Lost Identity Read online

  ‘Checking in, sir?’ enquired the woman, quickly regaining her professional demeanour and suppressing the look of disapproval which had momentarily revealed itself on her face.

  Stephen wasted no time on pleasantries. ‘We need to speak to the Head of Hotel Security – right now.’

  She pulled her head back, her face creasing in a puzzled frown. ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘The Head of Security – we need to see him, right NOW.’

  ‘I’m sorry sir, we have a very important function taking place this evening, and all our security staff are fully occupied with that. Now if you’d like to give me some details of—’

  ‘Oh, screw this!’ muttered Stephen. He grabbed Carla’s hand and began striding towards the entrance to the pre-conference reception.

  The man on the door saw them approaching and clearly anticipated trouble. He looked over his shoulder and called out something. A moment later, his colleague was alongside him. They were both big men – about the same build as Stephen.

  As Stephen and Carla approached, one of the men held up his hand in a ‘halt’ gesture. ‘I’m sorry, sir. We have a private function taking place in here this evening.’

  ‘I know that,’ said Stephen, attempting to push past the man.

  His colleague intervened, grabbing Stephen’s arm, wrenching it up behind his back.

  ‘Let him go,’ pleaded Carla. ‘There’s going to be a mass murder in there if we don’t stop it.’

  The first man’s eyes widened in surprise. ‘What are you talking about … a murder?’

  ‘It’s true,’ hissed Stephen. ‘Let me go.’

  The two men looked at each other in what appeared to be utter confusion. ‘What do we do?’ said the one restraining Stephen.

  ‘I’ll get Mr. Schultz,’ replied his partner, reaching for the discreet intercom attached to his lapel.

  Stephen knew full well that they were never going to let him barge straight into the private function, but he had achieved his objective of circumnavigating the woman on the front desk. Derek Schultz was Head of Security, the man Stephen had previously encountered when last in the hotel. That was only a few days ago, but it felt like a lifetime.

  He only hoped that they were in time to avert the disaster which was about to unfold.

  ***

  ‘So now,’ said Derek Schultz, ‘you are saying you are not Doctor Stephen Lewis.’

  They were back in the same security office where Stephen had previously been questioned. He had spent the last twenty minutes trying, without success, to convince Schultz to call off the function and evacuate the entire hotel.

  ‘I told you,’ said Stephen, ‘I now know that’s not my real name.’

  ‘And your real name is?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t know?’ said Schultz, his voice laden with scepticism.

  ‘No I don’t,’ admitted Stephen, ‘… but look, we’re wasting time here. If you don’t evacuate the hotel right now, many people will die.’

  ‘Because you were going to kill them, but now the other man –who you say is also not Doctor Stephen Lewis – is going to do it instead?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Stephen. ‘I know it sounds far-fetched but—’

  ‘And your wife – who is now not your wife – is helping him?’

  Stephen slammed his hand down on the table in frustration. The security guard who had been standing motionless in the corner of the room took a step forward.

  ‘It’s OK,’ said Schultz, raising his hand to indicate that no intervention was necessary.

  He turned back to Stephen. ‘Look … you have had a very nasty experience. You said yourself that you have been completely mixed up since that blow to the head. I think you need to return to the hospital and—’

  Carla could contain herself no longer. ‘He’s telling the truth. We have spent the last few days running from these people; we have seen them kill without hesitation. You need to evacuate the hotel and call the police.’

  Stephen thought he could detect the first flicker of uncertainty in Schultz’s eyes. He needed to open up that chink of doubt.

  ‘Look, I know what the plan was. It’s odds-on that it hasn’t changed just because I’ve been replaced.’ He locked eyes with Schultz. ‘There’s a bomb – it will take out everyone on the top table and probably many others too.’

  Chapter 28

  As Natasha turned to walk toward the coat rack, holding Professor Mandelson’s bag, Ethan put into action the distraction strategy which he had prepared in advance. ‘Have you seen the seating plan for Monday’s conference?’ he asked the professor.

  ‘Well, no … I haven’t actually.’

  ‘Oh, well come and have a look,’ said Ethan. ‘They’ve posted it on the flip-chart stand just over there.’ He pointed to the stand in question, taking Mandelson’s gaze away from Natasha.

  Although she hoped that Ethan would be successful in keeping the professor’s attention away from her, she held the bag in front of her as she walked, so that her own body would shield it from Professor Mandelson’s view should he turn around. She unzipped the top of the case as she walked.

  As she reached the coat rack she stole a glance over her shoulder. Mandelson had his back towards her as Ethan pointed out some feature of the seating plan. So far so good. She hung the strap of the bag on the coat hook next to where her wrap was hanging. She pulled her wrap to one side to reveal the other bag, whose zip was already open in readiness for her next move.

  The urge to turn and take another look behind her was almost irresistible, but she suppressed it. Now, more than ever, was the moment she had to rely on the professionalism of her partner. Ethan would be watching her every move; she had to trust that he would keep Mandelson’s attention away from her until she had completed her task.

  Taking a deep breath, she pulled Professor Mandelson’s laptop out of the case, slipping it into the other bag and pulling the zip closed before turning around. Ethan made eye contact; she gave a small nod. Ethan turned away from the chart and guided Professor Mandelson back to where they had previously been standing.

  As she made her way back towards the two men, Natasha added her own touch to the distraction strategy. Effecting a slightly exaggerated sway to her walk as she approached them was quite sufficient to keep the professor’s gaze fixed on her hips rather than his precious laptop case. God, men are so easy to manipulate. When Mandelson glanced up and made eye contact with her, she assuaged the guilt in his eyes by flashing her most dazzling smile.

  ‘There, Professor – oh, sorry, I mean Richard – your bag is right over there’ – she pointed to where it was hanging – ‘where you can keep an eye on it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  She waited another five minutes or so, chatting easily with the two men, before making her next move. ‘Now, if you boys will excuse me for a little while, I just need to pay a visit to the ladies’ room.’

  ‘Oh, yes … of course,’ said the professor.

  ‘I think I’ll just grab my wrap. The air conditioning out in the lobby is a little too fierce for a dress like this.’ She emphasised the point by turning slightly to one side and running a hand over her bare shoulder. The professor’s Adam’s apple performed a little dance in his throat.

  Now, though, she needed to tone down the charm – the last thing she needed was for the professor’s gaze to be fixed on her backside as she approached the coat rack. As she walked away, she adopted a rather less provocative gait.

  This was the point where, once again, she had to rely on her partner’s distraction skills. As she reached the coat rack, she risked a glance back towards the two men. She needn’t have worried: Ethan had, once again, skilfully managed to adjust their positions so that Professor Mandelson had his back to her, while Ethan could see exactly what she was doing. She took both the wrap and the bag from the rack and draped the wrap over the bag as she headed for the door. As expected, the security guys didn’t bothe
r to check what was being taken out of the room – they were only interested in what was being taken in.

  She didn’t go to the ladies’ room; she headed back to the suite where she and Ethan had been staying.

  She slid the laptop from the bag and set it down on the desk, flipping up the lid of the machine and powering it up. After a few seconds, Mandelson’s name and photograph appeared on the screen. Just below, was a box requiring a password.

  This was an absolutely critical moment. If the information provided by her accomplice in Professor Mandelson’s employ was incorrect, the entire mission would fail. She took a deep breath to try to steady her nerves.

  Chapter 29

  Lara Hurst was a lab assistant at the University of Miami’s Marsden Medical School. Her résumé was outstanding – it had to be in order for her to land a job working with the renowned Professor Richard Mandelson.

  Actually, though, much of what was contained in her résumé was fictitious, including her name. She was, however, sufficiently competent to satisfy the demands of Professor Mandelson, who was usually too absorbed in his work to notice if anything she said or did might be inconsistent with her supposed background. She had worked for the professor for almost a full year, and now had his complete trust.

  Her task was to find out exactly where Mandelson stored all his research data and what security measures he used to protect it. She soon found that he committed very little to paper, preferring to store everything on his laptop computer. He guarded the machine closely, invariably closing any files he had been working on when he stepped away from his desk, even for just a few minutes, and always taking it home with him at night. On the very few occasions when she had been able to get to the laptop without the professor seeing her, she had found all the relevant files to be password protected. It was infuriatingly frustrating.

  At first, she was puzzled by the professor’s frequent requests for her to purchase new diaries. For someone who seemed so averse to putting things down on paper he seemed strangely reliant on these things. And why on earth did he need six new diaries during the course of a single year? All her instincts told her that this strange behaviour held some significance beyond the mere quirk of a somewhat eccentric academic.

  He often had his diary alongside him when he was working at his computer, and always picked it up and slipped it into his jacket pocket before leaving his desk. The strange thing was that every time he got a new diary he would tear out some of the pages from the old one and shred them. The rest of the diary would then be carelessly tossed into the waste bin.

  The first time she checked the remains of a discarded diary she was surprised to see that most of the pages were still in place, but that absolutely nothing was written on any of them. Whatever was important must have been on the few pages which had been shredded.

  On one occasion, the professor had neglected to pick up his diary when leaving his desk to visit the men’s room. She seized the opportunity to examine it while he was gone. One of the dates on the open pages was ringed in ink: January 23rd. She flipped quickly through the rest of the diary and eventually found another date, also highlighted: August 7th. She could not see any significance in either of these dates, but jotted them down in the notebook she always kept with her, before leaving the diary open on the desk, exactly as she had found it.

  When, two weeks later, Professor Mandelson discarded the diary in favour of a new one, the pages which had been removed included the ones containing those same two dates which had been highlighted.

  When, after another two months, the professor discarded the next diary, she retrieved it from the bin and checked it. Again, there were just a few pages missing, but the dates they contained were different. So the dates were clearly not significant in an absolute sense; they were significant only for a couple of months and then replaced with new ones.

  Finally, she worked it out. The professor, for all his brilliance, had an absolutely appalling memory. She had seen ample evidence of this as he went about his daily work: he would frequently ask her where he had left this item or that around the lab. The fact that she was invariably able quickly to locate the missing item only served to increase his dependence on, and confidence in, his trusted lab assistant. Given the professor’s dreadful memory, he would probably forget the passwords he used to protect his files if he didn’t write them down, but writing them down would make them vulnerable. Instead he had chosen a sort of simple code: he would select dates at random in a diary and use these as passwords, referring back to the diary if he forgot the passwords, which he frequently did. For extra security he would change the dates every two months and destroy the old ones.

  Now the only thing she needed to discover was in what format the date had to be entered. Was it ‘month/date/day’? ‘date/month/day’? Maybe the year was included too? There were many possible permutations.

  In spite of much urging by her paymasters, she never did manage to discover this critical piece of information. She never got the opportunity to watch how the professor entered his passwords; nor did she get a chance to access his laptop and experiment with entering the dates in various different formats. The only thing she knew, with near certainty, was that the dates highlighted in the diary at any given time held the key to accessing the files.

  The best she could do, as the date of the conference drew near, was to try to find out what the latest dates were. When she bought the professor’s new diary, just three weeks before the conference, she also purchased several additional, identical diaries. As the professor was working at his computer, with his diary alongside him on the desk, she sent a text message from her mobile phone. He was far too engrossed in his work to notice. Her accomplice was waiting for that message.

  Moments later, the phone in the adjacent room rang.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ she said. The professor nodded, absent-mindedly, as he waved her away.

  She went through to the next room and picked up the phone, waiting a few seconds before moving back into the main lab.

  ‘Professor Mandelson? It’s a Doctor Mackenzie from Harvard … he says it’s urgent.’

  Mandelson’s eyebrows drew together in a puzzled frown. He obviously didn’t recognize the name – hardly surprising as Lara had just made it up. He tutted and shook his head but, infuriatingly, remembered to close the file he was working on before getting up and moving next door to take the call. He did, however, leave the diary open on the desk.

  She had to act fast – it wasn’t going to take the professor long to figure out this was a hoax call. She took her diary from her lab coat pocket and quickly turned to the same page as that open in the diary on the table. She ringed the date: Thursday March 9th. Thumbing rapidly through the rest of the professor’s diary, she found a second date ringed: Sunday July 23rd. She marked this in her own diary, too. She couldn’t find any other dates highlighted in the professor’s diary, so she hurriedly turned back the pages to Thursday March 9th, leaving the diary open on the desk, exactly as she had found it.

  ‘Anything important?’ enquired Lara, as Professor Mandelson re-entered the room, muttering under his breath.

  ‘No … just some crank pretending to be a Harvard researcher. How do these idiots manage to get hold of my direct phone number?’

  ‘I’m sure I don’t know,’ said Lara, shaking her head.

  Chapter 30

  Natasha opened the diary and located the two ringed dates. She tore both pages out of the diary and laid them side by side on the table alongside the laptop.

  Although Lara had been unable to discover the exact format in which the dates had to be entered as passwords, she had at least determined that there were two, and only two, passwords. Furthermore, she had advised that the page at which the diary had been open, at the time she copied the latest dates, probably contained the deeper level password, as the professor had definitely had an individual file open at the time he had been interrupted. Logically then, if there was a top level password protecting the
entire computer, it should be the other date: Sunday July 23rd. Her heart was pounding as she made her first attempt to access the professor’s computer.

  She typed in ‘SunJul23’.

  Incorrect password - please try again

  She tried ‘SundayJuly23’.

  Incorrect password - please try again

  Third try: ‘Sun23Jul’

  Incorrect password - please try again

  There were only a finite number of possible formats, but time was short, and she wouldn’t be able to try them all. She tried ‘Sunday23Jul’.

  Incorrect password - please try again

  Fifth try: ‘Sun0723’

  The screen flickered for a moment and then displayed a long list of folders. She smiled – it really hadn’t been too difficult after all.

  She scanned the list of folders; most of the titles meant nothing to her, many of them containing esoteric medical terms which she had never heard of but, as she continued working through the list, eventually her eyes alighted on one entitled ‘Tridopamite’. That was the one they wanted – Lara had already reported that was to be the name of the new drug.

  Clicking on the folder in question, she was confronted by a message –

  Folder is password protected

  Please enter password

  She turned to the other date highlighted in the diary: Thursday March 9th. Now that she knew the format to use, this should be easy. She typed in ‘Thu0309’.