Deadline by Stephen Maher

then spat out a list of 3,276 numbers.
    Balfour cursed and sat up in his chair. His mind set to work. If there were hundreds of thousands of numbers in his lists, then thousands of them would be doubled. Some people who worked in Centretown during the day lived in Hull, or went there for dinner, so it was natural that there would be some overlap. He needed to separate the wheat from the chaff, but if he only looked for numbers that matched all the transmission towers, he could easily miss the right phone.
    He’d have to figure out a way to order them by signal strength, so that only those phones that were in close proximity to the missing BlackBerry would show as matches.
    He picked up his BlackBerry and sent a PIN.
     
    To: 74X93B4
    From: 58K42E6
    Subject: This could take a while
    I’m doing everything I can. Will let you know as soon as I have a match.

    As Jack ran down Murray Street, toward King Edward and his apartment in Sandy Hill, he realized that he was making himself stand out and slowed to a brisk walk. He suddenly felt alone on the near-empty street, so he turned left onto a side street, doubled back, crossed Dalhousie, and walked up to Rideau, where there were always people about. He wandered toward Sussex Street, lost in the crowd, and tried to work out what had just happened.
    Somebody badly wanted to get their hands on Ed Sawatski’s BlackBerry. It wasn’t the police, and Jack doubted very much that it was CSIS. As a reporter, he had occasionally called sources back through a switchboard to confirm they were who they said they were, and officials always agreed to that as a security measure.
    Whoever it was, they seemed to have the tools to track Sawatski’s cell phone, which would make them cops, or the phone company. But it wasn’t the cops. And maybe the guy was just bluffing, trying to convince him to cough up a name and his location because that was the only way they could get a line on the thing.
    His mind spun in circles as he tried to figure out who would want the BlackBerry. Ed’s boss, Jim Donahoe? The Ministry of Justice surely wouldn’t like having one of its cell phones go astray, and it might have secret stuff on it, but they would likely just ask the police to find it. And the police would likely just ask him if he had it. Flanagan hadn’t even done that. It seemed unlikely that they would not bother to ask and then suddenly try cloak and dagger stuff.
    It occurred to him that the Liberals would enjoy looking at a smart phone full of emails to and from an aide to the justice minister, but Pinsent’s shop barely seemed able to get their leader to give a coherent speech, much less run phone-snatching operations.
    In any case, it didn’t matter much. Jack resolved that in the morning he would tell Flanagan where he had left the BlackBerry and he would let the cops worry about it.
    He started when his own phone rang. It was Sophie.
    “Hi Jack,” she said. “I just wanted to hear a friendly voice. The Sawatskis are with Ed now and it’s so depressing. His mother keeps crying and whispering to him and he’s just staring at the ceiling, and his dad just keeps patting his hand.”
    “Lord Jesus,” said Jack. “I can’t believe this is happening. Do you want me to come down there now?”
    “No,” said Sophie. “I think I’m going to go home soon. The Sawatskis are going to sit up with him, but I think I should go into the office tomorrow, so I should try to get some sleep.”
    “That’s probably a good idea,” said Jack.
    “Um, I was wondering, though,” she said. “Do you have any idea what happened to Ed’s BlackBerry?”
    “No,” said Jack, lying without thinking. “I don’t. As far as I remember he had it when I saw him last. But, God, we were so drunk. I wish I could tell you more. How are you? Is someone going to stay with you?”
    “No. Marie-Hélène offered, but I think I’ll be okay.”
    “Call me later. I could pop by. It’s not far. I’m worried about