“Maybe there was no security guard to be biffed,” I mused aloud, hoping for the best. “Maybe Goon was the real guard. Maybe he used a fake ID and somehow managed to get hired by the security company. He’s wily enough. And you could get him for ID theft.
“Or maybe Goon bribed the real guy with a hefty wad of cash and security guy is on his way to Hawaii right now. I hope you’re checking into that.” Which was the scenario I was hoping for.
Van seemed to be in charge of the operation. He flashed me a sympathetic look. “That’s not the information we have.”
As I opened my mouth to ask another question about the guard, Van’s radio crackled to life. He answered, looking relieved by the interruption. The rest of us listened in to his end of the conversation without any of the usual subterfuge eavesdroppers use. Unfortunately, Van’s end consisted mostly of swearing and frowns. He signed off and set the radio down. “They got away.” He looked at one of his fellow agents. “Rock, coordinate with Seattle PD. See what we can do to track them down.”
Rock nodded and left the room.
“Both Ket and Goon?” I asked, anxiety creeping into my voice as the door closed shut behind Rock. I hadn’t realized I’d been so optimistic the Feds would catch at least one of them.
Van nodded. “Both.”
“Both,” I muttered to myself. “Both. Both. Both. Both.”
Van shot me a concerned look. “You’re saying the same thing over and over.”
Perseveration is a sign of concussion. I’m sure Van knew that. “Just digesting the news. I’m fine.”
Van didn’t look one hundred percent convinced, but he turned to the guy on his right anyway. “We’ve got news copters buzzing the site and reporters dogging us.”
“Channel Five’s been reporting police chopper action almost since the action began,” I said. When Van gave me a questioning look, I said, “Mom called. Our little party’s been on the news for the last half hour. Someone called a tip in.”
Van sighed, looking like he hated news-tippers. “Probably somebody listening in on police band radio.” He looked at the guy on his right again. “Ben, you have any ideas for damage control? For those of you who don’t know,” he looked at me, “Ben’s our PR guy.”
“‘No comment’ always works,” Ben said.
Van’s dislike of Ben’s answer was obvious from his expression. “We have to give them something. Something with a ring of truth to it. Something to throw them off the scent of our mission. Something to investigate.” He set his ice pack down on the table in front of him. Ice on. Ice off. He knew the drill.
I glanced at my watch. Twenty minutes? Close enough. My head was numb. I set my ice pack on the table, too.
“The trial’s coming up fast. We have just days left to get that dongle and nail Canarino or our case goes in the crapper. We don’t need the media blowing our operation.” He paused in thought. “We tell them about Ket.” Van glanced at me for affirmation.
I had my impassive face on. I wasn’t committing one way or the other until I knew where this was going.
“We don’t mention the dongle. We tell the media that we believe the suspect I’ll refer to as Goon is working for Ket. That he infiltrated FSC headquarters as part of a plot to help Ket kidnap Reilly. The plot went awry when Reilly fought back and I walked in on him.
“We’ll tie Jay’s murder in, saying we believe Ket murdered Jay because he was jealous that Reilly dated Jay for a brief time while Ket was in jail. If we’re lucky, we’ll get Ket to turn himself in.”
I shook my head. “Ket will never turn himself in.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I know Ket.”
“He didn’t hire Goon to kidnap you,” Van pointed out. “We don’t think he murdered Jay. Everything points to Jay’s murder being tied to the dongle. If Ket thinks we’ll make him a deal—”
“If you make him a deal, I will personally bean you with this ice pack,” I said, grabbing my ice pack and holding it like a weapon. “And I throw hard and with extreme accuracy. Then I’ll track Goon down and hire him to off you.” I paused. “I mean it.”
“Put the ice pack down,” Van said dryly. “It’s not nice to threaten an officer of the law—”
“Tell it to the judge.” I cut Van off. “I’ve had enough of the criminal justice system letting Ket loose to torment me.” I set the ice pack down and crossed my arms in front of me.
Van sighed and put his ice pack back on his eye, shooting me a challenging look and nodding toward my ice. Yeah, it was safer for him against my head than beaning his. I uncrossed my arms and picked up my pack to apply to my goose egg, staring Van down with a look as cold as my instant ice.
I rested my elbow on the table and pressed the ice pack against my head, wincing. “Ket’s back on the steroids. I could tell. He’s buffer than he’s ever been. He’s not rational. And he won’t be. He’s angry and he feels invincible. He’s walked right past you guys since the beginning. He won’t turn himself in.” I paused and pinned Van with an angry look. The Tylenol was helping, but my head was still spinning and it was hard to think straight. “And I don’t like your scenario. It makes me sound like a tramp in the midst of a torrid love triangle.”
“It makes Ket look like a dangerous nutcase.” Van stared back at me, daring me to challenge him.
All the others in the room were watching us, trying to hide their grins.
I let out a loud sigh. “Let’s go with the assumption Ket doesn’t turn himself in. What then?”
“We’re tracking him down. Both him and Goon.”
I had a lot less faith in Van now that he was a cop.
Though I didn’t officially consent to the story, I didn’t lodge a major protest, either. Van sent Ben out to talk to the press. Then he and his agents left me alone in the room while they made their battle plans.
Van pointed a finger at me as he left. “And don’t fall asleep on me while I’m out.” Then he instructed the uniform to check on me every few minutes and keep me awake.
How touching. On the other hand, a comatose me wouldn’t look good on his job performance report.
“We need your help, Reilly,” Van said when he returned. He took a seat opposite me at the table, all business.
“You don’t have to use the FBI voice. It’s just us.”
He gave me his in pain half smile. His eye had swollen completely shut, but he was still giving the instant ice a go.
“You’re the designated bearer of bad news,” I said. His posture gave him away. “They could have sent someone prettier. Right now you are the sore eye, not the sight for it.”
“Nice to see you have your sense of humor back.”
“Yeah.” I was still peeved.
“We have a plan to catch Goon and Ket and retrieve the dongle. And we need your help.”
I didn’t like the expectant way he was looking at me. Like I was bait he was ready to cast out and angle with. “Too desperate. Too calculating,” I said, critiquing his approach. “Try that again and put some sympathetic Agent Jack Malone into it. Soft, firm voice. Sympathetic eyes, in your case, eye.”
“Reilly…” He did his best Jack Malone imitation.
I couldn’t help smiling. “I’ll make this easy on you, Jack. If your plans involve me in the Cone of Silence, you got it. Mum’s the word. Anything else, forget it. Can I go now?” I pushed my chair back, ready to stand.
Van stood and blocked the door. “Not so fast. You haven’t even heard the plan yet.”
“I don’t have to. I take it that it involves more than silence.” I sighed, but remained seated. “Does it involve danger?”
“Danger, duplicity, acting skills. Everything you’ve learned in camp. What do you say?” He put that rah-rah tone in his voice that people use when they’re trying to rev you up about something as appealing as cold, canned spinach.
“You’re a lousy salesman. I don’t want danger and I’ve had more than enough of duplicity.” Okay, that wa
s a direct barb.
“Reilly, please?”
“Can you guarantee a happy ending?”
“Nothing in this life is guaranteed. I am authorized to offer you a limited warranty.”
I stared him down. “Why do I have the feeling ‘limited’ refers to notifying my next of kin when the whole plan backfires?”
His answering grin wasn’t as pretty as it used to be. The black eye and the wince of pain thrown in ruined the whole effect.
“No thanks.”
“The odds are in our favor.” He was still doing the grin/grimace of pain thing. Which played on my heartstrings, probably just as he’d planned. Even banged up, he was damned cute. And he had probably saved my life. “If we succeed, your problems with Ket are a thing of the past.”
“The odds better be better than fifty-one to forty-nine. They’d better be a lot closer to ninety-nine to one.”
“They are.”
“Uh-huh. You’re a big, black-eyed bluffer.” I put my ice pack and my hands on the table. It was a whole lot better than having my hands trembling in my lap.
“So you’re in?”
“Not so fast. I never sign a contract without reading the fine print. First, I want to know everything about Canarino and the dongle. Then, I’ll want to hear the plan. Then we’ll talk.”
Van nodded. “Fair enough.”
“I’m Reilly the spy, and I’m listening.” I leaned back in the chair and wrapped myself back into the space blanket like I was waiting for a bedtime story.
“Thank you,” Van said, looking amused despite the tense situation. “Where do you want me to start?”
“Canarino,” I said. “I was reading fast at Mom’s.”
Van nodded again. “Like you said before, Canarino’s a high profile investigator who’s an expert in audio analysis. In the mid-nineties, he worked with a software guru named Wagner to develop a device that converted audio and spoken words into computer files. That doesn’t sound like much today. You can buy cheap consumer products that do that. But back then, it was a big deal.
“It was pretty low-tech, a shielded box that attached directly to phone lines and drew the power it needed directly from those lines so that it wouldn’t need a battery that would have to be replaced. The device could also capture the touch tones of the numbers the target dialed and read incoming numbers.
“Canarino claimed he was developing it for use for law enforcement. In reality, with the assistance of a phone company employee he bought off, he was using it for illegal wiretapping that he did on behalf of his clients.
“Canarino bought off several cops to break into DMV records and criminal history records that aren’t available outside of law enforcement. His clients had the edge, which made him very popular. And very rich. Canarino got results.”
I shuddered. “Dirty cops.”
“Don’t worry. We have them. They’ve been charged with racketeering, along with Canarino. We have them dead to rights on those charges.”
I nodded. “You didn’t miss any?”
“No.”
“How old is Canarino?” I asked.
“Sixty-nine.”
“What’s the sentence for the racketeering charges?”
“Twenty years.”
“You’ve got him for life then,” I said. “Why do you need the audio files?”
“Canarino and his clients violated the privacy rights of dozens, maybe hundreds, of people. Those people have the right to justice, don’t you think?”
“And you have many more fish to bring in and fry,” I said. “This could be a career-making case. Am I right?”
He shrugged. “It could be.”
Which meant it was.
“If we let one dirty PI get away with it, what happens to the system? Who’s safe?”
My turn to shrug. “So Canarino has the encrypted audio files.”
Van nodded. “When Canarino was arrested on weapons charges earlier, Wagner destroyed the wiretapping equipment and software. Only Canarino knows the key to decoding his files. We’ve spent nearly nine months trying to decode them without success. This is where your theory about the dongle comes in.” Van’s eyes lit up.
“In August, Canarino suffered a mild stroke in prison. While he was recuperating in the prison hospital, someone tried to kill him.”
“Nice,” I said.
“Canarino realized that someone was trying to guarantee his silence. If he dies, his secret dies with him. So he ‘let it slip,’” Van made quotes with his fingers, “that before his arrest, he had made a dongle that contains the key to the decoding algorithm. He’d entrusted an associate with it and should he die, his associate would turn it over to the cops. Now he’s shifted the balance of power.”
“But is he telling the truth?” I asked. “He could be bluffing. What if there is no real dongle? Only the fake one? You all could be searching for the Holy Grail. And I have no intention of swinging by my neck from the rafters with you for an imaginary item.”
Van looked puzzled by my ramblings.
“Excalibur?” I said. “King Arthur. There’s always a Mordred to mess up the plans and cause death and destruction.”
“I get it now. Slow down. We have verification of the dongle from other sources.”
“I hope you don’t mean me.”
He smiled. “More other sources.”
“Huff was the associate,” I said. “I was right.”
“Yes. We’ve been following him. When he registered for camp, I did, too.”
“So you’re not a math man at all?” I couldn’t hide the disappointment in my voice.
“I have a degree in mathematics and computer science. I was a lab rat for CRRU before I went into the field as a special agent. That’s why I’m on this case. Does that make you feel any better?”
“It might if I knew what CRRU was?” I rolled my eyes and muttered about people using industry specific acronyms and jargon and expecting everyone else to understand.
“Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit.”
“Good to know. Where is Huff now?”
“We don’t know.”
“I feel so safe,” I mumbled under my breath. “On to the plan then.”
Van swore me to secrecy. “This is where it gets fun.” He went on to describe a plan where I was indeed bait. “You play out the final day of camp like nothing has happened. We don’t think they’ll try to take you here again. Too risky.”
I nodded, but I didn’t necessarily agree.
“After our last session, the instructors will suggest we all go out for a celebration dinner at a prearranged restaurant. We’ll make it common knowledge that we’re going out and where we’re going. We’ll have you wired. We’ll have agents and law enforcement officers undercover everywhere. We’ll put you out in the open and wait for Goon, and Ket, to make their moves.”
I frowned. I didn’t like this plan. “You get a career-making case. But what do I get out of all this?”
“Protection twenty-four seven until we find the dongle.” He gave me a steely-eyed look as only a man with a black eye and an ice pack can. “Right or wrong, the bad guys believe you have the dongle. Until they either get it back or determine to their satisfaction you don’t have it, you won’t be safe.”
“For cripes sake,” I said, sounding more like Dutch by the minute. “But I don’t have the dongle. If they manage to steal me away somehow”—I gave him a look that said I thought it was definitely possible, “they’ll try to torture it out of me. And I’ll have no recourse. Because I don’t have the dongle! They’ll think I’m just being brave when I’d give it up in a heartbeat.”
“Drama queen. We won’t let them torture you,” he said.
I rolled my eyes and winced.
“We won’t.”
“Is that the same kind of ‘won’t’ as in I was safest here at camp?”
“Trust me.”
“I’m not overly trusting of cops,” I said, giving him a steely look of my
own. “And you’ve got a bad track record of lying to me since we met. Plus, if you guys were so sharp, why didn’t you know about the dongle in the bathroom?”
Van looked sheepish again. “We knew about the dongle in the bathroom. We swapped it out and replaced it with a fake—”
“You what? You…you…” Words and epithets failed me.
“We were guarding you.”
I shot him a look that told him what I thought of their protection.
“I just got word from our cryptanalysists at CRRU this afternoon. The dongle Huff gave you was a sophisticated fake,” Van continued, unfazed. “What we don’t know is why they think you still have the real one.”
“Does it matter?” I asked.
“Not to me. Not if you go along with my plan.”
I considered my options. I didn’t have any, only bargaining chips. “Only if you promise me that you’ll stick with my case until you catch Ket.”
“Hey, the bastard tried to run me down. I want him, too.”
“You’ll put out an APB on him? You’ll plaster his picture in post offices?”
“He isn’t exactly one of the ten most wanted.”
“He’s my number one,” I said.
“Goon’s worse,” Van said. “He should be your number one.”
“He only wants the dongle and then he goes away,” I countered.
“Goon’s a hired killer. He has mafia connections behind him. You don’t want to mess with the men paying him. You don’t want to mess with him.”
“Are you trying to scare me off?” I frowned at him.
Van held his hands up in a “no contest” kind of gesture. “Just saying.”
“You can’t get Ket on post office walls?”
“I don’t have that kind of power. But I’ll bring him in and do everything in my power to see he’s locked up for the maximum the law allows. What do you say?”
I believed the resolve in his voice. “Do I have a choice?”
Van called several of his agents back to the room and made me repeat to them everything that had happened to me since arriving at camp.
“We’ll need to go through your car and everything you have with you at camp again,” he said.
“Again?”
Spy Games Page 20
