by David Dun
“When before that?”
“When I was sailing past the mouth of Devil’s Gate. I turned in.”
“It’s how you saw me.”
“Well, it made it easier.”
“Come on. Would you have seen me if you’d kept going?”
“Probably not. I had the same bad feeling about putting you in the seaplane.”
“So what is this?”
“It’s nothing.”
“What did your grandfather mean?”
“My Grandfather Stalking Bear decided that I inherited the Spirit Walker thing.”
“Fascinating.”
“It’s intuition pure and simple.”
“Did all Indians around these parts believe the same?”
“Well, there were some distinct differences. Only my tribe believed in Spirit Walkers, but all the tribes had the spiritual leaders known as Talth.”
“So tell me your tribe.”
“You can keep your trap shut?”
“Of course.”
“You threatened me with the New York Times.”
“I said I was wrong. I concede.”
“I’m a Tilok.”
“What’s your name? Your real name.”
“Oh, no.” He shook his head. “Let’s go back to Indians. Even in things as basic as language there were differences. The Yuroks spoke a language related to the Woodland Algonquian tribes of the northeastern United States, while the Karuk spoke Hokan, the oldest language in northwestern California, and the Hupa spoke the Athapaskan, which was a language common in the Pacific Northwest and the Southwest. Pretty amazing to have such diversity in one small area of northern California.”
“What do the Tiloks speak?”
“A dialect of the Algonquian tribes, but Mom says it’s pretty different. Before English, none of these tribes could talk to each other without a multilingual translator. Their economies, social structure, and spiritual beliefs were similar but there were differences. My mother can tell you what was common and what was not. Tiloks were travelers, not so much lowland Indians except seasonally. In spring and summer Tiloks went to the high country. They were hunters, trackers, and traders.”
“Why does she say that your soul lacks harmony?”
“I told you that you need to leave me with a few secrets.”
“Okay, just a little more. Tell me about your dad.”
“He was the penultimate tough guy. Life was about holding out the proper facade no matter what. Laugh at adversity, joke when others cry, never have a really serious conversation, and never under any circumstances be vulnerable.”
“Must have made a heck of a one-man platoon.”
“He was a parajumper. The bad-ass rescue patrol. The president or a cabinet member goes down, needs rescuing, or a pilot behind enemy lines, or a hiker on Mount Denali ... the toughest rescues around are given to the parajumpers. That’s what you wanted to know.”
“I’m not spying on you, Sam. Relax.” She squeezed his arm. “I do, though, fully intend to find out everything there is to know about you.”
“Curious creature, aren’t you?”
“I am,” she said, and quickly drifted off to sleep.
He didn’t really doubt her. It seemed that he was seriously losing his grip with this woman.
He used the plane’s satellite phone to call the office.
Typhony answered.
“How’s it going?” Sam asked.
“Really good but I can’t talk now, so I’m giving you Paul.”
That’s weird, Sam thought.
“Yo,” Paul said.
“Are we making progress?”
“You bet. I called Hal Godwynn. Apologized for the middle-of-the-night wake-up. Said you’d be talking to him, that you really needed his help. He’s cranking up as we speak. He knows it’s big and says there’ll be a lot of mouths to feed. Fifty thousand dollars to try, with a fifty-thousand success fee and fifty thousand more as a home-run bonus. Success is that he finds a plane leaving Canada with Jason on it and tells us where it landed. Another fifty-thousand home run if we actually find him and we get him back.”
“Okay.” Sam heard something in Paul’s voice.
“We’re thinking Jason was smart enough to circumvent file-folder security but never cracked the code to open the document. So he gave us a folder that he locked with a document inside that was encrypted by Grace Technologies. We’re working on breaking it. Grogg is going to run about two hundred big computers in series for about an hour and see what he can do.”
“We need to break it open. Jason had to have a reason for thinking it would be interesting.”
“So when you gonna be here?”
“Soon. Tell me what’s wrong, Paul.”
“Oh, it’s nothing critical; it can wait until you get here. Some people want to talk with you.”
“Which people?”
“Trust me on this one, Sam. It’s one of those things you should get into when you get here and it will definitely keep.”
“It’s why Typhony wanted off the line.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Okay. I’ll be right there. I can hardly wait.”
Someone had screwed up. Sam knew that. And the miscreant wanted to tell his or her story.
“What’s wrong?” Anna asked.
“You faker.”
“Tell me what’s wrong.”
“If you could hear, you know they wouldn’t tell me.”
“What do you think?”
“Don’t know.”
“Who’s Hal?”
“A retired FAA administrator. He has a knack for tracing aircraft flying in controlled airspace.”
“I hope he figures it out.”
“I do too.”
“Sam, I want to go to the office with you.”
“That’s out of the question.”
“If you let me come, I’ll ... well ... I’ll pay closer attention to what you say.”
“Oh, that’s a real concession.”
“You’re looking for my brother. That’s where everything is happening. You’ve got what ... bunches of people in there all working phones and computers and God knows how many people out in the field feeding you information.”
“You can’t come.”
“What if I promise to follow orders? How about that?”
“For the entire job you promise to do what I say?”
“Nearly.”
“What kind of lie is ‘nearly’?” Sam laughed. “At least be convincing. You get the anemic lie award.”
They drove through the streets of LA, she watching his face in the flickering of the night-lights, Sam talking easier now. She sensed he had decided to take a chance. He pulled through the gate, past the guard shack, and into what was obviously a very private parking area. She saw a lot of cars for what she considered the late hour.
“Looks like your crew is hard at it,” she said.
“That’s one I don’t understand, though.” He indicated a sporty-looking Porsche. “Four hundred and twenty horsepower, 413 foot-pounds of torque, zero to sixty in ten-point-oh seconds, and all-wheel-drive. It belongs to Jill, and she’s supposed to be in the mountains with Grady.” Then he leaned forward and peered down to the end of the row. “What the hell?” he said. “That’s my mother’s car down there.”
Sam had a look on his face that she hadn’t seen—a cross between anger and worry.
Inside they were met by Typhony and Paul. Jill stood just behind the pair. Everybody in the office was looking out of their cubicles, most standing.
Sam saw his mother in the doorway to the lounge. Beside her was Grady with a yellow pad. There was a hush about the place, none of the soft clicking from the keyboards. Everybody was watching as though he were a cop breaking down the door of a bookie salon. For a second nobody spoke or even moved.
“What’s happening with Grady?”
“I brought her here and put her to work,” Jill said.
“Paul?”
“Paul said no way. Said we would have to follow procedure and that she wouldn’t work here for months, if then. I argued and he said take it up with you. But I brought her in anyway, when he wasn’t looking.”
“You broke a company policy?”
“I’ll be happy to fire her ass,” Paul said.
“She was just trying to help ...” Grady called out.
“Go back to your desk, Grady,” Jill said. “This is my business.”
“I’m speechless but I’m sure it won’t last,” Sam said. He craved a cigarette.
“I want to explain,” Jill said.
“In there.” Sam nodded at the conference room. He felt like the King of Siam when the Englishwoman challenged him about Tup Tim. Security had to mean something.
“I’d like to speak with you privately,” Spring said.
It gave him the excuse that he wanted not to react immediately.
“Okay,” Sam said.
They went into the conference room first and closed the door. “Jill only told me after we arrived and were inside that you would not approve. Shortly before you arrived here she explained the significance of what she had done—that it was a major breach of your security rules.”
“It certainly was that. And she ignored Paul.”
“And so you need to fire her.”
“That’s right.”
“And yet you know she would bust her butt for you in a tight spot.”
“I know that.”
“So you don’t want to fire her. So maybe there is a better way.”
“I’m listening.”
“Let her come up with a means of making recompense that satisfies everyone she put at risk. If it satisfies you and everyone else, then she can stay.”
“But she’s not a child, and this is a job. We don’t do detention.”
“Sam, I’ve watched these people. It’s a little community.”
“It’s a community with rules and principles that we all follow. Myself included.”
“I’m not going to waste your time. But everybody here was threatened by the breach and they have worked out something, subject to your approval.”
“Well, I wouldn’t hold out a lot of hope. This isn’t a halfway house. But I’ll listen.”
“You know I’m right.”
“Just please don’t make a treaty with Anna Wade and declare war on my psyche.”
They opened the door.
“Can I talk to you now?” Jill came in.
“Talk,” Sam said.
“You can’t run your kind of business and have people doing their own thing. I know there is never a good reason to breach security.”
“But?”
“No but. You should fire me.”
“Then why did you do it?”
“At the time I thought you’d understand, because of the danger to Grady. Then when I mulled it over, and after Paul started literally shaking me, I realized maybe you wouldn’t. Originally, I thought, maybe you’d get mad but somehow ... overlook it.”
“But why did you think I’d understand?”
“Because our research shows that Samir Aziz is probably dangerous and that Chellis is perhaps deadly, but so clever that we can’t prove it Chellis will kill Grady because she’s the key to getting Jason free of Grace’s control. Aziz will abduct her for the same reason. There isn’t a safer place than here. Finally, I have a feeling about this girl. We can trust her. She should work here. That’s why I did it.”
“There is a safer place than here. Even if you were right, that doesn’t justify—”
“You’re not listening. I told you it doesn’t. That’s why you have to fire me.”
“Unless we come to some ...”
“Understanding.”
“Like what? I have a strung-out stripper kid in the bowels of my office.”
“Sam, don’t call her that.”
“You’re right. She really has nothing to do with the rank piece-of-crap trick you pulled on all of us.”
Sam took out a single Marlboro, his last.
“You don’t smoke. Do you?”
“Hell, no. I quit long ago.”
“Besides, that’s against company policy.”
He tossed it in the wastebasket. For as long as he could remember he had never seen her look this worried.
“We all talked about it. Your mother asked me a lot of questions. And we came up with something.”
“Okay,” Sam said. “What is it?”
“Of all my material possessions nothing means more to me than my car. We’ll all take a blowtorch and cut it into two-inch squares and we’ll put the squares in a giant box by the door to rust.”
“And everyone agreed to this?”
“No, that’s not all. For Paul that wasn’t enough.”
“Okay, what else?”
“I made a deal with Paul to drive some piece-of-crap car for a year. He will pick it out and it will come complete with rust spots. That is, if you agree to all this.”
“This is bizarre. It’s kindergarten. Tell me honestly: Would you do the same thing if you had to do it over?”
“No. I would ask you and if I couldn’t convince you, I would leave it alone.”
Sam thought for a moment. Two years ago she would have been out of the building by now. Getting soft in this business was scary.
He made sure to take his time and look her square in the eye. She took that to be his answer.
She turned and opened the door and walked through the office, aiming for the exit. They could all see the sorrow on her face and Sam saw the anger in their eyes.
“Jill,” he shouted as she waited for the heavy door to open. “If everybody agrees, then it’s okay by me.”
“I can stay?”
“Yeah. I just wanted you and everyone else to see exactly what it’s going to be like if anybody does it again. Anybody.”
Sam shut the door, wondering if he had done the right thing.
There was a knock. He opened the door and found Grady bursting at the seams to speak.
“Can I talk now?”
Sam nodded.
“I think I can do the job. I know you can trust me,” Grady said, looking at Sam. “You don’t even have to pay me.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking. We will be on your ass for two years. You’ll have to be in school and getting grades.”
“Fine.”
“If you drink even once you’re fired. There is no compromise on this job.”
“Fine.”
“You would have to counsel with Spring by telephone twice a week for the first three months when she’s available. And you will have to go to a substance abuse group chosen by Spring.”
“Fine.”
“You would have to live with Jill and exercise five days a week with her. I would tell her to torture you.”
“Fine.”
“You would have to take a polygraph should Jill ever ask for one. But most probably, if I think you are dishonest in any respect, you’re fired. I wouldn’t trust you for a long time.”
“Okay.”
“You do as Jill says at all times without question.”
“I know.”
“You never tell anyone about the company or your work without my permission. Break that rule and you’re fired.”
“Uh-huh.”
“What is uh-huh?”
“Yes. I agree.”
“You’ll see a lawyer and sign a contract. With the help of Spring and Jill you are going to create guidelines that will give a lot more structure to your life.” He hesitated. “It has to be a structure the rest of us can believe in.”
“I know.”
“You still want to work for my company?”
“Yes.”
“Pay starts at ten dollars an hour. Nice even number.”
“You won’t be sorry.”
“Time will tell.” He looked up to see Jill standing behind Spring.
&nbs
p; “And, Jill, you are committed to this?”
“Absolutely,” Jill said.
“You know Jill is doing this for you?”
Grady nodded and held out her hand to shake Sam’s.
“I’ll shake your hand in a month. Right now performance talks. We both made a decision today. I’m counting on you to make it a right decision.”
When Sam left the conference room he noticed that Anna was talking to Spring.
Great.
Twenty-six
An hour later, Sam introduced Anna to Grogg and Big Brain. She learned that Sam had roughly fifty people worldwide gathering information around the clock, in addition to the fourteen staffers in Sam’s office. Detectives were checking credit cards, phone traffic, looking for disgruntled former associates, people with ties to law enforcement, and into all manner of databases. Each iota of information was funneled into Big Brain, which stored images, driver license numbers, car VINs, Social Security numbers, telephone numbers, cell phone information. If it could be rendered digital, Big Brain stored it.
In the beginning, before the computer began to draw correlations and aggregate people who knew each other, it all seemed somewhat useless. Gradually, however, patterns emerged. Even more significantly, for years Sam had kept records that could not lawfully have been retained by many law enforcement agencies even after the war on terrorism. A few people in law enforcement did not like the limitations and had private webs kept at home on large PCs, and Sam had downloaded several of these. Much more significantly in off-the-record trades with the U.S. and other governments, he had downloaded various government databases. It was a dumping ground that hungry government spooks could come back to—a place they could find things that had to be wiped from government computers.
Terrorism had helped create the flexibility that Sam needed, but it had started long before the 9/11 attacks. Since bad guys tend to run in packs and deal with (or screw) each other, Sam already had information on both DuShane Chellis and Samir Aziz, along with hundreds of thousands of others. It was now becoming apparent that Samir and Chellis seemed to know some of the same unsavory people. Scotland Yard suspected that DuShane Chellis used a hired killer who had been employed by other criminal types.