Unholy Code (A Lana Elkins Thriller)

by Thomas Waite

“I can drive myself now.”

  “Point taken.”

  “Yours, too.”

  “Look, your happiness is most important to me, not whether you believe what I believe. I could be wrong about all that stuff. Maybe St. Pete’s going to meet me at the Pearly Gates and give me the old heave- ho.” Which eked a smile out of Emma.

  “Do you really mean you’d accept it if I became a Muslim?”

  “Absolutely. I just want you to know that your choice is yours alone, and not confused with feelings for someone else.”

  “I don’t think that’s what’s happening here, Mom, although I do love him.”

  “So what are you going to do about his uncle?”

  “This is America, not the Sudan. Tahir’s going to have to deal with our feelings.”

  “Did Sufyan text you after they left?”

  Emma nodded. “I’m picking him up for school just like always. He says his uncle can’t stop him from seeing me.”

  “You can’t blame Tahir for being worried, not after what that family’s been through. And you can’t go the same way to school anymore.” Lana pulled out her phone: “Here’s the route that creep put up on the Web about you two.”

  Emma studied the screen. “What the hell! That’s exactly how I go. How did he even know that?”

  “That’s the shortest distance between those two points,” Lana said, hoping that Steel Fist had simply been guessing; the thought of neo-Nazis already tracking her daughter’s movements was too horrifying to consider. “But you’ve got to start changing how you go every day. It’s not hard to do. Look at this.”

  She slid a map in front of Emma. Before going to bed, Lana had highlighted half a dozen different routes her daughter could take to and from school, which included stops for Sufyan; a small red dot designated his home. She’d also colluded with Don on another security measure.

  Emma ran her finger along the yellow lines, shifting the map to read the street names.

  “I figured you’d be doing the driving,” Lana said. Sufyan didn’t have a car.

  Emma looked up. “Do you think those threats are going to become news?”

  “I hope not, but the Post probably has someone monitoring the Steel Fist website. They did a piece about it a few weeks ago when he registered his ten millionth follower. Whether the paper will spread the word about you two, I can’t say. Let’s hope not.”

  “Can’t you stop them?” Emma asked.

  “No, I can’t. But I’ll talk to Deputy Director Holmes and see what can be done a little higher up the food chain, maybe get someone to nudge the publisher. We could make the argument that neither of you is even a legal adult yet.”

  A point that usually made Emma bridle. Not today.

  Don straggled into the kitchen, hair bunched to one side. His robe hung open, exposing his prison stripe pajamas. Emma had given them to him for Christmas as a gag gift, which Lana hadn’t known about until he opened his present. She’d held her breath when he took out the top, replete with a prison number—his birth date. But he was smiling and wore them most nights, joking that after years in prison they made him feel right at home.

  He was the last of the clan to activate the espresso machine. “Everybody sleep okay?”

  “No,” Emma and Lana answered at the same time.

  “Me, either. I don’t think I really fell off till about four. You tell her about the dog?” he asked Lana.

  “What dog?” Emma lowered her mug.

  “We’re looking at getting a Malinois,” Lana said.

  “I’ve never heard of them.”

  “Remember the story about the Belgian military dog that was on the Osama bin Laden raid?” Don asked.

  “Uh, no?”

  “That was a Malinois. They’re like German shepherds but they have shorter hair.” Don pushed his own out of his face and grabbed his java. “They make excellent guard dogs.”

  “Who’s going to train it?” Emma asked, clearly at odds with any thought of doing it herself.

  “None of us. No time for that,” Don replied. “We’re going to have to buy one all ready for duty.”

  “Is he going to be okay with me?”

  “Of course, but the three of us are going to have to be trained to work with him.”

  “You’re kidding,” Emma laughed. “We have to be trained for him? That’s classic.”

  • • •

  Emma opened the garage door and looked over her shoulder. Her Ford Fusion was two years old, white, and spotless. Her parents had insisted on a safe car. She’d wanted a sports car, an argument had ensued, and they’d won. But Emma liked the Ford, and it made her feel like an adult to drive to school and park it in the lot.

  She backed out, looking for bad guys. That was how she thought of them, but she had a hard time figuring what they’d look like. Skinheads? She knew cool punk skinheads. And she doubted anyone trying to kill her would be that obvious.

  What she didn’t see as she pulled away was her father, shotgun by his side, waiting down the street to follow her in his old Chevy pickup. By taking the pump action, Don was risking a fast return to prison for violating his parole guidelines. It had been fine for him to be armed on the high seas, but bad news for him to try that in Bethesda.

  Emma turned into one of the town’s few modest neighborhoods and parked in front of Sufyan’s house, a small clapboard two-story, freshly painted by his uncle in a cheerful yellow hue with refrigerator-white trim. A red door provided a flash of bright color when Sufyan hurried out with his knapsack. His uncle stood in the doorway staring at the de- parting young man. He never lifted his eyes to include Emma. If he had, she would have waved. She wanted Tahir to warm up to her, but it felt like trying to melt a block of ice in a blizzard.

  Sufyan slipped his solid frame into the front seat and dropped his pack to the floor. He smiled, but didn’t kiss her. He avoided that with Tahir always watching them until the car was no longer in sight. The man had piercing eyes, like he could see right through you.

  So her first kiss of the day never came until they braked at a stop sign at the end of the street. But this morning Emma pulled a U-turn and headed back the way she’d come.

  “Hey, where are you going?” Sufyan asked. “We’re going to be late.”

  “We’ve got to change the way we come and go to school. Didn’t your uncle show that website to you?”

  “No, but he tried to take me to school today.”

  “And you told him no?”

  “My mother told him to let me go with you, and then he pounded the table and walked away.”

  Emma gave him the URL and waited while he looked up the Steel Fist website on his phone.

  “I have six ways to come and go from my house to yours and school,” she told him. “My mom had that ready for us this morning.”

  “I like your mom. She’s cool.”

  “And my dad?” Emma asked.

  “He scares me. I don’t think he really likes me seeing you.”

  “He’s old school. Not about race,” she hastened to add. “With the religious stuff. Both my parents just don’t buy any of it.”

  “I don’t see how people can’t believe in God,” Sufyan said. “Look at all this.” They were passing a city park near Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School. Flowers everywhere. “It’s so beautiful.”

  Emma nodded. “Talk to him about it sometime. See what he says.”

  “Did you say your evening prayers?” he asked.

  She shook her head, unwilling to lie.

  “Morning?”

  “No, but I had a latté.” A non sequitur she hoped would make him laugh.

  Sufyan suffered a smile. “Me, too.” He said nothing of his prayers, which he never missed. They were as important to him as breathing.

  They finally came to a stoplight and kissed. Emma had put on lipstick before driving to his house especially for this moment. She loved his lips, his looks, everything about him. When he took to the court as a point guard, she always
thought of Wesley Snipes in White Men Can’t Jump, an old movie her father had insisted she see when she showed the slightest interest in basketball. One look at Snipes had her thinking OMG, I want a guy just like him. She’d hardly noticed Woody Harrelson. Then she’d seen Sufyan playing summer ball at an outdoor court and felt a shortness of breath. Not long after she’d brought him round to meet her parents.

  Sufyan had enrolled a few weeks before, having just moved to the district in June. He could shoot, drive to the hoop, spin in the air and pass behind his back. And he was deadly with three-pointers from any spot along the perimeter. The school was expected to move from also-rans to contenders this year. She was proud to hold his hand as they strolled onto campus.

  He was also the most sensitive guy she’d ever met. Sufyan was the first man she’d ever made love to. “Same here,” he’d revealed as they cuddled on her bed afterward. He believed their lovemaking had formed a sacred bond between them. That a guy could even talk in such terms proved no small part of Emma’s sudden interest in Islam. There was nothing remotely “hook-up” about him.

  Sufyan wrapped his arm around her back to escort Emma to her first class, AP World History. That was where her friend, Mindy Wellstrom, stood waiting.

  “Did you see this?” she asked Emma as the bell sounded. She was holding up her phone, hand visibly shaking.

  Sufyan took hold of the young woman’s wrist so they could see the screen.

  “Shit!” Emma said to Sufyan’s immediate consternation. She was staring at a Washington Post headline: “Suburban Teens Targeted for Terror.”

  • • •

  Lana laid her Sig Sauer 9 millimeter semi-automatic under a nubby summer-weight sweater that she’d draped casually across the passenger seat of her Prius. Looking around, she backed out of the garage. It was about fifteen minutes after Em had left with Don on her heels. He’d already texted to say the young couple arrived safely at school.

  As Lana drew within feet of the tree-shaded street, Em also texted: “See WA Post.”

  Lana braked, groaning at the headline and photo. She scanned the story and texted Emma to avoid reporters.

  Lana took side streets through Bethesda, eyeing the rear-view mirror as much as the lovely gardens in their fading summer glory.

  She made decent time to Fort Meade, passing through security at the gate. The Marine guard knew she was licensed to carry her gun.

  “Keeping that close to you today?” he asked her.

  She nodded.

  “We all are,” he replied, perhaps to reassure her. He failed, but she doubted any comfort would come until Steel Fist was identified and arrested.

  Or killed.

  Lana hurried straight up to Holmes’s office. His longtime executive assistant Donna Warnes waved her in to see their boss.

  He looked up, every one of his seventy-eight years imprinted in the lines on his forehead, cheeks, and chin. The bags under his eyes looked packed, the orbs themselves weary as a winter sky.

  She noticed his electric razor sitting on his desk and guessed he’d slept on the base. It was an option for all of them whenever circumstances grew especially tense. Bob, as she called him when they were alone, might not have moved farther from his duties than the long leather couch nestled against a wall.

  “You’re getting protection,” he told her without preamble. “So’s Emma and Don when you’re all together. It’ll be 24/7 for the foreseeable future.”

  “You saw the Post?”

  “We’ve already contacted the publisher. Showing those kids like that, a pair of seventeen-year-olds?” He shook his head. “How’s Emma doing?”

  “Emma’s in love, so that’s all she’s really thinking about.”

  “He seems like a nice young man,” Holmes said, as if by rote, though Lana figured he’d probably had Sufyan thoroughly vetted.

  “He is. His uncle’s a handful.” Which Lana guessed would come as no surprise to Bob, either. She filled him in on last night’s confrontation.

  The deputy director leaned back. “He could be more than just a handful. The CIA thinks he was Al Qaeda in Sudan. He was on their radar long before his nephew took up with Emma. Now that there’s a link directly to you, the FBI is keeping a very close eye on him.”

  “Seriously? Al Qaeda?”

  “The uncle and the boy’s dead father.”

  “What about his mother?”

  “Nothing, but if it’s true she must have known. The agency’s still digging.”

  “And Sufyan?”

  “Nothing on him yet, but they could be using him.”

  “To get to me?”

  Bob nodded.

  “I don’t think so. The uncle was really agitated last night. Either that or it was an Oscar-winning performance. He forbade Sufyan to see Emma again.”

  “How did she react?”

  “She shrugged that off and picked him up for school today as always.”

  “So the boy was allowed to go with her after his uncle’s big display in your living room?”

  “They’re seventeen, Bob. I don’t know how it was when you were raising yours, but there’s no forbidding a romance at that age now unless you’re part of some fundamentalist religious community.”

  “Which they are. They’re Sunnis.”

  Neither spoke for long seconds. It was hard for Lana to imagine the young man as a zealot when he’d been up in Emma’s bedroom breaking all his faith’s rules about premarital sex.

  “I’m not saying the boy knows,” Bob went on. “He probably doesn’t. I’m not even saying Tahir is Al Qaeda now, much less when he was back in Sudan. I’m just saying Sufyan and his uncle and mother are being watched. And now I’m hearing Tahir’s been in your home.”

  Lana’s turn to nod—uneasily. Al Qaeda in my house? A chilling thought. “Don should be licensed to carry.”

  “I’ll make sure we talk to the Bureau of Prisons. It’s definitely subject to parole conditions.”

  “He was armed on the Black Sea.” Don had been doing a six-year federal sentence when his drug contacts in Colombia had made him valuable to the DEA. Then his high seas sailing skills made him even more useful to the Defense Department.

  “That was then and this is now,” Bob replied.

  “They make exceptions,” she said.

  “And he’d be a good candidate for that. We’ll do what we can.”

  In Lana’s experience, that meant Don would be locked and loaded by nightfall.

  “Tell me about the security detail you’re arranging for us.”

  “Three rotating one-man shifts per day.”

  “A little on the thin side with Emma, Don, and me coming and going,” Lana said.

  “I agree, but getting any coverage is really tough with our domestic challenges. The threats to just about everyone on Capitol Hill are increasing almost every day. And the White House?” He waved his hand as if there were no telling the level of hatred directed toward the incumbent.

  “Don’s thinking we should get a Malinois.”

  “I can help you with that.” Holmes was smiling for the first time in days. He suddenly looked years younger. “I had one myself for eleven years. His name was Bingo, like the old song. My son raises them up near Hagerstown. Superb dogs.”

  “We’re going to need an adult for guard duty.”

  “He trains them for that if they don’t go to the military. Or for special security details if clients have unusual requirements. He may have one suitable for family work. I’ll check.”

  “So what did you want see me about?” Lana asked.

  “Steel Fist.”

  “Of course … ”

  “I don’t know about you, but I’m not buying that any one person is capable of what he’s done. The release of all those files on citizens was not supposed to be possible. You told me so yourself.”

  At Bob’s request, Jeff Jensen had tried to hack NSA’s domestic surveillance files last month, though neither Lana nor Jeff had any idea of the ex
treme nature of their contents. He’d failed to make a dent in the agency’s deeply layered encryptions. It irked her to no end that another hacker had succeeded.

  “So all that private data was real?” Lana said. “Not some stab at propaganda?”

  “They were old. They were supposed to have been destroyed. Now members in both houses are demanding to know why we ignored the post-Snowden reforms.”

  “That’s not all they’re demanding.” She showed him the subpoena from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

  “I see we’re scheduled for the same day. I wish I could say I’m surprised, but I warned you. We’re going to want you to push back hard with testimony about the need for even stronger national anti-terrorism standards. The agency’s legal counsel will prep you. Oysterton’s a prime example of that, but we’re going to have to fight this battle with facts, not anecdotes, which is what they’re doing with stories about good old boys holding down the fort. That’s what they’re going to hit you with. Me, too. We’ll coordinate our testimony.” He handed her back the subpoena. “I want you to try to attack our files again. Use that Bortnik woman instead of Jensen this time.”

  “Really?”

  “A fresh perspective. Just try it. Indulge me. See where Bortnik’s forensics take you.”

  She realized he wanted Galina to search for the footprints of the hacker who’d succeeded where Jeff had failed. If Galina could find the hacker’s trail, it might reveal the weaknesses in the NSA’s network that had led to the release of those embarrassing documents—and ultimately lead to the identity of the cyber culprit.

  Bob lowered his voice. “I suspect we’ve got a mole in this operation.” He looked out his window at the wide expanse of NSA facilities. “There are thousands of possibilities here. A mole’s the only way we could have been penetrated.”

  “A Snowden?”

  “No, someone who’s probably still working on the inside, passing it along to an openly declared enemy.”

  “Well, Galina’s very good. She’s excellent, in fact, at detecting patterns in metadata.”

  “Meantime, be very careful out there, Lana.” Bob had returned his gaze to the window. “You’re an open target now.”