Undercover Genius

by Rice, Patricia

  “You know they’re out to crucify you?” He tipped his head in the direction of the buffalo herd.

  “They want to screw me first. Tell me more, and let’s see if we can work together.”

  His eyes widened behind the thick lenses at her bluntness. But then he started to talk, and Patra drank her martini and bought him another.

  Twenty-two

  Nick tapped his spoon on his poached egg as we gathered around our morning buffet on Tuesday. “I’m interviewing with the British embassy this afternoon. Any last requests of the senator’s office, should I hand in my resignation this week?”

  “That’s overconfidence,” Patra grumbled, looking hungover.

  “That’s a rat deserting my dad,” EG pointed out, although she didn’t sound particularly upset as she scanned the morning comics on her iPad.

  I swatted both their heads with my newspaper as I passed by. “That’s an opportunity. Pay attention and be appreciative.” I took my place at the end of the table, opened my newspaper, and sipped my coffee.

  “What, no requests for the address books of D.C.’s rich and powerful?” Nick asked, sipping his tea and lifting his expressive blond eyebrows.

  “Unless the senator has an address book of D.C. gangsters or Top Hat, I’m good,” I said. “I doubt that Tex has enough influence left to get his bar tab picked up, much less help us get our money back. Good luck at the embassy.”

  “Tex isn’t without his resources,” Nick said, buttering his toast. “Gangsters may be beyond his scope, but I’ll see what I can do. I’ll truly miss his files.”

  “Does he have one on Broderick?” Patra asked, finally understanding the extent of Nick’s invitation.

  “I do,” I said. “And no, there’s nothing you can use or I would have told you. Tex is good for the connections behind the connections. If you want to know what lobbies Broderick hid behind to finance Tex’s campaign, Nick’s your boy.” I pondered that half a second. “Maybe we could use Tex’s entire campaign finance file. One never knows where the names might take us someday.”

  “I have that,” the candelabra said dryly. “Miss Llewellyn, you have a Samuel Adams attempting to access your email password. I’ve sent him a highly sophisticated virus that will no doubt destroy his computer within ten minutes if he does not desist.”

  I snorted orange juice. Patra swore and ran for her room looking like the Wicked Witch of the West in her shabby robe, with her hair still down.

  “That wasn’t very nice, Mr. Graham,” I said in the same tone he’d used. “You may have unleashed a deadly new virus upon the world if Mr. Adams is a techie.”

  “I know who Samuel Adams is and the virus will self-destruct before he knows what hit him. Your sister has entertaining friends.” The candelabra clicked off.

  I used to be annoyed by our morning interruption, but I insanely wanted to giggle today. I was starting to understand Graham’s dry humor better. Or maybe that hot kiss had deranged my suspicion-ometer.

  “What?” I asked innocently as both Nick and EG stared at me.

  “You didn’t punch the silver,” EG explained. “Does this mean Adams is friend or foe?”

  “I haven’t the foggiest notion who Adams is. I want that virus. I have a whole roster of people I’d like to set it loose on.” I was happily making lists in my head when Patra returned, still talking into her phone. She didn’t look any less green than earlier, but animation had returned.

  “Sam was only trying to verify the safety of my password,” Patra said, clicking off and returning to her seat. “Will you please call off your pet vulture?”

  “Graham has moved on to more interesting entertainment. If your friend quit his quest, he’ll be all right,” I promised. “As long as you’re wired into our network, you don’t have to worry about having a watchdog. You’d best tell your friend to cease and desist or I’ll sic a virus on him. Hacking is a nasty bad habit,” I added virtuously.

  Patra narrowed her eyes at me but refrained from commenting in front of EG. Nice. She’d grown up and learned manners.

  “Does Sam have an apartment big enough for you to move into?” Nick asked with devious motivation.

  “I’ll look into that,” Patra grumbled. “I don’t know how you endure this prison. Can I even think without being overheard?”

  “Presupposing you can think…” EG started to say. I pointed a knife at her. She caught on quickly and returned to her comics.

  “Think of this as our hive,” I said. “No, you cannot think without being overheard. Given our talents, that’s a good thing. It means if you’re out with Sam Adams and he tries to murder you, we’ll have some idea of where to find your body. Who is Mr. Adams and why is he playing your watchdog?” I asked.

  Patra gulped her black coffee and swallowed a piece of dry toast with a look of distaste. I pretended the look was for her breakfast and not my analysis of life with Graham.

  “He’s an IT person at Poo Manor and sees all the good gossip. He idolizes my father, despises Broderick, and is willing to share. Believe it or not, I have a few enemies in the cubicles already.”

  I bit back a grin at her creative appellation for BM. “Any person of intelligence has enemies. Practice basic Machiavelli.” I processed her news while I added fresh blackberry jam from a local farm to my toast, far more appreciative of Mallard’s repast than our resident journalist. “Is Sam helping you hack Broderick’s archives?”

  Finally, Patra grinned. “Yep.”

  We all punched our fists into the air.

  * * *

  I had more of Patrick’s decoded notes loaded into my spreadsheet, and I was starting to discern the pattern of dates, places, initials, and odd numbers. The dates started nearly ten years ago — before Graham had given him information — and continued up to the time Patrick was killed — not too long after Graham’s interference. The first date was a month after the September terrorist attacks and about the time of Graham’s spectacular descent into hell.

  If the pattern represented meetings, I hadn’t found the decoder for any of the initials that I assumed would tell me who attended, although I was fascinated to note that a PR was included in many of the old ones. I had a grudge against Paul Rose, the conservative presidential candidate.

  I did a quick search and lo and behold, Rose had been serving in the army nine years ago — early in the war, when a horrific American military atrocity in Iraq had left the nation stunned.

  It was before my arrival in Atlanta, so I couldn’t say I’d experienced a horrified nation first hand. But I did remember the ugly mood all over Europe at the time. The guys in the white hats weren’t supposed to kill civilians and blow up religious edifices, even in wartime.

  Scanning through the news files, I could tell the story had disappeared quickly, buried under stories of a crazed gunman running amuck in a mall. There were private websites dedicated to war atrocities, but the mainstream media dropped the military story like a hot potato. My paranoia radar detected media manipulation, but conspiracy theories are a dime a dozen.

  More recent dates in Patrick’s files corresponded with different initials: DS, EB, and LR stood out, but I’d have to do a lot more research to determine if Broderick exec David Smedbetter or Leonard Riley might have been in a war zone back then. The only EB I knew of in this case was Bill’s dad.

  I couldn’t explain the coded numbers yet, although my bet was that they referred to topics discussed. Or like Bill, had Llewellyn kept numbered disks? I left the file where Graham could get at it.

  Just as I was debating contacting the Seattle speech analyst and asking how far they’d gone with Patrick’s recording, Sean called.

  “We’ve sorted the material in Bill’s vault. Given what’s on these files, the little worm was in a nice position to blackmail a few powerful folks. Any number of people might have wanted him dead if they knew he had these files. What we want to know is who was making the recordings and giving them to him?”

  “I don�
�t think Bill was in a position to record powerful people,” I reminded him. “He was just a dumb schmuck who was starting to learn about the real world. From the memos we’ve read, I’d have to say his clients made the recordings and gave them to him.”

  Sean growled almost as nastily as Graham. “We don’t need speech analysis to identify half a dozen conservative senators and even more representatives on these recordings. His clients must have wanted to identify the lesser known quantities to whom they’re speaking. I need an index to Bill’s files, but most of them aren’t here. They probably went up in the fire or were stolen with his computers.”

  “Judging by the recording we’re working on,” I told him, “I’d say the R&P trusted Bill, and that the unknown voices belong to some of their members. Do your recordings sound like interviews or arguments or what?”

  He took a second to access a computer file. “We have a lot of promises being made, so those are probably your R&P people lobbying for legislation in return for campaign financing. One of these congressional idiots actually promised to shut down a local CBS station that had irritated a local millionaire, in exchange for a substantial contribution. Not sure which side of that conversation was stupider, but given the current political situation in that state, they’d both pay money not to have that little meeting revealed.”

  “Interesting.” I was pulling up Bill’s bank account information and studying deposits. “Unless Bill was stashing cash elsewhere, I’m not seeing riches. From everything I’ve learned so far, I’d bet that the killers took out the last honest man in town. Bill kept everyone’s secrets. Personality-wise, I’d say he hoarded them just for the pleasure of possession.”

  “What, you’re a psychiatrist now?” Sean asked incredulously.

  “Just finished an on-line course on psychology,” I told him with smug satisfaction. “Piece of cake. I’ve been studying people all my life, mostly so I can avoid them. Bill’s choice of a reclusive occupation and lack of friends was a classic trait of borderline personality disorder, and hoarding is a symptom. Did you hear any journalists conducting interviews in those files?”

  “Journalists?” he asked warily.

  “I would think you’d at least recognize a professional questioning technique. Unless you’re recognizing anyone from the nightly news, the journalists would be the voices you can’t identify,” I said. “I’m looking for a connection to BM, unless R&P has their own media.”

  “The R&P subsidizes a lot of right-wing media. Where do you think BM gets their shit?” he said with journalistic cynicism. “There are several files labeled ‘interview.’ Maybe I should listen to them.”

  “Sounds like a good way to put yourself to sleep, but it would be nice to know if BM was involved,” I agreed, only because knowledge is power. I certainly didn’t see the connections. Yet. “What have the police found out from the arsonist they caught?”

  “That Toreador is a small time thug with connections to the DeLuca crime syndicate. They got him out on bail,” he said dismissively, as if he hadn’t just handed me a huge puzzle piece. “And what the hell am I looking for if I listen to these files?”

  “For who killed Bill, of course. So far, I can’t tell that he stirred any particular nests on the day he died. Although…” I tapped my pencil against my desk. He’d called his mother three times that day. And they weren’t exactly friends, as I’d originally thought. I needed to look closer into EB — Ernest Bloom?

  “Ana?” Sean called through the line. “Are you still there? What was that ‘although’?”

  “Families are complex structures,” I told him. “Maybe Machiavelli should have said keep your enemies close but your families closer. Certainly would have been smart in his case. Thanks, friend, I owe you.” I hung up.

  The phone rang again but I switched it off and dived into the life and crimes of Carol Bloom and family.

  Patra’s perspective

  Later that morning, sitting in her cubicle, Patra concluded that Ana got lost in the details and ignored the big picture. Ana thought ferreting out Bill’s killer would lead her to Patrick Llewellyn’s death and wanted all the pieces to fit neatly together.

  Bill’s death was puzzling but not necessarily related to the world at large. But Broderick…there was the big picture, she decided while merrily working her way deeper into BM’s archives, courtesy of Sam’s passwords. Sam had promised to hide her activity if she just worked when he was available, like now.

  Broderick’s worldwide media conglomerate had the power to buy and sell entire countries and probably had. The conversation on her father’s tape had to be Broderick operatives. If so, his media outlets had started wars. Voila, BM had to have killed her father for the exposé he had no doubt been planning. She simply needed to go straight to the source and skip the baby steps.

  The problem, of course, was that the names of murderers didn’t generally get recorded. But she had the date and location of her father’s death, and now she could see which of BM’s henchmen might have been in the area at the time.

  The access to BM’s archives was nothing short of miraculous — well worth the office jerkwads. As long as Sam was at the IT desk, she should be good.

  The name Smedbetter leaped out at her from a special report by Broderick Media at the time of her father’s death. She skimmed the article. Ernest Bloom had been a Broderick embed in Iraq who had obtained an interview with General Smedbetter through the offices of a PR flack by the name of Charles Whitehead.

  Well, shite, maybe Ana was on the right trail after all.

  She did a quick search. Yup, Bill’s dad, Ernest Bloom, had worked for Broderick. The PR flack Whitehead wasn’t on the BM roster, but David Smedbetter was the fat cat who’d interviewed her. Had he been a general? Puzzles within puzzles.

  Whistling, Patra used her private cell phone to put in a call to Magda. Her mother had connections everywhere. Ana might have a problem asking for help from their parent, but Patra used her as the best gossip source in the world. She got voice mail, of course, but she left queries about Smedbetter and Whitehead and threw in one about Bloom, too. Magda was more likely to know generals than minor journalists, but one never knew.

  The office manager prowled by, and Patra hastily scrolled up her next piece on a new rock star that Rhianna had mentioned could use some publicity. Reading the press releases was like wading through dog poo. She gagged, typed, and challenged herself to write the article with one hand. Awkward, but amusing as she used her free hand to call one of the other women she’d met here and ask what was on for lunch.

  At lunchtime, she cleared her computer history and caches and left the rock star article up and running so any spare corporate spies could see she was diligently working.

  Back at her desk after lunch, she uncovered a whole file of interviews from Iraq by Ernest Bloom — when some clown shouted across the cubicle farm “Zombie run! To arms!”

  Everyone shoved back chairs and began talking excitedly, as if this were a welcome party break. Patra ignored them and opened the first of Bloom’s interviews to skim over it. Dear, dear Ernest was a military geek who fawned all over the officer he was interviewing — Good ol’ General Smedbetter. Interesting. The piece was entirely PR flak and showed off Bloom’s knowledge of ammunition and weapons more than posing any in-depth questions about the status of the war.

  “C’mon, New Girl.” A jerkwad in navy blazer yanked her chair back. “We all go.”

  Patra hastily sent the interview to Ana’s anonymous email address and closed the file before Jerkwad could read it. “I’m working. I don’t play games,” she told him, opening a new file and picking up her phone.

  “I said, we all go.” Jerkwad grabbed her arm and dragged her out of the chair.

  She wished she’d learned martial arts. Not a soul noticed that she was being manhandled. She jammed her high heel into his instep, but he was wearing combat boots.

  This couldn’t be good.

  The sheep hurried into the ha
ll as if given a call to recess.

  Patra regarded tall, dark, and stupid with pretend interest as he dragged her after the herd. “Hi, I’m Patra. And you are?”

  “Public Enemy Number One. You aren’t really interviewing Rhianna, are you?” Jerkwad’s tone reflected suspicion.

  She couldn’t fight his grip without getting her arm broken. She reluctantly joined the excited crowd in the elevator.

  “My article will be in Sunday’s entertainment section. I’m sure she’d sue if I made it up,” Patra said in her best posh Brit accent, trying to determine what the real game was here. “Do I call you Number One or just Pee? Perhaps Wee-wee?”

  She thought Pee might murder her on the spot, but the plummy tone always put them off.

  “Profound, Lady Jane,” he said stiffly. “We don’t use our names in the games.”

  “Lady Jane was a wuss.” Who got executed, but Patra didn’t show off her knowledge. She studied the young crowd in the elevator — none of the seniors seemed to be involved. “If I get to be a zombie, I want to be Boudicca.”

  “Booty it is,” he agreed.

  “Who’s the challenger, PE?” someone crowded into the corner called.

  “The R&P!” Pee called back. “I think they’ve hired a ringer to get us back.”

  Oh goody, Patra thought in gloom. Journalists versus preachers. How did zombies work into that scenario? The R&P was out to bury them?

  Twenty-three

  Patra’s email attachment intruded upon my search into Carol and Ernest Bloom and sent me down a whole new set of bunny trails. Ernest as a militaristic BM correspondent opened an entire world of options. And this David Smedbetter not only had initials matching those in Patrick’s files, but he’d been promoted to general not too long after friendly fire had blown up a mosque in Iraq and outraged the world.

  I wasn’t happy with where the bunny trails led.

  Unless I wanted to believe in coincidences, I was thinking Patra had been set up when she’d found Bill, and conspiracy theories might not be paranoid, after all.