by S L Shelton
“What sort of formal training have you had?” Kobe asked as Nick approached.
“Except for the past two and a half months, a little less than a year when I was a kid,” I replied.
“Then we’ll work on katas as well—to strengthen your pitiful fighting posture,” he said and looked at Nick, who was still smiling. I was mildly surprised Kobe didn’t question my lack of formal training. On the other hand, maybe he saw what the others didn’t—that it was all raw talent with little form.
“Why are you smiling?” Kobe asked Nick.
“Because I’ve been waiting months to see him get his ass kicked,” Nick replied, barely able to contain his glee.
Kobe’s hand shot up with the speed of a cobra, tapping Nick on the side of the head before he could even react.
I dropped my head and smiled.
Nick suppressed his anger but avoided looking at me out of embarrassment. As soon as he turned, Kobe stole a glance at me and winked.
“Let’s go join the others in the mess hall,” Kobe said, putting his hand on my back. “At my age, I get cranky if I don’t get a good breakfast.”
“What was your excuse twelve years ago?” Nick asked over his shoulder.
Kobe smiled and leaned over to whisper in my ear. “Let’s see if he feels the same way when he’s sixty-eight.”
I pulled my head back in shock. I never would have guessed he was that old.
After breakfast, we walked out into the early morning sunlight to prepare for our day. Nick was about to say something to me, his mouth opening with purpose, when his phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and looked at the number before creasing his brow, perplexed.
“Horiatis,” he answered and stopped walking.
“Yeah,” he said as he turned and looked at me. “He’s standing right beside me.”
After a second, he grabbed me by the arm and started us moving toward the cadre parking lot. “On our way,” he said before stuffing the phone back into his pocket as he called to Marcus. “I need the keys to your Jeep.”
Marcus reached into his pocket without hesitation and tossed them to Nick. He took off toward the parking lot at a jog, dragging me with him.
“What?” I asked just as a small corporate-styled jet flew over, heading for the runway at the other end of camp.
“That,” Nick said, nodding toward the plane as he got into Marcus’s Jeep.
I climbed into the other side, and we were moving before I had the door closed.
“What’s going on?” I asked again.
Nick shrugged. “John called, said there was a plane coming in, and you needed to be on it,” he replied tersely.
I redirected my attention forward toward the airfield. In a matter of moments, we were at the gate, waved through by the guard before stopping at the edge of the tarmac.
Nick looked over at me. “Well, go,” he said expectantly.
I got out and walked toward the Gulfstream jet as it glided to a halt. The door lowered from the side, and John appeared in the opening—his expression was all business.
“Hurry,” he said waving his arm toward me, prompting me to run the remaining few feet and up the stairs.
“Hi,” I said, amused by his lack of a greeting.
“He’s in,” John said to the pilot, who had us rolling again before John even had the door up.
“What’s going on?” I asked as my confusion started to give way to anxiety.
John nodded his head to the back of the cabin. I looked back to see Carrie Cantor of the Department of Justice and Director Burgess of the National Clandestine Service as well as two people I didn’t recognize—a man and a woman who were sitting behind Ms. Cantor.
“Go buckle up,” John said in a low voice before we moved back to join the others.
“Good morning, Scott,” Director Burgess said as I reached the first open seat. “Please, sit here.”
He patted the seat next to his as John sat across from it.
“Good morning, sir,” I said. I was suddenly very self-conscious about the fact that I was wearing sweatpants and a hoodie while everyone else was dressed for business.
“I’m sorry for the surprise visit, but we need your help,” Burgess said with a smile. There was something strange about the expression, though. It almost seemed to be sheepish embarrassment.
“I’ll do what I can,” I replied. “Where are we going?”
“Up,” John replied simply.
“We needed to ask your help on a matter and felt it best to do so face-to-face,” Burgess said as he adjusted himself to face me after the plane became airborne again. “I hate beating around the bush on anything, so I’ll just come out and ask.”
I nodded, appreciating the offer of directness, but more worried now than I had been when I got on the plane.
“The main source of information for the DOJ investigation into the payoffs seems to have been a man named Quinn Black…of Baynebridge Security,” Burgess began, giving me information I already knew, thanks to Ruth. “I think you’ve already heard that Mr. Black is recently deceased.”
“Yes, sir,” I replied.
“I think you’ve also been asked to expand your forensic computer search to include the payment recipients’ accounts.”
I hesitated for a second before nodding. I was suddenly very nervous. Are you getting ready to ask me what I think you are?
“If you don’t mind me asking, why did you turn down the request?” he asked finally.
Damn it! You are going to ask me to hack those accounts…and with the Justice Department sitting right here.
I swallowed hard as the blood left my face. “It’s unconstitutional, sir,” I replied firmly.
He and John both smiled and looked at Carrie Cantor as she looked at me, her forehead creased in concentration.
“We are having a problem with securing Mark Gaines’s release,” she said finally. “Certain Agencies within the government, backed by an unusual amount of Congressional support, have challenged the agreement we had concerning the immunity deal. Gaines was set to be released to our custody, but his main informant in the case is now dead—Quinn Black. The judge is insisting on additional proof of connections to the payoffs to secure the transfer.”
“The judge seems to be leaning toward letting Homeland Security shoot the deal down,” John said with a knowing expression and tone.
They think the judge is on the payoff list that Black provided them, I thought.
“What does this have to do with me?” I asked.
“The request for the US bank accounts was a test,” Cantor said. “I insisted on it. Director Burgess assured me that you could find the information we needed without violating constitutional protections. But I wasn’t so sure—until you turned down the request to access the accounts directly.”
I turned and glared at John, prompting him to shrug. “I’ve known you long enough to know where you draw the line,” he said.
That’s why Ruth never got back to me, I realized. She had been put up to calling me by John…she still owes me the suicide scene photos.
“That still doesn’t answer how I’m supposed to help you,” I said as I turned my attention back to Carrie Cantor.
“The accounts that disappeared from the Cayman Banks…they would have the recipients’ names on the transactions. All we need are the names, since we aren’t legally able to search the account numbers we have,” she replied. “It doesn’t matter how easy it is to get the information from the US Banks. If we can’t show that we got the information from the payment source, it would be inadmissible.”
A sudden realization hit me.
“You already know who was on the payoff list. You just need me to dig it out of a legal source,” I said incredulously.
“You have no knowledge of any such information,” Burgess said firmly and then softened his expression. “And you won’t in the future, either—we just need you to finish what you started, and we need you to do it quickly—or we’ll lo
se Gaines.”
“How quickly?” I asked.
John and the Director looked at Ms. Cantor.
“There is a DHS black site being prepped to receive Gaines this afternoon,” she replied. “If we don’t get it today, he may disappear forever.”
I turned to John. “I need a secure line,” I said.
John pulled his phone out of his pocket and handed it to me before I dialed Storc’s number.
“You’ll have to put it on speaker so I can verify the information was obtained legally,” Cantor said.
As soon as it started to ring, I hit speaker.
“Hello,” came the sleepy voice of Storc after three rings.
“Storc, it’s Scott,” I said.
“What’s up?” he asked, sounding as if he were stretching, followed by the sound of a fart.
“I’m here with—”
John raised his hand quickly and pointed at the Director before making a waving motion with his hands. I nodded.
“I’m here with someone from the Department of Justice, and I need to get an update on the Cayman ghost hunt,” I said.
“Oh, shit. Okay—give me a second,” he replied hurriedly.
“Okay,” I said and waited as we listened to his footsteps rushing to what I knew was the downstairs server room in his house. After a few moments of clicking and beeping from his systems, I heard the tone in his phone switch to speaker mode.
“Okay. I’m ready,” Storc said as more finger clacking sounded in the background. “We are at thirty-five percent on two of the banks, twenty-five on a third, eleven percent on the fourth one and about five percent on the fifth and sixth.”
Cantor looked up at me with surprise. “Six banks?” she asked.
I nodded. “Storc, do you have transaction data on any accounts yet?” I asked.
“Payments out only,” he replied. “Every deposit is recorded as cash…most likely bearer bonds or the like.”
I noticed a somewhat defeated look on Cantor’s face.
“Any ownership data on the origin accounts?” I asked.
“Yep…it’s all fake. I already checked,” Storc replied. “I’d have to find a way to break the double-blind to follow it up upstream, and so far I’ve had zero luck with that.”
“I'm going to need the payment information you’ve pulled already and send it to—” I looked at John for direction.
“The TravTech servers will be fine. Put them in the mommaSearch directory,” John said.
There was clicking in the background for a few seconds followed by a ding from Storc’s computer. “Done,” he said. “Anything else?”
I looked at Ms. Cantor.
“They won’t do us any good unless we can show the accounts are bogus. We’ll need to show some laundering was involved to justify the order,” she said.
“Storc, have you downloaded any PIN files yet?” I asked.
“On three banks, I have,” he replied quickly. “But they won’t do you any good. It would take several months to decrypt the passwords. By then, the system will have forced the users to change them.”
“I don’t need you to decrypt the passwords,” I said shifting my focus to following a trail rather than gathering content. “The passwords would all use the same encryption in the database. I just need you to find an account that we know is attached to the transactions you just sent us, and then match the encrypted PINs for those transactions to any other Cayman accounts with the same string.”
“Ahhh,” Storc exclaimed and then started clicking away. “But you know that will only work if the person making the withdrawals and deposits into the Cayman accounts uses the same password for every account.”
“How many passwords do you use?” I asked, already knowing the answer, having seen the encrypted variants of his eight “go to” passwords on a number of occasions on the TravTech servers.
“Eight or so,” he replied.
“How many accounts fed those transactions?” I asked, again already knowing the answer.
“Twelve so far,” he said. “Good point—give me a second.”
“I don’t understand the significance of what you’re saying,” John said quietly.
“The average person has one or two passwords or PINs they use for all their accounts,” I said, keeping my voice down so as not to disturb Storc too much. “If there are multiple accounts being deposited and withdrawn from, chances are we are looking at only a handful of PINs.”
“How does that help us?” John asked. “If you don’t know what the passwords are, they could be using their last name and it wouldn’t help.”
I shook my head. “Not true. The passwords are stored; they’re just stored in encrypted form. The same encryption string would be used for all the passwords on a single system, which means they will be identical in storage…even though we can’t break them.”
“So you’re looking for duplicate encryption keys to identify the other accounts,” John replied as realization stuck him.
I nodded. “There is an off-chance that they are poor passwords, but with this much money, I would imagine they are using pretty substantial passwords, which aren’t likely to be duplicated by accident in another account unless they have access to it.”
“Brilliant,” Cantor said quietly.
“We’ll see in a second,” I replied with a smile.
After several minutes of clacking and grunting from Storc’s end of the line, there was a sudden silence.
“Holy shit,” Storc muttered.
“How many?” I asked, smiling, realizing we were about to strike oil.
“One hundred twenty-seven accounts accessed by the same PIN that was used to make three of the transactions for the payoffs,” Storc said. “Dude—this is friggin’ huge.”
“What sort of account totals are we looking at?” I asked.
After a moment of clicking, he replied, “Not a single account has less than three million, and a couple of them are upward of thirty or forty million.”
“Dollars?” Cantor asked incredulously.
“Dollars, Euros, Pounds…it’s all numbers on a screen.”
I looked at Ms. Cantor; her mouth was gaping wide. John and Director Burgess exchanged worried expressions.
Ms. Cantor turned in her seat and whispered something to the woman behind her. The woman immediately got up and walked to the back of the plane with her ear to a phone. Cantor turned to me.
“Is there any way to show origins on the funds?” she asked seriously.
“I doubt it,” I replied. “It seems like they’re using a double-blind on the Cayman accounts. And with that much money in play, we aren’t talking about drug dealers. This is corporate, with big accounting set up.”
The troubled expression on Cantor’s face reflected my own tension. This was much bigger than just a few corporate payoffs…with this amount of money, we were looking at a full-blown coup.
“Storc,” I said. “Can you plank those accounts and follow them the same way…upstream?”
“I’ll need faster systems if you want it before the end of the century,” he said. “But I can get started.”
I looked at John, who in turn looked at Director Burgess. The concentration on his face said he was making a serious executive decision. After a moment, he looked at me and nodded.
“Keep cooking with what you have, and I’ll arrange for better equipment to be delivered to the NOC at TravTech,” I said. “You can sneak it out at the end of the day and have Mahesh help you set them up at your house.”
“Cool! I love getting presents,” Storc replied. “Superclusters, please. I wouldn’t want you waiting too long on your results.”
I chuckled. “I’ll see what I can do. Go ahead and load what we already figured out this morning to the mommaSearch directory, and I’ll keep you posted on whatever shakes out of that.”
“No probs,” Storc replied. “Is that it?”
“Yep. That’s it.”
“Cool. This conversation never hap
pened. Storc out.”
I laughed again as the connection ended and looked at John. “He’ll have those files in place in a matter of minutes,” I said. “Do you want me to walk you through how to read them?”
John looked at Ms. Cantor and got a nod from her.
“No need,” John said. “You’re coming with us.”
“Coming with you where?”
“To see the judge.” Cantor answered. “Any technical questions he might throw at us would be better answered by the brain behind the discovery.”
I looked down at my gym clothes and shook my head. “I’ll need a change of clothes.”
“No problem,” John said as he picked up his phone. “What are you? A forty-two in a suit?”
“Forty-four in a jacket, thirty-two waist,” I replied.
John shook his head. “Youth…wasted on the young,” he muttered. “Collar size?”
“Fifteen-and-a-half,” I said. “If you don’t have half sizes, go up to sixteen. I’ll choke on a fifteen.”
He nodded as he dialed his phone. As he spoke to the person on the other end, Director Burgess leaned over and spoke in a quiet voice. “Are you doing okay at the Farm?” he asked.
“Yes sir. It’s a good program. I’m learning a lot.”
He smiled and patted me on the leg, “Good,” he said quietly. “We’re looking forward to putting you on the job.”
I smiled at the irony of his statement. I’d been on the job in one form or another since May.
**
1:35 p.m., later that day—E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse, Washington, D.C.
I had been standing in a hallway outside a conference room for almost an hour when the door opened and one of the lawyers leaned toward me.
“As soon as the judge gets here and we explain what’s going on, we’ll call you in,” she said in a low voice.
I nodded and continued to wait patiently as she closed the door again. A few minutes later, I saw a man walk out of a door further down the hall, followed by a man with white hair. There was an animated conversation going on between the two men for several moments when another man walked up to the pair. I recognized him immediately as Ned Richards from the Department of Homeland Security.
