Chapter 22: Thumb Drive

I SAT DOWN with José María and Jacob for breakfast the following morning in a quiet corner of the embassy courtyard.

“I heard about your little encounter last Friday,” José María said. “One hit to the solar plexus and that was it? Not bad.”

I shrugged.

“Yeah, right. Except for that roundhouse swing just as he was going down. That put me out of the fight for sure.” I laughed. “Good thing it seemed to be over. Good thing Monsieur M’s driver, Carlos, was there, too.”

“You saved the damsel, Michael, no question.”

I nodded. “I like Alejandra, no BS. I’m glad I was there. Monsieur M was very grateful and invited me into his study Sunday night to tell me so.”

With that I told Jacob and José María what I’d seen on Monsieur M’s computer monitor. I had their attention and José María made a couple of notes.

“Did you recognize the boy and girl, Michael? Had you seen them before?”

“No.”

“What about the location?”

“It was grass, a garden, José María. Outside, obviously, but no place I recognized. It was only a second, remember.”

José María nodded.

“It doesn’t really prove anything other than Monsieur M likes to watch what seems to be underage porn, we know that.” He leaned forward. “The thing is, Michael, we’d like to know what else is on his computer. We don’t really care about his porn collection, unless it’s got seriously hardcore stuff and underage models, or unless it gives us leads to his trafficking operation, like faces we recognize from the girls and boys we’ve picked up.”

I didn’t say anything. I had a feeling I knew where this was going.

“So we’d really like to know what he’s got.”

José María put a dark gray flash drive on the table.

“This thing is an ordinary thumb drive, Michael, nothing special, except it has a 1TB capacity. That’s one Terabyte, which is enough to swallow just about anything he’s likely to have.”

He picked it up and turned it in his hand and showed me how to open it.

“It’s got some new software on it, Michael, never mind who made it, it’s not available in stores. It can transfer data faster than anything you’ve ever seen, seriously. We don’t care about his system files. All we want is his data. His images, video files, text files, spreadsheets, and so on. Anything that will tell us more about his operation.”

He snapped the cover back on and handed me the drive.

“The software automatically finds what it needs and transfers it, Michael. You don’t have to do anything except stick it in the nearest USB drive. It will decrypt whatever security he has and it doesn’t care what operating system his machine uses.”

He laughed.

“Oh, and by the way, Michael, don’t lose the damn thing, OK? They sell for about three thousand bucks each, even with a government discount. It’s not a one of a kind, either, or some kind of spy special. You can buy one for yourself on Amazon if you want. You can’t buy the software, however.”

I took the drive and stuck it in my pocket.

“No James Bond crap, Michael, seriously. If you have a chance to use the thing, do it. If you’re successful it will move us that much closer to nailing this guy and putting him out of business.”

I nodded.

“I’m seeing Alejandra next Saturday and we’ll probably end up at her house. I’ll keep my eyes open.”