No Good Deed

by Victor Gischler

  “I can imagine,” Gunn said. “Stupid not to make a copy, but we can remedy that right now.” He came out of his chair, knocked on the door behind him, then sat again.

  Boston entered, and the girl’s eyes widened when she saw the folded butcher’s paper in his hands.

  “Agent Boston, please carry on as we discussed earlier,” Gunn said.

  Boston unfolded the paper on the table, smoothing it flat. He took out his smartphone and aimed it at the algorithm. “This scanner app has the highest resolution available.”

  He clicked, handed the phone to Gunn. Gunn looked at the image on the phone’s screen and compared it to the image on the butcher’s paper. “Good. Take a few more just to be sure.”

  Boston obliged.

  “Let me know when they’re uploaded,” Gunn said.

  The girl watched all this with open curiosity.

  “It’s done,” Boston said. “Successfully uploaded to the secure mainframe.”

  “Good.” He reached underneath the table and came back with a small metal trash can. He set it on the table. From his pocket, he took a disposable lighter. He lit the butcher’s paper and dropped it into the trash can.

  The girl shot to her feet. “No!”

  The paper burned quickly and was nothing but ashes in a matter of seconds.

  The girl sank back into her seat, looking stricken.

  “I can’t let you back out into the world with the algorithm,” Gunn said. “It might fall into the wrong hands. But outside of this room, nobody knows what has transpired here. Middleton thinks you still have the algorithm, and that’s good enough.”

  “Is it? Good enough?” All traces of defiance had evaporated. Defeat weighed on her shoulders, and she seemed to deflate before Gunn’s eyes.

  “I’m prepared to offer you a deal,” Gunn told her. “A much better deal than you’ll get from Middleton.”

  “Oh?”

  “Our inside people tell us the complete software—not just the algorithm but the fully assembled package—is going to be installed in Middleton’s new home office. Trust me, if we’d had the chance to snatch it without raising an alarm, we would have tried it,” Gunn said. “But Middleton is a prominent billionaire, and if something were to go wrong, that’s not the kind of thing the NSA would like to see in the newspapers. Oh, we’d come up with some story for the public, but those in DC who know how to read between the lines wouldn’t like it. I’ve worked too hard to find myself on somebody’s shit list now.”

  “What am I supposed to do about any of this?”

  “All you have to do is whatever you were meaning to do anyway,” Gunn said. “You have a cache of weapons, and Middleton has something you want. And as far as he knows, you still have your copy of the algorithm. I don’t need to know the details. Would prefer not to, actually.”

  “Why?”

  Gunn frowned. “What do you mean? Do you mean why you? Or do you mean why all this trouble in the first place?”

  “All of it.”

  “We have a window of opportunity, and you’re in a position to take advantage,” Gunn said. “If you blow it, then the entire episode will simply be a tabloid story about a billionaire’s wife who went off the deep end. She was in Whispering Meadow for anger issues, after all, so it’s really not a surprise. But if you succeed”—and here Gunn smiled like a child giddy with his secret scheme—“if you happen to lay your hands on the external drive with the software and deliver it to me, then I can make all your recent antics go away—the auto theft, hacking the ATMs, all of it. As if it never happened.”

  “You can do that?”

  “I can do that and more,” Gunn said. “As for why the NSA wants to do all this in the first place, the answer is simple. Our government has been lagging behind for over a decade in cybersecurity. A couple of years ago, there was a mass shooting in San Bernardino. When we tried to break into the shooter’s smartphone, the company who made the smartphone refused to help us. The US government should not have to go crawling to an electronics company in matters of national security. Just recently, the Democratic National Committee was hacked by a foreign power. If I told you about the various cyber assaults on our country’s power grid, your hair would stand on end.”

  Gunn leaned forward, lowered his voice ominously. “Enough. No more. The new algorithm will not only make our cyber defenses the best in the world, but it will finally allow us to go on offense in a credible way. Imagine a program that analyzes a suspect’s actions, predicts what he will do, and allows us to apprehend him before he commits some horrible act of bloodshed.”

  “Is that legal?” the girl asked.

  “Legal isn’t my business,” Gunn said. “America is. Even with the key algorithm, it will take our tech people three to five years to extrapolate the rest of the components. You grab the external drive with the complete software, then America gets that much safer that much sooner.”

  “In writing.”

  “In writing what?” Gunn asked.

  “Clearing my record, all that stuff you said. I want it in writing,” the girl insisted.

  Gunn grinned. “I don’t have the standard clandestine agreement boilerplate on me at the moment, but I’m sure we can accommodate you.”

  “And all that Whispering Meadow stuff,” the girl said. “That’s gone.”

  “As if it had never happened,” Gunn promised.

  30

  They’d dropped him back in front of the doughnut shop and left him there. No instructions, no explanation, no nothing. Francis stood there not knowing what to do and feeling foolish.

  There was a vague sense of relief at no longer being in federal custody, but Francis wondered if it were a trick.

  He tried both doors on the pickup truck. Still locked, and Emma had the keys. He looked around, clueless. It was the wee hours of the morning, the street deserted. The lights were still on in the doughnut shop, but the place was empty.

  Headlights appeared at the end of the street and came toward him.

  A black sedan stopped next to the truck. A back door opened, and Emma got out. The door closed again, and the sedan floated away onto the night.

  She looked up and saw him. “Francis!”

  She rushed to him, arms going around him, pulling him in tight. He hugged back like he never wanted to let go.

  When they finally released one another, Francis asked, “What happened? Why did they let us go?”

  “They offered me a deal.”

  “Oh?” Suspicions rose up in Francis again.

  She told him about the conversation between herself and Agent Gunn. It was all too obvious to Francis she was still holding something back.

  Francis didn’t care. “I’ll help you. Tell me what to do.”

  “You do nothing.” She fished the keys out of her pocket, circled to the truck’s passenger side, and unlocked the door. “I’m going solo on this one.”

  “This again? We settled this.”

  “It’s different now.”

  “How is it different?”

  “Because Gunn burned the fucking algorithm!” She spun on him, heat in her voice, face tight with anger and frustration. “It’s gone, okay? Everything’s changed.”

  “Nothing’s changed,” Francis shot back. “You told me, Gunn said it didn’t matter. As long as Middleton thinks you have it, that’s good enough.”

  “Shut up! Stop acting like you know how to do this. You don’t. You don’t know anything!”

  “Why are you yelling at me? I’m the only person on the planet trying to help you.”

  “Well, you can’t!” she screamed.

  “Tell me why!” he screamed back at her

  “Because…” Everything seemed to go out of her, all the heat, the defiance, the anger, every breath. She sank against the truck. “It wasn’t the algorithm I needed. I mean, yes, I was going to try to trade it, but that wasn’t what was important. On the back of the paper were three codes. A parting gift from Marion Parkes. I kept thin
king I should make a copy, but everything kept happening so fast, and…” She smashed a fist against the side of the pickup. “Stupid!”

  “Three seven-digit numbers?”

  “Yes. They were written in the upper-top corner of the—Wait. What? You saw them?”

  “When you showed me the algorithm,” Francis said. “I looked at the wrong side first by accident. The first number is eight-six-four-eight-five-one-eight.”

  She blinked. “No, it’s not. I mean … is it?”

  “Yes.”

  “You remember?”

  “It’s just a knack I have with numbers.”

  “Like photographic memory?”

  “It’s not photographic—this isn’t really important. I know the numbers. Let’s focus on that.”

  “What’s the second number?”

  “Nine-four-nine-three-two-nine-one.”

  “You’re serious?” Her face made it clear she wasn’t messing around. “You’re certain these are right?”

  “I promise.”

  “What’s the third number?”

  He hesitated.

  Her eyes narrowed, and her features went stone cold. “Francis.”

  “I’m coming with you,” he said. “I can help.”

  “How?”

  “Any way you tell me to.”

  She turned, ducked into the truck’s cab, and Francis heard her open the footlocker. When she turned back, she grabbed Francis by the wrist and held his hand up.

  “Like this.” She slapped the revolver into his open palm. “I need this kind of help. Nothing less. Straight down the line, no half measures and no guarantee of a return ticket.”

  Francis’s fingers closed around the revolver. He leaned in and kissed her. She didn’t react at first, but then her hand went to the back of his head, held him, prolonging the kiss. When they at last pulled apart, she brushed his cheek with her fingertips. Her eyes were so full of love and gratitude, Francis thought he might cry. Or maybe laugh. He wasn’t sure how to feel. All he knew was there wasn’t anywhere else on earth he wanted to be if it was without her.

  “Give me the keys. I’ll drive,” he said. “You load the guns on the way.”

  * * *

  Ernie pulled the sedan off the road and parked.

  “What’re you doing?” Cavanaugh asked. We’re a quarter mile away.”

  Ernie motioned ahead.

  There was some kind of service van parked across from the main gate.

  “I figure we don’t want them in the way if we have to move fast,” Ernie said. “We can see good enough from here.”

  Cavanaugh looked up and down the highway before agreeing. “Yeah. Okay. We can see her if she’s coming from either direction. Then we call in the others and we take care of all this shit in one go.”

  “You sure she is coming?”

  “She’s on a mission. She’s coming,” Cavanaugh said. “Anyway, she’s got nothing else.”

  * * *

  Gunn scooped the files off his desk and packed them away into his briefcase. They’d no longer need the San Francisco offices. Matters were coming to a head, and when it was all over, he didn’t want to have to come back here. Gunn preferred catching a flight directly back to DC to revel in his triumph.

  The full extent of that triumph remained to be seen. As it stood, simply securing the algorithm would be enough for a feather in his cap. But if the girl could actually secure the complete software package intact …

  Well. Either she would or she wouldn’t.

  Boston entered. “I’ve told the watch point outside Middleton’s gate to be on the lookout for the girl and to notify us immediately when she arrives.”

  “Good,” Gunn said. “And you’ve found us a good candidate from the local sheriff’s department. He’s on standby?”

  “We’ve got a man,” Boston assured him. “He’s en route.”

  “Excellent.”

  “The watch team wants to know at what point they intervene,” Boston said.

  “Intervene?” Gunn looked appalled. “You tell them not at all. We’re on mop-up duty only. Our young lady is on her own. It’s go time. If she happens to go belly up, we break camp and slip into the night like federally funded ghosts.”

  31

  The ride to Middleton’s place in Sonoma went fast with little conversation, Francis behind the wheel, and Emma dutifully checking the weapons.

  They rolled up to the main gate. It was high and solid and iron. Francis stopped at the call box. He shifted the truck into park and looked at Emma. “Your husband lives here?”

  “It’s a vineyard,” she said.

  “You lived here with him?”

  She shook her head. “This is new.”

  “So you don’t know what’s ahead?”

  “Only vaguely. What Marion Parkes told me. He was suspicious of the algorithm and what could be done with it even before he realized his own life was at stake. He said he felt like he was part of some modern Manhattan Project. I didn’t know what he meant.”

  “In World War II,” Francis said. “All the scientists who worked on the atomic bomb—”

  “I know now, dink.” She scowled at him. “I Googled it.”

  “Sorry.”

  “The point is that Parkes was always suspicious of the project, and so he passed these codes on to me along with the algorithm. It wasn’t maybe the grandest revenge, but he hoped whatever I did with the information would at least stick in my husband’s craw.”

  “And now here we are.”

  “Roll down the window.”

  Francis rolled it down.

  “The keypad,” she said. “Put in the first code.”

  He typed it in.

  A second later, there was a metallic clunk, and then the gates began to swing inward.

  “Is that all it does?” Francis asked. “Opens the gate?”

  “No,” she said. “It does more than that.”

  * * *

  Ron Kowolski snorted himself awake.

  Damn, had he fallen asleep again? It was always tough to stay awake the last hour or two of a shift. How long had he been sitting there, snoring? He started to glance at his watch when something on one of the monitors caught his attention. Was that a pickup truck at the main gate? Before he could blink and look again, the screen went to static.

  “What the fuck?” He came out of his seat and turned the monitor on and off. No help. He looked and saw that all the monitors had gone fuzzy with the same static.

  Okay, wait, there was a thing for this. In case of a surge or something, he was just supposed to reboot the whole system. He found the button for that and pressed it. All the monitors went dark. A second later, the monitors flickered to life again amid the whir and hum of computers rebooting. The static on each monitor had been replaced with a test pattern.

  “Shit.”

  Ron was going to have to call somebody. Was there a tech support number? He picked up the phone. No dial tone. Dead.

  This … wasn’t good.

  He took his own phone out of his pocket and tried to dial the Vines woman. Nothing. He squinted at his phone screen. No bars. No Wi-Fi. It was all jammed, blocked, gone.

  Okay. This was bad. He flipped open the plastic lid covering the red alarm button. He mashed the button flat with his thumb.

  Nothing. No shrieking Klaxon. No flashing lights.

  Huh.

  He fished the keys out of his pocket as he went into the next room. The other three guys didn’t look up. One of them had sacked out on the sofa. The other two watched an episode of Pawn Stars on cable. They were younger, beefy cops collecting some moonlighting cash.

  Ron crossed the room to the weapons cabinet, found the correct key, and unlocked the cabinet. A row of AR-15s lined the inside of the locker, the drawer below full of ammo and magazines. Ron took one of the rifles, slapped in a fresh magazine.

  “Alarm, guys.”

  One of the guys watching TV looked back over his shoulder. “What are you t
alking about, Ron?”

  “There’s an alarm.” He took one of the vests hanging on the wall and began strapping it on.

  “I don’t hear nothing.”

  Ron sighed. “Just come get one of these fucking guns.”

  * * *

  “The gate’s not closing,” Ernie said. “You sure that was them?”

  “It was them,” Cavanaugh said. “Call the others. We’re going in.”

  * * *

  They slowed the truck a bit as they passed the old mission-style house, but after eyeballing it a second, Emma said that couldn’t be the place, so they kept driving.

  They took the road up to the main residence but pulled off, parking halfway hidden in the trees. They stood in the darkness as Emma strapped on a pair of shoulder holsters. She’d given Francis a holster for the revolver that clipped to his belt. He clutched the shotgun with sweaty palms, the bandolier with additional twelve-gauge shells across his shoulder.

  “We’re going through the trees to circle around back,” she said. “Leave some space between us. Bunching up makes an attractive target. Don’t rush, but keep moving, and when we get there, don’t come out from the tree line until I signal clear.”

  “Have you had training for this?”

  “Call of Duty.”

  The woodsy area turned out to be easier to traverse than expected. Much of the underbrush had been cleared, and the lights from the house drew them on. Francis paused at the tree line as instructed and took a knee. Emma was easily visible in the moonlight ten feet away. She was taking a good long look at the back of the house before making a decision.

  It was an odd-looking house, Francis thought, but clearly huge and expensive. Where a billionaire might live, he supposed. From this vantage point, he overlooked a large deck, a line of ten deck chairs in a neat row. Ten-foot-high metal shutters spanned the wall behind the chairs, and Francis thought he saw a door all the way to the right of the shutters.

  A hand on his shoulder startled him.

  “Easy,” Emma whispered. “It looks clear, and I’ve spotted a back door. I think there’s a keypad. Follow me.”