Death of Secrets (8 page)

The car crisscrossed the National Mall several times as Nathan
threw every trick he knew into the drive. Just to be sure, though, he kept them
in the car for another twenty minutes, driving an erratic and totally random
course around the tourist areas of Washington. He finally slowed the car when
he neared the White House.

"Why do we stick so close to the tourist areas?"
Kathy asked. "Isn't there too much traffic here to run very fast?"

It was a sign of how confident he was feeling about the loss of
their pursuers that Nathan bothered to answer at all. "The White House and
the national Mall are National Security Areas," he responded. "You
need a special permit to fly there. They won't be able to keep track of us by
helicopter. We lost them now, I'm sure of it. Where do you folks want to get dropped
off?"

Kathy looked at Mike, Mike looked at Kathy, and they both
shrugged. Finally Mike said, "Any hotel ought to do."

It took another half-hour of driving before they found a
suitable hotel, during which time Nathan never ceased looking in the rear view
mirror. He never saw a single vehicle that stayed behind them for even one
turn.

Kathy went in and rented one room for the night with two double
beds, using the driver’s license she normally reserved for buying liquor.

Mike turned to his friend. "Thanks for the help, Nate.
You're a real lifesaver."

Jacobs shook hands. "I had to do something, Mike. I don't
feel right about leaving you, but staying is going to cause more problems than
it solves."

"Don't worry about it, man. These guys have been on our tail
since last night. All we needed was to get out of their sight for a while.
That'll be enough for us to keep ahead of them."

"I hope so, Mike," Nathan said as he turned back to
the car. "Just don't underestimate them. The stuff you've told me sounds
pretty serious."

With that, he climbed back into his car and drove away.

***

Kathy and Mike turned toward the elevators when John grabbed
Mike’s sleeve. "I have a problem," he said.

"What’s that?"

"If I don’t show up for work tonight, I’ll lose my job. I
have
to go in there."

"You heard what Nathan said about going to familiar
places."

"I know, but I don’t think they’re after me. I think it’s
Kathy and the flash drive they want."

Mike looked at him for a long time. John’s job required him to
be tough, and it showed. The Congressman had no doubt the bouncer could hold
his own one on one with anybody. But would it be a one on one fight? Maybe not.
Could John handle himself? Maybe. One way or another, though, it was his
decision. Mike didn’t like this. He didn’t like it at all. But he’d let his own
career concerns dominate the decision making process so far, and he had to
admit that John had just as much right to worry about his job.

"OK, John. You have to do what you have to do. I don’t
want you to end up broke because of this. But watch your back, OK?"

John shook his hand. "Always, man. Watch your own. And
Kathy’s." With that he gave Kathy a gentle handshake too, and walked away.

Whittled down to just the two of them, the rooming situation suddenly
became more intimate than Kathy had planned. Sharing a room with two other
people – when one of them was John – took away the romance angle. Now that it
was just the two of them… She shrugged. Going back to the desk to get a second
room right after John left would be rude to Mike, so she decided she could just
deal with it.

Flopping into one of the chairs, Kathy released a huge sigh.
"This is crazy."

Mike smiled as he eased himself into the chair next to her. He
handed her a plastic cup filled with water from the room sink. "Maybe now
we're finally free for a while"

"I hope so. I never had reason to think about how precious
it is to simply feel secure."

Kathy stretched out in the chair, slouching and getting as
close to horizontal as possible. The comfort looked pretty good to Mike – he
stood up, pulled the tie out of his collar and shrugged his way out of his suit
coat.

Once he sat down, he spoke. "My staff is probably
wondering what the heck happened this afternoon in my office, but since they're
all on the team, hopefully they won't talk to the press." He harrumphed
ruefully. "After all, if I go down, several other budding political
careers will end along with mine. But they're all good people and good team
players, so I figure they won't try too hard to hurt me."

Kathy straightened up a bit on the chair. "Is it really
like that?" she asked. "Is every single move you make a potential
scandal?"

Mike shrugged. "Stuff about me winds up in the papers or
on the blogs back home. That’s just the way things work. The wrong rumor would
dramatically affect the re-election campaign. This is political life. This is
how you learn to think."

"Seriously, Mike, I don't know how you live like that. I
guess I never thought about it, but the idea of every little thing I do being
fodder for reporters isn't a positive one for me."

"I control it. I keep a tight leash on information about
myself. You have to."

"So you keep asking me out. Is that going to be a
headline? Congressman dating coed?"

Mike blushed and looked away. "Coed sounds so … well… I
don’t think there’s anything wrong with a single guy wanting to get to know a
woman better."

She gave him a smile. "The past couple of days qualifies
as getting to know someone better."

"Not exactly the way I wanted it to happen," Mike
replied, grinning. "We never did get that cup of coffee I wanted."

She laughed. "We could go out and get one."

They settled for sending for room service, and opted for a
bottle of wine instead of coffee, since both had hopes of eventually getting some
sleep. When the bottle came, Michael looked over his glass at Kathy and said,
"Confusion to our enemies."

"I’ll drink to that," Kathy replied, and drank much
more than a dignified sip.

"So let me ask you a question. Why Georgetown? I’d think
that for acting and performing classes you’d go somewhere in New York or
LA."

Kathy sighed. "I wanted to. But my Mom was pretty set on
me coming here. Most of my family are seriously into being Catholic, and they
like to come here to school. Every discussion of college was always accompanied
by her saying something about ‘what your father would have wanted.’"

"You father’s…"

"Dead. He died when I was very young, I never even knew
him. But boy oh boy has he managed to be an influence."

Mike didn’t know what to say. He settled for, "An
influence on you? Or your mom?"

Kathy shrugged. "Both. Dad was super into church
activities, and when he died Mom carried that on. Fundraisers for the hospital,
on the board for the private school, etc.

"It's probably not surprising that an 18-year-old kid from
a home like that became a rebel when she got to college."

Kathy looked away. When she spoke again, she was staring at the
wall. "But I was stupid about it. I really did a lot of stuff I wish had
never happened. My freshman year… well, regret is too weak a word. You ever
wonder how John and I got to be friends? It's not because he's a bouncer and
I'm a waitress. We met when both of us were a lot more messed up. He started
trying to get himself cleaned up, got a real world job at the Neon, and then
got me one too."

She looked back at Mike and smiled. "That's when I learned
that God isn't about buildings or events. God is about second chances. God is
about forgiveness."

Before Mike could even start to reply to that, Kathy smiled at
him. "Your turn. Why politics?"

Mike smiled back. "Same reason most people get started in
it. I was a bit of a firebrand when I was young. Idealistic, determined to
change the world, you know the story. My parents couldn’t have been more proud.
Neither of them were born here, and it gave them a lot of pride to think of
their son being elected. It’s not like they needed me to prove that they’d
fully adapted to America. Dad made himself a good chunk of money in real
estate. But to talk to them, you’d think the fact that I’m in Congress is
somehow proof that they’re real Americans."

"How do you come by Vincent for a last name, then?"
Kathy asked. "Doesn’t sound very ethnic."

"My mother was totally German, my father was half English and
half Slav. He got the name from the English half."

Kathy nodded and fell silent. Looking at her across the table,
Mike admired the way the red wine enhanced the color of her cheeks and lips.
Even after what they'd been through, she still looked good. A long strand of
brown hair hung low over her eyes.

Kathy pretended to concentrate on drinking her wine, knowing
all along that Mike was looking at her. She returned the favor.

He obviously took care of his appearance. His hair was neatly
in place, despite everything. And if he needed a shave, it only added a rough
edge to his otherwise polished appearance. He wasn’t quite on par with, say,
John, when it came to physical strength. But he was fit enough. The contours of
his chest under the shirt were those of muscles that got used.

Setting her glass down, she said, "I need to hit the sack,
Mike. Let’s re-cork this wine and drink the rest tomorrow. Can you give me a
few minutes to get into bed?"

He concealed his displeasure at the idea of drinking day-old
wine, then went into the bathroom to take a shower
.

***

"OK, Colleen, I'm going to bed. I'll see you tomorrow
morning."

Colleen kissed her boyfriend and watched him walk away to bed.
Idly, she stared at his computer, where she'd been helping him with an assignment
for his Human-Computer Interaction class. Tony was actually majoring in the
subject, yet he still needed her help to make his semester project work.

She scrolled through line after line of program code, wondering
what they were missing, why the program wouldn't run. Tony had chosen a project
that was probably above his head, but between the two of them maybe it could be
made to work.

Colleen enjoyed more technical aspects of computer science, but
in her more objective moments she admitted that HCI, as the insiders called it,
was a more important field of study.

Everything people do with computers comes down to putting in or
taking out information. It might be typing text or scanning a picture in for
example. Recording a sound – this was the focus of Tony's project – was still
another method of information input.

Tony's semester project was designed to demonstrate the
technical feasibility of creating an operating system designed to receive its
primary input from spoken commands. Colleen admired the ambition of it – that
was the coming giant leap forward in Tony's field, after all.

Her boyfriend’s work was about making the process even easier
than a touch screen. What if, instead of tapping an icon, all the user had to
do was say what he wanted? Obviously, the learning curve would get even
shallower, and the computer age would open up to even more people. Voice
recognition had become common, but building an entire operating system around
it had not yet been done.

That was Tony's project. Not to write the actual operating
system that worked like that – though no doubt someone would hire him to work
on that after college – but to demonstrate that it was possible.

Colleen closed the window they'd been working in, and turned on
her instant messaging program. Tony's wasn't the only project she had to help
with, after all. Whatever Kathy had gotten involved with, she wouldn't get out
of it until they knew what was on that flash drive. And Colleen knew she was
the only friend Kathy had with even a hope of figuring it out. After a few
moments of introductory chat with her on line friends, she found one in
particular she needed to talk to.

KH12> Yo, dude, wassup?

l33tluser> Hey, KH! Boring here, just thinking about surfing
for dirty pictures.

KH12> You know I think that crap is sick.

l33tluser> Yeah, you’ve mentioned that once or twice.

KH12> Anyway, I have a question for you.

l33tluser> Shoot, I'm in no hurry.

KH12> A friend mentioned a name to me today, and I think I
remember who he is. You remember the guy who got busted for trying to hack the
FBI? Eric Harrison? Do you know if he's still in prison?

l33tluser> Yeah, I remember him, why do you ask? Come to
think of it, I do remember something about him, must've just read it a little
bit ago, let me see if I can find it."

Colleen waited patiently, envisioning her friend on the other
end of the line sorting through news web sites and looking for the story.
Minutes later he sent another message.

l33tluser> OK, yeah, here it is, early this week I read a story
about him escaping from prison. Says the authorities suspected he had help from
his hacker friends. Something about the work detail schedule at the prison
being altered.

KH12> That's what I wanted to know. Thanks l33t.

l33tluser> No worries. Why do you ask?

KH12> It has to do with that flash drive I asked you about.

l33tluser> Still mysterious, I take it. Hey, you know what I
thought of?

KH12> Nope, haven't perfected thought reading yet.

l33tluser> Seriously, it occurred to me that the file names
you told me were on it don't even make sense. Maybe the flash drive itself is
encrypted, and that's why you're not having any luck trying to decrypt just the
files?

KH12> I never thought of that. I'm going to have to do some
hacking on it and find out.

l33tluser> Hey, see? I am useful, despite what everyone
says! Catch you later, KH.

Colleen clicked an icon and started her decryption program.