physically collected and then rebroadcast from another location.”
Harvath thought about that. “Either way there has to be a human being involved and that human being has to have access to this lab.”
“Yes, as far as I can tell.”
“Then that’s where we’ll start.”
Many of the university’s buildings were southwest of Geneva’s old town. Once they had located the building that housed the lab, Peio found a place to park. Harvath watched the foot traffic come and go and then exited the van and walked off campus. A couple of blocks away, he found what he was looking for.
The bar was noisy and crowded with students who were not paying attention to their belongings. He was in and out in less than five minutes.
He walked back with his backpack slung over his shoulder, and using the access card he had just liberated, entered the building Tsui’s data was being fed in and out of. He found a directory and located the lab he was looking for. Students came and went. No one paid him much attention.
When he arrived at the lab, its door was locked. He tried his access card, but it didn’t work. After checking the hallway to make sure no one was coming, he removed a set of lockpick tools from his pack. Harvath preferred lockpick guns, but was able to get the door open in a respectable amount of time.
Slipping inside, he closed the door quietly behind him. The room was nothing special and exactly what he had expected. Rows of tables with computers faced a long wall at the other end of the room complete with blackboards, a retractable projection screen, a lectern, and a desk. Off to the right-hand side was a pod of offices.
Harvath made his way forward. There were at least fifty computers in the room, any of which could have been the one designated to send and receive Tsui’s message traffic.
At the front of the room, Harvath saw that a message had been taped to each of the blackboards. It was written in French and English. It was dated one week ago and listed funeral arrangements for Professor Lars Jagland, as well as an announcement to his students that classes would resume with his teaching assistant on Monday. There was no explanation as to how the man had died, but Harvath had a pretty good feeling it wasn’t an accident.
The door to the offices was unlocked and Harvath walked through. He studied the nameplates and decided to start with Jagland’s.
His office was clean and sparsely decorated. Bookshelves and a small desk took up much of the room. There were no photos and no personal effects anywhere. On the wall near the window were two blank spots where artwork must have once hung.
Harvath took out his cell phone and stepped behind the desk. Dialing