Point of Contact

by Mike Maden

  This was just the kind of dog-and-pony show Gerry Hendley had warned him about. There was something more they weren’t talking about, but he sure as hell was going to find out what it was.

  29

  Paul Brown played poker in college, shaking down wealthy Greeks in their smoke-filled fraternity basements and beer-soaked-carpeted game rooms across the Iowa State campus. He made enough to cover his books and tuition for two years and stopped only when a three-hundred-pound lineman threatened to break his spine after Paul relieved him of five hundred dollars in a single hand.

  His keen numbers brain allowed him to accurately calculate the odds in a hand, but he excelled at the game because he knew that in poker you don’t play the cards, you play the man, and Paul had developed the world’s stoniest poker face. A poker face he had used to great effect today.

  The first time he used it was when Bai appeared in the office with the encrypted USB drive Yong had promised and handed it to Paul. He took it as nonchalantly as if Bai had handed him a glass of tepid tap water. Inwardly, Paul was dancing for joy. He was now decidedly one step closer to fulfilling his mission for the CIA.

  Coolly and calmly, Paul began downloading data from the Dalfan computer to the Dalfan USB, then loading that data onto his laptop. His own machine didn’t require the encrypted passcodes on the Dalfan drive, so it ignored them.

  Bai tried stealing glances over Paul’s shoulder every now and then, on the pretense of stretching or fetching hot tea or office supplies. Bai’s job obviously was to get a sense of the kinds of files Paul was pulling down, but Paul shifted around in his chair and adjusted his posture to keep Bai at bay, and when that failed, he simply turned to the young accountant and said, “I’m sorry, but I need my privacy.”

  That was enough to get Bai to back off, but Paul knew that Bai wasn’t his only problem. Someone in the Dalfan accounting department was likely monitoring his work. If it were him, he would’ve set up some kind of remote mirroring program—the same kind that allows a technical-support person in Bangalore to conduct remote repairs on a client’s computer in Baltimore. Every file he opened, and every data set he pulled down from the Dalfan desktop, would’ve been seen and probably recorded by the remote observer.

  That was fine by Paul, because the important work he needed to do he accomplished on his private machine. Unfortunately for Dalfan, the security protocols that prevented Paul from logging on to their machines prevented Dalfan from logging on to his machine. Air-gapping worked in both directions. Acquiring the encrypted Dalfan USB drive allowed him to download their data onto his secure laptop.

  But the real reason why he wanted the drive was the drive itself. As soon as Bai left the room for his first bathroom break, Paul plugged the Dalfan drive into one of his laptop USB ports and screen-grabbed the make and model and stored it in a file. He needed that information if he wanted to go out and buy a duplicate one. He wasn’t sure that he even could; at this point, he was still improvising. Unfortunately, he still didn’t have any idea how to defeat the Dalfan drive’s encryption.

  In the meantime, he needed to keep his hand to the plow and try and find any fraud in the Dalfan books. He got back to his auditing work.

  —

  As the day wore on, Paul’s proprietary auditing screens had come up negative in his searches. For the most part, Dalfan appeared to be a well-run and highly profitable company. Yong and his team had done an excellent job organizing and maintaining their general ledger over the last five years.

  Bai’s eyes continued to flit between his own screen and Paul. Paul hid his disappointment behind his poker face. The joy of the job of a fraud examiner was the discovery of actual fraud. The hunter who came home from the field without the kill, or the lothario who didn’t have a woman to bring home to his bed, hadn’t the faintest glimmer of the kind of disappointment Paul felt when he couldn’t find the clues he needed to uncover the criminal act. But Paul felt it was generally bad form for a CFE to show that kind of disappointment when no fraud was found at a reputable firm, just as it was bad manners to gloat excessively when a crime was finally discovered.

  It had taken him years to realize that he loved the job because it was exactly like a game of poker, only harder, playing against a brilliant but unseen opponent holding a million invisible cards. Paul’s job was to play the man—or woman—but first he had to find out what the cards even were and to see what kind of hand his opponent was playing.

  After he and Bai went to lunch in the Dalfan cafeteria and devoured steaming bowls of dumpling soup and heaping plates of chicken and rice, Bai returned to one of his video games and Paul resumed his game of blind poker.

  An hour later, Bai glanced up from his screen. “Everything okay, Mr. Brown?”

  Paul Brown the poker player shrugged, fighting the joy welling up inside of him. One of Paul’s more mundane search screens had just signaled a hit.

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Find anything yet?”

  “No. So far, everything looks fine.”

  “Good.” Bai returned to his game.

  So did Paul.

  The search screen had pulled up the letter combination QC enough times to meet the screen’s frequency parameters. Paul naturally assumed it was an abbreviation for “quality control,” and Dalfan, apparently, was concerned with it. But what caught his attention were the document references pertaining to the QC hits. They didn’t square up with his idea of quality control, and he couldn’t reconcile their connection to particular budget documents.

  He dug a little more and discovered that much of Dalfan’s QC concerns were connected to certain items that it produced and sold to an importer in Shanghai that seemed equally concerned about quality control—in fact, no other company Dalfan did business with made any reference to Dalfan’s quality-control issues.

  Strange.

  Not that doing business with a Shanghai importer was a problem. Nor was the fact that the company exported its Dalfan products to the People’s Republic of China. The whole world traded with China, including the United States, which had been running chronic trade deficits with Beijing for decades, transferring hundreds of billions of dollars of wealth to the Communist dictatorship decade after decade, allowing them to grow their economy and expand their military at America’s expense.

  But as Calvin Coolidge once said, the business of America was business, and such matters were far beyond Paul’s pay grade.

  However, Lenin was only half right when he said that a capitalist would sell the rope to the Communist who would hang him with it. In fact, while the United States government was more than happy to foster trade with China, it took a dim view of exporting goods or services that directly affected American national and economic security.

  To that end, the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Science created and maintained the Commerce Control List (CCL), which listed thousands of general and specific items that could not be exported to problematic countries on the Commerce Countries Chart (CCC).

  Of course, the People’s Republic of China was on the CCC and there was at least one item listed on the CCL with the Export Control Classification Number 5A002.c, and that item had two letters in it: QC.

  It was probably just a coincidence, but it was the closest thing to a clue that he had come across in two days of searches, so he decided to keep digging. He never could confirm the meaning of QC in the Dalfan files, but his investigation led him to that obscure file with a running list of invoices and payments that didn’t quite make sense. It was just a thread. But sometimes pulling on a thread led to unraveling the whole suit.

  He flagged the file on the Dalfan mainframe and made a mental note to return to it later, when he had the time to chase it down.

  —

  The old Thai trainer was dark like mahogany, with a hard, round belly beneath his T-shirt and a bald head like the Buddha of Yong’s
childhood memory, the one on the shelf in his grandmother’s kitchen. Only the ageless Thai never smiled.

  Yong stood barefoot and shirtless in his bright yellow Muay Thai silk shorts, hands up, ready to launch against the thick square pads in the trainer’s skilled hands held up on either side of his head. The sinewy muscles in Yong’s torso and limbs were tightly wound cords beneath his glistening skin.

  Yong exploded on his left foot and threw his right foot high, whipping around so fast that his heel strike against the pad sounded like a shotgun blast. He instantly repeated the move, again and again and again, four strikes in blindingly quick succession.

  The Thai muttered a command in his own language. Yong acknowledged it and switched directions, his left foot now striking six inches higher than the trainer’s head.

  “It would be an advantage if the deal goes through,” Meili said in Mandarin. She was small but well toned, with a heart-shaped mole just above her upper lip. Her hair was pulled back in a short ponytail. She wore red training shorts and a tight black tank top, and her hands were taped for practice sparring.

  Yong understood her perfectly, despite her heavy mainland accent. His own Mandarin was heavily influenced by his mother’s Hokkien dialect, which was also practically another language—the second of four he spoke fluently, English being his first.

  Yong took a couple of deep breaths, his eyes focused on the square pads now held chest high and pointing down at a forty-five-degree angle.

  “My father wants the deal,” Yong said. “My sister wants the deal because Father wants the deal.” Yong’s right leg exploded forward, his weight leveraged on his back leg. His foot struck against the pads in four rapid strikes, smacking them so hard it knocked the sturdy Thai back onto his heels.

  “Did I hit a nerve?” The diminutive Ministry of State Security agent asked. She kept one eye on the Thai. Yong had assured her before that he spoke only Thai and no Chinese dialects of any kind, but she was still suspicious.

  Yong hissed through gritted teeth. “I won’t have it!”

  Yong reversed positions and launched four more crushing blows against the Thai’s hands. The trainer grunted with each strike.

  Meili didn’t speak when Yong threw his kicks. There was no point—the noise was deafening. She shuddered at the thought of being on the other side of those heel strikes. She was hoping to convince Yong of the strategic advantage a merger with Marin Aerospace would have for him, and for her agency.

  Yong was breathing hard now. He turned to face his Chinese contact. “And that wasn’t our arrangement.”

  “No, it wasn’t. I just wanted to be sure you had considered the possibilities.”

  The Thai trainer shouted and Yong spun effortlessly on his heel, throwing a vicious right elbow strike across the left pad, then whirled around in the opposite direction and crushed the left pad with a left elbow reverse. Yong shouted, then repeated the exact strikes six more times in a single flowing movement.

  From Meili’s perspective, Yong looked like a spinning rotary blade. The elbow was the hardest bone in the human frame and Muay Thai used it to great advantage, one of the “eight limbs” of its fighting discipline—elbows, shins, knees, and fists. More and more MMA fighters were incorporating the Thai martial art into their combat repertoire.

  “And you’re certain Ryan won’t find anything?”

  “As certain as I can be. After all, I designed the accounting system.”

  “Is that enough?”

  “I’ve done my part. But it would be best if he and Brown just went away—the sooner, the better.”

  Yong barked an order in Thai for the trainer to leave for the day. The trainer grunted and bowed slightly, shutting the door behind him as he exited. The gym was an outbuilding behind the main house on Yong’s estate, not far from his father’s mansion.

  “What are you suggesting?” the woman asked.

  “If something happened to them, they might be tempted to leave early.”

  Yong slipped his fingers into the elastic band of her shorts and pulled her close to him.

  “Send me their itinerary. I’ll see what I can—”

  Yong’s mouth devoured hers greedily as he lowered her to the sweat-stained mat and took her without much resistance.

  —

  Paul made a big show of downloading data from his Dalfan desktop onto his encrypted USB, then loading it into the port on his personal laptop.

  “Man, this USB data transfer is really speeding things up. Thanks again for all the help, Bai.”

  Bai smiled. “You’re welcome, Mr. Brown. Happy to be of service.”

  Paul stretched his flabby arms high and wide and yawned like a bear coming out of hibernation. “Man, I’m tired.”

  “You want some tea, maybe?”

  “Oh, wow. That would be great. Something sweet, too, if you can find it.”

  Bai nodded. “Be right back.”

  “Thanks, Bai.”

  Paul turned back to his laptop, pretending to be focused on the screen but desperately trying to keep Bai in his peripheral vision, waiting for him to turn the corner into the kitchen and—

  Hurry!

  Paul whipped his fingers across the mouse pad and keyboard, opening the CIA file and dragging the contents over to the Dalfan USB to copy them. The progress bar popped up. Two minutes and counting. Just like last night.

  It would take Bai at least that long to brew a cup of hot tea and find a pastry or something, and another thirty seconds for him to walk back to the office.

  Unless the hot water machine was broken and the pastry box was empty.

  A minute passed, then ninety seconds. Thirty seconds to go.

  “Hope you like doughnuts, Mr. Brown.”

  Paul nearly jumped out of his skin. He swiveled around in his chair, using his wide body to block the screen from Bai, who stood in front of him, smiling and holding out a cup of tea and a chocolate doughnut with brightly colored sprinkles.

  Paul forced a wide smile. “Outstanding, sir. Thank you.”

  Bai frowned, lifted his chin, trying to see over Paul’s shoulder.

  “Something wrong, Bai?”

  “What’s on your—”

  “OW!” Paul jumped out of his chair, his pants drenched.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I spilled hot tea on my trousers! Quick, get me some paper towels! Please.”

  “Oh, yes, of course. Be right back!” Bai scurried out the door.

  Paul spun around to face the computer. His scalded thighs screamed with pain, but he ignored it. He set the half-empty cup down with his left hand and shook it off, then jammed the doughnut into his mouth with his right as he checked his screen.

  The USB message read INSUFFICIENT STORAGE CAPACITY.

  “Thit,” Paul breathed through his doughnut. His fingers flew again. The USB drive only had one gig of storage. He heard Bai’s softly padding feet running toward the door.

  “Thit!” Paul trashed the CIA file just as Bai yanked the door open, wads of paper towels from the men’s restroom balled up in his fists.

  “Here, Mr. Brown!”

  Paul turned around, the doughnut still in his mouth. He pulled it out. “Thanks.” He took a bite of doughnut and started blotting the hot tea from his trousers. Out of the corner of his eye he watched as Bai cast a glance at his empty laptop screen.

  “Anything else, Mr. Brown?”

  “No, thanks. This should do the trick. Sorry for the trouble.”

  “No trouble, Mr. Brown. More tea?”

  “Eh, no, thanks. I think I’ve worn enough tea this morning.”

  “Yeah, lah.”

  Paul was glad he’d dodged a bullet, but his plan was shot to hell.

  How in the heck am I going to get around Dalfan security now?

  30

  Jac
k arrived at the second floor with Lian on his hip and processed through the security desk, where they were met by Dr. Chen Tao. A smile creased her round, pleasant face as she extended her right hand to Jack; her other hand held a tablet. Jack noticed a bulge in one of her jacket pockets.

  “A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Ryan. Please, follow me.”

  The third floor was divided into three sections separated by security glass and passcodes like the floor below, but this place looked like a Hollywood production studio—which essentially it was.

  After leaving the security station, Dr. Tao led them through the central section with video-editing bays in the offices and software programming stations on the floor.

  Jack passed a workstation where three earnest programmers argued passionately over the densely packed lines of code on the screen. Jack felt the energy in the room all around him, full of creative and brilliant young minds attacking problems he could barely understand.

  Dr. Tao pointed out graphic designers, artists, mathematicians, software developers, and even a few physicists as they walked by. She asked Jack, “What do you know about VR—virtual reality?”

  “It’s the next big thing in video gaming.”

  “Why do you suppose that is?”

  “Obviously because it makes games seem more realistic.”

  “And it does. The challenge all VR programmers face is this: Is there a way to make virtual reality so realistic that it’s no longer possible to discriminate between the virtual and the real?”

  Dr. Tao slid her pass card into the reader for the glass door leading to the rear section of the floor.

  “Is that even possible?” Jack asked. “By definition, ‘real’ means that which actually exists. How can software and sensors ever be as ‘real’ as reality?”

  Dr. Tao pulled open the door and pointed them through a blackout curtain. “I suppose that depends upon your definition of reality.”

  “You sound more like a philosopher than a computer programmer.”

  “One of my undergraduate degrees was in psychology, actually. I’ve found it to be extraordinarily useful in my present position.”