Death of Secrets

by Bowen Greenwood

  It was Kathy. "Come on, John!" she yelled. Then she and Mike threw themselves out the back door. John got to his feet and followed them out.

  The clearer air outside allowed the three to open their eyes. The first thing they saw, though, was the barrel of a gun. Again, John identified it – either an M-4 carbine or else the civilian equivalent, an AR-15. Given the other firearm he’d seen that night, the military M-4 seemed more likely.

  "You people are annoyingly hard to kill."

  John stared. "Us? I watched you drive off a cliff!" The facial stubble was enough to mark this as the same man, but John also recognized the cold, hard eyes he’d seen at the club.

  "Seatbelts save lives," the man quipped, his short whiskers rippling oddly as his lips moved. "Now," he said, "hand over the flash drive."

  "We don't have it," replied Kathy.

  Like lightning, the man's hand flew out and slapped her across the face. "Don't even try to lie to me," he snarled.

  Michael angrily started forward, but the man rammed the butt of his rifle into his gut. The Congressman doubled over in pain. He collapsed on the ground, as Kathy screamed "No don’t hurt him. It's true, we don't have it!"

  "Then what happened to it in between Harrison giving it to you and me asking for it?"

  Kathy's mind was on overdrive, looking for a way out of this. She played for a bit more time. "Harrison?"

  "Eric Harrison, the messy, bleeding corpse who handed it to you. Nosy little punk, if he died as promptly as he should have, I wouldn't have this problem."

  Kathy's hand went to her mouth, and she gasped.

  "Stop stalling!" he yelled, and slapped her again. Mike growled and stumbled up from the ground, trying to lurch at the bearded man, but all he got for his trouble was another blow in the gut, this one from their attacker’s boot. It dropped him back to the ground.

  With his weapon pointed straight at John, the bearded man walked up to Kathy, standing so close she could smell his breath. She backed up a step. His wolfish grin seemed to fill her entire field of vision. "I’ve had a lot of anguish out of you people," he said. His physical nearness communicated a threat that didn’t need words.

  Kathy felt frozen, like the blood was draining out of her.

  Without warning, the bearded man shifted topics when he saw John over Kathy’s shoulder. He raised the gun.

  "If I were you I’d stop thinking that," he growled.

  John’s facial muscles contorted in a mask of rage, unable to bear watching this man threaten Kathy. His biceps rippled under his shirt and his right hand curled into a fist. John took another step forward, and the bearded man’s finger tensed around the trigger.

  "Stop!" Kathy screamed. "Stop it! OK, OK, my roommate has it!"

  "That's better." The bearded man turned back to her. "But we've noticed she's not in your room tonight. So you're going to help us find her."

  He threw her a cell phone. "I’m quite sure you know where to reach her. So you dial the number, then hand me the phone."

  "Come on," Mike said. "It's four in the morning! She'll be asleep, let it wait 'til morning."

  Two things happened at once. Kathy said, "Mike, don't! He'll…" and the bearded man drove his fist into Michael's gut.

  But this time, Mike was ready for it. In his pocket was his key chain, but to reach it he needed an excuse to put his hands there. Collapsing to the ground, he managed to land with one hand under his leg.

  One year ago, Congressman Vincent had celebrated his first election with a brand new Lincoln. Right now, Mike thought it'd make a pretty good diversion.

  He hit the ground with his hand under his leg. In the moment it was hidden, he shoved the hand into his pocket and pushed the panic button on his keychain.

  It wasn't much, but it was all he had. From the garage, the horn of his Lincoln blared and the whoop of the alarm echoed through the yard. It would wake the neighbors up, certainly. One of them might even call the cops. But that wasn't the plan.

  For just a moment, the bearded man's head swiveled reflexively toward the source of the noise, and away from his prisoners.

  On the floor, Michael lunged for the man's ankles and pulled him to the ground. His gun clattered across the floor.

  Like the bearded man, John and Kathy had both turned involuntarily to look toward the garage. When they looked back, they saw Michael grappling on the floor with their captor.

  John threw himself into the tangle and landed a punishing blow to the bearded man's jaw. He followed it up with a punch to the gut.

  Kathy leaped on the gun. Mike and John were too closely intertwined with the bearded man to shoot even if she thought she could, so she stood a few feet back, holding the gun, not sure what to do.

  The bearded man flexed his legs and broke them free of Mike's grip. He didn't have enough maneuvering room to put much power behind it, but he fired a kick at the Congressman, connecting hard enough to send Mike sprawling out of the fight.

  It was too late. John's fist hit the side of his head like a pile driver and the bearded man went limp, unconscious. Gasping for breath, John rolled off the man and sprawled on the ground. He just laid there panting. Mike rose unsteadily to his feet, reached into his pocket, and pushed the off button for his car alarm. "Let’s have a look at that gun, Kathy," he said.

  She handed it over to him and Mike fingered the barrel. "Well, no wonder no one called the cops when he shot at us. This big fat thing on the end looks like a silencer. Anybody know what kind of gun it is?"

  John got up from the floor and looked at the left side of the rifle, near the trigger, where he saw that the safety switch had a setting allowing the gun to fire three rounds at a time. "M-4," he replied. "And nice diversion, by the way."

  Mike nodded. "Let’s not waste it. No telling how long this guy’s going to be out. Let’s clear out while we still can.

  "We just leave him there?" Kathy asked, nodding at the guy on Mike’s floor.

  "Well, I’d prefer to throw him off of my property, but I don’t see that accomplishing much."

  John worked his jaw a little bit without ever opening his mouth before he finally said, "I’m not necessarily saying we should, but you know there’s a pretty obvious way to keep him from coming after us again."

  Mike nodded slowly. "I get that, but it might complicate things for us if we ever end up talking to the cops about this. Which I can’t imagine not happening, when my neighbors get a look at my house tomorrow morning. If they haven’t called the cops already. Besides, uh… I know I don’t have the stomach to shoot him. Either of you?"

  Vincent’s gaze drifted from Kathy to John, both of whom shifted their feet and shook their heads. John took a while longer to admit it than Kathy.

  Kathy said, "Well, couldn’t we at least take them somewhere and dump them? Maybe outside a police office or something?"

  Mike stroked his chin. "OK, that makes sense. Not a police department, but somewhere the cops are likely to find him. Come on, let’s carry him out to my car. All of them, I guess," he added after a glance at the man laying limp by his back door.

  John rose from the floor and Kathy nodded. Carrying the unconscious forms between them, the three struggled out of the house and into his garage. They loaded the bearded man in the back seat, then repeated the trip for the other men. John didn’t mention it, and he didn’t figure Kathy would know, but one of them definitely felt dead. That would be the one he got with the gun. The bouncer had been in a lot of unsavory positions over the course of his life. He remembered what a dead body felt like. Once tonight’s adrenaline wore off, he was pretty sure he’d have to deal with it mentally.

  By unspoken consent John took the duty of sitting in the back seat to guard them. Mike eased behind the wheel, Kathy took the passenger seat, and they were off.

  Mike said, "The weirdest thing is, I feel like I've seen that guy before. The one who looks like he forgot how to shave."

  Kathy asked, "Where?"

  Mike was about to re
ply when the bearded man groaned and shifted in his seat.

  John yelled, "Stop the car, Mike! Stop the car!"

  The Congressman looked over his shoulder, saw one of their prisoners stirring, and slammed on the breaks, swerving over to the side of the road. They drove off the shoulder and slightly into the grassy ditch flanking the highway, and John threw the passenger side rear door open. He shoved all three men roughly out of the car, then scooted over to their side of the back seat. He reached out and pushed some more, to make sure they were far enough away from Mike’s back tires, and wouldn’t be run over. Once John shut the door again, Mike tromped on the gas and sped away.

  John breathed deeply for a moment, then said, "I wouldn’t want to have to deal with them awake again."

  ***

  In the black hours before sunrise on Thursday, Colleen Christina rolled off of her boyfriend’s couch, landing softly on her feet. Abrasive snores from the other room assured her she hadn’t woken him. She tiptoed over to his computer, turned the volume on his speakers way down, and clicked it on. After a short wait for the machine to boot up, she started an instant messaging program.

  Long ago, she’d put copies of her own contact lists and favorites lists on this computer too, since she spent so much time here. She could have just used her phone, but Colleen often held very involved conversations via IM, and thumb typing got old really fast.

  The normal world faded behind her, and the cryptic acronyms and numbers people used for Internet screen names took their place.

  That was a part of the Internet she really appreciated. Her last name was surely wonderful to the old Italian nobility from whom it came, way back in her family tree. But among Americans in the 21st century, she got tired of jokes about having two first names.

  Online, instead of Colleen Christina, she was KH12, and the people she spoke too hid behind similar aliases.

  KH12> Wassup?

  133tluser> Hey Colleen! What’s going on?

  KH12> Just put the Boyf to bed, now back to important things.

  133tluser> KH, you’re the only human being I know who considers the Net more important than sex.

  KH12> Sex is your assumption.

  133tluser> Yeah right.

  KH12> Do any more thinking about that file I asked you about last night?

  133tluser> Nope. Not much to do without having it here. Sure you can’t send it?

  KH12> Dude! I told you it’s copy-protected.

  133tluser> Roger. But it’s hard to hack on a file without the file. You could always burn a copy and snail it to me.

  KH12> That’s so low tech.

  133tluser> I know, I know, but what are you going to do?

  KH12> Listen, think about the best hard core hacker you know who lives close to me here in DC, OK? I need help with this.

  133tluser> Will do. Check back soon.

  Colleen signed off the messaging program and stared for a moment at the blank screen. Being without her own computer was seriously bothering her. Her boyfriend’s was OK, but it just wasn’t the same without all her stuff on it. And he just wasn’t in her league as far as hacking was concerned.

  She made sure the volume was way down, and then inserted a DVD of her own that had survived the ransacking. Star Wars swam up on the screen, and she leaned back in the chair to watch.

  Her thoughts drifted back and forth between the movie and the matter at hand. The movie was just a pleasant background against which she could think.

  She’d tried several different commercial encryption programs to open the flash drive files, but gotten nowhere. She was inclined to believe it was a binary file of some kind, which meant that its contents would be computer code rather than text. But it wouldn’t execute, which meant it wasn’t a program itself. It had to be a file created by some other program.

  Colleen sighed and climbed back onto the couch. Her last thought as she drifted off to sleep was to remind herself to meet Kathy for lunch tomorrow.

  CHAPTER 4

  Bright and early Thursday morning, Kathy, John, and Mike made their way into the District. Mike paid cash to rent two adjoining rooms at the Georgetown Inn on Wisconsin Avenue – one in John’s name, one in Kathy’s. For the time being they ignored the second room and all three took seats around the small table in Kathy’s bedroom. The sun rose, and the stress of the night showed all over Michael’s face.

  "OK, I’ve got to be in today. The full Intelligence Committee is meeting, and I can’t skip that. John, you’ll look after Kathy ‘til I get back, right?"

  "No problem, sir. Want us to wait here?"

  "Yeah, that’s probably best. I’m hoping you’ll be safe here for a while."

  "No, wait!" Kathy spoke up. "I’ve got to meet up with Colleen today for lunch, and I’ve got three classes this afternoon."

  "Kathy, listen," Michael said, "None of us knows what’s going on here, but whatever it is, someone just shot the crap out of my house, and they did it to get that flash drive. What that means is that you’re in danger. You can’t go hanging around your normal places, and you certainly shouldn’t go to class. If you do, it’s an easy place for them to get you. You ought to stay here for a while."

  Kathy hadn’t actually thought about that. "OK, that makes sense, but I still have to meet up with Colleen. In case you forgot, she’s got that flash drive, and we should have it. Besides, she’d be in danger too."

  The Congressman sighed. "Yeah, I guess you’re right. I guess you’d better go get her and bring her out here too. But it’d be better if you didn’t just go meet her in your usual place. Can you call her?"

  "Sure, I’ll give her a ring."

  Mike nodded. "Pick a place you don’t usually go, and meet her there, then get her out here. I’ll be back about six and we can work things out further then."

  They watched him go, and then Kathy turned to John. "I’ll bet he’ll want me to stay home from work tonight, too."

  "Well, I gotta draw the line there. You know how they are – if you want to take a day off you need to arrange it in advance."

  "Yeah… maybe I can get someone else to cover my shift."

  John nodded. "You, maybe, but not me. There’s a lot less bouncers than there are waitresses." He paused and added, "You gonna call your roommate?"

  "Yeah, but she won’t be awake ‘til about eleven. I’ll wait ‘til then."

  "Okiedoke, Kathy. I’m going after a couple winks before you need to go pick this girl up. Wake me when you need me."

  ***

  "We’ve got it, boss!"

  Jacobs looked up to see a coworker walking into his office, waving a piece of paper in triumph.

  "The trace on that guy who hacked our decoy? What took so long? Should have been a simple matter of following the original IP back and seeing where he got on line from, right?"

  "Yeah, I expected that too. But you know what? He had another proxy before ours."

  "Two intermediaries? Just to go chatting?"

  There was another affirmative nod.

  "Something’s going on here," Jacobs said. "Something more than just chatting. I want to know his location."

  ***

  "…so you see, Congressman, the GigaStar device works. I hope you’ll authorize this expenditure."

  One Member of Congress replied, "Mr. Tilman, it’s not the effectiveness I’m worried about. I’m sure it does work. What I’m worried about is the fact that the NSA already reads all our e-mail traffic. If they start reading data on our home wifi networks – information we never even send out of our homes – what’s left of the Fourth Amendment? I never heard an answer to that question."

  Congressman Vincent listened with only half an ear. He couldn’t keep his mind on business; it kept coming back to the girl. One moment he’d smile, remembering sitting at his kitchen table with her, drinking coffee and talking about the drive. But then he thought of the awful trouble she was in, and the bottom fell out of his stomach. Then he started daydreaming about how things might go after t
his whole crazy cloak and dagger business got over with, which made him wonder whether his reelection odds would be helped by getting married, or hurt by the fact that his bride was a cocktail waitress.

  But once he started thinking along those lines, it reminded him of the night before, and that drove him crazy with worry about the whole business of the thumb drive. Why were people trying so hard to get it? How could they make them stop? And would Kathy have to travel to Indonesia?

  The Chairman gaveled the meeting to a close, and Vincent shook his head to clear it before rising and gathering his things. On his way out the door, D.W. Tilman wrapped an arm around his shoulder and walked out with him.

  At 23, just out of college, Michael Vincent had been volunteering on a race for U.S. Senate when the campaign scheduler made an incredible error that sent the candidate to the complete opposite end of the state from the trade association convention he was supposed to address. The very next day Mike found himself with his own desk, a much harder schedule, and the meager paycheck of a campaign staffer.

  His boss, the campaign manager, was a political professional from Washington DC who’d been hired to come out and win that Senate seat. His name was D.W. Tilman.

  Mike’s memory drifted back to the days when Tilman had been explaining how money, power, and skill fused together in politics. He had learned volumes in that one campaign. The elder man had gone on to other campaigns in later years, while young Michael Vincent stayed on with the newly elected Senator, moving up from scheduler to Legislative Assistant to Press Secretary and eventually to a campaign of his own.

  His old mentor never abandoned him. Tilman kept in close touch with Vincent, watching his career, making important introductions, and passing on lessons about how to make the levers of power move. Eventually, though, Tilman left politics.

  While Vincent was on the path to elected office of his own, Tilman was the perpetual insider. He moved from managing Senate campaigns to working for the party’s national organization, and eventually he found himself managing a primary campaign for the Presidency of the United States.