Death of Secrets (12 page)

"True, but if he decides to make waves he has the ability
to make a lot bigger waves than some cocktail waitress."

"We can’t kill him, he’s one of our staunchest allies on
the Hill. We need him."

"I’ve never heard of a vote so vital you couldn’t buy a
replacement."

"Why kill them at all if we can get the flash drive
without it?"

"What if they’ve read the contents? What if they
talk?"

"Don’t be dense, that file was so encrypted it’d take even
the NSA days to crack it."

"It’s you who’s being dense – she’s already got a computer
person working on decrypting it. They’ll figure it out."

There was one more long pause. John was nearly hyperventilating
now, taking shallow, short breaths. Kathy was in
real
trouble, he knew,
and he was the only one who could tell her.

He couldn’t resist any longer. Ever so slowly, he eased his
head out from behind the corner to peek.

A streetlight illuminated the area gently, and the two men
stood just outside the circle of light it created. One wore a long topcoat, the
other a jacket like John’s. Both had their collars turned up. The angle wasn’t
right to see their faces, though, both were looking away. It didn’t matter. He
recognized both voices.

One of the men turned around.

John yanked his head back around the corner so hard he almost
hurt himself. For a moment, his breath wouldn’t come at all. Had he been seen?
He thought he ducked out of sight fast enough, but he couldn’t be sure…

The conversation started up again. First the voice of Carlos,
and then the other. John breathed a sigh of relief. If they’d seen him, they’d
be coming after him right now, not talking.

The speaker went on at great length about the importance of
whatever it was they were working on, and the necessity of recovering the flash
drive. He talked and talked and talked, more like a sermon than a conversation.
John was just beginning to get curious about that – Carlos had never struck him
as the type to sit there and listen to a haranguing – when he had time to feel
a sharp blow to his head, and a wet rag over his nose. The rag smelled funny,
and John didn’t have any doubts at all that he’d be late coming back from his
break. Maybe someone at the Neon would be able to help him when they found out
he was missing. His last thought before fading to unconsciousness was that no,
Carlos wasn’t the type to listen to a harangue. But he wasn’t above using one
as a diversion.

***

Dejected, Colleen wished for Call of Duty, so she could at
least have a little fun. But it had taken long enough just to download the
programs she actually needed. Downloading a whole game would take forever on
the hotel’s network.

At a loss for where to go from here, she looked over to see
what Kathy and Mike were talking about. That was a mistake. The two had moved
their chairs closer together, their faces only inches apart.

Colleen pouted, and exhaled noisily over her lower lip, causing
her bangs to fly up. She closed her messaging and IRC programs. "I’m gonna
go get a breath of fresh air," she said.

A bright shade of red crept up Kathy’s face as she looked up at
her roommate. "Oh, um, Colleen… no luck with this Jakarta guy?"

Colleen shook her head on her way to the door and left.

Kathy sighed. "I totally forgot she was there."

Mike nodded, blushing almost as much as Kathy. "Me too. I
hope she’s not mad."

"Oh, she’ll get over it. I’ve been through more than a few
awkward moments between her and her boyfriend in our dorm room. Besides, last I
heard talking wasn’t considered a social
faux pas
."

Michael grinned and rested his arm around Kathy’s shoulders. He
leaned his head over and closer to Kathy’s.

Kathy felt his proximity as warmth on her cheek. Part of her
wanted to turn her face to meet him. But…

The computer emitted a loud, long beep.

Mike’s hands froze, and both of them looked over at the laptop.

Kathy went over to the computer and sat down. She bit her lower
lip as she looked at the screen. "Um, Michael, I think you better come
here."

Mike pulled his chair over from the table and sat down. He
looked at the screen, looked closer, and then said, "Well whaddaya know.
She did it!"

On the screen in front of them, a computer dialogue box had
appeared. It read "Why are you looking for me?"

There was also a space for a reply, and a button marked
"Send."

"Is this who I think it is?" Kathy asked.

"Sure looks like it to me," the Congressman replied.

"Well, what do I do?"

"Looks like we're supposed to talk to him," Mike
replied, adding, "I sure wish Colleen hadn't left. Glad she left the
computer connected, though."

Kathy hunted and pecked her way across the keyboard. "It
was actually my roommate, not me," she wrote. "She stepped out."
She clicked the send button.

After a moment, a new dialogue box swam up on the screen.
"I see. Tell her she missed her chance."

Quick as she could, Kathy typed out, "Wait!"

The reply came back, "Only for a moment. I don't like to
stay connected to an unknown computer for too long."

"Let me, Kathy," Michael said, pulling the laptop
over to face him.

At a speed much better than Kathy's, he typed out, "We
came looking for you because we have something that might belong to you."

"Oh? What might that be? Since I don't know you it's hard
to believe I loaned you a book or something."

Fingers clacking on keys, Mike replied, "It's a flash
drive. Looking for one?"

"Sure. Everyone can always use more storage. But if you
think I'm giving you my location so you can bring it over, they’re hiring
really stupid people at Fort Meade these days."

Mike and Kathy looked at each other. Kathy shrugged, and
Michael said, "Well, it’s a military base, but also the NSA
headquarters."

He typed "What do you mean?" and clicked the send
button.

"Don't trifle with me, fed. This has got to be your most
pathetic attempt yet."

Michael started typing a denial, but before he even got one
word out the dialogue box was gone. Frantically he clicked on random icons,
looking for one that would bring the little message box back. None of them
worked.

Colleen returned to the room, fully expecting that Kathy and
Mike would be gone to his room for privacy. She knew Kathy, so at least she
wasn’t worried about finding them entwined on the bed. Instead they were
sitting at the table, Mike with his head propped morosely on his hands and
Kathy resting hers on crossed arms.

"Um, try to stop having so much fun, guys," she
quipped. "You're making me jealous."

"We blew it, Colleen," Mike said, not lifting his
face from his hands.

"Blew what?"

Kathy rolled her head over to face her roommate without lifting
it off her hands. "Jakarta tried to contact you on the computer, and we
scared him off."

"You have got to be kidding me!"

Mike lifted his chin off his hands and shook his head. "Nope.
It's all too true, I'm afraid."

Colleen flopped down onto the double bed, arms thrown wide, and
expelled a gigantic sigh. "The most incredible hacker in the world calls,
and who gets to talk to him? My computer-illiterate roommate! I can't even
believe this!"

"He thought we were with the government," Kathy said.

"Yeah, I can see that happening," Colleen muttered.
"Do you have any idea how
cool
it would be to meet him? Most of my
friends would give their right arm to have the experience you guys just had."

"Jeez," Mike said. "I don't get this excited
about the President, and I've actually met him, not just exchanged text on a
computer screen."

"Yeah, but I'll bet you used to when you were just
starting," Colleen replied. "Don't forget you're a lot further along
in your field than I am in mine."

"And anyway," Mike went on, "It's not just about
talking to him, it's about finding out whether he can help us with the
drive."

Kathy got up to move to the bed and sit beside her roommate.
"I'm sure we can find him again, Colleen."

"Yeah, right. It's a miracle I pulled it off once."

Mike spoke up from the table. "We don't have much choice,
Colleen. Either we find this guy, or we wait for someone to kidnap Kathy again
– or worse."

"I know, I know," Colleen said. "I'll try again
tomorrow. He'll need that much time to calm down after his 'federal agent'
encounter with you guys, anyway. In the meantime, I need sleep. You two should
either break it off for the night or try the other room."

Mike and Kathy both blushed and looked anywhere but at each
other. The Congressman recovered and cast a hopeful glance at Kathy, but she
didn't even acknowledge it.

Without looking at him she said, "I'll just get some sleep
too."

Mike nodded. "No problem. I'll just be in my room then. You
two call me if there's any trouble at all. Otherwise I'll come get you for
breakfast tomorrow."

He stood and left. Once outside the girls’ door Mike sighed
quietly and walked down the hall.

***

"Colleen, that was kind of lame to put us on the spot like
that."

"I know, I'm sorry Kathy. It’s just uncomfortable being
the third wheel and all."

Kathy lay down in the other bed. "It's OK. It's not like
he's going to run away or anything."

"Well, if you keep stringing him along you never
know."

"You know how I feel about this. It’s not worth doing if I
don’t do it right."

Colleen nodded. "I do know how you feel. I think this guy
might be ‘doing it right,’ though."

Kathy sighed and closed her eyes. "Lord, please help Mike
get to know you. I’m starting to really like him." And with that she was
asleep before Colleen could reply.

***

Alicia Dugan – chief hardware engineer on EG’s GigaStar project
– eased her foot onto the accelerator pedal in her Mercedes, and savored the
immediate response. She loved this car – loved the way it responded, loved the
way it handled, and loved the way it made driving into a transcendent
experience. In the few months she'd owned it, it had become her prize
possession. She loved it as much as she loved the work she’d done on the GigaStar
project at Electron Guidewire.

She was an engineer, and a good one. Her career consisted
mainly of a long trail of successes. When she took a job with EG, many of her
friends looked at it as a step down. But only because they didn’t know the work
she was doing. Alicia Dugan designed the technical specifications of the
GigaStar wireless eavesdropping device. And she was the last member of the
project team who hadn’t died or disappeared.

Alicia's life stayed mostly empty of luxuries. Her professional
reluctance to waste resources on sheer comfort colored her personal life too.
Function was king, form and comfort were something you put into the project if
the client insisted, but only after lecturing them on how much more expensive
it made the job.

But after two years working for Electron Guidewire, when it
became obvious that her pie-in-the-sky project not only could work but would,
she'd been swept by such a feeling of pride that her normal reservations
crumbled. And she bought herself the Mercedes to celebrate.

She'd earned her Ph.D. in applied physics totally expecting to
work in a university environment for the rest of her life. But just before she
signed a contract to work at MIT, D.W. Tilman had come calling, offering her
the opportunity to work on something no one believed could be done for a decade
or more.

She'd told him it was impossible. She told him he was investing
billions in something that – if he was lucky – would bear fruit in twenty years
at best. She'd told him to talk about serious projects, not daydreams. And he'd
offered her three times what MIT was offering, with a big fat bonus if she made
it work in two years instead of two decades.

In a year, she'd had to eat all her tirades about
impossibility. In a year and a half, she'd produced a functional prototype. In
less than two years, she had her bonus, and one of the things she'd spent it on
was the Mercedes.

Now she was wealthy beyond her wildest dreams, and on the
cutting edge of her profession. The only drawback was that no one else knew it.
The project was a government contract, Tilman had told her, and highly
classified. She couldn't even talk about it, let alone publish it, and that
rankled. Like any good scientist, what she craved was not money, but the
respect of her peers. That goal still eluded her, but she tried to take solace
in the knowledge that it couldn't stay that way forever. Eventually her work
would have to be declassified, and she could enjoy the resounding awe of others
in her profession.

If she lived that long.

Alicia was a smart woman, she was paid to be. And it had not
escaped her notice that the other two employees at EG who had worked on the
GigaStar project were now either dead or missing.

She scoffed. Eliza Jackson resigned? No chance, she thought.
Eliza was as wedded to the success of GigaStar as she was. Both of them knew
their careers would take a tenfold leap forward as a result of what they had
done at Electron Guidewire.

Alicia wasn't a conspiracy nut, by any means. But when two of
four people – she counted Tilman in the total – who knew the details of a
project were suddenly gone in mysterious circumstances, the remaining two were
smart to keep a lookout.

Alicia planned to do more than look out. She planned to get out
of town. She'd let EG know somehow – they certainly could do without her for a
while, since GigaStar was basically through.

Her part had been through for some time. She'd been responsible
for the receiver end of the unit. It was like a tiny wifi radio, only so much
more. She had designed the device that made the code work. The production crew
didn't do anything more than follow instructions. They didn't even know what
they were building, just that it fit the design specs.

But she knew. Oh, yes, she knew. And apparently someone didn't
like the fact that she knew. That someone had killed Krupotnik, and probably
killed Jackson as well.

Her mind churned through possibilities. GigaStar was a
government contract, so perhaps foreign agents had gotten wind of it. She
wasn't sure whose foreign agents those would be, but it was one possibility. So
were terrorists or something like them.

But Alicia didn't buy that. If she had wanted to stop the U.S.
from developing this technology, she'd have killed Krupotnik before he'd
actually written the code. Killing him after it was done didn’t accomplish
anything.

Except to keep him quiet.

Alicia had never considered herself unpatriotic, but neither
did she think of her government as beyond reproach. What she had done on
GigaStar was revolutionary work – a full generation ahead of the pack in
eavesdropping technology. Two generations. She could easily see the government
wanting to make sure that no one else could get hold of the same capability. If
the Feds wanted to keep the GigaStar's technology all to themselves, the surest
way was to kill anyone who could spread the word. Now Krupotnik was dead,
Jackson was missing and probably dead, and she and D.W. Tilman were the only
ones left. Obviously, they'd want to keep Tilman alive until he'd completed the
sale. But she had no such security. And so she would run away. She'd take a
nice little vacation in the mountains until this had all blown over. Maybe
she'd publish the work she'd done on the Internet – let the whole world know,
so no purpose could be served by killing her. After all, if everyone already
knew, there was no point in keeping her quiet.

Alicia merged into the George Washington Parkway in Northern
Virginia. She dodged a few slower-moving vehicles and accelerated to a
comfortable 65 miles per hour.

Under the hood of her car, a few small, non-standard devices
clicked into action.

Upon attaining her cruising speed, Alicia took her foot off the
gas. But the car continued accelerating – seventy, eighty, ninety-five miles
per hour. The big German engine demonstrated its power as Alicia tried
helplessly to slow it down. She tromped on the brake pedal, but the same
sabotage that had disabled the accelerator pedal also disabled the brakes -
both the normal and the emergency brakes.

She hauled desperately on the steering wheel, zooming around a
minivan full of kids. She wasn't the type to panic, but Alicia realized her
options were running out. If only her gas tank would fall to empty…

No such luck. She'd filled up before starting. White knuckled,
she tugged the wheel to the right, squeaking around a clutch of commuters by
taking advantage of the shoulder. The scenery blurred in her windows as her
speed passed through one hundred miles an hour. Horns blared around her, and
she began to consider the unthinkable - trying to bail out of her car while it
still moved.

But there would be no time for that. Ahead she saw flashing red
and blue lights and an obstacle she couldn’t dodge - a traffic accident. The
whole road was blocked. Alicia had time to scream as her prize German car raced
toward the mass of vehicles blocking the road. She saw police officers
scattering, trying to get out of her path.

Her last thought was that she'd been too late after all. They'd
gotten to her, and only Tilman remained of the GigaStar team.

***

A deluge of cold water woke him. John sputtered his way to full
consciousness, cursing and trying to bring his hands up to wipe his eyes. But
his hands, of course, were tied.

When the water had fully dripped off them, he opened his eyes
and looked. Already he remembered getting hit on the head while eavesdropping,
so he had some idea of what to expect. And when he finally peered around
himself, he wasn't disappointed.

The man with the ratty untrimmed beard stood before him,
cracking his knuckles and flexing his fingers. Behind him stood a man whose
name he didn't know, but who he knew was a frequent customer at the Neon.

He sputtered out some very profane language and finished with,
"I'll kill you both."

The bearded man laughed. "Big words from a man who can't
move," he said. And indeed, John was so securely tied that none of his
limbs could so much as twitch. He took a moment to look down at the wooden
chair to which he was secured, and his eyes confirmed it, taking in the ropes
around his wrists, elbows, legs, and ankles. He also examined the rest of the
room. It was small – so small it wouldn't be big enough to meet federal
standards for the size of prison cells, as John knew from one or two past
experiences he was reluctant to admit. The walls and ceiling were bare white,
the floor bare cement. A single, unadorned bulb hung from the ceiling on a
short cord and provided the only light.

John spat out a curse, and the bearded man just laughed.
Thinking back to the Georgetown Inn, John remembered his name – Carlos. He
longed for some kind of credible threat, something he could say that might give
him the upper hand. But he knew just how long the odds were on Mike and Kathy
being able to handle these two alone. If
he
couldn’t do it, what chance
did a dancer and a soft desk jockey have? And frankly, his own chances looked
pretty small just then.

"My employer and I have a problem," Carlos said,
nodding at the other man in the room. John wished he knew his name. This guy
spent more on table service at the Neon than John made in a month, and he
figured he ought to have learned his name.

"We're pretty sure your little waitress friend has no idea
what's on that flash drive she has," Carlos continued. "Which is just
the way we like it. But we're not one hundred percent sure, and that bothers
us.

"So we thought, John's been with her, he'll know whether
they've learned anything from it. Let's ask him," he concluded.

"How many times do we have to tell you, we don't know
what's on it!" John growled.