Origin - Season One (15 page)

“I don’t have anyone from OSD on the clearance list.”

“So I can’t look at anything?”

“Afraid not.”

“You get Internet access down here?” Mitch asked.

“You’re joking, right? The only thing I have down here is iPod access, and I’ll probably lose that when the cameras go in.”

“You want it?” Mitch asked.

The man looked at Mitch doubtfully. “You can do that?”

“In return for a favor, yeah.”

“What’s so important you’re willing to risk getting us both fired?” the clerk said.

“Look,” Mitch said. “I’ve got to get a report to the deputy director before I go home. I’ve already been here for twelve hours. What I need is on the system, but the host server is down and won’t be back up till the morning. There’s a backup in the archive, that’s all I need. Just a quick look.”

“What archive is it?” Kevin asked.

“A satellite registry. Anything published before ‘03.”

“And you just need to look at it?”

“One minute and I’m out of here.”

“All right, pal. But if someone comes down while you’re here, you better act lost and split.”

“Deal,” Mitch said.

The clerk stood up and walked down one of the aisles. By the time he came back, Mitch could barely stand still. He dropped a giant volume onto the counter and looked over Mitch’s shoulder at the elevator. “You got two minutes, pal. Then it’s going back on the shelf.”

Mitch flipped the book open and began thumbing through the pages. It took him a minute to find what he was looking for. The entry read:
Darkstar CommSat 443

Launch: 9.3.1995

Altitude Class: Low Earth Orbit (LEO)
Inclination: Polar Sun Synchronous
NID: DSCS443-0098-887HG

Operator: Skyline Defense
License: IKL-77654-99 (expired)
Signal ID Tag: 47838-37398-39838

Retired: 5.23.1998

When he got to the end Mitch looked up, frowning. “Are these records accurate? It says here this satellite has been retired.”

The clerk laughed and shrugged his shoulders. “I’m on eighteen grand a year, buddy. People want something off the shelves, I go get it for them. If you need help with satellites, I suggest you call NASA.”

Mitch took a pen from his shirt, scribbled the details down on the notepad and tore off the page. He closed the book and handed it back.

“Thanks a lot, I really appreciate it.”

Mitch walked back to the elevator.

“Hey, pal. What happened to my Internet access?” the clerk asked.

“I’ll have to come back and do it later,” Mitch said and stepped into the elevator.

He returned to his office only long enough to pick up his backpack, then left the building. He found his old Volkswagen Rabbit sitting alone in the giant parking lot. When he got in he rested his head on the steering wheel. “Come on Mitch, think! Who uses satellites that don’t exist to intercept secure phone calls on the FBI switchboard? Dead cosmonauts? Fucking Martians?”

He needed to get hold of Mike.

Tapping a domestic line was one thing, but an encrypted one, one that he had helped set up, was another. For one, it couldn’t be anybody inside the FBI because he sat at the top of that particular intellectual food chain himself.

Whoever had done it was using a satellite-based system that deliberately made it impossible to trace. Unless you had a program to unscramble the mixed ID values being thrown at your own intercept software, you couldn’t even establish what satellite was being used. Mitch had one because he had made one, in the same way he had made a hundred other programs to deal with just about any problem he could dream up. And it had led back to a satellite that, according to official records, dropped into the Pacific eight years ago. A satellite owned by a company called Skyline Defense.

Mitch started the car and headed out of DC along Interstate 66 until he reached the junction at Meadow Mills, then turned onto Interstate 81 in the direction of Hagerstown and the Maryland-Pennsylvania state line. There was no reasoning to his choice of direction. What he felt was a need to move for the sake of it, to keep going until something or someone stopped him with a good enough reason. At least until he could clear his head and figure out what to do.

Lake Commissaires, Quebec

Tuesday 18 July 2006

2200 EDT

“You’re leaving?” Amanda said.

“I have to,” Francis said. “We can’t just sit here and hope things blow over. And the longer we stay here, the greater the chances are that someone will find us.”

“Out here?” Jesse asked.

“If I can find it, so can they. When enough people start looking, not even the dark side of the moon is a good hiding place for long. We need to know who is looking for the drive. Until I can answer that question, the only safe assumption is that everyone is.”

“And you just want us to hang tight here until you get back?” Amanda asked.

“Yes.”

“What if someone does find us?” she said.

Francis stood up from where he was leaning over the hole in the floor and pointed at the bed.

“Take a seat,” he said.

They did.

“The chances of someone finding you here in the next few days are slim. But I’m not leaving anything to chance. Give me a minute to get my stuff together and I’ll show you what you need to do while I’m gone.”

Jesse looked suspicious. “You never got a chance to finish what you were saying about the hard drive.”

“Didn’t I?” Francis said, looking nonplussed.

“You said you gave it to that man to have a look at. But you never explained how you got it in the first place.”

Francis looked down at the floor and scratched his head. “You’re not going to leave this alone, are you?”

“Why should we?” Amanda cut in. “It’s a pretty fair question.”

“Okay,” Francis said. “I took it. It seemed like a really good idea at the time and I regret doing it, believe me. But there you have it.”

“You mean you
stole
it,” Jesse said.

“Took it, stole it, what’s the difference? We’ve got it and we’re stuck with it.”

“No. You’re stuck with it and we’re stuck with you,” Jesse corrected.

“Whatever you say. But it doesn’t change anything.”

“If you took it, you must know who’s looking for it.” Amanda said.

“It’s not that simple,” Francis said. “I thought I knew who it belonged to; now I’m not so sure.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Jesse said.

Francis ran a hand through his hair and closed his eyes. When he looked at them again the expression on his face was resigned.

“Fine. You want to hear it, I guess I owe it to you.”

Amanda and Jesse both leaned forward like a couple of kids at bedtime about to hear their mother read their favorite story. Francis rested his elbows on his knees and looked down at the floor.

“I met a man two years ago on a plane,” he began. “He was an American security systems engineer and consultant living in Belgium. One of the best in his field, as it turns out. I’d been looking for someone like him for a long time. We became friends. Not close, but we stayed in touch. I don’t have time to get into too much detail, so let’s just say that in a former life I ran with a bad crowd. When I left I decided to put an end to it one way or another. It took me a few years, but I eventually figured out a way it could be done. Gerald was the key. One thing led to another, and I offered him a lot of money to help me break into a safe where the people I was after kept all their dirty little secrets. We spent a year planning it. He helped me shut down the security system, and I broke in and took what I needed. Gerald was going to get the files off the drive for me. That was supposed to be the end of it. As it turns out, I either got my numbers wrong or something had changed. Now the people the drive belongs to want it back.”

Both Amanda and Jesse looked dumbfounded.

“What did you think was on it?” Amanda asked.

“Files. Stuff I could use to force the CIA into shutting down one of its biggest blunders.”

“When did you realize you’d made a mistake?” Jesse asked.

“When we planned the job, Gerald made a list of people who might become suspects if the breakin was investigated because of their connection to the security system. Three of them were contacted shortly after I broke in, and not by the FBI. I called Gerald and told him to run. He wasn’t at home when I called, so I told him to get his wife to take the drive and leave the house. She made it as far as Morisson. The rest you know.”

Amanda sat back, looking at him in a way that suggested she had never heard so much bullshit in her life and said, “I don’t believe you.”

“Believe me, don’t believe me. That’s what happened,” Francis said, standing up.

“You said
if
there was an investigation,” Jesse said. “Yet you just admitted to breaking into a government building. Why wouldn’t there be?”

“Listen”, Francis said. “It’s a bit more complicated than that. Maybe when I get back I’ll fill in the blanks.”

“Try us,” Jesse said. “How complicated can it be?”

Francis walked to the fireplace and pushed one of the logs back into the fire with the toe of his boot. “The place I broke into was the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.”

“No way!” Amanda said. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No, I’m not. In fact I recorded the whole thing. So you can see why there wasn’t going to be an investigation.”

“So if they tried to find you, you were going to what,” Jesse said, “bring down the Fed, create panic on Wall Street?”

“Ever heard of poker, kid?” Francis said. “I made them believe I would so I didn’t have to. It’s how the game is played.”

Jesse was looking at him, or maybe through him, and appeared to be deep in thought. Amanda was about to say something else when Jesse asked, “How did you know where she was going, the Ross woman? Did your friend tell you?”

“I had a tracker on their car.”

“That’s convenient,” Jesse said.

Francis gave him a cold look. “Before I asked Gerald to help me, I spent a month following him. I had to make sure he could be trusted. I put a GPS tracker on his car. I know you’re just a kid, but these things happen.”

“Okay, fine,” Jesse said. “And how did the other people looking for the drive find her, the ones who showed up in town?”

“They found Gerald.”

“He’s dead, too?” Amanda asked.

“Yes, I think so.”

“Where
was
she heading?” Jesse asked.

“My guess is the border. I’m not even sure she knew herself. She was probably close to a nervous breakdown by then.”

“Close?” Jesse said. “She’d
had
it. When we stopped to help her, I thought she might have escaped from the nearest lunatic asylum.”

Francis turned around, the guilt clear and naked on his face. “It should never have happened. If I’d known who I was dealing with I would never have asked Gerald to send her anywhere.”

“So,” Jesse said, “They killed her. But before they did, she told them she had given the drive to me – to us.”

Francis nodded.

“And they were looking for me when you showed up?”

“I caught up to her while they were still by her car. I heard them shoot her and saw them drive back into town.”

Jesse nodded. “Were they in two unmarked cars?”

“That was them, yes,” Francis agreed.

“We saw them drive past just after I called the sheriff’s office,” Jesse said.

Francis had gone back to the hole in the floorboards and begun taking things out and stacking them on the floor. Now he looked up. “You called the sheriff?”

“Yeah,” Jesse said. “To tell them about the woman. We were worried about her.”

“And did you tell them she had given you a bag full of money?”

“No.”

“Why not?” Francis asked. There was a hint of smugness in the question.

“Hey,” Jesse said, shaking his head. “It’s not the same thing. You stole it. The woman
gave
it to me.”

“The woman on the side of the road who you thought was crazy?” Francis said.

“Okay, fine. But it’s still not the same. I was going to give it to the sheriff.”

Francis held his hands up to indicate he wasn’t the one on the defensive. He smiled at Jesse and said, “I’m not blaming you.”

“So were they cops, these people?” Jesse asked.

“No,” Francis said. “They definitely weren’t cops. They were pretending to be US marshals. One of the cars went looking for you at your house. Which begs the question, if you weren’t at home, where did you go?”

“We went down to the lake,” Jesse said. “And then to Amanda’s house.”

“Well it’s a damned good thing you did,” Francis said.

Jesse looked troubled. “They were actually at our house?”

“Down at the end of the drive,” Francis said. “There was a white pickup with a bike in the back parked outside.”

“Yeah. That’s it.”

After another long moment of reflective silence, Jesse asked, “What did you do?”

“What do you think I did?”

“You killed them? Right there in front of my house?”

“On the road at the top of the drive, yes,” Francis said, as if killing people were the most natural thing in the world.

Jesse tried to imagine it and found he couldn’t. The feeling of unreality, which had seemed to be passing a little, was back, and stronger than ever. Amanda looked at him with a blank expression that suggested she was having similar problems. Jesse put an arm around her and tried to think of the right thing to say, but there were no words that seemed even vaguely appropriate.

Francis had to raise his voice to get their attention. “Guys! Everything okay?”

Amanda looked at him, the color in her face beginning to rise. “Why would you even ask a question like that? How the fuck could anything possibly be okay? We’re stuck here while our parents go out of their minds. They probably think we’re dead.”

“I understand that,” Francis said, trying to sound less annoyed than he felt. “But you guys are going to have to pull it together. I have to leave soon and there are some things I need to show you before I go.”