Death of Secrets (26 page)

Franken tried the doors the tall man had gone through, and
found them unlocked. He emerged into the foyer, and walked over to the
elevators. Above the center elevator, which the tall man had boarded, the digital
display showed the elevator on the fifth floor.

Now, he had a decision to make. If he could find a set of
stairs, it might be wiser to take them than to take the elevator. After all, if
he could read the digital display down here, surely his quarry could watch it
from upstairs. He didn’t relish the thought of a hostile reception when the
elevator doors opened on floor five.

On the other hand, even if he could find the stairs – Franken
had no idea whether he could – he had no idea whether they’d be unlocked. Worse
yet, they could be open to the outside and locked from the inside, which would
trap him in the staircase. Any stairs might also open far from where the tall
man got off the elevator, leaving him with no idea how to continue his pursuit.

Besides all that, Franken wasn’t exactly in the best physical
condition of his life, and he felt winded just thinking about climbing five
flights of stairs.

In the end, it was Kathy who made up his mind for him. That
body he’d seen being dragged in was probably her. And though he couldn’t tell
whether she was dead or just unconscious, he hoped for the latter. If Kathy was
up there alive, she’d need help. Bratty college punk and all, she was basically
a good girl, and Franken found that he sort of liked her, despite all her sass.
He boarded the elevator.

To his great good fortune, Tilman was already in the office of
his security chief, and never saw the digital display of the elevator as it
carried Franken up to the fifth floor. The detective stepped out just in time
to hear a voice say, "…I want him predisposed to agree with me."

Franken looked around. He found himself in a large, well
appointed reception area, with wood paneling on the walls, hardwood floors, and
several paintings hanging. They looked real, rather than prints. From his
standpoint right off the elevator, there was one door to his right, a desk
right in front of him, and an open door behind the desk and to the left. It was
that door from which the voice came. He listened.

"Wake them up and keep them cuffed until I come in and
tell you otherwise. We’ll do a ‘good cop, bad cop’ routine and see if maybe it
helps me make my case. If not, well…"

The sentence trailed off with no ending, and Franken could
easily visualize the shrug that must have followed. Then he clearly heard
footsteps coming back toward the open door. Desperate, he ran behind the desk
and started climbing under it. His bulk made this a challenge, but Franken
managed to squeeze most of himself in, except his head. He turned that to the
side so he could look at the open door, pulled the desk chair over his head and
prayed.

He saw the legs of the tall man emerge from the room, and turn
to shut the door. Then he saw the legs walk through his field of vision and
around to the front of the desk he hid behind. He could no longer see them –
and wasn’t about to take the risk of moving his head and making noise – but he
could still hear the footsteps on the hardwood floor.

The man walked past the front of the desk and kept going. The
footsteps now came from behind Franken’s head. They seemed to go a ways away,
so obviously he wasn’t at the elevator. Then they paused. Franken held his
breath, wondering if he’d been seen but not daring to turn his head to look.

He heard the sound of a door opening, a few more footsteps,
then the door closing. And then he couldn’t hear anything else.

Letting out his breath slowly, Franken wormed his head around
until he could look the other direction. The door he’d seen from the elevator
was closed, but now some light showed under it. The man had gone in there.
Breathing a sigh of relief, Franken held his position. Judging by what he’d
heard, the man in there would be back in a few minutes.

***

Consciousness gradually seeped back into Kathy’s brain, despite
her wishes. Some primal instinct told her that the world she’d find when she
opened her eyes would not be to her liking. Nevertheless, she cracked an eyelid
open, and proved her instinct right.

The first thing she saw was her own lap. But when she raised her
head, she saw the man who’d offered to bribe her, who’d tried to run her off
the Key Bridge, and who’d fired a gun at her at Mike’s house. She knew his name
was Carlos, and she knew seeing him as she woke up meant trouble.

"Good morning, Miss Kelver," he said, a thin smile
etching itself across his face. In one hand he held a gun, pointed directly at
her head. In his other hand, he held the flash drive. "About time you
brought this back. Of course, Miss Christina doesn’t yet know she gave it to me,
but as soon as she wakes up I’m sure she’ll realize it."

She tried to move her arms, but found her arms were handcuffed
behind her back. She sat in a stiff, wooden chair. To her right, Mike, John and
Colleen had similar seating arrangements, right down to the cuffs around their
wrists.

John seemed to be recovering from the drug on about the same
schedule as Kathy. She sensed him moving to her right, and turned to look.
Before his eyes were even open, John’s first act was to try moving his arms.
When that failed, his eyes opened fully and he snarled. "I’m getting sick
of you tying me up," he said, staring at Carlos.

Their captor responded with another of his menacing smiles.
"Well, don’t worry. If I get my way, you won’t have to experience it for
long."

Kathy raised her eyebrows at that. The threat was clear –
Carlos wanted to kill them – but what was this about getting his way? She was
about to ask when John said, "No way you could take me fair and square,
but you’re sure tough enough to beat a guy who can’t hit back. Now maybe you’re
tough enough to shoot a guy who can’t fight back, too."

Carlos actually laughed at that. "Oh, I’m not in the
business of fair fights, and I don’t know anyone who is. My business is
winning, John, and tonight, I’m finally going to win."

Listening to John, Kathy hadn’t noticed Colleen wake up. Now,
she heard her roommate say, "You’re the guy…"

Carlos smiled at her. "The guy?"

"Jakarta and I saw one of your surveillance videos. You
murdered someone, pushed them off the roof!"

"Ah, yes," he replied. "Ivan. He knew too much.
So did his two coworkers. I can be hard on people who know things I want kept
secret. Right, John?"

John spat out a curse. "Yeah, but I was harder last time,
wasn’t I?"

Only Michael remained unconscious. Carlos solved that by
walking up to him and pinching his nose. His air supply cut off, Mike sputtered
to wakefulness, opening his mouth. Carlos stepped back. "There, now you’re
all paying attention. So let’s get down to business. I want to know what you
know about that flash drive you have. And if I ever get the impression any of
you is lying to me, I’m going to start shooting people in the kneecaps."

It had gone behind his back when he was waking Mike, but now
Carlos brought his firearm back into everyone’s field of vision. To Kathy, the
barrel looked too long and too fat – she had never seen a sound suppressor
before.

Carlos grinned wickedly. "Why don’t we start with you,
Miss Kelver."

Beads of sweat popped out of her forehead. Competing thoughts
in her mind told her she wouldn’t be shot in the kneecaps because she was going
to tell the truth, and that she would probably be plain old shot – as in dead –
because the truth was that she knew too much. Budding young actress though she
was, she didn’t think she could give a convincing performance of ignorance with
that gun pointed at her. And even if she could, if Mike, John, or Colleen
screwed it up she might still get shot in the kneecap. To Kathy, that sounded
more painful than she could even imagine.

"OK, yeah, I’ll tell you what we know," she snarled.
"And you’ll be able to tell it’s the truth because you know all of this
stuff as well as I do. That flash drive has the source code for a program that
interprets input from the GigaStar surveillance device. Only it’s not just a
surveillance device, is it? It’s a mind reader, and you guys have set it up so
you can listen in on the thoughts of anybody the NSA spies on with it. Yeah, I
know what’s on the flash drive alright. It’s the death knell of the right to
privacy, that’s what it is. And you know I’m telling the truth."

Finished, she held her breath. Had she doomed them all? Would
Mike and everyone else be shot now, for knowing too much? Suddenly all her
senses felt more alert. She felt the cool breeze of the building’s climate
control system blowing over her sweaty brow. She heard Mike breathing next to
her, and even without looking she was conscious of his head turned to look at
her. Out the corner of her eye, she took in the first rays of the dawning sun
through the plate glass windows of the office. Then, instead of the pain of a
bullet, she saw the door open behind Carlos.

***

Sam Franken’s joints protested the prolonged awkward position,
and he was just about ready to crawl out from under the desk just to stretch.
The rails that the desk’s center drawer rode on cut into his back painfully.
Just as he pushed the chair a bit forward to get his head free, though, he
heard the door to his right open. He snapped the chair instantly back in place.

As before, he saw the tall man’s legs walk through his field of
view. He heard the footsteps walk around the front of the desk he hid under.
And behind his head, he heard the other door open. This time, it didn’t shut
again. He heard the same voice he’d heard last time, and he assumed it must be
the tall man.

"Carlos! Put that thing away! What do you have them
handcuffed for? I asked you to invite them here, not take them hostage or
something!"

"They were slightly less than willing," came the
reply. Franken didn’t recognize that voice.

"That’s no excuse to… get those cuffs off them right
now!"

***

Inside the room, even John sat still as Carlos walked behind
their chairs and undid their handcuffs. He was too stunned by this turn of events
to resist right away. Carlos got all their hands free and then walked back to
stand beside the newcomer. Lest anyone get any funny ideas, he left his gun
very visible and very accessible, tucked into his belt.

"I know most of you. For those who don’t know me, my name
is D.W. Tilman, president of Electron Guidewire. I apologize for the way you
were brought here. Really, I had no idea."

Congressman Vincent stared hard at Tilman. "What the heck
is going on here? You’ve got so much explaining to do, I don’t even know where
to start."

"Mike, listen. I have no idea what Carlos got into his
head when he brought you here at gunpoint. I just wanted to talk to you.
Obviously you guys have gotten a peek inside our GigaStar program, and I wanted
to explain it to you, maybe set your minds at ease. It should have been just a
conversation – a pleasant one. Carlos, apparently, got a little bit carried
away."

"A little bit?" John shouted. "You were standing
right there when he tied me to that chair and left me in the dungeon
earlier!"

"Well, yes, I hope you can understand that we were a
little bit worried about someone who was obviously eavesdropping on us. But I
simply intended to ask you why you were doing that, then turn you over to the
police. There wasn’t any need for you to kill that poor man and run away.
Before that the police surely would have let it go with a simple interview and
warning, though of course when you killed him you did rather complicate your
own situation. You’re wanted for murder now, but perhaps something can be
arranged with them. I could tell the police that the man you killed was an
intruder into our building, and he unfortunately died while you were helping
Carlos subdue him. Surely that would solve your trouble with the police."

"That ain’t the way it happened, man. Your attack dog
there beat the
daylights
out of me, and anything I did back was pure
self defense."

Tilman turned to look at Carlos, arching his eyebrows. His
security chief simply stared back at him.

"Well," Tilman continued. "It would appear that
my Director of Security and I need to have a little chat about methods. Let me
offer you my apologies if there was any mistreatment. All along, all I’ve
wanted was to tell you about GigaStar, and explain to Mike why the NSA and EG
decided it was best not to reveal its true capabilities to the Judiciary
Committee."

"Oh can it," Mike snarled. "Nathan Jacobs was
scared out of his mind when we showed him what the GigaStar could do. He had no
idea what you were building here."

Tilman frowned. "Mike, come on, you know the rule. If you
don't control how the news comes out, you lose. This is classified, I couldn't
tell you before. But I’m telling you now because I trust you as a friend.
Listen, think about it. Do you think I’m brave enough to try and sneak
something like that past the NSA? I’d lose everything I’ve built here at EG,
and I’ve already lost one career, I don’t want to lose two. So Jacobs looked
scared when you showed him that you’d figured out the GigaStar? Did it ever
occur to you that what scared him was not the device itself, but the breakdown
in security that allowed a couple of college kids," he waved at Colleen
and Kathy, "And the bouncer at a night club to learn such a classified
secret?"

Mike tried to think of an obvious rebuttal for that, but one
wouldn’t come to him. He didn’t reply.

Tilman continued. "The NSA asked us to develop the
GigaStar as a thought recognition system to give them the most advanced
capability possible for spotting threats to National Security before they happened.
We all know how September 11 changed everything. Nuclear proliferation means
that if it ever happens again, the world could end. The NSA needs this to keep
us safe. The GigaStar would give them the capability to know if a terrorist
planned that, even if they never said it out loud.