404: A John Decker Thriller
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Decker took another sip of his coffee. The steady consistency of its flavor was an anvil of certainty in an insecure world.
The doorbell rang once again and he put his mug back on the counter. With a sigh, Decker climbed to his feet, now suddenly aware of every muscle in his body. He took a deep breath, then another, and the pain began to dissipate as he made his way slowly to the front of the house.
It was McCullough. His friend glowered down at him, a brown felt fedora covering his head, the collar of his trench coat pulled up at the neck. It was raining outside. His owl-like brown eyes gleamed behind his rain-splattered, wire-rimmed glasses.
“It wouldn’t kill you to answer your phone every once in a while,” he began, taking off his trench coat and hat, and pushing past him. He hung them up on the coat rack just inside the front door.
“Did you call?”
McCullough stared down at him for a moment without saying a word. He just stared at him. “Only about six times,” he replied finally. “How you feeling, man?”
“I’m fine, Rex,” said Decker, moving back toward the kitchen. McCullough followed close on his heels. “Want some coffee? I just made a new pot.”
“Is the Pope a bear in the woods?”
Decker took out another mug from the cabinet and poured McCullough some coffee. They sat down at the island together.
“Hellard wants to know when you’re coming back to the Center,” said McCullough. “I told him that you were, you know...recovering. I guess when you checked yourself out of the hospital after only one night, he got the mistaken impression that everything was okay. You know Hellard. Always jumping to conclusions like that.”
“I told you. I’m fine.”
“Sure you are.” McCullough blew on his coffee. “That’s what I told him. Got any cream? Don’t know how you drink it this way.”
Decker slipped off his stool and made for the fridge, trying to move as smoothly as possible. The pain was intense but he simply ignored it. Nonchalantly, he pulled out a carton of milk. “What brings you to this neck of the woods, Rex?” Then he stopped, remembering what the man who had blown up his townhouse had told him: Your neck of the woods. Just before the explosion.
“Can’t a guy check up on a friend? What the fuck, man? You almost died in that blast.”
“No I didn’t. You see.” He gestured down at his body. “Not a scratch. Nothing. Unlike the rest of the squad,” he concluded.
“Jesus Christ, John. It wasn’t your fault.”
Unlike Becca, thought Decker. “So you keep telling me.”
McCullough sighed. He held up his mug. “Anyway, I have news.”
Decker poured some milk into his coffee.
“You were right,” said McCullough. “It wasn’t El Aqrab.”
Decker finished pouring the milk. He put the carton back in the fridge. “I told you,” he said. “Have you made an ID?”
“Yep. Turns out it was another old friend of yours. Ali Hammel.”
Decker didn’t say anything. He didn’t sit back at the table. He closed the refrigerator door and simply stood there, facing the window by the sink. The frame was covered by a clear plastic sheet. The explosion had blown out every window in the house. What were once ways to look out at the world were now ways to get in.
“The Algerian? Are you sure?” Decker said.
“One hundred percent. DNA match.”
Hammel had been one of El Aqrab’s minions, thought to have died following an attempt to plant a fake nuclear bomb in the Empire State building eight years earlier.
“He’d been surgically altered,” McCullough continued. “Just like you suspected. Apparently, the order came from someone within the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Who, we’re still trying to find out.”
“But why?” Decker turned back to his partner. “I mean, why would Hammel have himself surgically altered to look like El Aqrab?”
McCullough shrugged. “Perhaps as an homage to his former boss. Or, to...I don’t know. I have no fucking idea. And it gets even weirder. The house in Brooklyn. It wasn’t blown up.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“I mean not intentionally. Explosives weren’t responsible for the blast. At least, not as far as we can tell. Some kind of gas leak, apparently, coupled with a freak surge in power. A transformer in the street overloaded and—”
“Overloaded? By accident?” Decker laughed. “Are you kidding me? That doesn’t make any sense, Rex. I mean, what are the odds?”
“We thought it might have been rigged as a way to cover their tracks, but we didn’t find any residue. Nothing. NSA was able to recover some hard disks from the wreckage, though, which, among other things, featured a lot of personal information about you.”
“Me? Why me? What kind of personal information?”
“Your home address, Social, financial records. In fact, your whole credit history. Plus, Bureau personnel records. Product warranty data. Even your Netflix and iTune playlists. That kind of stuff. Weird, huh?”
Decker put his coffee mug back down on the counter. He turned and looked out the window, through the clear plastic sheet, at the pair of great sourgum trees at the heart of his yard. One entire side of one tree had been stripped of its branches by the blast.
Without warning, Decker took a step forward and punched the kitchen cabinet nearest to him. He punched it again and again, until McCullough finally stood up and stopped him.
“Maybe you left the hospital too soon,” said McCullough. A crack ran the length of the cabinet door. “I’m not driving you out to Home Despot. You can replace that yourself.”
Decker turned toward his friend in such a threatening manner that McCullough took a step back. “Hey, it’s me,” he said, raising his hands. “Take it easy, man.”
Decker didn’t respond. He simply stared at McCullough with a vacant look in his eyes. After a moment, he finally relaxed, and mumbled, “I’m sorry. I’m...I guess I’ll get dressed. They want me to come in for de-briefing.”
“You sure that’s a good idea?” asked McCullough. “I mean, look at you. You’re a wreck, John. Not that you don’t have a right to be. If you hadn’t been wearing your body armor, surrounded by all of those heavy appliances, you’d have ended up just like everyone else...in pieces. You’re lucky to be alive.”
“Yeah, lucky,” said Decker, staring down at the floor.
“Luckier than those five other agents. Look, man. Take my advice. Please. As your friend and your partner. You’re not ready, John.” McCullough put a hand on his shoulder. “Why don’t you go visit Becca? Take a few days to—”
“I’m fine,” Decker said, and that ended it.
CHAPTER 13
Friday, December 6
Later that morning, back at work, Decker continued to investigate the breach in security at Westlake Defense Systems when Hellard appeared at his desk.
“How you doing?” his boss asked, staring down at him with his basset-hound eyes. “I hear the de-briefing went well.”
“Well enough,” Decker answered. In truth, it had been a grueling four hours, retelling the same story over and over again to a half dozen handlers. Given that Decker seldom went out into the field, he wasn’t particularly used to the process. Plus, for some reason, Hellard had tagged the assault a “black ops”—perhaps because all the suspects had died, not to mention those five men on the SWAT team—which meant that he had to undergo a session while under hypnosis.
Decker didn’t like being hypnotized. He didn’t like to be out of control. That’s why he seldom drank and hardly ever took drugs. He had no moral objection; he didn’t particularly care what others did to get by in the world. It just didn’t make him feel comfortable. The fact that he was especially prone to hypnosis didn’t help either. Dr. Foster, the Center shrink, said this was a mark of intelligence, but he probably said that to everyone.
“Then what are you doing?”
“Excuse me?” said Decker.
Hellard pointed at
Decker’s LCD screen. “You’re still working on Westlake. Isn’t that a mirror of the Lebanese hard drive? We plugged that hole, Decker. Thanks to you. Ali Hammel’s dead. Just like El Aqrab. You’re letting your personal feelings get in the way of your judgment.”
“Just tying up some loose ends,” Decker said. He reached over, closed the window. “I’m late for a meeting anyway. Sorry. Got to go.”
Decker watched Hellard waddle off to another workstation before making his way to the elevator.
The cafeteria was a large, well-lit room, airy and bright, despite the fact that it was five stories belowground in a bunker of reinforced concrete. The wall by the entrance featured a gargantuan painting of a pastoral water scene. The top half of the canvas viewed the world from atop a lake’s surface, with a field full of flowers beyond, weeping willows, snowy clouds, while the other half peered underwater, into a submarine landscape choked with lilies and schools of small fish. McCullough was standing beside it in the glare of a spotlight. His dark brown shaved head shone like a cue ball. He looked angry or anxious, out of sorts.
“Sorry I’m late,” Decker said.
They grabbed a couple of trays and headed past the steam tables toward the salad bar. As they filled up their bowls, McCullough started to bitch about the number of reported security breaches they’d been experiencing lately. They seemed to be doubling every four hours. It was like another Titan Rain, he complained, when, in 2003, state-sponsored Chinese hackers had mounted cyber-attacks against a host of government systems—from Lockheed to NASA.
This is why Hellard wanted him to concentrate on something other than Westlake, thought Decker. With Hammel dead, the case had come to a standstill. Plus, Decker had been out for two days. He had dozens and dozens of new open job numbers to attend to. Even his fellow cryptanalysts were growing tired of his singular obsession which, in the end, only meant more work for them.
With a forlorn glance at the fried chicken, McCullough started for an empty table at the rear of the room. Decker followed. They sat down facing each other, just as a white spinning object flew over their heads, whirling like the seed of a Japanese maple.
Decker ducked automatically, almost rolled to the floor. Then he took a deep breath.
Ever since El Aqrab, perhaps as far back as his car accident as a boy, Decker had been jumpy. Now they call it PTSD, he thought as he straightened. As if putting a label on it somehow makes it more manageable.
Every muscle in his body screamed out at once and he let the pain take him away. For the briefest of respites.
“Ivanov,” spat McCullough. “I hate fucking hackers!” He looked over at the Russian computer expert in the corner of the cafeteria.
McCullough and Decker were both seasoned analysts. Decker alone spoke twelve languages, nine fluently. But in their hearts they would always be codebreakers. Cryptanalyst forensic examiners. Shaking out logic from what appeared to be randomness was like a drug to them, and something they shared.
But hackers were prima donnas. That’s why McCullough loathed Ivanov. Hackers didn’t do what they did simply because their code was exquisite. Whether binary or logical. They did it to prove something, to show off, to be smarter than everyone else in the room.
Decker had seen hackers break into systems that—if they’d been caught—would have landed them in federal prison for decades, and they did it for fun. They were intellectual adrenaline junkies. I should know, Decker thought, staring down at his salad.
“I forgot you’ve been gone,” said McCullough. “Ivanov got a new UAV, an ultralight from a buddy at Lockheed. They call it the Samara. You know: like a whirligig, whirlybird, or whatever they’re called. Those seed pods that spin down from maple trees. Fifteen grams and only three inches. Got a camera too. Perfect for spying indoors.”
“Cute,” Decker answered. He looked across the cafeteria, saw Ivanov with a handheld by one of the steam tables. Ivanov was a good guy to have on your side when you wanted to break into a system, de-encrypt some hard drive, thought Decker, but he was still in his twenties.
McCullough started whining to Decker about his teenage daughter, Lisa, who went online all the time, practically lived on her iPhone, and who had recently given up the most personal information through her Facebook account.
“I keep telling her,” said McCullough, “in today’s online world, even if you keep your name secret, people can still learn all about you, and they’ll judge you simply by viewing your friends. It’s like that study by those two guys at UT, Smatikov and Nara...Narayama.”
“Narayanan. But I think he’s at Stanford now,” Decker said.
“Whatever. Didn’t they prove that by examining correlations between various online accounts, you could identify more than a third of all Twitter and Flickr users, even when the accounts were stripped of identifiers?”
“Thirty percent,” Decker said.
“And those two professors from Carnegie Mellon. You know...Grossman and Christie.”
“Acquisti and Gross?”
“Yeah, that’s them. They predicted the full, nine-digit Social Security numbers for one out of every ten U.S. citizens born between ’89 and ’03. That’s five million people.” He stabbed a tomato. “I tell her all this—I’ve been collecting these factoids—yet she still posts pictures of herself drunk on her Facebook page. As if college admissions counselors won’t find them. What’s next, sexting? You know, some private caller sent me a picture of her snatch the other day on my smartphone. Wrong number, I guess, trying to reach some guy named Perry. Anyway, it was at such an odd angle and so close, it took me a full minute to even figure out what it was.”
“I’d still be trying to figure it out. You sure it was a wrong number?” Decker laughed. “But what’s your point, Rex?” he added. “What are you going to do about Lisa?”
McCullough said that he was tracking his daughter’s movements online through Norton’s Online Family program—like her search terms and browser history—although her mother resented it.
“June claims that I’m violating Lisa’s personal freedoms, that I’m anti-American,” McCullough continued. “Can you fucking believe it? The words ‘joint custody’ have no meaning to her. Meanwhile, I don’t know why Lisa even bothers. All this technology hasn’t helped me. I’ve been on that e-Harmonize site for six months now and it still hasn’t paid off. No one’s ever like they are in their profiles. They lie about their age, their weight, their everything. When you chat with them online, they’re spunky and interesting. Alive. But when you meet them in person, they change. They wilt in the flesh. You’d think it’d be the other way around.”
McCullough had grown up in Stratford, Connecticut, the son of a Sikorsky engineer. After college and a brief stint as a Ranger, he’d joined Army Intelligence. Not long after, the Bureau. He was a lifer, a year from KMA, or Kiss My Ass—only twelve months from being eligible to retire with full FERS Basic benefits, and therefore pretty much immune from all the bullshit the Bureau could throw at you. A twenty-year man. And not just career-wise. He’d married June, his high school sweetheart, while still at the University of Connecticut. They’d had a good run, but he’d come home early one day from the office and found her pretzeled in the arms of a neighbor.
Same old story. He was never around. He was married to the Bureau. He...was.
It was like that old joke about the divorcée complaining about her ex-husband to friends: It was this, it was that, and that breathing...In and out. In and out.
“I’m the wrong guy to ask if you want to talk about dating,” said Decker.
“I thought you were seeing some professor from Georgetown. The one who likes sushi and jazz.”
“She works in a bookstore, Rex. And we only went out a few times. I’ve given up.”
“It’s been more than two years since the accident.”
Decker glanced sideways. “With everything that’s happened to Becca, I just won’t have time anymore. Plus, with all these new break-ins...”
Decker shrugged.
“You know,” said McCullough. “If you really want to find out what happened with Westlake, you should contact Xin Liu.”
“Who’s Xin Liu?”
“MIT adjunct professor. Consults with NSA’s TAO off and on. Has the clearance, believe me. Probably higher than yours. Fucking brilliant, you’ll love her.” McCullough stuffed another forkful of salad into his cavernous mouth. “If anyone can figure it out,” he said, chewing, “it’s Lulu.”
CHAPTER 14
Friday, December 6
It was always the same whenever Decker went to the hospital. There was that fuss about visiting hours, although that didn’t particularly bother him. Nor the perennial request for ID from those already familiar with him. As an agent, he was more than attuned to security protocols. No. It was that look from the nurses, that insufferably pitying stare. That he would never get used to. And then the long walk down the corridor in the harsh glare of the hospital lights, past the agent on duty, to that first glance of Becca through the door as it opened, as she lay there in her bacteria-controlled nursing unit, hooked up to a dozen purring machines.
She was barely a bulge in her bedclothes. Wrapped in bandages, enshrouded in plastic, she looked like a doll on the shelf of a toy store, trotted out just in time for the holidays.
It was always the same. He stood there, looking down, fighting an irrational urge to reach out and rip the clear plastic tenting apart in his hands. To hold her. To feel her in his arms once again.
Before, of course, he had done everything in his power to keep her away. You’re a fool, Decker said to himself.
He sat on the white plastic seat at the head of the bed, one hand on the monitor, watching her breathe, watching the sheets rise and fall, rise and fall. They were so white, so bleached and well-starched that they looked like a blanket of snow, and he remembered a moment when Becca and he had gone out to the Old Stone House Park after a particularly heavy snowfall some years earlier. The plows had left a small mountain of packed powder at the edge of the park, behind the Post Office parking lot, and they were having a hard time climbing over it, he remembered, when they’d stopped at the top so they could both catch their breath. It had been an overcast morning but a strong Arctic wind had blown the snow clouds away, and Decker had pointed this out to his four year old.