The Directive

by Matthew Quirk

  He went behind the bar and brought me a longneck Bud.

  “It’s a damn shame, you know,” he said. “That you and your dad went clean. I’m fine with all the detail stuff, keeping up the relationships, but nobody could beat your father for the big picture. And you, well…I’ll just say it’s nice having you back.” He raised his drink. “If only for a little while, of course.”

  I clinked his glass with my bottle. “Of course.”

  We caught up for a while, then Cartwright had to take a phone call. I pushed my chair back and was getting ready to leave when Jack stuck his head through the door.

  “Good. You’re still here,” he said. “What can I do? Anything on the papers?”

  “I took care of it,” I said.

  “Sorry I got held up. I had to finish a job. The courier thing.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  He poured himself a glass of water from the tap and sat down next to me.

  “Nice work today,” he said.

  “Thanks. Though you know, when I was thinking about calling you up, catching up with my old partner in crime, blowing off some steam before the wedding, I had in mind something like daytime drinking or a road trip, not robbing the goddamn Fed.”

  “Sorry about that. Though you’re holding it down like you do it every day.” He looked around the back room. I could hear Cartwright in the office, yelling at someone on his phone. The back still smelled like the old Ted’s: cheap cabinets, damp and mildewed.

  “Some bachelor party,” Jack said, and raised his glass of water. Tuck had been asking me about putting one together. I didn’t seem to have a lot of free time to think about it recently.

  “I’ve been to a lot worse,” I said. “Your courier job went smoothly, I hope.”

  “Yeah. The world’s sketchiest Vietnamese dudes out in Seven Corners. I can’t keep doing this work,” he said. “But I think I have a way out. Maybe you can give me your thoughts.” He pulled a folder from his bag.

  I rubbed my temple. “Jesus Christ, Jack. You haven’t even finished fucking up my life with the last scam. Maybe now’s not a good time.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  I looked over at the papers, slid them closer. They were registration forms.

  “You’re going back to school?” I asked.

  “Yeah. I’m done with the security stuff. There are just too many grays. I was wondering if I could ask you a couple of questions about how it works, with the credits. I guess everyone switched from semesters to quarters.”

  “Of course. School’s a good move. And you can really appreciate it when you’re older.”

  “When I think about sitting down for an exam—” Jack shivered. “But I’m going to do everything I can. I’ve got to make a change. You ever have trouble, get tempted, the stuff from the old life?”

  “Sure,” I said. “And I miss it. I wish it were different circumstances, of course, but today reminded me of the fun we used to have crossing the line, the old mischief, before everything got heavy.

  “But it’s like most things when you’re young and dumb,” I went on. “Nearly getting killed makes a great story looking back. But that’s not how I want to spend my time. I’m lucky to be where I am, and I don’t take it for granted for a second. It’s the little stuff: Sleeping through the night. Not fearing the knock at the door. Not having to keep a half-dozen lies straight in your head. Having an amazing girl I don’t have to hide stuff from—or didn’t use to. Driving past cops without breaking into a sweat. I’d take that over easy money and the thrill of a close call any day. It’s all just so much easier, simpler, happier.” I finished my beer, pushed it back on the bar. “Going straight is the best hustle out there.”

  “That’s why I’m so pissed with myself,” Jack said. “I told Dad I’d watch out for you and Mom when he went away. I never kept that promise. And now all this. I just keep fucking it up.”

  “You did all right,” I said. I looked over at the scar on his chin. He’d taken his lumps protecting me as a kid. “We don’t have to hash this out right now, Jack. It’s not exactly my favorite subject.”

  In the old days, it was the kind of thing we’d work out by getting fall-down drunk. We’d either end with our arms draped around each other’s necks, shouting how much we loved each other, or rolling on the floor punching each other in the face. Either way was therapeutic.

  “This is kind of hard for me,” he said. “Can I just tell you one thing?”

  “Sure.”

  “I tried, and I guess I did okay for a while, after he was gone. But it got to be too much. And then when Mom got sick and there was no money, it was just easier for me to be fucked up all the time. It’s not an excuse. It’s just what happened. I wasn’t strong enough. I wish I had been. It was shitty, what I did, bailing on you. You were just a kid. You carried way too much, way too young. And I’m sorry.”

  “You want me to forgive you—”

  “No. That’s not what I’m saying. I’ve got to earn that, and I haven’t. I don’t know if I ever will. And the night you got arrested. I’ll never forgive myself for letting you get caught. Never. I want you to know I can’t shut my eyes and try to go to bed without all those regrets running through my head, tearing me up. I just had to say it. I don’t want you to forgive me, but I need to tell you, I need you to believe me when I say I’m sorry. Truly. With everything I got. That’s all.”

  He looked down at the bar, then shut his eyes hard. His chin trembled.

  “I do,” I said, and put my hand on his back. “I believe you, Jack.”

  Chapter 26

  AFTER WE LEFT Ted’s, I stopped by my office to pick up a thousand pages of files on the dark-money case I wouldn’t have time to read. But really I just wanted to get to my computer to see if I had any bites on my cameras.

  To get to the servers linked to the camera and malware, first I went through a virtual private network, which created an anonymous tunnel over the Internet, and then through an anonymizing system called Tor that bounced my traffic around among a network of servers, hiding its origin.

  I didn’t understand exactly how it all worked. The impression I’d taken away from Derek was that it was the modern equivalent of the old trick of taping one phone to another, mouthpiece to earpiece, to defeat a trace.

  I was paranoid, so I used the Wi-Fi signal from the realtor’s office downstairs. They were always parking in my space. The connection was weak and slow, but I appreciated the extra layer. Between all the log-ins I had to go through and the dribble signal, it would probably have been faster to actually find a couple of phone booths and tape the damn handsets together.

  After all that, I logged in to the client software for my viruses, a program called DarkComet RAT, which stands for Remote Administration Tool and would let me take over the victim’s computer completely. Each time I got the same message: “Host not found.” I tried each flash drive. I tried Cartwright’s malware. I tried my hidden camera in the baseball stand. Nothing.

  I needed to prep that deposition and then do a triage on my other cases to keep the rest of my clients from bailing on me. I barely made any headway. Every five minutes, I would log in and refresh all my different backdoors and cameras, clicking over and over like a slots junkie.

  When I came up for air, it was getting close to eight thirty. I checked my cameras one last time, hoping to have something to show Lynch. None worked. I gave up. It was time to go home. At least Annie was safely gone, and at least I had a gun there.

  As I neared my house, I drove past St. Elmo’s, a little coffee shop and neighborhood hub where you could run a tab and keep your own mug on the rack. Idling at the stoplight, I thought I saw Annie inside. I parked down the street and came back. Her flight wasn’t supposed to arrive until ten.

  I checked my phone, saw the missed text messages she had sent. Just seeing her face made me feel better. Her laptop was on a side table beside a cup of coffee, and it looked like she was talking to som
eone, maybe the accountant from next door.

  I walked up to the entrance. As I grabbed the door handle, I saw Annie laugh, all her defenses down, then lean over and touch the arm of the man sitting across from her.

  I stepped inside and got a look at his face. She was talking to Lynch, laughing with Lynch.

  I walked behind him before Annie’s face could give me away. He was sitting on a low chair. I had the knife I’d lifted in New York in my pocket. I’d been carrying it wherever I could.

  I flicked the blade open and pressed the tip into his back near his heart, just under the shoulder blade. I balled his collar into my fist, a sure grip, and leaned down next to his ear.

  “Not another word,” I whispered.

  “Mike, hey, I caught an early flight back—” Annie had started to say as she saw me enter, but her smile disappeared as she watched the anger twist my face and noticed something not quite right about how I was standing over Lynch.

  “Wait a minute there, Mike,” Lynch said.

  “Get up and get the fuck out of here.”

  “Mike, what the hell are you doing?” said Annie.

  I tried to conceal the knife, but it wasn’t working. A good-sized group turned their attention toward us.

  “Good one, Mike,” Lynch said calmly as he patted my hand. He was smiling. In fact, he was the only thing saving me from myself.

  I saw a woman in the far corner sitting at a jigsaw puzzle, with a decent view of the knife, as she lifted her cell phone and put her reading glasses on to examine the digits. I could guess which three she had in mind.

  “What are you doing here?” I said.

  “Eating a cookie,” Lynch replied.

  “Mike,” Annie said. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  I looked over. The woman with the puzzle was talking on her phone. The police would be here soon.

  “Annie,” I said. “Run. Get out of here.”

  “I’m not going to run anywhere. What’s wrong with you?”

  “Let’s not let this little joke get out of hand, Mike,” Lynch said.

  The last thing I needed was to give the police a good reason to take a deeper interest in me. I was a murder suspect carrying two different identities, a wallet in each pocket. Who pulls a knife on a stranger in a coffee shop for telling a good joke?

  I pulled the blade back and dropped the knife in my pocket, then let go of Lynch’s jacket and stepped away.

  “That’s just a very old and very bad joke we used to play in the navy, Annie,” Lynch said. “I wasn’t his favorite CO.”

  “You know each other?”

  Lynch looked at me, waiting.

  I swallowed the acid rising in my throat. “Sorry, Annie. Just messing around.”

  “I guess we’ll never learn,” Lynch said, and lifted his palms.

  Annie shook her head. “Enough of this. I’ll let you keep doing whatever the hell you have going on. I have to run.”

  She picked up her laptop and headed for the door. I let her go, glad to be standing between her and Lynch.

  “If you come near her again, I’ll kill you.”

  He looked at me, unimpressed.

  “So what do you have?” he asked.

  I had nothing. “This isn’t a good place to talk,” I said.

  He twisted his head to the side, cracking his neck. Then he swallowed his last bit of cookie, stood, and walked me out to his car.

  “The cops cruised my house today,” I said. “What’s the story?”

  “Have you been a bad boy?”

  “You said you’d keep them off my back.”

  “You said you’d get this job done.”

  I knew Lynch probably had some law on his payroll. I had a feeling the police drive-by was a warning shot. I rattled off a list of every step I’d taken and filled him in about my new cover to get inside the building on Fed Day.

  “What else do you want from me?” I asked.

  “There’s no A for effort here. And this is not my first time getting jerked off, Mike. How are you going to get the directive?”

  “I have a way into the Fed. I can get inside the suite.”

  “So what, you went on the fucking tour? A class trip? What do you have inside the suite?”

  “Cameras. Trojan horses on the computers.”

  “Show me. Or I’ll go finish up my date with Annie.”

  “I need to show you on a computer,” I said, trying to stall. “At my office. Maybe—”

  He reached into his car, pulled out a ThinkPad, and opened it on the hood.

  “All right,” I said. “But before you connect to the cameras—”

  I was about to share some of my newfound expertise in Internet anonymity, but then I stopped myself. The more links between Lynch and this crime, the better.

  “—do you have a good signal?” I asked.

  “It’s fine,” he said. “It has a mobile card. What do I do?”

  I leaned over and started typing.

  “Walk me through every step,” he said, and pulled a pad from his pocket.

  “It can be a little tricky.”

  “Try me,” he said. “You think I’m going to take this on faith? Let you run this whole thing out of your pocket?”

  I had, actually. He took it all down, the log-ins, the software, the addresses of the servers. Not that it mattered. They didn’t show a thing.

  I started with the least complicated item, and logged in to the web server for the baseball cam. It came up “Host not found.”

  “What does that mean?” he asked.

  “Must be a flaky connection.”

  “Are you fucking with me, Mike?”

  “That’s a physical camera I hid in a gift,” I said. “He may not have opened it yet.”

  I tried to access the viruses I had planted with my USB keys.

  Connecting…connecting…connecting.

  I reached my hand into my pocket and felt my knife.

  “Host not found.”

  Lynch frowned and reached inside his jacket. Great. I had brought a knife to a gunfight.

  “It’s malware. It can be a little particular,” I said. I tried again, this time Cartwright’s spear-phishing virus.

  Connecting…connecting…connecting.

  Then a screen popped up with an IP address.

  Host connected.

  I pumped my fist. I was in, though it wasn’t all that impressive to Lynch.

  A side menu listed the program functions. It could bounce me all the e-mails sent to that computer, or every password saved on it. I pressed one called “Cam Capture.”

  A video window popped up. But it was all black.

  “Get in the fucking car,” he said, grabbing my elbow and digging the gun into my ribs.

  What was wrong?

  I looked down the street. Another car was waiting, a Charger with his backup. They had me covered.

  “There,” I said, and pointed to the corner of the screen. You could barely make it out, the letters were so faint.

  “What?”

  “The glow. It’s an exit sign. The office is closed. The camera’s working, but the lights are out.”

  “That’s on the desk?”

  “Yes. And I have more in the executive suite. I have eyes everywhere the directive will be.”

  “And you’ll be able to see it?”

  “I should,” I said. “They’re just coming online now. I can pull passwords. I can see inside the office, see where the restricted information is kept. I can get what you need.”

  He let my elbow go. The violence turned off like a switch. It was clinical.

  “Nicely done,” he said. “I’ll be back tomorrow, probably closer to five. I want to see screens and passwords and a minute-by-minute for Fed Day.”

  He shut the laptop and slid into the driver’s seat. “Tell Annie I said goodbye.”

  After he pulled away, I started toward the house to try to smooth things over with Annie, but she was already in her car, driving toward
me up the street. She pulled over.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “Meeting my dad for dinner,” she said. “What was all that about? You were acting like such an ass.”

  “Long story,” I said. The driver behind her leaned on his horn.

  “Can we talk when I get back?” she asked.

  That didn’t sound good. “Of course.”

  She rolled up the window and drove off.

  Lynch had seen right through me. I was trying to buy myself time, but he was tightening the leash. I was getting closer and closer to the point of no return, where my only choice would be to pull the job and then face whatever fate he had in mind for me.

  But this had come too close to my home, to Annie. He’d crossed a line. I had to find an out. The rule about snitching was simple: Dead kids don’t talk. But maybe I could inch up to the line and not cross it. Maybe I could get something for nothing.

  I opened my wallet and dug out a business card.

  EMILY BLOOM

  CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

  BLOOM SECURITY

  Her cell number was on the back. I took my phone out and dialed it.

  Chapter 27

  TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES later, I was looking for Bloom in the foyer of a Georgetown mansion where she’d told me to find her. I’d been to the house before. It belonged to a woman who was a full-time socialite and hostess (such things still exist in DC). She’d married for money, bought a beautiful Richardsonian Romanesque place on Q Street, and started throwing parties, which she liked to call salons with the full nasal French pronunciation.

  It’s not too hard to bring out the VIPs. Despite all the trappings of power on the Hill, most senators and congressmen live like college sophomores during the term, bunking in with other pols in apartments on Capitol Hill, living off takeout and cereal. Some sleep in their offices. Most are just glad for an excuse to get out of a two-bedroom apartment crowded with middle-aged guys in their undershirts.

  So here I was in the glittering firmament of DC’s social world: a party that ended at 9:30 p.m., where the juiciest discussion was about Congressional Budget Office scoring. I chatted with a derivatives lobbyist I knew as he scanned the room looking for someone better to talk to. He spied a whale of a man in a cream-colored suit, said, “Ooh, natural gas is here,” then walked away in the middle of my sentence.