The Garden of Betrayal Read Online Free Page B

“Gotta hop. This might be him.”
    I hung up the intercom and lifted the BlackBerry to my ear.
    “Mark Wallace.”
    “Open a browser window on your computer,” a voice answered. There was a rushing sound in the background that I couldn’t identify.
    “Gavin?”
    “Don’t interrupt. I’m in a car, and I haven’t got much time. You want to know about Nord Stream, right?”
    “Right,” I confirmed, my excitement building.
    “So, do what I tell you. Open a browser window and type this in the menu bar: F-T-P colon backslash backslash euronews dot net backslash …”
    I pecked carefully at the keyboard as he dictated a URL that was about fifty characters long, interrupting several times when I wasn’t sure what he’d said. Gavin had some kind of impenetrable northern accent that made all his vowels sound the same. He told me to press enter, and I did.
    “It wants a username and password,” I said.
    “The username is
extérieur
, all lowercase. Password
baiselareine
. Bloody frogs having a go at me every time I turn around.”
    I entered both, my high school French sufficient to translate the juvenile slur. I heard someone else on his end of the line as I pressed the enter key. It sounded like a child.
    “I see a bunch of folders. You’re with your family?”
    “On our way to the airport. Click the folder labeled
archive
, and then click the one inside that with today’s date, and then click the one inside that named Nord Stream.”
    “Done.”
    “You’ll see two files—EsatIIB135542 and EsatIIC141346. Clicking on either will download it to your desktop. They’re big files, but our server’s hooked directly to the Internet backbone, so the limitation will likely be on your side.”
    “What are they?”
    “Video. The first is the raw footage you’ve been seeing on television. The second is something else entirely.”
    I clicked the second. We were connected to a dedicated fiber-optic cable as well. A dialogue box indicated that I had ten minutes to wait, the file transfer speed a number I’d never seen before.
    “Give me a hint,” I said, wondering what the hell was going on. “I’m under a lot of pressure here.”
    “You?” he sneered. “I’ve had the effing DGSE in my face all afternoon.”
    “Remind me who the DGSE are?”
    “French foreign intelligence creeps. Jackbooters. They turned up just after we released the first footage and put a lid on us. I went out for a cigarette and kept going. If I wanted to work for fascists, I would have taken a job with Murdoch.”
    “So, what’s the second file?”
    “It’s what it isn’t that bears thinking about. It isn’t our footage. We had one cameraman and one reporter on the ground, and we lost them both in the initial blast. I’m inside the airport now, on the ring road. I’m going to have to hang up in a moment.”
    I scribbled the words “initial blast” on my yellow pad. I had to stay focused.
    “Who shot the footage, then?”
    “Our satellite truck kept running after our lads went off the air. Someone pirated one of the frequencies, and their feed uploaded automatically. We didn’t even realize we’d received it until an hour ago.”
    “Does it show what happened?”
    “Yes.”
    “Is it bad?”
    “It makes the guys who did 9/11 look like a bunch of shit-arsed kids. Be sure to watch the whole thing.”
    “Will do,” I agreed, wondering fearfully what I was about to see. There was just one more question I had to ask. “Has anyone else got this yet?”
    “No. I hadn’t figured out who to give it to. I want it distributed, but I don’t want my name mentioned. You understand?”
    “You’re fleeing the country, Gavin,” I said, feeling obliged to point out the obvious. “It’s not like they aren’t going to figure it out.”
    “There’s a difference between suspecting and knowing. I have your word?”
    “Of course.”
    “Fine, then. And listen, Mark—I’m going to need a job. Something in Dubai might be nice.