[Jack Emery 01.0] The Foundation
Page 18
“All sounds promising.” Celeste patted him on the shoulder. “Come on, time for lunch. Let’s game plan this.”
18
What this war has shown, more than any other in history, is the difference of warfare in the modern age. Smart weaponry has reduced the number of men needed to prosecute a war, but increased the drain of material and financial resources. The Chinese sank the George Washington, the US retaliated and struck at a number of Chinese air and naval bases, and now both sides are in stalemate over Taiwan. Billions of dollars’ worth of military equipment is wrecked daily, and while both states have the power to deny the other the air, sea and land, neither has the strength to exert much control. The concern expressed by United Nations Secretary General Hans Voeckler is that as the frustration continues, both sides will be tempted to use nuclear weapons to end the deadlock.
Jim Teague, Jane’s Defence Weekly, October 15
Jack held up his phone and took a few more photos of the woman. It hadn’t been hard to find her, given how much of a public figure she was, and since then he’d watched her from a distance for almost a week. Michelle Dominique, Director of the Foundation for a New America and Congressional nominee. He pushed himself off the wall he’d been leaning on and walked in an easy stride to intercept her.
After hearing her voice on the news, and matching it to the voicemail, he’d hopped a short flight from New York to Washington. He’d spent his days trailing her, and his nights digging deeper into her character. She was his sole focus. He was intent on learning more about this woman, who was somehow entwined in Ernest’s shooting. Unfortunately, she was surprisingly private and he'd struggled to find much dirt.
Now he walked twenty yards behind her, careful not to get too close. Not that it mattered all that much, since she didn’t seem overly aware of her surroundings. Whatever her part in all of this, he doubted she was some kind of super spy. After another block, she slowed near a bar and entered.
He had a choice to make. He could go in now and try to engineer some sort of contact, or he could wait and see what happened. He deferred to his professional judgment. There was no point in waiting any longer. An idea formed in his head, which he spent the next few minutes turning into a plan.
He crossed the road and entered the bar. It was more upmarket than he was used to. A bar ran the length of the small room and soft lighting accentuated curves and forgave blemishes. There were leather booths, which afforded privacy to those who wanted it. He had no doubt that the step up in class would be reflected in the drink prices.
Jack felt at home, or close enough. As he closed the door behind him and approached the bar, heads turned—he knew he was being sized up. In this sort of place, that analysis consisted of two things: how much he earned and how attractive he was. Lucky he was wearing the most expensive suit he owned.
He stepped closer to the bar with all the confidence he could muster and looked around. He recognized his target standing at the bar. Dominique was one of the few who hadn’t turned to look at him when he’d entered. Her jet black hair flowed down the back of her dress and confidence seemed to radiate off her.
As he stood next to her, he was terrified that she’d recognize him, but he had to take the chance. He left just the right distance between them to ensure he didn’t arouse her suspicions, but not enough for someone else to slip in between them. Jack rested his elbows on the bar and when the barman looked his way, he slid a fifty onto the counter.
The barman looked at the note, then up at him with a smile. “What can I get you?”
“Whisky on the rocks.” Jack had no intention of drinking, but the act was necessary.
The barman frowned. “Any in particular, sir? We’ve got quite a few.”
“Surprise me.” Jack turned to Dominique. “And I’ll get the lady’s drink too.”
Jack turned his head back to the barman and kept calm. He sensed slight movement to his left as the ice hit the bottom of the glass with a clink. He felt her gaze upon him as the top-shelf Irish whisky was poured over ice with the measured practice of a professional. He heard Dominique clear her throat as the barman put the scotch and a small bowl of nuts on the bar with a smile, then placed another whisky in front of her.
Dominique took the drink but left the nuts. “Thanks.”
As she walked away, Jack exhaled heavily, glad that she hadn’t recognized him. Though he wasn’t exactly a household name, a lot of Washington insiders knew who he was. Newsprint clearly still gave him a fair bit of anonymity. His name was known by most, but his face wasn’t. He remained perched on the bar as the barman returned with his change, but Jack waved at him to keep it.
The barman smiled and gestured his head in Dominique’s direction. “Hey, thanks, buddy. Looks like you’re in with a good shot.”
Jack grinned. “I’ve got no idea what you mean.”
Jack rapped his knuckles on the bar and walked to the only vacant booth, right at the back of the bar. Dominique was nowhere in sight, and his heart was threatening to leap out of his chest with its rhythmic thumping. He sat and took a few deep breaths to calm himself as he waited. Though tempted to take a sip of whisky to calm his nerves, his recent addiction was still too raw, and he left it alone.
A minute or so after he’d sat down, Dominique passed. He caught her scent: it was something floral but not overpowering, made all the more intoxicating by knowing he was close to getting her answers. Before he knew it, she’d placed her own drink on the table and was sliding up closer to him in the booth.
“Thanks for the drink.” Her voice was soft but thick with suggestion.
Jack kept his voice even, despite his nerves and excitement. “No problem.”
She smiled slightly. “What’s your name?”
Jack knew he had her attention, but it was potentially fleeting. There were a dozen other guys in the bar who’d give her exactly what he could, probably better. He pressed his leg into hers and she responded in kind. He dug into his pocket and placed a fake business card on the table.
She picked up the card and considered it. “So, James Ewing. Farzo? What’s that?”
“Social media, video conferencing, that sort of thing. It’s a start-up I’m working on.”
“Sounds dull.” She placed the card back on the table. “I’m Michelle.”
He grinned. “It is, until it outgrows Facebook. What do you do for a living, Michelle?”
“Lobbyist.” She clearly didn’t want to say any more. She lifted her drink to her mouth, drained it then placed the glass back on the table so firmly that the ice clinked.
“Get you another drink?” While Jack knew things might be easier with Dominique if she had booze in her, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was acting predatorily.
“Yours will do.” She grabbed his drink and downed it in one go. She obviously knew how to have a good time. “Let’s get out of here?”
Jack tried his best not to look stunned. He hadn’t expected her to be so forward. “Um, my hotel is miles away.”
This was his gambit. Getting Dominique interested, getting her into bed and escaping the next day with his story intact would be the easy part. But the entire effort hinged on whether he could get to her place, search through her things, and get a feel for who she was. Finding something useful would be a bonus. She started to stand and he hoped.
“My place is close.” She shrugged. “Come on.”
Jack stood and followed her to the exit. He was aware of every pair of eyes in the bar tracking him, scoring him much higher than when he’d walked in. Even though he had a purpose to all this, he had to admit he enjoyed the attention. He reconsidered his feelings from a moment ago.
Predatory or not, he had no qualms about his actions. He knew that he was about to start down the very slippery slope that had made his colleagues in Britain think that hacking phones was logical. But he didn’t care. He was in control again. He felt like a lion stalking a gazelle.
He was going to enjoy this.
Besides, she’d warned him the night before that she was intending to sleep in, so he could leave if he wanted to be up and off early. He wondered if she was as blunt with all the men she bedded, and decided it was a safe bet. She hadn’t been what he’d expected. She’d been harsh, demanding, physical. He’d had to work harder to satiate her than any woman he’d been with, and they’d tried things Jack never had before. Not even with Erin.
It gave him all the more motivation to do the next part right. He needed information, and this was the last place he could think of to get it. He listened and waited. She stirred again slightly, one more time, before she started to snore softly. When he was sure she was asleep, he pulled back the covers and moved quietly into the ensuite. Once inside, he took his time and sat on the toilet far longer than needed to conduct his business. He wanted to be sure she stayed asleep.
When he left the bathroom she hadn’t stirred. He dug around in the pocket of his jeans, which were on the floor next to the bed. He grabbed his keys as quietly as he could and moved toward the door. Once through it he closed it softly. He turned on the flashlight on his key ring and moved the small, bright beam of light around the apartment.
He didn’t really know where to start, so he went straight to the iPad on the coffee table. He sat on the couch with it and put the flashlight between his teeth as he rolled back the lime green cover. The screen lit up, nearly as bright as the flashlight. A box asking for a code popped up. He cursed. It would have been all too easy for her to have no security on the iPad, but she wasn’t that stupid. He probably had three tries to get the password right before he was locked out. He tried one random, four-digit code. The iPad buzzed, and “Wrong Passcode—Try Again” flashed in red at the top of the password box. He tried another. It buzzed again. He knew he could have one more try, but there’d be no surer way to inform her that he’d been rifling through her stuff than a locked iPad.
He sighed. While the iPad was the obvious place to find incriminating documents and information, it was closed to him. He shut the cover and put the iPad back down on the table where he’d found it. He took the flashlight out of his mouth and waved the beam around the room again.
He spent the next twenty minutes fruitlessly searching the apartment. He searched the kitchen, living area and main bathroom, but found nothing of worth. He knew there was one room most likely to contain some information, and he’d deliberately left it to last. He opened the door to the study, which seemed to pull double duty as a study, second bedroom, clothes storage room and general junk depot. There was no computer, but there was a desk littered with documents and a safe.
He left the safe alone, having no illusions that he was MacGyver, able to open it with a paperclip. Instead, he went straight for the notepad. He grabbed a lead pencil from the stationary caddy and tried the oldest trick in the book. He scribbled the lead pencil all over the yellow paper, and writing appeared.
Chen–608-558-2015.
A phone number. An Asian name. It might be nothing, or it could be a lead. He tore off the sheet of paper, crushed it into a ball and placed the pencil back in the caddy. He’d be able to look up the number easily enough later. He searched through the pile of documents on the desk but found nothing of use, though there was a boarding pass stub for Shanghai.
He left the study and made his way back to the bedroom. On his way through he looked longingly at the iPad, sorely tempted to try again, but he left it. He returned to the bedroom and put the keys and the screwed-up piece of paper into his jeans. He climbed back into the bed. Leaving now would just make her suspicious. Next to him, Dominique stirred, rolled over and placed an arm over his midsection.
“Thanks for last night.” Her voice was heavy with sleep. “I really enjoyed it.”
“No problem.”
His mind buzzed with the possibilities of what he’d found. He knew it could end up being nothing, or it could be the key to unlocking the whole puzzle. He had a number, and knew she’d been in Shanghai. He’d have to call in a favor to get the number traced to an address, but that wouldn’t be hugely difficult. He’d leave first thing in the morning and start down the path that had just opened for him. He hoped it led somewhere.
He felt energized. It was enough for now.
19
There has been a major development in the war between the United States and China today, as Japan announced it would be committing air and naval assets to the conflict. The Japanese Government has justified the move by stating the forces would be used in self-defense only. Japanese Prime Minister Hiroshi Matsui stressed that the Japanese forces were tasked solely to protect Japanese shipping lanes through the South China Sea. Japan has lost three merchant ships in the conflict so far and the deployment of the highly capable Japanese military will free up US assets currently spent defending convoys.
Kris Brady, New York Standard, October 16
Michelle woke for the second time. She’d enjoyed the sleep in, and was particularly glad that Ewing had left without much fuss. It made for a nice change, as did the quality of the sex. She stretched like a cat, relishing the fact that she had the bed to herself. She had loose plans to sleep for a bit longer, followed by coffee and then a jog. Her plans were interrupted in their infancy by her cell phone, which buzzed on the nightstand.
She considered leaving it, but then sighed and hit the answer button. “What?”
“It’s Andrei Shadd.”
“What the fuck, Andrei? It’s my day off, and it’s too early.”
There was a pause on the other end. “Sorry, Michelle, but I think your iPad has been stolen, and I thought you’d want to know.”
She frowned. “No, it hasn’t. I used it yesterday.”
“I can’t explain it then. The security guys recorded someone trying to unlock it. Whoever it was got nothing, but the guys have remotely wiped it.”
“It’s in my apartment. Unless Spiderman broke in while I was sleeping, there was no need to wipe it. Not fucking impressed, Andrei.”
The phone line was quiet.
She stretched her legs out again under the covers. Her body ached—a good ache. “I want whatever you wiped restored by the time I’m out of the shower.”
“Doesn’t work like that. It’s all gone, and the last backup was over a month ago. You should really plug it in more often, Michelle. The manufacturer recommends once—”
“Fuck off, Andrei. Send me the details of whoever broke into it, I need to know who to hate on for a couple of days.”
She hung up and threw the phone on top of the covers. She stretched out again and winced as a sharp pain stabbed her in the back, and wondered again what some of those positions had been last night. She’d have to remember them. She was just dozing off again when her mind screamed and her eyes shot open.
She’d been half asleep during the phone call, so had failed to connect the dots. It hit her like a brick. She rushed out of bed, tripped in the covers and fell to the floor. With a curse, she got up and ran to the living room. Her iPad was where she’d left it, on the coffee table, undisturbed. Her fears had been unfounded.
“Fucking idiots.”
Ewing had probably just wanted to check his Facebook account. He hadn’t seemed like the brightest spark, so she severely doubted that he was an international super spy, as Andrei seemed to think. She was about to call him back and abuse him some more, just so she’d feel better, when her phone beeped.
The message was from Andrei, and contained the information she’d wanted—a log of activity that confirmed someone had tried to unlock the iPad at a ridiculously early hour. She’d thought he might have done it once the sun had come up, or just before he’d left, but the odd timing aroused her suspicions.
; “Fuck.”
She did a quick scan of the room, but couldn’t see anything obvious missing. If she’d been robbed, the diamond earrings she’d left on the kitchen bench as they’d undressed would be gone. So would the iPad, for that matter. She rushed to the only place in the apartment she cared about, because it contained information that could ruin her.
Her safe was in plain sight in the study, but she’d been assured it was the hardest to crack in the world, short of those found in banks. It was intact and seemingly undisturbed, though some of the papers on her desk had been rifled through. But none of those mattered.
She knew she was being stupid, but she put in the code to the safe, waited until it beeped then entered the second code. It beeped again and she opened it quickly. Her body flooded with relief when she saw that the single manila folder was still there, along with a decent amount of cash, a handgun, some USB sticks and her duplicate ID.
She closed the safe and sank to the floor. She exhaled heavily and spent a few moments trying to regain her composure. Whatever he’d been looking for, the things that could destroy her life and her work were safe. She cursed at her carelessness. She’d underestimated the possibility that one of her casual pickups could mean her harm.
She called Andrei back. “You were right.”
She had a hunch he was smiling on the other end. “Oh?”
“I had a guy here last night. My iPad and my safe look like they’re okay, and I doubt he got much else, but I can’t be sure. I want you to find out what you can.”
“Got a name?”
“James Ewing. Probably fake though.” She ground her teeth. “I think I got played.”
“Leave it with me.” He paused. “That all?”
She thought for a few seconds. Michelle didn’t think she’d been compromised, but that didn’t remove the horrible feeling in her stomach. She had enough to worry about without free agents ruining her plans. She’d considered another, different problem for days, but this seemed to be the perfect time to make a decision.