The Essential Sam Jameson / Peter Kittredge Box Set: SEVEN bestsellers from international sensation Lars Emmerich

by Lars Emmerich

  Dan looked offended. “I thought you held me in higher regard than that,” he said with mock indignation. “You seem to have forgotten that I did juvie time in high school for hacking. Let me see what I can do.”

  “Thanks, Dan. I’m glad you’re on my team.”

  “Can you fix my parking tickets?” Brock asked.

  “For a small fee.”

  A pensive look crossed Dan’s face. “Listen,” he said, “something has been bugging me.”

  “I apologize for whatever I’ve done,” Sam said.

  “Not that. It’s been bothering me how quickly Jensen was killed after you enlisted his help with the music box evidence.”

  Sam nodded. “It would make sense if they had been tracking me. They could’ve easily figured out that we spent time together, which might have been the kiss of death for him. But I haven’t seen hide or hair of anyone, DC Metro guys included, since right after Quartermain’s murder on Monday.”

  Dan looked pensive. He scrunched his face and scratched what would have been his neck, if he had a neck. Instead, he had one giant set of shoulders with a head stuck on top of them. He was built like a bodybuilder, which seemed an unlikely frame to house the mind of an investigative computer genius with the temperament to sit in front of a computer monitor for weeks at a time in order to solve difficult cases. He complemented Sam’s tenacious fieldwork perfectly, with equally tenacious network ops. It was increasingly a cyber world, and Dan was among the very best.

  “You found a CD ROM in the music box, didn’t you?” he finally asked.

  Sam nodded. “It had the financial data linking Abrams and Cooper to Executive Strategies and JIE Associates.”

  “And you used Jensen’s computer to access the data?”

  “I did.”

  Dan asked for the CD ROM, which Sam happened to have tucked into her pocket.

  “You’re setting a bad example, walking around with crime scene evidence up your sleeve,” he chided as he took the computer disk from her and dropped it into a waiting tray on his own computer.

  He opened several more windows full of what looked like alphabet soup. It had an old-school computer aesthetic, nothing but a black background behind undecipherable code made up of ugly green font. But it seemed to make sense to Dan.

  He scratched his chin, typed, mumbled, nodded his head, and typed some more.

  “Care to let me in on the secret?” Sam asked.

  “Here’s the deal,” Dan said. “Ever heard of an outfit called Hack Team?”

  Sam shook her head, but Brock piped up. “Spyware guys? I saw a documentary a while ago.”

  “That’s right,” Dan said. “They produce some of the world’s best spyware and sell it exclusively to governments, mostly the kind who can’t afford to write their own.”

  “Seemed like they did business with some shady people,” Brock said. “Though you can’t always believe what you see in a documentary.”

  “In this case, it’s pretty accurate. Don’t tell anyone I told you this,” Dan said with a conspiratorial air, “but the federal government is actually ten times shadier. It’s just that we’re much quieter about it.”

  Brock nodded. “Figures.”

  “But Hack Team sells their stuff all over the world,” Dan went on. “They even have a slick little video sales pitch. Their software is supposed to be untraceable, but they’re too vain not to bury a signature line or two inside the code. It’s plain as day, if you know what you’re looking for.”

  “What does it do?” Sam asked.

  “Nothing much. Just records your position, your keystrokes, any ambient audio in the room, and even takes video, if your laptop has a built-in camera, all without alerting the user that anything funny is going on. They can also hack any passwords to bank accounts, social media sites, you name it.”

  “Jesus,” Sam said. “That’s dastardly.”

  “And then some,” Dan agreed. “It’s the dictator’s perfect tool.”

  Brock nodded. “Actually,” he said, “I think using something like that pretty much turns any government into a de facto dictatorship.”

  “It’s a brave new world,” Dan agreed. “Anyway, politics aside, it’s pretty easy for whoever put the Hack Team software on this disk to set up an alert. As soon as the user accesses the data, they’ll have instant access to everything on that laptop, and instant access to everyone who uses it.”

  Sam shuddered. “So they watched me look through the data.”

  Dan nodded grimly. “I’m surprised they didn’t find you, Sam.” He looked concerned. “You don’t still have the laptop, do you?”

  She shook her head. “I dropped it off back at Jeff’s,” she said slowly.

  Her face darkened and her eyes moistened. “I got him killed. He had rounded the corner. He was beating his drug habit, getting his life back together, and I got him killed.”

  “Bullshit, baby,” Brock said, draping an arm around her shoulders. “You’re not responsible for someone else’s crime.”

  “I should have been smarter than that.”

  Dan shook his head. “It’s not like you had many other options.”

  Brock’s watch alarm beeped, interrupting Sam’s self-flagellation. “If we’re going to Caracas today, we need to roll,” he said.

  “Can you find me a list of countries we suspect of using Hack Team software?” Sam asked on the way out of Dan’s office.

  “Sure thing,” Dan said. “It won’t be one hundred percent accurate, because that kind of stuff is hard to track, but our guys keep a pretty close watch on it. It’ll be a long list though.”

  “I have a specific country in mind,” Sam said.

  4

  El Jerga turned down the volume on his rented sedan’s radio. He was approaching the city from the west, and he needed the mental bandwidth to navigate while dodging traffic.

  His highly enjoyable and lucrative trip to the Midwest was a pleasant, glowing memory. His target hadn’t survived as long as El Jerga had hoped, but it had been long enough for the demons inside him to run amok. The skinny man’s otherworldly howls of agony fueled their frenzy.

  If he was a deviant, El Jerga rationalized, his environment certainly shouldered some portion of the culpability. Venezuela’s overly politicized society demanded muscle of all sorts, and a man of his particular brand of eager proclivity was almost infinitely useful to innumerable would-be masters.

  El Jerga had picked and chosen his affiliations carefully, always aligned with the interests of his beloved uncle, may El Señor have mercy on his soul, and always furthering the cause of the little guy. His father had died in one of the thousands of oil field uprisings, fighting for livable pay and less deadly conditions, and those values had taken on a talisman’s import for El Jerga as he came of age under his uncle’s tutelage.

  Because his enemies were still strong, El Jerga had an ideologue’s zeal. An untested philosophy is always easy to support, because its shortcomings aren’t yet as painfully obvious as those of a sitting government. Governing a society is a messy, involved, and invariably ugly process, and El Jerga’s self-evident truths were thus far unsullied by the welter of pragmatic politics.

  That made his ideology a convenient justification for the ungodly atrocities El Jerga loved to commit against his fellow man. When he was at work on someone, he relished the way the power of life and death flowed through him. It excited him on a visceral, wordless, precognitive level. It was progeny of some atavistic remnant of the predators from which humans evolved, but from which El Jerga had somehow descended without evolving.

  He was more animal than human, and he knew it. He used it shamelessly, not because it was okay in and of itself, but because it was okay in light of his cause. He would still have given himself over to his wanton hunger without the cause, of course, but it was wonderful to have found a community that cultivated and cherished his unique talents.

  Match made in heaven.

  El Jerga took the exit for Dull
es International Airport, automatically thinking of the airport’s namesakes, the Dulles family. He had studied their history. They swung the hammer of the gods. They thought they were gods. And godly. They believed that their religion, some apocalyptic good versus evil dogma, should guide their statecraft. So they had decimated the godless. What qualified a race or nationality as godless in the minds of the Dulles brothers wasn’t entirely clear, but they certainly had blood on their hands, El Jerga had concluded.

  The horrendous hypocrisy in his thinking was hidden from El Jerga by his need not to see it.

  He parked the large sedan in the short-term parking lot at Dulles, shuffled in his slow way into the ticketing area of the large, light-filled airport atrium, and took a seat.

  He listened.

  He heard many uncomfortably loud announcements, about smoking and unattended baggage and suspicious persons and parking violations and flight delays.

  Then he heard what he was listening for. “Mister Palms, Mister Harold Palms, please pick up a white courtesy phone.”

  He picked up the courtesy phone. “Stand by for your party,” the operator announced.

  A gruff gringo voice came on the line. “Seven,” he said.

  “Nueve,” El Jerga answered. The code sum was sixteen.

  “Hurry,” the gringo said. “Thirty minutes. Take the subway to the office. Cleaning crew will meet you. When you’re done, use the L’Enfant station for your egress. It’ll be sanitized by friends.”

  “Acknowledged,” El Jerga croaked.

  He hung up the phone, hustled back to his car, exited the airport after paying the parking fee, and drove more quickly than was wise toward the Tysons Corner park-and-ride complex.

  Cutting it close, he thought. Wasn’t his fault. He was on time. Wasn’t his problem if they didn’t have their act together.

  Still, he was anxious. And disappointed. A daylight hit at the office would afford him none of the pleasures that he had allowed himself to lust for. He wanted to take his time, to savor his victims. Especially the girl. But he would be forced to work quickly and silently.

  Pity.

  He looked at his watch again.

  He would be lucky either way, he decided. Lucky if he made it to the gringo government building in time to do his duty, because it would mean another impressively large paycheck. His hookers weren’t cheap, and he had grown accustomed to the eager favors his wallet garnered.

  But he would be equally lucky if he missed them. It would keep his hopes alive for a long, fulfilling engagement. He longed to hear her screams, taste her flesh, draw her blood, revel in his release over her gorgeous, powerless form.

  All in the name of the cause, of course.

  5

  “Caracas?” Ekman protested, his angular cheeks flushed. “I’m not going.”

  “Sorry, Francis. You don’t have a choice. Part of our deal with Jarvis, remember?” Sam said coolly. “You’re definitely along for the ride on this one.”

  “This is ridiculous. You have to know I’m not working against your interests here.”

  “I’ll know soon enough, won’t I?” Sam said with a smile. “C’mon, we have flights to catch.”

  Ekman’s phone rang. “Special Agent In Charge Ekman, how may I help you?”

  Clown, Sam thought. Even answers the phone like an errand boy.

  Ekman listened for a second, tightened his jaw, and held the phone out to Sam. “It’s your deputy. Apparently, I’m answering the phone for you now, too,” he said through clenched teeth.

  “Thanks, Frank,” Sam said cheerily. Brock chuckled.

  “Hi, Dan.”

  “Don’t say anything. I got in to that thing we were talking about earlier. Know what I mean?”

  “Umm, no,” Sam said. “Can I have a hint?”

  “That sealed thing.”

  “Ahh, that thing.” The identity of the person who left the partial print on the CD ROM in the music box. The person’s identity had been sealed by executive fiat or court order. Sam had asked Dan to hack into the system to find the data. “I’m with you now. Did we learn anything?”

  “You bet your ass I did.”

  “Leave my ass out of this, please,” she said, winking at Brock. “My boyfriend’s standing right here.”

  “Funny. Avery Martinson.”

  Sweet Jesus. Sam did her best to keep her expression neutral. She didn’t want to give anything away to Ekman. But this is a doozie.

  “Did you hear me?” Dan asked.

  “Uh, yeah. Sure, I’ll do that, Dan. Thanks for taking care of that for me.”

  “That was a nonsense response,” Dan said. “I presume Ekman’s listening?”

  “Yes, that’s right,” she said. “Spot on with your analysis. Let me consider that for a moment.”

  “You sound ridiculous, you know,” Dan said. “You never talk that way. He’s going to know you’re snowing him.”

  She ignored him. Her mind raced.

  Avery Martinson was the name someone had used to sign in on the Pentagon visitor log at exactly the same time that Arturo Dibiaso’s cell phone information placed him at the Pentagon visitor’s desk. Sam was certain it wasn’t a coincidence.

  So in her mind, Avery Martinson was Arturo Dibiaso. Or they were working together. Same thing, for her purposes.

  And when she had thrown Martinson’s name at Jarvis during their showdown an hour earlier, Jarvis had been unable to hide his alarm.

  Jarvis knows Dibiaso.

  And Dibiaso planted the financial data linking Executive Strategies, JIE Associates, Everett Cooper, and John Abrams.

  Smart money is on Dibiaso being a Company man.

  That means if Jarvis isn’t an Agency goon himself, he’s at least in play by the CIA.

  “Dan, I need you to look into the Tandem Joint files.”

  “What?”

  “The TJ files, Dan.” She noticed Ekman watching her as he stuffed papers and personal effects into his briefcase. She shouldn’t be having this conversation in front of him, but she didn’t have time to walk all the way back up to Dan’s office. Brock would miss his flight.

  Dan was silent for a long moment. “Ah. Of course. TJ. Same initials as our esteemed deputy director.”

  “Yes, that’s right. That’s the one. Maybe use some of those new software tools you were telling me about earlier. Let me know what you find.”

  “Holy shit, Sam,” Dan said. “Do you realize what you’re asking? We’ll need top cover and authorizations that we don’t have, and that we can never get.”

  “That’s definitely a concern, yes,” Sam said, watching Ekman with her peripheral vision. He had stopped watching her and was busily tidying his desk.

  “Seriously, Sam. If we get caught–”

  “I have every confidence in your abilities, Dan.” Getting caught snooping into Jarvis’ personal files would suck, she thought. But not nearly as much as getting blindsided by an Agency bastard. Jarvis was dirty. Sam could feel it in her bones.

  “I think right away is best,” she said.

  Dan reluctantly agreed and signed off with a flourish of profanity.

  “What was that all about?” Ekman asked when she replaced the phone on its cradle.

  “Nothing. Clearing off some case work that piled up this week.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Ekman said.

  “Fortunately for me,” she said with a smug smile, “what you believe no longer matters.”

  Ekman reddened, but remained silent. She’d beaten him into submission during their earlier meeting in Jarvis’ office, and he was now under orders from Jarvis to accompany Sam.

  She couldn’t tell for sure, but she thought she detected a hint of superiority in his eyes, a new affectation for Ekman. I wonder if that little weasel is in bed with Jarvis, she thought to herself.

  Guess I’ll know soon enough.

  “Grab your man-purse and let’s hit it, Francis. Brock has a plane to catch.”

  “I really, r
eally hate it when you call me Francis.”

  “Seriously? Why didn’t you say something?” Sam gave him a wicked smile.

  Brock tried unsuccessfully to stifle his laugh.

  Ekman sulked. He tried to follow Sam out of the office, but she waved him in front. “You first. Walk where I can see you.”

  He gave her a look that said you’ve got to be kidding me, but Sam gave him a look that said shut your damn pie hole and do as you’re told.

  Sam’s look won out, and Ekman strode out of his office, with Sam and Brock following two paces behind him.

  6

  El Jerga exited the subway station at L’Enfant Plaza. He was nauseous from the fumes, and from sitting sideways as the train jerked and jolted to stop after stop along the way from the Tysons Corner station. He was amazed that there weren’t more accidents in the world’s subway systems. They seemed to him like death traps, and he regarded them much like he regarded airplanes, with fear and loathing.

  He paused for a long inhalation of relatively clean air, and felt the nausea and fog lifting as he rode the escalator toward daylight.

  He ran through the identification challenge-and-response sequence in his mind for what must have been the hundredth time. El Jerga was always careful about making contact, as agents were captured and killed in grisly fashion – sometimes by their own agencies – as a result of relatively minor identification mistakes. Things were easily misinterpreted in a world where no one trusted anyone else.

  But he was especially fastidious about leaving nothing to chance this time. He was about to enter the most xenophobic institution on the planet, the gringo government’s Homeland Security building.

  And if all went well, he would leave two dead people in his wake.

  It had occurred more than once to El Jerga that because the risk was just shy of egregious, such an audacious hit was a strong statement. His handlers were obviously prepared to pay a high cost for such a statement.

  It was beyond obvious to El Jerga: he was expendable.

  But he resolved not to be expended.