Death of Secrets (27 page)

"Naturally, they were aware of the political difficulties
this kind of device presented, so they asked us to keep it under wraps. I was a
little uncomfortable with that, of course, but in the end I caved because the
project would be so lucrative for us."

Mike was trying to square Tilman’s story with the look on
Nathan’s face when he saw his thoughts appearing on screen. He just couldn’t do
it. No way did Nathan know in advance what the GigaStar could do.

Colleen spoke up. "You’re lying to us, and I’ll tell you
why. In addition to the source code for interpreting the input, that flash
drive had the technical specifications of how you build a GigaStar device. It
included not one but
two
frequencies for broadcasting the data it took
in. There’s absolutely no reason for that second frequency if this was all part
of the plan. You lied to the government when you put that in there, and that
means your entire story is a crock."

She paused in her tirade long enough to breathe, then added,
"And what’s more, we told the NSA all that, too! Your little project’s
coming to a glaring halt now, because it won’t work if the government knows,
and we already warned them."

Tilman stared at her, his lips curling into a snarl. But it was
Carlos who answered. "Such a neat little analysis," he told Colleen.
"All except for one little thing. I’ve been telling the NSA for days that
some hacker was trying to sneak foreign code into our project. And who do you
think they’re more likely to believe? A 20-year-old girl, or one of their most
respected contractors?"

Tilman cut in. "You're so sure that Nathan Jacobs is fully
informed? On a project this classified, why should he be in the loop? He's not
much more than middle management. If he didn't know what GigaStar could do,
maybe it's not because of little old me. Maybe he didn't know because he didn't
need to know."

Colleen's face fell, and Mike grew angry. "I don’t know
what to say," he said. "I’ve spent most of my adult life looking up
to you. I do know this though. The committee is split right down the middle on
authorizing the funding for your little gizmo. If you don’t have me voting for
it, the program dies."

Tilman didn’t speak for a long time. He stared at each one of
them in turn, finishing with Mike. The Congressman held his gaze, until finally
Tilman started talking. "I’m sorry things are working out this way Mike. I
have more bad news for you. I actually don’t need your vote. In about an hour,
most of the Congressmen who’ve opposed GigaStar to date will be sitting down in
my office with me to hear my pitch for why they should vote the way I need them
to.

"And do you know what, Mike? The entire meeting will be
recorded on this." He produced a little black gadget, barely the size of a
pencil’s eraser, from his pocket. "This is a GigaStar, and you’re right,
it can read thoughts. Every congressman who walks into that meeting has
secrets, Mike. They have financial dealings that will look bad in the papers.
They’ve done things on their campaigns that they don’t want voters hearing
about. They have extra-marital affairs they don’t want to see in the headlines.
And I’ll know all of that. I’m sure all of them will see reason about how to
vote when they’re forced to choose between spending a bit of federal money or
the end of their careers. After all, it’s just tax dollars, right? There’s
always more to be had, so why not spend a bit on my little invention."

He bared his teeth. "It’s going to go through, Mike. And
then the NSA will start putting these little bugs on every local computer
network they can get their hands on – anywhere in the world. And with all those
embassies here in Washington, there are going to be GigaStars all over this
town. Every time they pick up something nasty about a politician, I’ll end up
with a secret I can use. And then all those bastards who hung me out to dry to
save their own reputations are going to see the other side of the coin."

Tilman stared at Michael. "So no, I probably won’t need
your vote. But a little insurance never hurt anyone, so I’d still like to have
it if I can. We can still patch this up, Mike. If you can reassure me that I
can trust you, you can walk away from this and go back to a very promising
career."

Mike stared at him. There was a time when he used to say, "D.W.
Tilman taught me everything I know." But that wasn’t true anymore.

It was surprisingly easy to just shake his head.

Tilman stared at Mike for a moment, and then spat out a
curse. "It’s your choice. I’ll see that the press accounts say something
about a tragic car accident with the woman he loved. Carlos, take care of
things."

He spun on his heel and stalked out of the room.

Franken pulled the chair closer over his head, and tried to squeeze
backward even further under the desk. The last thing he needed was to be
spotted after all this effort. He saw the tall man’s legs walk past him, their
pace much quicker this time. He heard the footsteps around the other side of
the desk, then heard the door open and shut. As soon as he felt sure the tall
man – who now had a name: Tilman – was away, he pushed the chair back and
struggled out of his hiding place.

Getting in had been a challenge – getting back out was only
marginally less so. Franken scrapped his back painfully as he climbed out from
under the desk, but he didn’t pay any attention at all. He’d heard everything,
and knew that if he didn’t get in there fast, Kathy and her friends were dead.

He lumbered to his feet and ran toward the open door to the
left of the elevator. His legs were still stiff from his long period of hiding.
He nearly stumbled, and his feet hit the ground heavily as he barged through
the door.

Carlos had his gun out again and was just bringing it to bear
on John’s forehead, judging him to be the biggest potential threat. He heard
the commotion behind him, though, and whirled to see a fat, disheveled man
framed in the doorway. Carlos brought his pistol to bear.

Before anyone could shoot, John rocketed out of his chair. Head
down, shoulder forward, he slammed into Carlos and they both tumbled to the
ground. The flash drive clattered out of his hand and across the floor. He
kicked the gun out of Saglieri’s hand and sent it skidding across the floor to
where Franken stood.

The detective picked it up. Steadying the weapon and trying to
get a feel for the extra weight on the barrel caused by the silencer, he aimed
in the general direction of Carlos and John on the floor, looking for a clear
shot.

Surprise gave John the upper hand. Landing a punch that
probably broke Carlos’s nose, he grunted, "I told you! Whenever I’m awake
and untied, I win!"

Kathy squeezed Mike’s hand painfully as the fight erupted, but
the Congressman was rising out of his chair. He pulled his hand free and dashed
over to the pile of John and Carlos on the floor.

Carlos wasn’t about to simply give up. He brought his legs up
between him and John and kicked with all his strength, sending John flying off
him. He hit the ground with a thud, stunned for just a moment. As Carlos
struggled to his feet, though, John made it up too. They faced each other, just
out of arm’s reach.

Facing five opponents, with a gun that wasn’t in his hands,
Carlos didn’t like the odds. He turned swiftly and bolted for the door.

Franken never made a conscious choice. He did what any cop
would do when a suspect charged at him.

He loosed three rounds from the pistol. Stiff from his long
stint under the desk, and holding an unfamiliar weapon, he missed all three
times. The bullets thudded into the Plexiglas window behind Carlos, and the
barest hint of a crack appeared.

John caught the neck of Carlos’s shirt and yanked him back.
Once he’d stopped the other man’s forward momentum, he got a better grip on him
and heaved – he focused all his anger and pain into the movement of his arms,
and flexed the muscles he spent so much time building. With a grunt, he threw
Carlos as hard as he could, and had the satisfaction of seeing him smack
full-force into the same window Franken had shot.

The tiny imperfection the bullets caused grew into a long crack
from the top of the window to the bottom. A spider web of smaller cracks
erupted out from behind Carlos’s back. Everyone heard a tortured splintering
sound, and then the window gave way, shattering into uncounted pieces. Carlos
felt it let go behind him and tried to move forward, but his balance was still
off. He teetered for a moment before the jagged hole in the glass, and then
pitched backward into the air.

John walked over to the hole in the glass and stuck his head
carefully out. He stared down at the body, lying broken on the loading dock far
beneath them. When he pulled it back in, he said, "I… well, I don’t talk
about it much, but I’ve seen stuff like that before. The rest of you… don’t
look."

Everyone in the room sat stunned for a moment, all staring at
the shattered window. Kathy turned away and clung to Mike, hiding her face
against his chest so she didn’t have to see. Franken finally broke the silence.
"I wish that hadn’t ended the way it did."

Kathy seemed to come out from under a spell. "Detective
Franken! What are you doing here?" She turned to Mike and added,
"He's been investigating the original murder, where I found the flash
drive. But how'd you end up here, Detective?"

Franken pulled the office door shut behind him. "I met
that federal agent guy you were with. Jacobs. He told me I could find you back
at the apartment he'd just raided. I got there just in time to see y'all being
dragged off in a van. Followed it here."

"Which must mean you have a car here, right?" Mike
asked. "We can get past the secretary by holding a gun on her, maybe past
the whole office that way. We get to Franken's car and call for help. It's a
police car, it has a radio, right?"

The detective sighed. "Um, that would be a negative. In
theory, I had a night off tonight. Driving my personal car, no radio."

Mike swore, and Colleen got out of her chair. She walked over
and picked up the flash drive. "I’m not so sure we should just sit in this
room scratching our collective ass. That other guy could come back any minute.
And somebody’s bound to see that body down below."

John shook his head. "It’s on the loading dock, no one’s
back there. Of course, if they get a parts shipment just now…"

As if to reinforce Colleen's warning, they all heard noises
coming from outside the door.

But no one knocked. Listening at the door, Kathy heard the
sounds of someone settling into the desk outside in the reception area. There
was a muffled voice, and then a few moments later an intercom on Carlos’s desk
beeped. "Are you there, Mr. Saglieri? Just wanted to let you know I was
in."

Mike shook his head vigorously and held his finger to his lips.
No one moved or spoke, and finally the light on the intercom light blinked off.
"Must be the secretary," he said once it did.

Franken opened his mouth to speak when they heard more voices
outside in the reception area. Mike tiptoed up to the door with Kathy to
listen.

"Welcome, Representative Harris, I’m so glad you could
come today. Let me show you into Mr. Tilman’s office," they heard.

"Tilman’s little meeting," Mike whispered. "I
have to warn Julia, I can’t let her get blackmailed by him."

"Julia?" Kathy whispered back.

"Congresswoman Harris," Mike said. "She sits on
the committee with me; that must be her outside." They heard the sound of
the receptionist leading the Congressman to Tilman’s office.

"We might be able to make a break for it while she’s in
there," Kathy suggested. But as soon as she said it they heard the
receptionist greeting still more Representatives.

Mike and Kathy listened, while their friends huddled up right
behind them. They thought they heard about ten Congressmen come in and enter
Tilman’s office. When the commotion outside finally died down, Mike stepped
away from the door and motioned everyone else to come with him. Speaking in a
whisper, he said, "Listen, I have to stop this. Those people – I don’t
like all of them, and most of them are from the opposing party, but they still
don’t deserve to have their secrets strip mined out of their heads. We’ve got
to do something."

"But what can we do?" Kathy asked. "Are you
going to just barge in there with a gun and break the meeting up? They’d all
think you’re crazy!"

Colleen grinned. "We don’t need to break up the
meeting," she said. "All we need to do is destroy the GigaStar log of
what they think while they’re in there. That much, we can do from right
here."

She walked around behind Carlos’s desk and turned on his
computer. When it finally completed its slow boot up process, she started clicking
on files. "Now," Colleen muttered, "If I can just find where on
their network that GigaStar log is being saved…"

At first she just clicked through files and directories,
looking for one with a name that would give her a clue. Before long, though,
Colleen spotted something familiar. "Hey," she piped up, "Let’s
have a peek in at them, and see how the meeting’s going."

She clicked open the surveillance folder she’d looked at with
Jakarta. After a second or two of searching, she found the
"Executive" file she’d looked at before, and opened the most recent
file in it. Kathy, John and Mike clustered around her as a live feed came up on
screen, showing them the meeting in progress in Tilman’ office.

"Wow," Colleen muttered. "Look at that huge
video screen! It takes up almost the entire wall."

Kathy and Mike watched as Tilman stood in front of his video
wall, giving his presentation. The screen itself displayed slides to accompany
his speech, shifting occasionally between expense charts, effectiveness graphs,
and things of that nature.

Colleen grimaced. "I see Nathan Jacobs came for the
meeting," she said, noticing the NSA man in the audience. "Guess he
still believes that fool theory he came up with last night, about Jakarta
trying to sneak all this stuff in without EG knowing."

Hearing that, Mike looked at the other faces listening to
Tilman. "Harris, Wentworth, Kohl, Birnbaum… jeez, he’s got a lot of big
names in there. Tilman’s going to end up with more secrets than he wants."

Standing behind Colleen, Kathy blinked at that, stared at the
computer screen, then brought her hand up to her mouth and bit her finger to
hold in a gasp. "Mike, you’re brilliant!" she exclaimed. "That’s
exactly what he should do."

Mike stared at her blankly. "I’m brilliant? What did I think
of?"

***

Tilman couldn’t help smiling. The faces sitting around his
conference table, watching him give his speech, were so endearingly lacking of
any indication that they knew what they’d walked into. Here they were, calmly
letting his newest little electronic toy sniff up any secrets it could find,
and Carlos was even now in the process of burying the bodies of anyone who
could warn them about it.

"Thank you all very much for coming over today, I’m so
glad you could take time out of your schedule to be here. I know a lot of you
have had questions about the GigaStar program, particularly concerning the
cost. We’re here to lay those concerns to rest today.

"I’m sure nobody here needs to be reminded of just how big
a job fighting terrorism is. The GigaStar is designed to make that job
easier."

Tilman gave the audience his most winning smile, and clicked a
button on the remote control he held. The display on the video wall behind him
flipped from a flashy Electron Guidewire logo to a chart comparing the GigaStar
with the current state of the art in wifi monitoring technologies.

"What we have achieved is nothing less than a fourfold
increase in effectiveness over existing technology. The short version is, the
GigaStar can pick up wireless internet traffic from four times as far away, and
successfully read password-protected wireless networks, not just open
ones."

He worked through his presentation, shifting his eyes from
person to person, gauging their response. He was particularly gratified to see
Nathan Jacobs in the audience.

Most of the Representatives were showing positive body language
– leaning forward, good eye contact, etc. Tilman watched them all, gauging
whose vote he was likely to win.

***

"OK, Kathy, what’s this idea of yours, and when did I
think of it?" Mike asked.

She gave him a smile. "OK, so you didn’t think of it
yourself. But it was something you said that gave me the idea." She talked
without looking directly at him. She stared at the computer screen, where in
one window, they could see the meeting going on in Tilman office, as Colleen
searched through files in the other.

"He’s monitoring the whole thing on GigaStar, right?"
Kathy asked

Mike nodded impatiently. "Yeah, of course. Otherwise we
wouldn’t need to destroy the log, which is what we’re trying to do to help my
distinguished colleagues in there."

"Well, maybe there’s something better than destroying
it," Kathy replied. "That’s what you said that got me excited, Mike.
‘More secrets than he wants.’ This thing picks up the thoughts of everyone in
the room – remember how it listened in on all the FBI agents in Jakarta’s
place, even though we weren’t interested in any of them?"

Mike nodded again.

"So it’s got to be picking up Tilman’ thoughts, too."

His eyes went wide and his jaw hung open as understanding
dawned across Mike’s face. "Colleen, can we do what she’s thinking?"

Kathy’s roommate threw back her head and laughed. Her smile
possessed a wolfish character. "Kathy, you’re a genius! And yes, it’s very
easily done."

Colleen stopped to allow herself another laugh. "Jacobs
wouldn’t believe me, huh? Well, I’ll show him some proof he’ll find hard to
ignore. If he saw it happening live, there’d be no way to doubt it," she
replied. "See that big video screen in there?"

***

Nathan Jacobs sat in the comfortable leather chair at Tilman’
conference table and listened to the presentation. He was going through all the
specs, just as the NSA knew them. It all sounded so familiar to Jacobs – so
comforting. EG couldn’t really be planning something totally different, could
they? Everything Tilman said was exactly as it should be, exactly as his agency
had been told it would be.

Trouble was, if Colleen was right, that was what he’d expect to
hear too. It was an argument that couldn’t be settled just by listening to
Tilman, or just by listening to Colleen. There’d have to be some kind of
investigation.