“And RIO will pay you for this job,” Tolman said. “I know you’re here for me, but we can pay you.”
“Don’t need any more money. I can help, but I don’t need money.” He looked out the window. “Hope no one tries to hurt that little boy.”
“They better not,” she said.
“He’s different,” Sharp said. “He doesn’t talk.”
“He has autism and yes, he’s nonverbal.”
Sharp waited, then said, “I guess I’m verbal, but I don’t really talk either.”
Tolman reached out and put her hand over Sharp’s much larger one. Sharp looked down at their hands.
“So maybe you and Andrew understand each other,” Tolman said.
“Maybe,” Sharp said. “I don’t think very many people understand him.”
Tolman nodded. “But not many people understand you, either.” Sharp dropped his eyes and Tolman added, “Sorry. You know what I mean, Darrell. I understand you.” She squeezed his hand, looking up at him. “We’re not going to let anything happen to each other, right? Just like old times.”
“Yeah,” he said. “And the little boy, too.”
Tolman turned back to her computer screen and started a preliminary search for Panhandle Mining Company. The local address was a post office box in Turkey. The company was a Delaware corporation, created just over five years ago and privately held by another corporation. And so it went. She wanted to see the bank accounts, but didn’t know how—that was Kerry Voss’s job.
Tolman flinched at the thought of her friend. She still didn’t know what had happened to Voss. She could be anywhere. She could be dead. Given the propensities these people had already shown for violence, Tolman had to accept it as a real possibility.
Please, not Kerry, she thought. Too many good people have died already.
* * *
Two hours later, the others were still at the pool. “I hope you used sunscreen,” Tolman said as she walked up to them.
“Always,” Journey said. He’d been swimming laps, pausing to play hand games with Andrew—touch each finger, fold it in, then do a fist bump when they were all folded. Andrew held his hand out to his father again and again. “Find anything?”
“Yeah,” Tolman said. Sharp was right behind her, gun on his hip. Deputy Hills, still under the umbrella, looked him up and down but said nothing. Tolman kicked off her tennis shoes and socks, rolled up the legs of her pants, and dangled her feet in the water.
“Come on in,” Sandra said.
“Not much of a swimmer,” Tolman said. “I like water in bottles, mostly.” She looked at Journey. “I believe what your guy said about a treasure greater than is to believed, or whatever it was.”
Journey stopped in mid hand game. Andrew frowned but didn’t vocalize. “What?” Journey said.
“They have taken one hell of a lot of silver out of the ground here in the last four years,” Tolman said.
“Yes?”
“Last year this mine produced forty-two million ounces of silver.”
Sandra took off her sunglasses and looked at Tolman. “How does that compare to other producers?”
“All the other silver producers in the United States combined produced thirty-eight million ounces.”
“More than the entire national output,” Journey said, color draining from his face.
“Anyone know the price of silver?” Sandra said.
“Lots of things affect it,” Tolman said, splashing her feet a bit. The water felt good on her ankles. “Inflation, debt ceilings, the currency markets, and of course, Economics 101…”
“Supply and demand,” Journey said. “I’m willing to bet that with this mine more than doubling the available supply, the price has gone down in the last few years.”
“It has. But you know how supply and demand goes. In the last few years before this mine opened, production had been declining, and so the price on the COMEX division of the New York Mercantile Exchange had gone up steadily. That’s where the industry says that silver has ‘strong fundamentals.’” She smiled. “In English, of course, that means it costs more per ounce. At the time the mine here started producing, the price was around thirty-five dollars an ounce. Now it’s dropped to about twenty dollars.”
“But still—,” Journey said.
“Right. Forty million ounces, at twenty dollars, is eight hundred million dollars.”
Sandra drew in a breath. Journey said, “My God, Meg.”
“Multiply that by four years,” Tolman said, “and it’s three point two billion dollars. That’s billion with a B. Someone’s getting rich.”
Journey swam to the edge of the pool, where Sandra and Tolman sat. “The question is, who? Where does all that money go? Is this the account that transferred funds to the April 19 guy and—”
Tolman cleared her throat, cutting her eyes toward the silent deputy under the pool umbrella.
“I need Kerry’s expertise,” Tolman said, “and I don’t have it. All those bank account numbers are gibberish to me.”
“You still haven’t heard from her,” Sandra said. A statement, not a question.
“No, and I checked with my dad three more times. He’s on high alert, and he and his FBI buddy searched the area around the building. There’s nothing.” Tolman dipped her hand in the water and rubbed it over her face, letting droplets run down her chin. “If something happens to Kerry … I just keep thinking about her three little kids. I had them all over to dinner at my dad’s house a couple of times. We played Boggle and Yahtzee. Kerry’s ten-year-old daughter beat my dad at Boggle every time.” Tolman ran her hand over her face again. “I have to find Kerry. How was RIO’s network compromised? Who was in it? Why, Ann Gray, of course, or Diane Corbin, or whatever the hell her name is.”
“But we still don’t know that,” Journey said. “We don’t know what Gray is.”
“No, and my RACER search still has too many hits. The name’s too damn common. In a case like this RACER is almost too good a search engine. I’ve referenced it with ‘manager’ and with ‘freelance’ and with ‘freelance operator’ and with ‘silver.’ Thousands of hits. On the other end of it, I’ve referenced it with the names of all the Cables and April 19. Nothing there.”
“Assassin,” Sandra said, then lowered her head. “God, I can’t believe I’m thinking this way.”
“What?” Tolman said.
“You’ve entered all these mundane titles to cross-reference her name,” Sandra said. “That’s what she called herself when you talked to her, right? Manager, operator, all that? But what if she’s behind all these killings? Wouldn’t someone like that show up in your government databases? Cross-reference her name with the word ‘assassin’ or ‘murder.’ “
“Yes,” Tolman said. She drew her feet out of the water, pushed herself up, and took off for her room at a dead run.
CHAPTER
31
Duke spent his time alone and liked it that way, but he couldn’t stand silence. Usually he ran the TV, his iPod, streamed videos, even ran the dishwasher and clothes dryer for noise. Occasionally he had several of them going at once.
As Sunday afternoon clicked into evening, the TV was on full blast. Some incarnation of “Law and Order” was on, as it usually was. He’d seen most of them by now and could recite the dialogue almost as well as Jerry Orbach and Sam Waterston, but he watched them anyway. It was better than silence.
The seven grayed-out numbers had vexed him, and he had hacked into several federal government agencies already, browsing through their financials to see if the numbers matched. He’d barely moved from his chair since Kerry Voss called. He hoped she was okay. He hoped he could help her.
But the numbers stayed hidden from him. He’d tried the obvious choices for security-conscious departments, like Defense, Justice, and Homeland Security, then started on Energy, Commerce, Treasury, and on down the line. He was careful to shield himself when he was in the different departments’ networks, and he didn’t s
tay inside and poke around for fun as he did sometimes. Kerry was depending on him, and the longer he was in, the greater the chances he would be seen. Voss knew how to do some of this, but mainly she was on the up-and-up, and didn’t go hacking. That’s why she kept him around.
None of the numbers matched, and Duke’s eyes were getting tired. He opened a Diet Mountain Dew and thought about what he’d already done. He’d tried all the cabinet-level agencies. He’d tried the FBI, the CIA … he didn’t try NSA. No one could hack the NSA and he didn’t even try. He’d spent hours, and Kerry was … God only knew where she was.
Duke glanced at the TV. Now President Mendoza was on the screen, a replay of a speech he’d given earlier in the day about those buildings that had been blown up. People are crazy, Duke thought. Thank God he stayed in his apartment where it was safe.
Duke patted his pants legs. He knew what Voss wanted him to do: find those account numbers and call Meg Tolman when he figured it out. It sounded so simple.
Mendoza was talking about “justice being served” and “hunting down the cowards” and words like that. It was what politicians always said when these things happened. But Duke liked Mendoza. Liked him a lot better than the last one, Harwell, who had died last year. Duke had read all about Mendoza after he became president—he’d been raised in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he worked in his grandparents’ restaurant from the time he was twelve years old. He’d had real jobs, not like Harwell—or most politicians, for that matter. Plus, the president wasn’t afraid to wear glasses. A lot of them thought it ruined their looks, but Mendoza was honest about the fact that he was blind as a bat.
The president kept talking, and Duke kept patting his legs. Then he thought, Oh, what the hell? Better cover the bases.
The White House’s network was better protected than most, but not as well as NSA’s. It took nearly an hour, but he found his way in. The financials were a little trickier, because the White House budget came from different “pots” of money, but he could see the list of accounts. Nothing there. Then he tried clicking on a subdirectory and found it empty.
Duke frowned.
He returned to the root directory and checked the code, made sure the path was right. The path had been changed, and it went deeper into several layers of the network. Now his natural curiosity was up. He wanted to see what was there, what had once rested in the empty subdirectory.
Four layers deeper, he saw the complete number, and the seven digits were clear. It was a match.
“Well, fuck me,” Duke whispered.
The account Kerry Voss had been searching for belonged to the White House. A black, off-the-books account, buried deep.
And there had been a shitload of money in it.
Until yesterday.
All the money had been transferred out of the account, and it was now closed. He couldn’t see where the money had gone. It was just … gone.
The clock on the computer said it was 10:21 P.M. He’d been at this all day. He glanced over at the TV. The anchors were talking in urgent tones. A BREAKING NEWS banner scrolled across the top of the screen.
There were images of buildings in flames, all with the word “LIVE” in one corner of the picture. Duke grabbed the remote and turned up the volume even further.
“… have struck again,” said the male anchor. “The militant antigovernment group April 19 is claiming credit for a string of bombings in six American cities tonight. Within the last few minutes, facilities housing federal offices in Portland, Oregon, Buffalo, New York, Chico, California, St. Petersburg, Florida, Nashua, New Hampshire, and Duluth, Minnesota, have exploded.”
The graphic identified the young anchor as Megan Nguyen. “But these are not all federal buildings. Security at most federal office buildings across the country has been ramped up since Friday night’s bombings in Cleveland, Kansas City, and Albuquerque. These are all smaller facilities, usually satellite offices with only a few employees. Offices range from the Social Security Administration to the Department of Agriculture to military recruitment centers. The blasts happened at exactly ten P.M. eastern daylight time, and it’s going to be a while before we know an injury or death toll.”
“That’s right, Megan,” said the male anchor, a bland, middle-aged white guy. “April 19, in an e-mail to CNN tonight, has claimed credit. And once again they use the phrase, ‘We are April 19. Maybe now the U.S. government and those who conduct business on its behalf will get the message.’ That’s the exact wording from Friday night’s e-mail as well.”
“We’re starting to get some casualty reports,” the woman said, touching her ear.
Duke watched as the screen changed from one city to the next. “In St. Petersburg, the offices were next door to a popular local sports bar, and as of right now, at least twenty-seven are reported dead there. We’re told that the bar is ordinarily empty on Sunday nights, but a large private party was going on at the time of the explosion. Fortunately, the late hour on a weekend night means there were not a lot of people in most of the other blast areas. We’re hearing of one dead in Portland, three in Duluth, and three in Nashua. Is April 19 finished with their reign of terror? Derek, that remains to be seen.”
“Wow,” Duke said, and he was glad, again, that he never left his apartment.
He wondered if President Mendoza would be making another speech, a live statement from the White House.
The White House.
The thought jarred him away from the bombings on the TV to the account he’d uncovered. He grabbed the phone and scrolled through his address book until he found Meg Tolman. Duke had only talked to her once, when Kerry arranged a conference call last fall. But Kerry liked her, and she was RIO’s boss now, and Kerry had said to call her.
The White House, Duke thought, his thoughts racing wildly, bouncing like a ball in an old-fashioned pinball machine, as he looked at the images of the burning buildings on his TV.
* * *
The sun was finally going down across the Texas high plains as Tolman flipped the laptop open again and logged into RACER. Across the motel courtyard, Andrew and his father and Sandra Kelly were getting out of the pool. Andrew jumped up and down while his father dried him.
RACER took its time coming up, and Tolman could barely type fast enough to enter Ann Gray’s name and the word “assassin.”
Searching. Please wait.
The motel’s wireless wasn’t particularly fast, so this might take a few hours. But while Sandra’s idea was a good one, Tolman was still bothered by various aspects of the whole dynamic. Ann Gray had insisted she didn’t kill Dana or Jim Cable, but she was silent about Barry.
Next on the list was opening the file Barry had sent to his brother.
My damn list is getting longer, she thought.
She could have delegated some of these tasks to other people in the RIO office. They were capable, intelligent, dedicated people, and this was now an official RIO case.
But she couldn’t.
She had to handle it, for Dana. And for Kerry Voss. Tolman squeezed her eyes closed, trying not to think about what might have happened to Voss.
The phone rang. The caller ID read, “Duke.”
Voss’s hacker.
“Yes?” she said as she reached for the phone. She didn’t know if Duke was his first or last name, and she’d never seen him face to face. He was a strange guy, but Voss trusted him implicitly.
“Umm, is this Meg Tolman?”
“Hello, Duke.”
“This is Duke— oh, okay. I guess you saw the caller ID. Umm, Kerry called me—”
“She called you? Was she okay? Where is she?”
Duke sounded rattled. “I don’t know. I mean, yes, she called me, but I don’t know where she is. There’s this code we worked out a long time ago, for when she was in trouble.”
“Where is she, Duke? Please tell me you know where she is.” Tolman kept her voice tightly controlled.
“I … I don’t know. She just called … well, she
was working on something—”
“I know what she was working on. She was trying to find an account for me.”
“Okay, yeah. Well, I did a screen capture and then I found it. So, see, I had to go through these layers—”
“Duke.”
“Yeah, I get you. Okay. Umm, well, the account is really deep, like an off-the-books thing. And you know where it is? The White House.”
“Oh, shit,” Tolman said. “Goddamn, motherfucking, shit.”
“Yeah,” Duke said. “Um, Ms. Tolman? Or can I call you Meg?”
“What?”
“And the account is closed. It was closed yesterday morning. All the money’s gone out of it. There was a lot of money there.”
“Can you find it?”
“Well, yeah, but it’ll take some time.”
“Do it. Duke, how much money was in there?”
“It was, like, five hundred and eighty-three million dollars, plus change.”
Sandra and the two Journeys had come up from the pool and entered the room next door. The night deputy stayed outside. Sharp sat unmoving, silent as stone, on the bed behind Tolman.
“That’s a lot of money,” Duke said.
“Yes.” The White House. The money tied the leader of April 19 to the White House. They’d both received funds from the same account. And now the money was gone from the White House.
This is insane. This is black-helicopter stuff. There has to be another layer, another connection somewhere.
Ann Gray. Diane Corbin.
She tied it all together. She was the missing piece. She was the unknown.
Duke said something else.
“What?” Tolman said.
“I said, does this help Kerry?”
“God, I hope so. Find that money for me, Duke.”
Tolman disconnected the call.
She hoped Kerry Voss was still alive, and able to be helped.
Ann Gray. The Cables. The file that Barry had sent …
Tolman dropped the phone. Journey appeared in the doorway, Andrew bouncing up and down behind him. She snatched the phone from the floor and hit the redial button.
“Yo,” Duke said.
Silver Cross Page 22
