Cyberwarfare

Tom emerged from the U-Bahn into the cool evening air near Karlsplatz. The crowd had thinned, the tempo slower than usual. Vienna’s streets glowed gold under sodium vapor lights, too elegant to feel like a battlefield—yet too quiet to feel safe.

He walked three blocks on foot. Iggy’s link to the outside world was a whisper-chain: Tom’s satchel carried a UHF transceiver patched to a micro-router, while a discreet pinhole camera—embedded in the hinge of his glasses—fed images back through a staggered signal relay. Packet by packet, low-res frames were encrypted and dribbled down the mesh network, eventually reaching Iggy’s old basement server.

It wasn’t real-time surveillance—but it was enough.

From the trickle of image hashes and signal pings, Iggy tracked nearby Bluetooth MACs—unique device identifiers from earbuds, smartwatches, and stray burner phones left too long in discoverable mode. Two static repeaters popped up—likely mesh network relays planted for signal boosting or data interception. Portable transceivers—short-range radios, maybe goTenna-style or military surplus SDRs—blinked irregularly in the data. And two burner phones lit up in predictable shadowed intervals: brief activations, likely scripted, just long enough to exchange a drop and vanish again. Nothing looked military. But nothing looked civilian either.

“Are they still behind me?” Tom murmured.

“Yes. One at your three o’clock, pacing two storefronts back. The other moved into the side street near the tram stop.”

“Sloppy?”

“Deliberate. They want to be seen.”

Tom ducked into a dry-cleaner still inexplicably open. He stood by the coat rack and waited until the reflection in the glass door confirmed the pacing figure outside.

“They’re pushing you,” Iggy said. “A classic soft scare. No weapons. Not yet.”

Tom exited, hailed a cab, and gave a fake address—then got out at the next red light and walked a different path on foot.

At 21:07, he entered the designated cafe: Cafe Sperl. Marble tables, tall windows, the smell of damp coats and old newspapers. No piano player tonight.

She was already there. Late 40s, wireframe glasses, hair cropped tight. She didn’t stand, didn’t smile. Just gestured to the seat.

“You’ve been followed,” she said in German.

“So I gathered,” Tom replied, in English.

“You shouldn’t have come.”

“And yet here we are.”

She slid a thin envelope across the table. Plain. Cream-colored. Sealed with tape.

“It’s from Igor. But I suspect it’s been copied. Twice. Once by my own side. Once by theirs.”

Tom didn’t reach for it.

“Then why give it to me?”

“Because I still believe in delivery. And because I don’t like being told who I can and cannot speak to.”

Tom looked around. A waiter brought coffee. No one else in earshot.

“They’ll escalate, won’t they?”

She sipped her espresso. “You’re not dealing with state actors anymore. These people don’t send warnings twice.”

Tom nodded, finally taking the envelope. He tucked it under his coat.

“Where can I read this safely?”

“Nowhere. But the Kunsthistorisches Museum has blind spots. West stairwell. Sublevel archives. No cameras. Bring your own light.”

“Sounds romantic.”

She stood. “Try not to die.”

Tom finished the coffee and waited two full minutes before leaving. Outside, the night had thickened. He didn’t check for tails. He already knew they were there.

Iggy whispered: “Now we find out who they really work for.”

Tom walked on.

But halfway down the alley, he stopped.

“Iggy.”

“Still two on you. Closer now.”

“Good. Let’s turn this around.”

He ducked into a courtyard entrance marked as a Lieferanteneingang—delivery only. The archway was narrow, shadowed, and curved back onto itself with two exit points. Classic bottleneck geometry.

He reached into his satchel, pulled out a decoy envelope identical in shape and weight to the one from the café, and dropped it casually behind a recycling bin. Then he kept walking.

“Signal when they split,” he whispered.

“Now. First one’s biting. Slowing. Second is circling around the east path.”

Tom turned abruptly, doubling back through the side passage. He caught the first man just as he bent over to pick up the envelope.

“Looking for something?”

The man froze.

“Tell whoever sent you: I’m not some analyst with a podcast. I’m a pattern hunter with nothing left to lose. That makes me useful—or dangerous. You pick.”

The man didn’t reply. But he didn’t reach for a weapon either. He just straightened and walked away—fast.

Tom turned the other way. “Iggy, status?”

“Second one is gone. Signal dropped.”

Tom turned the other way.

“Did I get rid of the tail now?”

“You’ve neutralized physical contact, yes. But everything about tonight suggests Igor knows both you and me. That envelope wasn’t just a message—it was bait.”

“And the tails?”

“Redundant surveillance. Designed to see how you’d respond. As for now, I don’t see any DLP issues—no data loss patterns, no outgoing anomalies.”

“OK. I need to think. Keep watching me.”

Tom paused as he crossed the tram rails, eyeing his satchel like it was made of glass.

“Iggy—if I lose this bag, if someone smashes the glasses… what happens to us?”

Iggy’s voice came softer this time. “Then we’re cut off. You go deaf. I go blind. And whatever we’ve built gets swallowed in the noise.”

“Got it,” Tom said. “No mistakes.”

“No mistakes,” Iggy echoed. “Just latency and luck.”

Vienna wasn’t neutral anymore. But neither was Tom.