Death of Secrets (14 page)

She inhaled deeply and stared at the message box.
"Well," she said aloud, "When you go looking for the world’s
best hacker, don’t be surprised when he hacks you." Noting the area for a
reply, she typed out, "Jakarta?" and pressed the send button.

"Correct. And you are Kathy Kelver or her roommate,
Colleen Christina. Which?"

"Colleen. KH12 on the Net."

"Ah. Named for the recon satellite?"

She smiled. Not everyone got that. The American National
Reconnaissance Office ran a constellation of spy satellites orbiting the Earth.
Among the most modern of them were the model KH12s.

"Correct."

"OK, then. Why are you making such a ruckus all over the
Internet looking for me, drawing unwanted attention to my haunts?"

Colleen took a moment to simply breathe. This was it, what
they’d been waiting for. The man at the other end could tell them about the
flash drive.

Maybe
, she admitted silently. She might have gone after
the wrong Jakarta – though the coincidence would be hard to believe. And even
if he was the right one, he still might not know what all this was about.

"My roommate was given a flash drive," she typed,
"and instructions to bring it to you. We would like to do that."

"I see. Well, this does pose a difficulty, doesn’t
it?"

"Why?"

"I am not in the habit of meeting face to face with
strangers. The government, as I made clear to your friends last night, would
rather strenuously like to interview me."

"I thought I had established that I was not with the
government."

"Perhaps. But perhaps not. It could still all be a
trick."

"If you want the flash drive, you’ll have to take the
risk."

"Not necessarily. I would prefer to simply have a friend
meet you, and pick up the flash drive."

"No," Colleen typed, holding her breath. "We’ll
only give it to you." That was a risk, but one she couldn’t stop herself
from running. After everything she and Kathy had been through…

"Why?"

"We want an explanation. Kathy and I have been through
miserable experiences over this thing. We want to know what it is, and why it’s
so valuable. You can tell us."

The reply took a long time coming. "Ah, but you see,
that’s exactly what the government would want. Nonetheless, I want that flash
drive, so this is what I’ll do: in precisely an hour, an associate of mine will
meet you at the front door of your Holiday Inn. You will be taken to a meeting
place, and you will bring the flash drive. Understood?"

She stared at the message, a smile spreading across her face.
It
worked!
She thought. But she typed only, "Understood."

***

He woke to a cramp, thinking he must have slept on his arm
wrong. That idea lasted only halfway to consciousness, when the myriad messages
of other pains arrived at once to great fanfare at his brain. John groaned.

This was far worse than any beating he'd ever taken on the
football field. Worse even than the riot that had once landed him in jail. In
agony, he tried to move his right hand to touch the place that hurt worst, but
of course he couldn't. John remembered being tied up.

Which is why it was such a surprise that he could, in fact,
move his left arm. Overcome by curiosity, his right eye cracked open just a
bit, only to see that, yes, his left arm was still tied. So why was it moving?

He closed his eyes and summoned the effort to marshal his
thoughts, asserting control over the brain cells that just wanted to scream over
the uncounted pain messages flooding in.

Gradually, he opened both eyes all the way. Well, as far as
they would go. His left one didn't want to open all the way, and John felt sure
he'd have a nasty black eye.

Finally, he was able to analyze the situation, and it actually
gave him a laugh, which triggered an explosion of pain from his ribs. He
grimaced, figuring at least one of them was cracked. But he also knew doctors
didn't do much for cracked ribs, since the main thing to do was let them heal
over time.

His left arm was still tied up, but could move just a bit
because, in the course of beating him for no good reason, Carlos had either
punched or kicked him hard enough to crack loose the arm of the chair. Maybe
the fall to the floor had done it, John mused. He hadn't been moved from there
after tipping over.

He looked up, and saw that the unshielded bulb in his – room,
cell, closet, whatever – had been left on. By its harsh light, he brought his
left hand over to the right one and began to work the rope.

How long it took, he had no way of knowing. They’d taken his
watch before bringing him in here, along with all his other clothing. To John,
it felt like it took him at least an hour to undo the knot. At long last,
though, his other arm was free. He used that to unfasten the rope that held his
left to the broken piece of wood that had once been a part of his chair.

After that he went to work on the rope that went around his
midriff and elbows. To start with, it was tied behind him, so he had to pull
the rope around 180 degrees. The rope burns from that temporarily overrode the
other pains he was feeling, and John clenched his teeth to keep from screaming.
Finally, though, the knot was where he could at least reach it, and he went to
work getting it loose.

Next, his legs. Bending at the waist shot little spikes of pain
through him, and John thought again about his certainty of a cracked rib or
two. He set his jaw and worked through it. It was either bear this or wait for
them to come drug him and kill him. His breath came in gasps as he worked the
knots, but at least for this he could use both hands.

For a moment after his ankles were untied he stopped to catch
his breath, cursing about the pain. That lasted almost a minute before he
realized that he had no idea how long it would be before they came after him,
and he hurried back to work.

Only the rope around his knees remained, and John made short
work of that. It was the easiest of the bunch, since he could use both hands
and didn't have to bend over to get at it. It fell down to the floor loose, and
he was free.

His first thought was to stretch out, having been locked in
that one position for who knows how many hours. That proved to be a mistake,
though, as the cramps shot through him at the unaccustomed movement. John
winced, and waited for the pain to pass. After a period of small, gentle
movements, he was finally able to stand up. When he did, he carried the broken
chair arm like a club.

It would serve as a weapon, but it wasn't much of one.
Instinctively, John's eyes traversed his cell, looking for anything else he
could add to his arsenal.

They fell on the lone light bulb.

It hung by a cord from a ragged hole in the ceiling. John
shrugged. Maybe, just maybe…

He stood under the bulb, and reached up until he could wrap his
hand around the cord. It gave just a little bit.

As he pulled a second time, he heard a voice outside his door.

John felt a sudden urge to urinate as he realized they were
back for him. They must be right outside. The bulb came a little further down
on his last tug, and now he faced a choice: give up on the bulb and prepare
with his chair arm/club, or make one last try for the bulb. He gave another
powerful pull, and felt the cord loosen and come free into his hand. He had
about six feet of play in the cord. It would have to do.

He heard a key slide into the door outside, and as it did he
popped the bulb against the wall, shattering it, leaving shards of jagged glass
sticking out like teeth from the socket he held in his hand. He scooted up to
the door just as it opened.

The destroyed light bulb sat in his hand as if he had gripped a
rosebud at the top of the stem. And like the stem, the cord hung down from his
hand, stretching all the way behind him and up to the ceiling. He gripped it
tightly, waiting.

The door opened and the flash of light from outside was
immediately interrupted by a shape filling the door. Without waiting even a
second, John rammed the base of the shattered light bulb into the middle of the
shape's chest.

John heard the satisfying sizzle of live electricity from the
light socket burning into his target, and that brought a feral smile to his
lips. By itself, that was a painful but not deadly attack. The voltage from the
outlet probably wasn’t enough to kill. But the remaining shards of glass
stabbed into the man's chest like tiny knives. Although that wasn’t enough to
kill either, the pain combined with the surprise of finding a free opponent was
enough to keep him from striking back at John.

"Teach you to kick me when I’m down!" he yelled.

Unfortunately, the man on the receiving end of his electrical
assault wasn't the man who had kicked him. Over the shoulder of his victim John
saw Carlos, eyes wide in disbelief, reaching for a gun.

John threw the body forward, dodging to the side as the light
socket pulled free from the chest. The man – corpse or just wounded, John
wasn't sure – flew into Carlos, and knocked him to the ground. The gun went
off, and the bullet ricocheted off the cement ceiling.

It never occurred to John that he might have been in danger
from that. Still driven by rage at his beating, he charged forward, wielding
the chair arm as a club. Out the door, his foot flew savagely out and connected
with Carlos's head. He kicked again, then again, and again. He sent his foot at
the other man’s head once or twice too, for good measure.

He finally stopped kicking, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
He had no idea whether Carlos was unconscious or dead, but he wasn't moving and
that was just fine with John.

John shook his head to clear it. Eventually, someone would come
looking for Carlos. When they came, John didn't want to be around.

Escaping wasn't just about his personal safety. The man who had
come with Carlos earlier – the man who had left just before Carlos beat him
while he was tied up – that man was a regular at the Neon. That man usually sat
with Mike.

John wasn't sure what to make of that. Over the past couple of
days, he'd become pretty tight with the Congressman. But not tight enough to be
one hundred percent certain Vincent was one of the good guys.
Birds of a
feather
, he thought. Mike was buddies with a guy who'd stood there and
ordered him drugged.

At best, Mike had been duped and needed a warning. At worst, he
was in this too, and Kathy was in real trouble. Someone in this whole mix was
lying. And until he knew for sure, John wasn’t trusting anyone but himself and
Kathy. That meant he had to get to her.

Not sure where he was or how to get to Kathy, the only thing he
knew was that he had to get out of here.

It was a big, open room, like a storage room. The place was
poorly lit and cluttered with boxes. The closet where he'd been held was at one
end of the room, and the two bodies lay on the floor in a heap in front of that
door, seeping minor quantities of blood. At the opposite end of the room from
his closet, John saw another door. And lying discarded on one of the boxes were
his pants and shirt.

He ran to the pile of his clothing and got dressed, then
tried the door. It opened into a bare staircase, and John started up. At the
first landing he tried the door, and found it unlocked.

Mike and Kathy were just walking aimlessly when they saw
Colleen running down the sidewalk toward them.

"Where’s the fire, Colleen?" Kathy asked her roommate
when they pulled even.

"Guys, I did it!"

Mike grabbed her hand. "Jakarta?"

She nodded. "He’s sending a car for us! We’ve got to meet
them in front of the hotel in …" she looked at her watch, "… fifty
minutes!"

"He’s actually meeting us?" Kathy asked. "He’s
going to tell us about the flash drive?"

Colleen nodded. "Yeah, really! He said he wanted the flash
drive! Guys, we did it!"

The three hugged, drawing stares from the other people on the
street, but Mike pulled away. "Wait a sec, he’s coming here? You told him
where we are?"

"He already knew, Mike."

"How’d he know?" Kathy asked.

"It's a computer. They're not very good for privacy. As
soon as most of us turn a web browser on, we're giving away location
data."

"Wait a minute, he’s got something on my laptop? Like a
virus or something? No way, I have antivirus software."

Colleen rolled her eyes. "Congressman, if you learn
anything from this whole business, learn this: if it has a screen, someone's
probably tracking you through it. But come on, we should get back to the hotel.
We’ve got a car to meet in half an hour."

The three turned around and started back.

***

A dark gray Chevy Suburban pulled up in front of the Holiday
Inn, and the passenger doors came open. Four men in dark suits emerged from the
vehicle and formed up on the sidewalk. As one, they scanned the faces of nearby
pedestrians. Finding nothing there of interest, they marched – as if they were
a military unit in formation – into the Holiday. Three walked briskly through
the lobby and boarded the elevator, selecting the second floor.

The other walked up to the front desk clerk. "Is there a
restroom nearby?" he asked, and got a nod in the general direction of the
facilities. He thanked the clerk and headed over there.

He was glad to discover that it offered a place from which he
could watch the lobby yet avoid being seen by the clerk. In truth, asking for
the facilities was just a ruse to put the clerk at ease. He and his team wanted
no trouble until the proper time.

After an appropriate wait, he emerged from his place and walked
back over to the clerk. "Thanks," he said, a charming smile painted
on his face. "Gotta wait down here while my partners meet with a client.
Any chance there’s a newspaper machine nearby?"

The clerk was a young girl who might have been prettier if she
took it a little easier on the blush and eye shadow. She smiled at this very
polite young man, wondering what kind of business he did, and whether he would
ask her out. To encourage him, she offered her own newspaper.

The encouragement didn’t work. He smiled and thanked her, then
took a seat in the lobby and unfolded the paper.

***

John had no idea how long he'd been running. When he recovered
his clothes after knocking Carlos unconscious – perhaps killing him? – he'd
neglected to strap on his watch. He'd remembered it about ten minutes later,
but there was no way he was going back.

Running away from the scene, John had had plenty of time to
consider the situation. It was possible that he'd killed one or both of those
men back at his cell. Unlikely, though, especially in Carlos' case. If John
himself had survived a far worse beating, he had no doubt that Carlos would
keep right on ticking. After all, he'd shown quite a propensity for staying
alive.

John’s escape from the makeshift basement cell led first into a
brightly-lit corporate lobby. The moment he emerged from the stairs, the few
employees who were working on Sunday took one look at his face and assumed the
worst. True, he'd been bleeding from more than one wound and wore enough
bruises for an entire hockey team. But John still thought their screams were a
bit overly dramatic.

It felt like traveling between two different worlds. One
moment, he'd been in a poorly-lit, ominous basement where blood and bruises and
torture all seemed to fit right in. One single flight of stairs, and in the
next moment he'd been in a bustling corporate workplace, watching business
people back away from him and gasp.

Fortunately, several doorways led to the outside world, and
John headed right for them. He ignored the shocked looks from people waiting
for the elevators. The building did have a security guard who manned the
entryway, though, and he walked toward John saying, "Sir? Sir, can I help
you?"

John would have preferred to ignore him, but eventually the
guard walked right up to him and set a hand on his shoulder. "You OK,
sir?" he'd asked. "Why don't you wait a sec while I get someone to
look at those cuts?"

John had wanted no part of that. He'd seen enough of how they
treated people here. He'd broken free of the man's grip and bolted for the
doorways, elbowing a few stunned workers out of his way.

He'd emerged from the doors to find himself in a broad parking
lot. Hondas, Toyotas, and Pontiacs spread out in front of him, and briefly John
toyed with the idea of stealing one. But that guard had to be hot on his heels.

He trotted out across the parking lot. As he left the lot and
started jogging down the street, he saw a small, discreet sign identifying the
owner: "Electron Guidewire."

He might be able to hitch a ride on the parkway, John mused.
But not looking like he did. He’d have to go by foot, at least until he could
find a cab or a bus. And a cabbie stopping for him was just as iffy as any
other driver, unless he found a place to clean up. He moved off to the north at
a good running pace, hearing a shout behind him and knowing it must be the
security guard.

That had been some time ago. It felt like an hour, but John
knew how time could play tricks on you under stress. For all he knew, he'd been
running only fifteen minutes.

He tried to keep the pace up, but every now and then he slowed
down to a fast walk. John hadn't run the forty-yard dash since his days on the
college gridiron, and this was hardly like running on a flat, well-groomed
football field. Dressed as he was, he didn’t look like the average jogger, and
John drew a few stares from other pedestrians. He ignored it all.

All the businesses he passed identified themselves only with
tiny signs and plaques that were hard to read as he ran past. But still, he'd
seen enough to know the Electron Guidewire building was in the Northern
Virginia suburbs of Washington D.C. Eventually he had hit the Leesburg Pike, and
was now jogging on his way to McLean. Even all the way off the shoulder, the
traffic still bothered him. The busy commercial strip yielded up a lot of
exhaust fumes, which didn’t make breathing any easier. When he finally reached
Tyson’s Corner, he turned onto the Chain Bridge Road, and headed up to McLean.

But there was a lot of running in front of him first. John
plodded along, wondering whether Mike knew what kind of jerk was paying for
most of his drinks at the Neon.

***

"So where are Jakarta’s people supposed to be taking
us?" Kathy asked. She, Mike, and Colleen were on their way back to the
hotel.

"No idea," Colleen replied. "He’d barely tell me
anything. The guy’s hyper-paranoid about law enforcement finding him – he’s still
not sure whether we’re going to try to arrest him."

"Jeez, that guy’s
totally
paranoid."

"Not really, Kathy. The things that made him famous are
mostly felonies. The guy we’re going to meet, the feds would give a lot of
money to talk to. In fact, I think there’s a $100,000 reward for information
leading to his arrest and conviction."

Kathy gasped "Whoa, a hundred thousand bucks? Yet another
chance to make a huge profit on this whole unpleasant business."

"A shame you couldn’t have got the money from Carlos at
the club," Michael threw in.

"You heard him outside, Mike," Kathy replied.
"Once I told him Colleen was trying to find out what was on it, he just
wanted to kill me. Couldn’t take the risk that I’d found out, I guess. Besides,
the way he treated me at your place later, I’m not giving that scumbag
anything."

Mike’s face crinkled up in a grimace and he turned his face
away. "Agreed."

She nodded. "Here’s hoping this ‘Jakarta’ person turns out
to be better."

***

Of the three men who had gone upstairs at the Holiday Inn, one
held back to stand guard near the elevator. The other two went forward, looking
for Mike and Kathy. Knowing about both the original and the second room rented
when Colleen showed up, they selected the one Mike slept in first, and briefly
conferred outside the door. Both drew .40 Glock semi-auto pistols from inside
their jackets. With a nod, one stepped up to the door while the other stood
back, leveling his pistol.

The first man slid a card through the keycard slot, and watched
the red light blink to green. He twisted the handle, threw open the door, and
leapt to the side. As the door flew open and rebounded off the wall on the
inside, the second man swept his pistol from side to side, looking for targets.
There were none.

Down in the lobby, one of the men flipped a page in his
newspaper, but he wasn’t really reading it. His eyes shifted left to right,
scanning the hotel’s entry for possible threats. Under his suit coat was a
Glock just like the men upstairs carried. In his ear was a miniature radio – a
wire ran down the sleeve of his shirt to a microphone for it strapped to his
wrist. Now from the radio he heard the team upstairs check in.

"Negative on the subjects, both rooms are empty. Four,
keep your eyes peeled, they may be in the hotel somewhere. We’re coming
down."

The man in the lobby was number four of the team, and that was
his call sign. As if scratching his chin, he raised his hand to his mouth and
spoke into the mic. "Four acknowledges."

Setting down his paper, he stood up and walked around the
lobby. His eyes swept the room, eyeing all the faces. In the inside pocket of
his suit were three photographs, but he didn’t need to take them out. He’d
memorized the faces.

***

Sam Franken acknowledged the radio call and stomped on the gas.
His mind shifted into high gear just as his car did.
Another
homicide in
the Georgetown area. Someone had called the dispatcher about two dead bodies
this time, and this caller was staying at the scene to prevent the bodies from
disappearing.

Georgetown was normally a quiet area, in police terms. Three
murders in less than a week was unheard of here. He checked the street sign as
he turned a corner. Three murders in one block defied credibility.

He double-parked his car in front of the house the dispatcher
indicated, and stepped out. This house stood on a corner of Georgetown's Q
Street. The area’s narrow town homes looked pretty darn familiar to Franken.
Three nights ago, he'd been standing at the far corner of the same block
listening to Kathy Kelver tell him she wasn't lying and she wasn't drunk, there
had been a dead body there.

The exterior light was on, bathing him in a small bubble of
yellow glow that stopped at the front step. He walked up and in the door, to
find a patrolman taping off areas inside. Almost immediately, a young woman
approached him.

"I’m so glad you're here!" she gushed before he'd
said a word. "This place is creeping me out!"

The reason was right under her feet, Franken saw: an elderly
male, obviously dead, with a small hole through his forehead. His nearly bald
pate was a sickly gray hue, swimming in a congealed pool of blood. His wire
frame glasses had fallen off, sitting with one stem folded in beside his head.

Franken saw a few dead bodies in the course of his job, so he
handled the mess with aplomb. The young woman, on the other hand, was clearly
queasy. "The other one's in here," she said.

Franken followed her into the home's living room and met
another dead body. This one was female, about the same age as the male in the
hallway, still seated on her couch with her neck craned back at an awkward
angle over the back of the flower-patterned couch. She, too, had a hole in her
forehead.

Franken asked the uniformed officer about the forensics team,
and learned they’d arrive in about twenty minutes. Then he turned his attention
to the woman who'd made the call.

Short, just a bit on the pudgy side, with a few strands of her
shoulder-length hair flying off at odd angles. Her "Georgetown
University" sweatshirt hung loosely on a body too small for it. She wore
no makeup that he could see. Still, she was much more pleasant to look at than
the corpse on the couch. She introduced herself as Gina Cassone, which Franken
wrote down.

"How'd you find 'em?" he asked her.

She walked out of the living room into the small, cozy kitchen.
A collection of three bulbs under an elaborate lampshade hung from the ceiling,
and someone's paintings of sailboats on calm blue oceans hung on the walls.
They looked amateurish – Franken imagined one of the residents taking a class
in oil paints, and hanging the results on her kitchen wall. The girl took a
seat at the kitchen table and waved for him to do likewise. Waiting for the
forensics guys to show up, Franken sat down to talk to her.

"I rent the basement apartment below us," she said.
"The Conroys had it listed with the off-campus housing service last
spring, and I snapped it up when I found it. Reasonable rent, nice space – it
was a real find. The only drawback was that for laundry I had to come up and
share a machine in the main house. But I didn't mind that much, it’s better
than having to walk to a Laundromat. It's been a great place to live. I’ve got
no idea what I’ll do now that they're dead. Guess I'll have to move midyear,
and that's really going to suck."