by Mel LeBrun
“I think we know how he's smuggling the heroin into the country now,” Michael surmised. “Where are they shipped to?”
“Looks like three main locations,” Jessica answered. “L.A., New York, and Miami.”
“Any active requests?” Michael asked.
“One currently due in L.A. today and New York in three days.”
“New York in three days. I think we can swing that.”
“What do you have in mind?” Alonso asked.
“I'm still working on that. In the meantime, see what else you can dig up.”
Chapter 72
Having just suffered a monumental security breach, the likes of which had never been seen before, the CIA's IT department was in a frenzy. The damage assessment wasn't good. Massive amounts of data had been compromised and they were racing to find out what was taken and what operations were now at risk. With no readily discernible pattern, the files seemed to have been taken at random. As they frantically tried to trace the attack, the head of security wished he could trade places with anyone else.
One of his teammates approached him. “Sir, we have a big problem.”
“You think?” he replied mockingly.
“They got into the personnel files.”
As if he couldn't be more panic stricken than he already was, he felt all the blood rush from his face. He swallowed hard and turned to him. “How bad is it?”
“Just one file. Timothy Gatti.”
“That's it? No one else?”
“Just him.”
“Send a team to pick up his family and get him on the phone.” He ran his fingers through his hair. This didn't make sense. They could have taken half, if not all, of the personnel files. Why only one?
GATTI WAS sitting in a conference room with Price looking over what little security footage they had of the incident at the hospital for the twentieth time. They watched Michael enter Elaina's room. Shortly after, they watched a strange-acting orderly enter followed by another man that they identified as Josh. Then panic in the hallways as people screamed and ran for cover. Josh emerged from the room and headed towards the exit. A minute later, a man walked quickly down the hall and stared at Elaina's room. He fired as the door opened, then took three bullets to the chest and fell over. Michael emerged with Elaina and started running down the hall. He shot another man who came through the doors ahead bearing a gun. He made it to the door, saw the guards and ran in the other direction. Then, the video cut out.
Gatti turned it off and stared at the blank screen. Price stared at the floor. Neither knew what to think. Ryan stepped in the room holding a file. Gatti and Price turned to him.
“They've identified the victims in the hospital shooting. Seven were known members of the Russian mafia. One was a security guard who worked at the hospital. His neck was broken and he had been stripped of his uniform. They found another security guard stripped and unconscious in one of the patient rooms.” He handed Gatti the report.
Gatti nodded and quickly looked through it. “Thank you. This leaves me more confused than before.” He shook his head. “Cailen goes out of his way to avoid a group of guards. I can't believe he would then kill one to steal his uniform. So perhaps the Russians did it. But then how do you explain the second guard? Cailen didn't use it and Elaina Gomez would have been swimming in it. Report says the guard was six feet tall.” He looked at Price and the young agent. “So who else was there?”
“Russians or Cailen still could have taken out the last guard. Doesn't mean there was a third party,” Price reasoned.
“Actually, I think Agent Gatti is right,” Ryan interjected.
“How so?” Price asked.
He handed Price a page from the file. “Because both Cailen and the Russians shot out cameras after they had been disabled.”
As they pondered over that, another agent popped into the conference room and informed Gatti he had an urgent call.
Gatti picked up the phone. “This is agent Gatti ... I'm sorry what? ... No one else?” Gatti stood, pacing as far as the cord would allow him. “Yeah, okay. Thank you for informing me.” He hung up the phone.
“What happened?” Price asked, concerned by how agitated Gatti became.
“Someone hacked our mainframe. Downloaded a large amount of data along with my personnel file. Just mine. No one else.” Gatti continued pacing. “It's Cailen. I know it is.”
“Cailen couldn't even hack his own email let alone the CIA,” Price disagreed.
“We're missing something.” Gatti continued pacing as he tried not to let panic set in. He picked the phone back up and dialed a number. “This is Agent Timothy Gatti. I need a list of known hackers who would be capable of hacking into the CIA. I want files on all of them.” He hung up the phone and looked at Price. “It's a start.”
Price nodded. They spent the next half hour combing through the police reports looking for anything they might have missed.
An agent walked in the room carrying a mound of paper. “This just came for you.”
He handed it to Gatti who then split it into three piles and gave one each to Price and Ryan. They spent the next few hours going over each hacker's file looking for something to stand out.
Gatti finished his pile. He looked at the other two who were still looking. “Anything?”
“A lot of interesting characters,” Ryan remarked. “No one yet who would fit the profile though.”
“I don't see how Cailen could have come in contact with any of these people,” Price observed.
Gatti picked up the phone again and dialed the same number. “Yeah, this is Agent Gatti again. Did you send me all the names?” he listened for a few minutes. “Well, that is significant. Send me everything you have.” Gatti hung up the phone and stared down at the table almost in a trance.
“Well?” Price finally asked.
Gatti snapped out of it. “About two weeks ago, a computer hacker by the name of Jessica Nickoli was killed in a house fire in Massachusetts. It was ruled an accident. Here's the interesting part. Just a week earlier, two men were arrested in front of her apartment building. Those two men were involved in a shoot out in a cyber cafe not far from her home the day before.”
“What did the police get out of them?” Ryan asked.
“Nothing. Neither lasted twenty-four hours in custody. One hung himself and the other was killed in retaliation for a racial slur. Supposedly.” Gatti obviously had his doubts about the circumstances of their deaths.
“Was Nickoli at the cafe during the shooting?” Price asked.
“Don't know. The security footage is missing,” Gatti answered.
“That's convenient,” Price remarked.
“We know Cailen is in Massachusetts. What do we know about Jessica Nickoli?” Ryan asked.
“They're sending the file now along with the police reports from the shooting and fire.”
Ryan returned with a stack of papers. Gatti took Jessica's file while Ryan and Price looked over the police reports.
“This Jessica Nickoli is some hacker. She's well-known as an expert in her field. FBI has had her on a watch list since she started working openly, but as far as they could find she's strictly legal.” Gatti looked up while still holding the report in his hands. “What do we know about the men from the cafe?”
“Nothing.” Price dropped the police report on the table. “Their backgrounds were scrubbed and reinvented. It was good enough to fool the local police though. Someone knew what they were doing.”
“What if Jessica Nickoli isn't dead?” Gatti proposed.
“Dental records were a positive match,” Ryan pointed out.
Both Gatti and Price gave him a look like he should know better than to believe everything you read.
“Evidence can be created to say whatever you want it to say,” Gatti informed him.
“So you think she's still alive?” he asked.
“Maybe.” Price answered.
Chapter 73
“I found Black Pa
wn,” Jessica announced, never taking her eyes off the monitor. “It was one of the file numbers given to me by Alex.”
Michael, Josh and Alonso crowded around, trying to get a good view of her screen. She looked over her shoulder at the three men encroaching on her personal space and made a face. “They really made you look bad,” she added as the three men read the report. “Even comes complete with a photo.”
She pressed a few keys and two surveillance photos of Michael popped up. They were taken of him in China and both made him look rather unsavory. The report claimed they received new information on his whereabouts and listed his home address as his current place of hiding. It was where the CIA assassin was supposed to take him out and nearly had four years ago.
“Is there an email address in Gatti's file?” Michael asked.
“Umm ...” Jessica tapped away on the keys. “I have his CIA email address.”
“That will work. Can you send him the Black Pawn file without giving away where we are or who's sending it?”
Jessica grinned. “In my sleep. We just need to borrow someone's Internet connection.”
Michael smirked. “Let's go for a drive.”
“Would you like to call him too?” she asked still grinning.
“What do you mean?”
“Since we're going to be using someone else's Internet, I could set up a call over the Internet. We have his number.”
Michael abruptly kissed her lips. “You're amazing.” He smiled, clearly pleased with her suggestion.
She smiled bashfully. “I aim to please.”
“What are you going to say to him?” Josh asked.
“I don't know. Think I'm just going to feel him out. See how it goes. I'm still not sure I can trust him.”
“That's what I was thinking,” Josh agreed.
Jessica announced she was ready as she stood with her laptop bag on her shoulder.
Michael glanced at her and then back at Josh and Alonso. “Wish me luck.”
Parked on a residential street, Jessica took a moment to hack into a nearby wireless network. Once online, she got to work routing through various proxy servers and preparing to send the email to Gatti.
“It will look like it came from thin air,” she explained. “I hacked into a server and am using a spammer's website to send the email. If they do trace the proxy servers, they'll hit a dead end here with these poor people.” She handed Michael a headset. “Just let me know when you want me to send the email. Do you want to make the call now?”
Michael took a deep breath. “Guess so.”
GATTI, PRICE, and Ryan were looking over the police reports of the cafe shooting and the fire at Jessica's apartment when Gatti's cell phone rang. He was so absorbed in what he was doing he didn't bother to look at the caller ID.
“Gatti,” he answered.
“Hi, Agent Gatti. I hope I didn't catch you at a bad time?”
“Who is this?” he asked, still half reading the police report in front of him.
“We met earlier in the week. I said I would call.”
Gatti was getting impatient. “Yeah, I'm sorry, I don't have time...” He suddenly stiffened. He looked at the caller ID. It was a phone number from South Africa. Price and Ryan stopped what they were doing and looked up at him. “Michael Cailen,” he said calmly as he frantically pointed to his phone signaling for them to hurry and start a trace. Ryan ran from the room to get it going.
“Nice to finally get a chance to chat with you,Agent Gatti. We sort of got off on the wrong foot the other day.”
“Yes, well. I understand forgoing social graces when you're running for your life. I don't harbor any ill will.” Gatti paced back and forth in the room trying to sound calm and collected despite feeling anything but. “It's funny, we were just talking about you.”
“Really? Anything you'd like to share?”
“Well, actually it wasn't about you so much as a friend of yours.”
“Oh? And who might that be?”
“Jessica Nickoli.”
“Who?” Michael didn't admit or deny knowing her. He wanted to draw information from Gatti, not the other way around.
“Jessica Nickoli. A computer hacker with quite an impressive resume. So good in fact that it wouldn't be beyond the realm of possibility for her to hack into a highly secured government agency. Like the CIA, for instance.” Gatti didn't really think Michael would admit to knowing or working with Jessica, but it was worth a try and he hoped it would keep Michael on the phone long enough to complete the trace.
“That is impressive, but listen. Before we get too distracted talking about your fascination with computer hackers, I actually had a reason for calling you.”
Gatti snickered at the way Michael deflected the conversation away from Jessica. “Do tell.”
“I'd like us to be friends, Agent Gatti. Or Tim? Can I call you Tim?”
“Sure, Michael. Why not?”
Ryan returned to the room and gestured for Gatti to keep the conversation going. Gatti was trying his hardest to do just that.
“Great, Tim. Now, I know the military had a pretty extensive file on me which I imagine you've read cover to cover. So there's no need really to talk about me. Instead, I'd like to get to know you a little better. What kind of man are you? Are you a computer person? Do you check your email every day? Every hour? Do you have it sent to your Blackberry? Are you one of those guys, Tim?”
Gatti suddenly had an overwhelming urge to check his email. He bolted from the conference room heading for the closest computer. Someone was using it, but that didn't hinder Gatti. He pulled the agent from his chair and sat himself down in front of the computer. Price ushered the confused agent away.
“I don't know, Michael. Have to say I think that's an odd question to ask.” Gatti punched in his username and password while he was speaking. “Is there any particular reason you're asking me that?” He waited as his email loaded on the screen. He had two new messages, one from an unknown sender.
“Was just curious. Look I have to go. It's been great chatting with you. We'll have to do it again sometime soon.”
“Wait, Michael before you go ...” The call ended. Gatti turned to Price and Ryan who were hovering next to him. “Did we get it?”
Ryan looked over at an agent on the other side of the room and then back at Gatti. He shook his head no.
“Dammit!” Gatti turned back to his email. He opened the one from the unknown sender and wasn't sure if he should believe what he was seeing. It was the Black Pawn mission file.
“Isn't that Cailen?” Ryan asked somewhat confused by what he was seeing.
“Yes,” Gatti and Price answered at the same time.
“Why does it say he's a terrorist?”
Gatti quickly inserted a blank disc into the computer and made a copy of the file. He turned to Price and Ryan and whispered. “We need to get back to Langley and verify if this is real and if so where it originated from. And we need to do it quietly and quickly.”
“Why? What does it mean?” Ryan asked.
Price looked at him. “That we may have a mole.”
MICHAEL HANDED Jessica the headset.
“So? How did it go?” she asked as she disconnected it from the laptop.
“Well,” he paused and took a deep breath. “They know about you.” He looked at her.
She looked surprised. “What do you mean they know about me?”
“They suspect you're not dead and that you were the one behind the hack.”
Her heart started racing. “How would he know that? Unless he's in on it?”
“I don't think that's the case. He was reaching. He threw it out there hoping I'd bite.”
“But how did they even connect me?”
“This is what I keep trying to tell you Jessica. It's the CIA. They're good at what they do.”
“What do we do now?”
Michael put the car in gear. “We head back to the hideout and see what else we can dig up.”
> When they returned, Jessica relieved Jinx who had taken over sorting through the information they obtained from the CIA. Michael checked on Elaina. Her fever had dropped and she was feeling better than the day before. He squeezed her hand and looked up at Alonso.
“Do we have enough evidence now to have Morgan arrested?” he asked.
“If you can prove Morgan is using the CIA to ship heroin, along with all the other evidence you already have, yes.”
Michael nodded. He glanced at Elaina and Eddie and then back at Alonso. “Can I talk to you privately?
Alonso also glanced at his wife and son. “Sure.”
The two went down to the garage. Once there Michael paced a little then stopped, took a deep breath and looked at Alonso. “They know about Jessica.”
Alonso was admittedly surprised. “I wasn't expecting that.”
“What will they do with her?”
“What did they say exactly?”
Michael gave him a rundown of his conversation with Gatti and how he responded.
“You did good,” Alonso commended him. “You didn't admit or deny it. They have a strong hunch she's involved though, and if she turns up alive she'll be suspect number one. It's not good.”
“I know.” Michael crossed his arms and looked at the floor.
“Before you turn over your evidence, you're going to have to get them to agree to give both you and her immunity, and probably Josh as well.”
“Will they? And can we trust them? Or will we just end up with bullets in our heads when it's all done?”
“I know you've had a bad experience but generally the CIA doesn't treat its own that way. You're a decorated soldier and Jessica is still an American citizen. And both of you are helping to expose a huge security threat. If Agent Gatti is genuine, you will get immunity at the very least. The question is, do you trust him?”