by Kyle Mills
“Mark, there’s a white fiberglass box in that duffel. About a foot square.” He pointed in the general direction of a crooked pine tree behind the cross- connect box. “Bury it in the snow over there somewhere. One side of the box has two cables coming out of it. That’s the top. Make sure the shorter of the two cables is sticking out of the snow so I can get at it.”
“What about the long one?”
“Run it under the snow to the base of the tree behind you.”
Beamon grabbed the box and the shovel and walked over to the spot Goldman had pointed to. “How deep?”
“Deep as you can. But make it look natural.”
Beamon was just finishing—smoothing out the surface to match the unturned snow around it—when he heard the cabinet close. Goldman took the shovel from him and began digging a trench between the box Beamon had just buried and the cross-connect box, then spliced the wires together and buried them neatly in the trench.
“Is that it?” Beamon asked.
Goldman turned off his headlamp. “Nope.” He reached into the duffel and pulled out another fiberglass device, this one smaller than the one Beamon just buried and painted in a brown and gray camouflage.
Goldman connected a thin brown cable to it and handed it to Beamon along with a pair of bungee cords colored in a similar camouflage. “Climb as high in that tree as you can and tie this to the trunk.”
Beamon looked at the snow-coyered tree behind him. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“You want it to work, don’t you, boy?” Goldman pointed at the ground where Beamon had buried the other box. “Whenever a call comes into or goes out of the church’s compound, that box will dial us on a cell and we’ll get the call real-time. It’ll run into Ernie’s computer and a computer at my apartment, in case of a problem.” He pointed at the unit in Beamon’s hand. “That’s the booster.”
Beamon sighed and pushed his way through the lower branches of the tree, feeling snow invade every unsealed opening in his suit. He put a foot up on a sturdy-looking limb and turned to Goldman. “Who’s paying for all this cell service?”
Goldman rolled his eyes. Kind of a surreal gesture given the uneven magnification of his glasses and the moonlight.
Beamon started his struggle up the tree. “I know, I know. What kind of idiot pays for cell phone service?”
46
BEAMON STEPPED FROM HIS CAR AND TRIED unsuccessfully to ignore the sad drama playing out before him in the courtyard in front of his condo.
A woman and her young son were having a playful snowball fight in the intermittent glare provided by the common area floodlights. When she saw Beamon, she jogged through the snow to the boy and began speaking quietly into his ear. Beamon couldn’t help watching as the boy’s attention turned from the snowball in his hands to him.
The scene confirmed what he already knew. He had to get the hell out of there before the homeowners’ association started burning crosses on his lawn. He’d just draw too much attention if he stayed.
Beamon moved quickly across the courtyard and stepped up his pace even more as he walked past Carrie Johnstone’s front door. Murphy’s Law stated clearly that she would pick that precise moment to go to the store, take out the garbage, or whatever. He just couldn’t take another confrontation right now.
For the first time in weeks. Murphy wasn’t in control of his life and he reached the relative safety of his living room unscathed.
The warmth of his condo started to make him sweat almost immediately, amplifying the hangover that was showing no sign of weakening in its twelfth hour. Remembering the beer he’d thrown away, he flipped the top of the garbage can open and dug around until he came up with a couple of bottles.
He felt pretty pathetic as he washed a now- unidentifiable leafy vegetable off them, but drastic hangovers called for drastic remedies. He slid one bottle into the freezer, punched the play button on his answering machine, and unscrewed the cap from the bottle in his hand.
“Mark, it’s Chet. Pick up if you’re there.” Pause. “Look, I don’t know what you’re doing, but it’s really starting to hit the fan here. I just spent most of my day getting grilled by Jake Layman and a couple of his ASACs. I knew you wouldn’t give up on this thing. Call me. I want to help.”
Beamon reached out for the phone, hesitated, and erased the message instead. He had to keep Chet out of this. At least for now.
After a warm beer and a cold shower, he was feeling marginally better. The shakes that had come close to knocking him out of that goddamn pine tree had subsided and his mind was starting to flash pictures of Denny’s breakfast menu. A sure sign that the healing process had begun.
The phone rang as Beamon was toweling himself off. Probably Goldman, hopefully calling to tell him that the taps he’d wired were receiving five by five.
“Mark. Jake Layman.”
Great.
“What can I do for you, Jake?” Beamon said as he finished drying himself and began rummaging though his drawers for a pair of jeans.
“I’d like you to come down to Phoenix. Tonight. We need to talk.”
Beamon cradled the phone in the crook of his shoulder as he pulled on his pants. “I’d love to, Jake, but I’m afraid I just don’t have the time right now.”
“Look, Mark, I’ve been hearing rumors. About you. We—”
“Rumors about what, Jake? I’m already on suspension, why don’t you just call the Office of Professional Responsibility and add whatever it is that’s bothering you to their laundry list.” “Look, Mark. The FBI doesn’t need—” “What, Jake? Another black eye? Someone said that to me once and I stuck my ass out about a mile for the ‘good of the organization.’ Look where it got me.”
“I know you’re upset, Mark, but try to look at the big picture—”
Beamon cut him off again as he zipped his pants. “With all due respect, Jake—fuck you. I’ve got enough problems right now. I just don’t have time to solve yours.”
He leaned over the bed and replaced the phone’s handset. The doorbell rang less than a minute later.
“If you work for the FBI, come on in,” he yelled. “If not, I’ll be right there.”
He heard the door open and leaned out into the living room, still bare-chested. The two young agents self-consciously wiping their feet were from his office. Fucking Layman didn’t even have the decency to send up a couple of his boys.
“What took you guys so long?” Beamon kept his tone light, but in reality he had no idea what he was going to do. “I’m still getting dressed. Hold on for a second.”
Poor kids looked like they were about to die of embarrassment.
“Mr. Layman asked us to, uh, give you a ride down to Phoenix,” Kate Spelling said. Her cohort pretended to be fascinated by a poorly framed print hanging on the wall.
Beamon disappeared back into his bedroom but left the door open. “I just got off the phone with him, Kate. Let me get my stuff.”
“Sure. Take your time.” He could hear the relief in her voice as he walked into the bathroom and began throwing toiletries with unerring accuracy into an open suitcase on the bed.
After stuffing a week’s worth of clothes into the same suitcase, he got down on his knees and poked his head into the mess that was his closet. It took some digging, but he finally found the shoebox where he kept memorabilia from the cases he’d worked over the years. He dug through the old newspaper clipping and photographs, finally finding a fake driver’s license he had used on an undercover assignment a few years back. He stuffed it in his pocket, then slid a shirt off a hanger and pulled it over his head.
The shotgun wasn’t as easy—he had to pry it out from under a stack of unpacked boxes. He peeked out of the closet for a moment to make sure he wasn’t drawing undue attention and then slowly pulled back the slide to make sure the gun wasn’t loaded.
It took another minute to find the box of shells. He tossed them over his shoulder, hitting the suitcase dead center, and then crawled back ou
t of the closet, leaving the shotgun just out of sight.
He closed up the suitcase and once again donned his bright red parka. Looking at himself in the minor across the room, he took a deep breath. There wasn’t going to be any turning back after this. If he didn’t come up with the goods—Jennifer—he might as well just walk up to Sara Renslier and hand her a loaded gun.
Beamon grabbed the suitcase in one hand and the shotgun in the other and walked out into the living room. The two young agents’ eyes widened when they saw the gun.
“It just occurred to me that I have a prior engagement. Tell Jake I’ll have to catch up with him later.”
They watched him as he walked into the kitchen and grabbed a steak knife.
“Uh, Mark. Mr. Layman was pretty clear about this. You really have to come with us.”
Beamon started across the living room. “No, I don’t, Kate. I’m the one with the shotgun.” He opened the door and looked back at the two kids standing hapless in his living room. “Look, Layman isn’t going to blame you for losing me. Tell him I went nuts. Pulled a gun. What were you supposed to do, shoot it out with me in a heavily populated condo complex?” He stepped outside. “You guys stay in here for about five minutes, okay? There’s a beer in the freezer. Split it.”
He closed the door behind him, knowing from their expressions that they’d do exactly what he’d told them. In hindsight, he’d have to thank Layman for not sending his own people. He’d have never gotten away with that bullshit if they’d been a couple of experienced agents Beamon didn’t know. He’d have had to crawl out of the goddamned window or something equally undignified.
He spotted their Bureau car and shoved the steak knife in the passenger-side tires before jumping in his car and spinning out of the parking lot. He adjusted his mirror and watched his home for the last two months recede into the distance. Another minor adjustment brought into focus the church’s increasingly tenacious chase car. It was going to take some fancy driving, but it was time for him to permanently disappear.
His cell phone started to ring as he sped around the corner and toward the highway. As soon as he regained control of the car, he reached over and turned it off.
47
“YOU’RE SURE THERE’S NOTHING,” BEAMON said, continuing to scan the nearly empty parking lot.
Jack Goldman shoved yet another piece of mysterious equipment into the back seat of his car. “Damn right I’m sure. I’ve checked the entire spectrum—twice. Your car ain’t transmitting. It’s clean.”
They were alone, then. With the insane driving he’d done getting there, it was inconceivable that anyone could have followed him without his knowing it. Even multiple cars with drivers connected by cell phone couldn’t have stayed with him.
Beamon looked up at the sky and felt the heavy snowflakes falling against his skin. Visibility was horrible. No way to track him by air.
“Okay, then, Mr. Goldman. We abandon it here.” He opened the passenger side door and pulled what was left of his five thousand dollars from the glove box and his suitcase off the seat. “I’ll need you to rent me a car.”
“Where’s your coffee pot? I’m fading fast,” Beamon said, straightening a precarious stack of dishes before they teetered into the sink.
Ernestine Waverly wheeled to the edge of the kitchen. “I don’t drink coffee, Mark. Bothers my stomach. There are Cokes in the fridge.”
Beamon ducked his head into the refrigerator and grabbed one. His first swig emptied half the can. It wasn’t exactly what the doctor ordered, but it was better than nothing. His return to binge drinking had had the desired effect—made it almost impossible for his mind to focus on the fact that he’d lost everything meaningful in his life in the course of seventy-two hours. The problem was that it was making it impossible to focus on anything else, either.
“You okay, Mark?”
“I’m better, thanks,” he said as he followed her back to the office, where Jack Goldman was doing his best to pace back and forth. “I think it’s safe to run that by me again. If the phone taps are working like a dream, what’s the problem?”
“E-mail,” Goldman said, continuing to shuffle back and forth.
“Never had much use for it.”
“You know how it works though, right?” Ernie said.
“I guess. You type something into your computer and send it to someone else’s computer. It’s just a fax without the paper.”
“Essentially, that’s right. We’re picking up phone conversations clear as a bell on all six lines coming out of the compound.” She nodded a brief acknowledgment toward Goldman.
“I thought you said there were eight lines.”
“There are. One is dedicated to the security system, so there’re no calls coming through on it. The other is dedicated to a computer. E-mail is going out over that one.”
“So?”
“So, it’s encrypted. We can’t read it.”
“Encrypted? You mean in code?” Beamon fell onto a chair and set his half-empty Coke can on the table next to him. “What the hell are they up to?”
“It doesn’t really mean anything,” Ernie said. “Encryption’s not that uncommon. In fact, the program they’re using is very common—it actually comes with the e-mail software when you buy it. I use the same system.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want half the people on the Internet to be able to read my letters.”
Beamon chewed at his lower lip for a moment. “I’ve got a friend at the NSA. We go pretty far back. He might still be willing to help me. I don’t know.”
Ernie adjusted her muumuu nervously. Apples and pears today. “I don’t think that would do us any good, Mark. Even with their resources it would take them years to crack the Church’s encryption code …”
“What are you telling me, Ernie? That the National Security Agency can’t crack an encryption program that I can buy at Toys “R” Us? They—”
Goldman stopped pacing. “Forget it. We’re talking about an encryption code that encompasses thousands of characters. Literally trillions of possible combinations. There’s no way.”
Ernie nodded her agreement and looked hopefully at Beamon. Waiting for divine inspiration to strike, no doubt. Unfortunately, he wasn’t feeling very inspired.
“Come on, Mr. Goldman,” Beamon said. “You could record a conversation between dead people.”
Goldman started his pacing again. “You get me in there and give me some time with their computer, maybe I could do something … “
Beamon let his head loll onto the back of the chair and stared at the ceiling. “You mean I almost got myself killed climbing a goddamn ice-covered tree in a blizzard and it isn’t going to do me any good?”
“Blizzard, my ass,” Goldman said. “And we got the phones.”
“Screw the phones! I doubt they use them for anything more sensitive than ordering takeout. Whatever they have to say that’s of interest to us is going to go out over that e-mail system. Shit …”
What the hell was he going to do now? Rent a tank and drive it through the front gate of Kneiss’s compound? Shit, they’d probably have a newer, faster tank with more firepower waiting for him on the other side.
“There is something we could try,” Ernie started.
“Oh, come on, woman!” Goldman said. “Don’t waste my time!” He turned to Beamon. “Vericomm’s the answer, son. That’s where we need to concentrate our resources.”
Beamon ignored him. “Go ahead, Ernie. What’re you thinking.”
“We could send the church an encryption software update.”
“Come again?”
“I used to play a game with a friend of mine—he’s a programmer, too. We’d try to break into each other’s computers. Leave messages, move files around, that kind of thing. Well, once I had the idea of breaking the encryption to his e-mail—the same system the church is using.”
“But you said that it would take years.”
“If you took a conven
tional approach, it would. What I did was went out and bought a copy of the encryption software and reprogrammed it a bit.”
“Reprogrammed it?”
She nodded. “I rewrote it so that when he sent an encrypted e-mail, he sent his encryption key along with it. Then I printed a big official-looking sticker that said there was a bug in the version he had purchased that was causing computer crashes. I re-shrink- wrapped the whole thing so it would look official and then mailed it to him.”
“And it worked?”
“Uh, no.”
Beamon sighed and crushed the Coke can in his hand. “It didn’t work.”
“Uh-uh. But I know why. Like I said, Rick—my friend—is a programmer. Even though I put on the sticker that there was an encryption problem with his version, he wanted to know the details of what was wrong. He called the software company and, you know, found out that there was no glitch.”
Beamon thought about that for a moment and then turned to Goldman. “Couldn’t you set up an eight-hundred line and run it in here? We could just put that number on the label—a special help line dedicated to this little problem.”
The old man was looking more and more irritated. “I could, if it wasn’t a complete waste of time. What did you tell us when we came in this morning? We’ve only got a week left! Even if the church bought this bullshit, it would probably take them a couple of weeks to get around to installing the goddamn update. By then the girl’s dead, and you’re not far behind.”
“They’ve been pretty efficient at completely screwing up my life,” Beamon said. “No reason to think they don’t maintain their computers with the same diligence. Go ahead, Ernie. Nothing to lose.”
“Jesus Christ, Mark! Wake up!” Goldman shouted. “We have to concentrate on Vericomm. Get something we can use against them.”
Beamon shrugged. “I’m with you, Mr. Goldman, but I’m not hearing you give me a realistic course of action. You told me yourself that it’d take an army of people like you to figure out how they’re doing it. And I doubt they’re going to invite us over to their headquarters and show us their tapes. No, unless you can give me a concrete action plan, we’re going to go with Ernie’s suggestion. Set up the eight hundred line. Ernie, can you get that thing out in the mail tomorrow?”