The Canton Connection

by Fritz Galt

  “You have a choice,” Jake said. “It’s this house or yours, on your own salary.”

  “Won’t you please allow me a moment to fantasize?” she said.

  Jake resolved to shut up.

  He waited on the front steps and fingered the thick leaves of a banana plant.

  When she emerged and closed the door behind her, her enthusiasm seemed more subdued, not like she had just had great sex, but like she had satisfied her curiosity.

  She took his elbow unbidden, and they walked in silence for some time. They strolled back over the dam as if they owned it.

  Jake gazed down the full length of Li’s lake and saw the other dam upstream. It towered over the end of the lake. How much water would it release when the dam broke?

  And who would he allow to drown?

  Were Li’s programmers actually hackers? How could he tell? When would he find out?

  Was Wu the suspect Jake thought he was? All it took was one call from Langley to confirm the fingerprints.

  And lastly, would he let Stacy wash away in the flood? Things weren’t looking good for her, either. When would he be certain that she was the fraud he had suspected for the past two days?

  “I have something to tell you,” she said, breaking the silence. “Can you keep this a secret?”

  Jake didn’t know what he was committing to, but said, “Sure.”

  “I’m actually working for the NSA,” she said, and studied his reaction.

  “The National Security Agency?” He stopped in his tracks. “I don’t believe you.”

  “I’m working for a team run by Calvin Stickler,” she said.

  “Stickler?” An image of the tall, stoop-shouldered man with wire-rimmed glasses came to mind. “That limp rag of a mathematician?”

  “Hey. Don’t go off on mathematicians.”

  “He sent you here?”

  She nodded, giving him a moment for the full implications to sink in.

  “Wait a second. Why in the world didn’t you tell me that from the start? I lost my job over this.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  He stared at her. “So you were lying to me.”

  She nodded glumly. “I had to.”

  “I can’t believe it. The NSA?”

  He thought about the team of nerds that he had met in Maryland. They were the very definition of inaction. How could they have deployed this blonde bombshell into China to do their bidding? He was skeptical, to say the least.

  “You don’t have to believe me,” she said.

  “I can’t believe anything you say or have said.”

  She ran a hand down his cheek with a sorrowful look. “Oh, I know. I had to tell some white lies.”

  “White lies? How can you call major obstruction of justice a ‘white lie’?”

  “Don’t you see?” she said. “I had to.”

  “Had to what? Cover up a murder?”

  “I reported it,” she defended herself.

  “But you failed to tell the police or the FBI who committed it. You misled me and you continued to cavort with the killer, covering for him in Charlottesville as well.”

  She stepped away from him. “Don’t you see?” she said. “I had to. Simon was there to protect me.”

  “Protect you? You were protecting him.”

  “I don’t know why he had to kill those people, but…”

  “An old man on a bike path? A naked college student lying in bed in Charlottesville? How were they threats to you?” He looked at her disbelievingly.

  “Jake, he works for the U.S. Marshals. I had to trust him.”

  He let the argument drop. She would plead ignorance to defend Wu, and there was nothing he could say that would trip up that defense.

  “How about coming to China?” he said. “That was inexcusable. Talk about a security breach.”

  She dragged her feet in the stones as she walked.

  “You violated your travel restrictions,” he said. “Those travel restrictions are in place for a purpose.”

  She looked at him fondly. “Do you know why I like you? You are strictly by-the-book. Just like me.”

  He had once thought that he could read her. She had once been this uncomplicated young woman with a head for programming. Now she was playing around with industrial espionage. “Why did you have to come here?” he asked.

  “Jake, don’t you get it? The NSA needed me to infiltrate the hackers. We can’t identify Chinese sources of hacking without coming here.”

  “So are you going to give the password to Eric Li?”

  “I’m sure Simon will prevent Li from using it.”

  “So you’re going to give Simon the password?”

  “I will do what I have to do,” was all she said.

  That gave Jake no confidence. If he was in his right mind, he would bind and gag her on the spot. The world could not afford to entrust the security of the internet to Wu.

  “You identified the source. It’s Eric Li,” he said. “Why can’t you just implicate him and let it go at that?”

  “Jake, I’m not trained to protect myself and sneak in and out of countries. What do you think Li would do to me?”

  “And you were counting on Wu? Tell me what you expect him to do for you here?”

  She shrugged. “That’s his responsibility. And I see that you’re here, too.”

  The implication was clear. What was Jake going to do to save the internet? Why was he even there?

  He checked his watch. The dam was ready to blow in less than fifteen minutes.

  He let her accusation hang heavily in the air. Let her doubt him all she wanted. She was the one who brought the password to China.

  The cell phone rang as Jake and Stacy were walking back beside the lake.

  “It’s me,” Bill said.

  “Give me a moment,” Jake told Stacy. He veered off the path onto a small, stone patio with benches. “What did you learn?”

  “The fingerprints are Wu’s,” Bill said. “The metadata matches as well. Simon Wu killed Han Chu and his programmers. It’s definite.”

  “So he only switched…” Jake didn’t want Stacy to hear the details.

  “It’s clear that someone, perhaps Wu, switched the thumbprints, but failed to switch the fingerprints. I don’t know why.”

  “That’s all I need to know,” Jake said. Wu had committed the murders.

  “Remember to call that number when you’re ready,” Bill said.

  “Righto.” He hung up.

  Stacy was leaning over the water to collect fallen petals.

  He studied her fragile figure against the lapping waves. She was as delicate and free as she had been the day he had taken her on that rowboat at Mountain Lake Resort. But freedom meant vulnerability. And she had put her trust in a killer.

  So Wu was guilty of killing the Quantum employees. Did that mean he was acting out of self interest, or the interests of national security? If protecting her was Wu’s true purpose for killing the programmers, then why did someone switch the prints and try to implicate Wu’s boss?

  Things didn’t look good for Wu, but Jake would have to ascertain Wu’s true purpose soon. How would he know for sure?

  The one aspect to this counterespionage work that really bothered Jake was not knowing where people stood. Normal field work allowed him to maintain a distance from the players involved. This assignment required him to move in the circles of those who deliberately falsified their identities and the records.

  The deceit was getting him down.

  Chapter 40

  Ten minutes later, Jake saw Eric Li motioning to them from the front door of the building beside his house.

  Simon Wu stood in the shadows glowering at Stacy.

  “You ready for this?” Jake asked her.

  She took a deep breath and nodded.

  Together they crossed a grassy field. Even from that distance, Jake could see the glow of computer screens within the office.

  Li led them inside. “So
here is where you’ll be working.” He pulled out a desk chair in front of several computer terminals.

  Simon Wu’s interest seemed piqued.

  Stacy nodded as she absorbed all the details of the setup.

  Jake could only identify the basics. One computer had a sign above it that read .COM. Several computers next to that were labeled ASHBURN, HONG KONG, FRANKFURT and NEW YORK.

  “There you go,” Li said. “Type in the password, and you’ve got complete access to the A root server.”

  “Just like back in Virginia,” she said.

  “Just like back in Virginia,” Li confirmed.

  Simon Wu stepped forward and cracked a smile as he read the lines of code on the screens.

  “Why not take a seat?” Li suggested to Wu.

  Wu slipped into the main chair and pulled the various keyboards to within reach.

  Li turned grandly to Stacy and rubbed his hands together. “I guess now’s the time,” he said.

  Jake never thought that she would tell Wu the password. And her hesitation bore that out. Certainly, she could no longer trust a man who was poised to take over the internet on her command.

  For the first time in a long while, Jake felt proud of her. She was standing up for her country, her fellow man. Nothing would stand between her and her patriotic duty to protect all that she felt sacred.

  “The password is ‘Honeypot,’” she said.

  What? Jake was confused.

  Wu pounced on the nearest keyboard and began typing.

  What the hell…? Jake stared at the scene in amazement. Stacy had just given away the store. The big store.

  Her expression was unchanged. Her eyes were still clear. Her smile never left her lips.

  At once, things began to happen. All the screens surrounding Wu sprang to life. The code was spreading around the internet, and the screens reported the changes.

  They heard a whoop in back of the room. Voices were filled with excitement.

  The tone was not worried or upset. Rather, it was joyous. The programmers sounded like convicts who had just been released from prison.

  Given the keys to the internet, they began running the programs they had developed for that very moment.

  “We’ve got Barclays Group,” one man shouted.

  “Just got Aramco.”

  “Deutsche bank is ours.”

  “Hello, HSBC. I’m home.”

  “We’re into Royal Dutch Shell.”

  “We own Wal-Mart.”

  Like burglaries happening all over the internet, their routines were breaking into banks and corporations all over the world.

  Stacy’s bright eyes slid toward Jake. It wasn’t a haughty look. It was a cue for action.

  It was a small glance, but it told Jake volumes. She trusted him. She knew he would save the day.

  Jake hated to do it. But it was necessary.

  He slipped one hand into his coat pocket for Wu’s phone and his other hand reached for his pistol.

  “You can stop right there, Simon,” he said coolly.

  Wu turned and saw the weapon. A look of confusion crossed his face, then he jerked around, knocking a keyboard askew, and reached for his shoulder holster.

  The single bullet Jake fired into Wu’s chest brought all human activity in the room to a halt.

  The sound reverberated off the walls, and Wu’s body thudded on his keyboard. He was dead.

  Jake speed-dialed the number Bill Brewster had given him.

  He looked up to see Li holding a snub-nosed handgun to Stacy’s head.

  “Easy, Li. You shoot her and I shoot you.”

  Stacy winced under Li’s grip around her throat, and her eyes glanced at the muzzle against her temple. “Jake!”

  The line picked up, but there was no answer.

  “Now,” Jake said into the phone.

  He had only experienced one earthquake in his life. It had struck in central Virginia and destroyed property all the way into West Virginia, shook people in Maryland for half a minute and severely damaged the Washington Monument.

  This tremor was more abrupt, but equally devastating. The floor moved beneath his feet with a single thrust. His knees buckled, and he ended up on all fours.

  Wu’s chair flipped out from under his limp body and shot across the room. Computer monitors hopped several inches in the air and came down hard.

  But then the jolt was over, and there were no aftershocks.

  Li was sprawled back against a computer, a stunned look on his face. Stacy lay prone on the floor, moaning beside Li’s handgun.

  Li’s face brightened, and he leaped for the gun.

  So Jake turned his pistol on him and pulled the trigger.

  Li jerked backward under the impact and remained tottering for a moment. He gave a startled look at the blood on his chest, then up at Jake. “Why?” he asked.

  “I didn’t want your damned castle,” Jake said.

  Incredulity remained fixed on Li’s face as he fell in a heap.

  “Come with me,” Jake told Stacy, and holstered his pistol. He tried to pull her to her feet. That only increased her moaning.

  “Where are you hurt?”

  There was no response.

  He had no time to play doctor. He could hear the wall of water approaching.

  They had to reach higher ground.

  So he bent down and picked her up. Her arms flopped uselessly, and she couldn’t hold onto him.

  The door was twenty feet away and the room was full of programmers screaming hysterically. They might have earned millions in the past minute, but all that was about to be swept away.

  “Open the door,” Jake shouted, and pulled his gun on the nearest multimillionaire.

  The ground trembled from the onrush of water in the nearby lake.

  There would be no way to jump over, duck under or outrun the wall of water because of the enormous power behind it.

  The door swung open, and Jake hoisted Stacy onto his shoulders.

  She clung feebly to his shirt and he was able to step over Li’s body and out the door.

  He expected the programmers to flee the low-lying ground with him, but incredibly they stayed inside.

  Between their lives and their newfound wealth, they chose their wealth.

  Jake built up momentum and his feet flew across the grass. The slope increased with each step, and soon the going was hard.

  But his heart drove him to move faster than ever.

  He had just reached a grove of palm trees when the mighty wave roared in his ears. He didn’t look, and only heard the terrible crash as it powered through the buildings. Vegetation and debris smashed into the trees behind him.

  Water lapping at his heels, he ran through the palms. He wouldn’t stop there.

  Soon he was onto the access road and followed it toward Li’s chateau.

  A Ferrari convertible sat in the driveway with a pearl necklace dangling from the ignition.

  He leaned Stacy up against the car in order to open the door. Then he saw why she was only semi-conscious and unresponsive. She had a long bruise across her forehead. The skin wasn’t broken, but there was a scary indent the width of her face.

  He set her gently in the passenger’s seat and sloshed around to the driver’s side.

  He jumped into the car. The engine started immediately and he threw the transmission into reverse.

  He backed uphill at full speed and pulled onto the access road that circled the scene of devastation below. More branches smashed into the windows of the chateau and office buildings where the programmers toiled away.

  The water behind the wave never formed a trough. Instead, it was a bigger wave. This one swept closer to Jake, with fallen trees splintering as they hit the pavement.

  He watched flooding water creep across the road.

  He spun the car around and faced uphill. The road out of the compound led, of all places, back toward the dam that had just burst. The road rose ever so slightly, and Jake was able to avoi
d the water that crept up behind him.

  Driving at full speed, he got a good look at the destroyed dam. The breach was in the center of the dam, but the weight of the entire upper lake had crumbled away at the hole, making it larger by the second.

  The lake flowed through the breach like someone pouring water from a bucket. All the recent rain must have filled both the upper lake and Li’s lake to capacity, because the quantity of water seemed endless.

  He paused and took in the scene before driving away. Down at the far end of Li’s lake, he could see that the dam was holding twice its normal capacity. The floodwater would go nowhere but up and would completely inundate the access road.

  Upstream, the breach was deeper than the upper lake. The entire lake would drain into Li’s lake.

  The one-story programmer’s offices were already submerged. All he could see were satellite dishes, like giant lily pads, floating on the surface of the lake.

  Next to the offices, Li’s chateau was half-submerged and one wall was completely torn away. Jake could see the staff inside frantically scrambling up the staircase for safety.

  As for the dream house across the lake, it didn’t stand a chance. It had shifted off its foundation and only the upper half was visible as it floated toward the middle of the lake.

  The water at that end of the lake roiled and washed back in Jake’s direction.

  A body came floating past. The handsome and placid features looked familiar. It was Eric Li, drifting in restful repose over his submerged dream.

  Jake aimed for the guard booth. This was Li’s last defense. How would the soldiers react to Jake driving away?

  The iron gate that normally blocked the road was open, and Jake could see onto the main street. That was convenient, but why was the gate open?

  He saw a soldier slumped against the fence with a mortal bullet wound to his forehead. He still had an automatic weapon clutched in his hands.

  Jake slowed down to inspect the guard booth. A pair of boots lay sprawled out of the door. Blood trickled between the guard’s legs. A gunshot wound to the chest blossomed darkly against his green uniform.

  Jake gunned the engine in case Stacy opened her eyes.

  He looked at her. Her head rolled back unsupported between the headrest and the door.

  He took a ramp up toward the main road, and a man was walking along the shoulder. His frame was large and he had an easy swing to his gait. He wore a pair of sneakers and dark running clothes, an odd sight in the city.