Dunne was happy to return to his office on Forbes Avenue, with its glimpse of the Monongahela River, while he ruminated on his past and future. The first day back he contacted Vijay Prakash, the ex-FBI agent who had referred the California client, and offered to share the fee with him. But Prakash just laughed. Dunne’s $150,000 was a rounding error in the world where Prakash and his big cyber firm operated.
Instead of taking a split of Dunne’s money, Prakash offered him another referral, a lawyer in Evanston, Illinois, named Joseph Lee, whose business had been shattered three months before and was seeking “active defense” of a kind that Prakash’s firm wouldn’t provide.
“He asked for you specifically,” Prakash said. “He said he likes your work.”
“How the hell does he know about my work? I’ve only done one case.”
“Beats me, bro. But word travels fast in our business.”
“Is this guy legit?”
“I don’t know. But he’s rich. His law firm has offices around the world. This could put Paladin on the map.”
Dunne deliberated. He’d just gotten his life back. He didn’t want to give it away again, or even sell it. “Tell the Evanston lawyer I’m interested,” he said. “But I’m still getting settled. I have a few things to work out. I’ll get back to him in two weeks.”
“You’re nuts,” said Prakash. “This guy will have found someone else in two weeks.”
“Maybe,” said Dunne. “Or maybe he’ll want me more if he thinks I’m picky.”
Prakash gave Dunne the man’s contacts, and Dunne told his secretary to arrange a call in two weeks. Running a business can’t be this easy, he thought. But in the flush of having money and clients, he didn’t worry about it.
* * *
While Dunne had been away in California, his assistant Jenny had been developing other business prospects, fielding contacts from the website and LinkedIn. She had received retainers from three new clients and started providing them with basic security and forensic services.
Dunne had never been very tidy with money. He had showered presents on his wife and child when he was married. Now he had a fat bank balance, even after he paid his alimony and child support. He bought flowers for Jenny, and a fancy espresso machine for the office, so they could make good coffee at work, and he sent a check for $10,000 to his father in Tampa, who didn’t deserve the money, given everything he’d done to Dunne’s mother, but got it anyway. On a whim, he bought a fish tank for the office and filled it with a half dozen tropical fish.
In his newfound prosperity, Dunne tried not to think about revenge. But our pasts never really stay in the past.
Soon after he returned from California, Dunne retrieved the “Lemon Squeezer” letter that his attorney friend Richard Ellison had given him after his release. At first Dunne hadn’t wanted to do anything about it. It would suck him back into a time that he was beginning to escape. But he read it again carefully now. He paid special attention to the details about Jason Howe, the young American he had been chasing, on agency orders, when his world collapsed.
The anonymous correspondent had dangled some very specific leads. He’d provided the IP address, domain registry, and server name for one of Howe’s computers, and the serial number and SIM card of his iPhone. These traces could perhaps help Dunne find Howe, the architect of his destruction, but he would need some help.
Sometimes, perhaps, we should just let go of what is troubling us. But Dunne wasn’t built that way. He wanted to know.
* * *
Dunne invited Rick Bogdanovich for lunch a few days after he returned home from California. He said he wanted to thank his FBI buddy for getting him back on his feet, but he had more than that in mind. They went to a fancy Italian place along the Allegheny River in Highland Park and feasted on fried zucchini and veal marsala, two of the house specialties.
Bogdanovich had two glasses of wine and was reveling in his new friend’s good fortune – until Dunne pulled out the letter that had arrived at the U.S. Attorney’s Office so many months ago in a FedEx mailer.
“Maybe you can help me with something, Rick,” Dunne began. He had the letter in a plastic sleeve and pointed through the sheen to the items about Jason Howe: the computer addresses and the iPhone identifiers.
Bogdanovich stopped him in midsentence.
“Hold on, brother,” said the FBI man. “I can’t do this.”
“But I haven’t asked you for anything yet, Rick.”
“That’s why I’m stopping you now, before you do something I might have to report to the SAC in Pittsburgh.”
“But the Bureau helps people track leads like this all the time. You know that as well as I do.”
“We help law enforcement agencies and other government officials, not private consultants. There’s a difference.”
“Does that mean I should get someone in government to make the ask?”
“No, Mike.” Bogdanovich wagged a thick finger. “I am just telling you how the system works. You’re getting stupid again. Be careful. Now put that fucking letter away so we can eat our veal.”
* * *
One thing you learn gradually when the bottom falls out is that you need friends. Sitting in the dining hall at Petersburg night after night, it had seemed safer not to talk to anyone – not to owe any favors or grant any, either.
Now that he was out, Dunne wanted to see people he could trust, and there weren’t many. The one man who knew the whole story, with whom Dunne wouldn’t have to pretend, was Roger Magee, his old mentor at S&T. Like Dunne, he was divorced, and had free weekends and an appreciation for the great outdoors, especially when it included a cooler of beer.
Dunne called Magee at his town house in Reston and, after the preliminaries, asked if he wanted to go fishing that weekend. Dunne had been doing some research, and he proposed a spot between Pittsburgh and Washington, in the headwaters of the Monongahela, just across the West Virginia border. It was called Cheat Lake and Dunne told his friend that a local fishing website said anglers were catching smallmouth bass, largemouth bass, walleye, and catfish.
“Nobody just calls about fishing,” said Magee suspiciously. Dunne had phoned him just once since he’d gotten out of prison, and that was to give him his new mobile number and email. “What do you want to talk to me about when we’re at this Cheat Lake?”
“Fishing,” answered Dunne.
“Yeah, right. Okay. Fine.”
They met at a boathouse by the lake. Dunne had rented a small fiberglass bass boat with a little outboard in the stern. Both men had brought along spinning rods and other fishing tackle. Dunne’s was new. Alicia had thrown his old gear away in her rage during their breakup.
It was a bright spring day. The sky was Carolina blue. Surrounding Cheat Lake on all sides were low hills, thickly forested, dropping to the water’s edge.
“This ain’t no lake,” said Magee, when they were puttering toward a cove that Dunne said was a good fishing hole. “The hills are too steep.”
“It’s the backup from a dam built over near Morgantown back in the 1920s. That’s older than you, old man.”
Magee surveyed the calm water, dense green foliage, and clear blue sky. “It’s pretty,” he conceded.
“It used to be a dump. My dad brought me here once when I was a boy and it looked so nasty, he turned around and drove home to McKeesport. The only fish here then were bullheads and white suckers. Coal mines were all around these hills, and the waste drained into the Cheat, and acid rain did a number, too, back then.”
“And the do-gooders saved it?” asked Magee, as he made his first cast toward the shadows of the cove. “The EPA?”
“Fuck the EPA. It was local folks. Back when I was in college, they had a group to clean all this shit up. And they did. By the time I graduated from Pitt, you could fish in it and swim in it. One of my girlfriends at Pitt, I brought her here and we went skinny-dipping. Memorable.”
“Spare me,” said Magee. A few moments later, h
is rod bent sharply. Magee let the fish play for a moment and then jerked the pole to set the hook. The spinner ran for a few seconds as the fish dove for deeper water, then Magee tugged hard again and slowly began to reel it in.
It was a nice bass, nearly eighteen inches long. Dunne took out the net and scooped the flopping fish out of the water.
“Are we catching these big boys or releasing them?” asked Magee.
“I just got out of prison. Let’s give him probation.”
Magee took out his pliers. He carefully removed the hook from the fish’s mouth and dropped it gently back into the water, where it spurted away.
“Cheat Lake,” said Magee, newly appreciative. “Back from the dead. My kind of place.”
The fish were biting into the early evening, and they caught and released more than a dozen bass and walleye between them. They broke out the beer, too, so by the time the sun began to set, they were both feeling mellow. They returned the boat to the marina and walked to a seafood restaurant nearby. At the table, they ordered more beer, and whiskey, too.
“What did you want to talk to me about?” asked Magee. “Other than fishing.”
“I need some help.”
“I had a feeling. So, what’s pulling your chain? I hope you don’t want your old job back.”
“I’m thinking maybe I should try to rewind the tape on what happened to me. Just to satisfy my own curiosity. People did me dirt. Maybe I should look for them. Starting with the people I was chasing back then, who posted all my private stuff online.”
“Don’t do it. I said that to you once before and you didn’t listen to me, and you fell into a big pile of shit. Now that you finally got yourself cleaned off, you want to jump back into the pile again. What is wrong with you, Mike?”
“I want to understand. People messed me up. I want to find out who they are. I think I have some leads on the chief bad guy, and I want your help. So please don’t tell me to piss off, because that’s not what a friend would say, and you’re my friend.”
“Oh, shit. Is this going to be a test of character and loyalty? Because I don’t have any. I’m a burnt-out intelligence officer. I’m tapped out in the good-guy department.”
Dunne ignored the gruff words. He knew that Magee was listening, and deliberating.
“Here’s what I need from you,” said Dunne. “Someone sent me the coordinates of the kid that Strafe had me tracking. His name is Jason Howe. I have a computer address and SIM card numbers. He probably has ditched those, but if I can find out where he was, then maybe I can locate him. I have all the numbers here. What I need is for someone from the intelligence community to ask the FBI to do a search. Can you do that for me?”
“Maybe. Rather not. Who sent you those coordinates in the first place, anyway?”
“They came in an anonymous letter from someone who called himself ‘Lemon Squeezer.’ That had to be someone who knows tech ops, because who else would understand what that phrase means? That wasn’t you, was it?”
Magee cocked his head. “Hell, no! Why would I help your sorry ass?”
Dunne smiled and shook his head. He had no idea whether Magee was lying or telling the truth. That gift for ambiguity and concealment was one reason he liked the man so much.
“Okay, I’m just going to give you the coordinates, and hope to God you do the right thing with them.”
Dunne took a sheet of paper out of his pocket and handed it across the table. Magee let it sit there while he finished his whiskey and then ordered another. Eventually he folded it and put it in his pocket.
“Okay, dipshit. What else?” he said.
“The network I was chasing in 2016, with all the smart hackers, was called the Quark Team. Remember them?”
“Vaguely. Strafe was spun up about them. I guess they went away.”
“The network is still out there, and I think it’s getting nastier. They’re not saving the world anymore, they’re selling shit. I ran into traces of it when I was working a cyber case this month for a woman who got hacked by a former employee. I just started a consulting company. Just had my first big case.”
“So I heard. What was your fancy case, Mr. Big-Shot Consultant?”
“I hacked a hacker. I know this will sound weird, but the malware tools the hacker was using were branded by this old network I was after. I saw some of the same malware from before. These people are serious assholes. They hate America. I want to take them down.”
Magee didn’t say anything for so long that it made Dunne nervous.
“What the fuck, Roger? Talk to me.”
“My friend, you do not realize what you are up against here.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just what I said. You are running into a free-fire zone and you are clueless about who your enemies are. There is some serious juju on this case. Why do you think you got your ass fried and had to spend a year in prison, for Christ’s sakes?”
“Because I went after a journalist and pissed off the free-speech crowd.”
Magee laughed, slapped the table.
“That’s rich. Little brother, you truly do not have a clue, do you? No, and I’m not going to tell you, either. Because I like fishing and drinking beer, and I don’t intend to spend a year protecting my butthole from your boyfriends in Petersburg.”
“Howe and his friends ruined my life. I’m asking you to help me find him and make him pay.”
“I feel sorry for you, man. Truly. The problem with you is, you have a big, gooey wad of idealism down there with all the badass cynicism. You’re smart, but you’re just stupid enough to think you can make a difference on this stuff. You can’t.”
“Help me, Roger. People shouldn’t be allowed to destroy a man’s career, marriage, reputation, everything he cares about. There has to be an accounting.”
Magee sighed wearily. He wasn’t going to talk his protégé out of his revenge mission, but he wasn’t volunteering to help, either.
“If you have a problem, son, leak it to the newspapers. Let them do the dirty work. I keep a yellow old clipping from the Washington Post of an exposé that blew up a commie dictator we’d been trying to bust for a year. People didn’t believe the U.S. government, but they believed the newspaper. Weird, but true.”
“I hate reporters. The people who took me down claimed they were journalists, too.”
“Suit yourself. And on this payback thing, Ahlan wa sahlan, as our Arab friends say. Be my guest. But when the shit hits the fan again, don’t say you weren’t warned.”
“Fuck you, too,” said Dunne. He clinked the other man’s glass.
They drank a while longer, until they were both way too drunk to drive. Dunne had reserved two motel rooms at the marina complex, and they staggered off to their beds. When Magee left the table, he still had the information about Jason Howe in his pocket.
* * *
Dunne and Magee both awoke the next morning at six. Dunne knocked on Magee’s door a few minutes later and suggested they have breakfast together at Hardee’s, a few miles down I-68, but Magee said no, he had a long drive ahead and wanted to get on the road. The older man had dark circles under his eyes, as if he hadn’t slept much the night before.
Dunne hadn’t slept very well, either. He had been thinking about Magee. He trusted him, by force of habit as much as anything else. But there was a part of Magee’s character that was remote and, ultimately, impenetrable. Maybe he was Dunne’s secret deliverer, with the “Lemon Squeezer” letter sent when he was in prison, but maybe he wasn’t.
“I’ve got a weird question,” said Dunne. “Humor me.”
“Sure, buddy. Ask whatever you like. If I don’t want to answer, I’ll just lie.”
“Okay, here goes. Do you speak French?”
“Hell, no! I speak American. Period. What a dumbass question.”
“Then how did you know about Paladin? I mean, they’re French.”
“What’s a Paladin?” snarled Magee.
Dunne
looked his friend in the eye, and then gave him an even smile. Magee was genuinely, unmistakably mystified by the question.
“What the hell has gone wrong with you, boy? You’re scaring me.”
“Oh, forget it,” said Dunne genially. “Just some goofy stuff. I got confused about something, that’s all. Don’t pay me any attention.”
Magee wagged a fat finger at Dunne.
“Be careful, Hoss. This shit is bigger and weirder than you know. You keep turning over rocks and you’re eventually going to find a rattlesnake.”
“Maybe I already have. But if you get bit once, you start to develop resistance. It can’t be any worse than it’s already been, right?”
Magee shrugged. “If it were me, I wouldn’t try my luck in the snakebite department.”
Dunne heard the warnings. But he had set his compass, and he wasn’t a man to change that, especially now.
“I need your help, brother. Plain and simple. Will you send the coordinates I gave you to the Bureau? Rick Bogdanovich, the guy who runs Cyber-Forensics in Pittsburgh, is a friend. He’ll track the information down if someone official makes the request. Will you do that for me?”
“Of course I will,” said Magee. “You don’t have to ask twice.”
They began to shake hands, but Magee wrapped the younger man in a bear hug and clasped him tight for a long moment and then pulled back.
“Just don’t assume you can put this one back together the way it was, Mike. Things don’t work that way.”
The Paladin Page 10