King and Maxwell

by David Baldacci

  “At least a minute.”

  Michelle smiled. “I love you, Edgar.”

  There was a long moment of silence.

  “I’m actually seeing someone, Ms. Maxwell.”

  “Uh… good for you, Edgar. My loss.”

  He took her through a series of assaults on the computer. In less than a minute the hard drive came to life.

  “I’m in. Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome. And Ms. Maxwell?”

  “Yes?”

  “You’re not really house-sitting, are you?”

  “Um…”

  “I didn’t think so. I just helped you break into someone’s computer, didn’t I?”

  “It’s all for a good cause, Edgar.”

  “Okay, if you say so.”

  “Goodbye, Edgar.”

  “Goodbye. And I’ll let you know if things don’t work out with the person I’m currently seeing.”

  “Uh, okay, thanks.”

  Michelle clicked keys and accessed as many files as she could. She also found a flash drive in the desk and downloaded to it as many files as she could find that seemed pertinent.

  She jerked around when she heard a siren in the distance. She ejected the flash drive, used her jacket to wipe her prints off the keyboard, rose, and ran back out of the room. She hurtled down the stairs even as the siren grew closer.

  Did I trip some silent alarm?

  The little dog yapped at her heels as she raced to the bathroom, opened the window, and cantilevered over the sill, landing on her feet. She jumped off the deck and ran not toward the street, but into the woods behind the house. She came out on the other side and fast-walked to the same major intersection from last night.

  She didn’t see a cab but she did board a bus that carried her to the Metro. From there she grabbed a cab and rode that back to their office. Along the way she called Sean.

  “Where are you?” she asked him.

  “Just pulling into Heron Air Service at Dulles. Traffic sucked even heading out of town. What about you?”

  She quickly explained to him what she had done and where she was. She fingered the flash drive.

  “I’m going to take the rental car we left here and see Edgar. Maybe he can find some stuff on the flash that will make sense.”

  “Good idea. I’ll join you as soon as I can.”

  Michelle clicked off.

  Sean put his phone down just about the time the gun was placed against his head.

  CHAPTER

  70

  PERIPHERAL VISION. IT WAS A necessity for many jobs.

  NFL quarterbacks had to have it so they wouldn’t be crushed by charging defenders.

  Basketball referees needed it to cover all the goings-on around the court.

  And Secret Service agents needed it to prevent harm from coming to their protectees and themselves.

  Sean saw the gun and eyed the person holding it all without moving his head.

  His elbow hit the horn, and the sound shattered the relative morning quiet around the airport. At the noise the gunman’s hand flinched just a bit, but it was enough to give Sean the space he needed to do what he did next.

  He grabbed the man’s shirt and jerked him forward.

  His head collided with the hard metal of the Land Cruiser’s door frame. Blood spattered on Sean along with bits of a tooth from the man’s mouth; then the gunman slumped down to the asphalt.

  Sean already had the vehicle in gear and the wheels spinning. He punched the gas to the floor, and the truck shot out of the parking lot. He looked in the side mirror and saw the man slowly get to his feet and stagger sideways before falling down again.

  It wasn’t Jenkins. It was someone else.

  “Shit,” Sean muttered. He’d been spotted. That did not bode well for anyone he cared about, particularly Tyler and Kathy.

  He got on the phone and called Michelle. He talked as he drove, filling her in.

  “I never saw the guy until the last second. It was my screwup.”

  She said, “I distracted you with my call.”

  “I can chew gum and talk at the same time,” he snapped. “At least I used to be able to,” he added darkly.

  “Should we tell Wingo?”

  “No, he’s already close to going off the deep end. This will send him there for certain.”

  “So what now?”

  “I’ll meet you at Edgar’s. Hopefully, he can flesh out some of the computer files for us so we can get a direct line on these bastards before it’s too late.”

  An hour later Sean pulled to a stop in front of Edgar’s farmhouse. The skies had partially cleared and the sun was doing its best to poke through the clusters of gray clouds. He noted that Michelle’s rental vehicle was already there. He would have expected no less with the way she drove. He touched the hood of her car as he passed. It wasn’t even warm. She’d been here awhile, probably smoked her wheels the whole way. And never gotten a ticket. He shook his head and kept going.

  He knocked and then walked into the house.

  Michelle was hunched over Edgar’s shoulder as he was gazing at his multiple screens on his plywood desk.

  Edgar said, “She wasn’t house-sitting. She was breaking and entering. That’s a felony.”

  “Yeah, I told her the same thing. Is the coffee fresh?” asked Sean, eyeing the cup in Michelle’s hand. “My brain is mud.”

  Edgar gave him a significant look. Sean started to say something but then obviously decided not to even bother.

  Michelle said, “He has a Keurig. Take your pick.”

  Sean left the room, made his cup of coffee, rejoined them, and perched on the edge of Edgar’s desk.

  “So what do we have?”

  “A lot of files to go through,” replied Michelle.

  “What about the other stuff?” asked Sean. “The IP trail on the email from the blogger’s source?”

  “I’ve broken through three of five barriers,” answered Edgar.

  “Hey, that’s great.”

  Edgar said, “The remaining two are proving hard to crack. The person knows what he’s doing.”

  Sean’s excited look faded. “Well, if you can’t crack it, I don’t think anyone can, Edgar.”

  “I didn’t say I couldn’t. I just said they were proving difficult.”

  Michelle cradled her cup of coffee and pointed at the screen. “But there might be something here.”

  Sean squinted at the screen. “What am I looking at?”

  “On the surface it’s an invoice for jet fuel,” said Edgar.

  “But looks can be deceiving,” added Michelle.

  “What do you mean?”

  In response Edgar hit a few keys. The page they were looking at turned into a jumble of symbols that made no sense at all.

  “I’ve seen that before,” said Sean. “When my computer goes haywire and turns my document to gibberish.”

  “It’s simply a failure of the computer to read the document coding properly,” explained Edgar. “And that can happen for any number of reasons, including damage to the file or a problem with your processor. And if you know what you’re doing you can disable your computer’s ability to read the code properly. That’s what I just did. But it’s also something else.”

  “What?”

  “A code,” said Michelle.

  “You mean they hide the code in the gibberish?” said Sean.

  “Gold in the trash is a phrase we use in the cyber security field,” noted Edgar. “It’s actually pretty cool because everyone’s had that happen to them. It’s just a software glitch. You don’t think it’s anything more than that.”

  “But you obviously saw there was more to it,” said Michelle.

  “Well, with the Wall, you pretty much see everything,” said Edgar modestly.

  “So what does this code say?” asked Sean.

  “It’s a communication to an unknown party, but one I strongly suspect is the same one on the IP trail from the blogger because the exact same bar
riers have been set up to block access to the source at the other end.”

  “But what does it say?” persisted Sean.

  “It’s a series of numbers,” he replied.

  “Numbers meaning what?”

  “If I had to guess, it’s satellite coordinates because I’ve seen them before,” said Edgar. “I haven’t fully deciphered the message, so I don’t know the location of the satellite yet if that’s what it is.”

  Sean looked upward. “A bird in the sky? What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Eyes in the heavens,” said Michelle. She looked thoughtful as she took a sip of coffee. “How much does a sky bird cost?”

  “It could be a lot,” said Edgar. “You have to build it first and that’s not cheap. Then you have to get it up there, and that’s not cheap either. Most people with such a need just rent space on an existing platform.”

  “You can do that?” said Michelle. “Rent space on a satellite just like you would an apartment?”

  Edgar nodded as he kept clicking keys. “Done all the time. There are businesses devoted to it. Some of the satellites the government uses are rented from commercial companies.”

  “The government?” said Sean. “But how do you maintain security?”

  “There are a number of ways. Sometimes you rent the whole satellite.”

  “Must really be big bucks involved,” said Sean.

  “Like a billion euros?” replied Michelle.

  That comment drew a sharp glance from him. “Is that what you’re thinking? Someone bought a satellite? Why?”

  Michelle took another sip of coffee. “I don’t know. But if sats are expensive, a billion euros would certainly come in handy.”

  “Yes they would,” added Edgar.

  Sean said, “Edgar, what would it cost to buy or rent a satellite?”

  Edgar used his left hand to start clicking keys on another keyboard, with the results popping up on another screen. All the while his right hand clicked away on the first keyboard. His gaze darted between the two screens.

  “A lot depends on the size and reach of the satellite,” explained Edgar. “Building one can cost from half a billion up to two billion. They can be as small as half a ton all the way up to the size of a truck weighing a couple of tons. But there are other varieties. I call them burners.”

  “Why is that?” asked Michelle.

  “You can build them on the cheap, say a million bucks or less, get them up to position on a rented rocket along with other payload. You lease the platform out to as many paying customers as you can get, sometimes for a few hundred bucks a week to get your investment back plus a decent profit, and a couple of years later the bird drifts back to earth and burns up in the atmosphere. Hence the term burner.”

  “But these cheaper satellites, they wouldn’t have the reach of the more expensive ones.”

  “Of course not. Even in space you get what you pay for. Gravity not included.” Edgar smiled and looked at Sean. “That was a joke.”

  “Yeah, I got it. So how many satellites are in the sky?”

  Edgar clicked more keys. “Over a thousand. Most are owned and operated by the U.S., Russia, and China divided among civil, commercial, government, and military applications. But lots of countries own all or pieces of satellites. Most commercial satellites are in what is called geosynchronous orbit, as opposed to low-earth orbit where governments have the most platforms.”

  “And satellites are used principally for…?” asked Michelle.

  “Communications,” answered Edgar promptly. “Moving information around the world at speed. Phone service, navigation, computer networks, whatever. The Wall depends on them, which means so do I.”

  Sean looked off, thinking. “If Alan Grant bought or rented a satellite, what would be his reason?”

  “Spying?” said Michelle.

  Sean looked doubtful. “For whom? And why the billion-euro theft? Edgar said you could rent space on a satellite for a lot less than that. And Grant has to be the source for the blog. The administration is taking incredible heat over it. You saw how worried President Cole looked. And if this whole thing is payback for what happened to Grant’s father during Iran-Contra, then the satellite must figure into the plan the man has.”

  Sean put down his coffee cup and pointed at the screen. “Edgar, can you find a list of commercial satellite operators?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you find out who might have rented space on one of them in say the last few weeks or so?”

  “I can try.”

  “Okay,” replied Sean, picking up his coffee cup again.

  Michelle said, “What are you thinking?”

  “Communication, that’s what satellites are for. What I’m thinking is Grant is into communicating, running the show. He fed George Carlton all the secrets about the debacle in Afghanistan.”

  Michelle nodded, a glimmer of understanding coming into her features. “You think he’s using the satellite for communicating something else?”

  “Yeah, I do. I just don’t know what. And it might not simply be information.” He looked at Edgar. “Using a satellite, you can control things on the ground, right?”

  “Yes. The government uses it to operate the power grid, the nuclear arsenal, command and control functions, lots of things we all depend on.”

  Michelle interjected. “You think he’s trying to take over the U.S. nuclear arsenal?”

  “No. Those would be on government birds and protected as well as anything can be. Plus you have manual safeguards for those suckers back on the ground.”

  “Well, what then, Sean?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, visibly frustrated. “But whatever it is, I know it’s going to be pretty damn significant.”

  “While Edgar is working on all this, what do we do?”

  “We have to talk to Wingo. Tell him what’s happened.”

  “Like you said, he might go off the deep end.”

  “It’s all in how we phrase it, Michelle. It’ll take some diplomacy.”

  “So you want me to talk to him?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “Why not?” she wanted to know.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re about as diplomatic as the punk running North Korea.”

  “Maybe so, but I’m also a lot tougher.”

  CHAPTER