“Look, Durgan, I’m operating with supreme authority here. That was my call. There was reason to believe she knew about your precious Dear John File. So it was a preemptive kill. Therefore, it was justifiable. Doesn’t that tell you and the tenth floor that I’m on the job? That I’m on top of it? That I’ve got their back? That I’m covering for them?”
“Was it clean? Can it be traced back to you? Because if it can be traced to you, that’s going to complicate this partnership.”
“Of course it was clean. That upstate Boy Scout sheriff thinks Teagarden killed the kid in Bethel and now the NYPD thinks he killed her too. It’s perfect. There’s no way to connect me to that kiddieland sex-and-drug parlor in the Flatiron District. It’s that simple. And do me a favor, don’t call this a ‘partnership.’ We may have to work together for a couple of days, but we are not partners.”
“That kill better be clean,” Donnursk said.
“Besides, didn’t you just conduct a pre-emptive double assassination on Shirley Highway in Northern Virginia?”
“I did. And it was as clean as they come. The tenth floor was impressed with it. Unfortunately, the tenth floor is not happy with you. The bosses up there are worried about kickback from this Svetlana Gelayeva incident.”
“Jesus, Durgan, lay off. I’m telling you it was clean. Formula 409 clean. Nobody can place me as being in that tourist hostel. Besides, is there anything the tenth floor isn’t worried about these days?”
“Harry, I’ll tell you something they are worried about—they are worried about you. Why do you think I now have supreme authority and have been assigned as your partner? It’s because he escaped you in Bethel and downloaded the file. Then you let him get away in New York City, resulting in the manager of some fleabag flophouse getting eighty-sixed. If I were DFC commander, I’d be worried about you too.”
McCanliss was uncharacteristically subdued.
“Well they can stop worrying,” he said, almost apologetic.
“Let me ask you, how’d he happen to land on that particular Over Easy entry in the ‘Dear John File’?” Donnursk asked.
“Looks like dumb luck. Just like every other thing about this arithmetic teacher. He’s got spunk. That’s all.”
Donnursk craned his neck to look up at the taller man. He glared with impatience.
“Harry, the man shot down four top-of-the line K-32 drones like they were clay pigeons. Do you know how difficult it is to take out one K-32 set to kill with epipoxilene? And he did it—four—times.”
“Relax, Durgan. That was just more dumb luck. This guy is not Stasi, KGB, or Gestapo. He’s not Al-Qaeda. He’s not an ISIS sleeper. And he’s certainly not Jason Bourne. He’s a teacher. A Ph.D. in arithmetic. A forty-nine-year-old math professor at Columbia Liberal University. His parents were hippies. He was born at the Woodstock Music Festival for Crissakes. His name is personified milquetoast—Tea-gar-den. And I am telling you: I…will…get…him!”
Durgan held his upward gaze of contempt, straight into Harry’s eyes.
“Your analysis is missing some key elements,” he said. “As a young man, this fox spent a year in the decryption department at the CIA. He moonlights as an expert cryptologist for private industry. He’s eluded you and every cop in the state of New York. Now he’s decoding the Dear John File while disappearing from bureau radar. And you call all that ‘spunk’ and ‘dumb luck’?”
“Actually, it was only two of the newest K-32s. The other two were older, slightly bigger K-32 test models.”
“Harry, that’s not funny. This is no joke here. He’s got the file. I repeat, is that what you call dumb luck?”
“Well, what do you want to call it, Durgan? He sure as hell doesn’t have foreign assistance. This is not an international case. He’s domestic. Totally solo. No training. And that was a junior-level gig he had at the CIA. He was a kid back then.”
Donnursk continued staring with the repugnance that every new generation holds for its predecessor when the disease of elderly weakness is in the air.
“I repeat, what do you call it?” McCanliss demanded.
The sea lions barked and clapped on a rock-island in the middle of the pool where a zoo worker tossed fish as a reward for making the church group from Pennsylvania laugh with delight.
“Never mind what I call it,” Donnursk said. “I’ll tell you what the tenth floor calls it. They call it ‘disaster.’ And like I said, they’re scared shitless. They think you’ve been outsmarted, and that’s not all they’re worried about where you’re concerned. So what do—you—think of that, Harry?”
“I’ll tell you what I think, Durgan. I think you’re a goddamn genius. Isn’t that the way it is? You’re the hotshot who nailed that simpleminded retarded kid who stole everybody’s password at LAX.”
“That’s right, that was me, and there was evidence that kid had Chinese backing.” He paused, then said, “So?”
“So—what?”
“So is that it?” Donnursk asked. “You’ve got nothing else except that you don’t like me?”
“Yeah. I got something else,” McCanliss said. “Can you tell me how that encoded file came to be delivered to Teagarden in the first place?”
The question finally compelled Donnursk to back off. He glanced at the sea lions performing for their lunch. The animal on the highest rock ducked jealously whenever the food-fish was tossed to another on a lower rock. The worker teased the complainer with a fish of its own, then tossed it to another. The church campers laughed and applauded at the frustration of the top seal.
Donnursk sighed.
“All right, Harry,” he said, “I’ll tell you. I have not been told, as they say, for the record, but I tend to be more plugged in than you. There was a report that a blackmail file existed after Director Hoover died in 1972. His secretary, Miss Helen Gandy, issued a confidential warning, but no evidence was ever found so it was assumed to be no more than a rumor. There was a lot of gossip in those years. Turns out, it did exist. It was collecting dust in the FBI library for decades. The tenth floor only found out about it last week when the security software coughed-up an in-house warning on the words ‘CAT 38-72,’ as in 1938 to 1972. It was spotted when the assistant librarian snail-mailed a photocopy of the original to Teagarden. Nothing is confirmed, but office chatter indicates it was mailed in total innocence. Poor guy went through channels to ask if anyone cared. No one did. Then he sent it out for private analysis. The clerk thought he was doing his job.”
“And this librarian patsy was one of your two pre-emptive hits on Shirley Highway?”
“Yes.”
“Great. All because the tenth floor failed to clean up their own house forty-seven years ago.” Donnursk shrugged with apathy. “So tell me something else, Donnursk, how do you come to know all this?”
“Let’s just say I’m ambitious.”
“Okay, Mr. Ambition, how soon did they act on this e-mailed message after the librarian pushed the send button?”
Donnursk swallowed and looked away. It was his first sign of weakness since they entered the zoo and began a verbal brawl that at times could be easily overhead by anyone nearby.
“Not until the software monkeys noticed a warning in the back-up system, which was three days later,” Donnursk said. “That’s when they notified the tenth floor, which called you in and sent you to Bethel with supreme authority. You retrieved the hard copy just fine, but you let him download the e-file in that Hasid shack like some cat playing with a mouse.”
The older man clasped his hands together, tossed back his head and laughed in a spasm of delight. For a moment, he looked and sounded like one of the sea lions performing for lunch.
“That’s terrific,” McCanliss said, spluttering the words past his laughter. “That’s just terrific. It took them three days to figure out their own mistake. And the tenth floor geniuses are worried about—me?”
He leaned back and laughed louder.
&nb
sp; In the background, the sea lion on the top rock was finally tossed a fish of its own, prompting loud applause and laughter from the church group.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
The Boathouse, Sparta Township, NJ
Teagarden slept poorly Monday night.
He spent most of Tuesday watching the lake and enjoying the creature comforts of the boathouse, particularly the shower, which had plenty of hot water. He continued to play it safe by logging-on as Dan Jones, hoping to get more decoding assistance on the internet, but there was nothing more to be had. The best mainstream website was useless, leaving him to play a silly combination of crossword puzzle and word jumble with a ballpoint pen.
As for poor Dan, he was hanging tough.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
I say I am dishonest, because I am. 45 years in Canton is enough. I saw a crazy woman talking to a squirrel in Central Park yesterday as she fed it popcorn. You know what she was saying? She was saying—I love you, I love you and respect you like my brother. Sure, she was crazy. She was also honest. Maybe you need to think about that.
Whoa.
Teagarden felt a tug of sympathy for Dan from Canton, Missouri, and hoped he had the good sense to stay out of Central Park after dark.
The bathroom window across the lake didn’t display the cactus in a blue pot in the morning. That night, his hostess arrived with a supply of food for the fridge, plus chicken teriyaki carry-out and a bottle of good Bordeaux. She was in a particularly good mood because she’d just won a personal injury trial that saved her insurance company millions. A drunk construction worker fell from a scaffold and seriously hurt his back. His lawsuit claimed the scaffold was faulty, which it was, yet she prevailed.
“We had a common sense jury that concluded if he hadn’t consumed a pitcher of screwdrivers for lunch, he wouldn’t have been hurt by faulty scaffolding,” she said. “Common sense juries are hard to come by. So when you get one, it’s darn refreshing.”
“Makes sense to me,” he said.
They ate together while he related more details from the previous day near her west side law office. He started with the four drones, Coconut, and Billy Carney. He went on to tell her about the rude woman in the SoHo store, his narrow escape from the dog run, using the “yellow4submarine” password of a stranger named Dan Jones from Canton, Missouri, and the surveillance disc he received from Svetlana. He explained that he had to have a DVD because the only way he could receive it electronically was via the Dan Jones e-mail account, which would have blown his cover.
She thoughtfully listened to every detail. Afterward, she assured him that once he was proven innocent of murder, the other crimes related to being a fugitive would be dismissed.
“That’s good,” he said. “Now I only need to prove my innocence as a nationally wanted child killer. I’m going to need a good common sense jury like you had today.”
“Meantime, you must stay underground.”
“What if I go public with the security video from the Madison Park Euro Lodge? Maybe I could hold a secret press conference, or seek exile in Moscow like that man who leaked all that NSA information a bunch of years ago when Obama was in office?”
“Too risky.”
“Why?”
“Sam,” she said, “believe me when I say this—the law will not protect you. The police will be happy to kill you, but only if circumstances require it. On the other hand, this other mysterious man is hunting you for precisely that purpose—to kill you. Unlike the police, it’s his job. It’s as simple and ugly as that. Unfortunately, if you’re killed by either team, proving your innocence will be nearly impossible. So you need to stay alive. And the way you do that is by staying underground.”
He sighed deeply. “You are so right.”
She poured more wine.
“Why did you receive this document in the first place?”
He thought before he answered. The red liquid swirled in his wine glass. He never saw Billy Carney’s body, but could picture him lying in the woods, his youthful limbs bloodied by two rounds of twelve-gauge buckshot. He did see Kendra’s body. When he regained consciousness, she was sitting next to him as though resting, the front of her head a deflated basketball.
“Years ago,” he began, “I worked for the CIA in the encryption/decryption department. It was one of the most boring jobs I ever had. I mostly just watched the clock for eight hours.”
“Sounds like your typical government job.”
“It was. And the cafeteria food was worse than college. Of course, I was in my twenties, so I thought the job made me cool. You know, a spy. It helped me meet girls, which was the only thing I had on my mind at that age. Later at Columbia, because of that boring government job, I did my Ph.D. dissertation on the Morley Dilemma, which I first learned about at Langley. It’s a theory that rising complexity diminishes contrary complications.”
“Never heard of it,” she said with a small laugh. “What in the world does that even mean?”
“It’s more theory than real mathematic formula. It means that sometimes, for some problems, the more complex you make it, the simpler it can become. Emphasis on the word ‘some.’ Conversely, the simpler you make something, the more complicated it can become for a certain subset of people if they presume it to actually be complex. It’s ironic, but it does happen, largely because of the human factor. And the Morley Dilemma applies very nicely to issues of encryption and decryption.”
She held a sip of wine in her mouth while looking at him, then swallowed.
“Okay, so I repeat my question. How did you come to possess the document that seems to be at the root of all this?”
“Oh, right.” He took a breath and sighed again. “A long-time friend named Stu Shelbourn who teaches math at GW in D.C. has a son who’s some sort of archives clerk at the FBI. It was the son who sent me the document. It’s a series of encrypted passages in an old spiral notebook that he said had been lying around for decades and that nobody was interested in. He invited me to see if I could break it. Apparently he felt it would be fun to figure out its meaning. I’m guessing he thought it might be something he could put in a before-and-after library display case. You know, Cold War relics and all that. If I’m right, he made the offer to me as a lark, totally innocent.”
“Oops. Your Federal Bureau of Incompetence at work.”
“Cynthia, I just want to make certain of one thing: I can’t have my daughter and granddaughter get caught up in this. That’s the bottom line for me.”
She didn’t have much to say about the mathematics of decryption, but she was ready for that subject.
“I understand. Sam, if they do get caught up, I doubt they’d be at risk of personal harm. Hurting them would only make your story look more credible, which is the last thing they want, and I say that entirely as a lawyer. But you should know they might ask your daughter to issue a plea for your surrender.”
“That could be indelicate. Did I tell you what my daughter does for a living?”
“No. What?”
“Navy aviator. Stationed at the Naval Air Station near Key West. It’s on the adjacent island called Boca Chica, but she’s not working on a very popular program. She flies the new pilotless X-47 for Operation FIDROPRO. It stands for ‘Fighter-Drone Program.’ The navy temporarily mothballed the plan. But she still teaches trained pilots how to play a video game with a real bomber tooling around in the sky.”
The information sent Cynthia deep into thought. He could tell that she found it interesting, or significant, or potentially troubling, but she said nothing more about it.
He changed the subject.
“Here, maybe you can help with this.” He wrote out his one fully decoded entry for her. She sipped more wine while taking a prolonged period to study the words.
Dear John,
On this lovely day in June, you began recruitment
For
operation over-easy, illegal as bathtub gin used to be.
I love you,
CAT
He could see her mind working. It was the mind of a lawyer, which in some ways was like the mind of a mathematician. Numbers cut. They bore right through deceit. Galileo discovered numbers that bore through deceit of the church. And that’s what lawyers are trained to do. If they’re good, they too instinctively know how to cut through deceit.
“Well,” she said after her examination, “I don’t have any substantial interpretation of the meaning, but I can tell you two things. First, these pages are definitely the reason they’re hunting you. And second, you need to decode this entire file. Only then will we know the best way to move forward.”
Yes!
It made him feel better. It was independent affirmation of what he’d been feeling these past long days. Now, at least, he had someone to help. That meant a great deal. When the alternative is going it alone, having at least one ally is as good as having an entire army.
Come to think of it, that’s what marriage is—a partnership that unites two people into an army. That’s the way it was with Kendra. We had each other’s back.
Still chewing his dinner, he picked another entry at random, and hastily wrote above the numbers known to stand for the letters D-E-A-R-J-O-H-N. He passed it to her.
“Let’s take a shot at this one together,” he said.
“Okay. Well, the first letters of the line under ‘Dear John,’ might form the word ‘today.’ If so, that means eighty stands for T, and fifty-nine for Y.”
She passed it back to him.
Teagarden thought the word “infiltration” could be formed at the end of the second line and beginning of the third. He filled it in.
“Good,” she said. “And the word ‘arrest’ is in the fifth line. Plus seventy-six must stand for the letter U in the word ‘your.’”
She wrote them in.
“Of course. The ending is the same as the other one,” he said. “It’s ‘I love you, cat.’”
Flight of the Fox Page 13