by D S Kane
Cassie shrugged. “What if someone hacked their way into the secure terminal area? Someone without a family. Bob Gault, for example.”
He shook his head. “I’d have noticed. So the only question left is, do you trust me?”
Cassie stared back. He’d asked and asked again, the question at the heart of her dilemma. If she trusted him, she’d conclude he’d delivered valuable information. She decided that for the time being, she’d suspend her suspicions. “Okay. I guess you’ve earned your favor. So what do you want from me?” She sipped her drink and waited.
“Before you disappeared, you’d earned a reputation as one of the brightest people at the agency. I need you to find the mole.” He put his glass down on the table. “If you agree to help me, you’ll need a way to contact me.” He looked ready to offer her a piece of paper he suddenly had in his hand, but she interrupted him, reaching across the table and touching his hand.
“I have a favor to ask first. Prove your value.” Their eyes locked together. She handed him the piece of paper containing the printed phone number and initials in Arabic carried by her intended assassin. She had also printed a license plate number on the paper. “I need to know whose phone number this is, probably in Saudi Arabia. And who owns the vehicle with this Saudi license plate? Also, this one in Washington, since it was outside my apartment building the day McDougal fired me. Who are they? Where do they live? What do they do? Let me know as soon as you can.”
Then she reached into her handbag. She handed Ainsley the assassin’s cell phone in a plastic dry-cleaning bag labeled “Golden Tulip Hotel, Riyadh.” “Have agency forensics process this. Tell me everything about it, fingerprints, purchase place, and date. Everything.” She reached into her bag again and removed one of her untraceable cell phones. “This is how we’ll stay in touch. Keep the battery charged. Don’t call me, I’ll call you. And, Lee, never use this phone for outgoing calls to anyone besides me, ever. Keep it on you at all times. Clear? I’ll be in touch soon.”
She saw relief on his face. Ainsley nodded in acceptance. “Sure. And thanks.”
He scanned the phone numbers and the plate number on the paper she’d given him, then dropped it into the table’s ashtray, took a match, and burned it. He picked up the ashes and rubbed them against his fingers until they were just a smudge on his skin.
The darkened flesh of his fingers morphed into Evan’s ashes and her eyes suddenly blinked with tears. But only for a second.
Cassie rose and backed away from the table until her rear touched the exit door to the alleyway. She pushed it open with her hip, turned, and disappeared from Washington as fast as she could.
As he retreated back to his office, Lee Ainsley felt so many things at the same time: a throbbing erection, possibly due to being so close to her, possibly from the danger emanating off her skin like the heat from a forest fire. Confusion from the text message he’d received three days ago, anonymously, telling him how to find her. He opened his cell and reread it: Yom Tov Deli says the one you seek is at 2126899999 and will need your help to survive.
Who the fuck had sent him the untraceable text message?
Chapter Nineteen
Charles Crane’s flat, 38 Vauxhall, Stantonbury, Milton Keynes, UK
July 7, 8:26 p.m.
Sir Charles Crane stood at the door to his flat and ran his skinny fingers over the crack between the door and its jamb. He found the tiny thread he’d inserted and smiled. Old habits die hard. He opened the door and scooped up the thread for reuse when he next left his home.
He dropped his umbrella in the brass pail and walked to the kitchen. There, he pulled a small glass from the pantry and filled it with port. The sweet taste would counteract the nasty events of the day. He took the glass with him into the den and turned on BBC2. He adjusted the volume up to mask his voice and entered the bathroom.
The bug detector registered the bathroom was clear. Not so the den, but he wanted whoever had placed the bug to think he hadn’t found it. With the bathroom door shut, he turned the water on all the way in the shower to create more white noise.
Safe now. He punched a number into his cell phone. He turned on the voice modifier. “Do you have what I requested?”
“No, not yet. I need a few more days.” The man sounded nervous. That was good.
Crane’s management wouldn’t remain patient much longer. “I’ll give you two more days. That’s all. I’ll have my local contact deliver an encrypted thumb-drive. Use it. For delivery back to us, do it as usual.” He terminated the call.
There was one more asset from whom he needed to get a progress report. He entered the other number and waited for her to answer.
Almost three weeks had passed before Pesi Houmaz received all of the proposals, and with his receipt of the last one, he sat alone in the conference room once again.
Sitting in the conference room of the Houmaz family estate in the Al Madinah As Sinaiyah area, on east side outskirts of Riyadh, he reviewed printed copies of the documents. One of the chip manufacturers was in Taiwan. Another was in Hong Kong. There was one in Switzerland. The final one was in Southern California. All four were qualified. As he read them, he realized he had no basis for comparing them. He tried to design a weighting scheme for making a decision, but, they were all so similar. After an hour, he realized his engineering background wasn’t adequate to understand the differences between what he was taught ten years ago and what was now possible. He was out of his depth. He paced the room, his head swirling in the incomprehensible proposal details from each vendor. Wasn’t there an easy way to make this decision?
Had Tariq been available, he’d have deferred to his older brother. But Tariq’s email was routed from a nonresponsive address. There wasn’t any way to contact him. Why did he do that? Was his brother in a non-secure environment? Was he being tracked? Was he trying to keep someone from finding Pesi?
Pesi shook his head. He wondered if his brother really trusted him. He wondered if it was really his brother who’d contacted him.
What was paramount here? The recommendations of each vendor were almost identical. The prices for design and production were about the same. Their schedules to complete the prototypes were similar. He needed some way to pick a vendor, but there was no significant difference. As the sun set, he heard the call to prayer.
While he knelt on the prayer rug in the conference room, Pesi saw a vision. He saw himself entering the country of each vendor, and in every case except one, he saw himself arrested for espionage, or worse, assassinated by the Mossad. He decided that his prime criterion for selecting a vendor would be which country he’d feel safer visiting. He could never appear at the manufacturer’s facility. But he’d want to be nearby, just in case something went wrong.
Which country was the safest for him to travel to? He’d been educated in the United States, at the University of Cincinnati. The city was ugly to him. In fact, the whole country was. His face alone was enough to make things dicey for him in the US, with their facial recognition software and cams everywhere. But he’d stick out in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Not a good thing. Switzerland was close to the Netherlands with its huge Islamic fundamentalist population. Just a three-hour drive or train ride between the two locations. Amsterdam to Bern. Yes, the Swiss corporation was the safest alternative.
He reread their proposal, looking for flaws. The company had won many awards, but so had its competitors. It was small and ambitious, and seemed to have little regard for international copyright law based on the sheer number of infringement lawsuits filed against them during the twelve years since they were founded. They also had the best price and the quickest order completion timeline. A small company with lawsuits might be desperate for business and more cooperative.
In the end, he chose was what was easiest and safest. He typed and sent an email to Antron SA, near the town of Gals, Canton of Bern, Switzerland:
Dear Dr. Greystrom,
Our firm has selected your company to complete the
backward engineering of this new communications chip. Please contact me. I will deliver the sample we want you to duplicate. For the first round of manufacture, we will want 200 units for testing. Please indicate your payment information. We are willing to pay eighty percent of purchase price in advance if you can guarantee the order will be delivered within nine weeks. Otherwise, twenty percent on signing and the rest upon delivery.
Sincerely,
Sigmund Tahir
Associate Professor of Computer Design
University of Riyadh
Pesi smiled. The more cash they took up front, the 1ower the likelihood they would ask revealing questions.
The identity he used for the email had been set up for him by Tariq long ago, along with many others. Its address was a dead drop and Tariq had backstopped this identity several years ago.
Within three days, Pesi received a signed contract for the development and production of two hundred test units. In fact the two hundred units were all he thought Tariq would ever need. They wanted eighty percent up front.
Pesi called his driver. Time to visit the bank.
William Wing’s mouth was wide open as he snored in seat 23B of KLM flight 612 from Hong Kong to Munich. He dreamed he met Betsy Brown face-to-face right after she’d bested him at the latest hacker challenge. In the dream, she was seven feet tall, heavy, and ugly, with huge hands. She was naked. He was having sex with this monster when his smartphone beeped.
At first he was relieved to be awake. Then his mouth fell open as he realized he had an erection. Moving as far from the man in seat 23A as he could, he pulled the cell from his pants pocket and scanned its screen.
He’d set up several roving Internet bots, each one using ECHELON as a base to piggyback within, and one of them had just reported back: the word “Bug-Lok” found in an encrypted email between Riyadh and Antron SA, near the town of Gals, Canton of Bern, Switzerland. He opened the copy of the email his bot had retrieved:
Dear Dr. Greystrom,
I will travel tonight to your facility and meet with you tomorrow afternoon at the restaurant you suggested. At that time I will answer your questions about the Bug-Lok device and deliver the advance payment.
Sincerely,
Sigmund Tahir
Associate Professor of Computer Design
University of Riyadh
William felt in his gut Sigmund Tahir was no one’s real name. Now he had currency to trade with Jon Sommers when he arrived. He forwarded the email to Jon. This was getting interesting.
Before this email, he’d known Stillwater Technologies in Santa Clara, California, was Greenfield’s subcontractor, since he’d stolen the Bug-Lok plans from them. But now he knew there was another player involved. Who was this, posing as a Saudi academic computer specialist? “Damn. Hot damn.”
He closed his eyes and tried to clear his head. He thought of Betsy Brown, the enigmatic “Butterfly” he’d never actually met, he imagined a small body and a pretty face. Shifting in his seat, he put a pillow over his crotch and, hoping for a more attractive woman in his dreams, he drifted back into sleep.
Chapter Twenty
Jon Sommers’s apartment, Ottobrunner Strasse 17, Munich, Germany
July 29, 2:11 p.m.
Jon and Ruth sat at the tiny kitchen table, arranging index cards. Ruth pointed to one and frowned. “The favorable probability of this alternative is low. I think it won’t work and, if they find out, they can set up in minutes to exterminate all of us.”
Jon stared at the rest of the cards on the table as if they might provide an argument in defense of his plan du jour. “But, but, what if we—”
“No, Jon. They might fail to notice, but it’s too unlikely to count on.” She removed the card and tore it in half. And picked up another one. “Same with this one.” She tossed the pieces of both of them in the wastepaper basket under the table. She picked up yet another and held it. “But this one, well, it’s brilliant.” She placed it where the first one used to be. “Don’t you agree?”
Jon stared hard at the card. Not his first choice. “Yes, dear.” He sighed. “I think you’ve nailed it.” He touched the card where it lay on the table.
The door buzzer rang. Both jumped, startled. Jon picked up his Beretta PX4 Storm Mini, pulled the safety off, and stood with his body to the side of the door. Ruth grabbed her Beretta Nano and moved to the opposite end of the doorway. He peeked through and opened it, placing the safety back on. “Avram. It’s good to see you again.”
Avram Shimmel stared at Jon’s handgun and shook his head. He swung his head toward Ruth’s gun and sighed.
He looked as if he’d been beaten. It was obvious he was too tired to smile, and his expression was more a grimace than a grin. He edged his huge body inside the door and placed his back to the wall. “I need a shower and coffee. Can we talk after?” His voice sounded scratchy.
Jon pointed down the hall. “Second door. There are fresh towels inside on the shelf.” He watched his friend stagger away. “Looks like he’s been on the run for a while. He smells like a cow field.”
Ruth nodded, then turned back to the table and studied the index cards, scratching her chin. “Something’s missing here.”
Jon faced Avram and nodded. “So you killed twenty?”
Avram rubbed his hair with a towel. He shrugged. “It pays well, and Israel wants them dead. I’m not even sure who my handler reports to. Someone high up, probably in Aman,” he said, referring to the Israeli military intelligence directorate. I have a plan to use the money.” His nose twitched. “Something smells good.” He turned toward the kitchen area.
Ruth opened the oven and pulled a tray from it. “Food. Reheated from what was delivered over the last two days, but it was good then.”
They gathered around the small table. She and Avram took the two chairs and Jon paced the room, chewing on a kosher chicken wing. The room was quiet while they ate. While Jon did the dishes, Ruth moved closer to Avram. “You know what we’re going to do?”
“Yeah. Some hair-brained scheme from Mother that will probably get us all killed.”
Ruth frowned. “Well, there is that possibility. But Jon is the planner this time.”
“Jon’s plans never work. Last time he was shot. The time before that, he was shot. The time before that he was captured and tortured. And the time before that he was shot.” Avram shrugged.
She shook her head. “I’m vetting the plan.”
Avram was silent for a few seconds. “Good. I will too.”
Jon emerged from the kitchen holding a dish towel. They stopped talking and faced him. He shrugged. “Right then. Why don’t we show you what we’ve got.” He pulled his notebook computer from its case and turned it on. “Here is the plan. Such as it is.”
On the screen was an outline, steps numbered with a few at the top checked off. “We’ve assembled the team. William should be here before the end of the evening. Next, we each review the plan and fault-check it.”
Avram was silent, his finger tracing the lines. “Step three is to contact Mother for approval. What if the old man changes the objective? He does that, you know. Did it to me. Cost me the lives of my family.”
Jon stopped cold. He thought how Mother’s plans had cost the lives his parents, and then over a decade later, cost the lives of the first team he served with. The muscles of his face tensed. “Yes. I remember.” He grimaced. “He can be an idiot. He’s hurt me, too. But it’s his game. Why don’t we withhold judgment until we hear what he offers? We can always tell him to go to hell later.”
Avram’s brows arched and he pointed his finger. Before he could speak, there was a knock at the door.
All their heads turned. Ruth’s Nano was in her hands, and Jon pulled his Mini and loaded a shell into the chamber.
Avram stood to the side of the door and peeked through the view hole. “It’s William.” Ruth and Jon lowered their guns as Avram opened the door.
William scanned their postures and pointed a
t the guns. “A circular firing squad? Glad to see you, too. You three haven’t been partying without me, have you?” He pulled his spinner suitcase through the door. “How’s it going?”
Jon found himself bearing a grin. “Welcome. Much better, now you’re here.”
William pushed the suitcase to the wall. “What’s this all about?”
Jon said, “We’re planning to steal the Bug-Lok plans from a building and wipe their servers and backups. Your role should be safe. No danger at all. I promise.”
William shook his head and muttered something about seeing giraffes singing in a rock band. “You told me to find Cassandra Sashakovich. That’s what I did. So now the mission has changed radically. Is she involved in this one?” He scanned the screen of Jon’s notebook computer. “Is this it, then?”
Jon craned his neck over William’s shoulder. “She isn’t part of the assignment. And yeah. There are four steps. First—”
“I’m not an idiot. I can read it myself.” After a few seconds, William frowned. “This won’t work. We don’t know the locations of the backup servers. I need more intel before I can craft a bot that worms into the servers. Every one of them simultaneously, or they’ll just restore the files from the surviving backups.”
Avram thumped his hand on the table. “I see another problem. We’ll need more than the four of us. The server is likely guarded.”
Ruth frowned.
Jon shrugged. “Let’s craft a better plan.”
Jon brought another folding chair from the coat closet and the four sat. He faced the others. “We can ask Mother for additional operatives. We’ll also need transport to San Jose.”