King and Maxwell

by David Baldacci

  WHEN MICHELLE CAME OUT OF HER APARTMENT the next morning it was early, the sun barely up.

  Yet there he was.

  Sean was standing next to his Lexus, two cups of coffee in hand. He was shivering with the chill in the air.

  “Why are you here?” she asked.

  “To beg forgiveness for being a total ass last night.” He held up the coffee. “It’s not much, but it is hot. I timed your appearance just right. You are definitely not one to linger in bed.”

  She stared at him for a few uncomfortable seconds, then walked over and snagged the Styrofoam cup.

  “I am sorry,” he said quietly.

  “You have nothing to be sorry about. We’re business partners. What you fantasize about in your spare time is entirely up to you.”

  “I don’t fantasize about her. Don’t forget, I only looked her up because you asked me to.”

  Michelle’s anger faded with this statement. She took a drink of her coffee and just stared at the pavement.

  “Look, Michelle, Dana is happily married. I know it sounds incredible, but she really cares for her general. She went on and on about him.”

  “And you?”

  “I’m really happy she loves the general.”

  They eyed each other.

  “I guess I get that,” said Michelle.

  “Trust me, my years with Dana were some of the worst of my life. I do not have enough time left to go back down that road, even if I wanted to, which I don’t.”

  Michelle sipped her coffee. “Okay, what now? We’re waiting on Dana and Kathy. We really can’t approach Tyler at this point.”

  Michelle’s phone dinged. She looked at the screen and then held it up for Sean to see. “We just got Tyler’s email address from Kathy.”

  “Then our next stop is Edgar Roy.”

  “At his farm?” she asked.

  “No, I checked. He’s working in D.C. the rest of this week.”

  “Bunting Enterprises?”

  “Satellite office thereof,” replied Sean.

  “Can we see him there? Isn’t it classified and firewalled with attack dogs ready to eat trespassers?”

  “I’m sure it is. But we can call and arrange to meet with him outside the Emerald City. I’ll tell him to bring his laptop. And his big brain.”

  Sean started to get in on the driver’s side of his Lexus.

  Michelle said, “I’ll drive.”

  “But—” Sean started to protest. Michelle was already climbing into her truck, however.

  Sean opened the passenger door to the Land Cruiser and a pile of junk fell out onto the pavement. He jumped when a half-empty carton of orange juice spilled on his shoes.

  “Just throw it in the backseat,” advised Michelle.

  “How about I just put it all in that trash can over there?” he said angrily.

  “But it’s not all trash.”

  “If it looks like trash and smells like trash…?”

  “In the backseat, Sean. Thanks.”

  Sean glared for a moment at the pile of stuff and then proceeded to hurl it into the backseat with velocity. Finished, he slammed the door shut.

  “Feel better?” she asked.

  “No, not really,” he said between gritted teeth as he stared straight ahead. “I have orange juice in my socks.”

  “Then your feet will never get a cold.”

  Sean called Edgar on the drive over. He did not keep normal hours and had been at work for some time already.

  When they reached the office building a block over from K Street, they both saw him at the same time. Edgar Roy was hard to miss. He was six foot nine, which was extremely tall on any surface other than an NBA court. He was also exceedingly thin, which made him seem even taller. He was carrying a laptop computer under one arm.

  They pulled to the curb and Sean rolled down the window.

  “Hey, Edgar.”

  Edgar glanced over at him. Partially obscured behind the thick glasses was a pair of eyes that fronted one of the premier minds in the country, if not the world. Edgar Roy was America’s most invaluable intelligence analyst. The amount of material his mind was able to burrow through to find small nuggets of intelligence gold was truly unprecedented.

  Yet right now all Sean was hoping was that he could hack a teenage boy’s email.

  Sean and Michelle hopped out of the truck and approached. Both tall, they still had to stare nearly straight up to come close to an eyeball-to-eyeball with Edgar.

  Edgar nodded at both of them and then turned his gaze fully to Michelle.

  “I didn’t say this the last time we met but I’m glad you’re doing so well, Ms. Maxwell.”

  Michelle had tried and failed to get him to call her by her first name.

  “Thanks, Edgar. But I should be doing the thanking. You’re the one who saved my life. And we appreciate your taking the time to meet with us. It won’t take long.”

  Sean said, “I’ve got an email account here that I’m hoping you can hack into. We need to see some of the most recent flow.”

  Edgar looked at the email address. Sean knew that he had instantly memorized it. He sat down with his laptop on a nearby bench, opened it, and started hitting keys.

  “You don’t have to do it now, Edgar,” said Sean. “When you get a break from whatever it is you do in there, you can work on it, not sit out here in the cold. And then—”

  “Here,” said Edgar.

  He had turned the laptop around so that they could see the screen. On it were Tyler Wingo’s email postings.

  “How did you do that so fast?” asked an amazed Sean.

  “I’m not sure you would understand,” said Edgar politely.

  “You’re right there,” said Michelle. She sat down next to Edgar while Sean perched on the other side of the bench. They ran their eyes down the screen. There weren’t many emails.

  “I don’t see it,” said Sean. “He might have deleted it. That means we’re SOL.”

  “Highly doubtful,” said Edgar. “There are ways to fry drives. Unless you do, simple deletions mean nothing.”

  Edgar hit some more keys, and a new list of posts appeared. “He also deleted it from his trash, but there was another cache it was copied to that wasn’t so apparent. Easy enough if you know where to look.”

  “I’m glad you know where to look,” said Sean.

  “There,” said Michelle, pointing at the third email from the top. “It’s from Sam Wingo.”

  Sean and Michelle read it and then looked at each other. Sean said, “I don’t see anything in that message that Tyler wouldn’t want us or anyone else to know. It’s pretty short, and it’s just his dad talking about school and Tyler’s swimming.”

  “Maybe that’s why he merely deleted it and didn’t truly erase it,” suggested Edgar.

  “Did he reply to the email?” asked Sean.

  Edgar hit some more keys but finally shook his head. “No.”

  Michelle said, “Sean, look at the time stamp. It was sent after they told him his father was dead. Just like Tyler said.”

  Sean ran his eye over the message again and an idea occurred to him.

  “It might be in code, Edgar. Think you can help us out?”

  “Right.” Edgar ran his eye over the message, his pupils flicking back and forth at speed. His lips were moving but no words were coming out.

  He opened another screen and typed the letters IASPFM.

  He said, “I ran it through the typical hundred or so initial possibilities. Looks to be an every seventh word, initial letter substitution cipher. Low security value point, but it’s so old and seldom used that it could have some worth. Useless against a real cyber strike, of course. And any legitimate code breaker would have had no trouble with it. But it is a bit more sophisticated since it spells out an acronym and not actual words, meaning it’s a double-layer encryption.”

  “But what does the acronym mean?” asked Michelle.

  “Ordinary web shorthand,” said Edgar, sounding
surprised. “Initial letter based with straightforward extrapolation intended. I thought you would know.”

  “I missed that class,” said Michelle.

  “Me too,” added Sean quickly. “Along with all math and science courses.”

  “It means ‘I am sorry, please forgive me,’ ” said Edgar.

  Sean and Michelle exchanged a glance.

  “Does that help?” asked Edgar.

  “It certainly doesn’t hurt,” said Sean.

  CHAPTER

  17

  SEAN AND MICHELLE HAD JUST RETURNED TO their office when the phone rang.

  It was Peter Bunting, head of a large defense contracting firm and Edgar Roy’s employer.

  And the man was a little upset.

  Sean actually held the phone away from his ear as Bunting’s screams poured out.

  “Who exactly are we talking about, Mr. Bunting?” Sean asked when the man stopped to take a breath.

  Bunting said something and Sean nodded. “Okay, we will look into this. And I’m sorry.”

  Bunting yelled something and hung up.

  Sean turned to Michelle.

  “What was that all about?”

  “DoD just came and yanked Edgar Roy from his office.”

  “What? Why?” exclaimed Michelle.

  “Cause and effect apparently.”

  “Meaning we were the cause?”

  Sean nodded. “Because of the timing Bunting can’t think of any other reason he would’ve been snatched, and I tend to agree with him. Edgar told him of our meeting.” He added, “Bunting’s a little mad right now.”

  “I could hear. What did he say right before he hung up?”

  “Something about damaging my testicles, although he used a less polite term.”

  Michelle plopped into her desk chair and glanced at the door. “Should we be prepared for invasion too?”

  “Edgar Roy is employed by a government contractor and thus technically works for the government. He did us a favor on government time. They may be able to ding him a little for that but there’s no way they’ll keep him locked up somewhere. He’s too valuable an asset.”

  “Which doesn’t really answer my question. We’re not that valuable. So they wouldn’t have a problem locking us up and throwing away the key.”

  “We’re also not employed by the government. And there’s the little issue of habeas corpus. That still means something in this country.”

  “Yeah, but we got a government genius to hack a private account for us. Isn’t that illegal?”

  “We also have the permission of the account holder to investigate. Tyler did hire us.”

  “And he also fired us,” Michelle reminded him.

  “A technicality only.”

  “So you say.”

  “I am a lawyer.”

  “And lawyers are full of bullshit. In fact, they charge more for that.”

  “If they break our doors down, I think we’ll have enough of a defense to escape any real trouble.”

  Michelle feigned a smile. “Five years in prison versus ten, what a relief.”

  “I tend to believe that the email came from Sam Wingo. Which means the Army is lying its collective ass off.”

  Michelle said, “But what was he sorry for and why did he want his son’s forgiveness?”

  “For lying to him? For getting into this mess and causing Tyler to suffer?” suggested Sean.

  “Okay, but that leaves us with hunches and not a lot of paths to follow them up.”

  “We have Tyler. We have Kathy. We have Dana. And we have DTI,” noted Sean.

  “Let’s go with the low-hanging fruit first.”

  “Dana?” said Sean.

  “I was thinking Kathy.”

  “You want to split up?”

  “I’ll take Dana. You take Kathy.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” he said.

  “Am I?” she said, staring at him.

  “Kathy doesn’t know me. And it might be a little awkward for me to be meeting a high school girl.”

  “Okay, let’s partner up on both then. I’ve always wanted to meet your ex.”

  “Always?”

  “Always since yesterday.”

  “She might not know anything yet. It hasn’t been very long.”

  “From what you said, she can be very persuasive, particularly with her choice in clothes.”

  “Why don’t you text Kathy first? If she’s found something out we can meet her. I’ll text Dana.”

  “And DTI?”

  “I’d love to hit those folks, but DoD has to be watching them.”

  “Is there any law against us asking questions? People don’t have to answer.”

  “Sometimes people make up their own laws. By the time it’s all figured out we’re eligible for Social Security.”

  Michelle said, “It would help if we knew the names of some of Sam Wingo’s co-workers there.”

  “Well, from what I could find out the actual office where Wingo worked isn’t that big. Maybe twenty people. I bet they all knew each other. At least somewhat.”

  “Do we wait outside and see who looks promising when they leave work?”

  “Maybe. But that will be after we meet with Kathy, if she has anything. Text her now.”

  Michelle did.

  Five minutes went by.

  “Maybe she cut us off too,” said Michelle as she stared at her phone.

  “Give it time.”

  Another minute went by, and then a text popped up on Michelle’s phone.

  “She talked to Tyler. She’ll meet us at the same café.”

  “You should get a Panera card,” advised Sean.

  Michelle frowned. “This thing is looking stranger by the minute. I don’t want to end up back in a CIA cell that no one knows about.”

  Sean laced his fingers behind his head and leaned back in his chair. “Frankly, I’m more worried about Tyler and his stepmom than I am about us.”

  Michelle shot him a glance. “Why?”