The Lost Key (11 page)

26 Federal Plaza

1:45 p.m.

While Nicholas was on the phone to his family, Mike took a quick look at some of the information Agent Gray Wharton had taken from Pearce's computers. She glanced at Pearce's client list, stopped cold—she saw names she recognized—an international who's who of power and wealth. Sophie had said her father's business was global; she certainly hadn't been kidding.

Mike scanned the list, seeing name after familiar name, and knew from experience that there was something more here. She glanced at her watch; it was nearly two and they had to get to the OCME for Mr. Olympic's autopsy. She started to close the file when she saw a name that really stood out. She read it over a few times, then closed the file and ejected the thumb drive. Nicholas needed to see this. She didn't know what it meant, but he might.

She grabbed two bottles of water and two apples from the small fridge she kept under her desk. She was hungry; they hadn't had time for lunch. The apples would have to do for now. They could stop and eat on their way back downtown. A full stomach before an autopsy wasn't a smart move, in any case.

She looked up to see Nicholas standing in the door to her cube. “Are you ready to go?”

“I am.” She handed him a bottle of water and an apple. “I know we have to hurry, but you need to see this before we go.”

She inserted the thumb drive back into the secure, red partitioned side of her FBI computer and opened the mirrored hard drive. She clicked on the file labeled
CLIENTS
. Hundreds of blue folders came up on the screen, neat and orderly.

“Thank goodness Pearce was an organized bloke. His files are almost too easy to find.”

Mike punched the third blue file, got up and gestured to her chair. “Sit down and take a look. Tell me what you see.”

Nicholas sat with Mike perched on the chair's arm. Her blond ponytail had grown in the past few months and it was right next to his face. He breathed in the jasmine scent, shifted himself away.

She leaned, pointed, her ponytail touching his face. “Look at that, Nicholas.”

He leaned away again, looked at the screen, whistled. “Good catch, Agent Caine. Alfie Stanford bought several books on military history from Mr. Pearce over the years. Mostly World War One titles, though there are a few from the Franco-Prussian War and some on the Russian oligarchs.”

“Weighty stuff.”

“Certainly. Stanford was a very bright man, very dedicated to study and scholarship. You don't get to his position otherwise.” He clicked a few other folders. “I wonder who else we may recognize in Mr. Pearce's clientele.”

She tapped her watch. “No time. We need to go, Nicholas. We can talk about it on the way up to the OCME.”

Ben Houston jogged around the corner. “Oh, good, you're still
here. I was about to call you. Before you go, you need to see this.” Ben's red hair was mussed, his suit rumpled. Nicholas thought he looked like he'd had a rough morning of it, then thought to look down at his own bespoke trousers. There was a line of mud along the crease and a thin ash of dirt covering his knees, right above a small rip in the fine wool. He brushed at it, shaking his head. Nigel would have his head tonight when he realized he'd ruined his trousers. Six hours into his first day and he was already falling apart.

Ben handed Mike a brown file. She opened the brown folder and both of them stared at Kevin Brown's photo.

Ben said, “Looks like Sophie Pearce wasn't exactly telling you the whole truth.”

Nicholas laughed. “I thought he looked familiar. Remember that photo of the Pearce family? With the boy and the girl? There he is, all grown up.”

“Yep,” Ben said. “Adam Pearce, the nineteen-year-old son of the late Jonathan Pearce, alive and well and running around in his father's store this morning, well protected by his sister, Sophie. You're going to love his file. The kid is serious trouble. Here's his arrest record. Look at the list of places Pearce has broken into. I bet you want to get your hands on him, right, Sir Nicholas? He's as big a hacker as you are.”

Nicholas didn't look up from Adam Pearce's photo, simply said, “Careful, Red. I have not been knighted.”

Ben patted him on the shoulder. “I'm sure it's only a matter of time. I mean, you do have the right accent for it, after all.”

Mike ignored them and read the list. When Ben had said “broken into,” she'd expected stores and businesses. Instead, she was seeing major multinational corporations, military targets, the
Pentagon. It hit her. “Whoa. I know about him. Talk about a hacker, he's right at the top.”

“Yep, he's become rather notorious around here, actually. We've tied him to Anonymous, WikiLeaks, several remote break-ins on some very high-level military sites, the whole shebang.”

“What's his
nom de guerre
?” Nicholas asked, and Mike heard the excitement in his voice.

Ben said, “Eternal Patrol. He has friends in almost all the dissident and domestic protest groups. But he's good, I mean really good. We've never been able to pin him down. And he's been off the grid for a while, hasn't been seen in the city for the past two years.”

Nicholas laughed, shook his head. “So now everything makes sense.”

B
en said, “EP is famous in the underground computer world, but what's cool is that he isn't a black-hat hacker—you know, the ones who take down governments and sell credit card information and the like. But he's not purely a white hat, either, trying to improve the Internet. He's walking a fine line, could go either way as he gets older.”

Nicholas said, “Eternal Patrol—EP, Adam Pearce—he's a real talent. If you can catch them young, and turn them—well, I wouldn't mind getting my hands on him. He'd be brilliant at risk assessment.”

“Takes one to know one,” Mike said. “I'm glad you're now working with us, legally.” Shortcuts were okay, she thought, as she glanced through more of Adam Pearce's file. She saw echoes of Nicholas, no way around it.

She said, “Adam Pearce is a genius, no question, into computers from the time he could walk. He hacked into the Pentagon's secure internal e-mail system at the tender age of twelve.”

“Oh, he was an old hand at it by then,” Nicholas said.

“So it appears. Here's a list of transgressions, long and varied.
So, does he do this only for social acceptance among his peers or just for fun?”

Nicholas shrugged. “Fun, credibility, secret stealing. Who knows the motivation?”

Ben said, “I'd say Eternal Patrol is more of a merry prankster than a truly malicious hacker.”

Nicholas said, “You know, hackers make the best employees.”

“Why's that?” Mike asked.

“They're always willing to think outside the box. I used to use some of the brighter international ones for my work in the Foreign Office. They are barely controllable unless you have something on them. Or they want something from you. Sometimes you even have a bit of luck and they'll turn against their compatriots. They'll bargain the information away. You must be the most careful with those, they're unpredictable at best, moles at worst.”

“So how can you be sure they're being honest and legitimate with your information?” Mike asked.

Nicholas said simply, “You need to have someone who's just as talented to keep an eye on them. If you hire one to build you a back door, you need to be sure the code he's using is clean. A clever hacker can build a trapdoor in his back door, and then you're up a creek, as my uncle Bo likes to say. Would you look at this—he's managed to stay off the radar for what—two years? He's very good, considering he's wanted all over the world. NSA, CIA, Interpol. Kid has a lot of powerful people very peeved at him.”

Mike said, “You were right, Ben, about Sophie Pearce. She flat-out lied to us, and, of course, so did Adam. Now, why is she hiding her relationship with him? And why did he show up out of the blue hours after his father was killed?”

Ben said, “Maybe he wanted to see his family, maybe he thought
we'd be off his scent. I'll admit, though, the timing is certainly coincidental.”

Mike said, “Is there a special meaning for Eternal Patrol?”

Nicholas said, “It's an old naval term, actually. For a lost ship. There are hundreds of ships and submarines that have been lost in the various wars. Traditionally, when they go down and no one knows where, they call it being on eternal patrol.”

“Well, that makes sense, at least. His dad was a naval history buff. Ben, put out a BOLO for Adam Pearce, and we need to go talk to Sophie again. Find out if this was all she was keeping from us.”

Ben said, “Already did. We also need to look at what Adam Pearce has been into lately as EP. If he crossed the wrong people, perhaps his father was killed in retaliation, or to draw him out. If that's the case, Sophie isn't safe, either.”

“She's safe enough,” Mike said. “We've got eyes on her. No one's going to get close to her. Have them pick her up, Ben, we'll see if she knows where her brother's hiding. Nicholas, we're outta here.”

When Mike had cleared the garage doors and turned the Crown Vic onto Worth Street, Nicholas said, “I have something to tell you.”

She knew that tone, he'd decided to tell her something that he'd thought to hold back. Good, it meant he trusted her, at least every once in a while.

She looked over at him. “Your dad told you something super-secret, and you're not supposed to say anything?”

Nicholas had to laugh. “You're too smart for your own good. Yes, he told me something very disturbing. The Home Office believes Alfie Stanford was murdered.”

“You've got to be kidding me. I thought he was old enough to die on his own?”

“Yes, he was, but he wasn't ill. One of the medics found a needle mark on his neck.”

“That's not good. Do they have a suspect?”

“If they do, he didn't tell me. I don't believe in coincidences, Mike, and here we are, hit in the face with a huge one. Alfie Stanford and Jonathan Pearce have clear ties, and they're both murdered on the same day?”

She didn't believe in coincidence, either. “And Adam Pearce is an über-hacker, and his sister lied to us. But how is it all related?”

“I don't know yet.”

“Ah, here we are, your inaugural FBI autopsy. Let's hope Dr. Janovich found the poison pill.”

Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME)

2:20 p.m.

Dr. Janovich was waiting for them in his office, dressed in stained scrubs, his eyes shining brightly with excitement. He tapped his watch face when he saw them, but without rancor.

“Finally, you're here. I didn't want to wait, so I started without you. Come on. I have something to show you.”

They stood over Mr. Olympic's naked and partially autopsied body. Janovich spoke quickly, pointing to a nasty scrape on the man's shoulder. “Did quite a job on him, didn't you, Drummond?”

“I believe the tarmac was responsible for that particular mark.”

“Ah. Well, this isn't the interesting part.” He pointed at the wall, where X-rays hung on a light box. “Look closely. Do you see the foreign object in his skull? I went digging in his brain, and I found this.”

He used a small set of calipers and showed them a tiny bit of metal, no larger than a thumbnail, thin as paper.

Mike said, “It looks like shrapnel.”

Nicholas's heart rate jumped, adrenaline poured into his bloodstream. “No, not shrapnel, Mike. Dr. Janovich, can I see it under the microscope?”

Janovich beamed at Nicholas. “Good, good.” He set the rectangle of metal on a clear glass slide. “Try it at one-hundred-times power. It's quite illuminating.”

The metal object came into clear focus. Nicholas's breath caught. He hadn't wanted to be right, but—“It's an implant. There must be two hundred filament leads off this.” He stepped away so Mike could take a look. “Dr. Janovich, where did you find this, exactly?”

“Embedded behind the optic nerve. The incision was well healed, which means it's been in his brain for a good while. I also found a very small feed into the auditory nerve as well, so small I nearly missed it. All in all, it's amazing.”

“Sight and sound? Is that even possible?”

Janovich said, “Evidently, it is. I've never seen anything like it. This is incredibly advanced technology. And this implant? It isn't a metal alloy I've ever seen. It's biologic in nature, meaning it can merge with the brain tissue it's implanted in and not be rejected. If it does what I think it does, well—” He shrugged. “It's huge, terrifying, really.”

“Could it be running now?” Nicholas asked.

Janovich shook his head. “I don't think so, not without its processing power. It shouldn't be able to stand on its own.”

Mike held up a hand. “I know about implants used for people who've lost limbs, to help them control new arms and legs. Through thought-controlled action.”

“Yes,” Dr. Janovich said. “Yes, implants are very big in robotics and nanotechnology. There are even implants for the blind, those with progressive diseases like macular degeneration, to restore their sight.”

Mike said, “Let me look again; talk me through this.” As she studied the implant, Nicholas said, “Do you see the filaments coming off the edges? They're thinner than a piece of hair.”

“It looks like a metal millipede. So this is a brain implant. It's tiny, wafer-thin. It was implanted behind Mr. Olympic's optic nerve?”

“Yes,” Dr. Janovich said.

“And not because Mr. Olympic was going blind.”

Nicholas said, “Oh, no, quite the opposite. Dr. Janovich, correct me if I'm wrong, but I assume it was mono-vision—meaning the people who were getting the feed from the implant could only see out of Mr. Olympic's left eye?”

“You're right, Drummond.”

Mike's head was cocked to one side. “You're saying that someone could see through Mr. Olympic's eye? See what he was seeing?”

Nicholas said, “Implanted into the optic nerve, it's possible this works something like a video camera, uploading images as the user sees them. And since Dr. Janovich also found the thin thread that fed into the ear, I'm guessing the person behind this could hear what Mr. Olympic heard as well.”

“A visual recorder, then,” Mike said, “and the audio part as well. Sight and sound.”

Dr. Janovich said, “Since I pulled this implant out of his brain, your wild speculations aren't so wild after all. If someone was watching, and hearing, remotely—”

“Holy crap,” Mike said. “It makes sense and it sounds insane.”

Nicholas was so excited he was nearly vibrating. “It's possible, though. Look how tiny the implant is. Think of the uses. You could send someone into the field and all they'd have to do is
stand around looking at the target, and the chip would do the rest, relaying the information to a remote server. And if it can be done live, it would change the face of intelligence gathering forever.”

Dr. Janovich said, “It's entirely possible.”

Nicholas said, “Dr. Janovich, you're certain the device only works with active brain waves?”

“I believe so. It definitely runs biologically. There is no battery, nor any way to take it out and recharge without surgical intervention. It used the suspect's brain to charge and run. Without its electrical plug, so to speak, it can't work. Once his heart stopped, transmission stopped as well.”

Mike said, “Who has the capabilities to make such a thing? And the ability to make it work?”

Nicholas said, “I reckon any of the private firms who do this sort of research. It's one thing to develop a prototype. It's a whole different level to put them into action. We're talking billions of dollars. The list of firms capable of doing this can't be very long.”

“You could look at universities, too,” Janovich said. “No, forget it, not enough money.”

Mike said, “No chance there's a serial number, like we see on other implants?”

Janovich said, “Good thinking, but I wasn't able to find one. If I can get the device open, I might see something, but I really don't want to try it. I think we need someone well versed in nano-biotechnology to autopsy the chip. I have a friend at MIT who's quite accomplished in the nanotech field. I'd recommend bringing him in to have a look inside, see if we can identify a manufacturer.”

“Do it,” Mike said. “Right away, if you please, Doc.” Mike drew in a deep breath. “Imagine, someone was watching remotely as
Mr. Olympic murdered Jonathan Pearce. Hurry, sir, we don't have time to waste.”

Dr. Janovich said, “There's a lot of money in nano-biotech, a lot of private investors. It might be harder than you think to find out who developed and placed this particular device. Especially if he doesn't want to be discovered.”

Nicholas said, “Oh, we'll find him. I have an idea of where to look.”

Mike squared her shoulders. “And knowing who Mr. Olympic is will go a long way toward helping us ID the maker of the implant. There still haven't been any matches on his fingerprints?”

“Not yet,” Janovich said. “I don't think he's a local. If he's in CODIS, we'll have a match soon.”

Nicholas said, “We heard him curse the victim in German.”

Dr. Janovich nodded. “Sounds right. He was wearing a pair of socks with a small Metro label, and that's a European store, in Germany as well.”

Mike asked, “In all this excitement I nearly forgot. Have you isolated what killed him, whether it was a poison of some sort? Or how it worked so quickly?”

Janovich stepped back to the body. “I need toxicology to be specific, but it was some sort of deadly neurotoxin. It caused an almost immediate heart arrhythmia, followed quickly by cardiac arrest. Take a look.” He used his calipers to spread the man's upper lip back from the teeth, showing a small gap in the gingiva. “It came from right here, I think. There's a pocket of sorts, almost like a small abscess, but it's definitely man-made. There's a scar, in the tissue, from a laser cut. There was also some sort of residue, in a gel form. Thicker than saliva, clear and tacky. I swabbed it and sent it to tox, but like I said, it's going to take some time to identify
what exactly it is. Currently, I have to list it as undetermined. But whatever was in here, I'm certain it's the culprit.”

“Did I kill him?” Nicholas asked.

Janovich put a hand on Nicholas's shoulder and said, not unkindly, “You fought with him, true, but based on his facial bruising, I believe the gel pack was hit externally, and that broke open the abscess and activated the poison. But, Agent Drummond, it was an accident, you are not to blame.”