Ed must have felt Tiffany watching him because he glanced at her, smiled, stopped tapping, then went back to nursing his coffee.
Returning to her keyboard and mouse, she navigated through screen after screen as comfortably as she would walk around her own apartment. After her mother unexpectedly died in a car accident, Tiffany was left with her father. She loved her dad—of course she did—but the two never had a close relationship. When he worked for the National Clandestine Service, he was always away on an assignment, and then when he landed his new position with the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology, he was always at the office. Tiffany respected him and was truly proud of him but more as a father figure and less as a father.
She found operating systems and code to be things she could control, things she could manipulate and order and predict. Soon, breaking into computer systems became an obsession, and in that sphere she developed a semblance of friendships and community on group boards, conversing with other hackers, sharing ideas, techniques, shortcuts. She was a natural too. She found quickly that there were few firewalls she couldn’t skirt around or bust through. Her hacking was mostly play then, nothing devious or criminal. It was more about the challenge and the victory than about stealing identities or holding information for ransom. At worst, her conquests were nothing more than cyber vandalism.
When she landed the job in finance three years ago, she put aside her hacking ways and stayed on the straight and narrow. Until now. These numbers were too intriguing, too odd to just report up the chain of command. She needed to know why.
Technically, there wasn’t any hacking needed to get where she was going, though she’d still have to bend some ethical barriers. Most of the sites and pages were protected, but she had clearance to enter them. Page after page she scanned, folder after folder, looking for anything that appeared out of place. But nothing did. The expenses were more deeply embedded, more covert. In fact, she’d never dived this deep into the CIA’s system. Only someone who knew exactly where he was going and what he was looking for would be able to navigate these deep, dark waters.
And with each minute that passed, her pulse increased. So engrossed in the network had she become that she forgot about Ed and his tapping, about the dozens of other analysts in the room with her. And for a moment she even forgot about Big Brother watching her every keystroke. She was alone with the computer, just her and a web of files to work through, a maze of pathways and trails to follow. It reminded her of her hacking days, and strangely, it felt like a deeply buried addiction had been fed again and was now growing ravenous.
“Hey there.” A tapping pen snapped Tiffany out of her zone.
It was Ed Worley. He’d wheeled away from his own keyboard and was bouncing his pen off the wall of her cubicle. He was in his midthirties and not unattractive. His eyes were tinted the oddest shade of light green, like the color of ocean water. He’d asked Tiffany out for coffee a few months ago and she had politely refused. She had a thing about dating coworkers, no matter how attractive they were.
“You all right?” Ed asked.
Tiffany glanced at her monitor, making sure Ed didn’t have an angle to see the screen. “Yeah. Why?”
Ed smiled. “I’ve been saying your name for like five minutes now.”
“Oh, sorry. Yeah, I’m kinda working on something here.”
“Oh. Well, I don’t want to bother you—”
“No, it’s no bother. It’s fine.” Tiffany didn’t want to appear unfriendly and raise suspicions.
“Okay, well . . . I, uh . . .”
He was going to ask her out again. Tiffany hated telling him no because he really was a nice guy and he was cute. She braced herself.
Ed continued, “I was wondering if you’d like to go to a concert with me this weekend.”
Tiffany’s face went warm. His nervousness about asking her out made him even cuter. “What concert?”
“Well . . .” His cheeks turned a light shade of red. “It’s actually the National Symphony Orchestra. They’re playing at the Kennedy Center with this world-famous violinist.”
“Oh, uh, wow.” Tiffany groped for words. “You don’t strike me as the symphony kind of guy.”
Ed smiled and held up his pen. “I’m not all drummer, you know. I like all kinds of music.”
“An eclectic taste, huh?”
“Yeah. Something like that. I just thought maybe, after, you know . . . you’d like to get out of the house or something.”
Tiffany paused and swallowed. After, you know . . . your father’s tragic heart attack three weeks ago. Tiffany’s knee-jerk response was to lash back against the pity, but when she looked at Ed, it wasn’t pity she saw, just compassion. Still . . . “Ed, I’m sorry. You know how I feel about dating coworkers.”
Ed sat up in his chair. “Oh, this isn’t a date. Don’t think of it that way.”
“So how should I think of it?”
“Just a guy and a girl going out.”
“On a date.”
“As friends. I just thought maybe—”
“It’s still a date.”
“Maybe it’s too soon. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s not too soon. But the answer is still no.”
He sat back. “I’m not going to get you to go out with me, am I?”
“Not as long as we work together.”
“Then I’ll ask for a transfer,” Ed said. He smiled and thrummed a beat against his desk with his pen.
Tiffany laughed. “You wouldn’t.”
“Bet me.”
“Don’t. I’m not worth it. Trust me.”
Ed turned back to his monitor. “I’ll be the judge of that.”
Tiffany returned to her quest and quickly forgot about Ed and his invitation. As if she’d never been diverted from her work, her pulse increased and the back of her neck began to sweat. She expected her boss, Jack Calloway, to appear at any moment and tap her on the shoulder. She knew they were monitored—every keystroke, every page navigated, every click of the mouse—but she didn’t know how closely. She imagined Jack sitting in his office behind a closed door watching every move of every analyst on multiple monitors. But she knew that wasn’t the case. Jack had his own business to attend to. He didn’t have time to look over every analyst’s shoulder. But someone somewhere was. The CIA couldn’t be too cautious.
Still she clicked and typed and clicked some more. And the deeper she got, the more vague the expense reporting became, the more ambiguous the classification of items grew. Until she reached a file labeled Centralia. She clicked on it and received an error message:
Centralia: not accessible
Access denied
She clicked on it again. Same error message. The file was protected, and only someone with higher privileges than she had could access it. Someone like a supervisor or manager. Someone like Jack Calloway. Or her dad.
Tiffany sat back in her chair and stared at the words. What was behind that wall? Where were those billions going? She needed to know. This was the sort of thing that went overlooked and ignored, the sort of place where scandals were hidden and crimes committed without ever being noticed.
She had to find out what it was, where that money was going. Her father’s blood ran through her veins, and no matter how much she’d denied it in the past, she knew she was so much more like him than her mother. He’d served this country well. That was one of the reasons she’d agreed to work for the business and finance department when Jack approached her. She wasn’t about to let some cocky bureaucrats get away with anything they wanted.
Tiffany clicked out of the screen and returned to her home site. She’d have to resume this at a later time. She needed her father’s credentials, his badge and PIN. She knew where the badge was in her apartment and the PIN was stored on her dad’s laptop.
Tomorrow. The thought of it sent a shiver down her spine.
SIX
• • •
“We’re coming with yo
u.” Karen stood in the doorway between the bedroom and living room, arms crossed, feet spread wide. It was her I’m-not-budging-on-this-one stance.
“You can’t,” Jed said. “Way too dangerous. I won’t put you and Lilly at that kind of risk.”
Karen set her jaw and stared at him for a couple seconds. “What do you have in mind?”
“You take the thumb drive and head off with Lilly.”
“While you go to Denver.”
“Yes.”
“And where are we supposed to go?”
He didn’t have specifics yet, just the framework of a plan. “That’s what we need to work out. Do you know anyone you can trust, someone no one else could know about? Someone from your past. Distant past. Someone you haven’t had contact with for years.”
She kept her arms crossed and frowned. “You’re really narrowing the field.”
“I know, but think. There’s got to be someone.”
Karen chewed on her lip. “I don’t like this, Jed. I don’t want to leave you. I think we’re safest when we’re together. Anything could happen.”
“Anything could happen if you’re with me.” Jed approached her, glanced back at Lilly. “I can’t put you two in danger. And I don’t trust Murphy enough to say there won’t be danger.”
“But we trust you.”
“You shouldn’t.”
“But we do. We’re safest when we’re with you, no doubt about it.”
Lilly came up behind Jed and took his hand. “I’m with Mom on this one, Dad. I don’t want to leave you. The last time we were separated, it didn’t turn out so well.”
She was right, of course. As it turned out, Jed was stripped of his identity, and Karen and Lilly were held captive in a secret underground government bunker. He still didn’t like the idea of Karen and Lilly tagging along, but he honestly had no idea where he’d send them. “Look, humor me for now. Who could you go to if we went with that plan?”
He could tell he’d gotten through to Karen, even if only for a brief moment. She relaxed her arms and let them rest at her sides. “Joe Kennedy.”
He’d never heard the name before, which was a good thing. “Who’s that?”
“Mr. Kennedy lived two blocks from us when I was a kid. In Harrisburg. He used to sit on his porch and wave at us as we walked to school every day. My dad knew him, spoke very highly of him. I don’t know what he did, but he was well-respected in the neighborhood. I think he’d remember me if he’s still alive.”
“You remember his house?”
“I know exactly where it is. But we’re not going there without you.”
Jed knew he wasn’t going to change her mind. Once Karen had her head set on something, there was little he could do to dissuade her. He’d have to come up with an alternative. “Okay, but you have to meet me halfway.”
She paused, shifted her eyes to Lilly, then back to Jed. “I’m listening.”
“You can come with me to Denver . . .”
• • •
Alone in her apartment in Alexandria, Virginia, Tiffany Stockton stared once again at a computer screen. And her palms were once again wet with sweat, her breath quick and shallow. And though she was alone in her apartment, though she knew for certain no intruders were hiding in any shadows, she still had the feeling of being watched, as if some unseen entity were peering over her shoulder. The feeling made her shiver, belying the thin sheen of sweat that covered most of her body.
She’d been living with her dad in this apartment until three weeks ago when he’d been taken from her. Jack had told her to take a month off, regroup, sort through things. But she didn’t want to do that. She’d taken a few days off, then wanted to get back to work. She enjoyed what she did and needed it to keep her mind off her loss. Losing two parents in the span of five years was difficult enough; sitting around an empty home with nothing to do but reminisce would drive her nutty.
Now, she reclined on the sofa with her dad’s computer open on her lap. His wallpaper was a photo of her when she was twelve, proudly holding up a fish she’d caught. She remembered that particular outing, too, that particular fish, that particular photo. Mr. Slimy. That’s what she’d named the fish before tossing it back into the water. She loved to go fishing with him on Saturdays when he was home. It was the only time she spent with him that amounted to anything meaningful. At least, until she came on at CIA headquarters in Langley. She’d grown closer to him in the past three years than she had in her previous twenty-five.
Tiffany wiped away a tear that had snuck up on her. She’d spent the three days home after the funeral crying, sleeping, crying again, ordering take-out food, then crying some more. She thought she’d cried all the tears she had. But suddenly a wave of sorrow and loss rushed over her, and the emptiness inside her and all around her felt overwhelming, too much to bear. More tears came. She tried in vain to wipe them away; there were so many and they came so quickly now.
After a few minutes the waterworks finally subsided and Tiffany got back to the laptop. She needed her dad’s list of passwords and PINs, and she’d seen him access the file before.
Clicking into the Documents folder, she scanned the subfolders. Most were work-related, but there was one named simply Words that caught her eye. She clicked on it and a password request box popped up.
Fortunately, she knew her father’s favorite password because she’d helped him come up with it fifteen years ago: bugaboo1006. Bugaboo was a nickname he’d given her during one of their first fishing trips. Only he called her that name and only she and he knew what it was. And October 6 was her birthday.
The subfolder contained one document also named Words. Tiffany opened it and found a list of passwords and PINs. There were five of each, but none of the specific sites or systems were identified.
After jotting down the PINs and setting the laptop on the coffee table, Tiffany grabbed her dad’s computer bag and heaved it onto her lap. He had all kinds of folders and legal pads stuffed into it.
She began unpacking every file and pad of paper—she’d go through them later—looking for her dad’s CIA badge. She’d need the digital certificate it contained, which would give her high-level access. Government computer systems operated on multifactor authentication—something you are, something you have, something you know. Since she was currently an employee, her retinal scan would get her into the work area like it did every day. The digital certificate on her father’s ID badge would be something she had, and his PIN would be something she knew. All this rested, of course, on the chance that her father’s privileges were not yet revoked and his computer at the office not yet refurbished.
With the bag nearly empty, Tiffany saw the ID wedged into a corner. She tugged the badge out and heard the distinct sound of Velcro tearing. There was something odd about the bottom of the bag. It felt . . . She ran her fingers along the seam until they reached the corner. Working her finger underneath, she pulled up. It was a false bottom containing nothing but a thumb drive.
The drive had no labels and no markings of any sort. What files were so important that her dad would stash them in a secretive place like this?
Tiffany swung her legs off the sofa and set the bag beside her. Leaning forward, she inserted the drive into the laptop’s USB port. Seconds later a single folder appeared named Centralia. The name caught Tiffany’s breath as she recalled a flashing message on her screen: “Access denied.” Tiffany double-clicked on the folder, which opened another window with a list of documents, all labeled with code names of some sort: Black Ocean, Bagpipes, Brain Games, Gemini. The list went on, all with equally ambiguous names.
Not knowing where to begin, Tiffany clicked on the file named Black Ocean. It opened as a Word document, but all the text was encrypted.
She tried another document but it, too, was encrypted. They all were. Denied again. But if her dad had downloaded them from his work computer, then they might still be readable on that machine.
Tiffany sat back against the couch and
sighed. “What were you up to, Dad?” she said into the emptiness of the apartment.
Uncategorized expenditures. Encrypted documents. What was Centralia?
SEVEN
• • •
Jed and Karen and Lilly left Idaho a little after noon and drove straight to Casper, Wyoming, stopping only for food and gas at out-of-the-way filling stations, and once to empty their bladders at a rest stop along Interstate 90 right outside Billings, Montana. They found an abandoned drive-in movie theater lot outside Casper and parked there for a few hours of sleep. By 3 a.m. they were back on the road.
They arrived in Denver at the Daniels and Fisher Tower at seven. He had an hour to spare before his meeting with Murphy and Abernathy. Jed had planned it this way. As a Special Ops sniper he’d learned to survey an area, get a feel for the terrain, the traffic patterns, usual activities. He’d learned to be patient, to wait, to watch, to feel. It came naturally to him now, as if he’d been born this way, born to observe first, then plan, then act.
The threesome sat at a patio table belonging to an indie coffeehouse across Arapahoe Street from the tower. From there he could get a view of both sides of Sixteenth Street, the tower, and Skyline Park to the north. The sky was clear and blue, the air dry and cool. Most of the tower and surrounding area were still darkened by the shadows of the skyscrapers that loomed overhead. The Daniels and Fisher Tower might have been the tallest structure in the west at one time, but it certainly wasn’t anymore. Modern architecture rose four hundred feet above the Daniels and Fisher Tower, more than double its height.
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