Katherine Karlson noticed Jordan descending the stairs, turned, and waved.
“Hold that thought,” she said into the phone and set it on the table. “Good morning, sunshine! Sleep well?”
Jordan’s mood was still stormy from the last discussion with her mother. She feigned a smile to avoid a clash so early in the morning.
“I made a pot of coffee,” she offered, “nice and strong, the way you like it.” She pointed to a carafe on the counter, then picked up her phone again. “Sorry, Jordan just came down. Like I said, I got a call from a friend at the embassy in England at four this morning. The first reports were sketchy, but more details came in when they began playing this video. What’s that? Yes, I don’t think there is any doubt it’s him.”
Jordan sipped the day’s first cup as she watched the big screen.
‘Breaking news from Al Jazeera television,’ was the headline in large white letters. Karlson grabbed the remote and turned the volume louder, something she rarely did when watching the news. The video appeared to be shot in the mountains of Afghanistan with narration in both Farsi and English. The cameraman filmed while walking along a rugged, rocky path toward a group of armed men. They argued a moment but then parted, allowing him access to what they all gathered around. There, perched upon a blood-stained boulder, was a dirt-caked, grossly disfigured human head. The nose was butchered open from either side. The screen filled with the mutilated face, frozen in an expression of agony, suggesting the victim endured this torture while still alive. The dialog continued through the video while a name was repeated by the agitated tribal militiamen. Over and over now, they chanted, “Abu Dahl, Abu Dahl, Abu Dahl!”
The English narrator now added, “We have unconfirmed reports that the victim shown here is, in fact, Abu Dahl. The former detainee of Guantanamo Bay was recently released after years of imprisonment in connection with a series of European mass bombings that claimed the lives of hundreds.”
“My God, how can somebody do that to another human being?” Jordan said, turning away from the graphic images.
Her mother, however, sat stone-faced, watching the entire report with keen interest.
“That’s the man you helped Erin Laurent get released from Gitmo, right?”
Karlson’s eyes remained fixed to the screen as she held the phone to her chest, nodding slowly.
“I don’t understand,” Jordan said, shaking her head in disgust, “why would they slice him up like that and then cut off his head? I thought they wanted him back. Instead, they torture and kill him? What is wrong with these people?
“They knew the CIA had him by the nose,” Karlson blurted out, staring at the brutal images. “They were looking for the beacon.”
“The what?” Jordan asked, completely puzzled.
Karlson broke her gaze from the television, realizing what she had revealed. “Oh honey, I don’t know why I said that. I’m sickened by the brutality over there.” “You should stick to your promise and get our troops out,” Jordan said, releasing some of her pent-up frustration from the last heated conversation.
Karlson put the phone back to her ear. “I’ll let you know when I’m on the way,” she said, then ended the call. She turned to confront her daughter. “Are you going to start that again? Christ, kid, it’s too damn early, and that is a very simplistic view of an extremely complicated issue.” She glanced at her watch. “And it will have to be a subject for another day. I need to finish getting ready for a meeting. So how about you give it a rest for a while?”
She topped off her coffee in silence and headed for her bedroom, content to learn that the secret military mission was now exposed and foiled. She also hoped their plan served its intended purpose and forced the president to re-think his position on the war effort. She wasn’t sure if the signal beacon transmitting from inside Abu Dahl’s head was common knowledge yet, but it would be soon enough. For now, denial was the best course of action.
26
Jordan found herself walking down an unfamiliar street with no recollection of how much time had passed or how she’d come to be there. The gruesome images and conversation with her mother weighed so heavy on her mind that she felt faint, nauseous. The room was suddenly empty of oxygen, and she’d bolted for the door to catch her breath. Once outside, she kept moving with no thought of a destination.
She tasted a tear on her lips and realized she’d been crying. Great, she thought, I feel like hell, and now I probably look even worse. She paused a moment to view her reflection in a storefront window, surveying the damage and grinning back through mascara-streaked eyes. Good thing I don’t wear much makeup, or I’d pass for Alice Cooper’s ugly sister.
She regained her bearings and realized she wasn’t far from her favorite coffee shop. Jordan stepped up the pace and headed for a pick-me-up.
She walked past the counter and straight into the Ladies’ room, where she made some adjustments to her makeup and hair. The Alice Cooper analogy may have been a bit extreme after all, she mused. Then her mother’s words came streaming back. “A campaign promise is not a political protocol.” She looked into the mirror, still shocked, disappointed beyond words that the woman had uttered the line. She studied her own reflection, confirming she was not the one with the damaged philosophy. The ordeal left her feeling shaken and empty. All she wanted now was coffee, a snack, and time to think. She pushed through the restroom door and stepped into line to place an order.
With a hot drink and sugary treat in hand, she scanned the room for an open seat. She spied Cody and Ethan huddled over a laptop in the corner, and her mood brightened. She decided there would be plenty of time to brood later and grabbed an open seat beside them.
“Hey guys, what’s new in the cyber world?” she asked.
Both of them looked up and smiled.
Ethan put his hand on hers. “Free time from the campaign?”
Jordan frowned. “Maybe a bit more to come. I’m thinking of going back home for a while.”
Ethan returned the expression. “I’m sorry to hear that. Why would you leave now?”
Jordan looked around the room, thinking whether she wanted to discuss her situation. She decided against it.
“Being home with my dad always gets me back on target. I feel like I’ve already spent too much time in DC. The last thing I would ever want is to start thinking like the people here.”
“Thanks a lot!” chuckled Cody, eyeing her over his shoulder.
Jordan patted him on the back. “You both know the types I’m talking about. I think I just need a break.”
“I’ve always admired your dad,” Ethan said. “He’s one of the rare ones that understand what’s going on and doesn’t sugar coat it.”
“Unfortunately,” countered Jordan, “campaigning is sugar coating.” Hype and bullshit, to be more precise, she thought. “My dad doesn’t have the stomach for this town. He’s content with being a governor, and I’m glad.”
“Now, hold on!” Cody turned and held up a finger. “Did you say your dad is a governor?”
“Great state of California,” Jordan said, smiling.
Cody looked perplexed. “You gotta be kidding me. West, right? Cliff West, who’s married to. . .wait, Senator Karlson is your…and nobody…holy shit!”
Jordan gave Ethan a puzzled look.
“I told you your identity was your business alone,” he said. “I wouldn’t repeat it.”
“But Cody is your best friend. I assumed you would have told him who I was.”
“I gave you my word. To some of us, that’s still something of value.”
Jordan smiled. “Thank you.”
“I think I’m hurt by that,” Cody smirked. “Way to keep a secret, best buddy. Oh, and by the way, that was sarcasm.”
Ethan and Jordan drifted to the far end of the table, comparing their knowledge of history when Cody flagged them over, pointing to his laptop screen. “I’ve seen three blogs now that say the leak came may have come from Senator Karlson. So
rry, I meant your mom. This one even quotes a guy who says he was part of the Al Jazeera film crew and saw the documents in her office.”
Jordan heard her mother’s name and instinctively prepared to defend her, despite their current differences. “What leak are you talking about? And what documents?”
Ethan and Cody eyed each other uncomfortably. “Cody’s been tracking a story that came up this morning about that beheading in Afghanistan. Some insiders say that OASIS did this to their own guy because of a secret American military mission that went wrong. They’re now threatening to retaliate. As usual, the whole thing is long on theories and short on details.”
“I was watching this with my mother,” Jordan said. “She didn’t go into detail, but I got the feeling she knew more than she was letting on.”
“It’s weird they would execute this guy after waiting so long to get him out of Gitmo,” Cody said.
Ethan shook his head. “He got all the way back home, then his own team whacks him. Definitely weird.”
“A group of actors and politicians flew him from Guantanamo,” Jordan added. “The organizer was a friend of my mother.”
“So why would they help a murderer who has sworn to fight against us?” Cody asked.
Jordan shook her head. “I learned a long time ago not to argue with a bleeding heart. It’s what they do.” She thought a moment and added, “Something else my mother said that seemed a bit weird. She said the CIA had him by the nose. When I asked her what she meant, she backpedaled.”
“Wait a second,” interrupted Cody. “By the nose? That’s rather ironic, considering they found this guy’s head on a rock with his nose carved open.”
Jordan nodded. “She said something else…something about a light, or signal… A beacon! She said they were looking for the beacon!”
Cody looked up with a bewildered expression that turned to excitement. He began typing rapidly. “Dudes, that’s what the cameraman from Al Jazeera said. He’d caught a glance at the details of this mission but said it was about following a beacon signal to track down Sirhan Abbas.” He pulled up another website that listed recent quotes by the cameraman. “Yeah, here he says there were secure documents left out in plain sight in the senator’s office. All he did was film them.”
“It’s hard to believe my mother would be so careless with confidential files.”
“But how else could he gain access?” said Ethan.
“Careful here,” cautioned Cody, “we’re still assuming this is valid information and that he’s telling the truth in the first place.”
Ethan pointed to the laptop. “There’s enough information from other sources to make his story appear at least credible, don’t you think? Play the video back again.”
Cody restarted the clip from the beginning, and they all watched with renewed interest.
Ethan noticed it first, an odd glimmer off to the side. “Hey, pause this for a second, will ya?”
Cody froze the image as Ethan stared hard at the screen, then slid the computer over and began single-stepping through each frame. When the screen was filled with a full view of the severed head, he sat back and pointed. “There, you see that?”
“What are you looking at?” Cody squinted, searching for any anomaly he hadn’t noticed earlier. He was rewarded with the faint reflection of sunlight from a small object. “Whoa!” he said, wresting back control of the laptop and zooming the image. With each enlargement, he re-centered and zoomed in again. Gradually, a tiny object began to reveal itself in greater detail.
“What is that?” Jordan asked, leaning in closer.
“Not sure yet, but it’s definitely something man-made that doesn’t belong there. Just another few steps in, and…”
There it was, nearly plain as day. Frozen in a pool of congealed blood beside the lifeless head of Abu Dahl lay a small metallic device about half the size of a cold capsule.
“Could that be?…” Jordan wondered aloud.
“The beacon!” the three of them whispered in excited unison.
“Bloody hell! That tiny thing is a transmitter?” Cody stared dumbfounded.
“Oh God,” Jordan shuddered as she realized the real implications of the discovery. “They dug that out of his face!”
There was a moment of silence as they all envisioned the gory scene that led up to this gruesome image. The sheer brutality of restraining a man while carving into his face in search of this device was beyond comprehension.
“That’s what my mother must have meant by the CIA having him by the nose,” Jordan said, revulsed at her own words. “What animals could do this to another human being?”
“The CIA must have been tracking him through that device, and these guys figured it out,” Ethan said.
“Hoping he would lead them to their headquarters?” Jordan asked. Suddenly it made sense. Hell, it made perfect sense. “That was the secret mission!” she exclaimed. “Abu Dahl didn’t know that thing was planted inside of him!”
“Only the bad guys found out and killed him for it.” Cody was surprised at how simple it all sounded. The details fit so neatly into place that there had to be some truth to it.
Ethan’s expression turned somber. “You realize what this means? The military was using Abu Dahl to get a bead on Sirhan Abbas, and now that door slammed shut.” He looked from Cody to Jordan. “Every murder committed by OASIS from this point on could possibly have been prevented if this mission had not been compromised.”
Jordan suddenly felt the weight of Ethan’s words, and her stomach twisted. If her mother was the source of the leak, then the woman had blood on her hands. She silently prayed that they were wrong, and Karlson had nothing to do with it.
Cody took pity on her, imagining what she must be feeling. “So, we might have a way to find out,” he offered.
“Find out what?” Jordan asked.
“Find out if your mother gave away the secrets during her interview with Al Jazeera.”
“You can do that?”
“Maybe,” said Cody as he started tapping on his phone. He sent out two quick texts, and within a minute, he received a response. “My cousin, Murray, runs a little company that installs many of the surveillance systems in town.” Cody tapped out another text as he spoke. “I know he did a lot of work on the Dirksen building because we talked about the testing process. They set that system up so that maintenance and diagnostics could be run remotely.”
A response came back from the second text, and Cody read it with a satisfied grin. “Okay, this is too cool. So, he has the back door codes to access the surveillance system. It’s not the kind of thing he does for fun, but he says he’ll try to download the data from the memory drives if we can tell him the approximate time of that Al Jazeera interview. We can check it out tonight. Anybody up for a late-night video party?”
27
Baltimore, Maryland
Murray Falcone lived where he worked. That is to say, his address was in an industrial park, and his living room featured a parking area for his work van. With the high rent cost in the Baltimore area, it made more sense to combine his home and workspace. At least, he figured, until he got married. The arrangement worked well, and there were no simmering relationships on the horizon to threaten it anytime soon.
He sat before a massive cluster of computers and monitors. His fingers clacked on the keyboard in preparation for the night’s featured event, logging in and viewing security footage from Senator Karlson’s office in the Dirksen building. He opened a program for testing the system, ensuring his passcodes were still valid and capable of accessing the data within. While the computers connected, he reached for a beer and spun around to face his guests.
Murray’s cousin, Cody, and his friends Ethan and Jordan sat at the kitchen table sipping beers, munching snacks, and following his actions as though watching a computer geek in motion was actually entertaining. Murray grinned at the thought but at the same time appreciated the company and the attention.
“I�
�m surprised it’s this easy to access security information from a government building,” Jordan remarked as she scooped a carrot stick into the artichoke dip she had brought along.
Murray shook his head, swallowing a mouthful of beer. “It’s not as easy as it looks. I have access only because I do installations and final testing on these systems. Truth is, I’m bending quite a few rules tonight. And believe me, if you weren’t related to the subject of our snooping, I would not have agreed to be involved.” He leaned in closer and added, “I could lose my contracts and probably face some serious charges. I’m relying on your silence as much as you are mine. Whatever information we find tonight goes no further than this room. You have my word on that.”
“Thank you,” she said, “I appreciate that more than you know.”
A beep from the computer caught Murray’s attention. “We’re in!” he exclaimed, turning back to the console.
Jordan scanned the impressive array of rack-mounted CPU’s and numerous monitors, the most elaborate system she’d ever seen. There were so many lights flashing and cables running in every direction that she would have struggled to even locate the power button.
“Okay, now we see what’s on those security server drives,” Murray said as he set his beer down and began typing. “I have seven files from that time frame. Jordan, can you tell me the senator’s suite number?”
“I believe it’s 221.”
“221 it is.”
More typing, then he began scrolling the cursor across the screen. “I have two separate feeds from that suite with multiple camera channels multiplexed together.” He turned to Jordan and explained, “That means the system stacks four cameras on each feed. It combines them together, so when viewed, you will be watching four different video streams. We’ll start with feed one and see if that’s our information.” Murray opened the file, and immediately the images of the two entrances and waiting area were displayed on the large monitor.
ENEMY WITHIN THE GATES Page 14