Within twenty minutes, he had set up his false tracer as well as a sub-program to alert him when the real trace was underway and closing in. He spent the next ten minutes reviewing what he’d set up while mentally reviewing what he’d learned over the years from several sources, both criminal and non, regarding the kind of computer work he was doing.
Only when he was certain he’d done all he could, did he finally start the search of all of the computer systems of the FBI, CIA, Pentagon, and the Navy looking for anything recently connected to the Los Angeles. If they actually were aware Cashman was on that sub, and Jack was almost certain they were, he was hoping to find out what had tipped them off to the fact.
He found references to the attempts to contact the submarine that had only begun in the last twelve hours. But there were no references to why the Navy was trying to contact his brother’s boat, nor who had ordered it. That information was marked at a level of classification that would trigger the trace back to him and he was not ready for that to begin just yet.
He had hoped to find a clue to the identity of just one of the conspirators he was hunting, but in the end he once again came up completely empty. Whoever these people were, they knew how to cover their tracks all too well.
He checked his alert program and was relieved to find the indicator bar still safely at zero. So far his presence in the system hadn’t been detected by anyone, but that was all about to change. It was time to throw his Hail Mary pass and hope it was completed.
Jack plugged in the thumb drive and launched the Sleeper file, bringing up the login window. He’d been thinking over how to get past this particular road block with only one way to do it. It would guarantee that he’d be traced, but he had no other option.
He accessed an FBI program that the cyber division used to crack password protected files and systems around the world and turned it loose on the Sleeper file. As soon as he did it the trace alert window flared to life and the indicator bar quickly moved off of zero and was heading toward 100 at an alarming rate.
It reached the quarter mark just as the login and password fields were filled in and the Sleeper file opened up to reveal its secrets. Jack scrolled through several records, coded messages, transfers, military orders and bank records from around the world, but none of them yielded a solid lead or pointed to any specific individual who could possibly be in a position to engineer an overthrow of the U.S. Government, from within or without.
The trace alert program began to flash red as the bar passed seventy-five percent. Jack had little time left but felt a slight flare of hope as he stumbled across a curious posting in an obscure chat site on the Internet. The sender was named Shadow and it had been sent to an e-mail address, [email protected].
“Found an eagle and bear exhibit on island trip,” Jack read the message aloud. “Of note: eagles return to nest at night and bears are extremely hard to track.”
The message had been posted on the same day and near the time that Cashman had taken his trip to Nassau to meet with his old friend Karpov.
“Right day, right time,” Jack muttered softly to himself. “Alright, let me see if I can find out just who this mysterious Mr. Hoover is.”
With a quick glance at the trace alert, now approaching ninety percent, Jack punched in the command to search globally for any reference to a [email protected]. A few popped up on the screen, but nothing of any relevance showed up. He sat back, thinking for a second. He decided to try to trace the sign-on to its source server, but just as he began to enter the commands to start the trace the entire screen flickered and changed to a solid white with ACCESS DENIED in big, bold red letters filling the screen. In the upper corner, where the tracing message had been flashing, there were now just two terrible words, TRACE COMPLETE.
Jack stared at the upper corner for a very long minute. He failed to get any pertinent information that he was in desperate need of and now he’d just tipped his hand. The conspirators now knew that he knew something and they would be coming directly after him now. He would be lucky to get out of the building a free man, and his odds of living to see Inauguration Day had just dropped dramatically.
Moving with a deliberate slowness, he shut down the computer and pulled out the thumb drive as he got out of the chair. Then violently, he slammed his open right palm against the side of the monitor, sending it flying across the room. Pieces of glass and plastic scattered across the room when the monitor impacted the wall.
“Damn it, damn it, damn it…” he swore quietly before exiting the server room. There was a maintenance exit nearby. If he hurried, he might just be able to get out of the building. But where he could go next completely escaped him.
TEN
Cavanaugh was nearly apoplectic with rage at the latest report. It had been bad enough to discover someone was attempting to access the information Karpov had delivered to Cashman. They had been able to eliminate Karpov as a suspect as he was being followed and hadn’t had the time to engage in either of the previous searches.
Cashman must have somehow gotten the information off to a third party, though no one seemed to be able to figure out exactly how he’d done it in the limited time that he’d had the information, and it was this unknown person who had presented himself as a threat and a credible one at that. How the hacker had managed to locate the Sleeper file defied any attempt at explanation.
While there was nothing left in the file that could prove damaging to their cause, the fact that file was now in their enemy’s hands was troubling. About the only good news Cavanaugh had received so far was that the hacker hadn’t managed to locate the Pathosis file.
Had that file been compromised Cavanaugh would not have time to clear out of his office before agents from every law enforcement agency would swarm in and take him and the rest of his conspirators into custody.
Cavanaugh had been assured that there was no way to connect Sleeper with Pathosis but then again he’d also been assured that there was no possible way to open Sleeper. An assurance that proved to be of little value when the alert sounded that Sleeper had in fact just been opened.
He’d also been assured that the next attempt on Sleeper would result in the immediate trace back to the hacker. But again the assurances fell short as the trace program took much longer to locate the terminal the hacker was working from.
Then came the quick series of disaster upon disaster. The hacker had been working right under the noses of the very people trying to track him down and then amazingly had managed to slip out of a secure building and avoid capture after opening the supposedly un-openable Sleeper file.
The only good news that came out of the near-catastrophe at least was that they now had the identity of the hacker: Jack Del Rio. But that was proving to be of little comfort to Cavanaugh.
“How the hell did he manage to get away?” Cavanaugh raged at the woman who’d drawn the unfortunate task of reporting the latest round of bad news to Cavanaugh.
“He has been issued a legitimate Secret Service credential and he is expected to be in and out of the building,” the woman replied defensively. “It wasn’t as if we could issue a shoot to kill order on an FBI Agent without a reasonable explanation, sir.”
“Did no one think to pursue him? I assume there is at least one security camera in the area that would have told you which way he went after he exited the blasted building?”
“He exited the building before anyone could get eyes on him,” the woman replied defensively. “As for external cameras he knows where they are located just as well as we do and knows how to avoid showing up on one when he doesn’t want to be on one. It is his area of expertise after all, and he has spent the last few months finding every possible crack in our security across this entire district.”
“Very well,” Cavanaugh seethed. “He’s the best in the business and had the advantage of anonymity working for him, but no longer. Now that we know who it is, I want him dealt with, immediately. No more soft-pedalling either. I want that man dead
by the time I sit down for dinner tonight.”
“Should I inform Director Collins?”
“Tell him nothing,” Cavanaugh snapped angrily. “He’s too close to the man to see what needs to be done. He had his chance to get his Golden Boy out of the way and failed. See to it that you fare better.”
“Yes, sir,” the woman replied as she turned and briskly walked away.
Those damned Del Rios, Cavanaugh raged silently to himself, beginning to understand Georgina’s obsession with eliminating any and all trace of that traitorous clan. That family’s last two surviving members were proving to be a real pain in the ass.
So far their disruptions had been somewhat minor, but if the younger Del Rio somehow managed to locate and gain access to the Pathosis file it would be all of their undoing. Fortunately, only three copies of that file existed and were in trusted hands. But what if that also proved to be as unreliable as the assurances that Sleeper was as safe and secure as possible?
Cavanaugh reached for his phone to call Soors and Wells. He had to be certain their copies were in fact secure and that a fourth copy did not exist. For the very first time, Cavanaugh began to worry about their chances for success.
Those damned Del Rios, he raged as he punched buttons.
***
Cavanaugh would have been surprised to discover that his quarry not only shared the same concerns about his own chances to succeed, but just at that particular moment was rating them far lower than Cavanaugh was rating his own.
Jack had slipped out of the Secret Service’s headquarters and kept to the alleys and shadows mindful of the myriad security cameras in the area that could be used to track him down. He maintained the pattern for a full thirty minutes, constantly checking behind him to see if he was being followed.
Only when he was completely certain that he had actually slipped away cleanly did he stop moving, setting up shop in a small coffee bar. He slipped a hundred dollars to an attractive twenty-something lobbyist’s aide to borrow her laptop just long enough to send out a brief e-mail and receive a reply.
The account he accessed had been set up by Karpov for Cashman to use in case more information was needed, or another clandestine meeting was required, and prying eyes would not be aware of the communication. Out of options, Jack had decided to use the e-mail account to reach out to Karpov in the hopes that the man might have something else, something he hadn’t yet shared, that might prove useful.
He’d been surprised at the speed of the reply to his original e-mail, and even more surprised at how quickly Karpov could meet him in person. Jack had been under the impression that Karpov had been heading back to his homeland to deal with the conspiracy on that end after meeting Cashman in Nassau.
Yet here Jack was, standing among a crowd of tourists in front of the Reflecting Pool and looking at the Lincoln Memorial, fighting off the chilly air of the late afternoon when Karpov strolled up from behind. Without actually appearing to be looking for possible watchers, Karpov expertly scanned the area and determined that no unwanted eyes or ears were upon them at this time.
“You should take better care when you are contacting someone for the first time that you've never met before my young friend,” Karpov said in English, with an amazing lack of a Russian accent. “I’ve know many agents, young and old, who have paid dearly for that kind of nonchalance.”
“I don't have time for spy games, Karpov,” Jack snapped impatiently. “Especially with people who are supposed to be on the same side as I am.”
“So I gathered from your message,” Karpov replied without rancor, understanding all too well where Jack was coming from. “You were very wise to find another computer to send it on. They surely know now that it was you that was looking into their files and they'll be keeping an eye out for you now. They might even have decided you are too much of a threat to them to remain a free agent. It would not surprise me at all to discover that your death has been ordered.”
“The thought has occurred,” Jack admitted. “I'm just glad you set up the e-mail accounts for Cashman if he needed to contact you. It hasn’t been easy going it alone on this.”
“I was very disheartened when I heard the news that his plane had crashed and he was pronounced dead,” Karpov said. “When I got your message, I had to assume he must have survived long enough to contact you. Where is Norman?”
“They shot his jet down on the way back from Nassau,” Jack replied. “He was never on the flight from Atlanta. My brother’s submarine was nearby where Cashman’s jet went down and pulled him and one other survivor out of the water. He’s safe and alive on my brother's sub. He’ll stay there until I either blow the lid off of this thing or just before the inauguration and hope we can expose it when he miraculously returns from the dead and all hell breaks loose.”
“It sounds like a solid plan,” Karpov said. “Was he injured?”
“A few bumps and bruises, but he's a tough old man and he’s in good shape,” Jack replied. “He gave me the drive you’d given him in Nassau and I've been working on cracking this thing open ever since. Not with a lot of success I have to admit. But I'm at a road block. I know what their ultimate goal is and when they plan to trigger it but I can't lock down who's involved. Now that they know about me I don't really expect that they're just going to sit back and let me keep digging into this without coming after me.”
“No, they don’t dare do that. But I find myself much in the same position as do you. I haven't been able to get further along in uncovering the plot or the identity of the plotters. I've also lost contact with the last of my trusted agents. I'm afraid that you and I are all that stands in their way now.
“There is one piece of information I can give you that I hadn’t passed along on the drive. Shortly after the original twelve couples arrived in America in 1945, there was a division. Half of the couples had decided that they wanted nothing more to do with what they had been sent over to accomplish. They fully embraced their new country and raised their children to be true Americans and not Russian sleepers they’d been sent to create.”
“That must have gone over well with the others, as well as your father,” Jack interjected.
“We never spoke of it.” Karpov closed his eyes momentarily in his honor. “But I think he understood why they did it. The other six couples on the other hand were not so forgiving. They broke off all contact with the other six couples as well as with anyone in Mother Russia. They went so far as to change their names and created new identities known only to them, vowing to complete their mission on their own and without our help.”
“Surely your father kept some record of their names somewhere,” Jack insisted.
“Oh, he did,” Karpov admitted, “and I have the names of the original twelve couples.”
“Then why didn’t you include them on the drive?” Jack was beside himself.
“Because the twelve who abandoned the mission had nothing to do with the conspiracy as it exists today,” Karpov explained. “Nor had they ever had any contact with the twelve that carried on. There was no way to use those names to connect to anyone living today.”
“But we could take the names of those twelve that remained in the conspiracy and use them as a starting point,” Jack stated.
“I’d already tried that,” Karpov explained patiently. “There are records that show all twelve died in various accidents and from an assortment of medical ailments before 1950 along with their children. The trail ends there my friend. They’ve had nearly seven decades to make sure their tracks were covered and position their children and grandchildren to complete their mission.”
“There was no contact between them and anyone in your government for all of that time?”
“None. Not a single word until a few short months ago, and even then they used code words and code names when they reached out to factions in my government. They have no intention of revealing their real identities to anyone until after they have completed what it is that they have set out to
do.”
“Your father would be proud of them I suspect,” Jack said bitterly.
“On the contrary,” Karpov corrected to Jack’s surprise. “My father never wanted this. His goal was to see our two countries on friendlier terms. He felt that a balanced relationship would bring out the best of our respective systems of government. To have one be in complete dominion of the other would lead to chaos.”
“It’s a pity more of your father didn’t rub off on them then,” Jack said sadly.
“I suspect it did, originally,” Karpov replied. “It seems that it was the later generations that twisted the original mission and managed to find willing allies in my government today.
“But there is one thing you have going for you, Ivanovich,” Karpov said, slipping into the Russian patronymic for Jack’s given name. “We intercepted your Navy’s sudden attempts to contact your brother’s boat, so no doubt they know Cashman is on board. Now they know you are on their trail and these two facts alone will have them rattled.”
“Why?”
“Because, dear boy, one of the original twelve couples my father sent here and the leaders of the six couples that abandoned the original mission was James and Kathryn Del Rio.”
Jack stared at Karpov in stunned disbelief.
“Yes, your great-grandparents,” Karpov confirmed. “Whose son, Peter, married Mary Fitzpatrick, the daughter of one of the other six couples that followed the Del Rios. Your mother, Jackie, was the granddaughter of another of the six as well.”
“That’s not possible” Jack said, struggling with what Karpov had said. “I’ve seen our family genealogy all the way back to the Revolutionary War.”
Jack Del Rio: Complete Trilogy: Reservations, Betrayals, Endgames Page 32