by Kat Smith
“The best we can tell is it’s some sort of code.” He brought up the fourth image. This one was of a group of kids playing soccer with the heading “Youth ATHLETICS League.” The fifth image was of two women. One a redhead, the other brunette. They were at what looked like a cafeteria. “NEED a snack.”
Something nagged in the back of Alex’s brain, but she couldn’t put her finger on what it was. The images, the numbers at the bottom. Unlike the rest of the young analysts, she found she worked better with hardcopy. “Print these for me?”
Payton turned back to the group. “This doesn’t make any sense. We’re trying to stop a bombing, and these are advertising flyers.”
Alex studied the image on the screen and said confidently, “They’re coded messages of some kind. It will take some time, but I’ll figure it out.”
Vincent dropped the printed documents in front of Alex, and she flipped through them one after another, trying to put her finger on the itch she had in her brain.
Vincent returned to his seat. “Interestingly, there’s been no activity in that particular email account in over four years. Until now, he’s always used the same dot ru email address.” He shuffled through a thick folder. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say it looked like it could be a secret lover account.”
Payton scoffed. “This is getting ridiculous. What the fuck is a secret lover account?”
Vincent could feel the sweat beading on his forehead. He was beginning to feel like a fool. “They’re popular with people who have… umm, affairs. One person composes an email and saves it as a draft. Then the other person logs in, reads it and deletes it, and composes one back to the first person. The emails are never actually sent to anyone, so they can’t be traced. It makes it hard for the spouses of the lovers to find any evidence because the emails are never actually downloaded to a computer, tablet, or phone. The only way to see them is to log into the email account.”
He paused, looked around the room, and when no one commented, he continued. “I don’t know what to make of it. I don’t know how we can even pick up on something like this. There’s nothing in the account except these drafts.”
“It’s one of the parameters I wrote into the program.” Alex continued without looking up from the pages in front of her. “This method isn’t just for lovers. People want to communicate and stay under the radar for all sorts of reasons. Every email sent, or not as in this case, is captured in the data dump.”
He nodded and grinned. “Smart thinking, Sheridan.”
“Have you traced the owner?” Alex probed.
“Only that it’s U.S.-based. Subpoena’s in process.” He shuffled through his folder. “Looks like a coded email address, as well. [email protected].”
Alex’s head snapped up. “What…What did you just say?”
“It’s a U.S.-based—”
“No, the email address.” Everyone turned to look at Alex. “Give me the goddamn email address again.”
He looked confused. “It’s [email protected],”
Then everything fell together. Alex’s hands trembled, and her face paled as she stared at Vincent.
Everyone watched Alex with concern. They’d all been worried about her. She’d barely left the office for the last week. Payton reached out and gently grasped her arm. “Alex, what’s wrong?”
Alex grabbed the document and shuffled through them again.
“Alex?” Payton leaned closer. “Sweetie, talk to me.”
“Call the colonel,” Alex whispered.
“Alex?” Payton was growing concerned. “Look at me.”
Alex snapped out of her shock and picked up the papers. “Get her now.” Her chair flew across the room as she stood and raced to the huge whiteboard on the other side of the room. “Clear the room.”
Payton wasn’t sure what was happening, but she’d witnessed Alex’s epiphanies in the past and had learned not to break her thought process. She looked at Vincent. “Give us the room, folks.”
When the room was empty, she turned back to Alex. “Talk to me. What do you see?”
“She’s alive.” Alex raised the papers and shook them in the air. “Devan’s alive.”
Payton regarded her with concern. She knew she’d have to tread carefully, and her voice softened when she spoke. “Alex, sweetie, that isn’t possible.”
Alex began to tape the documents across the top of the whiteboard. She didn’t turn around, just barked out the demand, “Call the colonel, Director. Do it now.”
Alex grabbed a marker out of the tray and began to write. As Payton watched, it soon became evident that Alex was, in fact, on to something. She stepped quickly to the door.
Vincent intercepted Payton on the way to her office. “Is Alex all right?”
“She’s fine.” Payton swung into her office and glanced at her watch. Maybe she could still catch Mara before she left the office. She snatched up the phone, punched in the number, and waited. “I’ll fill you in as soon as I can, but we have to let her work through it.” She looked up. “Close the door on your way out, please.”
When Mara answered, Payton barked, “Get here as soon as possible.”
“What’s happened?”
“We believe Devan is alive.” It only hit her when she spoke the words. Heard them in her own voice.
“What?” Mara’s voice was full of shock and disbelief. “That’s not possible, Director.”
“She’s sure of it.” Payton had to sit down. “And the little bit I’ve seen, I’m leaning that way, as well.”
“I’m on my way.”
“Hurry. I’ll meet you in the lobby.” When Payton disconnected the call, her hands were shaking. When she spoke, it was to an empty room, or maybe it was a plea to a higher power. “God help us all if we left her there injured and alone.”
Christopher had decided less than a week into his capture to go on a hunger strike. He’d defiantly refused his meals and had thrown several plates of food across the room. He’d proclaimed, “I will die a martyr for my people and what we believe in before I surrender to the corruption that you people from the Western world call progress. Georgia belongs to Mother Russia, and no one will prevent us from prevailing.”
Devan had just laughed in his face. “Tell me, Christopher. Is there some secret school specifically for terrorists? Because you’re spewing the same old crap every other terrorist group preaches. Almost word for word.”
He responded by spitting on the floor and mumbling something Devan couldn’t understand.
He had ultimately crumpled under the pressure of Teona’s cooking. She used the money they’d found on him and bought food. The cupboards were now stocked to the brim.
Teona had prepared delicious traditional Russian dishes, and she and Devan enjoyed huge meals while he tried to ignore them. He couldn’t ignore the aroma, though, and on the third day, he had caved and ate two large bowls of borscht.
He might have been the brains of the militant organization, but he wasn’t the brawn, and he sure as hell wasn’t much of a soldier.
Payton waited by the lobby door and saw Mara heading to the building in a dead run. She opened the door as Mara cleared the steps. “You made good time. Let’s go.” They double-stepped it, and when they reached the elevators, several people were waiting to get on. Payton elbowed her way through the crowd. “Code Fourteen. Make way.”
Everyone scrambled to get out of the way. When the elevator was empty, they stepped inside. Payton inserted a key into the panel and punched the button for B6. “Emergency bypass. Nonstop to my floor.”
Mara felt her stomach lurch when the elevator descended much faster than she had remembered from past visits. “Christ Almighty.”
They raced through the maze of hallways and checkpoints and entered the conference room less than four minutes later. They walked in quietly and saw Alex still making notations beside the images.
They stepped closer. “Alex, the colonel is here. Talk to us. What’s going on?”
Alex barked out
an order, “Sit.”
“We are.” Mara scanned the documents and writings on the whiteboard.
Alex continued to frantically write, and it reminded Mara of an old movie she’d watched about a teenaged savant and the way he filled blackboards with dusty scribblings.
Alex spoke without turning around. “Devan is alive.”
As gently as possible, Mara spoke to Alex. “Alex, you know that
isn’t—”
Alex finally dropped the marker to the tray and turned around. “I can prove it.” She walked over, picked up her water bottle, and took a gulp. “The pictures mean nothing, it’s the words in all caps that hold the key to the message. Here, the first document. Duchess. The second, Eyes. The third, Vacation. Fourth, Athletics. The fifth, Need.”
Mara studied the images. “I don’t get it. What are we missing?”
Alex punched her finger to each with a thud as she spoke. “Duchess, Eyes, Vacation, Athletics, Need? What does it spell?” She waited until the recognition hit them. “The first letter of each one spells Devan.” She tapped a finger to each document again as she spelled it out. “D-E-V-A-N.”
She walked to another area of the whiteboard. And these phone numbers aren’t phone numbers at all. Look 1-800-555-7843. The last four digits of this series of numbers are the last four digits of Devan’s Social.” She glanced over to make sure they were still following. “And the last four numbers here, 2596, are the last four of Devan’s cell number.”
She pointed to another set. “Here, 6174…the last four digits of my cell number.” She pointed to others. “This one is our anniversary, 0615. And on the last one here, 0315, my birthday.”
She turned to see Payton and Mara, their gazes glued to the images and numbers. Alex turned back to the first document and a number she had yet to explain, one she’d circled with red marker. “This number, this one is the proof. It’s on all five of the documents. 234-143-4948, and only one other person on the planet knows what this one means.”
They studied it trying to decode the digits, and Payton finally asked, “Another phone number…birthday?”
“That’s what is looks like, but no. We had a secret code back when we were in the Army together. She would drop this number on my desk sometimes.”
Payton leaned back in her chair. “So, what does it mean?”
Alex blushed and looked away. “I told you. It’s our secret code.”
Mara’s voice was strained but demanding. “Yes, you did, but what does it mean?”
Alex looked at her feet. “It’s private.”
“Speak,” Payton snapped. “If I need to make that an order, then so be it.”
“Fine.” Alex turned back to the board, so they couldn’t see her face. “When Devan and I joined the Army, we would have been kicked out if anyone had learned that we were gay. Even when we got together in 2015, there was still a lot of bias and discrimination with the old farts. Especially in higher ranks. They had their orders for equitable treatment, but you know yourself that wasn’t what happened. This was a safe way for us to communicate.”
“Go on.” Payton’s interest was piqued.
“Each number represents the number of letters in a word. Everyone knows that 143 is code for ‘I love you,’ right.” She saw they were following her. “This reads, ‘Do You Know-I Love You-Alex Elizabeth Maya Sheridan.”
Payton stood and walked to the whiteboard. Her lips moved as she counted the letters and checked the number. “Well, I’ll be damned.” She ran everything over in her head. “But this would mean that Devan is not only alive, but she also has Christopher’s computer.”
Mara shook her head. “That’s a bit far-fetched, don’t you think?” She tried to find a sensitive way to phrase her next words. “You two are the analysts, so let’s look at the data and think about this logically.”
She stood and paced the room. “We know she was shot in the leg trying to get back to the helo. Then she fell, what fifty feet from said helo? Even if she did somehow manage to survive all that, she’d most likely have had broken bones and internal injuries.”
She turned back to Payton and Alex, and her expression was a mixture of sadness and confusion. “She would be in no condition to overpower the man described by Jacob Altman.” Her hands shook and her heart ached as she argued the points with herself as much as with Alex. “He’s a large man. Yes, Devan is strong as an ox. She’s clever. She’s a soldier right down to her soul. But surviving the gunshot wound and the fall. Evading the police and the one known remaining rebel? I’m sorry. I can’t see it.”
Alex refused to be denied. “She got it. She knows I successfully loaded the program on Jacob’s computer and connected to their network. She’s also smart enough to know that the program would have propagated to any other computer that connected to that same network. And she knows we’d be monitoring those computers.”
Payton went back to the board to study Alex’s notes. “She has no idea what the program is, what it does, or how it works.”
“Well, yes, she does…sort of…well, just the basics,” Alex mumbled.
Payton’s head snapped around. “Excuse me?”
“She asked some questions when we were in Vaziani. I gave her the highlights of how it worked.”
Payton’s mouth opened, closed, and opened again. “What the hell were you thinking?” She was dismayed that Alex would risk divulging classified information to anyone, even Devan. “Do you have any idea how much trouble you could be in if that got out?”
“She has top-secret clearance,” Alex snapped. “For God’s sake, it was Devan, not a complete stranger.”
Mara stopped and snapped, “Stop, both of you.”
Payton gave Alex a scathing look. “We’re not finished with this.”
Alex lifted her chin defiantly. “All I told her was how the program will log information. Find and flag things like repeat numbers, images, and such.” She pointed to Mara. “You said yourself she was clever, brilliant even. She figured out a way to communicate with us without tipping the rebels off or being flagged by the Russian government for sending an email to a U.S. email address.” She continued when neither of them replied. “She found a way to communicate and not only protect herself, but protect us, as well.”
She picked up a printout from the table. “Another thing is the email address. It’s ours—mine and Devan’s. We used this address when Devan was deployed to Afghanistan. She set it up. 56And48@gmail. Same letter word code. 56 is Devan Conner, and 48 is Alex Sheridan.” She turned back to the whiteboard. “You can doubt this all you want, but she’s alive.” She turned to Mara and Payton. “Devan’s alive, and we have to find a way to communicate with her. We have to figure out a way to go get her.”
“I’ll concede the argument is compelling,” Mara said. “But—”
Alex stomped her foot. “No buts, damn it, we have to go get her.”
Mara’s neck was in knots. She rolled her head. “Hold on. Let’s just say that Devan is alive and has the computer. Where is Christopher? You think he just handed it over?”
“We find Devan, we find Christopher,” Alex argued.
“How do we know that he didn’t get this information out of Devan and is using it as a setup?” Payton asked.
“Colonel, you probably know Devan almost as well as I do. She would die before she’d hand over any information that would lead us into a trap.” Alex finally sat across from them. “You know that as well as I do.”
Mara agreed. “No, she’d never do that.”
“We’re not making any progress sitting here debating this.” Payton yawned. “We have to take this one step at a time. The first thing we must do is figure out a way to communicate with her. The email address, do you remember the password?”
Alex shook her head. “No. It’s been years since we’ve used it.”
Payton shrugged. “No worries, I can hack it.”
Mara and Alex looked at Payton with frowns of disbelief.
Pa
yton responded by rolling her eyes. “Oh, please.” She picked up a marker and stepped to the whiteboard. “We need to carefully compose an email. Find out where she is. The situation. Her condition. She fell out of a fucking helo, for God’s sake. She has to have injuries.”
Devan sat at a desk in Christopher’s apartment. She was exhausted from long days listening to Christopher’s rantings and long nights sleeping on the floor, but she pressed on. Dark circles shadowed her eyes, her vision was blurred, and she was jazzed up after six cups of coffee.
She opened the email account to add a new file, and her hand froze on the mouse. There was a number one beside the drafts folder indicating a new email had been saved. She clicked on it and read the subject line.
“Subject: ROGER THAT”
She opened the email and saw a flyer similar to the ones she’d created. She swiped away the tears blurring her vision as she read.
The image was a picture of a golden retriever with a heading that read, “Best Rescue RETRIEVER in the world.”
She swiped her eyes with the back of her hand. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She scrolled down and read the message.
Golden retrievers are excellent search and rescue dogs. However, before releasing your dog into a hazardous situation, important information must be gathered for the protection of all parties. One must always determine the following prior to proceeding.
1. The LOCATION of the victim.
2. The HEALTH CONDITION of the victim.
3. The ENVIRONMENTAL STATUS of the situation.
4. The SAFETY of the potential rescue site.
Call the number below for more information or to enroll in our upcoming class.
234-143-5660
Devan recognized the number, and the tears flowed freely now. Alex had sent the message and signed it with. Do You Know-I Love You-Devan Alicia Conner? They added the zero at the end as a placeholder to make it look like a phone number.
Chapter Thirteen
Payton couldn’t sleep. She kept worrying about the email they finally agreed upon and placed in the drafts folder. She wondered if it was too obvious. What would happen if someone other than Devan read it? She rolled over and looked at the clock. 0348. She sighed, contemplated getting up and working, but she was exhausted from sixteen-hour days at the office. Just as she dropped her head heavily onto the pillow, the ring of her cellphone pierced through the silence of the bedroom.