Authors: Bowen Greenwood
Death of Secrets (5 page)
John got up from the floor and looked at the left side of the
rifle, near the trigger, where he saw that the safety switch had a setting
allowing the gun to fire three rounds at a time. "M-4," he replied.
"And nice diversion, by the way."
Mike nodded. "Let’s not waste it. No telling how long this
guy’s going to be out. Let’s clear out while we still can.
"We just leave him there?" Kathy asked, nodding at
the guy on Mike’s floor.
"Well, I’d prefer to throw him off of my property, but I
don’t see that accomplishing much."
John worked his jaw a little bit without ever opening his mouth
before he finally said, "I’m not necessarily saying we should, but you
know there’s a pretty obvious way to keep him from coming after us again."
Mike nodded slowly. "I get that, but it might complicate
things for us if we ever end up talking to the cops about this. Which I can’t
imagine not happening, when my neighbors get a look at my house tomorrow
morning. If they haven’t called the cops already. Besides, uh… I know I don’t
have the stomach to shoot him. Either of you?"
Vincent’s gaze drifted from Kathy to John, both of whom shifted
their feet and shook their heads. John took a while longer to admit it than
Kathy.
Kathy said, "Well, couldn’t we at least take them
somewhere and dump them? Maybe outside a police office or something?"
Mike stroked his chin. "OK, that makes sense. Not a police
department, but somewhere the cops are likely to find him. Come on, let’s carry
him out to my car. All of them, I guess," he added after a glance at the
man laying limp by his back door.
John rose from the floor and Kathy nodded. Carrying the
unconscious forms between them, the three struggled out of the house and into
his garage. They loaded the bearded man in the back seat, then repeated the
trip for the other men. John didn’t mention it, and he didn’t figure Kathy
would know, but one of them definitely felt dead. That would be the one he got
with the gun. The bouncer had been in a lot of unsavory positions over the
course of his life. He remembered what a dead body felt like. Once tonight’s
adrenaline wore off, he was pretty sure he’d have to deal with it mentally.
By unspoken consent John took the duty of sitting in the back
seat to guard them. Mike eased behind the wheel, Kathy took the passenger seat,
and they were off.
Mike said, "The weirdest thing is, I feel like I've seen
that guy before. The one who looks like he forgot how to shave."
Kathy asked, "Where?"
Mike was about to reply when the bearded man groaned and
shifted in his seat.
John yelled, "Stop the car, Mike! Stop the car!"
The Congressman looked over his shoulder, saw one of their
prisoners stirring, and slammed on the breaks, swerving over to the side of the
road. They drove off the shoulder and slightly into the grassy ditch flanking
the highway, and John threw the passenger side rear door open. He shoved all
three men roughly out of the car, then scooted over to their side of the back
seat. He reached out and pushed some more, to make sure they were far enough
away from Mike’s back tires, and wouldn’t be run over. Once John shut the door
again, Mike tromped on the gas and sped away.
John breathed deeply for a moment, then said, "I wouldn’t
want to have to deal with them awake again."
***
In the black hours before sunrise on Thursday, Colleen
Christina rolled off of her boyfriend’s couch, landing softly on her feet.
Abrasive snores from the other room assured her she hadn’t woken him. She
tiptoed over to his computer, turned the volume on his speakers way down, and
clicked it on. After a short wait for the machine to boot up, she started an
instant messaging program.
Long ago, she’d put copies of her own contact lists and
favorites lists on this computer too, since she spent so much time here. She
could have just used her phone, but Colleen often held very involved
conversations via IM, and thumb typing got old really fast.
The normal world faded behind her, and the cryptic acronyms and
numbers people used for Internet screen names took their place.
That was a part of the Internet she really appreciated. Her
last name was surely wonderful to the old Italian nobility from whom it came,
way back in her family tree. But among Americans in the 21st century, she got
tired of jokes about having two first names.
Online, instead of Colleen Christina, she was KH12, and the
people she spoke too hid behind similar aliases.
KH12> Wassup?
133tluser> Hey Colleen! What’s going on?
KH12> Just put the Boyf to bed, now back to important
things.
133tluser> KH, you’re the only human being I know who
considers the Net more important than sex.
KH12> Sex is your assumption.
133tluser> Yeah right.
KH12> Do any more thinking about that file I asked you about
last night?
133tluser> Nope. Not much to do without having it here. Sure
you can’t send it?
KH12> Dude! I told you it’s copy-protected.
133tluser> Roger. But it’s hard to hack on a file without
the file. You could always burn a copy and snail it to me.
KH12> That’s so low tech.
133tluser> I know, I know, but what are you going to do?
KH12> Listen, think about the best hard core hacker you know
who lives close to me here in DC, OK? I need help with this.
133tluser> Will do. Check back soon.
Colleen signed off the messaging program and stared for a
moment at the blank screen. Being without her own computer was seriously
bothering her. Her boyfriend’s was OK, but it just wasn’t the same without all
her stuff on it. And he just wasn’t in her league as far as hacking was
concerned.
She made sure the volume was way down, and then inserted a DVD
of her own that had survived the ransacking.
Star Wars
swam up on the
screen, and she leaned back in the chair to watch.
Her thoughts drifted back and forth between the movie and the
matter at hand. The movie was just a pleasant background against which she
could think.
She’d tried several different commercial encryption programs to
open the flash drive files, but gotten nowhere. She was inclined to believe it
was a binary file of some kind, which meant that its contents would be computer
code rather than text. But it wouldn’t execute, which meant it wasn’t a program
itself. It had to be a file created by some other program.
4
Bright and early Thursday morning, Kathy, John, and Mike made
their way into the District. Mike paid cash to rent two adjoining rooms at the
Georgetown Inn on Wisconsin Avenue – one in John’s name, one in Kathy’s. For
the time being they ignored the second room and all three took seats around the
small table in Kathy’s bedroom. The sun rose, and the stress of the night
showed all over Michael’s face.
"OK, I’ve got to be in today. The full Intelligence
Committee is meeting, and I can’t skip that. John, you’ll look after Kathy ‘til
I get back, right?"
"No problem, sir. Want us to wait here?"
"Yeah, that’s probably best. I’m hoping you’ll be safe
here for a while."
"No, wait!" Kathy spoke up. "I’ve got to meet up
with Colleen today for lunch, and I’ve got three classes this afternoon."
"Kathy, listen," Michael said, "None of us knows
what’s going on here, but whatever it is, someone just shot the crap out of my
house, and they did it to get that flash drive. What that means is that you’re
in danger. You can’t go hanging around your normal places, and you certainly
shouldn’t go to class. If you do, it’s an easy place for them to get you. You
ought to stay here for a while."
Kathy hadn’t actually thought about that. "OK, that makes
sense, but I still have to meet up with Colleen. In case you forgot, she’s got
that flash drive, and we should have it. Besides, she’d be in danger too."
The Congressman sighed. "Yeah, I guess you’re right. I
guess you’d better go get her and bring her out here too. But it’d be better if
you didn’t just go meet her in your usual place. Can you call her?"
"Sure, I’ll give her a ring."
Mike nodded. "Pick a place you don’t usually go, and meet her
there, then get her out here. I’ll be back about six and we can work things out
further then."
They watched him go, and then Kathy turned to John. "I’ll
bet he’ll want me to stay home from work tonight, too."
"Well, I gotta draw the line there. You know how they are
– if you want to take a day off you need to arrange it in advance."
"Yeah… maybe I can get someone else to cover my
shift."
John nodded. "You, maybe, but not me. There’s a lot less
bouncers than there are waitresses." He paused and added, "You gonna
call your roommate?"
"Yeah, but she won’t be awake ‘til about eleven. I’ll wait
‘til then."
"Okiedoke, Kathy. I’m going after a couple winks before
you need to go pick this girl up. Wake me when you need me."
***
"We’ve got it, boss!"
Jacobs looked up to see a coworker walking into his office,
waving a piece of paper in triumph.
"The trace on that guy who hacked our decoy? What took so
long? Should have been a simple matter of following the original IP back and
seeing where he got on line from, right?"
"Yeah, I expected that too. But you know what? He had
another proxy before ours."
"Two intermediaries? Just to go chatting?"
There was another affirmative nod.
"Something’s going on here," Jacobs said.
"Something more than just chatting. I want to know his location."
***
"…so you see, Congressman, the GigaStar device works. I
hope you’ll authorize this expenditure."
One Member of Congress replied, "Mr. Tilman, it’s not the
effectiveness I’m worried about. I’m sure it does work. What I’m worried about
is the fact that the NSA already reads all our e-mail traffic. If they start
reading data on our home wifi networks – information we never even send out of
our homes – what’s left of the Fourth Amendment? I never heard an answer to
that question."
Congressman Vincent listened with only half an ear. He couldn’t
keep his mind on business; it kept coming back to the girl. One moment he’d
smile, remembering sitting at his kitchen table with her, drinking coffee and
talking about the drive. But then he thought of the awful trouble she was in,
and the bottom fell out of his stomach. Then he started daydreaming about how
things might go after this whole crazy cloak and dagger business got over with,
which made him wonder whether his reelection odds would be helped by getting
married, or hurt by the fact that his bride was a cocktail waitress.
But once he started thinking along those lines, it reminded him
of the night before, and that drove him crazy with worry about the whole
business of the thumb drive. Why were people trying so hard to get it? How
could they make them stop? And would Kathy have to travel to Indonesia?
The Chairman gaveled the meeting to a close, and Vincent shook
his head to clear it before rising and gathering his things. On his way out the
door, D.W. Tilman wrapped an arm around his shoulder and walked out with him.
At 23, just out of college, Michael Vincent had been
volunteering on a race for U.S. Senate when the campaign scheduler made an
incredible error that sent the candidate to the complete opposite end of the
state from the trade association convention he was supposed to address. The
very next day Mike found himself with his own desk, a much harder schedule, and
the meager paycheck of a campaign staffer.
His boss, the campaign manager, was a political professional
from Washington DC who’d been hired to come out and win that Senate seat. His
name was D.W. Tilman.
Mike’s memory drifted back to the days when Tilman had been
explaining how money, power, and skill fused together in politics. He had
learned volumes in that one campaign. The elder man had gone on to other
campaigns in later years, while young Michael Vincent stayed on with the newly
elected Senator, moving up from scheduler to Legislative Assistant to Press
Secretary and eventually to a campaign of his own.
His old mentor never abandoned him. Tilman kept in close touch
with Vincent, watching his career, making important introductions, and passing
on lessons about how to make the levers of power move. Eventually, though,
Tilman left politics.
While Vincent was on the path to elected office of his own,
Tilman was the perpetual insider. He moved from managing Senate campaigns to
working for the party’s national organization, and eventually he found himself
managing a primary campaign for the Presidency of the United States.
He should have gone on to a staff job at the White House, or
perhaps even a seat in the President’s Cabinet. But instead his candidate
encountered a serious scandal, and needed someone to blame. Tilman found
himself fired and his reputation blackened. He never managed another campaign.
He left the trenches behind and founded Electron Guidewire.
Tilman knew a bit about electronics, but that wasn’t his real
area of expertise. His real specialty had always been making the political
system work. The company he founded made most of its money selling gadgets to
the federal government, and that was where Tilman excelled. His contacts from
the political days proved to be his most valuable asset as one after another he
found the right ear to bend in order to make a sale.
Because it was so valuable to him, Tilman never entirely left
politics behind. He gave generously to candidates, he maintained his contacts
with old campaigners, and he consulted regularly with politicians who needed
advice, whether about his old experience in the arena or his new expertise in
electronics.
It brought a grim smile to his face as well. The bastards who’d
sold him out were now making him rich. Every time a Congressional subcommittee
authorized the purchase of one of his products, it felt like payback.
He’d been there when Vincent ran his first race for public
office – a seat in the State Senate, and made sure that Electron Guidewire
contributed to the campaign committee. The race for U.S. House which followed
had enjoyed the maximum legal donation from EG, as well as Tilman’s support in
the defense and intelligence communities, bringing in still more financial
support.
By then, their relationship had changed. Rather than teaching
Vincent, Tilman could enjoy the spectacle of his lessons being applied. The
young protégé had learned very well. His election to Congress not only proved
it, it validated all the time both of them had invested in their relationship.
The victory had been sweet, and the two men had shared it as old friends.
"It’s going to be a close vote, Tilman. This much
surveillance power is a political hot potato, but the intelligence community
loves it. Question is, can you deal with all the bad press the NSA’s getting
about privacy right now?"
Tilman grinned. "You just have faith in the old master,
Mike. No one knows how to work the system like I do. I’ll have ‘em eating out
of my hand after I get a chance to sit down with all of them."
Behind the grin, though, the political
professional-turned-businessman fought back a snarl. There were people on the
Judiciary Committee who had history with Tilman – history dating all the way
back to his last campaign. Some of those Congressmen had been there to help
point the finger at him, and turn him into a scapegoat. They would
not
do it again. Not this time.
Unaware of his friend's anger, Congressman Vincent allowed
himself a laugh. "You always were a salesman. The used car industry missed
a great opportunity when you went into politics."
"So," Tilman asked, patting him on the back.
"Coming out with me tonight?"
A frown spread across Michael’s face. "I can’t tonight.
Something else going on."
"Whatcha got? Fundraising reception, meeting with media
consultants, what?"
Mike stopped walking, eliciting minor grumbles from folks
behind him who had to step around him to leave the room. "Some personal
stuff, D.W. Let’s go grab lunch."
***
Kathy picked up her phone and checked the voicemail. After
listening to two friends suggest outings for the weekend, she played the third
message. "Officer Sam Franken calling, with the DC Metro police
department. I’m trying to reach Katherine Kelver. Miss Kelver, please contact
me at your earliest convenience to discuss the report you filed regarding a
possible homicide." He reminded her of the date of the incident and gave
both his office and cell phone numbers before hanging up. Kathy hung up the
phone.
She muttered, thinking that whatever Mike wanted as far as
police involvement, it didn’t look like they had a choice anymore.
She picked up the phone again and dialed the cell number
Franken had given her.
"Franken, Metro PD," she heard after two rings.
"Officer Franken, this is Kathy Kelver. You called me
regarding the report I filed."
"Right, glad you called, I’ve been waiting for you. I need
to discuss that with you, can you come to the precinct office later this
evening?"
She hemmed and hawed. "Honestly, Officer, there are a lot
of things going on in my life right now that make it impossible for me to
predict whether I’ll be able to make it to your office tonight."
There was a pause, and then Franken said, "Well, I suppose
I could meet you down there, I’m off duty right now but I could come in."
"Look, I don’t have transportation, and I have urgent
business that requires me to be available. Couldn’t I just met you someplace
closer to me? I’m on Wisconsin Avenue."
She heard a sigh over the phone and then the officer named a
coffee shop in Georgetown. Kathy agreed to the meeting.
She set down the phone and walked over to the couch to wake
John. He cracked an eye and grunted.
"What’s up?"
"The police are looking for me about the body. I have to
go meet them. Wanna come?"
"I better. Let me grab a quick shower before we go. I’ll
be right back."
While John cleaned himself up, Kathy placed a call to her
roommate’s cell number. Her boyfriend Tony answered, Kathy asked for Colleen,
and told her she wouldn’t be able to make their planned lunch.
"That’s OK, Kathy. I’ll go have something with Tony. How
ya doing otherwise? Enjoy spending the night at work?"
"Um, I didn’t actually end up sleeping there,
Colleen," Kathy replied. "I’ve got a really long story to tell you,
and most of it you’ll have a hard time swallowing. I think I’d better not tell
you on the phone. Let’s try for dinner instead of lunch, maybe. If I can get
free, I’ll give you a call."
"Now wait just a minute, Kathy. What kind of story is
this? Are you OK? Don’t just leave me hanging like that."
"Yeah, I’m fine. It’s been a close shave, though. It’s
really too much to tell you over the phone."
"Kathy, what’s going on? Does it have anything to do with
that flash drive?"
"Yeah, as a matter of fact, it does. Look, Colleen, I have
to leave, but before I go there’s one other thing. Speaking of that flash
drive, I have a name that might go with it, if that might be any help. Eric
Harrison."
Kathy could practically hear her roommate biting her lip.
"Harrison? That name actually sounds familiar, but I’m not sure from
where. I’ll think about it and get back to you. Call me when you know about
dinner."
"I will, Colleen. And be careful, OK? I don’t think it’s
safe to start sleeping in our room again yet."
Colleen harrumphed. "To listen to you, I’m afraid to even
go outside. I’ll be careful. Don’t worry."
John came out of the bathroom just as Kathy hung up, dressed
and ready to go. They set out on foot. Before long they found their way to the
small coffee shop Franken had specified. The place was crowded and cramped, but
she saw Officer Franken across the room. She and John went over and took seats
at his table.
"Thank you for coming, Miss Kelver." Franken turned
to John and asked, "You are?"
"John Lincoln."
"Miss Kelver’s attorney?"
John’s eyes widened and he gave a short bark of a laugh.
"Me? This look like an Armani suit?" He indicated the blue jeans and
dirty shirt he’d been wearing since last night.