“But Sanchez only knows we met with Walker. Walker wouldn’t share his plans with Sanchez if he wouldn’t share them with us.”
“Relax, Bobby. No one’s ever going to think that two upstanding and successful solar CEO’s would get involved in domestic terrorism. They’ll blame it on Muslim extremists or the Tea Party before they’d ever think of us.”
“Hope you’re right. I don’t think I’d do jail well.”
“Did you worry about going to jail when you were doing your eco terrorism thing?”
“Not much. I was pretty much obsessed with stopping the logging of old growth forests. And I was young. I didn’t have a lot to lose. Now I do.”
“Tell me about it. I think I’d rather commit suicide than be poor and have my dad laughing at me.”
~
Saleem Canaan stood silently at the other end of the great room listening to the two men. He had walked his motorcycle down the long driveway to make it look like he was out of gas, and then he had simply let himself in the unlocked front door. For men involved in such a devious plot, he thought, they were amazingly careless.
And hearing the men talk so casually about their chances of getting caught made him want to shoot them both in the back of their heads and be done with it. Their wealth and success must have blinded them to reality. The country they were willing to cripple would never stop looking for them, just as it had not stopped looking for bin Laden. The trail from EIS Inc. would inevitably lead back to them, with or without the evidence that Ryan Walker had planted for the government to find.
Canaan almost wished that there was a way the two could be left alone to suffer through the humiliation of a trial and imprisonment leading to their execution, for surely the death penalty would be sought for their crime of treason. Instead, here he was, about to give them an easy way out; he’d decided a quick bullet to the brain would be easier than a hanging and would still look like the cowardly choice of two men remorseful about the destruction they had caused.
But as much as he wanted to continue eavesdropping on these two sacrificial lambs, it was time to put an end to the charade.
Canaan walked across the great room without making a sound and touched the silencer on his FN FiveSeven pistol to the back of David Klein’s head.
“Stay seated, both of you,” he said in a pleasant voice, “or Mr. Klein will get his wish to die rather than become poor.”
Chapter 52
Bradford beckoned Drake and Strobel out to the deck and pointed to a prominence that jutted out into the lake to the west of his property. “That’s David Klein’s estate.”
From where they stood, it looked like a lakeshore hotel. A lawn the size of a football field bordered by a stone fence lay below the main house. A private pier reached fifty yards out into the lake, and they could see the futuristic, flat-roofed yacht with solar panels moored beside it.
“It’s beautiful,” Strobel said. “In a sort of over-the-top sort of way. Does he live there year round? That’s a lot more than just a lake shore getaway.”
“Not full time,” Bradford told her. “Klein comes up here a couple times a year for parties on his yacht. And a little skiing during the winter. There’s a guest house on the other side where his caretaker lives, but the main house is empty most of the time.”
“The yacht’s impressive,” Drake said.
Bradford nodded. “He had it built in Europe. He claims it can cruise around the lake for up to six hours at ten knots using only electric propulsion. He uses it to demonstrate the efficiency of solar power, of course. I’ll give him credit, though. The thing cruises by, and the only thing you hear are his guests laughing. No noisy motors. It doesn’t disturb the tranquility of this end of the lake at all.”
“Do you want to call and let him know we’re coming over?” Drake asked.
“I think we should just walk over. The exercise will do me good. And he’ll be less likely to come up with a reason why he can’t be bothered today.”
Bradford led them back through the house, then they walked to the road that led to the estate next door. The late morning sun had taken the chill out of the alpine air and the calls of blue jays in the pines overhead followed them along the way.
The long driveway that meandered down to Klein’s house passed a waterfall flowing over a massive rock formation and into a pond surrounded by golden aspens. Fifty yards ahead were the courtyard and the covered entry that led to the mansion’s front door. To the right, the driveway curved away from a four-car garage to the small guest house set back in the pine trees.
Drake had stopped to look down at the red and white koi swimming in the pond when he heard a motorcycle roar to life around the side of the garage. When it came speeding into view and raced up the driveway toward them, the rider leaning low behind the windscreen, he grabbed Strobel’s arm and pulled her off the driveway. At the same time, Bradford jumped to the other side. As they spun around to watch, the rider accelerated up the long driveway. When he reached the road, he dropped his left knee and made a tight racing turn to the left and sped away.
Drake shook his head. “You were right Bill,” he said. “Your neighbor isn’t very friendly.”
“That wasn’t Klein! He’s six-seven or eight and heavy. And it wasn’t Robert Parker, either. I don’t know who that was.”
“Whoever it was,” Strobel said, rubbing her arm where Drake had grabbed her, “he certainly didn’t seem too concerned about our safety. I hope your neighbor’s a better host.”
Drake took the lead and started toward Klein’s house. “Let’s find out.”
Bradford pressed the button beside the massive front door. They heard the chimes inside and stood patiently, waiting to introduce themselves and ask if either Klein or Robert Parker had time to speak with them. After several minutes, he tried again. Still no one came to the door.
“Let’s walk around back,” Bradford said. “If he’s out on the rear terrace or out on his yacht, he might not hear us.”
A brick walkway took them around to the rear of the house and an empty flagstone rear terrace. There wasn’t anyone out on the pier, either. Bradford looked around and shook his head.
“He could be out on his yacht. Want me to go check?” Drake offered.
“Yeah” Bradford said. “And let me go peek in the windows. He has a game room back here, with an antique pool table he loves. He could be playing pool with Parker.”
Drake stood beside Strobel on the terrace as she looked out on the vast blue waters of the lake. “This is simply stunning,” she murmured. “It’s so quiet. You can hear the wind in the top of the pine trees.”
Bradford’s booming voice changed her peaceful mood. “Drake, come see this!”
Chapter 53
Looking in the window, they saw two men sitting in two blood-red leather arm chairs. Blood was trailing down their faces. Each man had a round hole in his right temple. On the hardwood floor beside their chairs lay two snub-nosed revolvers.
Drake tried the door that opened onto the terrace. It was unlocked. Stepping inside, he motioned for Bradford and Strobel to wait as he listened for the sound of anyone else in the house.
“Liz,” he said half a minute later, “help me clear the house. Bill, looks like suicides, so search for a note. It might tell us what’s going on here.”
It took them ten minutes to complete a cursory search of the four large suites upstairs, the gourmet kitchen and dining area, the pool room and library, the utility room and the four-car garage. When they returned to the great room, they found Bradford studying an open laptop sitting on a coffee table in front of the fireplace.
When he looked up, the color drained from his well-tanned face. “According to this,” he nodded at the screen on the laptop, “they were remorseful over a plan to crash the energy grid and cause a nation-wide blackout. They wanted to show the country the importanc
e of using more solar energy.”
“You mean they killed themselves over something they were planning?” Strobel asked.
“This suggests that it’s more than just a plan,” Bradford said as he took a screenshot of the suicide note with his iPhone. “It’s something that’s about to happen.”
“What exactly does it say?” Drake said.
Bradford read the suicide note aloud.
We should never have let it go this far and for that we are supremely sorry. When the lights go out all over the country, we just wanted people to know they could have avoided the misery by using free energy from the sun. But we never meant for anyone to die. It’s out of our hands now, but it’s not too late to prove how sorry we are. Please forgive us.
Strobel shook her head and walked close enough to read it for herself. “This can’t be real,” she said.
“It’s apparently real enough for them to kill themselves,” Drake said. “Bill, could they really pull this off? Cause a nationwide blackout?”
“It’s possible,” Bradford said. “They were smart guys. But they didn’t have access to the grid. To cause a blackout all over the country, they would need to attack a number of strategic utilities that have sophisticated anti-virus systems. Some of the smaller utilities aren’t up to speed yet, but if they went dark, it wouldn’t bring down the whole grid.”
“You said they didn’t have access to the grid,” Drake said. “Who does?”
Bradford thought for a minute. “Well, the new ‘smart grid’ will link most of the country’s power grid to the Internet, so a cyber attack that penetrated the IT security program of a major utility would provide system-wide access. That’s what we’ve been working on with our software—a way to prevent such an attack via the Internet. Also, anyone who supplied key components like transformers would have access. But that supplier would have to sabotage all the transformers in the country so they’d malfunction at the same time for that to work.”
“And these guys didn’t supply components to utilities. Right?”
“I would know about it if they did.”
“Then we’re missing something.” Drake looked around the room again. “Aside from this suicide note saying they wanted to bring down the country’s electric power supply, the closest they were to having access to the grid was Klein being your neighbor.”
“And,” Strobel cut in, “referring the guy who just left your employment. The one we came here to ask Parker about.”
Drake turned to stare at her for a long moment. “Yeah. It fits. Bill’s manager is murdered and replaced. Anthony Capelli is referred to EIS by Parker.” He pointed to the dead man. “Capelli gains access to the power grid by working on the software Bill’s developing. Capelli plants a worm the infected software is installed throughout the grid. And then the lights go out when the worm is activated.”
“No way!” Bradford almost yelled. “We tested and retested that software. We would know if it carried any malware.”
Drake shook his head. “Wasn’t Capelli on the team that did the testing?”
“He was, yes. But he wasn’t alone on the team.”
“Could he have planted malware in the software after you finished your tests?”
“He wouldn’t have had time. We finished testing and he quit the next morning.”
“Just the same, I think you should have your IT security analyst take another look.”
When Bradford walked out onto the terrace to call his analyst, Drake turned to Strobel. “Who do you want to call first about Klein and Parker?”
“Local law enforcement can handle the investigation for now,” she said. “They’ll want to know why we’re here. And what the suicide note’s about. I can truthfully say I don’t know. All I know is that Bill just flew here to see if Klein or Parker knew where he could find Capelli and we tagged along. I don’t want to cause a panic just yet. Let’s not have any speculating about a blackout until Bill confirms that there really is a problem.”
“If there is,” Drake said, “I’m going after Capelli. Five people have died since I arrived in San Francisco a week ago. Mike was poisoned. And now this. If Capelli’s the guy who just rode out of here on his motorcycle, then this is bigger than just Klein and Parker’s crazy plan.”
Chapter 54
By the time the detectives from the Washoe County Sheriff’s Office responded to the call about two dead bodies at the Klein estate on Crystal Bay, Saleem Canaan, aka Anthony Capelli, was back in his room at Harveys Lake Tahoe.
He’d parked his motorcycle in the parking garage adjacent to the casino and, in case they came looking for it, covered it with a stretch-fit motorcycle cover. Seeing the attorney with his former employer at the mansion as he was leaving, he knew they would find the bodies of the two CEO’s. That meant Walker’s plan to paint a picture of a remorseful double-suicide would probably fail. The immediate decision he had to make was whether to tell Walker that he’d been seen.
As far as he knew, Walker was the only one who knew his real name, but there was no reason to think that Walker would give him up and risk having his relationship with Hezbollah discovered. Walker liked being the puppet master who made things go smoothly for the cartels and his clients in the Middle East. Being recognized as such would paint a big red bullseye on the Alliance and its financial empire.
But as he had discovered when Walker had betrayed the mastermind behind the plan to blow up a dam in Oregon the month before, the leader of the Alliance was not to be trusted. He would easily play one client against another if it suited his purpose and, in this matter, the sacrifice of one young Hezbollah commander to keep from being named America’s most wanted terrorist was not hard to imagine.
Standing at the window of his suite and gazing out over the lake without really seeing it, Canaan decided there was no reason to alarm Walker that his plan would fail when there was a chance it wouldn’t. The authorities might conclude it actually was a double suicide, especially if Walker had planted the evidence in their offices as he had promised.
Killing them had been easier than he’d expected. He had given them the chance to end their own lives at the moment of their own choosing. That way, he had not been forced to make it look like they had killed each other. They had accepted the bargain. All he’d had to do then was taunt them about being remembered as men who didn’t have the guts to kill themselves before their horrific crime was discovered.
Klein had broken first. What he’d said was that the thought of his father believing he’d been a coward and a failure was more than he could stand. The other man hadn’t said a word when Klein pulled the trigger. He had just watched, looking like a man standing on the gallows as the black hood was pulled down over his head. And then he had lifted his own gun.
Canaan had, of course, worn surgical gloves inside the mansion, so there was no trace of him anywhere, not on the two guns or the laptop where he’d left the suicide note. The only evidence that he’d been there was those three people walking down the driveway. Canaan laughed out loud. They might suspect that he’d been involved in the murders, but when all the forensic evidence established that each man had held his own gun, there would be no way to prove it. The problem, however, was the damn attorney.
Canaan turned away from the window. Walker would be waiting for his report, but Canaan put some ice in his tumbler and refilled it with two fingers of good Scotch whiskey before he called. He waited for Walker’s bodyguard to answer the phone, then asked to speak with his boss.
“Mr. Canaan, how’s the weather at the lake?”
“It’s fine here, Mr. Walker. But I can see some dark clouds at the other end.”
“How unfortunate for those living there, I suppose. Will you be returning here?”
“I hadn’t planned to. Why?”
“I’m having a guest for dinner I’d like you to meet. He’s the one our two friends ca
lled on to solicit my help.”
“Do you think it’s a good idea for me to meet him?”
“I think it would benefit us both if you did. He’s been seen with our two friends too many times. Dinner is at eight. Come early and you can tell me about your trip.”
Canaan returned to look out the window again. He knew who had referred Klein and Parker to Walker in exchange for a healthy campaign contribution. He was a U.S. Congressman his cartel connection was fond of saying was “in the bag.” Now Walker apparently wanted him to disappear.
Walker was tying up loose ends, just as he had with the two solar CEO’s. This meant that he, Canaan, would be the only person left who knew what Walker had done. He would have to very careful that he wasn’t the one blamed for killing the cartel’s favorite politician. If he was, he wouldn’t have to worry about Walker tying up the last loose end. The cartel would do it for him.
Chapter 55
After giving their statements to the Sheriff’s detectives at the Klein estate and making a quick drive back to the South Lake Tahoe airport, Bill Bradford received the bad news. The ‘smart grid’ security software EIS had just shipped out was infected with a sophisticated worm.
Drake listened to the call on the cabin headphones they were all wearing in the Cirrus SR22. “How bad is it?” he asked.
“If this is what we think it is, it’s as bad as it gets. Some of the code Lewiston mentioned is from the Flame worm that was used against Iran’s nuclear program. That worm is huge. Some 70,000 lines of code. And it’s very sophisticated. We’re still studying it, and we’re not even sure we understand everything it’s capable of doing.” He sighed. “The good news is that a removal tool for the Stuxnet exists. If we can get the word out soon enough, we can prevent this thing from being installed and infecting our clients’ IT systems. If not, we’ll have to send the removal tool out and hope it’s effective against this variant of the worm.”
Dark Trojan (The Adam Drake series Book 3) Page 16
