"Still doesn’t explain how she made the connection to the possible value of the exchanges. Or how she knew about the File Drawer Protocol."
"She surmised value because of the security precautions. At that point she probably matched up data from her mirror spying to what she could dig up out of the think tank cover. As a college librarian she could poke around there to an extraordinary degree and not be suspected.
"She built a case, piece by piece, year by year, until she honed in on this one project of mine, the one that took the longest and involved the most research requests and exposed me like no other one had.
"All the while she was shopping her theories around – patent, cautious, like a fisherman, until one person nibbled. That’s the person who must have recognized our organization’s footprint and known about the File Drawer Protocol."
"You’re reaching on some of this. Highly speculative stuff."
"Maybe. But we can see the results. All of this knowledge came together somehow. They decided they knew who and what I was and that the information from my op was worth obtaining. They sent two thugs to collect it. You know the rest."
"I see some your reasoning. The idea has merit. But they failed. There was no information breach."
"I know there was no breach. I know we lost no data. Not this time, or, yet, anyway. But this person knew about our File Drawer Protocols. They know enough that, with codes for an operation, they can find and retrieve that operational data from cyberspace. That means they have inside knowledge of our agency and that they have a backdoor in place through which they can gain access."
"Impossible. Everything is too compartmentalized. Even if they got the codes, they couldn’t get through with them."
"Unless the Spamalot Worm is still present but dormant or continuing to penetrate below the radar. And we know that it has to be, given the email attempt, and the subsequent spam folder delivery."
"The attempt failed."
"It was just a test. And it didn’t fail. It worked. The project termination emails all went into the spam folder. Don’t you understand? They can start snatching, breaking, and discarding agents and gathering up our intel at their leisure. They established that the system works with me. They just didn’t have time to finish."
"You think all our courage, all our resolve – all our heart to do right will mean nothing because we’ll be helpless to resist when they figure out what it takes to send us into File Drawer mode? It will just pop out of us?"
"The protocol was put in place because it works to our advantage – it helps us remember the huge amounts of information we have to report. But we are humans. That’s the weakness they can exploit.
"They don’t believe in courage, resolve, or hearts to do right. That’s why they’ve killed three people. They don’t even care if it works every time. They’ll just keep plowing through operatives they uncover with Spamalot until someone cracks and some file drawer brain pops open somewhere. That will re-enforce the belief in their plan and prove they can succeed. It will convince investors and buyers … and may end up in the destruction of our service."
Murali stood up and rubbed his eyes. "I need to go be with Karin."
"Is she a distraction, or do you need one?" Gerald inquired.
"More like a respite. A storm is coming, and I need some time in the calm before I head for the eye."
"Ah. I sometimes achieve that sensation when Bruno licks my face."
"To each his own." Murali departed with a grin.
Eight
Karin jumped up to meet Murali as he entered the tiny apartment. She’d lost track of how many hours he’d been gone. With no cell phone, no computer, not even a stereo or microwave, and no clock, she had given up worrying and thrown herself into decorating, fixing food from what she could find in the cupboards and miniature refrigerator, and, finally, just reading.
She slipped into his arms. "Are you sure you’re completely recovered from … from Christmas Eve?" she asked softly. "You look so tired. Was it productive at least?"
Murali kissed her and held her close. "I’m all right. We learned some important information. And I didn’t torture him. I was nice to him." He smiled and she was glad to smile back. "I believe he told us everything he knows, and now at least we’re starting to understand what we’re up against."
She hurried to the tiny kitchen for their lunch but watched him out of the corner of her eye as he moved to the card table, on which sat her favorite miniature nativity set. His eyes traveled around the room and he went to touch a few small paintings she had found in his luggage. For a long time he lingered in front of a formal portrait of his family clearly taken when he was a child in India.
"I was right. I told Gerald I was coming here to find the calm before the storm."
Karin’s determined cheerfulness faltered a little when he said storm, but she pushed herself to respond. "So you know where to go and what to do? This will be over soon?"
Murali embraced her again and didn’t answer. An old-style wall intercom buzzed. "Excuse me," he said, disengaging himself and picking up the handset. "Ah. I was afraid of that. All right. I’ll be there shortly."
"Bad news?"
"We can’t find Gail. The prisoner gave us the location of his meeting with the buyers but it was also a dead end. I don’t know where to go next at all, I’m afraid."
They sat down to toasted cheese sandwiches and canned soup on the corner of the card table that was clear of nativity set.
"I have a question, if it’s all right?" Karin asked. "But … Maybe I shouldn’t even get involved in this? Is it a security breach for us to talk about your work?"
"You are my wife," Murali replied. "There are no protocols, that I am aware of, saying I can’t talk to you about this. Until they establish some, ask your question."
"I’m sure agents are trained to endure … torture … and not give up information. Did those men think it was going to be that easy to get you to talk – right there in that house, in only a couple of hours? I don’t want to sound like I’m making light of what happened to you, but it seems so strange to me."
"I understand what you’re saying. The truth is that these men had some inside information about how we gather, remember, and communicate information. It’s a way of memorizing, to put it simply, that depends on certain mental and physical techniques and reducing things to codes.
"It would take too long to explain it, but someone knows about these methods we use and found a weakness they can exploit. The men who attacked me were trying to use … I guess the best word is stimuli … to force me into a sort of recall state where I’d give them a chance to record the codes that represent the keys to accessing the information from my last assignment.
"It’s possible that they could have gotten what they wanted if you hadn’t interrupted them, or if my diabetic shock didn’t kick in. The people who sent them were testing their methods on me, and possibly are continuing to test them on the other agents who have been killed."
Karin reached for his hand and squeezed it. "Even if they learned these codes, they can’t access your agency’s information, can they? You must have firewalls on top of firewalls."
"Someone also introduced a sort of computer worm to our system a few years back that we thought was eradicated. The spam messages about the project termination alerted us that the worm still exists. It’s another weakness they can exploit to access our system.
"I have no idea where to look for this person – or these people – who know so much about our operations. Our prisoner doesn’t know who they were going to meet."
"But they still want your information, don’t they? Couldn’t there be some sort of backup plan? Surely this was too important for the people to just forget it."
"Backup plan? He didn’t mention anything. But I wonder if anyone really knows what happened in that house. Gerald said the agency cleaned up the scene and dealt with the body. The hospital report says I took a fall after I passed out from diabetic shock so
it’s not as if any crime was suspected or reported. Perhaps Gail just took off because she got nervous after we questioned her."
"If only there were some way to get your prisoner to contact them … to tell them he got the information they wanted, but they were shot at, his partner was killed, and he was wounded and had to hide out to avoid capture and recover somewhat from his injury." Karin dropped her eyes suddenly as a thought occurred to her. She let it simmer in her mind, afraid to say anything yet until she was sure there wasn’t another way.
"I doubt he’ll agree to that, even if he knows how to contact them. It would be putting his head in the lion’s mouth. I bluffed him about cutting him loose and you should have seen the fear on his face."
Karin gathered up their dishes. "I have an idea," she said, "but you may not like it. I’ll need my cell phone back."
"What’s your idea?" Murali helped her carry the dishes to the postage-stamp-sized counter.
"I have a number for Gail saved in my phone. Not at the library – her personal number. If it still works, I can call her and … well … your prisoner would have to cooperate, and you would have to prepare something to convince them he got what they wanted …" She trailed off at the look on Murali’s face.
"This cannot involve you meeting with Gail, or those people who want the information."
"I think I’ll have to, though. Murali. I can tell her that I went to that house to meet my blind date, and this man grabbed me and made me hide him and take care of him.
"I can say he wants his money but he can’t drive because of his leg and wants me to take him to them. I’ll convince her that he’s threatened to kill me and beg her to help me. He may have to talk to her too, and you’ll have to let her hear something that convinces her to tell us where to go to deliver the recording."
"I would rather surrender myself to them. They know I have the information. I can go with our prisoner and …"
"There’s a much better chance they’ll believe my story. Gail won’t think I have any knowledge about what this really involves. She certainly won’t consider me a threat to her. My plan is the most reasonable one."
"I can’t consent to this. Give me some time to come up with another way."
"We don’t have time. They’ll keep doing to other agents what they did to you. You find a way to keep me safe, but I don’t think we have a choice."
***
Agents had called a public towing service to remove Karin’s car from in front of Murali’s rented house. They had stored it in a warehouse outside of town. Gerald had escorted them this far in a red Suburban, very different from his usual black SUV. He had come to this storage facility by a very roundabout way and finally drove them inside to where Karin’s car sat.
"It’s a small risk if someone sees me," Gerald had explained when she questioned his presence. "But we’ve already been associated. We need to expose as few agents as possible, and we certainly can’t risk your husband being seen. We’d like them to think he’s still recovering from his diabetic shock and has no connection with this. If asked, you should act as if you never got a chance to meet him and know nothing about why he was attacked. You’re just collateral damage."
Karin nodded.
"Lady, you are crazy to go along with this," the man Karin had shot, whose name she had learned was Ted, said as they climbed into her car. "I can’t believe that guy is your husband, and he’s making you do this."
"He’s not making me do it. I had to make him understand that this was the only way. Thank you for agreeing to play along."
"Hey, the other choice was life in someplace with no windows. How do you know you can trust me, though? I was hired to beat information out of your husband and maybe use you as incentive to get what we wanted out of him."
"I don’t trust you. I trust my husband. He said he had a plan to protect me."
"Oh? What’s the plan?"
"He didn’t tell me. That’s in case you don’t play along. You can’t force me to reveal anything I don’t know before he makes you sorry."
Karin smiled and made sure her lips didn’t quiver. She had never been so terrified in her life, but she knew the plan was as solid as it could be made. Before she closed her door, she stretched up and kissed Gerald on the cheek. He jerked back. She could have sworn he blushed.
"Take care of my husband," she said to him, got in the car, and drove out of the warehouse bay.
***
They stopped at a rest area and Karin hooked her phone up to the free wifi. She dialed Gail’s number and waited through four agonizing rings.
"Hello? Karin? Is that you?"
"Gail, help me, please! He’s going to kill me!"
"What? Who’s going to kill you?"
"I am," Ted said, pulling the phone away from Karin with plenty of scraping and background noise. Karin sobbed quietly while he spoke. He kept the phone close enough that they could both hear Gail.
"Listen up, head librarian. You screwed us – said this was an easy, no-risk job. The h– it was. But I’ll give you a chance to make it up."
"Calm down, Ted. We thought you were dead or had run off on us. People were asking questions. I had to get out of town. What happened? Why is Karin with you?"
"Some guy with a giant dog started shootin’ at me and Gary right after she showed up. Gary’s dead. I got it in the leg. I grabbed her and we made it out of there while he was busy tryin’ to save the guy you sent us after. We hid in the trunk of her car.
"Guess nobody thought about looking for us there. They just towed us to a warehouse. I made her patch me up and she’s been a good little nursey-wursey with my gun at her head. Now I’m gettin’ to where I can get around but I can’t drive. So we wanta come see you and them people who are gonna pay me my money."
"You got what we asked for?"
"Yeah, he coughed it up just before the guy with the gun showed up. I got it on the recorder along with all the shootin’ and screamin’ and crap. So where do we come and when do I get my money?"
"Play me the recording."
"Hell no. You won’t pay me if you get it off the phone."
"Just a few seconds. You can’t expect me to expose myself without proof."
Ted flicked on the digital recorder. Sounds of water, Ted’s indistinct cursing, blows falling. Karin cringed when Murali’s groaning started. She had not been present when they made the recording, but it sounded so real. It was easy to make her small noises of pain and fear sound genuine with that as a backdrop.
Murali’s voice failed in a fit of coughing and choking with more water sound effects. Suddenly strange sounds erupted, hardly human noises, though clearly from the same throat. Ted clicked off the recorder before more than two or three distinct sounds got through.
"You get that? I ain’t playin’ no more. It was real, I tell ya. Just like you told us it would sound."
"God!" Gail breathed. "I don’t believe it. We were sure it was a failure."
"Just so you know, the price went up," Ted snarled. "Double what you was gonna pay Gary and me. That guy shot me in the freakin’ ankle! I don’t know if I’m ever gonna walk right again. And I been livin’ on cereal and crap she had in her trunk in a warehouse with no heat! You’re lucky I protected this thing and didn’t kick off!"
"Yes. Fine. You’ll get your money. But you can’t bring Karin here. She’s of no use to us. We’ll come and get you. Tell us where you are and get rid of her."
"Not a chance. Too hard to get rid of a body. Besides, it’s been fun playin’ nursey and patient with her. I think she’s startin’ to like me. So I’m keepin’ her as a payment, too, like you said I could. And I ain’t waitin’ for you to get around to getting’ here. Gimme a place to come to. Karin’s movin’ out now."
Ted clicked the hammer of the gun they had provided him with next to her ear. It was real, it was loaded, and Karin’s heart leaped into her throat. She turned the key and put the car in motion so Gail would hear it. Ted switched the phone over to Gail’s w
ifi.
"Please, Gail. Please," she whimpered as they merged onto the interstate. "I can’t take any more of this. Please."
Gail finally started to read off directions. Ted scribbled them down on Karin’s pad. A rush of memory almost overwhelmed her when he tore off her list of austerity measures with Murali Nanda scribbled out at the top.
How could all this have happened so fast? Five days ago she had not even met this man who had turned her world upside down. Would she ever see him again? Strangely, her fears calmed and she could pray silently even while tears trickled down her cheeks.
Fall on your knees
O hear the angel voices
It wasn’t up to Gail whether she lived through this. It wasn’t even up to Murali, as steadfast as her confidence in her husband and his unknown plan to protect her was. Before they had parted, they had prayed, and Murali had said what now repeated in rhythm to her heartbeat.
"Only God can bring this to a good end, my Karin. Some trust in chariots. Some in horses. We will remember the name of the Lord our God."
"Yes." She had clung to him, and he to her. And they had broken off the embrace and walked away from each other.
Nine
"They are eight miles east of that cabin we searched. May be another one up there, or else they are misdirecting them so they can maintain control. They probably consider Ted a loose cannon and Karin is of course a wildcard. They want that recording very badly to take this risk."
Gerald’s voice in Murali’s ear almost made him jump out of his seat on the snowcat. He forced himself to calm down, wishing he had his pick of Scriptures to call up the way Gerald did.
He burned to turn on the motor and rush to Karin’s rescue but he remained where he was, five miles away on a logging road in the national park where Gerald had tracked Karin’s car.
He shifted his goggles. They still itched. He shifted them again and winced when they slid over the bruise where Ted had slammed a fist into his cheek. After all, the recording had to sound real.
"You’re sure they won’t suspect anything if they see you up on the ridge?"
Fall On Your Knees Page 7