by Meg Gardiner
“I see.” Sensing that she was watching for my approval, I declined to give it. “What about heat and corrosion?”
“We’re temperature-controlled, ’round the clock. The canisters are acetone-free.”
“Good.” I kept my expression flat. “I guess my basic question is about overall security.”
“Oh.” She tilted her head, puzzled. “If you’re worried about theft, it isn’t really a problem. Most of our work is rescuing or remastering old recordings. I mean, they’re primarily out of copyright. With compilations and spoken-word recordings, piracy isn’t a big issue. Really delicate or rare stuff, like live performances by famous jazz artists—that’s why we have the vault.”
“Naturally.”
I thought I got it: This outfit archived luxury and specialty items, things that rich investors or well-endowed museums would pay a lot for—which explained why it was here in a swanky skyscraper instead of an industrial building in the burbs.
“And as far as the vault—I guess you don’t worry about robbers jackhammering through the floor above to gain access,” I said.
“I see your point. But we don’t hold cash or bullion. It’s a fire vault. Metal floor with seismic reinforcement. Protects against flame, flood, or earthquake.” She looked at me askance. “Wasn’t all this explained when you signed up for archiving services?”
“I didn’t take a tour.” I kept the suspicious face, relying on attitude. “When you store something contentious you want to make sure it’s properly protected.”
“Contentious?”
“Disputed. That’s part of your service. Right?”
“The escrow service, you mean?”
“As it was explained to me, you’ll hold things that are contested in inheritance or ownership disputes. . . .”
“Yeah. Or things that might be used as evidence in a court case. So we’re careful to maintain chain-of-custody procedures.”
“Good.”
We reached the vault. Manga Barbie put herself between me and the door. “We typically provide vault services to law firms and auction houses. And excuse me, but if that’s your key, how come you don’t know squat about Crescendo?”
So much for bluffing. I didn’t have time to try anything else.
“Because it’s not my key.”
Her eyebrows shot up behind her horn-rims. “What?”
“The box is a friend’s. I’m here at their behest.”
“This is irregular. How come your friend isn’t here?”
“I appreciate your caution, but I presume that the services Crescendo provides its clients include discretion. And privacy.”
She blushed. After looking at the floor for a moment, she pulled the door wide.
Lockboxes filled the vault. I handed over the key and she unlocked box 357, slid it out, and handed it to me. It was the size of a manuscript container. I set it on a table in the corner.
“Call when you’re finished,” she said, and left me alone.
Palms sweating, I sat down and opened the box.
9
Sitting in the vault staring at Jax’s safe-deposit box, I told myself to stay cool. Outside in the music archive, Manga Barbie stood drinking a Starbucks coffee. “Give it Away” was cranking on the sound system. Resting in front of me was a fat manila envelope. Inside it was the ticket to my father’s freedom.
I tore the envelope open and pulled out a heavy paperback book.
I stared at the stone graveyard statue on the cover, baffled. She had to be kidding.
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.
The book was dog-eared, the spine cracked, the cover held closed by thick rubber bands. I peered in the envelope. Nothing else was inside.
I pulled off the rubber bands and opened the book. Title page, table of contents: “Destination Unknown,” “Gun-play,” “And the Angels Sing” . . . No note, no remarks scribbled in the margins, no letters highlighted. If a code lay hidden in this four-hundred-page Southern gothic tale, I was in trouble. Jax had a degree in linguistics. I figured that meant she was more adept than I at manipulating language. And I earn my living manipulating language. I picked up the book and fanned the pages.
Oh.
There in chapter seventeen was a chunk of hollowed-out pages. Just big enough to hide the tiny computer flash drive.
I tipped it into my palm. Smaller than a stick of gum, according to the marking on the silver case it had eight gigs of memory. That was plenty to contain DVD-quality video. It was strung on a chain, together with a religious medallion. The sight of the Madonna and child was as disconcerting as anything. I pulled my computer from my backpack. Manga Barbie, now talking on the phone, shot a glance my way.
A hollowed-out book; I half smiled. Jax was old-school.
Or a joker. Chapter seventeen: “A Hole in the Floor.” My computer fired up.
Lavonne paced. “The kill chain.”
“It’s the target cycle. Find, track, target, and kill,” Jesse said.
She glowered out the window. “And he meant—”
“Nothing good.”
Her expression said, No kidding. “Keeping Evan clear is no longer an option.”
“So I have to stop her.”
His tone was measured, but she raised her hands, trying to slow him down. “You can’t tell her.”
“If I do, I can get her to—”
“No. This information is privileged. You cannot disclose it. Period.”
He raked his hands through his hair. “Then I have to get her off the street somehow, because I don’t know if I can reach her again.”
“This is a raw, gut reaction. Aside from whether you can actually stop Evan, do you—”
“Nobody can do it but me. Not and keep Phil’s message confidential.”
She shook her head. “You’re setting yourself up for disaster. You have a huge potential conflict of interest.”
“Phil spent his final seconds of freedom sending me this message. No way am I going to sit here pondering the niceties of conflict-of-interest law.” He spread his hands flat on her desk. “He was clear. Do this to protect his family.”
“He’s your client, not your commanding officer. You don’t take orders from him.”
“It’s not an order. It’s a call to action.”
She held his gaze.
“I know Evan’s trying to save her dad, but she doesn’t understand how bad things are,” he said. “I have to stop her from getting this information.”
She took off her glasses and tossed them on her desk. Rubbing her eyes, she said, “I know.”
Gratitude and adrenaline hit him all at once. “What do you want me to do about Nicholas Gray?”
“Let me make the next move.” Her expression soured. “Threatening your brother will not stand.”
Lavonne called herself a tough little broad from Philly, but tough and righteous was the crux of it. She would go to the mat for Jesse. He nodded his thanks.
“Get out of here,” she said.
My computer booted. With luck I could not only examine the information on the flash drive; I could copy it and even forward it—to Sanchez Marks, and to Rio Sanger. I was willing to bet that Crescendo had a wireless network. I wouldn’t have to spend time driving someplace to deliver it. One click and I could get to Dad.
My screen came up. I jacked the flash drive into the computer. The drive lit red, flickering on and off.
And in less time than it took to inhale, the red light vanished and my screen went black.
Jet black. No cursor. Nothing at all, except . . . at the top left corner of the screen, in tiny white machine-script letters, a single word.
Root_
This couldn’t be good. I ran my hand over the track pad. I hit escape. I hit return. I tried to quit. Nothing happened.
Damn. Computers aren’t my métier. They’re great for online research and for finding high-resolution photos of the U.S. men’s Olympic swim team, but when they go hay-wire I’m useles
s. Fix one? I stood a better chance of landing the space shuttle. I smacked the side of the monitor with my hand.
Root_
Jax, what did I do? What do I do now?
Peering out the door, I waved to Manga Barbie. “Kani?”
She looked up from her phone call. “Done?”
“No, computer question. What do you do”—when you’ve totally screwed yourself?—“when your screen goes black and you get the message ‘Root’?”
Looking nonplussed, she adjusted her glasses and called the question to a colleague across the room. “Try typing ‘Logout.’ ”
“Thanks.” I did it.
For a moment the screen stayed black. Then text bloomed, the tiny white machine letters multiplying in long strings of script, filling the screen and starting to scroll. I blinked, fingers hovering above the keyboard. The letters multiplied into words and nonsensical verb strings, scrolling faster, as if they were alphabet bacteria running amok.
Abruptly, the letter train stopped running. Below the profusion of text, at the bottom of the screen a single word winked at me.
Loading_
I held my breath. The machine script vanished and on the screen a video faded in. Staring straight at me was my not-friend Jakarta Rivera.
“If you’re watching this, then you’re after the Riverbend records.”
She spoke with an arctic calm that sent a needle climbing my spine. Manga Barbie looked my way, curious. I grabbed some headphones from my backpack and plugged them into the computer so she couldn’t overhear. Jax’s voice came in, blade-smooth.
“In that case you’d better be damned sure these records are what you want, because from this point, it’s the whole shebang.”
She was sitting in a teak-paneled room with amber light flowing from the sconces in the wall behind her. Hands folded on the desk in front of her. Pearls on her ears and at her throat, dressed as if for a diplomatic negotiation in a severe black suit with a daring neckline. Feline self-assurance. Heat in her eyes so primal, it approached blood-lust. The effect was Condi Rice meets Kill Bill.
“If you want to stop now, eject the flash drive,” she said. “You have ten seconds to consider it. After that, you’re in.”
Slowly I breathed. Riverbend: I’d heard the word repeatedly. From Tim North. And from the slutty voice on a dead man’s cell phone. I was in.
Jax said, “All right. You want it, you’ll get it. The whole shooting match.”
Her expression hadn’t changed, but her tone seemed tinged with regret. It occurred to me that she didn’t know it was me watching this video.
“When I went to Colombia twelve years ago, I didn’t expect it to be my last federally funded assignment. Even if I was a NOC, out there on my own.”
She pronounced it knock—nonofficial cover, a covert operative posted abroad without any diplomatic protection. The needle pricked its way along my spine.
“And for so many months the mission went well. Gathering information, cultivating assets. Pure humint, highly valuable. I was damned good. The film footage and still photos back me up on that. Doing my part in the war on drugs, right up to the moment it turned into a tactical cluster fuck.”
Her face remained glacial. “You’re going to see all the footage. But you have to work for it.”
I sat forward.
“As soon as you typed ‘Logout,’ the flash drive loaded a program into your hard drive. When the ten-second mark passed, it activated.”
Uh-oh.
“Right now, it’s building the program it needs to decrypt and display the Riverbend file. However, the flash drive has only part of the information you need to do that.” She refolded her hands. “There’s more, and you have to go get it.”
No. I didn’t want to go anywhere else. I wanted this to be over, now. Before Dad died of dehydration, before the cops figured out that I’d taken the elevator up here and came storming in to arrest me.
“Jax, don’t do this.”
“A second flash drive will supply another chunk of source code. But you have to get it in time, or everything you’ve just downloaded will be corrupted. You won’t be able to reload it. Once this program launched, the flash drive attached to your computer was wiped and overwritten. Every bit of information it contained is now on your machine. It can’t be copied. It can’t be attached and forwarded to somebody else.”
“Dammit.”
The heat in her eyes was unnerving. The whole shooting match.
“And it can’t stand on its own. You must get the next portion of source code or everything on your computer will be erased.”
“No. Jax—no.”
“I told you. In all the way.”
The machine script that had infested my screen was not lingual bacteria. It was a virus. And it was demanding, Feed me.
“The program is still building. The first chunk of footage will be available from this download in twelve hours. Get ready for Riovision.”
Twelve hours, not good.
“And before you try to hack this—don’t. You load the next section of code or you’ll be frosted out. You have to get all the flash drives in the right order, under the deadline. You can’t crack the program. Don’t try it. You don’t have time.”
I leaned on my elbows, clawing my fingers into my hair. Get them all?
“So saddle up. You want to know where you’re going?”
“Don’t screw with me any more than you already are,” I said.
“Look at the back cover of the paperback.”
I flipped it over.
“Bottom left, there’s a photo credit.”
My eyes ran down the page. Cover photograph: Bonaventure Cemetery, Savannah.
“No,” I said. “No way. Don’t send me three thousand miles across the country—”
“Hit the escape key and type those words in. You’ll get the location.”
I did. My fingers felt numb.
Ajahn Niram
2 Sanamchai Road
Bangkok 10700
Thailand
“Take the book with you. Hang onto the medallion of La Virgen. You’ll need her.”
On the screen a new window appeared. It was a timer and it was running down: 29:59.00, 29:58.59.
Jax’s voice went flat. “Hit the road, Jack.”
10
Jamming everything into my backpack, I bolted out of the vault. I felt as though I were breaking out in a rash. Thirty hours to get a computer flash drive in Bangkok. Was Jax crazy?
I wanted to call somebody on the ground there, tell them to get this damned flash drive and FedEx it to me. But who was I kidding? I knew nobody in Southeast Asia. I had to go.
Thirty hours. In the background, the music segued to “Can’t Stop.” I glared at the speakers.
The thought of going halfway around the world gave me vertigo. I’d never been to the Far East. For all I knew, west of Hawaii the earth ended, and everything I’d been told of this continent called Asia had been invented from whole cloth by jokers at National Geographic magazine. What the hell did I know about Thailand? Not a word of the language. Not a clue whether Bangkok was a safe place for an American woman to travel alone. Nothing. Watching The King and I six times didn’t count as a mission briefing.
By the windows the Barbies and Kens were gathered, peering down. One pointed, and another stood on her toes for a better view. Passing by, I glanced out. The psychic rash reached my hair and fingertips.
Two police cars were parked farther down the block. A cop was walking up the sidewalk in this direction.
At the phone, Manga Barbie looked up sharply. “All set?”
I backed away from the window and hurried for the exit.
“Yes. Thanks for your time.”
On the way through the lobby, the church lady smiled from beneath her turquoise headdress and wished me a blessed day. “I’ll Fly Away” was playing.
Easier said than done. Riding the elevator down, I felt the weight of my infected computer in my bac
kpack. The spent flash drive hung along with the religious medallion on the chain around my neck. The Virgin Mary, bearing the Christ child: It was an image that beamed from plaster statues in ten thousand parish churches. What it had to do with Jakarta Rivera, patron saint of the devious, I couldn’t fathom. I checked the time: thirty minutes to the rendezvous with Tim.
The rest of my family had been to Thailand—my brother on R & R from carrier duty, my mother when she had worked as a flight attendant. And Dad, as the U.S. Attorney was wont to remind me. That thought had been catching in the back of my mind for the past few minutes. Dad had keepsakes from his trips there during his navy days. I recalled photos of him with service buddies, all with crew cuts and beers, smiling against a backdrop of coconut palms. A ceramic Buddha had occupied a place of affection on an end table in our living room. He was a jolly little guy. When Dad would come home at the end of the workday he unloaded his wallet and coins from his pockets next to it. I remember asking about the Buddha when I was little.
“He’s Thai,” Dad said. “From Siam. You rub his belly for good luck.”
Siam. As a child I had regarded it as so exotic it was almost magical.
All children grow up to comprehend that their parents aren’t who they think they are. That’s Freud for Dummies. But now I wondered if R & R on a white-sand beach was Dad’s only experience of Thailand. How many times had he been back, and what had he done there?
The elevator reached the ground floor. The doors opened to clacking heels and echoing conversation. Five feet into the lobby, I heard the scritch of a two-way radio. Fighting near-irresistible impulse, I kept my pace even. I cut my eyes left. Two LAPD officers stood talking to a security guard. I heard “woman” and “CCTV footage” and my blood pressure jumped. Don’t run. I focused on the far door and strode straight toward it. I walked out into the sunlight, one hand clutching the strap of my backpack, eyes on the path through the plaza gardens. I had made it. Now all I had was twenty-nine minutes to get through Century City and meet Tim at the Century Plaza Hotel.
