Dividing Zero

by Ty Patterson

  The name board had the same red markings that the Toccoa one had.

  Connersville now read CO/NNERSVILLE.

  Four hours later they were back in the sky, after thanking the police chief and returning the vehicle back to Fields.

  They hadn’t expected to find much and hence they weren’t disappointed.

  That’s not right, Meghan corrected herself. We know Maddie was here. We know he was here. There is a purpose to their traveling.

  ‘We just have to find what it is,’ she spoke aloud.

  Her sister looked at her questioningly.

  ‘Why they are traveling? To small cities,’ Meghan explained.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ Beth replied slowly, her phone by her side, Maddie on its screen.

  ‘What if he isn’t mocking us?’

  Meghan felt the words sink slowly inside her and with a sudden certainty, she knew Beth was right.

  ‘That changes everything.’

  ‘He’s trying to tell us something.’ Beth rose and paced in the cabin. ‘He’s deliberately reaching out, traveling, and putting himself at risk.’

  ‘You know what that means don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, our starting point and assumptions were all wrong.’ Beth stopped and turned to her sister and smiled when she saw Meghan was on the same page.

  ‘It means John Doe wasn’t hitting Amy Kittrell.’

  Chapter 32

  They spoke rapidly, completing each other’s sentences, thoughts forming quickly, connections being made.

  ‘Josh Kittrell is dead, isn’t he?’ Beth was nearly vibrating from the rush of a new line of thought.

  ‘Yes, we can’t dispute that. We still have a John Doe.’

  ‘He grabbed Maddie because something happened. Or was about to happen.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘He laid low for a while, maybe to follow what we or the cops would do.’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘Maybe he thought we were on the wrong track when we interviewed Mayo and Kane—’ Beth stopped mid-sentence. ‘How would he know?’

  ‘Easy. He could have followed the news, called the NYPD, put two and two together. Or maybe he has contacts inside the NYPD.’

  Beth nodded and resumed. ‘Our questioning Amy Kittrell was not helpful, either.’

  ‘Yeah, and he could have found that easily enough.’

  ‘So he went to Toccoa and took the picture.’

  ‘Uh-uh.’

  ‘When we still went around in circles, he sent the video. That too didn’t work, so he had to go to Connersville.’

  ‘I’m with you so far, but what’s in Connersville?’

  Beth frowned for a long while, looking out of a window, paying no attention to fluffy clouds and a gleaming wing.

  ‘Maybe it’s not what was in those cities, but something in those messages.’

  ‘Werner analyzed those and got nothing.’

  ‘Werner did what we asked it to do. Maybe we asked the wrong questions.’

  Beth pulled out her screen and swiveled it so that Meghan could watch too.

  She brought up the Toccoa photograph and placed it next to the Connersville one.

  They stared at the pictures.

  No answers came.

  Beth played the video and they listened to Maddie’s musical voice recite the math problems she was solving.

  Subtraction. Division.

  Meghan’s eyes flicked to the pictures that were minimized at the top of the screen.

  Something tugged at the edge of her memory.

  She turned away and let Maddie’s voice enter her mind and blow away the baggage and the noise.

  Nope. Not working. It’s still elusive.

  Subtraction. Zero. Division.

  Subtraction. Division. Zero.

  Her eyes flew back.

  ‘Got it,’ she yelled.

  Beth winced and turned off the video.

  ‘Got what?’

  Meghan knew she was grinning goofily, but she couldn’t help it. ‘All those subtraction problems she’s doing, what do they end in?’

  ‘Zero. It might be quicker if you tell me—’

  ‘Nope. We’ll do it my way. And the division ones?’

  ‘Not one answer there.’

  Meghan enlarged the pictures and sat back waiting for Beth to connect the dots.

  A sudden widening of the eyes and gasp was Beth’s reaction. ‘TO/CCOA. CO/NNERSVILLE. Subtraction. Division. Zero.’

  ‘He was pointing us to those two Os and that slash…’

  ‘Dividing Zero!’ Beth exclaimed, completing Meghan’s sentence.

  She high-fived Meghan, grabbed her screen and instructed Werner to dig into the term.

  They waited. Meghan cracked her knuckles. Beth opened a bag of nuts and crunched through them.

  Werner hadn’t returned any answers by the time they landed in New York at eight p.m. on the fifteenth day.

  They flagged a cab, discussed the two words and their possible meanings.

  ‘Let’s ask him,’ Meghan said finally, when they got nowhere.

  ‘He might be sleeping. It’s past midnight in Paris.’

  ‘Zeb?’ Meghan laughed. ‘He’ll be awake.’

  Beth texted Zeb. Have you heard of Dividing Zero?

  Her phone buzzed the next moment, an incoming call. Zeb.

  She put it on speaker and briefed him.

  ‘Rings no bells,’ he said, when she had finished. ‘It sounds like a term the military would use. You know who to ask.’

  ‘Will he know?’

  It was Zeb’s turn to laugh. ‘If he doesn’t, he’ll know who to ask.’

  ‘When are you back?’

  ‘Tomorrow. Bwana, Rog, Chloe, and Bear are returning tomorrow too.’

  General Klouse answered promptly, his voice alert, as if he had been expecting their call.

  He probably was. Zeb must have messaged him; Meghan thought and listened while Beth outlined their direction of thought and their finding.

  The National Security Advisor kept quiet for several moments. Above the hum of tires and the honking of the city’s traffic, they heard a clink, as if a cube of ice had dropped into a glass.

  Scotch. He loves fine whiskey.

  ‘Can’t say I remember any such name.’ The general’s voice came back. ‘Leave it with me, though. There are folks I can ask.’

  ‘Discreetly, sir.’

  ‘Of course.’

  They hopped out of their cab outside their office, paid the fare, and disappeared inside, without a backward glance.

  If they had, they would have spotted the tail.

  Chapter 33

  The National Security Advisor called them at ten p.m. as Meghan was readying for bed.

  ‘Would you ladies be up for a short flight? Now?’

  Meghan glanced at the clock and at her inviting bed.

  What the heck. We can sleep just as well in D.C.

  ‘We’ll be there, sir. It might be midnight.’

  ‘I’ll be awake.’

  She called Beth and told her to haul ass and in half an hour they were heading back to the airport, back to the Gulfstream where the pilots were waiting.

  Beth stifled a yawn and leaned back in the cab, ‘He has something, hasn’t he? Otherwise he wouldn’t have us fly to D.C.’

  ‘Only one way to know.’

  ‘Where are we staying? You booked any hotel?’

  ‘You ever stayed with a National Security Advisor?’

  Beth’s eyes widened. ‘You mean –’

  ‘Stick with me, kiddo,’ Meghan smiled smugly. ‘You’ll have life experiences of the kind you’ve never had.’

  Beth snorted and jabbed her with an elbow, however, she couldn’t contain her excited grin.

  Washington D.C. was half asleep when they landed at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport two hours later.

  A voluble cabbie pointed out the sights to them as he drove them to Georgetown where General Klouse h
ad his residence.

  They made good time since the streets were empty; politicians needed their beauty sleep and had retired to their comfortable mansions long since.

  General Klouse lived in a whitewashed brick Georgian-style house, separated from its nearest neighbors by a leafy garden surrounding the house.

  It was fenced and had an obvious security detail.

  The guards checked the twins’ credentials and one of them escorted them to a black door.

  The door opened before he could knock, General Klouse filling it. ‘I’ll take it from here, Brad,’ he thanked the guard.

  The general was in his sixties, had iron-gray hair that was cut short, eyes that matched his hair, and was fit. He had a barely discernible limp on his left leg; the only sign that the general had seen active duty.

  He starts his day with a five mile run at five a.m. Ends it with half an hour of CrossFit.

  Meghan started when Beth nudged her. The general was addressing them.

  ‘Dinner? A drink? ‘

  ‘We are good, sir,’

  The gray eyes pierced her as if seeing through her, and then the craggy face relaxed. ‘It’s good to see you ladies. Zeb keeps you away from me; he probably thinks I will want you on my staff.’

  He led them up a flight of stairs and showed them to two rooms. ‘He wouldn’t be wrong.’

  It was over breakfast, the next day, the sixteenth, that the General brought up Dividing Zero.

  ‘You have heard of WITSEC, the Witness Security Program, operated by the U.S. Marshals?’

  Meghan swallowed a bite and washed it down with water before she replied. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Witnesses are provided with new identities, trained for jobs, and are relocated. The Marshals haven’t lost a single witness who entered their program.’

  Meghan nodded, wondering where General Klouse was going. From the corners of her eyes, she saw Beth was similarly puzzled.

  The National Security Advisor didn’t keep them hanging for long.

  ‘Dividing Zero came into existence more than two decades back.’ His sentences were short, sharp, staccato bursts. ‘When PMCs, Private Military Contractors, were increasingly used.’

  ‘A smart guy thought up the program for those PMCs who were deployed in black op missions.’

  He smiled thinly when he sensed the impatience in the twins.

  ‘Dividing Zero was the opposite of WITSEC.’

  Meghan stopped chewing. Beth followed suit.

  ‘In Dividing Zero, people ceased to exist.’

  She laid her cutlery down, wiped her mouth with a towel and listened.

  The general took a long pull from a glass of juice. ‘The PMCs’ identities were not changed in this program. They were erased.’

  He snapped his fingers. ‘It’s as if they had never existed. Total deniability took on a new meaning.’

  Meghan sat stunned as she took it in. ‘That...’ she searched for words, ‘sounds right out of Hollywood.’

  General Klouse acknowledged her point with a nod. ‘Yes, and that was a big part of its appeal.’

  ‘What about the legal stuff? I can’t even imagine the various rights and civil liberties this program trampled on.’

  ‘The military machine distanced itself. The smart guy, one Russell Stoll, ran a defense contractor firm, Brown Spear Corporation. Brown Spear ran the program.’ ’

  ‘Brown Spear was a public company,’ General Klouse elaborated. ‘Very high profile, the then favorite of the defense establishment. It was a software company; wrote intelligent algos. For facial recognition, thermal imaging, that kind of stuff.’

  ‘The smart guy, Russell Stoll, was the CEO of that company. He was its chief programmer too. He got the military to sign off for a pilot. Brown Spear did the rest.’

  He sighed. ‘The military didn’t question any contractors too much. There was none of the oversight and checks that we have today.’

  ‘The program was sexy,’ he continued, ‘The military gave Stoll the operatives. Single men or those who didn’t have large families. Stoll washed their pasts. Out came operatives who didn’t exist.’

  ‘The operatives weren’t its own?’ Meghan couldn’t hide her incredulity.

  ‘No. Brown Spear provided the washing program and did the dirty deeds of eliminating their identities in various databases. The military provided the operatives.’

  ‘Who were they?’

  ‘I am trying to find out. You can imagine, not a lot of folks are talking. I reckon they were private contractors.’

  He spotted the impatience in Beth’s eyes and smiled thinly.

  ‘You have spotted the defense contractor connection, but it isn’t valid.’

  ‘The program is inactive.’ He let them digest that bombshell for a moment. ‘The military didn’t use it for long. Dividing Zero trampled on too many freedoms and rights.’

  ‘It would be political suicide for any government,’ Beth gestured with a hand. In the direction of the Capitol.

  General Klouse nodded. ‘And for any Chief of Staff too. The program was criminal in the first place.’

  A phone buzzed softly in the vastness of his home. He ignored it.

  ‘Things didn’t work out well for Stoll. He got embroiled in legal battles almost as soon as the pilot got approved.’

  ‘He went to prison ten years back. For embezzlement. He’s still there, in Hazelton, West Virginia. He’s got another ten years to serve.’

  He rose and they followed him to the living room where he poured coffees for them.

  ‘How did this program get off the ground in the first place?’ Beth shook her head in disbelief and anger at the revelation.

  ‘The same way the intelligence establishment started snooping on us.’ A fleeting expression of regret crossed the general’s face.

  ‘What happened to Brown Spear?’

  ‘It’s still around; however it’s a failing company. It had a hundred staff at its peak. Now it’s down to ten.’

  ‘There must be employees who worked with Stoll. Who know all the details.’

  The general shook his head. ‘Stoll worked alone on Dividing Zero. He wrote the software. He did whatever he had to. No one else got their hands dirty.’

  His eyes peered keenly at them through tendrils of steam from his cup. ‘Mayo and Kane didn’t represent them, it that’s what you are thinking.’

  ‘None of the firm’s clients were involved with Dividing Zero. ’

  The twins returned to New York in the afternoon after the general had finished briefing them. They were silent on the flight back, their minds whirling, trying to fit the new information with their latest assumption.

  Meghan pulled out her screen when they were in the air, tasked Werner to look into Brown Spear.

  She reflected for a moment and then expanded the search to include all those associated with the program. The general had given them some names; those went into the search command too.

  A yellow cab brought them back to their office. The sisters stepped out quickly; the hunt had a scent to follow. They had to move fast.

  ‘John Doe could be one of these contractors,’ Beth queried her sister while paying off the cab.

  Her sister didn’t get to reply.

  An SUV screeched to a halt behind the cab.

  Three dark-suited men sprang from it. Grabbed the twins and bundled them into the vehicle.

  The SUV disappeared into the traffic

  Chapter 34

  Two SUVs were parked in front of their Columbus Avenue office when Zeb stepped out from his cab. Their engines were growling softly. There was no one inside them.

  Four people were huddled around one person. His body tightened involuntarily, sensing something wrong, as he took in the bunched crowd.

  Bwana, Roger, Chloe, and Bear. Surrounding someone.

  Chloe looked up on hearing his approach. ‘The twins have been grabbed.’

  The beast roused itself within Zeb. Surged from repose to acti
on in less than the blink of an eye.

  Wait. Hear things out.

  His step didn’t falter. He didn’t swear or curse. Listened as Bwana explained rapidly.

  The fifth man was the cabbie. He had dropped the twins when a black SUV came from behind; three men emerged, and kidnapped the twins.

  It happened so swiftly, he hadn’t time to take the number. The security guard from inside hadn’t heard anything.

  Ten minutes later the four of them arrived. Zeb came two minutes later.

  ‘Twelve-minute lead,’ Chloe confirmed when Zeb looked at her. She had a screen in her hand read out from it. ‘Their GPS is dead. Cell too.’

  All their clothing had GPS tags, tracked by Werner.

  Attackers made them remove it. Disposed their phones.

  Zeb was moving before she had finished. Hauled himself in one SUV, Chloe and Bear crowding behind him. Bwana and Roger went to the other.

  They slapped on near invisible headsets.

  He joined the slipstream of vehicles, uncaring of furious honking and swearing.

  Faster, the beast urged.

  Not yet.

  ‘Where to,’ Roger drawled in his ear. The Texan’s voice was relaxed. Zeb knew he wasn’t.

  ‘Go to LoJack. Find which vehicles were here. Track them. Get camera footage.’

  Chloe nodded. Grasped what he had said.

  From the LoJacks they would know which vehicles were present at the time of the grab. Security cameras at their building would show the images.

  In urban traffic, a bunch of vehicles usually stayed together for a time, before peeling off to their destinations.

  Werner would dip into the traffic camera feed and track the vehicles, and home in on the black SUV.

  It wasn’t perfect. The slim lead the attackers had, worked to their advantage. A twelve-minute lead was too small for a getaway vehicle switch.

  There were five men in the large seven-seater SUV. They were silent. They had worked as a team before. They didn’t need to speak. No wisecracks, no casual conversation.

  They were all dressed in dark suits. Looked quite similar. Hard bodies. Dark hair cut short. Tanned faces. Searching eyes.