by John Lutz
Thomas Laker and Ava North.
PARANOID ENOUGH FOR TWO
Sunday night in Washington, D.C., and the clubs and restaurants of the Adams-Morgan district were brightly lit, the sidewalks thronged. Every parking space was taken. Many diners and drinkers had to park on distant side streets and hike back to their cars at midnight when these streets were dark and deserted.
A fact well known to the city’s predators.
As one couple, strolling arm in arm, left the lights and people behind, a skinny kid in jeans was trailing them. His T-shirt bared heavily inked arms. His face had a wispy beard and dark, deep-set eyes. They were fixed on the couple. The woman had a willowy figure set off by a long, full skirt that she had to hold down against the wind with her free hand. Her purse hung from a strap over her shoulder. The man was tall and broad-shouldered. He was old, though. Which to someone the kid’s age meant forty.
The kid decided to take them.
His right hand slipped into his jeans pocket, and with swift quiet steps he closed the distance.
The woman turned, a look of concern on her lovely face. “Young man, no closer, please. My boyfriend spotted you two blocks ago. He’s just waiting for you to come in reach to break your arm.”
The mugger hesitated, but only for a second. His hand came out of his pocket and flicked his gravity blade open. Holding it poised for the underhand thrust, he stepped closer.
“That’s not going to do you any good,” said the woman. “Now he may kill you. He knows fifteen ways to do it with one blow.”
The kid looked at the man. He was standing quite still, arms at his sides, face expressionless. The kid took another step.
“Oh God—here!” the woman said, and tossed him her purse.
The kid caught it. Surprise held him motionless for a moment. Then he spun and sprinted into the shadows, arms pumping. Within seconds he’d vanished.
“I wasn’t going to kill him, Ava,” said the man. “Just disable him.”
“Yeah. For life. It’s only money. In this case, only twenty-four dollars.”
“Assuming that’s what he was after.”
Ava laughed. “You actually think this was an enemy op? The Russians or the North Koreans sent that kid? He’s still in his teens. Laker, you are so paranoid.”
“Paranoia is a secret agent’s best friend, my boss likes to say.”
“Which explains why everybody’s paranoid in the agency whose name none dare speak.” That was the Washington insiders’ nickname for The Gray Outfit, for whom Laker worked. It wasn’t entirely a joke.
Laker was staring into the darkness with narrowed eyes. “I would’ve liked to ask the kid a few questions.”
“Laker, it’s the city. Once in a while, even secret agents get mugged.”
* * *
Ava’s apartment was on New Hampshire Avenue near Dupont Circle. On her salary as a junior cryptographer at the National Security Agency, she’d never have been able to afford a place in one of the capital’s choicest neighborhoods. But she was a North, offspring of the celebrated political dynasty, and the apartment had been in the family for decades. It had served various Congressmen as a Washington pied-à-terre and at least one cabinet member’s mistress as a love nest.
“Care for a nightcap?” she asked as they entered. “I bought a bottle of Old Tongue-Shriveler in honor of your visit.”
“You shouldn’t have, but thanks.”
She returned from the kitchen with a bottle of Speyside Cardhu, his favorite single malt, and a glass. He always took it neat.
“Thanks,” Laker said. “What are you going to have?”
“Nothing. I want to finish up that report. It’s due tomorrow.”
She went to her laptop, which was sitting on the coffee table in front of the sofa. Ava had a home office with a desk but didn’t use it much. “Oh! The flash drive’s not plugged in.”
“You mean the thumb drive?”
“Funny how people can’t agree on what to call these things. Especially when ‘flash drive’ is so obviously the correct term.”
“But they don’t flash.”
“Sure they do. When you plug them in.”
“That’s a wink at best. On the other hand, they’re just the size of your thumb.”
“Your thumb. You have mutant thumbs.”
“Not so. Just measure one against your thumb.”
“I would if I could find it,” Ava said. She’d been rummaging through drawers as they’d talked. She stopped, put her head back and closed her eyes. “Oh, shit. It was in my purse.”
Laker had poured a glass of single malt. He set down the glass and the bottle and looked at his watch. “We should call NSA at once.”
“There you go again, Laker. It was just a mugging. Anyway, I would never put classified information on a flash drive and take it out of the NSA.”
“Or a thumb drive?”
“Or a thumb drive.”
“What about the draft of your report?”
“It’s on an Iranian code we broke last year. Mathematical and linguistic analysis might help us break the next one. But it’s not top secret. Or even bottom secret. It was just a lot of work.”
“Do you have a backup?”
“Sure. It’s on the system at the office.”
“So no harm done—except you can’t work tonight.” He held up the bottle. “Care for a bracing dram of single malt?”
“Ugh. I’ll make myself a Black Russian.”
They were halfway through their drinks when the intercom buzzed. She pressed the button. “Yes?”
“I’m looking for Miss Ava North,” said a soft wheezy voice through the grille. An old woman’s voice.
“Speaking.”
“Miss North, I have your purse. I found it on the street.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful! Thank you. Please come up. It’s 6-J, left off the elevator.”
She walked over to Laker, who was sitting on the sofa, and clinked glasses with him. “Here’s to good luck and good Samaritans.”
“I’ll be interested to see what’s left in your purse.”
A few minutes later there was a knock on the door. Ava opened it to a woman in her seventies, who was leaning on a cane. She had white hair under a thin faded scarf, and she wore bifocals.
“Please come in,” Ava said.
“I don’t want to be any trouble,” the woman said, almost inaudibly, and held out Ava’s purse.
“No trouble at all. Thank you so much. Here, let me give you something—”
“There’s no need.”
“Just for your time and inconvenience.” Ava had taken her wallet out of her purse. She frowned. “The cash is gone. Should’ve expected that.”
Laker rose and came over to the door. “Better check what else is gone.”
The woman peered up at him in alarm. “I didn’t take anything!”
“No, of course you didn’t,” Ava said. “We didn’t mean—”
“I’m sorry,” Laker interrupted. “Please come in and sit down.”
But the woman was already shrinking back. Ava took a step toward her, which only made her turn and hobble toward the elevator. Giving up, Ava glared at Laker.
“You scared her.”
“I didn’t mean to. I really wanted to talk to her. At least find out her name.”
“Oh, you think she’s an enemy agent, too? That little old lady?” Ava was pawing through the contents of the bag. “Everything’s here except the cash.”
“The thumb drive?”
Ava plucked it out and flourished it. “The flash drive.”
“Are you sure it’s the same one?”
“Of course. It’s a yellow Lexar.”
“Maybe slip it in your laptop just to make sure.”
“Laker! No foreign power was after my little essay. You can’t be suspicious of everyone we meet and everything that happens to us. You’re driving me crazy!”
She spun on her heel and went into the bedroom, ta
king the purse with her. She didn’t slam the door, though. Laker figured that meant he could join her once he’d finished his single malt. But if he didn’t want to be sent back to his place for the night, he’d better not mention the thumb drive again.
Even if he called it the flash drive.
* * *
The Gray Outfit was on Capitol Hill, but the NSA was located in Fort Meade, Maryland. Which meant that Ava had to leave for work before Laker did. Ordinarily he rose with her and set off for a jog. But on this Monday morning, he fell back asleep as soon as she shut off the alarm clock. He’d had a restless night.
He’d been trying to figure out what hostile nation would be interested in an analysis of a broken Iranian code. Hadn’t gotten anywhere. Maybe he was paranoid. But even when he awakened the second time and got out of bed, his suspicions wouldn’t let go of him.
As he made coffee, he tried again to shake them off. If this had been an enemy op, it had been an elaborate one to stage just to get hold of a thumb drive. And why would a foreign agency assume it would have valuable intel on it? As Ava said, she’d have to be pretty stupid to put secrets on a drive and take it out of the NSA.
As Ava also said, secret agents could get mugged, too. Considering the street crime statistics in Washington these days, it wasn’t even that unlikely.
What was unlikely was the purse being returned.
The thought brought Laker up short. He sat down with his coffee and let his paranoia, if that’s what it was, rip. Allowed himself to be suspicious of a little old lady. With a headscarf and a cane and bifocals and a querulous voice and timid manner. It was all a bit much, come to think of it.
Say the little old lady was an agent. That would mean that returning Ava’s purse was as important as stealing it. Which would mean that the purpose of the op wasn’t to steal her thumb drive.
But to substitute another one for it.
One that carried a virus.
It hit Laker with sickening force. When Ava plugged the drive into her desktop computer, the virus would infect the NSA system.
He ran into the bedroom, grabbed his cell phone from the table, and speed-dialed her phone. Heard it ring. Looked across the room to see that it was plugged into its charger.
Next he called the entrance security checkpoint at Fort Meade. Glanced at his watch as the phone rang. This was going to be close.
“Front gate.”
“Has Ava North passed through yet?”
“Maybe you have the wrong number, sir.”
“No, I don’t. You’re the NSA. I’m Thomas Laker. My ID code is J for John 1749. Now has Ava North passed through? This is urgent.”
“Give me a minute.”
It took more than a minute. Laker paced. Naturally the guard was verifying his ID before answering his question about Ava.
Finally the line opened. “Ms. North went through ten minutes ago, Mr. Laker.”
He ended the call and speed-dialed her desk phone. Got the recording. He said, “Ava, call me right away.”
Leaving his cell free for her callback, he went into the kitchen and picked up the receiver of the wall phone. Dialed NSA Security.
“Extension 317.”
“This is an emergency. Send somebody to the desk of Ava North in cryptography and—”
“Hold it. Let’s start with how you got this number.”
“I’m Thomas Laker, J for John 1749. You’ve got to—”
“Sorry, did you stay J for John? You’ll have to slow down, pal.”
* * *
Ava had gotten into the office early. She was passing empty desks on her way to her own at the end of the row, near the window. Just as well she didn’t have to chat with anybody. In the car she’d been running over her report in her mind and knew just what revisions she wanted to make. She sat down, switched on her desktop computer. While it booted up, she removed the flash drive from her purse and laid it on the desk.
The message light on her phone was blinking. That was bound to be Major Thornton, the project director, wondering where her report was. She’d wait until she could truthfully tell him it was done and on its way.
The screen was asking for her password. She typed it in. The NSA screensaver appeared, an eagle with spread wings, a golden key in its talons. She picked up the flash drive.
She thought she heard footsteps and voices behind her, but before she could turn to look, the phone rang. She leaned forward and reached for it left-handed. Her right hand was extending toward the CPU under the desk, to plug the drive into the USB port.
It was two inches away when a tremendous force hit Ava and she and her chair toppled over. She found herself lying on her back, with two burly U.S. Marines on top of her.
A man in a suit loomed over her. His eyes were staring at her right hand, as if she was holding a stick of dynamite with a burning fuse. He said, “Ms. North, please drop the thumb drive.”
“You mean flash drive,” she said and let it fall.
* * *
“NSA took no chances,” Ava told Laker that evening at his loft. She was drinking straight Speyside Cardhu. It had been that kind of day. “They inserted the drive into a nonnetworked computer. The effect was amazing. It was like a tiger hurling itself against the bars of its cage. Our cyber warfare experts say it’s the most effective virus they’ve ever seen. It would have spread from my computer to the whole NSA system in nanoseconds. Before we could have reacted, it would have swept every shelf in the cupboard bare. All our secrets would’ve been shooting across the Internet.”
“To where?” Laker asked.
“As yet undetermined. They’re tracing the route from servers in the Cayman Islands to Warsaw to Tokyo to . . .”
“It may be a while till we know who was behind this.”
“In the meantime, new regulations have already been announced. All USB ports on desktop computers are being sealed. Employees are forbidden to bring in flash drives from outside.”
“And thumb drives?”
“Those, too.”
Photo by Jennifer Lutz-Bauer
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A multiple Edgar and Shamus Award winner—including the Shamus Lifetime Achievement Award—John Lutz is the author of over thirty novels. His novel SWF Seeks Same was made into the hit movie Single White Female (1992), starring Bridget Fonda, and later remade as The Roommate (2011), starring Minka Kelly and Leighton Meester, and The Ex was a critically acclaimed HBO feature. He lives in St. Louis, Missouri, and Sarasota, Florida. In describing his serial-killer thrillers, John Lutz says: “I’m trying to provide readers with the kind of roller-coaster ride that will scare them a lot but compel them to buy another ticket.”
His website is johnlutzonline.com.