Road Kill; Puppet Master; Cross Wired

by Jan Coffey

  So their computer security specialist was a hacker, Alanna thought. She couldn’t help but wonder if he’d been twelve years old when he’d gone to prison.

  “I perfectly understand your concern, Jay,” Galvin said calmly. “And Mr. Collier and Dr. Mendes haven’t said it yet, but I think it’s safe to assume that neither of them would feel comfortable participating in anything that they would consider illegal.”

  She was glad Steven said what was on her mind.

  “My proposal bends but doesn’t break U.S. laws, though to make you all more comfortable about it, I’ve based the operation here, offshore.” Steven paused before continuing. “But I’m not playing softball, either. We’re going after these killers in ways that governments can’t. We aren’t going to simply freeze assets. My plan is to drain the liquid assets of this organization altogether. I want to cut them off without a riyal.”

  “You could be talking about hundreds of millions, maybe even billions of dollars. Transfers of amounts that large won’t go unnoticed, by the people losing it or the banks charged with protecting it,” David said, not trying to keep his skepticism out of his voice. “And there have to be recipient accounts that the money gets transferred to.”

  “Exactly. My suggestion is that the recipient accounts be a few thousand charity organizations that we’ve been covertly lining up. The transfer will be direct…no middleman, no fingerprints. On the books, it must only look as if they made the donations themselves.”

  “Won’t we be getting these smaller charity groups in trouble by having them receive money from a terrorist organization?” Alanna asked.

  “No,” Steven answered her. “These people have hidden their money in thirty-seven Dubai accounts that we have identified. The accounts have been created with smokescreen on top of smokescreen. Finding them has been no small feat, and it’s already cost me a well-spent fortune. But these have been set up in a way that no government out there has been able to touch them…first of all, because the banking concerns we’re focusing on are based in Dubai; and second of all, because they cannot be linked directly to the terrorist activity we know they’re funding. In the end, though, this money will go where it can do a lot of good.”

  “I don’t mean to sound like some gutless geek, Mr. Galvin, but I’m thinking there could be some pretty powerful people behind this,” Jay put in. “Like maybe a dictator or two—or at least some members of royal families. I have to be straight with you. Those guys scare me more than any prison term. They’ll come after our…I mean. I would be worried about my family.”

  Galvin looked up at the bookcase where the images of his son and his wife had been projected. He looked back at Jay and nodded grimly.

  “I understand your concerns. There’s nothing gutless in that,” Galvin told him. “But you all know who I am and what I’ve done in my life. I am not a person to leave the planning of a project half-done. I’ve always been a details guy. Once I explain the plan to you all, you’ll see that there will be no fingerprints. Nothing will tie us to those accounts or to what we do. In fact, that is exactly where you and Mr. Collier fit in.”

  “So, I won’t exactly be ‘auditing’ accounts, as Mr. Lyons told me,” David said in a low voice.

  “No, Mr. Collier. I couldn’t—”

  “It doesn’t matter where we are, offshore or on Mars, Mr. Galvin,” David interrupted. “In my mind, we are still breaking the law. And operating outside of the law is a huge concern to me. I’ve spent more years that I care to count fighting legal battles to clear my name of false accusations. Something like this could destroy the little ground I’ve gained. Never mind that it could put me behind bars where I would be no good to my daughter.”

  “The same thing I told Mr. Alexei applies to you.” Galvin was looking hard at David. “I believe the ethical…rightness…of the project speaks for itself. Once you hear the specifics, you’ll see that there’s absolutely no danger of your being tied to this project. Think of the arrangements that were made directly by my people in Germany. I wouldn’t go through all of that if I thought you’d be locked away and unable to enjoy the results of it.”

  Alanna had no idea what the arrangements were that Galvin had made for David. Whatever it was, though, it didn’t need farther explanation, for David became silent. She could see that Galvin held both of these men on a string; a gentle tug was all it took to put David in a more amenable position.

  “Will you explain some of the specifics of your project to us tonight?” Jay asked, breaking the silence that had fallen on the room.

  “That’s certainly a possibility.” Galvin nodded. “But before we get to any of those specifics, you should know that nothing will go ahead unless we can convince Dr. Mendes here to join us.”

  He turned to Alanna.

  “So what can we do to convince you to come along?”

  CHAPTER 47

  Dundalk, Ireland

  “We barely made it here,” she said breathlessly, her head dropping back against her hotel room door.

  Just as the book signing ended, the rain had stopped. Amber hardly noticed the weather, however, as she and Mick walked along the wet streets. And she had definitely no longer been thinking of book sales.

  The invitation was to go together to a quaint pub a few streets over called the Beerkeeper. She’d heard they served a hundred different kinds of beers. Instead, as they walked, he’d whispered a few words in Gaelic into her ear, and Amber had physically steered him in another direction. With the Secret Service trailing in the car furnished by the Irish government, the two had nearly run to the tired little hotel where she was staying.

  They’d never bothered to take their clothes off. They’d never made it to the bedroom. He’d barely had time to slip on the condom. And then he’d taken her right there against the door of the suite. Their lovemaking had been explosive.

  Now, he carefully lifted her, disengaging his body from hers and setting her feet on the floor. She laid her head against his chest.

  “I can’t believe we did this,” she said with a laugh. “I’m not usually so easy. I’ve always made it a rule never to have sex with someone on the first date. But this wasn’t even a date, was it? I think we may have shocked my escorts.”

  “Hush, woman,” he whispered against her mouth. He kissed her tenderly on the lips. “Is that the bathroom?”

  “Ask it in Gaelic,” she said, hoping to get lost in his accent again and forget the foolishness of her actions.

  He smiled. “Cá bhfuil an seomra folctha?”

  She let out a heavy sigh. He was absolutely gorgeous. “That’s the door to the bedroom. The bathroom is through there.”

  Amber watched him pull up his jeans. He didn’t bother to zip them. He picked up his hat and jacket from the floor and threw them onto a nearby sofa and disappeared into the bedroom.

  She looked down at herself. Her winter jacket was half off her shoulders. Her black wool dress was twisted around her waist. Her thong was still dangling around the ankle of her boots.

  “This would be a great story for the newspapers,” she whispered to herself, shaking her head and putting her underwear—for want of a better place—in her jacket pocket. Slipping the jacket off, she straightened her dress. “He is gorgeous, though.”

  He was in the bathroom, so she hurried to the sink in the little kitchenette off the living room to clean up.

  She didn’t even know his last name. His first name was Mick, and he was a college student in Belfast. He’d approached her table, gave her that heart-melting smile and asked her in that accent, “Didn’t I see your picture in the paper?” That was all it took. Amber had been ready to jump him right there.

  Standing at the counter, she pulled off her boots. She still couldn’t believe what she’d done. Her problem was that it had been too long since she’d gone out with anyone. She had her wild days, of course, during high school and college, but she just wasn’t into hooking up so much anymore. Of course, you couldn’t tell by the
way she’d acted tonight. She was glad he’d had the sense to use a condom. God knows, she wasn’t thinking about it.

  The breath caught in her chest when she saw him come out of her bedroom.

  “You seem to have lost your clothes,” she announced in case he didn’t know.

  He came around the counter into the kitchen. She backed into the corner.

  “What did you have in mind?” Her eyes moved down his body, and she almost laughed at the ridiculousness of the question.

  “Well, lass. I just thought maybe we’d fock some more.” He pulled her dress up and over her head, and dropped it on the counter.

  She reached around to undo her bra. He wasn’t much into taking his time—not that she minded. He lifted her up and sat her on the counter.

  “That sounds a bit rough, Mick. Can you say it in Gaelic?”

  He laughed, pulling her to him.

  “Woman, fock is fock…mo mhúirnín bán.”

  CHAPTER 48

  There was nothing like being put on the spot.

  As she’d listened to Steven Galvin talk, Alanna had realized she was putting her earlier decision of leaving on the first flight on hold, but only for the time being. And now, every eye in the room was on her.

  “I just can’t commit to staying until I know more about the project,” she said. “What do I have to offer?”

  “The STEREO satellites,” Galvin told her.

  Alanna could already tell she wasn’t going to like this. The others might be able to hide their activity, but she was the owner of the STEREO mission. She’d be the first person suspected if anything malfunctioned.

  “Those satellites provide an important service to the world. I won’t do anything that compromises the success of that mission.”

  He nodded. “I wouldn’t expect you to.”

  “Then how can I help,” she asked.

  “There are test cycles that you personally schedule,” Galvin told her. He glanced at David and Jay. “To bring these gentlemen up to speed, the test cycles are a kind of emergency response system. Isn’t that right? They assure that everything functions as it should.”

  This was confidential information, but Alanna wasn’t going to bother to ask how he knew so much. Government clearances didn’t appear to apply to this man.

  David broke in. “Actually, I don’t know anything about this STEREO mission.”

  Jay answered for Galvin. “Two satellites were launched into orbit around the earth. They monitor solar storms and warn us when we’re going to be hit by the energy. Keeps us from having unexpected power disruptions.”

  “That’s a very accurate description,” Steven said. Alanna was impressed by the young man, as well.

  “So, what about the tests?” she asked Galvin.

  “At the onset of any of these tests, you have a highly secure list of recipients that get communications from you, indicating that this is only a test and that no emergency backup needs to be activated.”

  Once again, this was true. Alanna didn’t think he needed confirmation that he was right.

  “What I am asking you to do is to schedule a test cycle to fall within our desired work window. Then, I want you to activate that communication that this is only a test. What Jay will do is to make sure that some of key contacts on your communication list have, well, a delay in receiving your message.”

  “You want them to activate their backup system,” Alanna said.

  “Exactly,” Steven replied. “I already know that this portion of the switch over is automatic in the institutions we’ll be targeting. Because of their international nature, the banks we are interested in can’t afford to lose time looking for an administrator to make a decision. They have taken the human delay out of the procedure. Also, they don’t like the risk of power grid structures going down in waves, so they have configured their response to shut down ahead of the blackout. They power up in their own security mode.”

  Jay spoke up again. “So, if they don’t receive word that the signal is actually a test signal, their computers automatically reconfigure the security coverage as they activate the switch-over to the secondary power source.”

  “That’s right.”

  Alanna shook her head. “But there should be no difference between the security coverage when the backup power source is activated. I don’t understand what you hope to gain.”

  “One minute and twenty-three seconds. Eighty-three seconds total. With the banks that we are interested in, that is the dead time between the power down and power up in the switch-over. We have the eighty-three seconds to empty the accounts.”

  Alanna looked at him. She still didn’t understand how, during those eighty-three seconds, they could gain access to those accounts. But that wasn’t her area of expertise. That was why David and Jay were here.

  “When this is over, you will have done nothing wrong,” Galvin told her. “You will have followed every step of the procedure as it’s done month after month.”

  “Except that some people won’t get the communication,” Alanna reminded him.

  “They will get it, but late. And the reason for that won’t be because of any error you make. The problem will be a hiccup in their mainframe. The timing of your signal will coincide with a barrage of attacks on their sites, flooding them with traffic from botnets.”

  It was David’s turn to ask. “What are botnets?”

  “Thousands of PCs unwittingly hijacked with hidden software,” Jay told him.

  “But I will know I’ve done something wrong,” she said.

  “In what we are trying to do, how does the word ‘wrong’ apply?” Galvin asked philosophically. “We will be taking money out of the accounts of those who fund terrorist activities around the world. That isn’t wrong. We are giving that money to a large number of organizations whose sole goal is to help people in need. That isn’t wrong, either. We’re not robbing anyone of their life savings. We’re taking money away from those who use it without consequence to themselves to hurt others. There is no legal authority that can act against these people, Alanna. They have successfully insulated themselves within a cocoon of evil and international finance. But we’re not going to let them continue. This is a Robin Hood project…but with an edge.”

  Put that way, Alanna felt like an unfeeling robot. An inflexible idiot who followed orders and never stepped out of line.

  “I have to think this through,” she said. “I can’t commit to anything like this until I can consider everything that is involved from my end.”

  “I would have expected nothing less from you,” he said politely. “Is it safe for me to assume that you will stay on the island until you’ve made your decision?”

  She nodded. “I shouldn’t take too long. And I’m sure I’ll have questions for you as soon as I walk out of here.”

  “I’m available twenty-four hours a day to you. Just pick up your phone or come over here or tell me where to meet you. Whatever. I’m available.”

  She felt funny sitting here. It appeared that the explanation portion was over, at least until she’d given them her decision.

  “Then I think I’ll go back to my room.”

  The three men stood up. She was surprised and touched, especially by Jay. She didn’t believe his age group knew anything of old-fashioned courtesy. Alanna stopped at the door and turned to Galvin.

  “Oh, I already have a question.”

  He nodded encouragingly.

  “What happens to the job offers you’ve made Jay and David if I decide not to participate in the project?”

  “I’d prefer not to discuss their situations with you, if you don’t mind.”

  “But you said yourself that my input is key,” she reminded him.

  Steven looked steadily into her eyes. “A decision on your part not to participate would seriously jeopardize moving ahead with the project.”

  “Right,” she said. “That’s what I thought.”

  Alanna didn’t have to look at the two men to know h
ow devastating that decision could be in their lives. Just as Ray’s situation mattered to her, she had a feeling Steven Galvin had chosen his candidates based on their degree of desperation.

  “I’ll let you know,” she told him, walking out.

  CHAPTER 49

  Dundalk, Ireland

  Amber heard the door in the other room close. She sat up in bed, still groggy. The bedside clock read 3:23 a.m. She looked over her shoulder at the other side of the bed. He was gone.

  “Mick?” she called, getting out of the bed. There was no answer.

  The hotel room was cold. She pulled the blanket off the bed and wrapped it around her naked body. From the light spilling in the window, she could see that the bathroom door was open.

  She turned on the bedside light. His clothes were gone.

  “Mick,” she called out, still hoping. She went into the empty bathroom and turned on the light. Her reflection surprised her. She looked happy and relaxed. She wasn’t a novice at sex. She’d had half a dozen boyfriends over the years. Not one of those relationships, though—even at their best—had approached what she’d felt with him. Tonight had been amazing.

  She walked into the living room and turned on the light there, too. His jacket and hat were gone.

  “I sure hope you left me a note.” Amber looked around on the counters and in the living room. It was as if he’d never been here. Nothing had been left of him but the empty wrappers from the fish and chips they’d ordered from room service.

  She sank onto the sofa and slapped her hand on the cushion. She didn’t even know his last name. She had no phone number. And how many university students in Belfast were named Mick? She could have cried just thinking about it. They hadn’t run into anyone after leaving the bookstore. There was no one she could ask who might know him. She’d waved off the Secret Service agents when they reached her hotel. She hadn’t even given them a chance to learn anything about him.