by James Phelan
“I’ve never worried about something happening to Jasper,” Monica said, and she looked out again over the kitchen sink to the small garden of hanging plants and flowers, an espaliered pear tree across the back wall budding with new shoots, as the shadows of the LA night fell.
“They’re going to force him to do terrible things.”
“So?”
“So?”
“Walker . . .” Monica said. She looked at him. There were tears welling in her eyes. “My brother? He has always done terrible things.”
24
She began with their childhood. Jasper was two years older than her. They’d bounced around Europe as military brats with her father’s Air Force career, the most time spent in Germany, which was West Germany for most of that time. She was fifteen when they’d returned to the United States, and they’d been posted in Florida for two years, then a year in North Dakota, and then the General took up the spot at the Air Force Academy and Monica had gone to college.
“Tell me about Florida,” Walker said. When she’d said it, he’d noticed something. She’d sped through it. Said it really fast—Germany, Florida, North Dakota and then onto Colorado Springs and the Air Force Academy. Florida. Three syllables, but said in the same time span as one regular syllable. Like she spat it out.
Monica looked at him. There was pain there, visible beneath the veneer of the smart, successful, capable and striking woman. Vulnerability. Memories she didn’t want to dredge up. But her eyes held Walker’s gaze and she didn’t look away when she told her story, which seemed to occupy most of those two years in Florida when she was fifteen and sixteen, and her brother had been seventeen and eighteen.
Walker listened, took it all in. He didn’t make notes, didn’t need to. This was all background. Maybe useful. Definitely it told him about the type of character that Jasper was, and why the relationship was distant between the siblings. It painted a picture he’d seen a few times. Friends at school and at the Air Force Academy who’d opened up to him like this. Stories that as a young man had made him mad, and now, as a guy who’d seen the worst that wars and war zones had to offer, didn’t have much impact. Sad for the victims, sure, but life went on. There was therapy and drugs and all kinds of avenues to help deal with it in America. Sure, he felt a pang of anger because he’d known this woman once, really fell for her for a few days, but what would that anger do now? There was nowhere to direct it, and he had to keep her talking. Hours were going by and he could see she was exhausted. He had to know all he could.
What had that meant to Jasper, abusing a younger sister like that? What did it mean now? How did that get skipped in his psych profile for the Army?
“It was post 9/11, and we were fighting in two unpopular and seemingly never-ending wars,” Monica said, as though sensing what he was thinking. “The Army needed front-line meat. Screening standards were relaxed, especially in an outfit like the Rangers. The Army welcomed him with open arms. My dad put in a good reference for him. That was that.”
She didn’t say if her parents ever knew. Walker pictured some kind of moment years later where the General found out, maybe from the mother who’d known from earlier—perhaps from Monica confiding in her, or reading Monica’s diary—and there being a tussle and the General somehow getting unbalanced in the act with the younger man and tumbling down some stairs and needing the crutches ever since.
“Do you hate him for what he did to you?” Walker watched her, for what she didn’t say as much as what she did. He kept his voice gentle but his questions on point. He couldn’t change what happened to her, he couldn’t offer comfort, but he could show her that what she had told him was important, and that he would use the information to help her family now.
“I did. For years. After being scared faded away, sure, I hated him. Then, after that, I guess I felt sorry for him. It’s like a sickness, doing what he did.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Why stop now?”
“Are you glad he’s been taken captive?”
“Part . . . part of me is indifferent to it, I admit that.” Monica paused, said, “But, ultimately, no. I don’t want harm to come to him.”
“Did he ever apologize?”
“No. I used to want him to, to apologize and take penance and admit his evil depravity to everyone who’d listen but then, when I forgave him in my mind . . . I think now that if he ever mentioned it in any way I’d just hate him all over again.”
Walker nodded. He’d not known that about her but it made sense now as he remembered back to that July Fourth weekend; how in a couple of the quiet times she’d flinched when he’d gone to kiss her, to touch her. It must have been raw back then, and he felt a rising anger at the guy despite himself. He breathed in and out, heavy. He didn’t buy that it was a sickness. As far as Walker was concerned, if you hurt children, and Monica was a teenage kid back then, a child really, and family, well—he had no objection to guys like that being dropped off en masse into the middle of the ocean. Sink or swim, sickos, don’t mind the sharks.
Monica had stopped talking. She was watching a news bulletin.
He saw the television. Monica un-muted it. It was a profile on Jasper, since the news outlets had nothing else to go on reporting other than, in just over an hour another cyber attack may or may not occur, and all kinds of security experts had weighed in with possible scenarios.
There were pictures of Jasper. One from the Army, when he’d been discharged from the Rangers with a medical condition that was the result of a training accident.
“What was the injury?” Walker asked.
“Amputation,” Monica said. “He’d been pegged for Special Forces and was training with the Rangers at Camp Merrill when his Black Hawk clipped a tree in the mountains of Georgia. It went down hard. He broke both legs and developed a clot and now has a prosthetic below the left knee. After that, the Rangers were out.”
“Then the Army Cyber Warfare came knocking.”
“Cyber Command pounced on him. He could have left with a payout and medical pension, but he saw it as an opportunity. He was always deep into computers.”
“So, he went to work in Fort Meade.”
“That’s right. He was there a short while, then he was lent out to the NSA when it was evident what he could do with a computer.”
“Hacking foreign networks?”
Monica nodded. “His high-school and college hobby had become the new black in military circles. They’re desperate for recruits—they’re still running at less than half the manpower of what they’re aiming at.”
“Because of Silicon Valley.”
“Mainly. Why work on computers for the Army when you can do it for Google and play ping pong all day and earn a whole heap more.”
“What sort of work did he do?”
“He never said. It wasn’t long, that first NSA posting. He was dragged back to the Army and tasked to an assignment with the MPs; 110th, some kind of special investigators.”
“I’ve heard of them. They’re good.”
“Well, that op spelled the end of the work he could do with the Army, because it made him a target.”
“How?”
“It was law-enforcement stuff.”
“For the Army?”
Monica nodded. “More coffee?”
“Sure, I’ll give my kidneys another sharp punch.”
She put another capsule in the machine, then pressed the button. As water steamed, the smell of freshly brewed coffee filled the air. She seemed content to be busy, happy to be talking of something other than what her brother had done to her.
“Jasper started out helping the MPs investigate rings of Army units that were doing . . .” Monica trailed off, absently watching the coffee stream into the cup. “They were attacking women, degrading them.”
Walker’s eye twitched. More guys to be dumped at sea. “Like?”
“Jasper never told me about it, but I heard, later, from—well, I guess you’d call him
a mutual friend,” Monica said. “He came in on the tail end of a three-year operation that would be the Army’s biggest bust for sex rings and sexual harassment. Army guys would rate women in uniform, not just how they looked, but what they were like in bed. Details were shared around. About Army wives and girlfriends, too. Local bar staff and other women. It led to rapes and other sex crimes being committed against women who had rated highly but evidently got sick of all the attention from men in uniform. Over a hundred Army personnel were booted out for that. A few are doing time in Fort Leavenworth. And a huge number—up to a thousand, I heard—were reprimanded for accessing the footage and data.”
Walker nodded slowly. “That’s interesting.”
“Interesting?” Monica’s voice raised a little.
“The guys busted out. They’ll be pissed. At Jasper. When was this?”
“Seven, eight years ago.”
“It’s motive. I mean it could be, right? Some of those guys would harbor a hell of a grudge against him. And you said yourself he had to leave the Army because of ongoing threats.”
“That’s what he said to me. Well, to Dad, and Dad told me. But I’d say those guys wouldn’t know of Jasper’s involvement. His focus was on collecting the data, running the hacks on the computers and networks and phones that these creeps were using. He never faced them in court, and his name wasn’t on any documents.”
“You sure?”
Monica nodded. “That’s the first thing Dad did this morning: he rang the Pentagon and called in favors. They confirmed that the guys Jasper helped bust were never aware of his involvement, and his name isn’t recorded any place. The 110th MPs are good like that.”
“I bet those guys could find out, if they really wanted to. Army is a close-knit circle. People know people. Friendships run deep. A guy like Jasper could be seen as a traitor, in their warped eyes—worse, to those who got caught and were bumped out of the Army. They’re probably still looking out for one another, furious about losing not only their jobs and pensions and all that, but their little side project too. Maybe it took them seven or eight years to find out who exactly he was. They made him, and now they’ve got him.”
“Does that fit with your linked cells of terror attacks?”
“It might.”
“You really think they could play a role in this?”
“Maybe. It has to be considered.” Walker caught her eyes. “That’s when you forgave him—when you heard about that work?”
Monica nodded. “I thought it was his way of making amends. Catching those criminals and depraved a-holes.”
“So, they have form. They could be the ones who’ve taken him.”
“It’s just . . . Okay, let’s say you’re right. What do we do? Track down every last one of them in the next twenty-four hours?”
“Leave that to me.” Walker sipped his fresh coffee. “What did Jasper do after that?”
“He was doing that op for a couple of years. When they did the big bust, he got a Silver Star for his involvement, as well as a promotion to Captain, and was given his choice of roles.”
“What’d he choose?”
“To leave. To go to the NSA, full-time. He’d worked so long looking inward, he wanted to deal with foreign-only interests. He felt the Army and the Cyber Warfare outfit were crap. So, he transferred to the NSA for good.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because, he . . .” Monica again looked out her back window into the darkness. “He asked my advice.”
“And you gave it?”
“Sure.”
“Did that happen often between you?”
“Asking for advice?”
“Asking, and receiving.”
“No. No, it didn’t. Ever. That was literally the first time.”
“Why then?”
“Because . . . because I wanted him to move away. Out of the country. A posting someplace, for a few years, maybe more. I wanted him to do something that would make him even more valuable to the government.”
“You were protecting him?” Walker asked gently. “Because of the Army investigation?”
“Maybe.” Monica nodded. “I think. I don’t know. That Army investigation did have him spooked. They’d given him access to all military communications. All communications. Emails and phone recordings. There was a General involved—that’s how high it went, some scumbag in the 101st. He never said, and I’ve not heard anything to confirm it, but I’ve wondered—what else would he have seen and heard when running those communications through keyword programs to hunt out these creeps? I honestly think he left the Army because he was scared that someone may have thought he’d seen something else in there.”
“Like what?”
Monica shook her head. “No idea. That’s just my thinking. It’s like the Snowden files, you know? How Snowden cherry-picked and only took this and that, then left breadcrumbs behind for investigators to see exactly what he took and what he didn’t, showing he’d touched some files but not taking them because they were too explosive and damaging.”
“But the powers that be are terrified that Snowden took it all, or looked at things that are thermo-nuclear in content, too explosive to be laid bare to the world.”
“Right? That’s what I figured with Jasper. They may think he saw even more than he reported.”
Walker filed that away, said, “What did Jasper think of Snowden?”
“We never spoke about him. The last communication I had was that conversation about leaving for the NSA posting, just over two years ago. He’d got in touch because he’d heard of my divorce, from Dad. We chatted and met up and then all he talked about was his work. No, actually, just before he left, he sent me a letter. Snail mail. Not-hackable. He said he could get my ex, if I wanted him to. ‘Sort him out,’ he’d said. ‘Finish him.’”
“Kill him?”
“That’s not how I took it. Not at first. At first I assumed he meant finish him online—hack his accounts, wipe data, post things that would incriminate him somehow, destroy his career and reputation. But who knows? Jasper was weird like that, always talking in riddles, the result of never fully trusting communication, whether in that letter or when it’s verbal and face to face, in a Barnes and Noble cafe like we were that day we last caught up.”
“Why’d he write that?” Walker said. “After years of no communication between the two of you, why would he suddenly act like he cared?”
Monica closed her eyes. They may have been wet. A tear ran down her cheek.
“Because. At the end of the day, he’s my brother. For all his faults, he loves me.”
25
“Did Jasper have friends?”
“Not really,” Monica replied. “No one that I knew about, not since his school and college friends. I never met any of his Army buddies, if he had them.”
“Any close friends from ages back, a best friend?”
Monica shrugged. “That’s another story. A long one.”
“I’m listening.”
“I really don’t think it’s related.” Monica gave him half a smile. “Though you’ll think otherwise.”
“Let’s talk about it and see.”
“They’d had a fight.”
“About?”
“It doesn’t matter. But the upshot was that things were said, things happened, they fell out. That was, oh, fifteen years ago and that guy has moved on. Jasper too—that’s when he up and joined the Army, after college.”
Monica fell silent.
Walker finished his coffee, then rotated his head slowly to work the kinks out of his neck. He checked his watch.
“Okay,” he said, “what did Jasper do for the NSA?”
“Development, he told my father.”
“Of?”
“I don’t know. But it was big. Their lead program. That’s what my father said.”
“But you don’t know what it was?”
“I know he was given clearance above me, and that’s high.”
/> “Yeah, we should talk about that.”
“What?”
“You.”
“Me?”
“Your role. Your job.”
“My job is boring. And it certainly has nothing to do with this.”
“There you are, assuming certainty again.”
Monica smiled properly this time.
“Humor me so we can rule it out. But we need to talk about it. And then we’ll go back to the friend.”
“You wanted to know about Jasper. And the Army. And the NSA.”
“And you’re telling me about him. Is that it? Are we caught up with his working life, up to the point of the NSA?”
“Almost. Almost as much as I can tell you. As much as I know, I mean.”
“I knew what you meant.”
“Do you? Did you?”
“I think so.”
Monica leaned forward on the island bench, tilted her head slightly to the side. “You’re trained to spot lies.”
“So are you.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because you have government clearance just below Jasper’s, which would be high, as you said, which means you’ve done your human-resources psych work for the government. I’m guessing military-related, given your provenance.”
“You’d be right.”
“Doing?”
“Nothing related.” Monica paused, then said, “You saw my graduation picture, at my father’s place.”
“The academic colors. And I read a brief snapshot of you online, before heading here. You’re a psychologist. Or psychiatrist?”
“The former. No medication dispensed.”
“Right. Then grad-school. And since then you’ve worked for the government,” Walker said, seeing her shoes, her outfit, her jewelry. “You freelance, though, never just working for them, because you’re too smart for that.”
“Okay. Smart, I’ll take that. Plus I want certain things. And I have a daughter to raise.”
Walker couldn’t hide his surprise. “Daughter?”
Monica smiled again, but this time in a new way, a pure way. “She’s seven. She lives with her father.”