by Rick Acker
He chuckled. “We joke about it, but it really is true. You are doing great things, and I’m proud to know you.”
“Thanks, and likewise. I couldn’t do it without you.”
“Yes, you could. Any decent lawyer could set up a shell company for you and tell you what evidence you need to build a good case. You’re the one who actually goes and gets it. You put it on the line every day by going into these companies undercover, finding the fraud, and never getting caught. Hey, I’m going to propose another toast.” He lifted his glass again. “To Qui Tam Girl.”
“And her crime-fighting partner, Lawyer Boy.”
“I’ll drink to that.” And he did.
“Cheers!”
He set down his glass. “We really do get to fight crime. I love that. I wish everyone took the law as seriously as we do. If you commit a crime, you should pay the price. Every. Single. Time. No excuses, no compromises.”
“Uh-huh. By the way, is that PI still tailing you?” she asked, referring to a detective who had been following Connor during a previous case.
“I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure he was working for Three C, and we settled with them six months ago. I still can’t believe they had someone going through my garbage. Good thing I shred Us magazine before I put it in the trash.”
She laughed. “It’s amazing what dirty contractors will do to figure out who I am. Who knows, maybe some lucky investigator is getting a free dinner at Wente right now, courtesy of Hiram Hamilton.”
“Maybe.” He saw his waiter approaching with a loaded tray. “Speaking of dinner, mine is arriving.”
“Mine too, so I’m going to let you go. It was good talking to you.”
“And it’s always good talking to you, Allie. Have a great dinner. Danko’s is the best place in the city.”
Connor took off his headset and was truly alone for the first time that night. He looked around the restaurant and realized he was the only one eating by himself. He must look a little pathetic.
He shook off the feeling. Tonight was a time to celebrate. He took a bite of his filet mignon. As delectable as always. The jazz trio was just starting to play, and the sky overhead had darkened to deep sapphire, with a few early stars glimmering in it like diamond chips on blue velvet. Maybe Allie would like this place after all, at least tonight. He smiled at the thought and took another bite of his steak.
Allie closed her cell phone and put it down on a cluttered counter. She sighed and shook her head slightly. It really would be fun to be dressed up and sitting in Danko’s right now.
Instead, she was wearing sweats and standing in her kitchen. Erik hadn’t liked the idea of her “going out” with Connor, even though they would have been miles apart. He had promised to buy her lobster and champagne to make it up to her. But somehow that hadn’t actually happened.
She looked over to the sofa and saw Erik watching her with a smirk. “Qui Tam Girl and Lawyer Boy? Excuse me while I go puke.”
She wadded up a piece of junk mail and threw it at him. “Oh, shut up. I thought you were asleep.”
“Why’d you tell him you were at Danko’s? I thought we agreed that… uh…” She watched his smirk fade as he remembered the lobster and champagne.
She shrugged and turned away. “It’s what he wanted to hear, and there’s no harm in letting him hear it.”
“So, how often do you lie to me?”
“Hmm, let me see… Never—as far as you know.”
9
THE MAN LOOKED DOWN AT THE PASSPORT IN HIS HAND AS THE LINE SNAKED toward the customs checkpoint at San Francisco International Airport. It identified him as Cho Dae-jung of Seoul, Republic of Korea. Other papers in his wallet and luggage reversed family and personal names in the Western fashion, calling him Dae-jung Cho. Some even informally Westernized it to David Cho.
He reminded himself that he was Cho so long as he was in America. Cho couldn’t be just an act—it had to be him. He needed to lose himself in this identity as long as he was in enemy territory. He needed to be utterly convincing to the outside world. So from now on, he would think of himself as Cho.
Cho was a sailor employed by Incheon Marine Industries, a South Korean marine exploration and mining firm—or so his documents said. He was here to make a voyage aboard the Grasp II, an American vessel with advanced technology unavailable in South Korea. The trip would begin and end across the San Francisco Bay at the Port of Oakland. He doubted that the customs clerks would be chatty enough to ask about the exact purpose of his trip, but if they did, he could give an honest answer: he didn’t know. His superiors were keeping the exact destination and goal of their trip confidential—which was not unusual among the secretive fraternity of ocean bottom explorers.
The line moved forward and he was at the front. The clerk in one of the customs booths motioned him over. His heart quickened, as it always did at these moments. His papers and cover story were both solid, but what if his name had been added to a TSA watch list? What if the South Korean National Intelligence Service had discovered he was here and told the CIA? What if the clerk simply didn’t like his looks and had him pulled aside for fingerprinting and a thorough background check?
He walked forward and held out his documents to a bored-looking overweight woman whose nametag said “Sandra.” She looked at them quickly and glanced from his passport picture to his face and back. “Anything to declare, Mr. Cho?”
“No.”
“How long will you be in the United States?”
“Two or three weeks. It depends on the weather and how many days my ship voyage takes.”
She gave him a quizzical look. “You here for a cruise?”
“No. Perhaps I am unclear.” He made himself smile and look a little embarrassed. “My English is not so good. I am here for a business voyage. My company rents the ship, and I am crew.”
She looked at his papers again, studying them closely. Lines of concentration formed around her mouth and between her eyebrows. He felt the muscles in the back of his neck stiffen and performed mental calming exercises to prevent himself from sweating.
After nearly a minute, the woman turned and waved over a beefy man wearing a blazer and tie. She handed him the documents and the two of them had a conversation that the visitor couldn’t quite hear. They were both poring over his documents now, shooting quick glances at him as they spoke.
He looked past the customs checkpoint and spotted an exit about twenty feet away. He was confident that he could get past these two and through the door in no more than fifteen seconds, but what then? He would be on the run in a strange country with no safe houses, no weapons, and his only cover identity blown.
The conversation ended and the woman looked up again. The lines on her face relaxed. “Okay, I see. All right.” She handed the documents back to him and smiled. “Welcome to America, Mr. Cho.”
10
AMAZING. ALLIE SHOOK HER HEAD AND LEANED BACK IN THE CHAIR IN HER cubicle at Blue Sea. During her orientation, the HR director had bragged about how the company had grown from a little salvage and commercial diving outfit twenty years ago into a billion dollar company today. Maybe they were worth a billion dollars, but their accounting system wasn’t worth the week-old leftovers in the back of Allie’s fridge. She had literally seen gas stations with more financial sophistication.
Based on what her supervisor told her, five years ago the company had tried to modernize their records by computerizing everything. They bought an accounting software package that they didn’t really understand and hired some temps to convert all of their financial information to the new program. They left the job of keeping it current to secretaries—none of whom had any accounting training, naturally.
The result, of course, was a colossal mess. Now the company was a finalist for a $360 million government contract and, in the words of Allie’s supervisor, needed to “tidy up the books a little” before submitting their final bid. And that bid was due in just over two weeks.
This
was all music to Allie’s ears. All the permanent employees around her would be distracted, so no one would have the time to pay close attention to what she was doing. Better yet, Blue Sea would need to have people working on this “tidying up” project around the clock, so no one would find anything suspicious about a temp poking around in the files after hours. And Allie didn’t mind working after hours. Not at all. Work was an easy way to keep her mind focused on the here and now—which was exactly what she wanted this week.
Allie scanned her computer’s directory and pulled up half a dozen project files at random. Each was supposed to contain an Excel spreadsheet showing every transaction and PDFs of all backup documents. Three of the spreadsheets featured at least one phantom entry with no accounting backup. Another spreadsheet was completely blank. Only one file held a spreadsheet that actually matched the supporting PDFs.
Then Allie pulled up the electronic general ledger to see whether the numbers in it matched what the spreadsheets showed. Surprisingly, they all did. Allie surmised that the IT staff had linked the spreadsheets directly to the general ledger to prevent errors. Not bad.
Having a good general ledger system wouldn’t save them, though. If all the files were as bad as the ones she’d seen, the general ledger was garbage. Blue Sea had no idea whether its invoices were accurate, which almost certainly meant they were overbilling some of the time. They’d be on the hook for triple the amount of each overcharge plus $10,000 for each inaccurate invoice they sent the government.
Allie grinned. This would be easier than a slow run on the bunny slopes. Almost as boring too, but she could live with boring if she was well paid for it.
The only potential problem was that none of the files she’d pulled were for government projects. She pulled up the directory again and scanned it for telltale words like “U.S.,” “State” or “base.” Nothing.
She decided to risk running a few searches. There was a chance that an alert IT staffer might spot what she was doing, but it was a small chance. Even if they did catch her, there wasn’t anything particularly suspicious about an accounting temp who had been hired to help the company get ready for a government contract running searches for government invoices in the company’s accounting database.
“Your search has located 0 records,” her computer informed her.
She frowned and did a little more digging in the directory. There was a secure server she couldn’t access. That must be where all the government files lived.
She drummed her fingers on her fake wood desk as she weighed her options. Ask someone to give her access to the secure server? No, the connection would be too obvious when the documents she found there later appeared in Devil to Pay’s court filings.
Try hacking into the secure server? Maybe. She’d helped configure security software for an accounting database during a previous assignment and had learned a couple of tricks in the process. At the very least, she could poke around and see whether the system administrator had left an unlocked “back door” in the security barriers. She’d be careful, and she doubted that they’d be on the lookout for internal hackers. After all, how many employees were likely to try to hack into a bunch of customer files? Still, it would be risky.
Was there time to take a quick trip into forbidden cyberspace, or was she done for the night? Allie glanced at the clock on her computer: 6:23 p.m. She hesitated, her fingers poised over the keyboard. She needed to call Mom and Sam tonight, and she really couldn’t put it off any longer. It was already 8:23 back home in Illinois, and Mom usually went to bed by 9:30.
Thinking about calling Mom got her thinking about Dad. She’d been trying not to think about him all day and most of yesterday, but she couldn’t hide from him anymore. His blood-spattered face filled her mind, repeating soothing lies over and over.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Worries about secure servers and dreams of easy money vanished, burned away by memories bursting out of a locked box buried in the back of her mind. Tonight was their night, and she couldn’t keep them away. Tomorrow she’d force them back in, close the lid, and lock the box again. But tonight was their night.
Yeah, she was done. She wiped her eyes and opened them. The computer screen glowed expectantly, showing a list of Blue Sea’s servers and their filepaths. Tomorrow. She sniffed and turned off her computer.
11
THE EARLY EVENING SUN ARCED OVER THE CANOPY, CASTING SPLINTERED gleams as its light caught imperfections in the thick old Plexiglas. Then shadow filled the cockpit as Connor nosed the White Knight over into a power dive, making sure to keep the sun directly behind him to blind antiaircraft gunners on the ground.
The deep roar of the single Packard V-1650 engine thrummed through the entire plane. The airspeed gauge climbed fast, racing past 200, 300, 400. The airframe shook with speed and the altimeter plummeted. A familiar adrenaline rush hit Connor and a wide grin spread across his face.
The Japanese airstrip rushed up at him. Zeroes and Oscars lined up in neat rows on either side of a dirt runway. Camouflage-painted buildings and fuel tanks hid among palm trees. Uniformed men scrambled for cover or ran for their planes. Machine guns blazed away from behind sandbag rings that looked like brown snow forts, sending streams of phantom bullets toward Connor and his plane.
Connor returned the sentiment, firing a sustained burst from the six .50 caliber guns in the White Knight ’s wings. The force of the guns rattled his teeth and slowed the plane sharply, pushing Connor forward into his harness.
He dragged back on the stick, killing more airspeed and pulling the plane out of its dive. G-forces crushed him back into his seat and his heart struggled to pump blood to his brain against the unnatural gravity. He flew over the base at tree-top level, so close that he could see the bright red star of the Imperial Japanese Army on the gunners’ helmets. He kept his finger on the trigger the whole time, aiming roughly at a group of Zeroes, which duly exploded.
Suddenly the camp was behind him and he was flying over a sea of warehouses and parking lots. He wheeled around and headed back toward the jungle camp. He leaned toward his mic. “Okay, here I come again. I’ll be flying in low from the north, and I’ll be shooting at the oil tank.”
“Roger that,” said a voice in his ear.
The line of palms flashed below him and a large oil tank came into view. He pressed the trigger, but no bullets came. He swore and tried again. Still nothing. The oil tank blew up on cue anyway, but Connor was not happy. He pulled the stick back and to the right, veering smoothly around the fireball. “Sorry about that,” he said into the mic. “A wire must’ve pulled loose or something. I’ve never had that happen before.”
A few seconds passed in silence. Then the director’s voice came on. “Don’t worry about it, Connor. You did great. We just looked at the roughs, and we got some terrific footage. It’ll be easy to have the FX guys add muzzle flashes. Besides, we don’t have another oil tank ready to blow up.”
“Okay, Steve. Well, if you change your mind later, let me know. I’ll be happy to bring the White Knight down free of charge for a reshoot. I want to make sure you get your money’s worth.”
“Oh, we did. Cindy will be in touch with you in a couple of weeks about scheduling the dogfight scene.”
An hour later, Connor was at the Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, crouching on the wing of the White Knight and peering down into the machine gun feed mechanism in her left wing. The guns hadn’t jammed. He smiled even though that meant more work later. He was proud of those guns, and it pleased him that they were still working smoothly over two generations after they came off the assembly line.
The problem lay somewhere between the trigger on the control stick and the guns’ firing mechanism. Since all six guns had failed, he suspected a wiring problem in the cockpit. He’d have to tear it apart once he had the plane back at its home airport in Livermore.
“Is that a P-51D?” asked a young voice behind him. Connor turned and saw a boy of about twelve, staring at
the White Knight with bright blue eyes.
Connor stood and smiled. “It is indeed. How did you know it was a D?”
The boy pointed to the bubble canopy. “It doesn’t have that big thing behind the pilot that the A, B, and C models had.” He gestured at the wings. “And it’s got six guns, not four.”
“Very good. I’m impressed.”
“Do the guns still work?”
“They do. In fact, I was just firing them today. A movie studio is making a war movie called Blood on the Sun, and they paid me to fly down and shoot up a Japanese air strip—or pretend to shoot it up anyway. I loaded the guns with blanks today. The real bullets are locked up back at my hangar.”
“Cool, I’ll have to see that movie when it comes out.”
Connor tapped the metal skin of the wing. “You know, my grandfather actually built the guns in this plane during World War II.”