K Street

by M. A. Lawson

  “So now do you understand what happened, Ms. Hamilton, and why it happened?”

  “No,” Kay said. “I don’t understand how the killers, or whoever hired them, knew about the e-mail in the first place. Parker gave the attachment to Danzinger and Danzinger told you about it. But how did the killers find out about it?”

  “I don’t know,” Prescott said.

  Kay suspected that Prescott wasn’t telling her everything she knew. But what Kay really didn’t understand was how anyone could have pulled this off so fast. In a ten-hour period, someone had found out about the e-mail intercepted by the NSA, killed an NSA employee, killed Sally Ann Danzinger, learned that Callahan had the e-mail attachment, and then stole the safe from Callahan’s office, killing two of Callahan’s people along the way. Who the hell were these people?

  34 HOURS EARLIER

  8

  DAY 1—7 A.M.

  The National Security Agency’s headquarters are at Fort Meade, Maryland, in two box-shaped high-rise structures that appear to be made of black obsidian. The buildings loom over a parking lot that holds eighteen thousand vehicles. James Parker sat in the bowels of one of the buildings in a small cubicle in a quarter acre of identical cubicles. He was staring at a computer monitor, trying to make a decision.

  On the screen in front of Parker was a short e-mail originating from the iPhone of a man named Kenneth Winston that was sent to a woman named Jane Moore. The text of the e-mail said, “Jane, just wanted to wish you a Happy Birthday.” The e-mail had an attachment, and the file name of the attachment was BDayCard.jpg.

  Kenneth Winston worked for Zytek Systems, a company that manufactured sonar equipment for the U.S. Navy. “Jane Moore” was one of the cover names used by a woman named Lin Mai, who worked for a Chinese trade association in Washington, D.C. The NSA had been monitoring calls to and from employees of the trade association for years, knowing it was a front for industrial and military espionage. The attachment to the e-mail—BDayCard.jpg—was encrypted in a code the Chinese thought was unbreakable but that the NSA had broken two years ago.

  The attachment was only forty-five kilobytes and contained less than four hundred characters of what appeared to be computer source code. Parker had no idea, however, what the significance of the source code might be; most likely only experts in sonar technology would be able to understand it—but Parker didn’t need to understand it. All he cared about was that the e-mail was proof that the Chinese had a spy at Zytek.

  Parker had no idea what had caused Winston and Lin Mai to do something so dangerous; that is, communicate by e-mail. The whole time the NSA had been monitoring the trade association, it had been almost pristine insofar as not exposing Chinese operatives. So the e-mail meant one of two things. One, that Winston, who appeared to be Lin Mai’s agent, had gotten careless, thinking that because the e-mail and the attachment were so small and seemingly innocuous that it wouldn’t be noticed in the trillions of e-mails sent each day in the United States. The second possibility was that they knew it might be noticed, but the information contained in the e-mail attachment was needed so urgently that they decided to take the risk. Whatever the case, it didn’t matter to Parker. He didn’t care about the intelligence value of the e-mail.

  What James Parker cared about was that the e-mail was the key to his salvation.

  Parker printed out a copy of the e-mail and the attachment using a printer in a different section of the office. He then spent the next half hour doing everything he could to make the original e-mail and the instructions to the printer disappear. He knew that they wouldn’t ever really disappear—they would still exist as fragments of computer code buried inside the NSA’s servers—but he hoped he had made it impossible for another technician to find them and, more important, trace the documents to the machines in Parker’s wee cubicle.

  DAY 1—8 A.M.

  Parker told his section head that he had a dental appointment that he’d forgotten about. The supervisor, who had never liked Parker—hardly any of Parker’s co-workers liked him—looked as if he suspected Parker was lying, but all he said was “You need to get back here as soon as your appointment’s over. I have three people on leave this week, so I’m shorthanded.”

  “Sure,” Parker said.

  Parker left the base and headed toward Washington. He passed the pay phones closest to Fort Meade, thinking those might be monitored. He stopped at a 7-Eleven in Greenbelt and made the call.

  “No names,” he said when she answered the phone. The way her voice sounded, he’d woken her up. “I have something you’re going to love. It concerns the brothers.”

  “What is it?”

  He laughed. “Are you crazy? Over the phone? We need to meet, right away, because I have to get back to work. Pick a place in D.C. I’m headed there now.”

  She named a restaurant in southeast D.C. and he told her he’d be there by nine a.m.

  DAY 1—9 A.M.

  Parker was already seated, drinking coffee, when Sally Ann Danzinger walked into the restaurant. She beamed a smile at him and came toward him in long-legged strides. She was wearing Levi jeans and a man’s short-sleeved plaid shirt unbuttoned over a white T-shirt. She was an impressive-looking woman because she was six feet tall and had the broad shoulders of a former swimmer. She was now in her sixties, her hair was long and completely gray, and she had a network of wrinkles around her eyes and mouth appropriate to her age—wrinkles she could’ve gotten rid of any time she wanted. Danzinger, however, would never avail herself of a plastic surgeon, any more than she would dye her hair to hide the gray. Parker simply couldn’t understand why a woman with her money would want to look and dress the way she did—but then, Danzinger was a nut.

  She immediately said, “What did you find?” Before Parker could answer, she said, “I’m so excited I’m practically peeing my pants.”

  “Uh, yeah,” Parker said, not knowing what else to say. He handed her the copy of the e-mail attachment.

  “What is this?” she said. The document was obviously gibberish to her, as it would be to 99 percent of the people on the planet.

  “It’s computer source code related to submarine sonar technology.”

  “How do you know that?” Sally Ann asked.

  “Because I know what computer source code looks like and I know it’s related to submarine sonar because of where the e-mail came from.” He paused dramatically. “The e-mail was sent by a guy who works at Zytek Systems to a . . . to an operative of a foreign government, a government not friendly to the United States. In other words, there’s a spy at Zytek who’s giving military secrets to our enemies.”

  “Oh my God!” Sally Ann said. Then she frowned and said, “Are you saying the Layman brothers are involved in this?”

  “The CEO of Zytek is Bob Layman’s middle son,” Parker said, telling Sally Ann something she already knew. Parker was confused by her confusion.

  “I know that,” Sally Ann said, “but did Ted Layman send the e-mail?”

  “No. It was sent by a guy who works for him. But can’t you see the headlines? A spy in a Layman company? This is huge. I mean, you know how the Laymans are always going on about what superpatriots they are.”

  Sally Ann shook her head. “This doesn’t do me any good, James. As much as I loathe the Laymans, I would never accuse them of being traitors. I mean, they’re xenophobic, and one of the many things I despise about them is their so-called patriotism, but they wouldn’t condone or ever be part of something like this. And if the e-mail you intercepted didn’t come directly from Ted Layman . . . Well, like I said, this doesn’t do me any good. I need proof that the Laymans are committing crimes and this doesn’t implicate them at all.”

  Parker couldn’t believe her. Was she obtuse? Before he could object, she said, “You need to turn this over to whoever deals with this sort of thing. The FBI, I suppose.”

  “Are you insane?
” Parker shrieked. Lowering his voice, he said, “You think I’m going to go to my boss and say, ‘Hey, I’ve been eavesdropping on the Layman brothers for Sally Ann Danzinger and I just happened to run across this e-mail that shows there’s a spy at Zytek’?”

  “Well, you need to figure out a way to do the right thing. I mean, I don’t want you to get in trouble, James, but somebody in law enforcement or counterintelligence needs to know about this.”

  Before Parker could speak, she asked, “Who was the e-mail sent to? The Russians? The Chinese? North Korea?”

  Parker didn’t answer the question. Instead he said, “Look, I need money. I’ve gotten myself into some serious financial trouble, and I need eighty-five grand. I thought you’d be willing to pay for something as big as this.”

  Then the bitch turned righteous on him. “I’m not going to pay you for this. And this isn’t the sort of information I wanted you to get for me.” She reached out and patted one of his hands. “James, I’ve always appreciated your willingness to help in my fight against the Laymans, and I’ll never tell anyone that you’ve been helping me, but you need to do the right thing. Now, are you going to tell me who sent the e-mail and who the recipient was?”

  “No.”

  “Then I have to leave,” she said and pushed back her chair.

  “Wait a minute! Goddamnit, just wait! I’ve been risking my job to help you. Hell, I could go to prison for what I’ve been doing.”

  “I’m sorry,” Sally Ann said. She stood, the copy of the e-mail attachment still clutched in her clawlike hand, and turned to leave.

  Parker shouted, “Hey! Give me back that paper. You can’t take that with you.”

  “Well, I am. Because if you don’t do what’s necessary, then I’ll be forced to.”

  Parker started to get up. He was going to rip the document right out of her hand. Then he noticed the dozen other customers in the restaurant, including three big guys wearing hard hats, and one of them was eyeing him. The hard hats would definitely try to stop him and might even call the cops.

  Before he could do or say anything else, Sally Ann was out the door.

  Son of a bitch!

  DAY 1—9:10 A.M.

  As Sally Ann drove back home, she tried to decide what to do. She could wait to see if Parker would contact the Bureau or tell his superiors—although the only way she would know if he did was if the media reported that a spy had been arrested at Zytek—but it was obvious to her that he wasn’t going to do anything. He was too afraid that he’d get in trouble.

  She’d met James Parker at a rally at the Capitol. It was one of those 99-percenter protests. The Layman brothers and Sally Ann were both part of the elite 1 percent—but Sally Ann sided with the masses while the Laymans did everything they could to crush the dreams of the poor and the middle class. Parker didn’t know who she was when she met him. He was just standing next to her, holding his WE ARE THE 99 placard, and they started talking. When she found out that he worked at the NSA, she invited him to dinner and used all of her considerable powers of persuasion to get him to assist her.

  Parker wasn’t a likeable man. He was a boorish, arrogant egomaniac, and he was bitter because people he considered fools had been promoted instead of him. He assisted Sally Ann because it thrilled him to put one over on the idiot who supervised him, but he’d also seemed genuinely interested in helping her bring down the Laymans. All he agreed to do for her was keep his eyes and ears open for anything the NSA scooped up, and if he came across anything related to the Laymans, he’d pass it on to her.

  In the nine months she’d known him, he’d twice provided voice recordings of Bill Layman, the older of the two Layman brothers, talking to the senior senator from Kansas. The recordings proved that the Laymans were trying to persuade the senator to pass legislation the Laymans wanted, but nothing said was overtly illegal. The recordings simply demonstrated that the Laymans had a cozy relationship with a politician they supported financially.

  But Parker had never asked for money before. She had no idea what sort of financial trouble he was in and she couldn’t help but wonder if it had happened recently. He seemed so desperate that she wondered if he might try to sell the information he’d intercepted, although she didn’t know who would buy it. A more likely possibility was that he’d destroy the illegally intercepted e-mail, and if he did, the spy at Zytek would never be identified. Whatever the case, she needed to do something quickly.

  Sally Ann’s house didn’t have a garage, so she parked in the driveway. The house was a two-story, four-bedroom home built after World War II in a racially mixed neighborhood in southeast D.C. When she bought the place, it was a dilapidated wreck surrounded by similar wrecks, but she used local contractors to restore the house and did everything she could to bring the neighborhood back to life.

  Latisha Taylor, the young woman who lived with her and acted as her secretary and general assistant, was already up and working. Sally Ann said good morning to her, then went to the bedroom on the second floor that she used as an office. She looked again at the piece of paper she’d taken from Parker. It was just a bunch of numbers and symbols and absolutely meaningless to her.

  Who should she talk to about this? There were a dozen progressive politicians who would be in a position to help, but she didn’t want this politicized. She could always go to her contacts in the media, but that didn’t seem right either. She could, of course, take the information directly to the FBI, but she wasn’t on the best of terms with the Bureau, who considered her a radical activist.

  She suddenly realized who she should call.

  DAY 1—9:15 A.M.

  Parker sat brooding in the restaurant for five minutes after Danzinger left, then headed back toward Fort Meade. He didn’t know what to do. He was confident that Sally Ann wouldn’t tell anyone that he’d been collecting information on the Layman brothers. She would protect his identity the way a reporter would protect a source. She might, however, give the attachment to the FBI, and if the FBI was somehow able to figure out that it had come from someone at the NSA, then they might be able to identify him.

  But then he thought, no, they wouldn’t. He’d buried the e-mail and his handling of it so deep in the NSA’s servers that it would never be traced to him. It was like the original e-mail was a bottle he’d smashed, and then he’d thrown the pieces of broken glass onto a pile of broken glass that was as high as a mountain. It wasn’t a needle in a haystack; it was a needle cut into a thousand pieces, and then tossed into the haystack.

  So he should be safe, but he still needed money and he needed it desperately—and suddenly he had an idea. It would be dangerous, but he didn’t have any other choice. He took the next exit he came to and drove around until he found a pay phone.

  DAY 1—9:30 A.M. (2:30 P.M. IN LONDON)

  Olivia Prescott was in a taxi on her way to Thames House for another meeting with the good people from MI5. She’d been in London for two days meeting with the NSA’s counterparts in the U.K. and would be returning home the next morning. The meetings were primarily so that the NSA could share the latest eavesdropping and encryption tools they were using with their British brethren—which, of course, weren’t really the latest tools in their tool bag. But what they did share impressed the British, and they were appropriately grateful. The other purpose of the meetings was to subtly reassure the British that the NSA wasn’t spying on their politicians—not that long ago they’d been caught spying on the German chancellor—but, of course, they were.

  Prescott didn’t recognize the number on the caller ID when her phone rang. She thought for a moment about letting the call go to voice mail, but having nothing better to do while the cab was stuck in traffic, she answered.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Olivia, it’s Sally Ann.”

  For a moment Prescott was too shocked to speak. She hadn’t spoken to Sally Ann Danzinger in three years.
They had been at a Princeton reunion, and they got into a terrible row, and Sally Ann called her a fascist.

  “What can I do for you, Sally Ann?” Her tone made it clear that she hadn’t forgiven her.

  “Olivia, this is important and it’s not about politics. I was given a copy of an e-mail this morning by a . . . a person who works at the NSA. The e-mail, according to this person, is a fragment of computer source code, whatever that is, related to sonar technology manufactured by Zytek Systems.”

  “What?” Prescott said. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

  “This person said the e-mail had been sent from someone at Zytek to a hostile foreign government.”

  “Why on earth would an NSA employee give this to you?” Prescott asked.

  “I’m not going to tell you that, nor will I give you the person’s name. And I don’t know who sent the e-mail or who it was going to. The copy I have is just the attachment—just a bunch of numbers and symbols—and doesn’t have the e-mail addresses on it.”

  “Sally Ann, please don’t say anything for a moment. I need to think.”

  If she was telling the truth—and there was no reason for Prescott to believe she wasn’t—there was a mole in the NSA passing information on to Sally Ann, most likely information about the Layman brothers. Prescott could have someone at the NSA pick up the e-mail attachment from Sally Ann right away and begin an investigation, but if there was a mole in her house, she didn’t know who she could trust—at least not until she understood more. But she also wanted the document out of Sally Ann’s hands. You could never tell what Sally Ann might do.

  “Okay, Sally Ann, here’s what I need you to do. I’m not in D.C. right now, so I want you to put that e-mail attachment in a sealed envelope. Under no circumstances are you to make a copy of it. Then I want you to take it to a man named Thomas Callahan. Callahan has a company on K Street called the Callahan Group. He’s a civilian now, but he’s ex-CIA, an old friend, and I trust him. His office isn’t far from your house, so please do this quickly.”