by David Cole
“Only if you’re arrested,” he said casually.
Staggered, she rubbed sweat from her forehead with the back of a hand.
“I’d never tell anybody about you, Antonio.”
He dropped the cigarillo butt onto her Chinese carpet. She automatically stooped to pick it up, but he put a shoe on top of her hand and pressed down.
“In my country, when the policía arrest you, nobody makes a deal with judges or lawyers. If you even smell guilty, the policía let you free, send you outside with protection, and young boys assassinate you on busy street corners.”
“Is that a threat?”
He ignored her, studying a small brown stain on his silk shirt.
“And your young boys? Are they also on the list?”
“In this country, they’re too young to be afraid,” Galliano said. “They kill without any real understanding that it’s a terrible thing to take someone’s life. If I told them that everybody had death coming, they simply wouldn’t understand me. Back in Medellín, I’d be wary of them. They’d kill for me, but given the right incentives, they wouldn’t hesitate killing me also.”
He removed his jacket, stripped the shirt off, and threw it on the floor, shrugging back into the jacket.
“Your green tea,” he said. “It leaves stains.”
“I’ll have it cleaned.”
“Just burn it,” he said, and left the room.
laura
21
Aquitek’s offices occupied the top three floors of the newest building in Scottsdale. A prime and expensive location, situated between two hotels and only a few blocks from the center of Scottsdale. Faced with pale lavender sandstone in the atrium area, the building’s exterior was pretty much fifteen stories of tinted, mirrored glass. Six stories up, the building’s size jogged inward floor by floor, so that Don’s floors were roughly two-thirds the size of the bottom of the building.
The lobby, seemingly open and accessible because of all the glass windows, in fact could only be entered by one door. An armed security man stood inside and studied Brittles’s ID before unlocking the door to let us in, immediately locking it behind us. He took us to the central security desk, a horseshoe-shaped configuration about waist-high, with dozens of small security screens showing views of the entire building. He made a short phone call, nodded, pointed behind him.
The elevator bank had two lifts to most of the floors, and a special elevator to the top. Brittles keycarded an expensive device next to this elevator door, then bent over to peer into it for a retina scan. The doors slid back and we rode directly up, the doors opening into a small lobby with a single door, again protected by a keycard and retina scanner, which let us into a sally port area with yet a third security combination, a punch-code device and a palm scanner.
Don sat waiting just inside. Typically, he didn’t even say hello, as though he’d just seen you an hour before. Yet another elevator door stood open and we went up two floors and followed Don into a conference room, where three men rose from their chairs. Two I didn’t recognize, but I was surprised to see Justin Wong, who came to hug me, standing sideways during the hug and clapping me on the back, one of those nongenital-contact things, or maybe even his martial arts training to have one side free in case he needed to move suddenly. His right arm was slightly withered, hanging at an odd angle from his shoulder.
“You okay?” I said, pointing at the shoulder.
“Still frosty.”
“Nathan, Laura,” Don said. “This is Michael Briggs. FBI, Phoenix office. That’s Louie Youker. He keeps all the non-computer gadgets working around here, but he’s also learning a lot about computer hardware. And Justin Wong is in charge of all my security.”
Nobody shook hands. Don gathered us around the conference table, punched some buttons on an LCD panel. The window blinds glided shut and a projection screen lit up with an image, rapidly scrolling data, nothing I could recognize. I looked around the table.
Youker settled somewhat uncomfortably in his chair, obviously not a man used to spending much time at a desk. An unlit cigar clamped between his teeth. Barrel-chested, with a slight belly and an expensive haircut obviously dyed with a color so black it gleamed with a dark purplish sheen. Wearing a blue cotton short-sleeved Polo shirt and pressed khaki Dockers, two gold chains hung around his neck, a cross on one, an Italian pepper on the other. He said nothing, sat patiently, waiting to contribute if asked, but not actively involved in discussions where he had nothing to contribute. Youker looked like somebody who dealt with hardware effortlessly, without much thought although his knowledge was encyclopedic.
Briggs was old, really old. Hands and head dotted with liver spots, his neatly combed hair very sparse and in some places just individual strands. But he waited with courtly patience until I was seated, standing ramrod-straight, still several inches taller than six feet, with a very brushy mustache that made him look at least ten years younger.
“You young farts,” he said, sitting down. “You probably never really wonder how things will be when you get near my age. Your technology will have changed as much as your friendships, with most of who and what you once knew dead and buried. You’ll learn, like me, to just keep going. You can’t look back, because you’ll realize that what the newer group of young people call the future doesn’t have any place in it for you except as a memory. Like the first personal computer with no hard drive. And that was barely twenty years ago. You’ve got to have that will to keep going, you’ve got to tell your primary care doctor that if he sees you’ve lost that will, lost that spirit, especially if you’ve lost all your humor, that doctor has instructions to put something in your veins right then and send you off for cremation.”
“You’re a long way from that,” Don said.
“I am. Indeed, I am. But it’s a goddam nuisance to think that when you get up each morning you take a moment to realize that, yeah, you’re still here.”
Don spent half an hour summarizing every detail of what we knew. It wasn’t much, and he called up three PowerPoint screens in succession.
KNOWN
Bones of possibly more than twenty people found in Coolidge
Credit card scam run from Florence 800 # call center
Theresa Prejean and US Marshal assassinated in Tucson
Laura Winslow assassination attempt fails
William Marriott murdered, helped install call center computers
“Five facts. Five independent bits of data. We assume they’re connected, we just don’t know how they’re connected. We can also assume the following.”
CONJECTURED
Bones tentatively identified as female
Prejean is connected to Winslow because of bikers
Call center data sent by wi-fi outside prison
“You’d better explain that wi-fi thing,” Youker said.
“Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers started work on wireless networks back in the early 1980s,” Don said. “Sneaker-net was a bore, taking a floppy disk from one computer, carrying it to another. So IEEE set a standard, 802.11b, officially adopted in 1999 when Apple Computer built it into some of its machines and called it AirPort 802.11b. Some marketing guy, maybe Steve Jobs himself, started calling it wi-fi, for wireless fidelity.”
“This guy reminds me of Hugh Downs,” Youker said to the rest of us. “Old-time TV announcer. If you asked him the time, he’d tell you how to build a clock.”
“Okay,” Don said. “So here are the major questions we have to answer.”
UNKNOWN
Who are the victims, where did the bones come from?
Who are the bikers, where did they come from?
Why is Winslow targeted?
Is Brittles also targeted?
What’s the common link between all of the above?
“Focus on that last item,” Don said. “There are absolutely no reasonable ideas why all the listed events are connected. I don’t want to even spend much time conjecturing.”
/> He switched the screen back to the scrolling numbers.
“I’m crunching the entire call center database from the last six months. Hundreds of calls, thousands if you count the ones that didn’t result in orders. Once I get it all crunched, I can process and sort it a dozen ways from Tuesday, looking for any kind of pattern. Right now, I want to start at the prison. Data was being transferred outside the prison by a wireless network. We have no idea, yet, where the signals were going.”
“We’re getting around to me,” Briggs said.
“We appreciate the courtesy of your being here,” Don said. “We’ve worked together before, so you know the drill. Any problems with what I want to do?”
Taking time to consider the question, Briggs shot his cuffs, straightened his tie, aligned the American flag pin in his lapel. Up to this point, other than beyond the introductions, he’d listened carefully without saying a word, taking no notes, written or with a tape recorder, his concentration intensely focused on whoever spoke.
“Okay,” he said finally. “I can’t authorize any federal personnel or equipment for this electronic search. But as I understand this wireless thing, when you set up a wireless network, you broadcast a signal. You create an electronic node that’s accessible to anybody nearby. Am I right?”
“Yup,” Don said.
“Our computer security people back in DC tell me that with these broadcasts, no laws are being broken. Am I right? Anybody can legally tap into an open node?”
“Yes,” I said.
“So anybody can use anybody else’s Internet connection, if you’re close enough to the active node?”
“Yes.”
“How far away can you be?” Briggs asked.
“It was originally set up just for use in a house or an office building. Some colleges these days have set up wireless networks on the entire campus. I think a few cities are doing the same, mostly in the San Francisco area. Berkeley. Santa Cruz, farther down the coast.”
“How far away can you be?” he patiently asked again.
“Probably no more than three hundred yards,” I said.
“So your theory is that the database info from the prison call center is going somewhere outside the prison walls?”
“It’s not a theory,” Youker said. “My men have isolated a small portion of the motherboard in the sample computer Laura brought back from the work center. It’s been altered to include wireless transmission.”
Briggs laid circuit diagrams on the table, took a ballpoint pen in both hands, and traced out a circuit for us with both hands moving from the sides into the center to indicate a specific area of the diagram. He set the motherboard on the table, used the pen to point to some circuit board components.
“If the data is going out, it doesn’t matter if it’s from one computer or twenty. We need to find where it’s being received. Justice says it’s a go for you. We have no authority to interfere. Depending on what you find, we may have jurisdiction. I reserve that option. To step in if we so decide a federal crime is being committed. Now I’ve got to leave. Anything else?”
“Thanks,” Don said. “We’ll let you know anything new.”
Briggs left. Once the elevator doors closed on him, Don took out a thick folder and spread it open on the table.
“Just as well he doesn’t know everything. I’ve been digging into financial records of the Rapture Warriors Camp. Can’t find any traces of a corporation with that name in Arizona records. Has to be some other state. Given the structure of cash flow for the camp, the corporation may even be established offshore.”
“What now?” Brittles asked.
“These financial records, including the bank accounts we know about, show that a Tucson woman, Tamár Gordon, was the rainmaker. Anything needed at the camp, Tamár paid for by check. Somebody named Anthony Galliano also has power to write checks. I’m trying to find out now who he is. All finances legal enough to survive both state and federal audits. Micah Posada drew a salary, paid by Tamár. Posada paid all expenses at the camp, including staff salaries and equipment purchases. At the bank, all deposits from the camp were by check. Other cash deposits, some from people who sponsored kids there, but no ability to trace the source of a lot of cash.”
“What now?” Brittles asked again. “I don’t see how you make any sense of this.”
“That’s the trick,” Don said. “Some of it will never make sense. All we can do is try to eliminate the false hopes, which we can only do by checking out everything. Frustrating, if you get impatient, if you try to play a hunch without the data to support hunches. At some point, we’ll know we’re on the right track. But right now, just out of the gate, it’s foolish to make any predictions or play hunches.”
“I said I couldn’t find any traces of a corporation,” Youker said. “But I’m sure I know what to look for. The problem is time. There are so many offshore banks in different parts of the world.”
“Or maybe,” I said, “it’s a corporation in name only. I’ve been looking in the wrong place. I’ll bet the ranch that it’s referenced in Arizona DBA files.”
Brittles said he had to go to the bathroom, and Wong followed. Youker stood up, impatient to leave the room, and Don waved him away.
22
Don asked me again to summarize anything I’d seen at the prison or in the town of Florence, but nothing yet seemed relevant. A blown-up grid map of Florence’s streets and roads hung on one wall, a red marker pen ready to make crosses marking locations of wi-fi nodes.
“Gotta take a break,” Don said. “Come on.”
Wheeling into his office, he started to brew up another pot of his Arabian mocha triple-roast coffee. I stood outside the glassed wall of his office, watching him carefully measure and grind beans, adjust the temperature of his espresso maker, a headset running down to three different cell phones. He’d click from one to another, using a small switch in the mike cord, the cells rigged to take voice commands. Seeing me, he waved me into the office.
“Close the door,” he said. “Take a break with an old friend.”
“I’m too scared to relax.”
“Keep me posted every ten minutes,” he said into his stalk mike. “Whether you find anything or not.”
He turned off the cell connection, removed the headset.
“Coffee?”
“Got any Mountain Dew?”
“In that small fridge.”
I took out a one-liter plastic bottle, cracked the screwtop, drank deeply.
“Yikes,” Don said, settling into the leather backing of his wheelchair, which popped and crackled. “Gotta get this upholstered. Okay. We’re in a holding pattern.”
He studied a single sheet of paper, crumpled it, smoothed it out, and tore off some tiny strips, wadding each strip into a jagged pellet, setting them on the edge of his desk, aimed at his wastebasket to flick each pellet six feet away.
“Got any ideas?” he said.
“Titanium Powerbook. Node sniffers that will show any open wi-fi nodes.”
“Already got that covered, Laura. Trust me. I’ve got three different people on scene with computers, already checking for nodes. One of them thinks there’s a pattern to the south. But nothing specific yet. Florence is a bigger area than it looks once you start dealing with just a three-hundred-yard radius.”
He flicked the last pellet, missing the wastebasket by several feet. Rolled his chair back and forth a few inches, hands on the rubber rims, thinking.
“Just so it’s clear,” I said, “I’m not participating. I’ve done my part of the deal. There are too many dead people connected here. I just want my daughter, and nothing else.”
“What’s up with you and Nathan?”
“Nothing.”
“What happened to that nice guy I met at your place a few days ago?”
“Rich?” I said, bursting into tears again, good Christ, crying again.
“He seemed kind of a control freak.”
“Stay out of my personal li
fe, Don.”
“I said that wrong. He seems pretty much focused on the long ago. Dead bones, ancient artifacts. Nathan is focused on long ago, but he deals with that by working hard to live in the here and now.”
“Don, fuck your psychobabble.”
“You know me. I say whatever’s on my mind.”
He handed me one of the cells he’d been using.
“Okay. Take this cell. Keep it on. Here’s an extra charged battery. Here’s two. I figure it’ll be an hour, maybe two before I get complete reports from my crews in Florence. So, right now, why don’t you and Nathan go somewhere? Soon as I hear something, I’ll give you specific directions to the nodes.”
“Okay with me,” Brittles said from the doorway.
Don let us find the elevator by ourselves. When we got off two floors below, one of the coded doors was open, Wong waiting for us.
“Let me show you what I’ve got,” he said to Brittles. “Just so you know in case you need equipment of any kind.”
Going through yet another sally port, complete with even more elaborate coding devices, Wong opened the inside door to a small corridor ending in a steel-plated wall with a huge vault door standing open.
“Fort Knox vault door,” Wong said, spinning the five-spoke wheel just below the combination dial. “Executive Model 8240. Weighs six tons, with twenty-four locking bolts. Modular interior, set with shelves and racks. Electronic snooper stuff on the left, armament on the right, ammo in the center drawers. Anything you want to start a small war, I’ve got it here.”
Brittles looked over a rack of assault weapons.
“AK-47. M-16. AR-15. Take your choice, if you want one. Two dozen different handguns ranging from .22-caliber to. 45.”
“I used this piece when I was in the Shadow Wolves,” Brittles said, taking down an elaborate weapon with a long barrel and a short, squat shoulder stock.
“You were in Shadow Wolves? Cool, man. When this exercise is over, you gotta tell me about that. I hear it’s an elite unit, all Indians. Part of US Customs, or the Border Patrol, whatever. I’ve been in all kinds of elite units. I was a LURP, in Nam. Used older sniper rifles, but the principles are the same. You in Nam, man?”
