“Thank you, Philip,” Lena said. “Are you going to get in trouble with your roommates for having us here?”
“Oh, no. I own the house. They’re just staying here for a while. I knew Frank from high school. He got kicked out by his parents… and, uh, Jelly’s a friend of his. He just kind of moved in too. I know they seem kind of crude, but they’re all right, really.” He laughed nervously.
Lena nodded her head.
Philip glanced at his watch. “You know, I’m dying to hear your whole story. But I need to get into work. You see, I didn’t go in today, but I’ve got a project that I need to check up on. I really should go in tonight.”
“What kind of work do you do, man?” Ramon asked.
“I work at the Power Company. I’m a systems designer. I run their computer network.”
Ramon caught a spark of excitement in Lena’s eyes. Maybe this would work out after all.
The first problem was that the country was too big. Too damned big. And the bigger problem was the freedom. People were free to go across the country, from one coast to the other, across state lines, without ever having to show identification or state their purpose. As long as they had money and kept their noses clean, people could go most anywhere. And the authorities had no way to keep track, no way to monitor who was out there and what they were doing. It was a hell of a way to run a nation. It was a real wonder that terrorism wasn’t more of a problem.
Cain walked slowly around the vehicle. It was a 1996 Buick Century. A big boat of a car, gunmetal blue with specks of rust showing through like pockmarks. The interior was a gray woven cloth with rips in the upholstery where the foam stuck out. It was once a luxury car; now it was transportation but nothing more.
But it had served its purpose. The car had somehow gotten the rabbit—both rabbits—out of danger and into open territory. Out of his grasp. Cain was on their trail, now he could reconstruct where they’d been for the forty-eight hours after fleeing Austin. But it wasn’t enough. He still had no idea where they were now, or where they were going. The country was too damned big.
The break had come when a Missouri state trooper realized, after the fact, that he’d seen the fugitives when he stopped for some coffee the night before. It burned Cain to think about it. Their pictures were all over the media, there was a regional manhunt in progress, and this trooper runs into them, smiles, and wishes them a good day. The next day during roll call, the desk sergeant circulated their pictures and the trooper realized he’d just blown any chance he’d ever have for a promotion beyond traffic patrol. By then, it was too late.
The Buick was stolen that same night from the employee’s parking lot at the switching yard. It took another day before someone put two and two together and figured out these events were somehow connected. That was when Cain finally got the call. His men were spread out checking on other leads and he was going stir crazy sitting in his office fielding phone calls. He flew up and got to work. He interviewed the waitress and he interviewed the trooper. He walked through the switching yard searching for some kind of insight. It felt good to be back on the trail. Even though the trail was ice cold.
They’d put out an APB for the Buick. It was another lost day before it turned up, abandoned in a shopping mall parking lot outside St. Louis. The forensic team transported it to a clean garage and gave it a full run through. Analysis of hair samples found inside showed proof the subjects had been in the car. But that was all they could say with any certainty. The car was abandoned for at least a day, maybe two. No one at the mall could say one way or the other.
Cain felt the tension in his neck. His ribs throbbed with pain. They’d done it again. A goddamned spick jailbird and a bitch of a reporter were making him look like a fool. He’d missed them again. And now they could be anywhere—it was a big country. He closed his hand into a fist and visualized hitting someone. Instead, he shut his eyes, took a deep breath, and willed himself to relax. He had to stay in control.
The technicians stood outside drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes, when Cain approached them.
“Listen, fellas, I need you to go over that ve-hicle again with a fine-tooth comb. Tear it apart if you have to. It’s all we got. If there’s any more information to be got, we need to get it.”
While they went inside to continue working, Cain made some calls. First he checked in with the office. Nothing new there. Next he called in to the Installation to give his report. Colonel Pope was away at the time, Cain left a message, happy he didn’t have to deal with the colonel. Not yet anyway.
His last call was to a number in Washington DC. “This is Cain. Any luck?”
“No, sir,” the voice on the other end replied. “Just the normal calls, work-related and such. Nothing out of the ordinary.”
“Damn. I was sure they’d call again. Anybody notice anything about the voice being different?”
“No, sir. Well, one guy said something, but I said I had a cold, and that was it.”
“Okay, well, let me know if you get any bites.” Cain hung up the phone and went back inside. As he walked through the door, the chief tech headed right for him. He had something in his hand.
“Maybe we got something, Captain. I don’t know if it’ll do you any good.” He handed over a piece of scrunched-up white paper. “This was wadded up and wedged between the seats. I don’t know how we missed it the first time. It looks like this was underneath a paper that someone wrote something on. We could only make out a little of it now. We’ll see if we can get any more of it back at the lab. We got a lot more to work with there.”
Cain looked at the paper. The words came clearly through. Maybe the paper came from his subjects, maybe it was something that the car’s owner had thrown away weeks ago. Either way, it didn’t mean a thing to him.
“Yeah, check it out. You never know.”
He looked at the words again. Nothing. They were spelled out in bold print: TRUE BELIEVER.
18
The building was one of several smoked glass structures that circled a pond in the suburban office park. It stood four stories high, a clean, simple design. Set among the trees and on the water, it seemed more like a college campus than a corporate headquarters. The large sign in front was sculpted out of polished chrome and stainless steel. Spotlights hit it from several angles, illuminating the company logo, WPCO, the Wisconsin Power Company.
The night was clear with a slight chill to the air. Lena crossed her arms to conserve her warmth. It was too early to be this cold. But the weather here was like that, hot and muggy one day and cold and rainy the next. She missed the sunny predictability of Texas. They parked in the lot at the side of the building and crossed over to the front entrance.
She tried to pick up her pace to keep up with Philip. He walked at nearly a trot, his head down, clutching his briefcase like he was afraid it would fly away. She could tell he was nervous. She was too. It had been over a week since they’d come to Wisconsin—one of the worst weeks of her life. Philip left for work early each morning, leaving her and Ramon alone with Philip’s roommates, who didn’t seem to have steady jobs. Most of the time they spent watching TV, playing video games, or sleeping. That and drinking beer and eating. They had no interest in Ramon, but every time they saw her, they would leer, then, when she turned away, they’d elbow each other and laugh like donkeys. It reminded her of sixth grade. Lena spent most of her time upstairs, working on Philip’s computer, searching for information, trying to make sense of their situation.
They talked with Philip about their plan the night they arrived, but he could only help if he had access to his company’s computer system when no one was around. Tonight was a Saturday and he was sure that no one else would be working, so it was the best time to try. Lena was nervous but excited too, anxious to know what was on the tape. If it contained the proof she thought it did, then their run was nearly over. With proof, she could buy freedom. With proof, the authorities would have to listen. She’d call a press conference if sh
e had to.
They came to the front door and stepped into the atrium. The first thing she saw was the guard station across from the door. The guard was young—even younger than Philip. He was stocky with short brown hair, and a small earring in one ear. He looked up from the book he was reading, surprised to be disturbed.
“Hey, Mr. B. You’re working awful late tonight.”
“Hi, Bart. What are you reading?” Philip asked, trying to hide his nervousness.
Bart held up a textbook. “Statistics. It’s brutal. I got a test on Tuesday and I’m history if I don’t get at least a C. It’s usually so quiet here I can get a lot of my studying done.” He looked at Lena curiously as they talked.
Philip signed in at the register. “Good luck with that. I’m sure you’ll do fine.” He put down the pen and started to move away. Lena moved with him. “I’ll see you on the way out. I need to work on a project myself.”
“Hey, Mr. B, I don’t want to be a Barney Fife or anything, but I’m afraid you can’t go back there with her.” Bart nodded towards Lena. “Company rules.”
Philip stopped. He fidgeted nervously. “Come on, man, can’t you make an exception? We were out in the area and I need to get this done before Monday. Otherwise, I’ll have to come back tomorrow.”
“I can’t. I could lose my job if anyone found out.”
Philip’s shoulders sagged with defeat. He looked down at the ground.
Lena felt their opportunity slipping away. She smiled at Bart, a flirting, sexy smile.
There was an awkward silence, then Bart asked, “Is this Mrs. B?”
Philip looked up, “No, not exactly. This is uh…Linda.”
Bart wasn’t really listening. He stared hungrily back at Lena. After a moment, he looked away. “I’ll tell you what, man. Go on back this time. But nobody better find out about this. And you can’t put me in a position like this again.”
Philip’s face lit up; his body came to life. “Thanks, man. I owe you.” He stepped forward and Lena moved in step with him. “If you need any help with those statistics, let me know. I’m your guy.”
They took the elevator to the second floor and went down a short hallway. The building was deserted. Walking through the hallways, past office areas with warrens of cubicles, Lena was reminded of her office at the Star. It felt strange to be in a space that on a weekday would be bustling with activity but was now so empty. It made her feel alone. It was more than that, though. Since the whole ordeal started, since she’d first hooked up with Ramon, they’d been together almost constantly. She’d grown accustomed to his mannerisms, the way he moved, even his long silences. Now, just being away from him, she realized how much she relied on him. In a strange way, she felt more alone because he wasn’t there.
The hall ended at a set of double doors. Philip took out his key card and ran it through a scanner on the side. He waited for the light to flash green, then opened the door. “Here we are.”
They were in a large room filled with computer equipment. One whole wall was taken up by a row of massive gray metal boxes, their amber and green lights blinking on and off in a lazy pattern. In the middle of the room was another row of smaller cabinets, with monitors interspersed throughout. There were layers of sound in the air. Some of the machines gave off a high-pitched whirring sound, others a low hum.
Philip opened his briefcase and took out the tape. He slipped it into the slot near one of the servers then sat down by a monitor.
“These things are kind of obsolete now. We've replaced all the tape drives and feed directly off the cloud. But we still use some for backup now. So let’s see what this sucker’s got.”
It seemed to Lena that there had been a transformation. Outside in the hallway and in the car coming over, he’d been like a scared kid. Now, in front of the monitor, he was in his element. He tapped out quick commands and read the responses on the screen as he mumbled a running commentary. “Let’s try to scan…” Tap, tap, tap. “No, then we try…. That’s better.”
It went on like that for about twenty minutes but ended in frustration. Philip leaned back in his chair and stroked his goatee.
“This is a trick setup here. They programmed it on a UNIX platform, which is good. What I was thinking was we could isolate the program and reconstruct it under a new platform. But that leads us into our main problem. I can bring up the code, but I can’t make anything of it. It’s encrypted.”
“Encrypted? Can't you un-encrypt it somehow? ”
“Yeah, but it's a little more complicated. All computer code is based on numbers—it’s all digital. But this is sensitive stuff, with the shit that they’re doing, they wouldn’t want anybody else to see it. I mean, you’re proof of that. So what they do is they change all the numbers in the code based on a common algorithm so that the code is all still there, but it’s in a different form. Did you ever have a decoder ring when you were a kid?”
Lena shook her head. “No, not that I remember.”
“Well, I did. When I was a kid, I made up my own code and—well, that doesn’t matter. It’s the same thing, though. If your computer has the key built in, it reads the program like it was intended to run. If not, then it goes like this.” He motioned to the screen. “Nothing.”
“So we can’t get into it? This is a dead end?” Lena felt a wave of dejection. So much had been riding on that tape. The tape was going to explain everything. It was going to be the proof they needed. Without it, they were lost.
Philip stared intently at the computer screen. “Not necessarily. There might be a way.” He was lost in thought for a long time. “There are programs out there. I can download ‘em from the net. They’re designed to act as decoders. But it’s not that simple. It’s almost a trial and error system. Encryption is digitally based, so the possibilities are nearly infinite. What the program does is use the patterns that the encrypted code shows to try and narrow down the options.”
Lena nodded her head, trying to take it all in.
Philip’s voice rose as he got more excited. He paced across the room, waving his arms as he talked.
“The problem is that even after the options are narrowed down, there’s still a hell of a lot of numbers to plow through. But we’ve got a lot of computing power here. Our mainframe handles all the power transmission, our network does most of the internal functions. They’re linked together. Sometimes, the computers are running near capacity, other times, we have dead time where they’re very under-utilized. What I’m thinking is, I could write a program that, when the computers are under-utilized, they would be redirected to work on the encryption program. That might do it.”
“That would work? How long would it take?”
“Yeah, I think it would work,” Philip thought for a moment. “As to the time, I could write the program over the weekend, that’s no problem. But breaking the code? Who knows? Maybe a week, maybe a month. If we don’t catch a break, it could take a lot longer.”
Lena nodded, but her spirits fell. She hoped they had enough time.
The valley sat at the base of the Davis Mountains near the Pecos River in Loving County, Texas, just across from the New Mexico border. It was flat, dry land, its soil thin and poor. From an agricultural standpoint the land was worthless. There wasn’t much value from any other standpoint either. The official population of the entire county was just over one hundred people.
Back in the early eighties, at the height of the Texas oil boom, a developer from San Antonio bought the land cheaply and took on a huge loan to put up vacation homes. The land was near the river and the view of the mountains was striking; the view was the selling point. But it didn’t really matter because he was working with borrowed money. By 1984, he’d built an access road, laid a couple of dozen concrete pads, and erected a beautiful carved wood sign at the entrance to the development. The sign read Shangri La Estates.
Sales never took off, and the developer stopped working. A year later, the savings and loan that lent him the money foreclosed
and took title. But that company was a victim of the S and L debacle and the land soon reverted to the Resolution Trust Corporation, which was charged with selling the property. There were no takers. It had been government land ever since.
For commercial purposes, the land had no value, too remote for recreational land and not suited for anything else. But the view was nice, and for some people, the remoteness held an attraction. These were people who for one reason or another wanted to step away from the outside world. Ex-hippies and free spirits, retirees living on fixed incomes, and some just not suited to living in modern society.
Over time, a small village of squatters sprang up on the site of the failed development. A few brought in trailers, set them on the pads, and propped them up with concrete blocks. Others arrived with small mobile homes or recreational vehicles. Some erected makeshift structures. The year-round population fluctuated. Most of the time, there were less than fifty people in the development. But in the winter, when the snowbirds came down in their RVs, the population could swell to over one hundred.
Loving County had waged war with the squatters over numerous violations, ranging from access to zoning. But the real battle was over health. The community had no electrical power, running water or sewage disposal system. These amenities were handled separately by each individual. Some had generators and their own disposal units. Others lived much more primitively. The place was a public health nightmare waiting to happen. And now it looked like the nightmare had begun.
Rev Tanner looked up at the weathered wooden sign—Shangra La Estates. This was too fuckin’ strange. This wasn’t the drill he’d been told. This was way beyond the edge. The sign said Shangra La, but it might as well have said Never Never Land or Oz. This was a whole new planet.
He glanced back. They were at a roadblock positioned at the entrance to the old development, where the road cut through a small canyon. His men were all in position, guns ready, staggered out in an arc over the high ground, covering the road below. Tanner stepped out into the dirt roadway. The dust rose up and settled on the back of his neck, caking to the sweat on his skin. He put his hand on his pistol as he called out.
Living Proof Page 21
