The Devil's Code

by John Sandford

  “Yeah, I’ve got . . .”

  “Tomorrow morning, early, I put your ass on a plane to somewhere—New York would be good, with the San Francisco ID. Then you shuttle back to Minneapolis, with the first ID you had—that’s still good?—and then fly out to the British Virgins or the Bahamas under your own name. It’s a lot of flying, but I want you checked through customs somewhere, and I want you in public for the next few days. Where people will remember you.”

  Now she was curious. Still pissed, but curious: “What are you going to blow up?”

  “I’m not going to blow up anything. But this is all coming to a head, and you can never tell what these alphabet security agencies are capable of. If they put us together, you could be in trouble, and Bobby says they’re peeling back the names.”

  “I’ll never get all the flights . . .”

  “I booked you this morning,” I said. “You’re all confirmed.”

  “This morning,” she said. She turned that over for a second, then said, “Asshole. This morning? You . . .”

  We argued about it, off and on, for the rest of the evening. Tried to get some sleep; she was throwing clothes around the next morning, but at eight o’clock, her little round butt was in line at DFW, for the New York flight. She’s absolutely capable of turning her back on me and walking away, I think. But this time, she didn’t. After several hours of chill, she gave me a serious kiss good-bye, whispered, “Take care,” and got on the plane.

  I was on my own, and on my way to Little Rock.

  24

  The drive to Little Rock took six hours, with time out for a cheeseburger and a couple of bathroom breaks. I was in the part of the country where, instead of getting french fries, you get home fries. Home fries are actually pure grease, soaked into grasslike strips of potato so you can get it to your mouth. A waitress in a uniform the exact color of two-day-old pumpkin pie dropped off the burger and fries, did a searching scan of my tabletop and said, “My goodness; somebody forgot to put out your catsup.” She was back in a minute with a bottle of Heinz, and said, “Home fries just ain’t right without catsup.”

  She was, and is, correct. They just ain’t right.

  I’d only been to Little Rock once before in my life. If you live in St. Paul, Little Rock isn’t on the way to anywhere except itself. I didn’t get to see much of the place, either. The guy I was meeting was waiting at a Shoney’s. I picked him out as soon as I walked in.

  “How are you, John?” I asked, sliding into the booth. He reached across the tabletop and we shook hands.

  “Not too bad. I heard about Green and that lady: you’re in some shit.” He looked at me sideways, his dark wraparound sunglasses glittering in the fluorescent light.

  “I’m sorry about Green,” I said.

  “I’m sorry about your friend,” he said.

  John Smith was a black man, originally from Memphis, but now going back and forth between Memphis and a small town in the Delta, where his wife lived. He was both hard and intelligent; a political operator, a friend of Bobby’s, and an artist, a sculptor. “I just got in,” he said. “I’m having the open-face turkey sandwich, home fries, coconut cream pie, and diet Coke.”

  “Then you check in somewhere for a heart scan,” I said.

  I got a Coke and a salad; when the waitress came to take our orders, I said, “Don’t forget the catsup, for his home fries.”

  “How could I do that?” she asked, a look of puzzlement crossing her face.

  John said the package was in his car, and we could get it on the way out. “Bobby says that you should get some duct tape, and tape the box onto the receiver at the focus of the dish. That should be good enough. Then, there are some tapes coiled around the box. Those are pickups, like antenna. You should wrap those around the support lines on the receiver. That gives the receiver a little extra sensitivity. Okay?”

  He was drawing a hasty diagram on a napkin, and it was all clear enough. “As soon as the dish begins to move, turn our receiver on,” he said. “There’s only one switch, a toggle on the side. While the dish is moving, make the same kinds of notations you did the other night—direction, times, and azimuths. The receiver will pick up both incoming and outgoing, and record them, and Bobby built in a timer function, but he didn’t have time to do a level or compass function.”

  “All right.”

  “LuEllen with you?”

  “I sent her away,” I said.

  “You guys ought to have a couple of babies,” he said. “You’re gonna wind up old, with nobody to care for you.”

  “Thanks for the thought,” I said, and flashed to Morris Kendall, dying in room 350. “Has Bobby heard any more about Firewall?”

  “I’m not all together on this; this is not my line,” John said. “Bobby says Firewall is definitely phony—he says you think so, too.”

  “I’m leaning that way.”

  “But he says the feds, the NSA, are blowing it up into a major danger to justify their budget. He says that they don’t have anything to do—they’re completely obsolete—and this whole Firewall thing has been like a gift from heaven. A reprieve.”

  “What about the IRS attack?”

  “Bobby says ten kids in Germany and Switzerland. He’s sent four names, specific names, to the feds, but they’re not paying much attention. Bobby says they don’t want to catch Firewall. Not yet.”

  The salad came, along with John’s food, and we spent twenty minutes talking about his wife, Marvel, and kids; and the political situation in Longstreet, where Marvel lived with the kids. He hadn’t quite finished eating when he finished with the political situation, and I looked at my watch and said, “There’s a phone booth out in the lobby. I’m gonna get online with Bobby; see if anything’s happening.”

  “Be my guest,” he said.

  The phone had little business, and I got right on and dialed. I never got to dial the ten digits after the 800 number, because after seven, the phone rang once, and a woman picked up and said, “Montana Genetics, can I help you?”

  “Uh . . . I’m sorry, I think I have the wrong number.”

  “Well, have a good day then,” she said cheerfully, and hung up.

  I dialed again, “Montana . . .” and hung up.

  Got a problem,” I told John, when I got back to the booth. “Bobby’s not online.”

  He looked at me, a wrinkle between his eyes. Bobby was always online. His life was online. “He’s not . . .”

  “When I dial the 800 number, I get something called Montana Genetics.”

  He sat back, hands on the table: “Ah, shit. He’s pulled the plug.”

  “I need him, man,” I said.

  “So do we,” John said. I never did know who we were, although I’d known for years that there was a we. He looked at his watch and added, “I gotta get back. I’ve got to be near a telephone . . .”

  The waitress came over, carrying the check. She looked at John and asked, “Are you Mr. Smith?”

  “What?”

  “Are you Mr. . . .”

  “Smith. Yes.”

  “You’ve, uh, got a phone call. Normally we don’t allow customers, but the gentleman said it was an emergency . . .”

  John was out of the booth, trailing her; she took him into the back. Two minutes later, he was back out. “Gotta go.”

  “Bobby?”

  “Yeah. He knew we were gonna be here.” He tossed five dollars at the tabletop and headed for the cashier. Outside, in the open, he said, “He says to tell you that Ladyfingers was busted and she gave them the 800 number and that the feds, the NSA, traced him all the way to the banana stand. He said there were only three more links between him and the feds before he was toast. He’s shut down everything. He says you should recover the number just like you did before—he didn’t tell me what it was, he’s crazy paranoid—and said you will cut directly into him. It’s the only link he’s going to take coming in, until he reworks all his numbers.”

  “Bad time for this,” I sa
id. “Bad time.”

  At the car, John handed me a gym bag with the receiver in it. “As soon as you’ve recorded a full movement, mail it back to me, express mail, at the house in Memphis.”

  “All right.”

  “Good luck,” he said. “Keep your ass down.”

  At Texarkana, I found a gas station phone booth and hooked up with the laptop. I went out to my two mailboxes, and found, just as Bobby had promised, two pieces of a phone number. I called, keyed a “k,” and Bobby came up.

  VERY CLOSE. NEVER CLOSER. SCARED THE S OUT OF ME. I’M CLOSED FOR BUSINESS, EXCEPT FOR YOU. DID YOU GET PACKAGE?

  YES .

  CAN YOU MOUNT TONIGHT?

  YES .

  WHAT ELSE CAN WE DO?

  I told him, and got back a long silence. Then,

  TAKE CARE. TAKE CARE. TAKE CARE.

  The Interstate crosses some sparsely inhabited landscape between Texarkana and Dallas. After checking the map, I got off at one of the larger white spots, and picked out a long piece of quiet road. I parked on one side, got out my sketchbook, checked around, then paced off 200 yards down the road, and stood a plastic Coke bottle on the shoulder. I was willing to bet I wasn’t more than a yard or two off—one of the things you learn in the burglary business is how to estimate distances. My normal stride was thirty-four inches long, and I’d learned how to swing a leg just a split-second longer than I usually did, to come down right on thirty-six inches.

  Back at the car, I looked around again, then got the AK out of the trunk, loaded it, rolled down the passenger-side window. When I was sure nothing was coming from either direction, I ripped up a couple of pieces of newspaper, made them into spitwads, put them in my ears, and aimed the gun out the window at the Coke bottle.

  The scope was decent; I leaned back against the driver’s-side door, my left hand cradling the fore-end, and braced against the inside of my knee, held on the bottle, squeezed . . .

  The rifle jumped, and I lost sight of the bottle; and when I got back on it—where it would have been—it was gone. I got the car straightened out, repacked the rifle, found the ejected shell and threw it into the roadside weeds.

  Rolled slowly down the road until I spotted the bottle. There was a neat .30-caliber hole an inch off center to the right, maybe two inches below the shoulders of the bottle. Good enough; more than good enough.

  At Dallas, I stopped at the motel to clean up, change clothes, look at the package—a plastic box with a toggle switch and a couple of pieces of tape antenna sticking out of the top, the whole thing the size of a VHS videotape cassette, but heavier—and get the rest of the gear.

  Moving right along, it was still well past nine o’clock before I made it through Waco, and headed out to Corbeil’s. The ranch house showed only one light, and I saw no cars in the yard; I continued up to the ruins of the old home place, took the car back into the trees, then got out, and sat down on the incoming track.

  And listened.

  Listening will always tell you more than your eyes, if you’re in the dark and somebody might be hunting you. People get tense, try to see, don’t know how to move, breathe too hard, and they stumble. If you’re relaxed, breathing as quietly as you can, eyes closed . . . you can hear. Everything but owls. You hear birds moving at night, but never the owls; they’re like ghosts.

  After a half-hour, I was satisfied that I was alone. I stood up and scanned the area with the night glasses, then picked up the equipment, including the AK, and headed down the road. Halfway down, a truck came banging up the gravel. I stepped well off the road to let it pass, and watched until it had passed the car’s hiding place. When it was out of sight, I listened again, then moved on.

  Moving this slowly, it was nearly midnight before I crossed the fence line and started down toward the dish. When I was directly above it, I scanned it with the glasses for ten minutes, then moved down. I could hear the electric hum; and waited again, but only a minute or two this time, before taping up the package and extending the little antennas. Then I taped up the plastic bands, so I’d be able to measure the azimuth. That done, I moved ten yards off, into the pasture, laid down, and alternately listened and scanned the fields.

  An hour passed, and then another. Halfway into the third hour, the electric hum changed pitch. At first I thought I might be hallucinating the change, because I’d been waiting so long. I scrambled over, listened again: no doubt about it.

  I put my hand on the dish and at the first vibration, flipped the switch on our package. The dish was moving, and I began taking measurements; a half-hour later, I was crossing the fence with the package in my pack.

  What Bobby could do with it, I wasn’t sure. Bobby would take care of that. I’d put it in the mail as soon as I got back to Dallas—there must be an all-night post office out by DFW, I thought—and then I’d make my own run.

  The killing of Lane Ward had put the idea in my mind: the anger and frustration growing as these people hit at us, for reasons we didn’t know about, and—aside from Jack’s death—barely cared about. The cynicism of the people who were supposed to help—the FBI and other agencies—was nearly as bad.

  That night, on the way back to Dallas, I saw a Wal-Mart, and stopped to buy a box. I finally found one large enough: it contained the side boards and shelves for a do-it-yourself book case. I bought it, and threw it in the car.

  At the same time, I called and got directions to the all-night post office, and mailed the package to John in Memphis. That done, I cruised the North Dallas house belonging to William Hart. There was the faintest glow of light behind a window, as though he had a night light; but never a sign of life. It was not a street where you could loiter. I made a few passes, checking out the neighborhood, and called it a night.

  But I was back the next morning, at six-thirty, eyes grainy after only four hours of sleep. There were only a couple of logical, quick routes from Hart’s house to the downtown offices. I couldn’t hang out on his street, but I could sit in a McDonald’s parking lot, eat an egg-and-sausage McMuffin and watch the street he’d probably come out of. I sat for a little more than an hour, and saw the Buick turn out of his street.

  I fell in, but kept six or seven cars between us. He headed for an Interstate ramp, and I followed him up and toward town. Halfway down, he got off the highway, and began threading through local streets. I stayed with him, pulled off once, then got in behind before he disappeared. He stopped in front of an apartment house, waited. A moment later, a man hobbled out. Short hair, six feet, barrel-chested. Benson, I thought. The one we’d ID’d in San Jose. He got in the car, carefully. I waited until they were gone, and started scouting the neighborhood.

  This neighborhood was different than Hart’s. Lots of apartments, lots of older houses, commercial lots elbowing in on the residences: corner stores and hairdressing salons, video-rental places, like that. After half an hour of careful scouting, I found a spot. There were drawbacks. Too many windows looking down on it, but I’d have to risk it, if it turned out to be the best I could do. After scouting it, I headed down to the historic district, hoping to find a better setup.

  AmMath was a block from the end of the historic district. The district ended with a parking lot, and beyond that a jumble of freeway ramps. I intended to cruise the district for a while, hoping to spot their car. I cruised for about two minutes, and spotted it in a slot on the side of the building: if the guy with the limp was hurt badly, they’d probably kept looking for a space until they got one close to the building entrance.

  All right: I had the car. When I rolled past it, I could see, straight ahead, a truck in the parking lot. The cars were actually parked in diagonals, from the perspective of the AmMath building anyway. I drove down to the parking lot, got a ticket, and went to the end of the parking area, next to the truck. From there, I could see the Buick’s passenger side, and most of the driver’s side, and some of the sidewalk beyond it.

  I settled down to wait.

  In the movies, when the detect
ive settles down to wait, the bad guys show in a reasonable time. These bad guys didn’t do that. I waited for two hours, couldn’t stand it any longer, and got out and walked around. Got a sandwich at a bar that gave me a view of the front of the AmMath building; plenty of people came and went, but not Hart.

  I was back in the car, the rifle just behind the seat, at eleven-forty. They’d be going out for lunch, I thought. Lunchtime came and went, with no sign of them. I got out and walked around some more, always where I could see either the car or the building door. Got out the sketchpad and drew for a while: but I wasn’t in the mood, and I don’t like to draw concrete.

  Several times during the day, I decided I’d had enough: but I never quite left. I was sure that if I left, they’d head for the car one minute later. So I stuck around: watched Texans come and go, big hair on the women, cowboy boots on the men; not universally so, but enough that you noticed.

  At five o’clock, I knew the wait had to be short. At five-thirty, it was nearly over, I figured, and wondered if I should move the gun to the front seat. Didn’t do it. And at five-forty-five, Hart walked out to the car, got in, and drove away. The wrong guy.

  I went after him, and got close just in time to see Benson limp around the back end of the car and get in.

  I followed them out to the Interstate, and up the ramp. They were headed for Benson’s apartment, I thought. All I had to do was get him out of the car for a minute . . . I passed them on the highway, drove way too fast through Benson’s neighborhood, and left the car in the parking lot of a dry cleaners that was closed for the night.

  The rifle was in the bookcase box, the box I’d acquired at Wal-Mart the night before. I’d wanted a big box, one that would carry the rifle but not shout “possible gun.” Something that looked awkward; the bookcase box did it. The bookcase itself was in a Dumpster behind my hotel.

  I got the box out of the back, and walked around the corner of the dry cleaners and set up between a garage and a hedge of a house down the street from Benson’s apartment. I could see the door, the parking lot, and just the edge of the street, some two hundred yards away. I waited in the growing darkness, hoping I could see well enough under the streetlights to get a good look at him.