by J. B. Turner
Where the hell was Scott Caan? What was he planning next? Who was pulling the strings? Now decrypted messages. Thomas Wesley. A Congressman. More and more questions.
She knew, as assistant director of the Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch, she was under the spotlight both from within the FBI and outside. People would be analysing the way she was leading the investigation. It added to the pressure, which seemed to be mounting. Slowly. Inexorably. A notch at a time. She also knew the National Security Branch, which included the Counterterrorism Division and Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate, would also be under immense pressure. They all were. They knew what was at stake. But she also knew that with the full might of the FBI – including its resources, reach and expertise – they would unearth whatever conspiracy was under way.
Only time was against them. The clock was running down, and still Scott Caan was out there.
Less than an hour later, the link to the Strategic Information Operations Center buzzed into life. The face of computer specialist Special Agent Johnny Lopez was on the screen.
Meyerstein said, “OK, what have your team got?”
“The personal laptop of Congressman Drake has just been analysed by us. The emails sent by Thomas Wesley I’ve just forwarded to you. They were heavily encrypted, but we’ve decrypted them all, hundreds of them.”
“Good work.” She turned and looked over to one of her colleagues who gave the thumbs-up sign as he studied the emails from Thomas Wesley. “How did Congressman Drake react when you guys turned up and said you’d need to scan his computers?”
“Smug, pain in the ass, if you must know, talking about infringement of civil liberties, you know the spiel.”
Meyerstein looked at the emails on the laptop in front of her. “Gimme a few moments,” she said, as she speed-read them. “The conversation Wesley claimed he had decrypted mentions a threat to national security.”
She looked up at the screen and saw Agent Lopez grinning from ear-to-ear. “You have something else, don’t you?”
“I’ve left the best till last. We have a clean recording of the decrypted conversation Thomas Wesley gave Congressman Drake.”
Meyerstein clenched her fist. “That’s what I want!”
“It was on an iPod and our analysis shows that the voices have been demorphed. This Wesley is a genius, stripping it right back.”
Meyerstein felt elated. “Get this to me right now.”
Lopez nodded. “Look, we’re still working our way through the emails, but he doesn’t name names. Wesley has simply given the recording of the decrypted conversation to Drake, but doesn’t indicate who is talking. We’re still working on it ourselves. Freddie Limonton and his team are also involved.”
“I want that voice identified. Check and double check and then check it again, before you speak to me. I don’t want ninety per cent certainties. I want one hundred per cent or nothing. Do you hear me?”
“You got it.” He paused. “There’s something else.”
“What?”
“Freddie is analysing the audio signal. He says there are discrepancies which he hadn’t spotted earlier.”
“What kind of discrepancies?”
“An embedded message.”
“Who’s working on this?”
“We’ve got the best steganalysts working on it right now. But it’s proving a tough nut to crack.”
“I don’t want excuses, I want answers.”
Then she ended the real-time feed.
Meyerstein stood and stared at the eerie pictures beamed back from lower Manhattan. Clouds of powder still floating in the aluminium duct. Her blood pressure hiked up a notch as she thought of what the embedded message contained. A final target? Was that it?
She looked around at her team. “Where is Thomas Wesley, people? Who were the guys who took him from his house? I want answers, people.”
TWENTY-NINE
Thomas Wesley came to in darkness. He tried to open his eyes and realised he was blindfolded. He tried to move his hands but felt tight leather straps cut into his wrists. He ached all over. He slowly realised he was tied to a chair. Hands behind his back and ankles strapped tight to the legs of the chair. A wave of anxiety swept over him as he wondered what was going to happen to him. He struggled hard to get free, but the straps only cut deeper into his wrists.
His heart was pounding and he felt as though he was going to hyperventilate. He took deep breaths and tried to control the panic that was spreading through his brain. His lips were parched and there was a chemical aftertaste in his mouth.
“Thomas,” a man’s voice echoed, from somewhere behind him. It sounded like the man from the Defense Criminal Investigative Services who had interviewed him before. “I’m sorry it’s come to this, really I am. All you have to do is tell us who knows about this, and you’ll be free to go.”
“Who are you? Where am I? Please, I just want to go back home to my wife.”
“Thomas, I can only help you so far. We know that you’ve given details to Congressman Lance Drake. But I can’t believe that’s the only person you told. That’s not a realistic proposition. What I’m saying is that there must be others who know about this. Friends, perhaps. Your wife.”
“I swear, it was only myself, the NSA and Lance. But I didn’t tell them the full story. Only the gist of it.”
“I find that very hard to believe, Thomas.”
The man’s voice now had a harder edge. He sensed the man was standing in front of him. Wesley smelled the man’s cologne mixed with stale cigarette smoke and he felt sick to the bottom of his stomach. What the hell was going on? Who were these guys?
“Who else in the NSA knows about this?”
Wesley sighed. “The Inspector General. One or two others. But they didn’t listen to what I had.”
A long silence opened up.
“What about your wife?” the man asked.
“What about her?”
“I can’t believe for one minute that she doesn’t know about the recording and who’s on it.”
“Listen to me, she doesn’t know.”
“Thomas, nothing would make us happier than if you could just go back home. Go back to your wife. But you’ve got to look at it from our point of view. It doesn’t look good. We’re talking national security. This is not a fucking game.”
Wesley said nothing.
A deep sigh. “Thomas, I’m a regular guy, just like you. I’m a Midwestern boy too.”
“Where you from?”
“Not far from where you grew up in Galena, Illinois. Small town boy, same as you. Same good American values. Hard work, honesty. We both love our country, right, Thomas?”
“Absolutely.”
“So let’s just try and get along, so we can both get back to our families. Now, I feel like I’m repeating myself, but I need to clarify your position, Thomas. Who else knows about this apart from Lance Drake?”
“NSA and Lance and myself, and that’s it. And they don’t know who’s on the tape. That’s the God’s honest truth. And it doesn’t matter how many times you ask that question, I’ll still give you the same reply. I can’t say something that isn’t true.”
A long sigh from the man. “You’re not making this easy for yourself. I’m sorry you’ve not been more forthcoming, Thomas. Really I am. You seem like a decent enough kind of guy. Smart. But there’s only so much time I can spare before I have to hand you over.”
Wesley smelled the man’s sour breath close to him as if he was stooping down beside him.
“What do you mean hand me over? Who are you? You’re not DCIS!”
Wesley struggled against the straps, but after a few seconds he didn’t have the energy to continue and his body slumped back in the chair. He broke down and wept, unable to stop the long, deep sobs. “Please, let me go home to my wife.”
“I’m sorry, Thomas. We need answers. A colleague of mine is in the next room. He’s not an understanding kind of guy like me.”
Wesley felt si
ck. A sense of dread swept over him. He now began to feel what real fear was.
“Our man next door, he likes to be what some just think of as… thorough. Do you know what I’m talking about?”
“Who the hell are you? You aren’t DCIS.”
“I’m going to–”
“I’m an American. A patriot. You can’t do this to me!”
A prolonged sigh followed. “Thomas, do you know how easy it is for people to disappear? To appear to kill themselves for no apparent reason?”
The words were spoken in a gentle manner, as if from a life coach. But to Wesley, they struck terror in his heart. He didn’t dare think about what was about to happen. “I’ve told you what I know. I can’t tell you anything else.”
“You are in a basement, with very thick walls. No one can hear any screams. Nothing. The sound just echoes around the room. It’s a little while since we’ve used this room. Do you know what happened to the last person we brought down here?”
Wesley felt nauseous and light-headed, hot and anxious.
“They tell me he went mad.” He let the words hang in the air, as if for effect.
The sound of the man’s footsteps across the concrete floor, opening the heavy door, and then slamming it shut, before it was locked.
Wesley was alone in the pitch-black room. A sense of dread and terror entered his soul. Terror of the unknown. He had heard stories about unlisted sites where high value detainees were taken; tortured until they were broken, where no one knew they were there. Then they disappeared. His mind was racing. But he was an American. Why was this happening? What had all that to do with him? Who were these guys?
A few minutes later, the sound of the door opening and softer, muffled footsteps as if the person was wearing rubber soles. The lights went on again.
He jerked around and struggled feebly against the straps. “Who’s there?”
He felt a sharp jab in the back of his neck.
“What the hell are you giving me?” He struggled again and clenched his teeth, desperate to escape. He inadvertently bit his lip and tasted blood. Suddenly he felt a tingling run up and down his arm and then up his neck. His heart pounded hard. Then he felt a surge of adrenaline and struggled wildly against his restraints. But he was trapped.
Fluorescent strip lights were switched off and a moment later the blindfold from his face was ripped off. He was in suffocating darkness. He squinted as his eyes took a few seconds to adjust and he could make out a silhouetted figure in front of him. The figure turned and left the room and the door slammed shut.
The minutes went by in the still, black, basement. Then suddenly the fluorescent lights flickered to life, flooding the room with a harsh white glow. Wesley screwed up his eyes. It took him several moments before he could see properly. He looked around. Whitewashed walls of a windowless room. The metal chair he was strapped to had been welded to a metal plate on the floor. The wrist and ankle straps were thick, brown leather. The floor was concrete.
He felt completely at their mercy.
Had they just given him a sedative? Perhaps a relaxant? Perhaps LSD? He waited for the effects of whatever drugs he’d been given to take hold.
Then slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, he saw flakes of white paint fall from the whitewashed wall. Then a pulsing sound emanated from the cracks in the wall. It got louder. And louder. The deep bass sound of hip hop.
Military loud. Assailing his senses.
Wesley felt as if his eardrums were going to explode. The hypnotic and terrifying beats were cranked up a notch for several moments. The flakes of white paint became like snow, falling from the wall. Underneath, from the cracks in the bricks, emerged insects.
He watched transfixed as dozens of beetle-like insects emerged. Then scores. Then hundreds. Swarming out of the bricks.
He shut his eyes tight to block out the image as his heart pounded faster and harder. He felt liquid dripping onto his face. He forced his eyelids open and looked up to the ceiling. Blood was dripping through the ceiling and down onto the chair and onto him. He looked down at his feet. Maggots swarming all over.
He looked at his hands and saw worms emerge from his cuticles.
Wesley started screaming as the lights were switched off. He saw snakes crawling in the bloody darkness, circling him. Dark, whispered voices in his head. He felt sick and his insides moved. Dark sick spewed from his mouth down his front.
The sour smell made him cry. He sobbed as rats squeezed through the cracks in the walls and swarmed all over him. They were chewing his ankles and neck and he felt their sharp piercing bites sink into his skin.
He screamed and screamed as he was swallowed up in the darkness.
Wesley was aware of leaves blowing through the trees as he was walked through a darkened wood. He tried to open his eyes but couldn’t. He heard them talking about the canoe. It would be found at the same time. Step by step. Legs heavy, brain woozy.
He tried to open his eyes again. Murky darkness. Blurred rocks and fast moving water. He wanted to struggle, but nothing happened. He felt a jab in his neck and he collapsed in the mud. He tried to move but he couldn’t. Paralysed.
He thought of his wife and saw her smiling eyes. He was sure he could hear her talking to him. Hold on, my darling. I won’t be long. I’ll get you out of there.
Her voice echoed in his head like an angelic whisper. He wanted to see her face, but he couldn’t see a thing. Then he forced himself to open his eyes. Standing above him, blurred, was the man who had interviewed him. His face was partially hidden in the shadows from the trees. Then he felt the water lapping around his mouth and into his lungs.
He felt himself floating on the black water. On the far shore, he saw the blurred silhouettes of two men walking back through the woods.
THIRTY
The sun streamed through the wooden blinds as an exhausted Meyerstein finished briefing her team in the operations room of the FBI safe house on the East Side. She yawned and realised she was running on empty, sleep deprived and grouchy. What she wouldn’t give for a long, hot bath and a great sleep. But that would have to wait. She wasn’t the only one. Many of her team – including Stamper - had gone without any serious sleep – apart from naps – as they strived to make the vital breakthrough, as they sifted reams of data that was flooding in from all corners of the intelligence community. Her father only needed four hours sleep a night and chided anyone that needed more as ‘weaklings’.
A plasma screen showed a feed from the FBI’s New York field office showing WMD agents in Hazmat suits scouring the air ducts for other lethal weapons. It never ceased to amaze her how brave and selfless her colleagues could be. The public didn’t know the half of it. Another screen had a Fox News anchorman speculating that the building may have been leaking dangerous asbestos. But she knew that line or any line could not stand up indefinitely.
Hundreds of special agents across America were trawling numerous encrypted calls and emails and security video footage culled from the NSA. A specialist team worked on Thomas Wesley’s recordings. Meyerstein was focussed on two objectives: tracking down Scott Caan and identifying the two people talking on the tape.
An image showing Freddie Limonton, the bureau’s top computer expert in Washington, came up on one of the huge screens. He looked bug-eyed as he tried to hook up to the teleconference facility.
Meyerstein had known him since she’d joined the bureau in the early 1980s. At the time, the atmosphere of sexism and racism were still ingrained from the Hoover generation of special agents. A world where the white Anglo-Saxon man was king. Limonton was always a loner, didn’t enjoy the locker room atmosphere, and just got on with his job. He was Jewish, like her, and was often the butt of anti-Semitic jokes from a hard-core few from the old school. When cartoons of hook-nosed money lenders were taped to his desk or computer screen, he just shrugged his shoulders and smiled. Meyerstein fumed, but as the years went by, the culture began to disappear, as a new generation of smarter special
agents emerged, changing the FBI for good.
Limonton cleared his throat on the screen.
“Freddie, can you hear and see me?”
“Loud and clear.”
“OK, you guys have been working on this a helluva long time, Freddie. This better be good.”
Freddie remained stony-faced. “I’ve had my best guys working on this flat out, Martha, gimme a break.”
“What have you got?”
He let out a long sigh. “We’ve been trying to figure out why we can’t get a location trace with our face recognition software. It’s the best there is. But we’ve had nothing. A few close things, but nothing concrete.”
Meyerstein looked at her watch, which showed it was 7.09am. “You wanna get to the point. I’m due to hook up with the Director in six minutes precisely.”
“You need to know how cute this guy is. Martha, we ran numerous programs and variations of the program, checking for faces, but nothing. That hasn’t happened to us since we got this new package. But then we started working the problem. What we needed was to pull a face out of the crowd, and compare it to all the stored images we have, alright?”
Meyerstein wanted him to hurry up, but she knew Limonton didn’t know how to cut to the chase.
“Every face has numerous landmarks, as they’re called.”
“Unique to that person.”
“Absolutely,” he said, nodding slowly. “Now, there are peaks and troughs that make up everyone’s facial features. These landmarks are known as nodal points. And each human face has around eighty nodal points. You with me?”
Meyerstein felt her foot tapping against the desk.
“Distance between the eyes, width of the nose and depth of the eye sockets. The length of the jaw line. These nodal points are measured.”
“And this produces a numerical code, right?” she said, trying to hurry him along.
“You got it. Known as a face print. But we’ve been using biometrics, to check skin texture, and still we haven’t come up with any trace of this guy, Scott Caan.”
Meyerstein looked again at her watch. “Tell me there’s a point to all this, Freddie.”