Death of Secrets (11 page)

This landing came hard. She crumpled to the ground and sat
there, gasping, her legs punishing her for the abuse. Only the sight of a
service door opening into the alley brought her to her feet. Painfully, she
started trotting away.

A voice behind her called out, "Kathy, wait!" Instead
she tried to pick up the pace, coming to a full run and ignoring the pain in
her legs. When she heard the clatter of running footsteps behind her, she
increased her speed again, sprinting now for the end of the alley.

Once there she turned the corner onto a street and found
herself in the middle of a throng of pedestrian traffic.
Thank you God.
It was harder to run, now, with so many people around her. But the crowd made
her feel safe from assault by her mysterious captors. She pushed, elbowed and
shoved when she needed to, and ran when she had a clear space.

Her head swiveled back to look over her shoulder, and she
couldn’t make out pursuers back there. No doubt the crowd would make it as hard
for them to keep her in sight as it was for her to keep running. Nevertheless,
she didn’t slow down any more than congestion required.

***

Colleen listened as Mike recounted the story of Kathy’s
abduction from the street in broad daylight. When he finished, Mike just shook
his head.

"I’ve gotta call the cops," he said. "My chief
of staff will kill me. D.W. will kill me. He always taught me to control how
the news comes out, and this is letting it as far out of my control as can
be."

Colleen spoke up. "Um, I can maybe help you a bit there.
Why would it have to be you who called the police? I’m her roommate, I could do
it. You wouldn’t even have to be involved."

He looked at her. "I never thought of it that way."

She nodded. "It’s OK, I understand. But listen, I’m not
sure we should go to the police yet."

"Are you crazy?" Michael nearly shouted. "What
else can we do? We don’t even have the foggiest idea who took her, let alone
where
they took her, so we’re sort of out of luck when it comes to rescuing her
ourselves."

 "Listen to me," Colleen urged, gripping his
shoulders. "Just listen for a sec. It’s obvious that the only reason this
is happening at all is that stupid flash drive, right? And I have it,
right?"

He nodded glumly, and Colleen went on. "OK, then. Whoever
they are, they
will
be back in touch with us, because they want that
drive. With kidnapping, the criminals usually want to keep the police out, and just
get the ransom. We know for a fact that Kathy is useless to them without the
flash drive. So why don’t we just wait for them to call and tell us how to make
the exchange? We might even be putting her more at risk by calling the
cops."

Michael turned away from her and stared out the window. He
looked back, and then away again. Finally he said, "OK, you’re right. I
don’t like just doing nothing, but you’re right, they
have
to come back
to us. Then we just give them the flash drive and get Kathy back."

She nodded.

"OK," Mike said. "Let’s go back to our hotel
room, so Kathy has a way to contact us if they ask her to."

The walk to the hotel went quickly, with neither one in the
mood to talk much. Once inside, Colleen sat silently at the table, watching the
Congressman. Tilting her head to one side, she appraised him. So this was the
guy Kathy talked about. Attractive, she thought, and a member of Congress to
boot. It wasn’t everyone who had a Congressman fall for her.

After a long silence that grew increasingly uncomfortable,
Colleen decided to try starting a conversation. Just sitting around brooding
about what might be happening to Kathy was unhealthy. Trouble was, she didn’t
quite know what to say to him.

"I’ve never known a Congressman before."

He laughed. "Lucky you. By and large they’re a cutthroat
bunch."

"You seem nice enough."

His face seemed to light up a bit. "Did Kathy tell you
that about me?"

Colleen laughed. "What, I can’t have formed my own opinion
about you?"

His burgeoning smile melted a bit, but not totally. "Yeah,
I suppose so. I just thought …"

"That she talks about you." Colleen grinned. Men were
all the same. "You’re a politician. Is it a good idea for you to fall this
hard for her?"

Michael blushed. "Well, that’s exactly what I was thinking,
actually. I don’t know whether to be glad that she’s interested enough to talk
about me or worried that when she talks about me it puts my career at
risk."

Colleen gave him a mysterious half smile. "Well, yeah, she
has talked to me about you a little bit. But I don’t think she has to anyone
else. Except maybe at the club. From what she says it sounds like they all know
you’re in politics."

He sighed. "Yeah, that can’t be helped. Waitresses
overhear conversations, stuff like that."

Colleen nodded, and Mike went on. "So do you think I have
a chance with her?"

She laughed. "Don’t you men ever get out of junior high?
Do you want me to give her a note asking her to go steady with you?"

He blushed again. "Well, I can’t help it. She’s so…"
Another sigh escaped his lips.

"So beautiful, sexy, funny, smart – yeah, yeah. Guys
always sound the same when they’re in love." She stopped to laugh.
"Oh come on, don’t look so embarrassed. It’s cute, in its own way. And to
answer your question as best I can, yeah, I think you have a chance.
Circumstances being different, I imagine the two of you would already be
dating."

"What circumstances?"

She looked at him. "OK, I don’t know you that well, so I
can afford to just be honest. I know my roommate. God’s everything to her. Does
she have any reason to believe you share that?"

His eyes widened and he stammered.

He mumbled and looked away, and Colleen patted him on the back
as she stood up. "Look, don’t worry about it. From what I’ve seen of you,
you seem like a decent guy. She says the same thing. Assuming you
are
a
decent guy, then that’ll come through and you’ll be fine."

He sighed. Colleen was about to ask him if he had any booze in
the room when her cell phone rang. Michael listened to the side of the
conversation he could hear.

"Hello?"

"Kathy! Are you OK?"

Michael fidgeted and whined, itching to grab Colleen's cell
phone. "Let me talk to her!" He held his hand out and hopped from
foot to foot.

Colleen laughed, the relief evident in her voice as she yielded
the phone to Michael. "Some random guy wants to talk to you," she
finished, with a wink at the Congressman.

He grabbed the phone. "Kathy?"

"Hey, Mike. I’m fine, I got away, calm down."

A huge sigh came through the phone to Kathy’s ears. She
couldn’t even understand most of what Mike said, the words came out so jumbled
and confused.

"Calm down, calm down, I’m fine. I’m on my way back there.

Mike brought his voice under control. "Do you want us to
come get you?"

"No need, I’ve lost them, obviously, or I wouldn’t be free
to make a call, so I should be safe just catching a cab and coming over."

Mike promised to wait in the lobby, clicked off the phone, and
impulsively hugged Colleen. She laughed and hugged him back. "That’s my
roommate," she said. "She’s good at taking care of herself."

***

When they saw her walking in, Mike and Colleen ran across the
lobby and wrapped Kathy up in twin bear hugs. She squeezed back until breathing
got tough, then slipped out of their grasp. "You guys are not going to
believe
how I got away!"

As pleasant as it had been to share the room with Kathy,
Colleen's presence made Mike feel like he should get a second one. They went to
the front desk and made the arrangements, using Kathy’s fake ID again, and then
headed back to the room where they’d spent last night.

As they rode the elevator, Kathy poured out the story of her
great escape, stretching out the part about the slide down the drainpipe. Once
in their room, she came back to it again, assuring her friends they’d never
believe how cool it was.

Colleen laughed and hugged her friend. "Oh, I believe it
alright. I just can’t believe you had the guts to do that."

"I couldn’t either!"

The three slowly settled down, and traded information about
what they had learned so far. Kathy mentioned remembering where the murder
victim had told her to take the thumb drive.

She said, "There's got to be some way to get out of this
short of flying to Jakarta, though."

Then she trailed off, and raised an eyebrow at her roommate.
Colleen was staring at her, mouth open, eyes wide.

Michael leaned over the table and asked, "What is it,
Colleen?"

"Guys, Jakarta isn’t just a city in Indonesia. Jakarta’s a
hacker."

In unison Michael and Kathy asked, "What?"

"Jakarta is like, a legend on the Net," Colleen explained.
"I have no idea what his real name is. No one does. But do you remember
when the NSA itself got hacked last spring? That was him."

Michael nodded, but Kathy’s face looked blank. "I get what
the NSA is, but what’s this about them being hacked?"

"Well, you know, everyone’s been up in arms about the NSA
spying on everything right? We computer people are very hyper about privacy –
mostly because we know how poorly it mixes with computers. So the famous
Jakarta managed to hack into their computers – which is huge, by the way, it’s
about as hard as data theft ever gets – and released a list of the names of
several thousand American citizens who the NSA was actively spying on."

Colleen grinned as she told the story. Mike added, "It was
a huge deal. There were Congressional hearings and everything. I was involved a
little bit."

Kathy blinked. "And you think
this
is who I’m
supposed to give the flash drive to? Some hacker who calls himself Jakarta,
rather than Jakarta Indonesia?"

Colleen shrugged. "Well, I mean, either one is a
possibility, but it
is
a computer flash drive, after all, and Jakarta
the hacker has a lot more to do with computers than Jakarta the city. What’s
more, that name you told me, Eric Harrison? He was known for working with Jakarta.
Besides, how much sense does it make to just fly to Indonesia and hope for the
best? He didn’t give you any more instruction than just ‘Jakarta?’ Then it
seems more likely it’s a person."

Michael was nodding. "That makes a lot of sense, but I’m
not sure if it makes our lives any easier. How is finding some hacker who hides
behind a screen name any easier than flying across the world?"

"Well," Colleen replied, "He’s supposed to live
here in D.C., that’s a start…"

"Not much of one," Michael replied. "This is a
pretty big city to just start knocking on random doors asking if they’ve seen
him."

Colleen nodded. "Well, it’s a good thing you brought that
laptop along. I’ve got some research to do."

"You think you can find him?" Kathy asked.

Colleen shrugged. "I’m not sure, but I have better odds
than a house-to-house survey in Washington D.C."

***

They returned to their room, hoping Colleen could get in touch
with this Jakarta fellow before too long. Although they’d paid for a separate
room for him, Michael spent the majority of the evening in with the two girls.
After everyone took the time to shower and clean up, they got together in Kathy
and Colleen's room for the evening’s work. While Mike and Kathy summoned room
service for strawberry daiquiris, Colleen got to work on the Congressman’s
computer.

The hotel provided a wifi connection, so Colleen fired up the
laptop. Once it was fully booted, she grimaced at the web browser that Mike
used. But it was the only one on the machine, so she had to start it to download
the software she’d be working on.

As the browser opened up, Mike’s e-mail and social media
accounts popped up in separate tabs. Colleen closed both right away. She didn’t
like looking at other people’s mail.

As the tabs closed, she never noticed the text box for a new
post on the social media page. There was a location tag on it, ready to let the
world know where Mike was posting from. It read, "McLean, VA."

It took a while for Colleen to get all the software she wanted
installed. Once that was done, she hunched over the small keyboard and screen,
trying to disappear from the room. The more Mike and Kathy talked, the more
attractive Michael’s room looked. Kat’s reservations were apparently on their
way out the window. Each little whisper from the other side of the room made
her try even harder to disappear.

Finally, though, she had everything she needed. Logging onto
her instant messaging service, she fired off notes to four of her Internet
friends to start the search.

KH12> Glad I caught up with you, dude. I need your help.

Freshy> Wassup? Need a swift whuppin’ at COD again?

KH12> Dude, you know I’d beat you down like I did last time.
But tonight I want help finding someone. I want to meet Jakarta.

The reply was a long time coming. When it did, it was hardly
hopeful.

Freshy> LOL, first of all how am I supposed to know where to
find him, and second, what makes you think he’d want to talk to you?

KH12> Come on, dude. You’re like, the most connected webhead
I know. If anyone’s going to have met him, it’d be you.

Freshy> No such luck. You know I’d help you if I could, but
I just don’t even know where to start."

Colleen's other four conversations went largely the same.
People LOL’ed at her every time she said she wanted to talk to Jakarta.
Dejected, she sighed and stared at the screen for a while, wondering who she
could ask next. Before she could think of another angle of approach, though,
she got another message from a friend she hadn’t talked to yet.

N00k> Yo KH! Freshy say’s you’re trying to meet Jakarta.

KH12> Hey, cool, I am. Whacha got for me?

N00k> What’ll you give me for help?

Colleen sighed. N00k – the name was derived from Nuke,
misspelling it with a double O instead of a U, and then using zeroes in place
of the letter O – was one of her least favorite Internet people. She knew him
from the occasional Call of Duty deathmatch, but she didn’t like the guy much.
He was also an inefficient hacker, or he wouldn’t need to ask her for things.

KH12> Ah, come on, N00k.

N00k> Hey, ya gotta look after number 1 in this business.

KH12> OK, OK, fine. But I’ll take it out of your hide the
next time I play you in Call of Duty. I got a few hacked passwords you can use.

Stealing passwords to sites that charged users to create
accounts was a favorite hacker hobby. In Colleen's online social life, few
people believed in paying for things. She visited an illicit web site she knew
about, stole a few passwords to pay sites for music and movies, and sent them
winging off to N00k.

After a few minutes for him to test it out she got a message
back. It turned out N00k had probably gotten the better end of the bargain. All
he had was the name of an IRC channel and a rumor that Jakarta occasionally
hung out there.

Sighing, she went to work. IRC stood for Internet Relay Chat.
It was like a chat room. It was a dated technology in most ways, but among a
certain segment of Internet users, using IRC was a kind of fashion statement.
It was a way of keeping out the less-well-informed.

Colleen logged on and found the right place. For a while she
just watched the text scroll by on the screen. This was a hacking channel, and
people were talking about the finer points of breaking into other people’s
computers. She smiled at the vast array of misspellings, profanities, and
bizarre acronyms that people used as nicknames online.

Finally, she felt ready to speak up. When one of the other
people logged into the channel made a claim about a supposed security hole in a
popular Web Browser that would allow a hacker to gain unauthorized access to
whatever computer used that browser, Colleen sent her own message.

KH12> I heard they closed that hole.

J3rK> Who’re you and how do you know?

5w33+> Don’t be such a jerk, J3rK. Hi, KH12, glad you could
join us.

KH12> I was at DefCon last Spring, and that’s enough about
who I am and how I know for you to take it seriously. And Hi, 5w33+.

DefCon was the annual "hackers’ convention." It was
held every year in Las Vegas, and spending the cash to attend was considered a
sign of being pretty serious in the hacking community.

Kewlio> Cool, I was at DefCon too. Don’t remember your name.

KH12> I remember yours. You were on that panel about the
ethics of bringing real life international relations to the Net.

Colleen remembered the name Kewlio as one of the presenters,
although she couldn’t remember what he’d said. It didn’t matter. It was only
necessary to prove she really knew what she was talking about. That done, the
conversation moved on.

The conversation now drifted off to reminiscences about the
last convention, including a tale from one guy about how he’d met the love of
his life there. That took the conversation away to the subject of Internet
romances, with most people on the channel taking the position that it was
pretty much a waste of time. Finally there came a brief lull in the
conversation, and Colleen took advantage of it.

KH12> Listen, guys, I need something.

Kewlio> Most newbies to the channel do when they come here.

5w33+> What’s that?

J3rK> Whaddaya need?

KH12> I want to meet Jakarta.

J3rK> LOL, right!

5w33+> So do I!

Kewlio> Why are you asking us?

KH12> I heard he sometimes hung out here.

Kewlio> I wish, that’d be sweet!

5w33+> No lie, dude.

KH12> You guys have never seen him in here?

J3rK> LOL, dude, even if we had we wouldn’t tell you.

KH12> Well, if he happens to tune in, ask him to e-mail me.
I imagine he’ll have no trouble tracking me down.

***

Donning a leather jacket the same shade as night itself, John
stepped outside the Neon Nightclub. He lit a cigarette and stared at the stars,
enjoying a brief break. His ears savored the escape from the music inside. The
wind fluttered the collar of his jacket, and he zipped it up a little tighter.
Fall was here in force.

When his ears had adapted to the peaceful absence of dance
music, John heard voices around the corner. He sucked in on his cigarette and
listened.

"They’re in The Holiday Inn in McLean," said one
voice.

"Cell phone location data again?"

"No, his laptop logged in to a social media site and sent
its location data."

There was a pause. John strained to hear more. His heartbeat
had suddenly accelerated. He only knew one person associated with the Neon who
was in the Holiday Inn in McLean right now.

"Good enough. I’ll send people."

"There’s a complication."

Again a pause, and John’s mind furiously weighed the pros and
cons of peeking around the corner. He imagined all kinds of nonverbal
communication going on when the voices were silent, and he felt pretty sure he
needed
to know the content of this conversation. But looking around the corner could
mean getting caught, and that would ruin his utility to Kathy. John wasn’t a
paranoid man, but he did know for a fact that these people had tried to kill
him twice already, so he assumed they were quite capable of trying again and
getting it done right this time.

When the conversation resumed, the first voice spoke again.
"She’s still with the Congressman. He sits on the House Judiciary
Committee. If he disappears suddenly there’s a lot more attention on this than we
want."

Another pause. John’s breath froze in his throat, and he
contemplated running back inside and calling Kathy immediately.