Point of Contact

by Mike Maden

  “There isn’t any time.”

  “I feel crappy about this.”

  Jack wanted to curse. He was frustrated, but it wasn’t Gavin’s fault. He shouldn’t expect the man to pull his bacon out of the fire every time he hit a wall.

  His Uber driver pulled up to the curb. “No worries, Gav. Gotta run. I’ll find another way.”

  Jack climbed into the Toyota Camry knowing that a long night was ahead of him. He had one other option, and he needed Paul’s help to pull it off. He just hoped the pudgy accountant was up to it.

  —

  Jack snuck in the back kitchen door the same way he had left, careful to avoid the Dalfan security car out front and eager to enlist Paul in tonight’s clandestine effort. He heard a noise in the living room and headed there.

  Paul sat on the couch in the living room, a half-empty bottle of Bushmills on the coffee table in front of him. His eyes were red-rimmed and rheumy. He forced a smile. “Hello, Jack.”

  Jack prayed it was the first bottle. Paul won’t be any help tonight. He crossed over and sat down next to him, patting his fat knee. “What’s wrong?”

  “Have a drink with me?”

  “What’s going on? Seriously. You can tell me.”

  Paul sighed. “I really miss her.”

  “Your wife.”

  “Carmen was the best.”

  “You’re not so bad yourself.”

  “You don’t know me, Jack.” Paul stiffened. “Or anything about me.”

  “You’re a great accountant. You have impeccable taste in ballpoint pens. What else do I need to know?”

  Paul poured himself another drink, spilling some on the coffee table. He then filled an empty glass next to it. “Have a drink with me.”

  “I was actually heading back out—”

  “Have a drink with me. Please.”

  “Okay.” Jack picked up the glass. “What’s the occasion?”

  “Today’s my anniversary. Carmen and I would’ve been married thirty-two years today.” He lifted his glass.

  “That’s amazing.” Jack touched his glass to Paul’s. “To Carmen, and to you.”

  Paul’s lower lip began to quiver, like a child’s. “I miss her, Jack.”

  “C’mon, buddy, drink up. You’ve got a lot to celebrate.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like fantastic memories of a woman you clearly adored, and who adored you, too. Not everybody gets that in this life.” Jack smiled warmly. “My mom and dad have that. I envy them—and I envy you and Carmen.” Jack tossed back his drink.

  Paul brightened. “Yeah, you’re right. I am lucky.” He tossed his drink back, too.

  Jack stood. “I’d stay and hang out with you, but I’ve got some running around to do.”

  “Want me to come along?”

  Yeah, if you weren’t already hammered and if it would keep you from drinking yourself into a coma, Jack thought. “Not this time. But thanks.”

  Paul grinned wide. Waved a fat finger at him. “Oh, I get it. It’s that woman, isn’t it? Lian? Oh, boy. She’s a beauty. Good for you.” Paul poured himself another drink. “We should toast to that.”

  “Another one of those and I’ll be toast. Rain check?”

  “Sure! I understand. Not everybody can hold their liquor good as me.” Paul burped.

  “Can I get you something to eat before I go?” Anything to get him sobered up, Jack thought.

  “Nah, I’m fine. But thanks.”

  “Okay. Call me if you need me.”

  “Don’t do nothing I wouldn’t do,” Paul said, snickering. But then he darkened. “But you treat her right, you hear me? Or you’ll answer to me.”

  Jack nodded gravely. “Of course.”

  Jack turned on his heel and headed for his bedroom to take care of some business before paying another visit to the garage. Jogging up the stairs, he swore to himself, frustrated that the night was going to be even longer than he’d expected.

  45

  Jack Uber’d over to Dalfan headquarters but had the driver drop him off a few blocks away. He knew from the vice president of operations, Feng, that Dalfan shut down in the evenings, maintaining only a skeleton crew of security in the building. But it wasn’t unusual for a few of the hardworking employees at Dalfan to stay late or even overnight if they had hard deadlines to meet.

  Jack had asked Feng for a tour of the entire facility as part of his auditing duties, but he’d also been taught by John Clark to always scout the terrain wherever he found himself, even if it’s just a movie theater or restaurant. He could still hear Clark’s voice drilling the questions into his skull. “Where are the exits? Where is the quickest egress? What are the sight lines? What are the most defensible positions? Where’s the men’s room?”

  “Why the men’s room?”

  “In case you have to take a leak.”

  Feng’s tour had been quite revealing. For the most part, Dalfan relied on electronic security for the building, with alarm systems, sensors, and cameras doing most of the heavy lifting. Dalfan’s most valuable commodity was their IP—intellectual property—and that was stored on the Dalfan mainframe and workstations, and those were passcode-protected. There really was very little crime in Singapore, so they felt comfortable with a single guard at the front station in the lobby monitoring the remote cameras, which Jack had also taken note of.

  With his security pass and other Dalfan credentials, it wouldn’t be a problem at all for Jack to just walk in the front door and present himself to the guard at the security desk with a story about needing to finish up some paperwork. He had no doubt whatsoever that the guard would let him in. He had even less doubt that the guard would log him into his system and quite possibly discover that Yong or Lian had red-flagged him, requiring the guard to notify one or both of them if Jack suddenly appeared in the building after hours. That wasn’t going to work. For the work ahead of him tonight, Jack preferred to remain anonymous, if at all possible, at least until he got the job done.

  He suddenly had a better idea.

  —

  Back at the guesthouse, Paul tipped the bottle, teasing out the last ounce of whiskey into his glass. He ran his finger around the mouth of the bottle, catching the last glistening drops on his fingertip, then ran it over his teeth, sucking away the very last of it as he set the bottle down with a thud.

  He prided himself on his ability to hold his liquor, a gift from his Irish-German cop father, long dead, killed in the line of duty. The man could shoot a pistol—Paul displayed his father’s marksmanship trophies in a case back home—but his real gift, the old-timers told him, was his dad’s ability to drink any man in the precinct under the table and still be able to walk home in a straight line directly into a tongue-lashing from Paul’s teetotaling mother.

  Paul knew he was drunk, but the key to mastering the condition was to be cognizant of it, and Paul was fully aware that he was not in his right mind. But it was only in his inebriated self-aware state that he was finally able to put some distance between his heart and the light-absorbing black hole of inconsolable pain spinning inside his chest. For the first time that evening, Paul didn’t feel like crying. The booze allowed him to escape the gravitational pull of grief that never let him go while sober. Sober, at least, he could work, blinding his mind from the sense of loss with an intense focus on whatever task was at hand. But when his mind was idle for more than a few moments, he was invariably sucked back into the abyss. It wasn’t right, and it wasn’t even normal, but it was the way things were. Carmen was his soul mate, and his soul was torn in two.

  Now that he was drunk, the iron bonds of grief were slipped, which allowed for a certain clarity of thought, or at least perspective. He had the overwhelming sense that Carmen was watching him at that very moment, and he was certain she was unhappy with him. Not just unhappy, but ashamed.
<
br />   “You have important work to do. Have you forgotten? Why are you just sitting there, feeling sorry for yourself?”

  He nodded, agreeing with her. She was right. Carmen was always right.

  “I’m sorry, Carmen.”

  “Prove it.”

  Paul shut his eyes, willing her voice away. He picked up his glass and lifted it to his lips, but he couldn’t drink it. Not now, at least.

  He stood and wobbled toward the kitchen table, where he had laid his laptop shoulder bag. He struggled with the zipper but finally managed to get it open, and a minute later the machine was powered up. He blinked furiously, trying to remember what he was supposed to do next. Through the fog it finally came to him.

  He zigzagged his way to the staircase and climbed up with some effort to his bathroom. He tugged on the spring-loaded shower curtain rod, but he pulled too hard and the whole thing came crashing down. Didn’t matter. He’d fix it later.

  Paul pulled the cap off the far end, trying to fetch Rhodes’s drive, but his fat fingers couldn’t feel the tissue paper. He looked inside the rod. Nothing.

  Someone had stolen the USB drive.

  His heart raced as panic flooded over him, dumping enough adrenaline in his bloodstream to sober him up a little. He suddenly remembered something.

  He dropped the curtain rod and marched over to his closet and picked up the shoe that he’d stuffed with the sock, and in it found the USB.

  Snatching up the drive, Paul practically ran back downstairs and loaded it into the drive port on his laptop. He heard himself breathing heavily through his nose as a throbbing headache crept into his skull.

  “This is too important to fool around with,” Paul told himself, repeating what he had heard Carmen tell him.

  “Coffee,” Paul told himself. He took a minute to try to clear the cobwebs, then figured out where the coffee, filters, and coffeepot were located. Ten minutes later he sat back down in front of his computer, a giant steaming cup of Sumatran coffee in hand, creamed and sugared like a cheesecake. He slurped it down as fast as he could, then opened up his laptop again and got his bearings.

  He found the file containing the captured Dalfan encryption code where Gavin’s program had placed it. He opened it and scanned the lines of software. He blinked hard. It might as well have been Sanskrit. Paul could write basic software and create macros for his Excel spreadsheets easily enough, but encryption algorithms made his head spin. He closed the file back down.

  After missing the slot a few times, Paul finally inserted the CIA drive into the drive port on his laptop. When the drive icon appeared on his desktop, he dragged the Dalfan encryption code onto it. A minute later, the file was copied to the CIA drive.

  Paul sighed through his nose. His plan was actually working.

  He felt the warmth of Carmen’s approval flooding over him. He picked up the cup of coffee but didn’t see the point in drinking it now. His work was done for the evening. Time to finish up the last of the whiskey still waiting for him in the living room. He had reason to celebrate.

  He stood and headed back to the living room. The heavy rain thundering outside jogged his memory.

  Where the hell was Jack?

  46

  Jack thought his “better idea” was pretty solid until the sky opened up and torrential rain poured down in sheets. He was already twenty feet up in the air and still climbing the exterior drainpipe at the back of the Dalfan headquarters building.

  His feet slipped against the rough concrete wall a couple times, but his hands were locked tight on the pipe—John Clark taught him a long time ago that grip strength was the key to overall power and stamina, and it was paying off in spades tonight.

  The slashing, sidelong rain whipped his face, but his Baltimore Ravens cap stayed fixed to his skull. He was halfway to the rooftop. Climbing down at this point would be just as hazardous as continuing the climb up, and it wouldn’t get him to his goal anyway. His arms were tired, but the prospect of plummeting to his death on the asphalt below strengthened his resolve, and he took advantage of the steel brackets supporting the pipe for extra foot grips. As he finished looping an arm around the top of the roofline, the rain suddenly stopped—of course!—and he hauled the rest of his rain-drenched body over the edge and headed for the roof access door.

  Jack had taken a flathead screwdriver he’d borrowed from the garage and was working against the latch bolt in the door when the rain came crashing down again. When Feng had shown him the roof his first day on the job, Jack noticed that the strike plate was hardly worn, suggesting that the strike plate was set too deep in the door frame. That meant the deadlocking plunger probably didn’t engage when the door was shut.

  Sure enough, it took only a couple twists with the flat blade of the screwdriver to push back the latch bolt and open the door. Jack had also noticed that the door hadn’t been secured with an electronic alarm or even a magnetic sensor. There weren’t any cameras on the roof, either. Feng’s sand-filled coffee can was flooded over with water, the butts washed out onto the roof, all around Jack’s feet.

  Jack slipped inside and took a second to pull off his cap and coat and shake them out, trying to dry off as much as possible. Once he was inside he would get picked up on security cameras; if the guard on duty bothered to check the cameras and if they actually saw him dripping wet, he might guess Jack’s entry into the building was less than conventional.

  Jack sped down the steel stairwell but did his best to keep as quiet as possible. No point in alerting anybody by thundering down the steel steps. He reached the third-floor access door and paused for a moment, listening to see if anybody was nearby. He didn’t hear anything, so he waved his security card past the reader and the door clicked open. He wondered how he’d explain his actions when Dalfan checked their security logs tomorrow, but that was another problem for another day.

  The first thing he did was dash into the men’s room, where cameras were thankfully not present, and he used fistfuls of paper towels to finish drying off before heading back out to the main floor. Nobody was around. He had the place all to himself.

  Jack made his way past the second glass security wall with another wave of his security card, then headed straight for the workstation that controlled the Steady Stare surveillance drone system. He logged on with his passcode and accessed the window for the live feed and found exactly what he expected—nothing. In weather like this, the drone would be grounded. But it wasn’t a live feed he was looking for.

  Jack pulled up another window, which allowed him to access the stored video data for the last twenty-four hours. “Time for a little time travel,” he whispered.

  —

  It took Jack just a few clicks to find the video data files he was looking for. His concern was what he would find on them.

  Overall, the weather had been pretty good today, but there were occasional gusting winds and downpours. In other words, typical Singapore weather for this time of year. If Steady Stare was going to be a viable option for the Singapore Police Force, its drone aircraft needed to be able to fly in less-than-ideal conditions.

  A few more clicks and Jack found what he’d been hoping for. The Steady Stare video program was completely intuitive, but the training Dr. Singh had given him made it even easier. The Steady Stare aircraft had luckily been flying most of the day. The first screen he opened was a bird’s-eye view of the entire city. He typed in the warehouse address, and the video image zoomed in to the western side of the city and with a few more clicks enlarged the warehouse and its grounds.

  Jack suddenly realized that if the Steady Stare aircraft had been flying tonight it would’ve caught him on its cameras, too. Fortunately, that didn’t happen. It was time to focus on the task at hand.

  When Jack approached the warehouse yesterday it was heavily guarded. Tonight, the guards were gone and the contents had been removed. That had obviously occur
red within thirty-six hours, give or take. Judging by the way Lian had insisted on taking them on the tour and taking them out to eat, it was now clear to him that she was keeping them occupied while the warehouse was being emptied.

  He tapped on a few more keys and then hovered an arrow over the time scrubber, designating the calendar day, hours, minutes, and even seconds. It didn’t take Jack long to find a semi truck pulling into the loading dock area. Jack decided he liked time travel.

  A lot.

  Because the truck was backed up to the loading dock and the dock itself was covered, Jack couldn’t make out what was being loaded into the semi. That was unfortunate, but not fatal. He pushed the scrubber forward in time until the truck pulled away. Jack then zoomed out several hundred feet, put a tracking reticle on the vehicle, then let the program run at 10x speed. He watched the truck traverse several streets and pull into another warehouse facility less than four miles away. Jack snapped a photo of the address with his phone.

  Once again, it wasn’t possible to see what was being unloaded from the truck. He pulled up the data on the warehouse ownership, though he suspected it was a shell company that would shield the identity of the real owner. He wanted to grab some faces for the facial-recognition software, but the two people walking around the truck both wore long-billed caps and had the OPSEC smarts to not look up. Even if he had grabbed a few faces and could get them to Gavin, Jack suspected, they would’ve come up empty again if this was the same bunch who had secured the first warehouse facility.

  All of that was bad luck. The good news was that whoever was moving this stuff around didn’t simply load it onto a ship and send it on its way. But this warehouse, like the first, was butted up against the bay, and Jack suspected that a ship was en route to pick up the secretive cargo. How soon, he couldn’t know. But sooner rather than later, no doubt, and whatever the shipment was, it was hot enough that the owners felt they had to move it just on the suspicion that Jack Ryan might dig further.