Of Wheels and Angels 11

Sweating from the burdened hike, this was hardly what Preston was expecting.
Their hostess opened the door for them. Patiently waiting until they unburdened themselves, she turned one of the chairs around from the table and faced where they sat in the two easy chairs.
“Heerlen is one of the best places to hide. You can disappear so easily in such a busy town. When we got an offer of a computer, the same person mentioned they would love to have a house sitter.”
Angie and Preston glanced at each other, eyebrows raised.
“First, you can never meet this person. It’s best you never look into the details; this protects everyone, as you know. On one of the central walking promenades in Heerlen, there is a top floor apartment above one of the shops. You access it from either the front or from an alleyway in the back. There is a crazy legal status I can’t explain, but this person cannot use the property for business nor rent it out, yet are required to keep it up. It’s quite valuable so they want someone to occupy it for security reasons. They estimate it’s at least two years before anything changes.”
She crossed her legs and smiled. “You can move in tomorrow morning. They left you a nice Mac system there. I was told you should simply rely on wifi, and I’m sure you can work that out. It’s not that we are eager to see you go, but this is so much better for you two.”
Preston thought for a moment. “I rather like the idea it reduces your risks, too.”
She smiled, but said nothing.
Angie stood and walked over to the older lady. Bending a bit, she gave her a hug. “We kunnen niet genoeg bedanken.” We can’t thank you enough.
The woman returned her warmth. “You two have opened many doors for us. It would all be worth it simply for what you’ve already done.”
As she got up to leave, Preston stood and hugged her, too.
“We’ve asked a friend to bring up a small truck to help you move. He’ll be here mid-morning, so you should have plenty of time to get ready.” She gently closed their door behind her. They never saw her again.
Next morning, the small truck pulled up in the courtyard around nine. You would have thought with so few worldly possessions, they could have easily been ready. Somehow, it didn’t quite work out that way. They were still packing the last few items as the truck arrived.
The ride into Heerlen was mercifully short in the cramped front seat of the little van. Their baggage and three bikes easily fit into the back. Only during the early morning hours could he have driven on any part of the walking plazas, so he had to park a ways off at the train station. However, he had a dolly and was able to help them with the baggage. They wheeled their bikes to the back of the building. There was a small steel rolling door with the obvious purpose of bicycle storage. The man spoke nary a word, simply pointing and smiling. He handed Preston a key for this door, then another key to Angie. The old fellow waited at the bottom of the stairs while they located the apartment. It took only a few trips and he disappeared when they last bag left his dolly.
Something in the layout screamed at Preston that one small room had to be their office. Sure enough, in a corner under a small, simple table sat some boxes. He pulled the two aging but serviceable rolling office chairs back from the table and slid the boxes out across the hardwood floor.
Inside was a complete Mac workstation of recent vintage with a large monitor. While Angie unpacked their clothing and other stuff, he fetched his computer tools and took a look inside the case. There was nothing suspicious, but he wanted to double check. He fired up his laptop. Sure enough, there were dozens of wifi nodes in the area. He picked at random one of the unsecured ones and looked up a site that offered complete tear-down instructions for Macs. He checked everything, including the cables.
By matching the images, he decided there was nothing amiss and reassembled the case. That didn’t mean things were perfect. Among the parts in the box was a wifi router. After getting the system up and running, but before connecting the router, he pulled a disk from his collection and inserted it. Mac is Unix with a pretty face, and he had some scripts that took advantage of this to make it more secure. It included a very smart firewall and some other measures to lock down the system against unsafe changes.
Angie walked in asking about how he wanted some of his clothing put away and stopped when she saw the system running. It was embarrassingly opulent. He quickly plugged in the wifi as she watched him get her online. Rolling back in his chair, he pointed to the system with his open hands. “There you go, Baby. It doesn’t get any better than this.”
She was clearly impressed. She sat down and began playing with it. He left it to her and went to the bedroom so she could work without worrying about his stuff.
With restaurants, cafes, snack-bars and grocery shops aplenty in easy walking distance, food was never an issue. The apartment was fully furnished, aside from linen. Again, shops within walking distance covered every need. Everything in the apartment was obviously well-used, but certainly better than nothing. As they were working away on their photographs that evening, Preston looked over at Angie and said aloud, “I didn’t notice dying, so how did I get to heaven? The only thing missing are the wings on your back.”
She turned with a big smile, leaned over and kissed him. “Don’t be silly. We still have a lot of work to do. I’m betting our bicycles will not rest much in that lock-up downstairs.”
Preston grinned. “Well then, we’ll have to play angels on wheels while the real angels guarding us will never get much rest for their wings.”
(End of Part 2; Part 3 follows.)