by Theo Cage
You’re not taking me seriously. I handed you a dozen unsolved murders with new evidence.
I stared at the screen. Buzzworm emailed me the documents. But the ID on my phone was Kyla’s. How did he hack her phone? Was that even possible? I typed, clumsily.
Who is this?
When I finally got my hands on this Buzzworm maniac, I was going to jam my phone down his throat. Or some other available orifice.
You went to the FBI. How many deaths do you want on your hands?
It had to be Buzzworm. My first impulse was to smash the phone on the floor and grind it to bits. This freak was poking his face into my personal life and acting like he was my handler. He needed to be taught a lesson. I typed a quick response.
I don’t make deals with psychos.
His answer came quickly. Like he was typing from a computer, not a tiny keypad.
Too bad. Cause I have Kyla now.
The tiny screen blurred and I felt like a blood vessel had burst in my brain. I struggled to read the name again. Kyla? It was impossible. But somehow he had her phone. Suddenly the cell rang in my hand and I jumped. I placed it to my ear.
“Hyde. Listen carefully. You have an assignment.” The voice was altered, robotic.
“Fuck your assignment.”
“Fine. But I if you ever want to see your daughter again you better pay attention. The CIA is launching a new weapon on Monday called GIPETTO. Named after the bumbling father in the Pinocchio story. Remember that. The other word you can’t forget is Avion. That’s the computer GIPETTO runs on. I am taking control of it, finally. If anyone tries to shut the Avion down, if the power gets cut off or anything clever happens to ruin my plans, you need to understand that your daughter dies. It’s that simple.”
I forced myself to respond even though the anger was tightening up my throat to the point where I could hardly breathe. “I don’t understand any of that fucking gibberish. And nothing is simple. What makes you think I can control what the CIA does?”
“You’re a bulldog, Hyde. You’ll find a way. Talk to Mary Ellen. Strong arm Vienna. They’ll know what I’m talking about. ”
Buzzworm knew all the players. This was like an insider’s game that I wanted no part of. But it looked like I had no choice now. “Regardless of what happens to her, anything, at all. You need to know — you’ve signed her death warrant.”
“Just do your job, Hyde. Keep GIPETTO alive for one week and I’ll release her. Fail, and I will happily slit your daughter’s throat and post the video on YouTube.”
CHAPTER 41
Green, the staff counselor at HQ that I had been avoiding lately, told me once that five percent of the population causes one hundred percent of the violence and misery. The psychopaths and sociopaths among us, stirring the pot for their own perverted satisfaction, are the ones making the world a crappy place for everyone else. Buzzworm was no different. Only with this case, I felt like I had a shot at stomping it out.
I pulled out my notebook and dialed Xavier. NOC agent or not, he was in for a world of pain if he didn’t provide Buzzworms’ identity. No answer. I was beginning to feel like I had been screwed over. The address Med had supplied was a townhouse in Georgetown, so I drove there in a hurry, using my siren and emergency light for the first time in years.
Xavier’s home was a three-story walkup right in the middle of the toniest part of town, Bentleys and Ferraris parked on the street. I rang and waited, but there was no answer. I was about to go back to my car and check out the address on the computer when a round dark-haired woman in her fifties came up the steps, her face curious. I showed her my badge. She told me she cleaned the house once a week. Who owns this place? I asked, almost dreading the answer. She said the house was owned by a wealthy businessman from Panama. She sent her invoices to a company there every month. She showed me the address. A numbered-company with an office in Panama City. If you were going to pick a country to hide your identity, you couldn’t find a better place. Was Buzzworm a foreigner?
I asked her to describe the owner. She said he was European, a big rotund player who wore a lot of gold. Not at all like Xavier. But she did say that someone from Washington had been renting the townhouse for over a year, and he did fit Xavier’s description. I convinced her to let me in. She sighed when we entered the tiled foyer and then looked up at me, disappointed. The front closet door was open and empty. She led me upstairs to an office and large bedroom. The bed was made and the closets bare. Xavier had cleared out.
The only person I could think of who might be able to guess where Xavier had gone to — was Mary Ellen Duke. And I wouldn’t be surprised me that he might be going after her again. I raced to the Washington Plaza on Thomas Circle. On the way there, I called one of the people who worked on the forensic team on the death of Melissa Coyne. I asked them to check on MicroFlight and get me a work number for Xavier.
Med was up when I knocked on the door to her hotel room. She let me in without asking why I was there. We stood in a small kitchenette off the living room.
“Xavier is gone,” was all I said. She didn’t seem surprised. “I need to find him.”
“Did you go to his townhouse?” she asked.
I nodded. ”He’s gone. Cleaned out the place.”
Med frowned. “Why doesn’t that surprise me? Can you check the airports?”
“I sent out an alert on the way here. If he checks in we’ll get a call. But I was hoping you might have some idea where he would go.”
“After what he did to me last night? I was hoping I’d see him again.” Then a thought seemed to occur to her. “You had him, detective. You let him go.”
I tried to ignore that last accusation, as true as it was. “Does he have any family here?”
“He’s a spy, detective. A NOC agent. There’s nothing real about him. Do we even know if Xavier is his real name?”
I felt a chill. I was operating on the assumption that he was a well-known Washington businessman who worked on the side for the CIA, a man with too much to lose by running. I was probably wrong. My cell phone rang. It was Forensics. I listened and then put the phone down on the counter, my head spinning. Minute by minute, my daughter’s trail seemed to be growing colder.
“MicroFlight is a shell,” was all I said. Med stepped back. “There is no such company. It’s just a slick website and an anonymous answering service paid up until the end of the year.”
Med pushed her hair back and took a deep breath. I had a feeling that if she knew anything, she would tell me. “I may have something else,” she said and immediately saw my reaction. “It’s not much, detective, but you never know.”
Med led me to a desk beside the couch where she flipped up the lid to an unusual looking portable computer. It looked like something the military might use in a war zone.
She knew I was curious. “This is a mil spec laptop. Military grade and encrypted. Magnesium case. We call it a HUMMER. It’s water proof, vapor proof, shock proof. But it works like any other laptop. Just weighs a ton.” She hit several keys and brought up what looked like a map on the screen. I recognized the outline of the city of Washington. The map was covered in blue and red lines connecting various points on the grid.
“I tried something last night.” She nodded towards the bed. “Can’t sleep on hotel beds. So I tried something. HUMMER gives me access to all CIA systems including that supercomputer we talked about. So I ran a report.”
“Med. I don’t have time for this. I need to get my hands on Xavier.”
She looked at me then, her face giving away something. Could she see the desperation in my eyes?
“I think I know where Buzzworm is. Isn’t that who you want?”
I sat down on the edge of the couch. “Show me.”
“I’ll be quick,” she said, pulling up a chair and sitting down in front of the military laptop. “Imagine you’re tracking a fugitive. Think of it like you’re following his footprints in the sand. And you know exactly who it is because you ca
n match the specific imprint made by the brand of his running shoes. You follow the trail, but suddenly, it just ends. Your suspect has gone back and erased his tracks.
We all leave the same kind of footprints when we move around inside a computer system. But Buzzworm knows how to go back and erase his tracks. And that’s why we can’t trace him back to his lair.
But think about another way to track your suspect. You get up high, in a helicopter, for example. And you look for paths that many people have walked on. Not the tracks of one person, but a well-worn trail left by people over a long period of time.”
“Mary Ellen, just tell me what you have.”
“We’re almost there. Look at the screen. I’ve mapped out all email and computer access over the past year from within the entire intelligence community.”
I looked at the screen. There were three primary centers within Washington where most of the lines converged, the major traffic centers. I had no idea why this was important. She pointed at them.
“The biggest one, that’s HQ at Langley. Building 213 is there and the third is NIM, the satellite recon division. That all makes sense. That’s where everything happens. There are some other smaller centers in other locations in Washington as well. All part of the intelligence network.”
Even I could see that there was an obvious outlier. A small but dense clump south of Washington, in Virginia back country. Near Fredericksburg. Med looked at me, aware that I had noticed the nexus point in what was a very unlikely location.
“By the way, that’s not Quantico, which I thought originally. They don't share our secure system. This cluster of activity sits in the middle of nowhere really. Near a reservoir called Mott’s Run.”
I stared at the converging lines on the screen. A data centre in the middle of the woods of Fredericksburg? “What is it?” I asked.
“It’s not the location of any intelligence branch I know of. I checked. It could be some top secret location none of us are supposed to know about though.”
I added. “Or it could be Buzzworm running the show from his hideout.”
“I don’t know, detective. It's just a spot on the map. A troubling mass of lines. A spider web. Something is going on there though.”
“Is it Buzzworm? What does it mean?”
“It means someone is moving data back and forth from a location in Frederiksberg. Remote computing. And that shouldn't be happening. CIA employees can't work from home on secure data. I can't do my job from home unless I have the HUMMER here and there’s only two of them with access to our division. Vienna has the other one. Someone is connecting with a highly secure system over a long period of time from outside the network and that's the one trail that looks suspicious.”
I stood up. “Give me a location. Where near Mott’s Run?”
“I can't just hand that out. What if it's a classified location — something none of us is supposed to know about? I could be breaching national security.”
I looked at her, wondering what my next move might be. That area could be ten miles long for all I knew. I needed a specific address.
I stared at her for a moment. “He has my daughter.”
“What?”
“Buzzworm. He’s taken my daughter.”
“Oh my God.”
“Xavier is on the run and I don't have any time. I need to know where that madman is.”
“What does he want?”
“It has to do with GIPETTO. Whatever the hell that is. If it gets shut down or interfered with in any way for the next seven days, he will kill her. You have to keep the Avion running. I don't even know what a fucking Avion is. But you have to insure that it doesn’t get shut down.”
“The Avion is a super computer. GIPETTO is a defense project.”
“Well, Buzzworm has other plans. He wants it to be left alone for seven days. Give me the location.”
”Seven days?”
“That's my assignment, Med. Tell me you will do everything you can to leave the Avion alone. Or Kyla dies. I will not let that happen. You need to promise me that until you hear from me, nothing happens to that computer. Nothing. Guard it with your life.”
Med stood up. At first I thought she was going to give me a hug, then it occurred to me that she might just want to slap me instead. She was looking very conflicted. “Do you know what you’re asking me? People have gone to prison for years for doing a lot less.”
“I'll take the flack. Tell them I stole it from you. I don't care.”
She took a piece of hotel notepaper and wrote on it. She handed it to me. “That’s the address. I can’t guarantee what you’ll find. I’m so sorry about your daughter.”
I gave her my cell number. “Call me if anything comes up. You need to go to this Avion of yours and do whatever you need to do to keep it running.”
“But why? Is he going to destroy GIPETTO? Or share it with every other foreign power on the planet?”
“Med, I don't know and I don’t care. That's your job. You figure that out. I'm just going to find the bastard. Say it. Say you will do whatever it takes to keep that Avion running.”
Med seemed frozen in place, unable to answer. Then she held out her hand to me. “Give me your phone.” I must have looked puzzled by her request. “There’s a good chance that Buzzworm is tracking you with the GPS chip inside. That’s the last thing you need if you’re going into his home turf.” I handed the cell to her, a scarred flip phone. She threw it on the couch. “Get another phone somewhere. A burner at the mall. Call me on my cell when you get it so we can keep in touch.”
Med stood up. “You know I want to help you, Greg. But the Avion is like a nuclear missile in the wrong hands. It can do incredible damage to our country. I’m not sure if I can do what you want me to.”
“I am,” I said, and left, running for the elevator.
CHAPTER 42
Roger woke up on Sunday morning feeling like his head was about to explode. In two days, he would be catching a flight back to an unknown future. Maybe another year locked up in Overton. Or worse. He was certain that the CIA would report he had failed miserably, which would end his career as a virus expert once word got around the industry.
He pulled a six-dollar bottle of spring water out of the mini bar and broke the seal thinking hydration might make his head feel better. Then he grabbed a granola bar worth roughly the same as a continental breakfast and ripped open the packaging. The breakfast of champions, he thought.
Xavier had promised them a lead on Buzzworm by noon, which was about two hours away. Hyde hadn’t disclosed his plans, but going and making an arrest seemed the most obvious tactic. Buzzworm, whoever he was, would finally be locked up. But would that change anything? Roger couldn’t help but think that whatever plans he had to disrupt Med’s launch on Monday could still go on without him. So an arrest wasn’t the solution.
Roger decided he needed to talk to Med right away. She had picked up a pay-as-you-go phone the day before to replace the one that Buzzworm had hacked, and he still had the number. She answered after a few rings, probably thinking about the wisdom of even talking to him again so soon after the Xavier incident.
“Are you OK?” was the first thing he said, pacing around the small hotel room.
“Yeah,” she said, sounding distant.
“You don’t sound like it.”
“Roger, Xavier has gone AWOL.”
Roger stopped walking, the pain around his temples making his vision blur. Having Xavier run had never occurred to them. Where could he hide?
“We need to talk. Where are you?” He could hear Med’s breath on the phone, not quite a sigh. She told him where she was staying and the room number at the Washington Plaza. He dressed and ran out the door within minutes, taking the stairs down to the lobby, too impatient to wait for the elevator.
After a short cab ride, he arrived at the Plaza, took the lift to the 22nd floor and knocked on her door. She let him in immediately, wearing a white hotel bathrobe over jeans and a te
e. Her feet were bare and her hair was wet, as if she had just had a shower. She led him into a sitting area. You could fit four of his hotel rooms into her suite, which had a separate seating area and what looked like two bedrooms off the main area and a small kitchen. She was holding a small white cup in her hands. He could smell peppermint tea.
“How did you know about Xavier missing in action?” was the first thing Roger said.
Med took a sip of the tea. “Hyde was just here. He went looking for him.” She stared out the window, lost in thought for a few seconds. “Buzzworm has taken his daughter hostage.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.” Roger could only imagine what Hyde must be feeling right now, his only lead evaporating. “I wouldn’t want to be Buzzworm if Hyde gets his hands on him. But we still have no idea who he is. What’s he going to do?”
Med showed Roger the HUMMER and the graphical report she had run on web traffic. They stared at the cluster of dots crowded over a thinly populated area about two hours south of the city. She explained what the data meant.
“So you think that’s Buzzworm?” asked Roger.
“For Hyde’s sake, I hope so. Seems like an obvious place to keep a hostage.”
Roger pointed to the military laptop. “Can you take that thing on the road?” Med looked up, not sure what he was asking. “How long does the power last.”
“Six hours fully charged,” she answered. He could see it was plugged into the wall socket. So likely topped up.
“Access to satellite mapping?”
“That’s what it does best,” she said.
Roger looked at his watch. “Get dressed, Med. We’re going on a road trip.”
CHAPTER 43
It amazed Roger how you could drive fifty miles outside of the nation’s capital and find yourself suddenly in heavy forest, not a person in sight. Med had driven them in her aging Honda Civic; they had headed south out of Washington to Fredericksburg, in search of the location she had found and given to Hyde.
