The Asset (18 page)

“I think I might have preferred that to total exile.”

“I'm glad to hear you say that.”

“Why?”

“Because despite your pariah status with Alia, I think there's a way to get you back in. If you're interested.”

Kennedy perked up. “Hell yes, I'm interested.”

Juarez handed him a USB drive. “Lentz has a compound on one of the Cuban islands—Isla de la Juventud. Nuri managed to get us a hack on their government network, which he uses to run his operation. All the data she captured so far is on that stick. The good news is we can track his comms all over the world and identify his collaborators—at least by location. The bad news is he's using an encryption technique our analysts can't identify.”

“And you think I'm going to be able to decipher it?”

“Absolutely not. But maybe you can come up with a work-around that our team of so-called experts hasn't thought of. Unless you have something better to do.”

Kennedy shoved the USB into his pocket.

“It's worth a shot,” Kennedy said. “Does Alia know you're doing this?”

“Hell no. She'd kill me if she knew I was even talking to you.”

Day 27

T
he next day, Kennedy called
some of his dad's old air force buddies, most of them engineers, to see if any of them knew anything about cryptography. Phyllis, one of their colleagues at the Space and Missile Systems Center in El Segundo, was a software engineer who collected old cipher devices as a hobby. Kennedy had coffee with her and showed her a few lines of encryption he'd copied from Nuri's Cuban data.

“Looks like gibberish,” she said.

“Isn't that the point?” Kennedy said.

She laughed. “Yes, but if you've seen as much enciphered data as I have over the years, you notice patterns. There's always a pattern, whether you're dealing with old telecipher systems from World War Two, like the German Enigma, or boring old SSL code used in banking transactions. The characters in the code correspond to a key that the recipient uses to
decipher
the code. Those keys are usually some kind of number system or transposition alphabets. So, if the characters feel too randomly arranged, like these do, then you're either dealing with a super genius who has created an entirely new cipher, or it's gibberish.”

She looked at the code again and started scribbling in her notebook.

“I'm just throwing a few of the more obscure keys at this code and I can't get a handle on it. Not even one word, which is rare. Cipher is a lot like computer code. It's based on previous versions of itself. I have no idea
what this might be based on. Sorry I can't be of more help. What's this from anyway?”

“I work in security and my boss likes to send us these annoying problems. Thinks it keeps us on our toes. If I solve it, I win a trip to Hawaii,” Kennedy lied.

She laughed again. “I think he's messing with you.”

“I think this enciphered data is a decoy,” he said to Juarez over the phone that night. “Lentz has spent a fortune successfully hiding himself from the prying eyes of the CIA. Why wouldn't he do the same thing with his data? A bullshit cipher that seemed sophisticated would present a Super Geek challenge to your analysts at Langley, and their egos would drive them to try to crack it. While they're at it, focusing resources on a dead end, Lentz is communicating another way and advancing his plan.”

“Not bad,” Juarez said, genuinely impressed. “The Super Geeks still ­haven't decoded a damn thing and, if our systems can't crack it—”

“We need to get someone close to Lentz,” Kennedy said.

“Oh, we've gotten people close to Lentz . . . close range, that is. You could fit what was left of them in a Ziploc bag.”

“There has to be a way.”

“And I have a feeling you might find one,” Juarez said.

Kennedy was not ready to give up on a second chance with Alia. He not only had to think outside the box, but he also had to live and operate there. As Juarez said, the CIA had not been able to get near Lentz. In fact, no intelligence agency had been able to pull that off. But they were probably all doing the same thing—attempting to embed an agent in the organization of a man who was essentially a hypervigilant recluse with the ability to smell a rat miles away.

The answer was not to try to get someone close to him. The answer was to recruit one of his already-close minions. He had to have a small army of them, handling logistics, resources, and financial transactions. It was like any other business. Lentz had
employees
, and there was a hierarchy governing them. Attempting to pilot fish onto someone too high up in the organization was not the right approach. The higher up the minion, the higher the pay, and the stronger the loyalty. Kennedy needed someone
lower on the totem pole, but not so low they couldn't leave Lentz's back door open for him. And it needed to be someone Lentz was obliged to trust to some degree.

Kennedy knew travel, so he started there. Private would be the only way for Lentz to move freely around the world and maintain anonymity. A pilot would be someone who would have a lot of contact with him and someone he would be obliged to trust. If he were Lentz, he would engage someone and keep that person local so he could leave at a moment's notice. Kennedy contacted the Ciudad Libertad Airport in Havana. It had been Cuba's original airport before José Martí International was built, so it was large enough for big private jets and catered to a wealthy clientele. He spoke to the airport's main office, telling them he needed a large aircraft for executive travel. The flight crew needed to be experienced enough to pass muster with corporate risk management. The airport e-mailed him a list with contact information for all private pilots and aircraft they had available for service, listed in order of years of experience.

He narrowed the list to a dozen pilots with the flight hours and aircraft-­type ratings to fit the profile. Juarez had Nuri pull all of their recent flight records, and only one of the pilots on the list had multiple flight logs listing Isla de la Juventud as point of origin. His name was Rico and he was a former pilot for the Venezuelan Air Force. On the surface, he seemed like an excellent candidate. He was very experienced and well trained, something Kennedy believed Lentz would look for. He was also from a country whose president despised the United States, so he may have had his own reasons, politically, to help Lentz. Finally, at thirty years old, his youth was something Lentz could use to his advantage. The average salary for young pilots even in the United States was shockingly low, so the commercial prospects in Venezuela, and most of Latin America for that matter, couldn't possibly have been able to compete with what Lentz might pay.

Juarez agreed Rico was an excellent mark, but when he mentioned it to Alia, couching it as a lead he had thought of, he had not been able to convince her to try to bring him in. She was in full ass-coverage mode and felt that recruiting one of Lentz's own people as a snitch carried too much risk. If things with Rico went sideways, Lentz would go even darker.

“Sorry, man,” Juarez said, “you did some great work here but it looks like this is the end of the line.”

“So, that's it? You're just going to ignore this lead and walk away?”

“I have to, brother. She's the boss. You take care.”

Juarez's
Better luck next time
brush-off only galvanized Kennedy's resolve. This wasn't about getting reinstated with Red Carpet anymore. It was about saving lives, and he couldn't, in good conscience, leave this last stone unturned.

If Alia was covering her ass, it was time for Kennedy to put his on the line.

W
hen you called to say
you needed a favor, I figured maybe you wanted tickets to a show or a ride to the airport,” Love said.

It was early evening and Kennedy had invited Love to El Carmen, a hole-in-the-wall tequila bar on the outer edge of West Hollywood. She had just come from the recording studio, so she was sporting her artfully dressed-down look—jeans, gold combat boots, and a vintage Descendents concert T-shirt. Kennedy, on the other hand, looked like he was coming off a three-day bender. He was desperate to chase down his lead in Havana and thought maybe Love could help him, so he told her about being recruited for Red Carpet and filled her in on most of what had happened. Love just listened and tried to keep her jaw from breaking on the floor.

“I know it's kind of crazy—”

“
Kind of
crazy? Dude, I can't believe you're a . . .” She looked around to see if anyone was listening and mouthed the word “spy.”

“I'm not. I'm what they call an asset. They hired me because of my work and connections in airport security.”

“But you got fired?”

“Yeah . . . I fucked up.”

“What'd you do?”

“I'll tell you sometime. I promise. But I can't right now.”

“You're kind of scaring me,” she said.

“Sorry, I'm just desperate to fix this. I'm doing it for Belle. I feel like it's a chance to make good with her.”

“And you want
me
to help?”

“I don't know where else to turn.”

“Okay,” she said, putting her hand on his. “I'll do whatever you want. We're family, remember?”

“Let me explain it to you first and you can make up your mind.”

Kennedy told her about the young pilot and how they needed to get close to him in order to get close to Lentz, the man they wanted to catch. Kennedy couldn't think of a scenario where he could do it himself without raising Rico's suspicion. But Love was capable of sweet-talking the devil into going to church. Maybe she could go to Havana and get the guy on the hook.

“You want me to whore myself out for information?”

“No! Jesus. All you need to do is talk to the guy and see if you can convince him to help us. Once you get your foot in the door, the CIA can take it from there.”

“You need me to be a fluffer,” Love said, grinning.

“For lack of a better term, yes. But it's a mind fluff, nothing physical.”

“Look at you! All protective. What does this guy look like? Not to toot my own horn, but if he's a troll and I throw the vibe all over him, he's going to be suspicious.”

“He's not a troll.”

Kennedy showed her Rico's picture.

“Ay,
caramba
,” Love said, biting her fist.

“Okay, maybe this isn't such a great idea.”

“I'm
joking
, dummy. I'll do it.”

“Really?”

“Why not?” she said. “Sounds kind of fun. James Bond shit.”

Kennedy gave her a hug. “Thank you. You're the best,” he said.

“I know,” she said. “Now give me the intel,” she said, raising an eyebrow.

“You're taking this seriously, right?”

“Of course. I'm just getting into the right headspace. Sorry, I'll shut up now.”

“I want to send you to Havana as soon as possible. I'll handle all the expenses, of course,” Kennedy said. “And pay you very well for your time.”

“Please,” she said. “This is a favor, remember?”

“No, this is work, and you're getting paid whether you like it or not.”

“Fine. But I don't fluff cheap,” she said.

“Fair enough.”

“Quick question,” she said. “How do you know this guy isn't going to smoke me on the spot?”

“He's a pilot, so I doubt he spends a lot of time smoking people. But if he gets out of line at all, we'll be waiting to take him down.”

“You know you're going to owe me big-time for this, right?”

“Absolutely. Whatever you want.”

“If I do this, you have to promise me you're going to quit that lousy bullshit thing you call a day job and do something fun for a living.”

“I promise,” Kennedy said without hesitation.