The Shadow Circle

Chapter-23

The guesthouse wasn't much. It was sturdy and crude but it did its job. Bare walls that had dulled due to the humidity from the reservoir nearby, a simple wooden dining table, a kitchen with a stove and bedrooms that had nothing more than some beds, some chairs and a heater.

"I bet Nakamura's residence is nicer," Julian muttered. Kai, Ryo and Elizaveta simultaneously held a finger to their lips.

Bugs, Ryo mouthed.

"Ah, okay," Julian said. Kai called us outside after we dumped our backpacks. It was starting to get really cold as evening settled. We stood in a circle outside the guesthouse. The fog was heavy, I pulled my jacket closer. In the silence, I could hear the roar of water and guessed the dam was nearby.

"Nakamura's most likely bugged the house," Kai whispered. "See how many you can find. Don't deactivate them, they don't need to know that we're aware of being spied on, just make a note of where they are for now. Okay?"

We nodded.

"How do they look?" I asked.

"You'll know. It looks really out of place or it could even be built into the wall, in any case, important plans are going to made outside the house," he said.

Elizaveta and Ryo nodded as if they were soldiers taking orders from their commanding officer.

"Four days left," Julian reminded us.

Kai nodded. "I know. I expect we'll have an unexpected visitor sometime soon. Shah wants to talk to us."

"Dammit. How did you know?!" Ryo demanded.

Kai looked at Julian pointedly. "Anonymous sources."

Very anonymous, Kai.

"You had Juliette here tap my phone?!" He whispered indignantly.

"Hey!" Julian protested. "It's Julian, dumbass."

"Calm Julian, Ryo is twice your size," I said comfortingly.

"Kai does that shit," Elizaveta told Ryo. "I honestly won't be surprised if he knew my e-mail password from six years back."

"Kittygirl65?" Kai offered.

I let out a snort of laughter.

"Great," Elizaveta snapped.

"Now Juliette...er...Julian. Find us a line to Shah," he said.

"Do you have a super secret communication system or something?" I asked.

"It's called Google Hangouts," Ryo grinned.

I stared at Julian.

"The Circle can't listen in on our calls. Google Hangouts encrypts all the information between us and the servers. It uses HTTPS, the Transport Layer Security between the Hypertext Transfer Protocols so...."

"Okay. Criminals use Google Hangouts too. Got it!" I interrupted.

"Ryo, get my laptop," he said.

"My laptop," I amended.

"Why should I—"

"Because I'm the one doing all the work here," Julian snapped.

"Oh I nearly forgot. That was Arianna's laptop so you might..."

"Yeah, I know. Kai warned me and I looked into it. She's got pretty good security and I disabled that fuckturd Cavilleri's spyware," he said.

"I'm going to the backyard," Julian said. "Don't disturb me. Hacking the VPN server without alerting the Chinese government is bad enough," he said.