the coffee shop.
Marsh had quickly caught up with her, matched her speed along the pavement, and then stepped into the café a few minutes after her. He’d taken a seat at a table from which he could observe her covertly, a task not made any easier because the café was clearly not the most popular establishment along that particular street, and was virtually empty. It was always much easier to be covert in a crowd. In fact, when Jessop and Marsh walked in, they had precisely doubled the number of customers, the onlyother occupants being an elderly man sitting in one corner perusing the sports page of a tabloid newspaper and muttering to himself, and a teenage girl on the opposite side of the room talking earnestly into her smartphone, her side of the conversation consisting almost entirely of the phrases “yeah,” “you know,” “like,” “right,” “know what I mean?” and “whatever.”
All Jessop had done since that moment was study something on a small tablet computer, drink two cups of coffee, both quite slowly, and consume a cake that looked to Marsh like some breed of muffin. After she’d walked over to the counter and purchased her second cup of coffee and the cake, Marsh had quickly used the lavatory at the back of the café—he didn’t want to be caught short, not knowing how long his target would remain in the café, or where she would be likely to go next—and had purchased another café Americano when he returned.
Then Marsh had had a stroke of luck, precisely because the café was not a popular rendezvous. In technological terms, he was highly proficient, more or less a necessity because of the nature of his employment, and was very well aware that the intelligent use of cutting-edge technology would provide him with a significant edge in many situations. In particular, he knew only too well that a single man trying to provide surveillance of a single target was at a very considerable disadvantage. To do that kind of job successfully would normally take at least half a dozen people. Despite his fortunately nondescript appearance, it really would only ever be a matter of time before any target he was allocated realized he or she was being followed. Eventhe most relaxed and unobservant of people would eventually be bound to spot him and start wondering.
But technology, and particularly Bluetooth technology, could provide an answer. Originally considered to be essentially a solution looking for a problem, Bluetooth had come of age with the introduction of smartphones, which relied heavily on this particular piece of electronic wizardry. Virtually everyone who owned a smartphone had Bluetooth almost permanently enabled on it, so that the device could be linked to printers, hands-free car systems, and other peripherals, and Bluetooth was designed to be as easy as possible to use, which was both its strength and—from the point of view of people like Gary Marsh—also its weakness.
The theory was that before one Bluetooth device could link to another Bluetooth device, there had to be an exchange of data between the two pieces of equipment, and as a part of this a password would be sent between them. The weakness of the system was that in most cases the password was incredibly simple, precisely so that connection would be as easy as possible. In many cases, the password was “0000,” “1234,” or “4321,” which hardly required much in the way of decryption.
Gary Marsh owned a smartphone, an uncommon model that was significantly more bulky than the majority and with a rather larger screen, and on it he had what amounted to a surveillance tool kit, one part of which was a tracker.
The obvious problem with most tracking systems was that a transmitter of some sort had to be attached to thetarget vehicle or placed somewhere on the person being followed, but both these methods offered the obvious and severe disadvantage that if the car was parked and the target proceeded somewhere on foot, the
Marsh had quickly caught up with her, matched her speed along the pavement, and then stepped into the café a few minutes after her. He’d taken a seat at a table from which he could observe her covertly, a task not made any easier because the café was clearly not the most popular establishment along that particular street, and was virtually empty. It was always much easier to be covert in a crowd. In fact, when Jessop and Marsh walked in, they had precisely doubled the number of customers, the onlyother occupants being an elderly man sitting in one corner perusing the sports page of a tabloid newspaper and muttering to himself, and a teenage girl on the opposite side of the room talking earnestly into her smartphone, her side of the conversation consisting almost entirely of the phrases “yeah,” “you know,” “like,” “right,” “know what I mean?” and “whatever.”
All Jessop had done since that moment was study something on a small tablet computer, drink two cups of coffee, both quite slowly, and consume a cake that looked to Marsh like some breed of muffin. After she’d walked over to the counter and purchased her second cup of coffee and the cake, Marsh had quickly used the lavatory at the back of the café—he didn’t want to be caught short, not knowing how long his target would remain in the café, or where she would be likely to go next—and had purchased another café Americano when he returned.
Then Marsh had had a stroke of luck, precisely because the café was not a popular rendezvous. In technological terms, he was highly proficient, more or less a necessity because of the nature of his employment, and was very well aware that the intelligent use of cutting-edge technology would provide him with a significant edge in many situations. In particular, he knew only too well that a single man trying to provide surveillance of a single target was at a very considerable disadvantage. To do that kind of job successfully would normally take at least half a dozen people. Despite his fortunately nondescript appearance, it really would only ever be a matter of time before any target he was allocated realized he or she was being followed. Eventhe most relaxed and unobservant of people would eventually be bound to spot him and start wondering.
But technology, and particularly Bluetooth technology, could provide an answer. Originally considered to be essentially a solution looking for a problem, Bluetooth had come of age with the introduction of smartphones, which relied heavily on this particular piece of electronic wizardry. Virtually everyone who owned a smartphone had Bluetooth almost permanently enabled on it, so that the device could be linked to printers, hands-free car systems, and other peripherals, and Bluetooth was designed to be as easy as possible to use, which was both its strength and—from the point of view of people like Gary Marsh—also its weakness.
The theory was that before one Bluetooth device could link to another Bluetooth device, there had to be an exchange of data between the two pieces of equipment, and as a part of this a password would be sent between them. The weakness of the system was that in most cases the password was incredibly simple, precisely so that connection would be as easy as possible. In many cases, the password was “0000,” “1234,” or “4321,” which hardly required much in the way of decryption.
Gary Marsh owned a smartphone, an uncommon model that was significantly more bulky than the majority and with a rather larger screen, and on it he had what amounted to a surveillance tool kit, one part of which was a tracker.
The obvious problem with most tracking systems was that a transmitter of some sort had to be attached to thetarget vehicle or placed somewhere on the person being followed, but both these methods offered the obvious and severe disadvantage that if the car was parked and the target proceeded somewhere on foot, the
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