Death and Treason

by Seeley James

  Olivier shrugged.

  The oldest boy spoke to his father in French. His words were foreign, but his angry tone was easy enough to translate.

  At another table, Tania, Emily, and the new girl, Sylvia, huddled together in conspiratorial conversation. Tania said, “Another thing to w-w-watch out for with Jacob is…”

  Which was not a conversation Pia was interested in. She drummed her fingernails on the table impatiently. Was there a way to overcome the Frenchman’s fears? Was it worth the effort?

  “Forget him, Dad.” She nodded at Olivier. “We need to figure out what Pozdeeva wanted. His files are full of things we don’t understand. Have you looked at the microdot inventory?”

  “There are thousands.” Alan shook his head. “You’re still looking for the needle in that haystack?”

  “It must be in there.” Pia pulled up the inventory Bianca’s team put together. She pushed her tablet between them. In unison, they sighed when faced with the monumental task of looking through forty thousand documents and files. First stop: a glance through the pivot table showing types of documents: invoices, handwritten notes, deeds, recordings, bank statements, financial filings, photographs, and miscellaneous.

  “Let’s check the notes first,” Dad said.

  Olivier’s son got up from the couch and engaged his father in the impatient and petulant tone only teenagers can voice. His father responded in the universal tone of fathers: louder and deeper and angrier.

  Pia and Alan glanced at them for a second before looking at each other. They had been like those two in the past. They felt the antagonism between parent and child like an age-old song they used to sing. If felt like years since their conversations escalated too quickly. They gave each other a knowing smile. They were glad to be beyond that stage now.

  Not counting yesterday.

  They turned their attention back to the screen. They noted a few promising items and pulled up the translator’s notes with the original scan. After twenty entries, nothing jumped out at them. They kept looking.

  Olivier’s argument with his son grew to the shouting stage. Olivier stood, his face red, his fists clenched. The boy’s arm pointed at Pia as he shouted something in French. Olivier slapped his hand away. The boy made a fist.

  Alan stepped between them. His large build intimidated them into silence. He pushed them apart with a stern scowl.

  For a full minute, Alan stood with a hand on the chest of both Frenchmen. Their heated breathing and snorting began to subside. The boy lowered his fist, then his chin. The father sucked his teeth and let out an exasperated sigh.

  Olivier calmed his breathing and rattled off what sounded like a concession to his son.

  They retook their seats.

  Olivier turned to Pia. “Please accept my apologies. My son said, ‘Chacun voit midi à sa porte.’ Everyone sees noon at his door. It means, we care only about our own interests. He is right. I have been looking out for my family, ignoring the danger you are in.” He folded his hands in front of him, penitent. “It is useless to argue. You have proven yourself capable against these men, albeit in small numbers.”

  “You’ll be safe at Sabel Gardens,” Alan said.

  “I appreciate your generosity.” Olivier held up a hand. “We cannot stay there forever, but when we leave, I will take full responsibility for my family’s safety. Blaming you for my wife’s murder—” he bowed his head “—was not right.”

  Pia nodded. “What can you tell us about Dad’s cache of documents?”

  “Strangelove’s men got to Barcelona ahead of you. They found the trail and discovered Eleni’s cache. Strangelove came to me in person the day after you wiped out his men in Cyprus. He didn’t know if you’d left anything with me, but he suspected it. He threatened my son. I told him about the boxes you left in my care. He took everything and left instructions with more threats if I didn’t comply. We called him minutes after you called me.” He choked and took a moment to compose himself. “I am truly sorry.”

  “We’re past that,” Pia said.

  “What are you looking for?” Olivier asked.

  “Dad documented transactions between Roche’s companies and the Russian company, Santalum. It was a long time ago, but we believe it proves money laundering. Our agents in Singapore and Bogotá have retrieved caches, and we have the documents from Zurich.” She sighed. “When we get to Washington, we’ll sort through it.”

  “We went to the FBI,” Alan said, “but they need some tangible evidence before they can open an investigation. They called me a conspiracy theorist.”

  “Did you know Pozdeeva?” Pia asked.

  “Not personally.” Olivier scratched his chin. “I heard his name. But I can tell he was reasonably important because he was never in any official photographs.”

  “That’s it.” Pia looked back and forth at the men. “The Russian way.”

  “What?” Dad asked.

  “What’s not in the Pozdeeva files?” Pia asked. “What’s missing?”

  Alan grabbed the list and scanned it. With his eyes glued to the screen, he scrolled patiently, checking each line like a near-sighted entomologist counting insect eggs. After several quiet minutes, he looked over the edge of the tablet at Pia, then set it on the table.

  “There’s nothing about me.”

  “Did they have kompromat on you?”

  “Their auditors were in our satellite facilities.” He nodded with his mouth drawn tight. “They photographed and analyzed satellites we were building for the Defense Department.”

  “Is that bad?” Pia asked. She prayed for a positive answer and knew there wasn’t one.

  Olivier picked up Alan’s tablet and scrolled through the data.

  “Espionage is treason.” Dad clenched his fist. “They had pictures and videos of them looking over the software and the codes in our facilities. It was proof that they’d had access to top-secret technology. Reporting them would’ve destroyed my reputation in the industry. Not reporting it implied that I allowed it. That’s how Strangelove and Roche kept me from going after them. I would’ve gone to jail.”

  “Mutually assured destruction.” Pia reached for his hand and held it. It was a difficult secret for him to keep all these years. He’d been played by the financiers, but he never revealed the extent of his security breach to the government. “How badly did they compromise US intelligence operations?”

  “If we had launched those satellites, they would’ve had a front-row seat at the CIA.” He met her gaze. “I made excuses and found a way to rebuild them using ternary systems instead of binary. Where binary has off/on operators, everything is either zero or one, ternary has off/on/maybe.”

  “But that’s what makes our system impossible to hack. That’s a good thing.”

  “Yes, our system is rock-solid in security.” He shook his head. “The Russians have never hacked a Sabel system to this day. But I should’ve told the Feds. Lying by omission is still lying. It would’ve been the end of Sabel Industries, so I kept it a secret.”

  “It’s been years. Nothing bad happened. We can come clean now.”

  “You’re right. I should. Even if they ban us. It’s the right thing to do.”

  Olivier coughed. “Are you done with your confession?”

  Pia and Alan looked at him.

  “This is a picture of Ilya Pozdeeva standing at CIA headquarters in Langley.” He pointed at a corner of the picture. “Barely visible in the background is Kryptos, the famous sculpture containing the Vingère cipher. There is another picture of him standing at the Hirshhorn. If you’re familiar with the sculpture museum’s grounds, you’ll notice he’s standing to the left of Antipodes, the second cipher by Jim Sanborn, who made Kryptos. He gave you this clue because everyone knows Popov detests art. He thinks it’s a waste of time. Pozdeeva left you a code.”

  “You need a key to decode a Vingère cipher.” Pia grabbed the tablet and looked at it. “I’ll get Bianca’s people on it right away. Thank you, Oliv
ier.”

  “What would he have left for a key to the cipher?” Dad asked. “Something you don’t write down but is easy to find. Like a calendar or a famous quote or a name.”

  They retreated into their thoughts for a minute before deciding it could be anything.

  “One more thing.” Olivier pointed to a file on the tablet. “This is the deed to Popov’s dacha. The very house where he murdered my wife.”

  CHAPTER 28

  We landed in Stavanger on a chilly yet sunny November morning. Neither of us had a clue what to do with our captured Russian soldier. Miguel had advocated for pinning a confession to the murders in Svaneke on his chest and dropping him off at airport security. Mercury backed that plan. My idea to keep him around prevailed. You never know when a sedated Russian might come in handy.

  The pilot lowered the airstair. I handed him a pistol full of Sabel Darts.

  “What am I supposed to do with this?” he asked.

  “In case our guest wakes up.”

  “I’m not taking part in your kidnapping.”

  “Let’s get our roles straight.” I patted his shoulder. “I’m the kidnapper, which makes me a fugitive. You’re aiding and abetting a fugitive’s flight from justice after his participation in the biggest Danish slaughter since King Christian II murdered a hundred and fifty Swedish leaders in the Stockholm Bloodbath of 1520.”

  The pilot pinched the bridge of his nose. “Stockholm is not in Denmark.”

  “That’s what the Swedes were telling King Christian—” I lowered my voice to a whisper “—and look where that got ’em.”

  Miguel shouldered him aside, and we left.

  The nice thing about flying on your own jet while looking, acting, and dressing like the ground crew—because that is your true socioeconomic brotherhood—is that no one expects you to walk into customs. We skipped it and went straight to the rental counter, where the only car left was an Audi S5 hot rod.

  We drove the short distance to NATO’s Joint Warfare Center. That’s where big-brain guys plan the genocide of certain political or ethnic groups who might piss them off someday. It’s also the biggest collection of brass outside the Pentagon and about as useful. Luckily, we didn’t need to break into the base. The carrier-class routers we were looking for were outside the perimeter. Carrier-class routers are the kind that internet suppliers use to drop a megahuge-bandwidth connection to operations like your local cable company or the biggest military co-op on the planet.

  The little camera on Bornholm had sent its video feed to a spoofed IP address. Until Bianca explained it to me, I had no idea that hackers could pretend, or spoof, the physical location of their computer. Now that she explained it to me, I still don’t get it. All I needed to know was that to find the guy, we had to find where he plugs into the internet. She traced him to a switching station near NATO’s JWC.

  We walked into the unattended station, an innocent looking building about the size of a school gym, in broad daylight with our balaclavas on. I smiled and waved at the video-attendant who sat in Oslo. Probably. She waved awkwardly and frowned and spoke through the intercom in Norwegian with a certain amount of surprise and strain in her voice. “Hvem faen er du?”

  “Air Conditioning.”

  “You are English?”

  I shrugged. “OK.”

  “Some ID please.”

  “Hang on a sec.” I raised my rifle butt and smashed the camera.

  Miguel had the door open. We circled into our target: the router room. It was about the size of a basketball court and filled with server racks. It was geek heaven. Each rack was bolted to the next, rows and rows of them. Power and networking cables cascaded from a wiring harness above our heads.

  Bianca’s team had prepped us with complete how-to’s. We installed two devices, a dummy that was easy to spot and another they wouldn’t notice for days. We had them wired into the right ports and were out of the building in two and a half minutes.

  Balaclavas off and scooting through the neighborhood, we thought we had gotten away with it.

  Mercury leaned in from the backseat. ’Sup dude? Getting on the wrong side of NATO just for fun? Didn’t Changing Woman talk your boy out of this?

  We’re good, I said. Down the road and gone.

  Mercury laughed. Another voice laughed with him.

  I looked over my shoulder to see one hot blonde with a cat in her lap. What the fuck? You promised not to bring your friends around. You know I can’t handle it. I need my meds.

  Mercury squeezed my shoulder in a patronizing manner that made me want to break his hand off. Chillax, bro. You’re in her hood, show some respect. This here’s Freyja, goddess of love and battle. The Norse knew those two things are inextricably connected. Anyway, I was hanging at her crib, Sessrumnir, where she keeps her warriors. You should drop in sometime. You’d love it. Your kind of people, homes. Anyway, her MVP for Viking of the Year is driving that cop car.

  I said, What cop car?

  Miguel turned around to look out the back window at the same time I looked in the mirror. Three seconds later, a VW Passat with Militaerpoliti written on the hood crested the hill, lights blazing.

  “How did you know they were coming?” Miguel asked.

  “I get messages.” I shrugged.

  “I hate NATO cops,” Miguel said. “Always act like they’re in charge of the free world.”

  I put the hammer down. The Audi doubled the speed limit. We pulled away from the Passat, but traffic—and my reluctance to endanger the nice people of Stavanger—worked against us. Miguel worked the phones and maps, asking the Sabel Security help desk for good escape routes. Between the sources, Miguel pointed me in the right direction.

  Norway never got the memo on autobahns from their German friends. Everything was a two-lane road. Making matters worse, the major streets were half bicycle lanes. Skirting traffic that stopped because of the sirens and lights, we screeched against guard rails and sent a couple cyclists wobbling off the shoulder.

  We took a wrong turn heading for a ferry dock, which seemed to be the destination for every road that wasn’t heading up a mountain. Not that there were any options. I threw it into a four-wheel drift and spun around with the cop on our heels. He never took Ms. Sabel’s aggressive-driving course and couldn’t make the turn. We were heading up the hill, watching him in the mirror, as he tried to get his car turned around in a crowded ferry-ramp.

  Mercury leaned forward. Did I mention Freyja has money on that guy? Don’t get cocky now. Look out for the school bus over the hill.

  We crested the hill with enough speed to get some air under all four tires. When we came down, the brakes were already slammed to the floor.

  Three kids looked into my eyes, frozen with fear. They stood in the street next to a bus as I slid sideways. We stopped with a foot between Miguel’s door and the kids. The engine stalled.

  Miguel zipped his window down. “Hammersåk?”

  Two of them blinked. One pointed to the left.

  The engine fired up. I slipped into gear.

  Mr. Viking flew over the hill, slammed on his brakes, slid sideways. I kept my foot on the brake to protect the kids. He squealed his way down the slope and bumped the side of my rental. The impact wasn’t enough to set off the airbags, but we were stuck to each other.

  He started yelling in Norwegian over the loudspeaker. He was using one hand to hold the mic and the other to open his door. He had one foot on the ground.

  I tossed up my hands and shrugged apologetically. At the same time, I stomped the accelerator. Metal screeched against metal as I extracted my Audi from his VW. With all four tires pouring smoke, I pulled away, slowly at first, then gaining speed until the last shred separated. The cop stood there with his mouth open.

  He had no idea what to do. Apparently, most Norwegians respect authority.

  Miguel waved goodbye to the kids. They waved back.

  We flew down the side street, tires shrieking as we drifted onto the next big
road. It took us into a dark tunnel. “Where does this lead?”

  “We’re on our way to Trolltunga. Troll’s Tongue.” Miguel pulled a pouch of pistachios from his pocket. “It’s a big, thin piece of rock that sticks out over the fjord. It’s two thousand feet high. An iconic piece of Precambrian bedrock. Like the Norwegian version of Monument Valley.”

  Crossing the yellow lines in the dark tunnel, I passed a truck and two cars like they were standing still. “Why there?”

  “I’ve never seen the fjords.”

  “Miguel.”

  “You know,” he said while munching a nut, “whenever I travel with you, I get shot at, arrested, chased, shipwrecked—all kinds of bad things. Can’t we do some sightseeing once?”

  “We’ve never been shipwrecked.”

  “Hurricane Dolly.”

  “Yeah. OK. Not the ship though. Just the landing craft. I’ll give you ‘Zodiac-wrecked’ on that one.”

  A mile behind me, the cop’s flashing lights lit up the tunnel like Christmas. We flew through the three-mile-long tunnel, seven hundred feet below Byfjord, otherwise known as the Atlantic Ocean. I passed two more cars and squeezed back into my lane to the sound of everyone else slamming on their brakes.

  Finally, I broke the silence. “Has Bianca found the bad guys’ lair?”

  “Not yet. Soon as we’re out of the tunnel, take the first right. Should be a nice view while we wait for her team to get back to us.” Miguel finished his pistachios without sharing. “Since you’re no fun.”

  We sped up the incline leading from the bowels of the earth and turned onto a small ribbon of pavement. The damn cop was behind us, only half a mile. Our fenders clicked across the fence posts, and our tires whined around every hairpin turn. We reached the scenic overlook and slowed.

  Miguel rolled out.

  I pulled to a stop, got out, and leaned my butt against the hood. Miguel was right. It was a nice view.

  The cop screeched to halt behind me. He got out and claimed to have a weapon in his hand. I couldn’t take my eyes off the scenery. He kept ordering me to do things in different languages. I presumed they were instructions for getting on the ground. I get that a lot. Police always want me face-down on the ground.