by John Lutz
“Oh. Sorry.”
But he was clearly missing something, because she was now perched on the edge of the sofa, eyes wide and glistening, full lips parted in a half-smile. Ava looked particularly lovely when she had a hunch. “It wasn’t a waste.”
“You mean you’ve cracked the code. You’ll be able to read other messages.”
“No. They changed it right away.”
“You’ll have to explain, then.”
“It’s a phenomenon that sigint experts call downcreep. Codes that would normally be used only for top secret messages are extended to lower levels of importance. That makes it harder for code breakers to spot the important messages, because they’re hidden in the stream of low-level stuff. When you see downcreep at an agency, you should assume they’re preparing a major operation. Frequent changing of code is another sign.”
“I see. But this is not the official recommendation of the NSA.”
“Not yet. I sent a memo. Hope somebody will read it.”
“Okay. I’ll look for the bear under the bed, wherever they send me, even if it’s Las Vegas.” It would not be Vegas. But he didn’t want to think about that until tomorrow morning. “Sure you won’t reconsider the ride in the Mustang? As our hours together dwindle to a precious few?”
“If they’re dwindling, I want a nice warm shower. With a nice warm you.”
She stood up and began to unbutton her blouse. The movement dislodged the pen, which fell to the floor.
Laker didn’t notice.
CHAPTER THREE
While the CIA and NSA had sprawling suburban campuses, the Gray Outfit was small enough to fit into a Victorian-era row house on Capitol Hill. Its chief, Samuel Mason, had his office in a converted top-floor bedroom. The front windows looked out over neighboring rooftops to the Capitol dome. It seemed huge from so close at hand. You got a clear view of Freedom, the twenty-foot tall statue standing atop the dome, sword in one hand, laurel wreath in the other. As Laker set down his suitcase and took his usual chair in front of the desk on Monday morning, he found himself staring at it. Even though Mason himself was a riveting sight.
He had a large bald head, short thick neck, broad sloping shoulders. Sitting behind his desk, he resembled a mountain with a necktie. In an enemy attack on the Outfit last year, he’d lost the sight in his left eye. He wore a black patch over it, the straps crossing his bare, gleaming scalp above the ears. He also had a natty gray-and-maroon glen plaid patch, which he wore sometimes, just to discomfit people. It amused him to see whether they would compliment him on it or not. Mason had a strange sense of humor.
As usual, he skipped the small talk. “You heard what happened yesterday in Tallinn, Estonia?”
“A streetcar platform was bombed. Fifty-two killed, at last count, and more than twice that number injured. Last I heard, no claim of responsibility.”
“Death toll is up to fifty-four now. Still no claim.”
“Unusual. If it was ISIS or some other Mideast terrorist organization, they’d be boasting about it.”
“Maybe it wasn’t.”
Laker considered. “I was thinking, after the Muslim extremist attacks in Belgium and France—”
“Estonia’s not like Belgium and France. It’s small and rather isolated. Has little contact with the Mideast.”
“Then who are the top suspects?”
“It may not be an organized group. Just a couple of crazies. That’s the thinking in Tallinn, I hear. Estonia has a sizeable minority of ethnic Russians, who immigrated when Stalin occupied all the Baltic states after World War II. They’ve never assimilated. They claim the Estonians are prejudiced against them.”
“Not surprising. The Estonians didn’t ask to be part of the USSR.”
“They were sure happy to regain their independence when the Soviet Union broke up. Tensions between the natives and ethnic Russians have gotten worse since then. There have been recent incidents. Vandalism of patriotic sites and churches. Street brawls. Demonstrations turning into riots. But nobody had been killed. If this bombing is the work of the ethnic Russians, it would represent a major escalation.”
Laker smiled bleakly and muttered, “Look for a bear under the bed.”
“What?”
“Something Ava said.”
“About Estonia?”
“About the general world situation these days. She thinks the Russians are getting ready to flex their muscles.”
“Your girlfriend has the best brain in the NSA. Which actually isn’t much of a compliment. My colleagues in Fort Meade and Langley are discounting the possibility of direct Russian involvement in the bombing. I am not.”
Laker said, “Moscow’s in an expansionist mood these days. They’d like Estonia back.”
“And the rest of the Baltic republics.”
“Why wouldn’t they be using the same strategy as in Crimea and Ukraine? Encourage the ethnic Russians to make trouble. Then announce, we’ve got to restore order. Protect our fellow Russians. And send in the troops.”
“Because Estonia is not Ukraine. It has a stable democratic government and a growing economy.”
“And it’s a member of NATO.”
“Yes. You know what that means. An attack on one NATO member is an attack on all. Meaning if Russian troops invade, American soldiers will be among those fighting and dying for Estonia.”
Mason sat back, closed his eye, and rubbed his brow. His injury had left him prone to painful and debilitating headaches. Friends and rivals had urged him to retire. But Mason said he was as competent as ever, and only a little more ornery. “My fellow agency heads think I’m being alarmist. Sure, Moscow doesn’t like to have NATO allies along its borders. Sure, there’s civil unrest in Estonia. And Moscow is encouraging the ethnic Russians. But that’s all they’re doing. They’re not planning to invade. They’re not going to risk starting World War III.”
“Duly noted,” Laker said. “But you don’t think this streetcar bombing was the work of a couple of crazies.”
“The bomb was a small but powerful explosive surrounded by ball bearings. The type that would do the most damage. Its placement and the timing of the blast were meticulous. And whoever planted it has vanished without trace.”
“Seems like a professional op.”
“FSB. In my alarmist opinion. And I admit, I don’t have much to base it on.”
“So you want me to go to Estonia and establish that the bombers were FSB agents. Good way to do that, of course, would be to catch them.”
Mason raised both hands and put them on either side of his head. It was as if his headache was literally splitting. He was trying to hold the two halves together. “Laker, we’ve talked about this before. From an agent of your seniority, I expect finesse. Judgment. Not single-handed heroics.”
“Right.”
“Just because I suspect Moscow of direct involvement in Estonia doesn’t mean Washington can do the same. Remember, the bosses of the other spy shops think I’m out on a limb already. If anybody is going to start World War III, it’s not going to be the Gray Outfit.”
“Okay. So I’m just going to liaise?”
“That’s the word. You put on your suit and tie. Go to meetings. Listen. Fly home and report. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“My secretary has your plane ticket.”
Laker rose, took a farewell glance at Freedom atop the dome, and turned toward the door.
“Laker?”
He turned back. Mason was putting on his glasses, reaching for the next report in the stack on his desk. The next problem. He said, “Leave your Beretta in your office safe, will you? You’re not going to need it. And it’s bad taste, packing heat while sitting in conferences with our allies.”
Laker considered pointing out that Freedom had a sword as well as a laurel wreath. Decided it wouldn’t do him any good. Went out.
CHAPTER FOUR
As she arrived at work, Ava North received a text message from Laker: “On my way. W
on’t be gone long. NRS.”
NRS stood for No Rough Stuff. He didn’t want her to worry. Which was nice of him. If only he hadn’t said it before, about an assignment from which he’d returned on a stretcher.
She walked down the corridor, ran her pass card through a reader, and opened a door marked J-22. If you didn’t already know where you were going, the National Security Agency preferred that you not get there. Its signs were deliberately unhelpful. J was the cryptography directorate, and 22 was the section that dealt with the Russian Federation. It was a large room, with a tier of glass-walled offices from which the supervisors could look down on the underlings. The mid-level analysts were in a cube farm. Junior analysts like Ava didn’t even rate partitions. They sat in rows of desks.
Hers was the last in the row, meaning that she had a view of the flags flying before the main entrance and the vast parking lot. She also had the satisfaction of knowing that while she could see out, no one could see in. NSA headquarters was a big cube of black reflective glass.
She switched on her desktop computer and waited for it to boot up. Stern memos circulated regularly, reminding employees to turn off their computers when they went home. NSA was the most voracious devourer of electricity in the state of Maryland, but her bosses deplored waste. She entered her password and the screensaver, the shield of the NSA, appeared on the monitor: a bald eagle, perched like a parakeet on a gold bar, which on closer inspection turned out to be a key.
Ava gazed at it gloomily. She enjoyed the intellectual challenge of her job, but most of her assignments were low-level tasks. Unlikely she would make any discovery worthy of being symbolized by a gold key on this gray Monday in March.
She touched keys and her schedule for the day appeared. On top, in flashing red letters, was “0930 MTG IN DD HARDIN OFC.”
Ava sat back and sighed. She’d never met the Deputy Director but had heard about her. Rear Admiral Victoria Hardin was one of those people from the military who didn’t believe in coddling the civilian employees. Summoning Ava at the last moment with an entry in her schedule rather than a call or email was typical. From what colleagues had told Ava, she could expect the actual meeting to be even chillier. But it was 9:25 now, and tardiness wouldn’t be appreciated. She rose, smoothed her skirt, and headed for the door.
One long corridor, a flight of stairs, and another, longer corridor, and she arrived panting before a door that said only, DD J and K Directorates. She knocked.
“Enter.”
Admiral Hardin was sitting at the head of a small rectangular table. She wore Service Dress Blues. Her hands were folded on the table, and the sleeves of the uniform were ringed with gold most of the way to the elbow. She had short gray hair and one of those faces that don’t reveal much. Ava’s informants had told her you didn’t get anywhere trying to read Hardin’s eyes or mouth. The thing to watch for was a Y-shaped vein down the middle of her forehead, which popped out when she was angry.
She said, “Sit down, North.”
There was one other person at the table, a middle-aged man in suit and tie. Ava was always glad to have at least one fellow civilian at a meeting. In a movement that became habitual at NSA, she glanced at the ID hanging from a lanyard around his neck: Rahmberg S. K-14, it said. She didn’t know what that section did. His dark hair was going thin on top, and he had heavy bags under his eyes and a mouth pulled down by sagging jowls. She took him for a lugubrious fellow, but then he smiled and put out his hand. Maybe he was just unhappy about being in this meeting.
“Stan Rahmberg. Pleased to meet you.”
“Ava North. Hi.”
Hardin said, “Your superior showed me that memo you wrote last week.”
Ava didn’t know which memo it was. But the telltale vein was showing in Hardin’s brow, so she decided not to say anything.
“Thing that amazes me about NSA,” Hardin went on. “We have people here with doctoral degrees, and they don’t know things every recruit learns in his first week at Great Lakes Naval Station. Like when you get a reprimand from a superior, you accept it and move on. You don’t shoot back a memo full of bullshit excuses.”
Rahmberg was embarrassed for Ava. He pushed back his chair. “I’ll just step out if you’re going to discuss classified material.”
“Sit down. It’s nothing classified. Far from it. North flagged what looked like a routine message from a foreign agency for decoding. After spending a lot of time and money on it, her section established beyond a doubt that it was routine.”
“Oh,” said Ava. So it was the one from Moscow to all overseas offices, about online shopping during office hours. “I was mistaken, but—”
“No, I don’t want to hear the part that comes after but. I read your memo, I told you. It was very ingenious. All that crap about downcreep. With footnotes even. You just about convinced your superior that you weren’t wrong after all. That you hadn’t wasted hours of supercomputer time. That this memo had significance nobody but you had seen. You need to learn when to let a thing drop. It’s not hard to figure out. All you need is a bit of humility.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Ava had noticed that calling military types sir and ma’am had a soothing effect on them.
Not Hardin. “I realize humility doesn’t come naturally to you. You’re one of the Norths, aren’t you?”
“I’m not sure what you mean. My father was undersecretary of state for a time.”
“And your grandfather was Ephraim North, confidant of presidents, and your grandmother was Tillie North, Washington’s most famous hostess. How come you’re not a multi-millionaire lobbyist? Or married to one?”
Don’t say it, Ava commanded herself. But she did anyway. “Maybe patriotism had something to do with it.”
Hardin’s close-set eyes widened dangerously, but before she could speak, the phone on the table rang. She picked it up, listened for a moment, and said, “All right, bring him up.”
A manila folder was resting on the table next to the phone. Hardin opened it and scanned a page. She asked Ava, “Did you meet with Kenneth A. Brydon, Directorate K, Section 14, late Friday afternoon?”
The change of subject threw Ava. She said, “Well, yes, Ken and I chatted in the third-floor lounge for a few minutes. I guess it was about five. Why do you ask?”
“Apparently you were the last NSA person to see him alive.”
“Oh God—what happened?”
“Sorry to have to tell you this,” Rahmberg said. “I was Ken’s supervisor. It’s a terrible thing. He was mugged in Baltimore Saturday night. Stabbed to death.”
“When you talked, did he mention his plans for the weekend?” Hardin asked.
“No. We’re members of the Math Club. We were talking about a program for tutoring public school kids.”
“Yeah, that program meant a lot to Ken,” Rahmberg said. “Did you know him well?”
“No. I mean, I liked him, but we were just office acquaintances.”
“Did you talk about your jobs?” Hardin asked.
“No, never.”
“Oh? So you’re a stickler for the rule that employees in different directorates shouldn’t talk shop? Or was he?”
“He just said his job was too boring to talk about.”
Rahmberg bowed his head to hide a smile.
Hardin glanced at her watch again. “Okay. I don’t foresee any problems, then. What’s happened is that Detective Sal Amighetti of Baltimore PD showed up at the gate an hour ago and said he wanted to question Brydon’s supervisor and the last person here who spoke to him. He should’ve put in a request through channels. But since he’s here, we might as well—”
A knock at the door interrupted her.
“Enter,” said Hardin, rising from her chair.
A black Marine sergeant opened the door and stood back to let the Baltimore cop enter. Amighetti had to be near retirement age. His face was all seams and pouches, but his coarse gray-black hair was still abundant enough to be brushed straight back. It made Ava think
of the quills of a porcupine. He was short and broad-chested. His visitor’s pass hung around his neck. Hardin rose and gripped his hand hard. He winced. Ava guessed that like a lot of men his age he had arthritis in his thumbs. She shook his hand more gently.
“Sit down,” commanded Hardin.
Amighetti did not. He said, “I’d like to interview each of you separately.”
Hardin’s thin lips formed a grim smile. “Detective, this is the NSA. You do not barge in and start grilling people as if you were in the Baltimore slums.”
“I noticed it was the NSA,” said the Detective mildly. “Somewhere between being searched and handing over every piece of ID in my wallet before they’d issue me this.” He flicked the visitor pass with his forefinger.
“This is a secure facility. The procedure we’re going to follow is that you familiarize us with the facts of the case, and I decide how best to assist you within the framework of security requirements.”
Amighetti looked at her in silence for a while. Then he said, “You know, Admiral? I really like your striped pants.”
Ava and Rahmberg exchanged a sideways glance and kept their faces straight as the detective craned his neck to get a better look at the broad gold stripe down Hardin’s blue uniform trousers. “I was in the Marines in the Gulf War. Never did get to wear striped pants.”
Hardin gave him her beady-eyed glare. Realizing it wasn’t having any effect, she said, “Let’s sit down.”
They took their chairs. Amighetti pulled a notebook out of his pocket and flipped it open. “Mr. Brydon was killed Saturday night in the parking lot of the Calle 57 Casino, near the Baltimore waterfront. A man walking to his car found the body and reported it at 11:49 P.M. We don’t have the M.E.’s final report yet, but he hadn’t been dead long. Cause of death was a stab wound, entry in the back, deep enough to pierce his heart. No wallet, watch, or phone found on the body. We assume robbery was the motive.”
“So it was an ordinary mugging,” said Hardin. “Obviously it had nothing to do with Brydon’s work. I wonder what you’re doing here, Detective. Wouldn’t your time be better spent on the streets of downtown Baltimore, looking for the perp?”