Primal Deception

by Robin Mahle

  ASAC Rousseau sat behind his desk. The sudden appearance of his senior agent came unexpectedly. “Come in. Close the door.”

  Mendez pushed the door closed behind him and stood behind a guest chair, his arms propped against it. Tense and stiff, he inhaled a breath. “One of my men is in trouble.”

  “Okay. Can you tell me who?”

  “Caison. I need to get back there and help him.”

  Rousseau leaned back in his chair. “You’re going to need to give me more than that, Mendez. Does this have anything to do with being replaced on the mall bombing? Because I thought I made it clear I didn’t have a say in that.”

  He tried to go on, but Mendez stopped him. “There’s a reason why they wanted me off the investigation and there’s a reason why I left one of my team there to find out why.”

  “And did he?”

  Mendez pulled his cell from his shirt pocket and pulled out the SIM card. “I’m being watched, or at the very least, listened to.” He tossed it onto the ASAC’s desk. “Whoever’s watching me is watching my man and who knows who else.”

  Rousseau sat upright and peered at the phone. He turned his gaze upward to Mendez. “Go. Keep a low profile and get to the bottom of this. Too many people have their hands in running that investigation and it should never have been turned over to someone outside the task force. I don’t know what’s going on and why you were sent back here. Just go do what needs to be done.”

  Mendez nodded. “Thank you, sir.” He returned to his office and needed to find a way to get word to Agent Caison. He wasn’t even sure if the man was still alive. The call was cut short after he heard the crash of metal twisting and Caison yelling.

  Someone tracked Caison down through Mendez’s phone and that meant the problem was on the inside. He didn’t know who he could trust. Agent Axell? Maybe. Caison said he’d helped him. Perhaps that was who he needed to see.

  ♦♦♦

  A mile from Nova’s office, Will and Lacy waited inside an exterior alcove that abutted a series of other office buildings that dominated the landscape in this part of the city. A car pulled alongside the curb and the passenger window rolled down.

  “Get in.” Axell arrived as promised after receiving the call from Will.

  The two quickly stepped inside and he began to drive away. “What the hell happened?”

  “Someone’s either gotten to Mendez or he was under surveillance and didn’t know it. I called him from a burner phone, but within minutes, a car came from nowhere and slammed into me.” Will looked at Lacy in the back seat and returned his attention to Axell. “I left my phone inside the car, so I had to get to the Nova offices before Lacy realized I wasn’t answering. I took a cab.”

  Axell turned to him with a smile. “A cab? Seriously?”

  Will shrugged. “I needed to get there fast. Anyway, I made it to Nova.”

  “I got what we needed.” Lacy nodded to Will in defense of his actions.

  “Good. Hunter’s driving me crazy with questions. We need to get him busy on this.” Axell continued the drive. “What are you going to do about Mendez?”

  “I can’t worry about that now. I don’t think he’s compromised. I’ve worked closely with him for the past two years. I trust him.”

  “You’ll soon realize that it doesn’t matter how long you’ve known or worked with someone. If they need to protect themselves for whatever reason, they won’t hesitate to throw you under the bus.”

  “Is that how you feel about your colleagues? Even Agent Colburn?” Lacy asked.

  He peered at her through the rearview mirror, which she assumed was answer enough.

  Within several more minutes, they’d arrived. Lacy stepped out of the car that Axell parked inside a small attached garage. The home was gated and seemed to offer superior protection than the cabin had.

  The skies had already turned dark and spending the night here was becoming a certainty. Lacy missed her kids so much and yet she couldn’t risk calling them. Not from any phone now.

  The three made their way inside and Aaron rushed toward Lacy. “Oh thank God you’re safe. I—we were so worried something had happened.”

  “I’m fine. Let’s just do this.” Lacy retrieved the login information. “This is what you’ll need to get into the Liwa Properties’ servers. I don’t know how far you’ll be able to get, but Neville asked for full access to review their security systems.”

  Aaron grabbed the paper. “Good. That’s all I need. Now we just need to get the proof on Kendrick.”

  Colburn got to the task of setting up the computer for Aaron.

  “How do we know once Aaron gets in that the same thing that happened at the cabin won’t happen here?”

  “I’m setting you up on a dedicated remote satellite whose access is monitored by the CIA.” He looked to Axell. “I can’t tell you what happened before at the cabin. I don’t know how they found you, but you acted quickly and everyone was safe. You did good, Travis.”

  Lacy noted the exchange. “Yes, he did.” This man had already risked his life twice for her and whatever happened before, she wouldn’t blame him for it. No one did.

  “That looks like something the military would use,” Aaron said.

  “They do. But so do we.” Colburn booted it up. “You ready to do this?”

  Aaron glanced at the agents. “If you have people at the CIA who can do this, then why aren’t they? Wouldn’t it be safer for all of us?”

  “It’s illegal, for one thing,” Colburn replied.

  “I thought you guys could pretty much operate however you saw fit.”

  “No. That’s definitely not the case. I get my people to go into Liwa’s files and we find something, our hands would be tied. We aren’t law enforcement with subpoenas. We gather intelligence and send it to the people who can do something about it.”

  “What’s the difference if I find the information, then?”

  “You aren’t a government agency accessing a foreign company’s computer system without a warrant or their permission,” Axell replied. “You can get the information to the right people anonymously. This connection will be monitored by CIA, but only to ensure it’s secure. They don’t know what will be transmitted or viewed.”

  “So, if I get what we need, am I going to get busted?” Aaron sat down at the table.

  “You ever hear of Edward Snowden?” Colburn asked.

  Aaron’s heart jumped into his throat. “Of course.”

  “It won’t be like that; I promise you. You’re online. Do your thing,” Colburn said.

  Aaron handed Lacy the slip of paper. “Would you mind reading this off for me? I don’t want to mistype anything.”

  “Sure. User name is Neville underscore TE, password is…” She paused to study it. “Oh hell, there’s too many symbols. Here; I’ll double check as you type.”

  Aaron glanced again at the paper and began to type the extensive and complicated password. “These guys don’t mess around.” Milliseconds after pressing enter, a welcome screen popped up. “I’m in.”

  Everyone hovered over Aaron, chomping at the bit for him to retrieve the information they needed.

  “Hey, um, you guys mind giving me just a little bit of space here? It’s kind of hard working with you all looking over my shoulder. You know, puts a lot of pressure on me.”

  “Oh, right.” Lacy stepped back and the others followed. “We got anything to eat around here?” She walked into the galley-style kitchen and began to search for food. Not because she was hungry, but because she needed something to keep her busy. Her heart pounded in her chest, expecting someone to come barging through the doors, guns blazing. Or for sirens to sound in the distance and head straight for them.

  “You okay?” Will joined her in the kitchen.

  “I was just thinking about my kids. And Jay.” Her eyes reddened.

  Will placed his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. “This will end soon
. It has to. Your husband’s name will be cleared and you’ll be able to go back to work.”

  “And the men behind this will be put to death, I hope,” Lacy replied, wiping a stray tear that had fallen onto her cheek.

  Aaron took his eyes off the screen for a moment and noticed the two in the kitchen. His fingers stopped moving.

  “Hunter? You find something?” Axell asked, noticing he’d stopped typing.

  “Oh, no, sorry. I’m still working around their systems. It’s pretty complex.” Aaron returned his attention to the task at hand.

  Axell’s eyes shifted to Will and Lacy and back to Aaron again. “Okay, just checking.”

  ♦♦♦

  The hour was approaching midnight, but Ahmed still hovered over his desk, working on the upgrades since the attack. Liwa Properties had decided to overhaul their systems and he was on the team assigned to the project. He noticed activity from a username he didn’t recognize and reached for his energy drink, tossing back the rest of it while he studied the code. He continued to monitor the username, Neville underscore TE.

  After several more minutes, Ahmed reached for his cell, ready to put a call in to his supervisor. “Yes, sir, I apologize for calling you so late, but there is some unusual activity from a username that I don’t recognize.” He waited for a reply. “I do know what time it is, sir. Again, my apologies. But this user is in the US and the IP address originates from Virginia, to be precise.” He waited again while his supervisor cleared his throat and seemed to mumble words under his breath. “Oh I see. I didn’t realize. But, sir, that doesn’t explain why he’s accessing the files of a hired consultant who doesn’t work in security. Okay, sir, I’ll work on that and get back to you. Thank you, sir.” He ended the call and returned to his monitor. “What are you looking for Mr. Neville?”

  ♦♦♦

  “Holy shit. I think I found something.” Aaron looked to his cohorts with wide eyes, each of them quickly returning to his side.

  “What is it?” Lacy asked.

  “It looks like there’s a program running behind Sajwani’s email client.” He typed in a command. “And it may be—yes, it’s a cloning program that’s sending his correspondence to another server, I don’t know where, though.”

  “What about any details regarding Kendrick?” Will asked. “That’s what we need.”

  “I understand, but if I can find out where the emails are going…”

  “You think they were going to Kendrick?” Colburn asked.

  “That wouldn’t make much sense,” Axell began. “They had to have been going to Jian or his people at MSS.”

  “That’s still—that’s not enough.” Colburn rubbed his forehead. “Unless those emails were being copied to Kendrick or someone in his office, this won’t do us any good.”

  “That may not necessarily be true, though,” Will continued. “We already have an indirect money trail from Jian to Ballard and we have Jian on audio talking to Kendrick. We have a direct connection between Kendrick and the MSS.”

  “We don’t know that yet and in the event we did, it would be indirect, not direct.” Colburn seemed to be searching for a solution. “Aaron, can you find out where that duplicate information was sent? Where is that server?”

  Aaron shook his head and went back to his screen. “It’ll take me some time.”

  Lacy turned her attention to Will. “Agent Colburn’s right. We need written proof of communication between the two and that Kendrick agreed to push the false story that this was Islamic terrorists.”

  “We’re looking for a needle in a haystack here, Lacy.”

  “Wait a minute, hold up.” Aaron stopped.

  “Why would Sajwani set up a cloning program to run on Liwa servers when all he had to do was copy the files or correspondence to a flash drive?” Lacy asked. “Wouldn’t that be less risky?”

  “No. Because when a file is copied, if the system has enabled logging and auditing, it’s very easy to then look at the event log and call up what files were copied,” Aaron replied. “But what I’m saying is that it looks like he installed a cloning program that automatically duplicated and forwarded information to a different server and it appears to have been good enough to avoid detection.” Aaron paused for a moment while he studied the information on the screen. “The server it was being sent to was private by the looks of it.” He continued to work. “Oh my God. There’s no encryption?” He cast a surprised glance to Lacy. “I can slide right in.”

  They waited for Aaron to gain access to this private server. “I’ve got it. I’m inside. Now let me see what you’ve got, little girl.” He seemed to be talking to himself now.

  “Where did you find this guy?” Colburn asked Will.

  “He’s my friend.” Lacy smiled. “And he’s the best in the business.”

  Lines of code began running down the screen. “Oh, oh, oh.” Aaron leaned back. “What’ve we got here?” He continued typing and no one but him seemed to know what it was he was actually doing. “Oh shit. This is Jian’s private server in Beijing. I don’t have a specific address, though.”

  “How do you know?” Lacy asked.

  “I can see the emails. I can see activity from several different locations. File transfers; everything is on here. Now I just need an IP address. It might not be encrypted, but it’s routing through a shit load of relays.”

  “That doesn’t matter right now,” Will began. “Can you copy anything and everything on there before they realize you’re inside? There has to be something on there tying him to Kendrick.”

  “Yeah, I can do that. I need storage first. Where can I send the files?”

  “Here. I’ve already got a secure cloud server online,” Colburn replied. “There better be something on there or we’re screwed.”

  25

  Ahsan Sajwani had diverted mounds of information from Liwa Properties to Lei Jian’s server over the past six months, completely undetected, and hours had already been spent sifting through that information in search of evidence. But so far, no one had spotted the smoking gun: the support needed to bring forth charges of treason against the Undersecretary of the State Department’s Office of Political Affairs.

  “Can I get anyone a coffee?” Lacy pushed away from the table. “I’m making a pot. I can’t keep my eyes open much longer without some caffeine.”

  “Jesus, it’s one o’clock in the morning?” Aaron rubbed his eyes. “I’ll take a cup.”

  “That’d be great. Thanks, Lacy.” Will leaned back for a quick stretch. “I thought we would’ve found something by now.”

  “Same here,” Axell replied.

  “It’s a lot of information. We’ll get there. We have to,” Colburn added. “I’ll take a cup of joe too, thank you.”

  Minutes later, Lacy returned, placing the pot on the table along with a few mugs. “Okay then, where were we?”

  ♦♦♦

  Under cover of night, a sleek, agile man draped head to toe in dark clothing slipped inside the quiet home by way of overriding a substandard and flawed security system. The pale yellow moon shined through the windows and offered temperate light that illuminated his path toward an elaborate winding staircase.

  Someone whose powers extended into the upper echelons had taken notice and was left with no choice but to right the wrong committed by the man whose home was absurdly opulent. A home that repulsed the man now cautiously ascending the stairs as further proof of the American’s avarice.

  Less than two hours ago, activity was spotted by an IT worker at the Liwa offices who was running maintenance on their new upgrades. Activity that raised concern, but it wasn’t until the discovery of the information he’d accessed that Ahmed was forced to alert his supervisor, who in turn made the appropriate call to the consultant whose files were being compromised.

  Sajwani notified Jian, who shut down his server within minutes of the discovery that Tom Neville, head of cyber-security at Nova Investments, had
broken into his own system. And on further inspection, noticed everything the intruder had copied. Jian was left with no choice but to put this to a halt. Neville, a man he’d only known through Ballard as one who could supply what Jian needed, might now be his downfall and the others who were in collusion with him. And if that happened, the minister would take his anger out on the former ambassador.

  Upon reaching the top of the steps, he peered left, then right, deciding which way would lead him to the target. A long corridor appeared on the left and that was where he decided to begin. In a house like this, the entrance to Neville’s bedroom would undoubtedly be grand and that was what he would look for. If any children resided in the house, harm would be unwarranted, but if his plan was obstructed in any way, he would take out whomever crossed his path.

  The hall was darker than the rest of the upstairs, having no windows to allow the light in. He would have to step lightly until his eyes adjusted to the near pitch black between the walls.

  In the distance, the end of the corridor appeared in the form of tall, black double doors. He had a fifty-fifty chance and it seemed he’d chosen correctly. This was the room. He reached for the lever and turned with careful consideration. There was no squeak, there was no sound at all. The door glided open with a smooth silence and he was inside.

  The bed lay roughly twenty paces ahead of him and was flanked by two tall but narrow windows on either side. However, there was little light, as the windows were covered by darkening blinds. The willowy man who lurked in the darkness couldn’t identify whether or not someone occupied the bed, but he’d come this far and had no choice except to continue. With a restrained approach, he reached behind his back to retrieve the weapon.

  Just feet from the bed, he saw that there was only one person and he believed this person was his target. The shadowy figure hovered over Tom Neville, examining the man whose throat he was about to slit. But the man’s eyes flickered and soon clicked open.