Heat Storm (Castle)

by Richard Castle

  Carl walked quickly inside. Derrick made to follow him, but Gorithem stuck out a skinny arm, blocking his path.

  “Wait. Who’s this?”

  “This is my son, Derrick.”

  Gorithem looked up at Derrick. “The day you were born, what brand of cigar did your father pass out at the office?”

  “How should I know?” Derrick said.

  “Cohibas,” Carl said. “Now knock it off, Al. We’ve got work to do.”

  * * *

  The interior of Albert Gorithem’s home turned out to be just as strange as the man himself. The entire downstairs had been turned into one large workroom.

  Its flooring was hard tile. It smelled of cleaning supplies. The walls were lined with dry-erase boards covered in multivariable equations, all of them written in painfully small handwriting and spiked with Greek letters Derrick only knew from college fraternity parties.

  In the middle of the room there was a large array of computers of varying sizes and ages, all networked into each other through a jungle of cords that protruded out their backs. If Gorithem knew about the invention of wireless communications, it didn’t show.

  There was only one chair: the one in front of the computers. There was no other indication creature comfort had been more than a glancing consideration.

  Security, on the other hand, had been lavished with attention. Hanging from the ceiling was a series of television screens that showed a variety of views of the stone front lawn, the small alleys on either side of the house, and the tiny space behind it. No one was sneaking up on Al Gorithem.

  “Bet you didn’t see any of those cameras on the way in,” Gorithem said, clearly proud of himself.

  “No,” Derrick replied.

  “The gargoyles. They’re hidden in the gargoyles. Which means they’re protected by stone. It would take a jackhammer to knock those things out of commission.”

  “What are you working on, Al?” Carl asked.

  “That’s classified,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I’d ask that you not look at the boards. There are some mathematicians at Berkeley who would give anything to have a gander at them. I don’t want you to tip them off to what I’m on the brink of.”

  “Yeah, not a real danger of that,” Derrick assured him.

  “I’d invite you to take a seat, but . . .” Gorithem looked around the room, which was devoid of furniture save for the one chair.

  “That’s okay,” Carl said. “We might as well just get down to business.”

  “I thought you were retired,” Gorithem said.

  “I am.” Carl jerked his thumb at Derrick. “He’s not.”

  “And why should I help him?”

  “Because I’m asking you to, and I’m the only reason they didn’t fire you before you got your twenty in,” Carl said. “Remember San Antonio?”

  “Oh. Right,” Gorithem said.

  “And Branson.”

  “Yes, yes. Okay, so what’s this encryption you can’t crack?”

  Carl nodded and Derrick extracted the CD from his jacket, where it had been safely nestled against his body. He handed it to Gorithem, who sat down without a word and inserted the disc into the drive of one of his computers.

  He struck a few keys, then frowned as two of the screens in front of him filled with a baffling series of numbers, letters, and symbols.

  To the Storm boys, it was unreadable. Derrick would have had an easier time unscrambling an egg. Carl would have had an easier time laying one.

  But Gorithem’s eyes were poring over the screen like it was as easy and pleasurable to read as a classic Stephen Cannell novel.

  “Yes, yes,” he said. “I haven’t seen this in a while. You were right when you said it was old. No one uses this anymore. Oh, this is a gem.”

  “So can you crack it?” Derrick asked.

  “Can I crack it?” Gorithem said, offended. “Would you listen to this kid, Carl? Can I crack it. What are you trying to say? That I’m just some Whit Diffie wannabe?”

  Derrick and Carl exchanged blank looks.

  “Please pretend you know he’s the father of public-key cryptography, or I’ll lose respect for you,” Gorithem said.

  “Uh, right.”

  “Anyhow, what we’re dealing with here is a combination of MD5 and AES. It’s 128-bit, so you’re going to have a tough time brute-forcing this puppy. And it employs elements of the Rijndael block cipher. Before WAP2 came along I really thought it had a chance to go places, but it never really caught on with anything more than enthusiasts like me. It’s known as the Bridget Two Cipher, or just the B2 for short.”

  “The Bridget Two?” Derrick asked. “So it was developed by a woman named Bridget?”

  “No, no. It was developed by a guy who named it after the only girl who ever slept with him, in the hopes she’d do it again.”

  “Did it work?”

  “Of course not,” Gorithem snorted. “Anyhow, this might take some time. So let me get to it.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  HEAT

  The call must have come in while Heat was in the shower or while Rook was performing his video analysis.

  But as soon as Heat was aware she had missed the call—and that the caller had left a message, and that the caller was John Null, Lindsy Gardner’s campaign manager—she eagerly checked her voice mail.

  “Nikki Heat, John Null here,” she heard. “Lindsy is really excited to meet with you. We’ve got a major rally in Phoenix tonight but she might be able to fit you into her schedule before she leaves. Or, better yet, you could join us for the trip. Whatever works. Call me.”

  Heat had been moments away from leaving The Lucerne and heading to the precinct. Without a word, she handed the phone to Rook, who was still wearing his bathrobe.

  They had yet to discuss the offer or its implications. As if she didn’t already have enough on her mind.

  Rook listened to the message, then handed Heat her phone.

  “So what do you think?” she asked.

  “I think he likes you. By the way, is he bigger than me?”

  “Stop it. I mean about the job.”

  Rook rubbed his chin for a moment. “I think if the future president of the United States offers you a position, you’d be a fool not to consider it pretty seriously.”

  “Yeah, but . . . I mean, I have too much paperwork now. Can you imagine what it would be like with that job?”

  “You’d also be better resourced. You could delegate the stuff you didn’t like.”

  “It’d be pretty high profile. I’m not sure I’d like that.”

  “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you seem to get a lot of attention in this job, too,” Rook pointed out. “Admittedly, I’m partly to blame—”

  “Mostly to blame.”

  “Mostly to blame. But, my point is, that would follow you wherever you went.”

  Heat looked out the small window, down at 79th Street. “And what would you think about living in DC?”

  Rook pantomimed typing. “I can do this from anywhere. It’s one of the perks of my job. I’m sure First Press wouldn’t mind if my stories got more of a Washington bent.”

  “So you think I should take it?”

  “I think that’s not my decision. It’s yours. Do what you think is best. I’ll support you either way. You know that.”

  “Do you think my mother would move to DC with us? I mean, you know, assuming this ends well.”

  “That’s a nice thought,” Rook said, then kissed her on the forehead. “And now, because I’ve already given up my hopes for another prework quickie, I’m going to hop in the shower.”

  Heat grabbed him before he could make it there and kissed him more deeply.

  “There’s more where that came from. But later. Now go,” she said, swatting him on the ass.

  She left the hotel with a bounce in her stride. She would check in with DeJesus to see if he had a hit on the fingerprints. Then she would see if she could arrange for some one-on-one tim
e with Feng, who was hopefully tired from an evening of being grilled by all levels of law enforcement.

  Despite the dearth of sleep, Heat felt so much more energy than she had when she’d made the same walk the previous night—or even when she’d first watched the video of her mother.

  Rook was right. She was becoming increasingly sure of it. The Serpent wouldn’t really harm her mother. The real threat was the owner of those fingerprints. Or it was whoever had hired Callan. Either way, she was close to learning the identity of those people and bringing them to justice.

  As she picked up her pace, Heat recognized the beginnings of one of the more tricky emotions a detective has to deal with: hope.

  In some ways, it’s the most necessary of feelings. It propels a detective forward, gives her confidence. She has to believe she can solve a case or else she never will.

  And yet it also comes with a certain amount of danger. Hope raises a person up.

  Which only makes the fall that much more painful.

  * * *

  “What do you mean Feng is no longer in custody?” Heat snarled into her phone.

  It had been her first act when she’d settled behind her desk: a quick call down to the Thirteenth Precinct to see when she could schedule some time with Feng; or, better yet, to have Feng brought up to the Two-Oh, where she could work him over in the friendly confines of Interrogation One.

  Instead, she learned she was too late.

  “He and his brute squad killed a man last night,” she continued. “They did it right in front of my eyes. You don’t just kill someone and then waltz out of police custody with a breezy, ‘Oops, it won’t happen again.’ They’re foreign nationals, for God’s sake. They shouldn’t even have guns. An incident like that should take days to untangle, not hours.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” the dayside detective told her. “I have no information for you. The order came down before I got here this morning.”

  “Came down from where?”

  “As I understand it, it was straight from the commissioner’s office.”

  “Oh, that’s just perfect.” Heat slammed down the phone.

  She waited half a second, then picked it up again and dialed Zach Hamner. The senior administrative aide to the NYPD’s deputy commissioner for legal matters answered with an officious “Hamner.”

  “What the hell, Hammer?” Heat began.

  “Well, good morning, Captain Heat,” he said, with false amiability.

  “Shove it. Why did the commissioner spring Colonel Feng?”

  Hamner rolled with the question like he had spent all morning expecting it. “Why is that any of your business?”

  “Don’t even try to get cute with me. You know damn well it’s my business.”

  “Because you were a witness? Or because Bart Callan made you look ridiculously foolish by turning you into a damsel in distress, in need of rescue, by separating you from your service weapon? Honestly, Captain, you ought to be thanking me for sweeping this matter under the rug and assuring this does not receive any more of the department’s attention. Or the media’s.”

  “So this was your doing?”

  “Call it a group decision that was made by a group whose membership may or may not have been larger than one,” Hamner said. “And not that you deserve any explanation whatsoever, but since the commissioner is already dreaming of all the Homeland Security dollars you’re going to shunt his way: Yes, we let Feng go, and we did it for at least three good reasons.

  “One, he was here on a diplomatic visa and claimed immunity. Two, he reasonably believed the lives of two people—a police officer and a civilian—were in grave danger. And part of the corroboration to support that claim came from your mouth, Captain. Three, the man he killed was an armed escaped convict who was clearly a danger to the public. Do I really need to keep going here?”

  Heat was gripping the phone so tight her forearm was starting to throb.

  “Oh, I’ve actually just thought of a few more,” Hamner said, clearly enjoying himself. “Four, our friends at the US Marshals Service were practically ready to pin a ribbon on Feng’s chest, because he spared them the continued embarrassment of not being able to track down a high-profile fugitive. And, five, Feng made a phone call to the Chinese Embassy, which started making its own phone calls to some pretty important people in the middle of the night. There was no chance our government was going to risk an incident with the world’s only other superpower over something like this. Hell, the Chinese are creating whole islands in the South China Sea and then populating them with missiles in blatant violation of international law and more treaties than I can name, and all we do about that is issue warnings and occasionally have a battleship sail into view. You think Uncle Sam is going to jam up a few Chinese diplomats for essentially doing us a favor? Dream on.

  “Now,” he finished, “any more questions?”

  “No. I think we’re done.”

  “Good. By the way, you looked great on TV yesterday, Captain Heat. Really represented the—”

  Heat hung up. She fired off a quick text to Storm: FENG IS IN THE WIND. BE ON THE LOOKOUT. HOW’S IT GOING WITH THE ENCRYPTION?

  Moments later, Storm texted back: WE’RE MAKING PROGRESS. ANOTHER HOUR? MAYBE TWO? THANKS FOR HEADS-UP ABOUT FENG.

  Heat stood. There was nothing more she could do about Feng. Maybe once Storm got the encryption cracked—and they understood why the Shanghai Seven was so hot to recover the CD—Feng would cease to be of importance.

  Or he’d be joining his employers in a jail cell. Extradition from China was not impossible. Better yet, if she managed to track him down while he was still in the country, no extradition would be necessary.

  With that end still loose for the time being, Heat stood and made the walk downstairs to Benigno DeJesus’s domain.

  She found him stirring some coffee, staring down thoughtfully at the brown liquid as if it held all of life’s answers. Heat only wished it were so easy. She tapped on his door, even though it was open.

  “Oh, hey, Captain,” he said. “I was just about to call you about those fingerprints.”

  “With good news or bad?” she asked.

  “The latter, I’m afraid. I ran them through our system and of course struck out. Then I went to NGI.”

  DeJesus didn’t have to bother explaining that the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division had developed what it called the Next Generation Identification system to house all of its biometric data. NGI’s crown jewel was Advanced Fingerprint Identification Technology, which now claimed a matching accuracy of beyond 99.6 percent and included more than a hundred million unique entries. In addition, DeJesus could access the Repository for Individuals of Special Concern, which included convicted sex offenders, suspected terrorists, and a host of other unsavory characters.

  “And you struck out there, too?” Heat asked.

  “Not exactly,” DeJesus said. “There’s a hit on the print. But it’s classified.”

  Of course it was. That’s likely why Cynthia Heat hadn’t been able to do anything with the prints seventeen years ago. She had hit the same wall her daughter was hitting now.

  “How classified?” Heat asked.

  “You need something called T-A1 clearance.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I had never seen it before, so I had to call down to the FBI in Washington to ask. It turns out T-A1 is the highest level of classification. Apparently, it was created during the Nixon administration—go figure—and it’s not used very often anymore. The fibby I talked to had never actually seen it, either. But it means only the president, the vice president, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or members of the president’s cabinet can access it.”

  As soon as he said the word “cabinet,” Heat brought her hand to her mouth.

  She wasn’t a cabinet member. Yet. But as head of Homeland Security, she would be. It would mean having to wait a few months before she could act . . . But what was a few more months compared to
seventeen years? Could her mother hold out that long? Could she even hop on that flight to Amalfi and make The Serpent think she was standing down, when really she was just lying low for a little while?

  “What?” DeJesus asked, reacting to her obvious shock.

  “Nothing,” Heat said. “I just . . . I have to make a phone call. Good work, DeJesus.”

  “Sure, Captain. Would you like me to put the bills in evidence, or . . .”

  “No, why don’t you just give them to me?”

  He handed Heat the envelope, and soon she was charging back up the steps toward her office.

  * * *

  Director of Homeland Security. Could Nikki Heat, onetime beat cop, really ascend to one of the highest law enforcement positions in America?

  When she reached her office, she pulled the door shut and tried to collect her wits. She took some slow breaths to steady herself.

  Almost without thinking, she sat at her desk, opened the top drawer, and was about to place the envelope inside. Then she considered the advisability of that move. George had stashed the bills for years in the most secure place he could find, a hidden compartment no one knew about in a place people were forbidden to go. Sticking the bills in a desk drawer—even in a secure police precinct—was hardly showing the same level of concern.

  Not knowing what else to do with it, Heat slipped the envelope into the jacket pocket of her pantsuit. That would have to do for now, until she found a better place. A safe-deposit box seemed like a good call.

  She took a few more deep breaths and thought about the set of circumstances that had led her to this spot. The entire narrative—from her mother’s murder all those years ago, to Legs Kline’s more recent shenanigans, to Storm’s raid on the Shanghai Seven, to her learning about those bills and their importance, to Lindsy Gardner’s job offer— played out in her head.

  Nikki Heat didn’t believe in fate, or kismet, or destiny. She believed there were always explanations for seemingly inexplicable things—even if she couldn’t necessarily find them right away. Mysticism, the occult, voodoo, those were areas she left to Rook, who always seized on the supernatural with special zest. In her experience, if the killer had mysteriously vanished without a trace, it wasn’t because he was a ghost. It was because no one realized he was still hiding in the closet.