Seven Unholy Days
Page 9
“If you are insisting, Matt Decker.”
“I am,” I said with a pat on the back. He reluctantly walked outside. Now that Rowe had the emails, and had probably shared them with the others, dealing with them could get dicey and I wanted to know who they were. I was inside the FBI’s internal database within three minutes and had Bob Rowe’s file on screen. Twenty-two years with no complaints, not to mention commendations for meritorious service. Steady track toward major management. Unmarried and no ties. He was a textbook career agent without a blemish.
Potella’s record did not have the same new-penny sheen. Walter Potella had a temper that had resulted in three complaints and one suspension during his fifteen years with the Bureau. Pay grade GS 12, which put his salary in the fifties. He came from a middle-class family, no ties to money, which meant he spent over two weeks’ salary on one suit of clothes.
Fifty-two-year-old Walt lived with twenty-eight-year-old wife Tiffany--no, I’m not kidding--in Falls Church, so I tapped into the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles. His DMV file showed two entries, a Range Rover and a Mercedes, both bought within the past few months at a combined cost of nearly two hundred thousand dollars. If data files had a scent, Potella’s would surely reek with the malodorous stench of rotten fish.
I heard Tark and Potella coming down the hall and made a brisk exit from the world of covert research. The email came about five minutes later:
Return-Path:
Delivered-To: x7ijljAweRRv -deckerdigital:com-x7ijljAweRRv@deckerdigital.com
X-Envelope-To: x7ijljawerrv@deckerdigital.com
X-Originating-IP: [66.156.171.40]
From: i14_696938@hotmail.com
To: x7ijljAweRRv@deckerdigital.com
Subject: Consequences
My Dearest Mr. Decker:
It is quite apparent that you chose to ignore my earlier warning regarding circumvention of the Decree of Darkness. Reinstate the Decree within one hour and meddle no more, or suffer more consequences.
Underneath the text was a picture that looked like a frame from the video we had just seen on television. It was a ghastly shot of a man’s ravaged face, his blood-red eyes open and staring right out of the screen. Across the picture in big stencil-looking letters was one word:
CONSEQUENCES
Rowe wasn’t in the room so I showed the email to Potella and Julie Reynolds. “Nice of you to share this one with us,” Potella said.
“You people didn’t exactly ride in on a wave of cooperation, Potella, so why don’t you knock off the hostile badass routine and let’s work together for a change?”
“I’m just getting started.”
Julie Reynolds, standing behind him, rolled her eyes.
Potella called some deputy director at FBI headquarters, who called the Director, who called the President, who called me. The process took four minutes.
“Mr. Decker, this is the President. I want you to shut everything back down immediately. All of it.”
“Yes, Mr. President.” He hung up without saying goodbye. “Abdul, what’s it looking like in the other regions?”
“I am saying rough twenty-four states up plus our own sixteen,” he said.
“Start bringing all our grids down, right now. I’ll get a message out to the others to do the same,” I said.
I noticed that Potella was staring at me, holding a file folder in one hand, slowly tapping the edge of it on the palm of his other hand. “Decker, I’ve got our people doing everything possible to trace that email,” he said. Looks like he’s turned this into a personal issue between you and him.”
“I noticed.”
“Any insights you care to share with us?”
“What’s that supposed to mean, Potella?”
“It means that whatever you know, I want to know. And if you don’t come clean, I’ll bust your ass this damn minute for obstruction of justice.”
“You’ve lost it, Potella. And considering the fact that we’re all supposed to be working on issues of national security here, you’re about a vindictive prick who can’t put petty issues aside.”
His fleshy face knotted into a swirl of angry red jowls and fierce eyes, and he started toward me. Rowe had obviously heard the commotion and ran into the room. “Potella, back off.”
He kept coming and Rowe stepped in front of him. “Walt, back off right now or I’ll have you removed from this case. I’m ASAC here and this is not a request. It’s an order.”
Potella spun and stomped out of the room, blasting a series of obscenities over his shoulder as he slammed open the front door and stepped outside. Julie Reynolds had stood up in the corner and had a look on her face that suggested a mix of amazement and embarrassment. Rowe slowly shook his head. “Decker, I’m really sorry about this.”
“I appreciate you calling Potella off, but this is getting old. I do not have time to deal with this crap.”
“I’ll have a talk with him. The Director has seen both emails, and while he wasn’t happy, he concurs that we don’t have time for bickering.”
“Maybe I need to have the talk with him instead, see if he’ll agree to a truce until we can get this case under control.”
“Suit yourself, but you won’t get anywhere. Potella came to the Bureau from an old school police department. He thinks you embarrassed the agents that were after you, and by extension, in his mind you’ve embarrassed every law enforcement agent in the country. He’s a good man but he’s also a dinosaur. The cloak of secrecy around your case has done nothing but ferment the angry mentality. You obviously pulled big powerful strings and the agents who actually worked your case won’t even say what it was all about. Although the brass obviously don’t have a problem with you, you’re like some phantom enemy among rank-and-file agents. And now these emails pop up. Potella won’t change his mind.”
“Just the same, for the good of all involved, I’m going to try.”
“Good luck.” Rowe left the room. At least he had come around. Far better to deal with one case of vengeance lust than two.
I turned to head outside and felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Julie Reynolds. “Mr. Decker,” she said as she looked around to be sure no one could hear her, “I’m sorry, too.”
“Thanks. You ready to tell me what else is troubling you, Agent Reynolds?”
“I’m new and I can’t afford to lose my job, Mr. Decker. I’d be black-balled.”
“I won’t break your confidence, Julie. You have my word.”
She glanced around the room again, then walked back to her desk in the corner. I followed. “Let me show you something I ran across while I was filing case reports,” she said as she tapped the keys of her notebook. A document soon appeared onscreen:
FBI CASE NO. 6298-5534
LOCALE: YELLOW CREEK (MS) FACILITY
RE: PERSONNEL ASSIGNMENT
As per ASAC request, the following personnel are assigned to the above referenced case until further notice.
Barry Pearson – Technical Specialist
Marcus Givens – Technical Specialist
Margaret Drummer – Technical Specialist
Daniel Roper – Technical Specialist
APPROVED BY HUMAN RESOURCES, WASHINGTON DIVISION
“There’s a problem here,” I said. “The team that’s here is all male. What happened to Margaret Drummer?”
“The problem is bigger than that.”
“How so?”
“None of the people on that list are here.”
“Are you serious?”
“Every person listed above is a legitimate full-time Bureau technician, not hackers pulled out of their bedrooms. It caught my eye because I personally know Daniel Roper. I managed to get an email through to him, and he hasn’t heard anything about being assigned to this case.”
“Then who are these people?”
“I took the liberty of finding out,” she said. “Earlier today, while everyone else was out of the room, I asked their names, t
old them I had to do some benefits paperwork.”
“And?”
“They’re nobodies, Mr. Decker. All of them. Low-level hackers busted for a variety of minor cyber-offenses, non-destructive for the most part. All on mild federal probation.”
I thought about it for a moment and said, “Now I understand why they were getting nowhere on the work assigned to them. They’re—”
“—not experts at all,” Julie said.
“Exactly. They were put here to fail. You realize what that means?”
“There’s a mole in the FBI.”
“No doubt about it.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m not sure yet but I’ll be careful that it doesn’t lead back to you, Julie.”
“Thank you. When it all comes out, I don’t mind cooperating but right now I’m at the bottom of the food chain and I don’t want to be booted out of here.”
“Understood.”
I walked casually over to the line of workstations where Neo and his merry band of incompetents were still getting exactly nothing done. After watching for a couple of minutes, I said, “How goes it?”
“Not, dude. This stuff is bitchrod hard, man.”
“Keep at it.” I hung around the area until I was sure Rowe was back in the room, then shook my head as if I didn’t understand. As planned, he saw it and walked over.
“Problem, Decker?”
“Yeah, I need a word with you.”
“Shoot.”
“Let’s go to the lounge.” I headed that way. He followed. Tark was there, looking over system logs and glancing up at the television occasionally. “I’m concerned about the tech team, Rowe.”
“How so?”
“They’re not making any progress.”
“These things take time, right? Not everyone has your level of expertise.”
“I appreciate that, but let me be honest. This team is bad weak, not up to Bureau caliber at all.” Never hurts to blow a little sunshine, especially when it’s based in truth.
“I don’t know what to say, Decker. Keep an eye on them and if they don’t start making progress maybe we can get another team assigned.”
“Fair enough.” Rowe turned to leave and just before he stepped out the door I said, “Oh, one more question?”
“What?”
“Just wondering how this particular team got assigned. Have you worked with them before?”
“No, I don’t know anything about them. I signed off on the paperwork and turned it all over to Potella.”
“Okay, thanks.”
“No problem.”
He was wrong, of course. There was indeed a problem, and it reeked of the malodorous stench of rotten fish.
“Agent Reynolds, what were you talking to Decker about?” Rowe said.
“Nothing much, small talk. Why?”
“I don’t need to remind you he’s a civilian, do I?”
“No, you don’t.”
“Good. If you can get something useful out of him, so much the better. Just remember that the flow of information is a one-way street. Are we clear?”
“I don’t think—”
“Are we clear, Agent Reynolds?” Rowe’s face had hardened, his eyes locked onto hers like a laser.
“Clear.”
“Always remember that the Bureau is a team, Julie.”
“I got it, Bob.”
“Good.”
16
9:38 PM CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME (LOCAL)
HENRY ROBERTS’s LAND
“Henry, why you want to come walking out here every night?” Missy said as they strolled along the only clean-cut area on their six acres of weeds and briars, the strip maintained by Great Central Electric because of the fiber optic line buried across the property.
“I like to look at the lights flashing in this little box up here. When I was a kid my mama bought me a toy called a Lite-Brite for Christmas one year. It had all these little things that you poked in holes and they lit up real pretty.”
“Yeah, I remember them things too. I didn’t never have one, though. What the hell’s that got to do with this box on a pole out here?”
“It reminds me of my Lite-Brite. That’s about the best Christmas I ever had. Daddy run off that next spring and it was harder than all get-out after that.”
“Hmmph,” Missy said, as she tucked a pinch of Copenhagen in her bottom lip.
Henry stopped at a square metal pole with a metal box fitted on top. A bright yellow label on the outside of the box that said
GREAT CENTRAL ELECTRIC COMM CHECKPOINT C47. TAMPERING WITH THIS EQUIPMENT IS A FEDERAL OFFENSE PUNISHABLE BY A MAXIMUM PENALTY OF ONE YEAR IN JAIL AND/OR A $10,000 FINE.
He opened the cover on the box and pointed inside. “See what I mean, ain’t that pretty?”
“If you say so.”
“Lot of blinking lights tonight. Usually ain’t that many.”
“What happened to the lock that used to be on that box?
“I tore the damn thing off so I could see inside.”
“I’ll swanee, Henry, you’re gonna get yourself throwed back in the lockup if the light company finds you out here messing with their stuff.”
“Aw, to hell with them bastards. They ain’t even got enough sense to keep the lights on.”
“Wonder why them little lights is still blinking when the lights in the house or nowhere else ain’t working.”
Henry cocked his head to the side and pondered the question for a few. “Hell, I think I’ll go over there tomorrow and ask them sumbitches about that.”
11:00 PM CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME (LOCAL)
HART COMPLEX
After spending the day locked in a spacious suite, Jana was once again taken by Dane Christian to Hart’s living quarters. Three hours had passed without him saying a word to her. He walked the room, talking on a headset telephone, and made dozens of calls.
He spoke in various foreign languages during some of the calls, but on the ones in which he used English, she gathered enough information to know what he was doing. Jana had a Roth IRA that she managed herself, and in so doing she had learned the basics of the stock market. Hart was executing stock transactions, many of them. She recognized many of the company names as global blue chips, and also took note of the fact that every transaction he made was either a sell or a short sell. He was unloading in a huge way, hundreds of millions of dollars worth, if not more.
The calls finally stopped and he sat down in front of a computer. “Do you live here all the time?” Jana said.
“This is but one of many homes I own, my dear.”
“I see. Where are the others?”
“You will see them all in due time. I am too busy to converse this evening.”
“Sorry I bothered you.”
“You are forgiven.”
At precisely eleven o’clock, Hart looked away from his computer long enough to say, “You may go.” Dane Christian met her outside the door and escorted her to an elevator.
When the elevator door closed, she said, “I’d really love to know how much you’re getting paid to work for this maniac.”
“A hundred million dollars.”
“I see. And is that money going to make you happy when you lie awake at night thinking about what you’ve done?”
The elevator door slid open with an airy hiss and Dane led her down the corridor toward her room without answering.
“Please help me get out of here. Please.”
Dane stopped and turned to her. “I’m sorry I brought you here, but what’s done is done. Nothing I can do.”
“You mean nothing you will do.”
He continued to her room and unlocked the door. “Have a good night.”
“Yeah, it’ll be a blast. Thanks a lot.” She slammed the door, walked to her bed, and fell onto it.
Just as Dane locked Jana’s door, Hart’s voice came over his radio. “Return to my chambers, Mr. Christian.”
“Yes sir.”
“Status update, please.”
Dane felt detached from himself, as if he were hearing someone else speak. “D-E-two exceed—”
“I am not a soldier and I loathe soldieresque abbreviations that butcher language. Do not use them in my presence again.”
“Excuse me,” Dane said, dramatically enunciating. “Distraction Event Two exceeded expectations. Over two million dead in Los Angeles proper, and we got lucky with wind distribution. Several million more were affected. The medical system is completely ineffectual. To put it bluntly, the entire region is in chaos.”
“Outstanding,” Hart said through a brilliant smile. “And the upcoming events?”
“I assume you handled Number Three tonight yourself?”
“That is correct. Continue.”
“Number Four is on schedule, as is Six.”
“And the Premier Event?” Hart stood up and leaned forward in anticipation.
“I received the updated data today. The professor says it will be accurate for at least a week, so we can start programming the target packages.”
Hart’s eyes lit up like a child at Christmas. “Wonderful. Where is the data now?”
Dane pulled a thumbdrive from his pocket. “I have a copy of the entire package here. Would you like to see it?”
“Indeed.” Hart eagerly took the key and plugged it into a USB port on his computer. A high-resolution map of Israel filled the screen. A few keystrokes later, the image appeared on a large flat panel display mounted in the wall beside the computer. On the eastern edge of the tiny country, a jagged blue line running north-south marked the Jordan River, and underneath that, the bulging Dead Sea. Running roughly parallel to this border was another line, this one a transparent, glowing red. At the bottom of the screen, with an arrow that pointed to the red line, was a label: Jordan Fault.
Hart walked to the display and slowly traced—to call it a caress would not have been inaccurate—his finger from top to bottom along the red line on the display. He closed his eyes, inhaled deeply, then opened them. “You are confident the data is accurate?”