Black Pawn (Michael Cailen Book 1) (37 page)

Having just suffered a monumental security breach, the likes
of which had never been seen before, the CIA's IT department was in a frenzy. 
The damage assessment wasn't good.  Massive amounts of data had been
compromised and they were racing to find out what was taken and what operations
were now at risk.  With no readily discernible pattern, the files seemed to
have been taken at random.  As they frantically tried to trace the attack, the
head of security wished he could trade places with anyone else.

One of his teammates approached him.  “Sir, we have a big
problem.”

“You think?” he replied mockingly.

“They got into the personnel files.”

As if he couldn't be more panic stricken than he already
was, he felt all the blood rush from his face.  He swallowed hard and turned to
him.  “How bad is it?”

“Just one file.  Timothy Gatti.”

“That's it?  No one else?”

“Just him.”

“Send a team to pick up his family and get him on the
phone.”  He ran his fingers through his hair.  This didn't make sense.  They
could have taken half, if not all, of the personnel files.  Why only one?

GATTI WAS
sitting in a conference room with Price
looking over what little security footage they had of the incident at the
hospital for the twentieth time.  They watched Michael enter Elaina's room. 
Shortly after, they watched a strange-acting orderly enter followed by another
man that they identified as Josh.  Then panic in the hallways as people
screamed and ran for cover.  Josh emerged from the room and headed towards the
exit.  A minute later, a man walked quickly down the hall and stared at
Elaina's room.  He fired as the door opened, then took three bullets to the
chest and fell over.  Michael emerged with Elaina and started running down the
hall.  He shot another man who came through the doors ahead bearing a gun.  He
made it to the door, saw the guards and ran in the other direction.  Then, the
video cut out.

Gatti turned it off and stared at the blank screen.  Price
stared at the floor.  Neither knew what to think.  Ryan stepped in the room
holding a file.  Gatti and Price turned to him.

“They've identified the victims in the hospital shooting. 
Seven were known members of the Russian mafia.  One was a security guard who
worked at the hospital.  His neck was broken and he had been stripped of his
uniform.  They found another security guard stripped and unconscious in one of
the patient rooms.”  He handed Gatti the report.

Gatti nodded and quickly looked through it.  “Thank you.  This
leaves me more confused than before.”  He shook his head.  “Cailen goes out of
his way to avoid a group of guards.  I can't believe he would then kill one to
steal his uniform.  So perhaps the Russians did it.  But then how do you
explain the second guard?  Cailen didn't use it and Elaina Gomez would have
been swimming in it.  Report says the guard was six feet tall.”  He looked at
Price and the young agent.  “So who else was there?”

“Russians or Cailen still could have taken out the last
guard.  Doesn't mean there was a third party,”  Price reasoned.

“Actually, I think Agent Gatti is right,”  Ryan interjected.

“How so?”  Price asked.

He handed Price a page from the file.  “Because both Cailen
and the Russians shot out cameras after they had been disabled.”

As they pondered over that, another agent popped into the
conference room and informed Gatti he had an urgent call.

Gatti picked up the phone. “This is agent Gatti ...  I'm
sorry what? ...  No one else?”  Gatti stood, pacing as far as the cord would
allow him.  “Yeah, okay.  Thank you for informing me.”  He hung up the phone.

“What happened?” Price asked, concerned by how agitated
Gatti became.

“Someone hacked our mainframe.  Downloaded a large amount of
data along with my personnel file.  Just mine.  No one else.”  Gatti continued
pacing.  “It's Cailen.  I know it is.”

“Cailen couldn't even hack his own email let alone the
CIA,”  Price disagreed.

“We're missing something.”  Gatti continued pacing as he
tried not to let panic set in.  He picked the phone back up and dialed a
number.  “This is Agent Timothy Gatti.  I need a list of known hackers who would
be capable of hacking into the CIA.  I want files on all of them.”  He hung up
the phone and looked at Price.  “It's a start.”

Price nodded.  They spent the next half hour combing through
the police reports looking for anything they might have missed.

An agent walked in the room carrying a mound of paper. 
“This just came for you.”

He handed it to Gatti who then split it into three piles and
gave one each to Price and Ryan.  They spent the next few hours going over each
hacker's file looking for something to stand out.

Gatti finished his pile.  He looked at the other two who
were still looking.  “Anything?”

“A lot of interesting characters,”  Ryan remarked.  “No one
yet who would fit the profile though.”

“I don't see how Cailen could have come in contact with any
of these people,”  Price observed.

Gatti picked up the phone again and dialed the same number. 
“Yeah, this is Agent Gatti again.  Did you send me all the names?”  he listened
for a few minutes.  “Well, that is significant.  Send me everything you have.” 
Gatti hung up the phone and stared down at the table almost in a trance.

“Well?”  Price finally asked.

Gatti snapped out of it.  “About two weeks ago, a computer
hacker by the name of Jessica Nickoli was killed in a house fire in
Massachusetts.  It was ruled an accident.  Here's the interesting part.  Just a
week earlier, two men were arrested in front of her apartment building.  Those
two men were involved in a shoot out in a cyber cafe not far from her home the
day before.”

“What did the police get out of them?” Ryan asked.

“Nothing.  Neither lasted twenty-four hours in custody.  One
hung himself and the other was killed in retaliation for a racial slur. 
Supposedly.”  Gatti obviously had his doubts about the circumstances of their
deaths.

“Was Nickoli at the cafe during the shooting?” Price asked.

“Don't know.  The security footage is missing,” Gatti
answered.

“That's convenient,” Price remarked.

“We know Cailen is in Massachusetts.  What do we know about
Jessica Nickoli?”  Ryan asked.

“They're sending the file now along with the police reports
from the shooting and fire.”

Ryan returned with a stack of papers.  Gatti took Jessica's
file while Ryan and Price looked over the police reports.

“This Jessica Nickoli is some hacker.  She's well-known as
an expert in her field.  FBI has had her on a watch list since she started
working openly, but as far as they could find she's strictly legal.”  Gatti
looked up while still holding the report in his hands.  “What do we know about
the men from the cafe?”

“Nothing.”  Price dropped the police report on the table. 
“Their backgrounds were scrubbed and reinvented.  It was good enough to fool
the local police though.  Someone knew what they were doing.”

“What if Jessica Nickoli isn't dead?”  Gatti proposed.

“Dental records were a positive match,” Ryan pointed out.

Both Gatti and Price gave him a look like he should know
better than to believe everything you read.

“Evidence can be created to say whatever you want it to
say,”  Gatti informed him.

“So you think she's still alive?” he asked.

“Maybe.” Price answered.

“I found Black Pawn,”  Jessica announced, never taking her
eyes off the monitor.  “It was one of the file numbers given to me by Alex.”

Michael, Josh and Alonso crowded around, trying to get a
good view of her screen.  She looked over her shoulder at the three men
encroaching on her personal space and made a face.  “They really made you look
bad,” she added as the three men read the report.  “Even comes complete with a
photo.”

She pressed a few keys and two surveillance photos of
Michael popped up.  They were taken of him in China and both made him look
rather unsavory.  The report claimed they received new information on his
whereabouts and listed his home address as his current place of hiding.  It was
where the CIA assassin was supposed to take him out and nearly had four years
ago.

“Is there an email address in Gatti's file?”  Michael asked.

“Umm ...”  Jessica tapped away on the keys.  “I have his CIA
email address.”

“That will work.  Can you send him the Black Pawn file
without giving away where we are or who's sending it?”

Jessica grinned.  “In my sleep.  We just need to borrow
someone's Internet connection.”

Michael smirked.  “Let's go for a drive.”

“Would you like to call him too?”  she asked still grinning.

“What do you mean?”

“Since we're going to be using someone else's Internet, I
could set up a call over the Internet.  We have his number.”

Michael abruptly kissed her lips.  “You're amazing.”  He
smiled, clearly pleased with her suggestion.

She smiled bashfully. “I aim to please.”

“What are you going to say to him?”  Josh asked.

“I don't know.  Think I'm just going to feel him out.  See
how it goes.  I'm still not sure I can trust him.”

“That's what I was thinking,”  Josh agreed.

Jessica announced she was ready as she stood with her laptop
bag on her shoulder.

Michael glanced at her and then back at Josh and Alonso. 
“Wish me luck.”

Parked on a residential street, Jessica took a moment to
hack into a nearby wireless network.  Once online, she got to work routing
through various proxy servers and preparing to send the email to Gatti.

“It will look like it came from thin air,” she explained. 
“I hacked into a server and am using a spammer's website to send the email.  If
they do trace the proxy servers, they'll hit a dead end here with these poor
people.”  She handed Michael a headset.  “Just let me know when you want me to
send the email.  Do you want to make the call now?”

Michael took a deep breath.  “Guess so.”

GATTI, PRICE,
and Ryan were looking over the police
reports of the cafe shooting and the fire at Jessica's apartment when Gatti's
cell phone rang.  He was so absorbed in what he was doing he didn't bother to
look at the caller ID.

“Gatti,” he answered.

“Hi, Agent Gatti.  I hope I didn't catch you at a bad time?”

“Who is this?” he asked, still half reading the police
report in front of him.

“We met earlier in the week.  I said I would call.”

Gatti was getting impatient. “Yeah, I'm sorry, I don't have
time...”  He suddenly stiffened.  He looked at the caller ID.  It was a phone
number from South Africa.  Price and Ryan stopped what they were doing and
looked up at him.  “Michael Cailen,” he said calmly as he frantically pointed
to his phone signaling for them to hurry and start a trace.  Ryan ran from the
room to get it going.

“Nice to finally get a chance to chat with you,Agent Gatti. 
We sort of got off on the wrong foot the other day.”

“Yes, well.  I understand forgoing social graces when you're
running for your life.  I don't harbor any ill will.”  Gatti paced back and
forth in the room trying to sound calm and collected despite feeling anything
but.  “It's funny, we were just talking about you.”

“Really? Anything you'd like to share?”

“Well, actually it wasn't about you so much as a friend of
yours.”

“Oh?  And who might that be?”

“Jessica Nickoli.”

“Who?”  Michael didn't admit or deny knowing her.  He wanted
to draw information from Gatti, not the other way around.

“Jessica Nickoli.  A computer hacker with quite an
impressive resume.  So good in fact that it wouldn't be beyond the realm of
possibility for her to hack into a highly secured government agency.  Like the
CIA, for instance.”  Gatti didn't really think Michael would admit to knowing
or working with Jessica, but it was worth a try and he hoped it would keep
Michael on the phone long enough to complete the trace.

“That is impressive, but listen.  Before we get too
distracted talking about your fascination with computer hackers, I actually had
a reason for calling you.”

Gatti snickered at the way Michael deflected the
conversation away from Jessica.  “Do tell.”

“I'd like us to be friends, Agent Gatti.  Or Tim?  Can I
call you Tim?”

“Sure, Michael.  Why not?”

Ryan returned to the room and gestured for Gatti to keep the
conversation going.  Gatti was trying his hardest to do just that.

“Great, Tim.  Now, I know the military had a pretty
extensive file on me which I imagine you've read cover to cover.  So there's no
need really to talk about me.  Instead, I'd like to get to know you a little
better.  What kind of man are you?  Are you a computer person?  Do you check
your email every day?  Every hour?  Do you have it sent to your Blackberry? Are
you one of those guys, Tim?”

Gatti suddenly had an overwhelming urge to check his email. 
He bolted from the conference room heading for the closest computer.  Someone
was using it, but that didn't hinder Gatti.  He pulled the agent from his chair
and sat himself down in front of the computer.  Price ushered the confused
agent away.

“I don't know, Michael.  Have to say I think that's an odd
question to ask.”  Gatti punched in his username and password while he was
speaking.  “Is there any particular reason you're asking me that?”  He waited as
his email loaded on the screen.  He had two new messages, one from an unknown
sender.

“Was just curious.  Look I have to go.  It's been great
chatting with you.  We'll have to do it again sometime soon.”

“Wait, Michael before you go ...” The call ended.  Gatti
turned to Price and Ryan who were hovering next to him.  “Did we get it?”

Ryan looked over at an agent on the other side of the room
and then back at Gatti.  He shook his head no.

“Dammit!”  Gatti turned back to his email.  He opened the
one from the unknown sender and wasn't sure if he should believe what he was
seeing.  It was the Black Pawn mission file.

“Isn't that Cailen?”  Ryan asked somewhat confused by what
he was seeing.

“Yes,” Gatti and Price answered at the same time.

“Why does it say he's a terrorist?”

Gatti quickly inserted a blank disc into the computer and
made a copy of the file.  He turned to Price and Ryan and whispered.  “We need
to get back to Langley and verify if this is real and if so where it originated
from.  And we need to do it quietly and quickly.”

“Why?  What does it mean?” Ryan asked.

Price looked at him. “That we may have a mole.”

MICHAEL HANDED
Jessica the headset.

“So?  How did it go?” she asked as she disconnected it from
the laptop.

“Well,” he paused and took a deep breath.  “They know about
you.”  He looked at her.

She looked surprised.  “What do you mean they know about
me?”

“They suspect you're not dead and that you were the one
behind the hack.”

Her heart started racing.  “How would he know that?  Unless
he's in on it?”

“I don't think that's the case.  He was reaching.  He threw
it out there hoping I'd bite.”

“But how did they even connect me?”

“This is what I keep trying to tell you Jessica.  It's the
CIA.  They're good at what they do.”

“What do we do now?”

Michael put the car in gear.  “We head back to the hideout
and see what else we can dig up.”

When they returned, Jessica relieved Jinx who had taken over
sorting through the information they obtained from the CIA.  Michael checked on
Elaina.  Her fever had dropped and she was feeling better than the day before. 
He squeezed her hand and looked up at Alonso.

“Do we have enough evidence now to have Morgan arrested?” he
asked.

“If you can prove Morgan is using the CIA to ship heroin,
along with all the other evidence you already have, yes.”

Michael nodded.  He glanced at Elaina and Eddie and then
back at Alonso.  “Can I talk to you privately?

Alonso also glanced at his wife and son.  “Sure.”

The two went down to the garage.  Once there Michael paced a
little then stopped, took a deep breath and looked at Alonso.  “They know about
Jessica.”

Alonso was admittedly surprised.  “I wasn't expecting that.”

“What will they do with her?”

“What did they say exactly?”

Michael gave him a rundown of his conversation with Gatti and
how he responded.

“You did good,”  Alonso commended him.  “You didn't admit or
deny it.  They have a strong hunch she's involved though, and if she turns up
alive she'll be suspect number one.  It's not good.”

“I know.”  Michael crossed his arms and looked at the floor.

“Before you turn over your evidence, you're going to have to
get them to agree to give both you and her immunity, and probably Josh as
well.”

“Will they?  And can we trust them?  Or will we just end up
with bullets in our heads when it's all done?”

“I know you've had a bad experience but generally the CIA
doesn't treat its own that way.  You're a decorated soldier and Jessica is
still an American citizen.  And both of you are helping to expose a huge
security threat.  If Agent Gatti is genuine, you will get immunity at the very
least.  The question is, do you trust him?”

Michael sighed.  “I'm still working on that.”  He slapped
Alonso on the shoulder.  “Thanks.”

Michael headed back upstairs to check on Jessica's progress.

“How's it going?” he asked.

“Well, I confirmed our suspicion that the confidential
informant is Ronald Sanders.  We have his file.  I also found the White Knight
file.  Alonso was very close to uncovering the location of their processing
facility.”  She turned to him.  He was intently reading the report on her
screen.  “What were you and Alonso talking about?”

He took his time responding.  He finished reading the report
and took a deep breath as he shifted his attention from her laptop to her.  “I
asked him what they would do to you.”

She stiffened.  “And?”

“I'm going to get immunity for us.”

“What if they don't give it to us?”

“They will.”  He smiled reassuringly.  “Are you able to
record the conversation if we call Gatti again?”

“Easily.  When are we calling him?”

“Tonight.  I want to call him late when he's likely to be
alone and out of the office.”

“Will you ask him for immunity tonight then?”

“Yeah, that CIA shipment is coming in three days.  I want to
have everything set before then.  Hopefully, we can end all this then.”

“In three days?” she asked surprised.

“Why not?  With the drug shipment and what we already have,
it will be enough to arrest Morgan.  We'll probably still have to hide from
Vlad, but having some help from the government will make that much easier.”

“I can't help but feel like it's almost too easy.”

Michael raised his eyebrows and looked at her.  “You think
this has been easy?”

She laughed.  “You know what I mean.”

“Yeah I do,” he smiled.  “It has to end sometime.  Why not
now?”

“I'll believe it when I see it I guess.”

He tenderly kissed the top of her head and stroked her
hair.  “You should get some rest.  You'll be out late with me tonight.”