Sir James Walter, CEO of Bruce-Partington Aerospace, arrived at the Bagatelle Club around 8:30 in the evening—half an hour late. In that half-hour, Sebastian Moran had successfully cheated the Bagatelle’s poker group out of nearly £600.
The group’s weekly game was usually held in the library, which overlooked the club’s central courtyard. Now that Walter had finally arrived, Sebastian bowed out of the next hand and slipped out onto the balcony.
He lit a cigarette and took a moment to reset. The poker game had called for him to be one of the lads: friendly, but competitive and just a little bit crude. Walter, however, was expecting the operator: the consummate professional with an enticing hint of danger that lurked just below the surface. Sebastian had settled into character by the time Walter joined him on the balcony, and greeted him with a nod. “Sir James.”
“Captain Moran.” Walter stepped forward and shook Sebastian’s hand. “Always lovely to see you.”
Walter was a bookish man swiftly departing middle age with a fondness for wire-rimmed glasses. He’d always reminded Sebastian of a flustered schoolteacher, one with a tendency to fawn that went above and beyond the troop-fucking standard among the upper classes since Iraq. Sebastian suspected it had something to do with all those spy thriller novels he read.
However, Walter paid well. And reliably.
“You’ve got a new assistant,” Sebastian observed, taking another drag off the cigarette.
The assistant in question stood quietly in Walter’s shadow: a slight young man whose boyish features made him look even younger, slouching uncomfortably in a rumpled suit that didn’t quite fit. His eyes widened a little as he met Sebastian’s gaze—as if shocked that he’d been noticed at all—then flicked sharply toward the balcony doors.
“Hmm?” Walter had, evidently, just remembered his assistant was there. “Oh, yes. Just started. How is your father, these days?”
And there was the downside of taking jobs from Walter. Before becoming CEO of Bruce-Partington, he’d been a civil servant alongside Sebastian’s father.
“I’m sure he’s fine,” Sebastian said, then quickly changed the subject: “You said you had some work for me.”
“Right, right, of course.” Walter’s smile was solicitous and a little patronising. “The tests you did for us last year were so very helpful that I hoped you might be up for a repeat performance. A security audit would put the board’s minds at ease—we’ve secured some new government contracts, you see.”
“The Ministry of Defence wasn’t put off when one of your planes fell out of the sky?”
Two weeks ago, Sumatran Airlines Flight 887 had taken a nosedive into the sea, killing everyone aboard. The plane was manufactured by Walter’s company.
“Pilot error,” Walter replied smoothly. “Nothing to do with us. We’re offering the usual rate.”
Sebastian blinked. “Sorry?”
“For the test,” Walter clarified. “Also, a bonus for physical proof you’ve circumvented our security.” He adjusted his glasses, levelling a stern look at Sebastian over the frames. “I’d prefer it if you left something, this time.”
Sebastian shrugged. “If your IT department doesn’t want me stealing their hard drives, they should secure their server room properly.”
“So you’ll take the job?”
Sebastian didn’t have any other clients lined up, and cheating at cards was only entertaining for so long. “Yeah, I’ll do it.”
“Glad to hear it.” Walter clicked his fingers at his assistant. “Arthur, please see that Captain Moran receives all the appropriate paperwork.”
The headquarters of Bruce-Partington Aerospace occupied the entirety of an office building in Westminster, which sat cheek-by-jowl with a dozen others of its type. Crammed between and beneath the looming edifices were a smattering of coffee shops, restaurants, and a basement cocktail bar—the last of which was an ideal place for a young professional to grab a drink after work. Sebastian’s seat at a table in the corner afforded him a view of the whole bar.
He maintained a Manhandl profile for reasons both professional and personal, and the app’s “Near You” page contained a handful of profiles close enough to be in the room with him. Sebastian scrolled through the feed, matching photos to faces around him. One profile, “Randy,” was just a few meters away.
Sebastian scanned the room until he spotted a face that matched the profile: suit and tie, clean-cut good looks, and still wearing his BPA lanyard.
Randy leaned against the bar, shoulders hunched and tense as he barked an impatient order to the barman. The man practically seethed with restless energy; the day’s work had left him feeling resentful and emasculated, and now he was eager to work out those frustrations.
Sebastian adjusted his posture as he crossed the room, taking on a shy, deferential air as he sidled up next to Randy.
“Hi,” he said with a sheepish grin. “Listen, I never do this, but … can I buy you a drink?”
Randy turned, giving Sebastian the once-over. His face took on a hungry look.
As Randy unlocked the door to his flat, Sebastian snuck his phone from his pocket and set a timer to go off in two minutes. Then the door was open, and Randy dragged him through.
Sebastian’s back hit the wall and Randy’s hot, insistent mouth collided with his. He groaned, hands fluttering to the small of Randy’s back, under his suit jacket. He slid his thigh between Randy’s legs and tugged with both hands until they were pressed tightly together, chest to thigh.
On any other occasion, this would be a lovely way to spend the evening.
Sebastian’s hands stroked up to Randy’s neck, cradling it between his palms as they kissed. The plastic clasp of Randy’s lanyard opened with a quick flick of Sebastian’s middle and ring fingers; he dragged both palms down Randy’s shirt-front and pocketed the lanyard with its attached key-card.
The timer went off. Sebastian had set the alarm to match his ringtone.
He pulled away with a reluctance he didn’t need to fake. “Sorry. Just a minute.” He glanced at his phone, carefully angling the screen so Randy couldn’t see it. “Shit. I’ve got to take this.”
With a heaving sigh, Randy moved back. Sebastian stepped away down the hall, just far enough that Randy wouldn’t realise there was nobody on the other side of the conversation, then killed the alarm and put the phone to his ear.
“Yeah?” Sebastian silently counted off an appropriate span of time. “Okay. I’ll be right there.” Tucking his phone back into his pocket, he looked back to Randy with a wry, apologetic smile.
“You have to go,” Randy guessed.
“Yeah,” Sebastian said, then added, “sorry,” and meant it.
Access to BPA’s offices past the lobby required either a guest pass or an employee key-card—a card that Sebastian now possessed.
One of the guards behind the security desk glanced up as Sebastian hurried through the front doors. Sebastian waved in the guard’s direction, said, “Forgot my keys,” and strode toward the turnstiles at the far end of the lobby with the rushed, yet confident air of someone who had every right to be where he was.
He tapped the key-card to the reader; the turnstile opened, and the guard lost interest.
Sebastian made for the stairs, noting cameras as he went. The layout was the same as it had been last year, although the cameras themselves had been upgraded.
BPA’s server room was on the third floor. The exit from the stairwell opened directly beneath the security camera that monitored the server room door; the moment Sebastian stepped into view and attempted to enter, even posing as an employee, security would take notice.
After last year’s test, during which he’d disabled a number of cameras by cutting their exposed cables, Sebastian had recommended the use of ceiling-mounted dome cameras with 360-degree fields of view. While BPA’s security department took the suggestion under advisement, in the end it was finance who made all the purchasing decisions. And finance always wanted to spend as little money as possible.
The upgraded cameras looked to be wireless, with all power cables concealed within the camera mount. Their field of view was still limited, however—and the one above Sebastian was mounted on the wall, well within reach.
Sebastian reached up and nudged the camera, just slightly, until the angle of it created a blind spot directly in front of the server room.
He edged along the wall and studied the server room door. It was secured with an electromagnetic lock; access required both a key-card and passcode. Even if Sebastian knew the code, he doubted his particular card would have the right permissions.
But the lock was a fairly standard model, and one that he’d bypassed before.
Sebastian always carried a knife—these days, a folding KA-BAR with a three-inch blade. He flicked it open and, with the tip of the blade, began to loosen the screws holding the front plate of the keypad in place.
The keypad had a tamper alarm, which would go off if the front panel were fully removed. Instead, he loosened the bottom of the panel just enough for his knife to slide beneath.
From down the hall came the muffled sound of footsteps on carpet. One of the guards was doing his rounds; Sebastian only had a few seconds.
While entry to the server room required a multi-factor authentication process, exit was as simple as pressing a button. The electric signal from that button went to a contact point within the keypad. Moving carefully, Sebastian laid the point of his knife against that contact, then pressed the rest of the blade to the keypad’s metal faceplate to short the circuit.
There was a muffled thump from the magnetic lock. Sebastian pulled the door open, darted through, and closed it quietly behind him.
The server room seemed largely as it had been last year: vaguely tomblike and filled with row upon row of server racks, smelling of rigidly conditioned air faintly cooked by the waste heat of so many electronics sharing the same space.
Sebastian strolled along the racks, studying them. Since last year, Bruce-Partington’s IT department had installed locked faceplates on each individual server. The faceplate locks weren’t intended as a counter-intrusion measure; they were, in the words of one sysadmin of Sebastian’s acquaintance, mainly “to keep dipshits from doing dipshit things to my hardware.” The locks themselves were small, flimsy, and easily picked.
As Sebastian reached for his picks, he spotted a carry handle built into the chassis of the server in front of him. The whole unit was wide, but thin—about the size of a large briefcase.
He could pick the lock on the faceplate and pull another drive. Or he could save a little time and prove a point all at once.
Sebastian grabbed the carry handle and pulled the server from the rack, pausing only to disconnect the power and network cables. The unit was heavy—maybe ten kilos—but not heavier than the gear he’d been expected to haul around every day in the army.
Prize in hand, he moved back to the door and paused to listen. The guard was long gone; Sebastian hit the exit button and slipped out of the server room.
There was one route out of every building that was guaranteed to be unobstructed: the fire exit. The alarm went off as Sebastian pushed through the door, but that wasn’t a problem.
By the time security figured out it was a break-in and not a fire, he was already long gone.
Walter was oddly terse when Sebastian called to report completion of the test, and instructed Sebastian to meet him that night in one of Westminster’s vanishingly few underground parking garages. It was an unnecessary amount of cloak-and-dagger, but Sebastian was more than willing to indulge Walter’s fantasies if it meant getting his bonus.
He had a cab drop him off at the address provided and made his way down into the garage, server in hand. The dim overhead lights failed to fully illuminate the cavernous space, which reeked of gasoline and other, even less pleasant substances.
Walter waited for him at the far end of the garage. Standing next to him was a man Sebastian didn’t recognise—probably a member of BPA’s security team.
The stranger’s suit jacket fit poorly, cut too wide in the chest. Sebastian’s pace slowed.
Then his phone buzzed. He had a text from an unknown number:
Its a trap run now
There was a large black van parked at the back of the garage, not far from where Walter stood. The fall of the stranger’s jacket was almost definitely concealing a gun. The stranger met his eyes—an accident, really, and likely the exact thing he’d been instructed not to do.
Sebastian’s phone buzzed again:
Behind you
He spun on his heel, much to the surprise of the man who’d been coming up behind him. Sebastian ducked as the man made a grab for him, then swung all ten kilos of the server into his opponent’s knees. The man’s legs went out from under him and he collapsed, screaming.
Sebastian was already moving again, shouldering through the garage’s pedestrian exit and sprinting out onto the street. A car idled in front of him—one that hadn’t been there when he arrived.
From the driver’s seat, Walter’s assistant stretched to throw open the passenger-side door. “Get in!”
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