3:51
They had all agreed that this would be their first major operation at CIA, to install software on Prisha’s computer to allow remote activation of her camera and microphone, giving them unlimited ability to hear and see everything Prisha did in her office. The software also included keystroke monitoring to track all her computer activity. It was much more difficult and time consuming to try to install this packet remotely, and it had been Robinson who suggested they install it on Prisha’s computer the old-fashioned way: human engineering—that is, by duping her secretary. Sarah had never liked the idea but said “her people” did. Robinson had asked about these people, but Sarah refused to elaborate. It was an unresolved friction between them.
Robinson scanned the papers stacked neatly in rows on top of Prisha’s desk. His instructions were to photograph anything with the word ODYSSEUS on it. He saw nothing. He slid open her top desk drawer and rooted around. Mostly stray office supplies and keys, of which he took note. A scrap of paper hung down from the top of the drawer. Robinson tugged at it. It was taped in place, so he peeled it off. It was the size of a large yellow Post-it note, and in a feminine hand had the following numbers scrawled on it:
2 - 1 - 5 - 3 - 4
Robinson knew computer users, and knew executives were often the sloppiest when it came to password security. He didn’t know what this number combination meant, but knew it must be important. It was important enough for Prisha to hide it in plain sight, which meant she probably used it frequently. Robinson held it in his hand.
5:02
Robinson checked the monitor and began to breathe again when he saw the download was complete. He got out of the download, removed his thumb drive from the back of the computer and jammed it into his front pocket. His eyes flashed to the office door, then back to the desk and the open drawer. He fished around for a scrap of paper and pen, found what he was looking for and scratched down the five-number sequence.
He heard a voice in the distance. A plaintive voice he had heard before.
The secretary. Shit!
Robinson slapped the yellow Post-it back onto the top of the drawer. He threw the pen and the rest of the junk he had pulled out, helter-skelter, back in the drawer and slid it shut. Prisha would of course know someone had been in this drawer, and he hoped she would just blame it on her secretary.
Robinson had to get out of that office now. He darted back across the room and, without hesitation, swung the door open and stepped outside. No one grabbed him. Good.
He stepped past the secretary’s cubicle and into the hallway. Voices to his left. He turned and saw Prisha and the secretary in animated conversation. They were about fifty feet away and approaching quickly. Robinson spun and walked down the hall in the opposite direction, at the fastest walking speed he could go short of a trot. He had about seventy feet in front of him before he reached the end of this hallway, where he could take a hard left turn and get out of their line of sight.
Robinson moved forward on heavy legs; white noise filled his ears. He expected to hear “Hey you! Stop!” at any moment. If he did, he would keep going. It was so hard not to break into a run. He dared not turn around, but desperately needed to know what was going on behind him. Finally, a man approached from the opposite direction. He said hello and Robinson nodded, head down. As soon as the man passed, Robinson slid to the other side of the hallway, using the man as a shield to cover the last twenty feet to freedom.
Robinson took a hard left at the end of the hallway. A wave of nausea hit him. He swallowed the stomach bile down and doubled his pace. He passed the elevator and entered the stairwell at the end of the hallway. He pushed his back against the wall and tried to catch his breath.
12:09
Robinson gripped the staircase banister and took the steps two at a time. He needed to be back at his desk ASAP. He needed the secretary’s terror of his boss to drive his actions, and by covering for himself cover for Robinson as well. Robinson needed the secretary to tell Prisha that the IT guy must have got tired of waiting and left, without doing the update. And hope it ended there.
12:16—stop.
Back at his desk, Robinson sat still, wiping the sweat from his forehead. His senses acute, as a deer listens for the snap of a twig under the hunter’s boot. He stared at his computer monitor, pretending to work, waiting for his world to end.
It didn’t. No one came rushing in to tackle him to the ground, flex tie his hands and feet like a steer at a rodeo. His breathing slowed back to normal. He looked around. None of his colleagues were acting suspicious. Robinson got up and walked by his boss’s office. His boss said hello and appeared fine as well. Robinson went to the men’s room and splashed cold water on his face, sopped it dry with the scratchy brown paper towels from the dispenser. He looked at his reflection in the mirror and smiled. The smile turned into a laugh. What a rush.
He couldn’t wait to see Sarah tonight and tell her all about it.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
November 5, 2016
House Party
Kingstowne, VA
The large man next to me cleared his throat. It sounded like sandpaper scraping more sandpaper.
“The Pats won last week… you see it? 41-25 over the Bills. They’re seven and one. Brady was money—four TDs.” He moved the toothpick from one corner of his mouth to the other with a flick of his tongue. “We’re going to the Super Bowl again.”
The man sitting in the passenger seat of my rented Ford Explorer was named Finn O’Neill. He had a couple of inches and about forty pounds on me and barely fit in his seat. He refused to wear a seat belt, even after I asked him to buckle up. Buzzcut reddish-blond hair, lightened by a few streaks of gray, sat atop his block head and thick neck. His light eyes were flat, expressionless. He had huge meaty hands, the scarred hands of a working man. Doyle had sent him down from Boston to help with tonight’s operation. I had seen men such as O’Neill growing up in Southie. Street fighters, men willing to trade with anyone for any reason. Men comfortable with violence. Men like my father, Arthur.
“Didn’t see it,” I responded. I wasn’t much interested in football these days.
The streetlights cast just enough light to put O’Neill in faint shadow. He plucked the chewed toothpick from his mouth, put it in his shirt pocket, and replaced it with another. My attention returned to our target this evening, the house across the street in a residential neighborhood in the upscale master-planned community of Kingstowne, Virginia.
We sat quietly, the silence broken by occasional shouts and the thud of deep bass coming from the high school party raging across the street.
“That Tom Brady… he’s a beautiful man.”
I turned to face him. A smile creased my face at the incongruity of his statement.
“Yeah, I guess he is,” was all I could say.
O’Neill nodded and appeared satisfied with my response. We resumed our silence.
Darryl Robinson had been at CIA for over three weeks now. We had collected eighteen days of data from the bug he had placed on Prisha’s computer. It appeared that we had gotten away with it, as Robinson had not been approached and, as best we could tell, was not under suspicion. We’d used all that collected data to map Prisha’s network and build profiles on her most important associates. We were looking for vulnerabilities, anything we could exploit. Looking for our second talion ladder step on the way to Prisha.
Our first ladder step, Chang Li, had proven particularly helpful. Not only had Li kept his word and resigned his position at CIA, he had also provided some valuable tips to Robinson as he shadowed Li during his one-week on-the-job orientation. Li mentioned that Prisha was working on a super-secret project of some sort (I already knew this to be ODYSSEUS from my old boss, Doug Mitchell), and that her project administrator, Linda Webb, was up to her eyeballs in it. Our monitoring of Prisha’s computer confirmed this, as the two women corresponded multiple times a day. We opened a file on Linda Webb and struck gold.
&n
bsp; Linda Webb was an overweight and bitter woman. In her mid-forties, stuck in a mid-level government job with no prospects for promotion. She had spiraled after her divorce, and blamed her current lot in life on her ex-husband, her co-workers, her daughter—anyone but herself. She was devious and amoral, which was what I suspect had attracted her to her boss, Prisha.
Robinson had begun to monitor Webb’s communications, and we quickly learned of her volatile relationship with her daughter Anna, a pretty and popular high school senior. Anna was miserable at home and fought with her mother often. These arguments had grown vicious, and sometimes even physical when her mother drank. They mostly fought about Anna’s boyfriend, Ryan Young, a blond-tipped hip-hop drug dealer who pushed oxycontin to schoolkids in Kingstowne. Webb suspected that Ryan had got Anna hooked on drugs. Anna had screamed that she loved Ryan. Her mother had screamed back that all men were pigs, like Anna’s father. She told Anna that Ryan was just using her, that he would leave her as soon as something else came along. Linda Webb did not love her daughter so much as she needed her. Anna was all she had left. This need was the hook that would get us one step closer to Prisha.
This need was also what had brought O’Neill and me to this quiet residential street this night. Anna Webb and Ryan Young were among the high schoolers partying across the street. The plan was to catch them leaving the party, then peel Ryan off and persuade him that it would be in his best interests that he not see Anna anymore. That’s why O’Neill was here. We figured Linda Webb would be so overjoyed at the demise of Anna and Ryan’s relationship that she would be willing to repay the favor. That was the plan, anyway.
Unlike Li, Webb had direct daily contact with Prisha. Great placement and access, although we all knew she was dodgy. A bigger risk than Li, but one we had to take. We hoped she would repay our favor. But hope is not a plan.
We sat motionless in our vehicle, motor off and windows down a crack. The party ebbed and flowed for another hour. Kids straggled in and out. It was overcast, a dark, moonless night. No one paid us any mind. O’Neill occasionally broke the silence with odd proclamations, apropos of nothing. In this manner I learned of his love for cats and Van Morrison. O’Neill was proving to be quite the enigma. I’d have liked to peel his onion sometime, over scotch and a Guinness or two. But not tonight.
Just shy of midnight I saw Anna and Ryan leave the house. Anna stumbled as she walked. Ryan grabbed her hard by the arm, pulled her towards him. She turned on him and yelled something. Ryan slapped her in the face. I flinched. O’Neill grunted low. Anna tried to pull out of Ryan’s grasp. They tussled on the lawn. Anna screamed loud, slapped at Ryan’s face with her free hand. Ryan reared back and threw a straight hard jab. I heard the sickening thud of his fist against Anna’s face. She dropped like a stone at his feet.
We both leapt from the car and ran across the street towards them. Ryan’s eyes went wide at the sight of us approaching. He broke into a sprint across the lawn and down the sidewalk. After a second of hesitation O’Neill gave chase and I went to Anna, still crumpled in a heap on the ground.
I rolled her over and gasped. Her face was awash in blood, her nose bent to one side at a grotesque angle. She moaned and gurgled. I elevated her shoulders and head to ensure her airway was clear. She opened her eyes and stared. It was the vacant stare of an addict. I had seen it enough times on the streets to know. She started choking, then heaving. She turned her head and vomited all over herself. Into her long, beautiful auburn hair. She then started to fight me, trying to stand up. I helped her to her feet, one hand gripped tight around her arm.
O’Neill approached. “Gimme the keys. The guy got to his car and took off.”
I tossed O’Neill the keys and he ran to the Explorer. He jumped in and roared off.
I turned back to Anna.
“What? Who… who the hell are you?” She spat and tried to wriggle out of my grip. “Where’s Ryan?” she slurred. Her eyes rolled back in her head and her knees buckled. I caught her before she fell. I had watched many men overdose on the streets, but had never intervened. I had no idea what to do. With difficulty, I fished my burner phone out of my pocket with one hand, leaning Anna against me to keep her upright. Thankfully, she was a small thing. I had my left arm wrapped under her arms, the back of her head tight against my chest. I dialed Sarah with my right hand.
She picked up on the third ring. I told her my predicament. She said she was about twenty minutes out and on her way. I ended the call and slipped the phone back into my pocket. Several kids had gathered on the lawn, watching. A few asked if Anna was all right, none brave enough to approach. I told them all to go back into the house. Most of them did.
I spun her around and gently slapped Anna on the cheeks to revive her. Her eyes fluttered open. I asked her if she was okay. She nodded like a bobblehead doll. I had to get her out of here. The cops were sure to arrive any moment. I asked Anna if she could walk. Another nod. We left the lawn of the house and headed down the sidewalk, me supporting her with a hand under her arm, she shuffling and dragging her feet. We made it about a quarter mile and ducked into a small wooded area between two houses. I called Sarah back and told her my location. She said she had called the ER nurse, Jill Everett, who was en route with Narcan nasal spray to reverse Anna’s opioid overdose.
I set Anna down next to me on a big rock fifteen feet into the woods. I held her tight to my side and kept her talking as best I could. Two cop cars flew past us down the street, lights flashing and sirens blaring. I checked my watch and hoped Sarah and Everett would be here soon.
Everett arrived a few minutes after Sarah. She rushed out of her car and over to us on our rock in our wooded hiding place. I thanked Everett for coming; she gave me a tight-lipped smile and began to minister to Anna.
“Anna, sweetie, what did you take tonight?” Everett asked, shaking her. Their faces were six inches apart.
Anna said nothing.
“Was it oxy? How many?”
Anna just nodded.
“Was it oxy, Anna?” Everett asked louder, shaking her again.
Anna nodded again.
Everett dug into her coat pocket and pulled out a nasal applicator. “Anna, I’m going to give you a little spray up your nose, okay?”
Without waiting for a response, Everett inserted the Narcan applicator up one nostril and emptied it. Anna came around quickly.
Everett then placed her thumbs on either side of Anna’s nose and jiggled. She howled and swiped at Everett. Everett staunched the blood flow from Anna’s broken nose and cleaned her face up as best she could.
“She OD’d on oxy. The Narcan worked, but we gotta get her to the ER,” Everett said to me and Sarah. “Her nose is broken—bad. She’ll need surgery. Sarah and I talked on the way in. Best if I drive her to the ER. I can get her admitted as a Jane Doe for now. Give you both time to get this under control.”
We both thanked Everett again. She loaded Anna into her car and left. I told Sarah to go too. Best if she wasn’t here. I didn’t know if the cops were still at the house, or if they were doing a neighborhood canvass. I hadn’t seen them pass by out of the neighborhood. Sarah squeezed my hand, then got in her car and left as well.
Doyle and I had agreed that we would not get Sarah involved operationally in this thing, and I had just broken this vow. Out of necessity, but nonetheless. I didn’t look forward to having to explain tonight to Doyle. He was very protective of Sarah. We both were.
I went back to my rock and called O’Neill. He picked up and said it was done. He asked me how Anna was, and I told him. He was relieved. I told him to pick me up in fifteen minutes at the gas station by the main road at the neighborhood entrance. He agreed and hung up.
I slipped out of the woods and looked both ways. The red and blue strobe lights of the cop cars lit the neighborhood to my left. I turned right and strode down the sidewalk towards my ride.
O’Neill was already at the gas station waiting for me, engine running. I jumped in and he hi
t the gas. He weaved the Explorer into traffic. We found the main road and traveled the speed limit. O’Neill even wore his seat belt. One less reason for the cops to stop us. We both checked our mirrors. Nothing behind us.
“How’d it go with Ryan?” I asked.
O’Neill paused before he answered. “I caught him a half mile away. Dumbass jumped the curb and hit a pole. I dragged him out of his car and threw him in the back seat.” O’Neill nodded behind him. “A little wet back there now. Sorry about that.”
“Wet?”
O’Neill grinned just enough to curl up the corners of his mouth. “Yeah, had to rough the kid up a bit. Get his attention.” He changed lanes. “I think he pissed himself.” He took an exaggerated sniff, then shook his head. “Yup.”
“Jesus.” I could smell it too.
“I explained to Ryan that he couldn’t see Anna anymore, and you know what that kid said?”
I shrugged, beginning to fear where this was heading.
“Our boy said that he didn’t like the bitch much anyway. His words.”
I exhaled. “Good.”
“Ryan may not have loved his girl, but he sure loved his stash. I asked him for it, and he actually refused—can you believe that?”
Looking at O’Neill, I couldn’t believe that, no. I would have given this man anything he asked for. No question.
“Got all indignant. Said he needed to unload them all. Turns out he deals at his high school. Sells to younger kids too. Got Anna high on oxy tonight. He said it wasn’t his fault if these kids were all stupid and weak. So I asked him if he used. He laughed, said he’s too strong to be a junkie. Believe that?”
Talion Justice Page 17
