Jump Cut

by Libby Fischer Hellmann

  “You know something?” he said.

  I shook my head.

  “I think I’ll come back Tuesday.”

  I looked up at him. How could he read my mind like that? “That would be wonderful.”

  “In the meantime, I want you to call or at least text twice a day so I know you’re safe.” I nodded. “And do not use your landline, unless it’s just to order a pizza. Use your cell. The encryption app I uploaded is pretty secure. But just to be certain, be sure you block your caller ID.” I nodded again. “And don’t use your computer, either.”

  “Unless it’s to order a pizza,” I said.

  He grinned. “I love you, Ellie Foreman.”

  “Me too you.” I gave him a smile and a fierce hug.

  After he left, I decided to trace the license plate of the SUV that had staked out my house and materialized at Hollander’s the previous night. Despite the risk of someone finding out that’s what I was doing, I had to know. In fact, I should have done it days before, but every time it crossed my mind, something else seemed to require my immediate attention. I trudged upstairs to my office and went online. Several websites proclaimed they could identify every license plate in every state of the country. But when I entered “W80-6939,” a plate from Illinois, they suddenly wanted money, and I knew better than to give them my credit card number.

  I got up and called Georgia Davis on my cell. As a former cop and now a PI, she had better resources than mortals like me. She called me back ten minutes later. There was no record of the plate. Not in Illinois, or anywhere else.

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “It could mean a lot of things. With no registration, it could be a stolen car. Or someone who wants to fly under the radar.”

  “The SUV looked like it was well maintained.”

  “How do you know? You said there was a dense fog.”

  She didn’t miss anything. “That’s true. Tell me something, Georgia. Could an unregistered vehicle like that be used by corporate security people? Or intelligence operatives?”

  A long silence followed. “Ellie, what exactly are you involved in?”

  “I really can’t—I wish I could—I just need an answer.”

  Another silence. Then: “Let me put it this way. If I was working for the FBI or the CIA or one of the ABCs, I’d do one of two things. Either use a dummy corporation to register the car, or have it registered in so many overlapping jurisdictions you’d never find out who it belonged to.”

  “But it would be registered.”

  “Listen. You know how the mayor keeps getting all those tickets?”

  The mayor of Chicago’s motorcade was well-known for running red lights and driving well over the speed limit.

  “Well, he’d have even bigger problems if his cars weren’t up-to-date with tags and insurance.”

  “So the SUV I’m talking about was probably stolen?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You’re confusing me.”

  “I don’t mean to. But a lot of so-called private security consultants do fly under the radar. Who knows what equipment they have or how they got it?”

  “So you’re saying—”

  She cut me off. “I’m saying that just because the SUV isn’t registered doesn’t mean a whole hell of a lot.” Another pause. “Are you sure there’s nothing you want to tell me?”

  I heaved a breath. “I never thought I’d be saying this, but sometimes I wish I wasn’t a video producer. I just seem to keep running into problems that turn out to be—well—dangerous.”

  “How dangerous”?

  “I’ll tell you. But it’s all off the record, okay?”

  She laughed. “It always is.”

  I told her about Gregory Parks, Delcroft, and Charlotte Hollander. When I got to Parks’ subway accident, she cut in.

  “I heard about that. People I know aren’t convinced it was a suicide.”

  “Yeah, well, they have a point. He could have been pushed. Delcroft thought he was a spy for the Chinese government.”

  “Does the flash drive you called me about have something to do with all this?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She let out an exasperated breath. “Ellie. These people do not screw around. What can I do?”

  “Nothing at the moment. But I’ll let you know.”

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Monday

  Monday dawned with one of those crystal-blue Chicago skies that says spring is imminent and it’s time to pack away one’s winter clothes. I didn’t; when you live in Chicago, you know better. I brewed a pot of coffee and waited impatiently until eighty thirty, when I could start making business calls. The first was to Charlotte Hollander. I still wanted to get rid of the flash drive and extricate myself from everything having to do with Delcroft—video or no video. It was time to withdraw into white-picket-fence land.

  But I didn’t get the chance. My call went to voice mail. I left a message for her to call me.

  A minute later my phone rang. I picked up, fully expecting Hollander to be on the other end. She wasn’t.

  “Hi, Ellie. Zach Dolan.”

  “Zach! Are you okay? I was shocked to hear about the explosion at your office. What happened?”

  “That’s why I’m calling. We’re fine. Joshua and me. We weren’t there when it happened.”

  “I heard. Still, it’s got to be devastating.”

  “It’s all right. I’m working out of my brother’s house until the insurance adjusters cut a check. He sends his regards. Hey, do you want to meet for a cup of coffee?”

  “You have news?”

  “We haven’t had coffee in a while,” he said.

  I got it. “Sure. Coffee would be great. I have something for you anyway.”

  He didn’t answer, but we arranged to meet in thirty minutes at the Starbucks closest to my house. I arrived first and parked in the lot. I was just climbing out of my car when Zach pulled up in a Beemer. Clearly ethical hacking had its rewards.

  He slid down the window and motioned for me to get in. Joshua occupied most of the backseat. I hadn’t realized how large he was. And how wolfish he looked, though he was a shepherd. Thankfully, his tail was wagging furiously.

  I hopped in. Zach pulled away.

  “Why the change in plans?”

  “You know our phones are tapped.”

  “I figured that’s why we’re meeting.”

  “Exactly,” he said. “And they think we’re going to that Starbucks, right?” He yanked a thumb behind him. When I nodded, he added, “Well, let’s just make it a little more difficult for them.”

  “There’s a Dunkin’ Donuts a block away,” I said hopefully.

  “I think we should just walk around somewhere. It’s safer.”

  I swallowed my disappointment. I didn’t need the calories anyway. I dug into my pocket and pulled out another flash drive. “I made another copy before I gave it to you. So here you go.”

  “Thanks. But there’s something I haven’t told you,” he went on. “About the drive.”

  “I want to tell you something too,” I said. “Things are getting out of control. Like us having to meet in person. And people following me. Then I found out there’s an executive at Delcroft who knows I have it. In fact, the explosion at your office may be connected to it.”

  “Is the executive’s name C. Hollander?”

  My jaw hit the floor of the car. “Charlotte Hollander. How did you know?”

  He turned down a side street off Willow Road that bordered a park. With the mild weather, lots of little people had converged on the slide and swings, releasing excited screams, the kind children make from the sheer joy of being alive.

  “Let’s take Joshua for a walk,” he said. He shoved the drive into his pocket, opened the glove compartment, and took out a leash.

  We climbed out of the car and Dolan put the dog on the leash. We started walking toward the park.

  “I don’t know if this is going
to make a difference, but before the explosion, I started playing around with the drive.”

  “And?”

  “You know what metadata is, right?”

  “Data about the data.”

  “Right. So, a lot of systems include logs of who emailed who, when, sometimes even the subject. As a user, you wouldn’t normally see them, but they end up in a file. And, if you know what you’re doing you can extract them.”

  I halted on the sidewalk. “And you found the log?”

  “I did. In fact I made a printout of it. I’ll give it to you, although you might not be able to read it. It’s in—well, it’s in computerese.”

  I inclined my head. “What did the log say?”

  “It looks like three people were communicating regularly. Almost every day. Most have cc’s on them.”

  “Who were the three? No, wait. It’s got to be Parks and Hollander. But who’s the third?”

  “A General Gao,” Zach said.

  Joshua took that moment to sniff a pile of leaves and twigs on the ground. Then he issued a whine.

  “Damn straight, Joshua.” I looked at Dolan. “Who is General Gao?”

  “I Googled him. He’s a big shot in the Chinese military. Like a five-star general. Or higher.”

  I rubbed a hand across my forehead. “This doesn’t sound right.”

  “Look him up. But don’t do it from home. Go to the library, okay?”

  I couldn’t help the quiver that rolled through me. My phone was hacked. My computer, too. What was next? “You don’t have any content from the correspondence, though?”

  “Not yet. I haven’t been able to crack the encryption. It’s probably a Chinese system. But I’ll keep trying.” We turned, making a circle around the playground.

  “So what do you make of it?” I blurted out.

  “I couldn’t say. That’s your job.”

  I thought about it. Hollander had told me Gregory Parks was a spy. But she’d been in daily communication with this so-called spy, as well as a general in the Chinese military. Instead of clearing things up, Hollander’s behavior was making everything murkier.

  Joshua barked as if on cue. I jumped. A poodle on a leash held by a woman who looked like she was on her way to Nordstrom strolled by.

  Zach looked over. “You sure you want me to go ahead with this?

  I gulped. “I don’t know.”

  • • •

  Our village library occupies only three rooms, one of which includes five computers that were all in use, so I waited. Eventually I presented my library card. Then I sat at one of the computers and Googled “General Gao,” confident in my relative privacy. Libraries, bless them, set their computers to delete everything a user has done once they log off, including their search history.

  Zach was right. Gao was a hotshot. He was one of only eleven men on China’s Central Military Commission, which essentially ran the army. The commission made all the senior appointments and supervised troop deployments and arms spending. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much about General Gao the man. He was in his fifties, young by Chinese standards. He had been raised in Shanghai but studied at Oxford. Which meant he was educated and spoke English. It didn’t say what he studied, but I suspected it had something to do with aeronautics.

  There was one image of a young Gao grinning in a racing shell, brandishing a paddle. He must have been on crew at Oxford. But aside from a 1994 group photo of about two dozen Chinese officers in front of a palatial building, I couldn’t find anything recent. I made notes on my iPhone, printed out the two images, and logged out.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Monday

  As I got back into my car, I tried piecing things together.

  If Parks was a spy for the Chinese, why was Hollander trading daily emails with him? As well as a Chinese general? Was she trying to entrap Parks and Gao? Extract proof they were spies? Or was she part of the ring herself? Either way, this did not give me a warm and fuzzy feeling.

  Which reminded me. I pulled over to the curb and called Hollander’s office again.

  This time a woman answered. “I’m sorry. She’s not here.”

  “When do you expect her?”

  “I really don’t know.” Her voice was brusque.

  “Will she be in today at all?”

  “Who did you say you were?” The voice turned suspicious.

  “Sorry to bother you.” I hung up. Where was Hollander? Still on a long weekend? I didn’t know, but I wasn’t going to turn over the drive to anyone except her. And I certainly wasn’t going to mail it or messenger it downtown if she wasn’t around.

  • • •

  After meeting with Grizzly, I was on the lookout for a tail whenever I drove, and coming home from the library, I found one. It wasn’t a battered green Toyota, it wasn’t a pickup truck, and it wasn’t an SUV. This time it was a nondescript beige car, the kind of four-door sedan that looks almost institutional. Still, the fact that anyone was shadowing me gave me the creeps and made me intensely aware that any privacy I might be entitled to was a myth. Was this the way covert agents felt? If so, I’d make a lousy one.

  I peered into the rear view, which, I realized, was now becoming my only tool to confront the surveillance. A man was driving, and a second person whose gender I couldn’t determine occupied the passenger seat. The driver had a ball cap pulled low, blocking his face, and the other person wore a wool hat, also low across his or her forehead. Friends or foes?

  Irritation shot through me. I was tired of being a target, the mouse with whom someone’s cat could toy. I couldn’t live my life in fear. At the next stop sign I considered mustering my courage. I would put my car in park, climb out, and approach the driver’s side door. I could play cop as well as the next guy. I would demand they tell me who the hell they were and why they were following me.

  Then I reconsidered. What if they had a weapon lying on the front seat? What if they lowered their window and shot me point-blank? That is the precise reason my attitude toward cops, whom in my younger days I was apt to call “pigs,” had changed. I knew now that cops put their lives in jeopardy every time they made a traffic stop, and I respected their courage. The erstwhile pigs had become “pals,” and I didn’t have their guts.

  So I gritted my teeth and tried to get a license plate number. Naturally, there was no plate in front. I accelerated and raced the rest of the way home, hoping my “pals” weren’t out ticketing speeders today. The warmth of the day did nothing to dispel the chill that came over me. Thank God Luke was coming back soon.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Monday

  Gary Phillips, Delcroft’s deputy chief operating officer, loved his corner office on the sixty-fourth floor of Delcroft’s Loop office building. The eastern window framed a magnificent view of Lake Michigan, and it was high enough that low-hanging diaphanous clouds occasionally hugged his window. Phillips had flown F-16s during the First Gulf War, and like most pilots, he loved the solitude and power of flying, the sense that he was the only human in the sky, both servant and master of his own fate. But after the war Delcroft lured him away from McDonnell Douglas, and he spent most of his time at a desk. Now, though, with the problems Delcroft was facing, he wished he could fly back into the clouds.

  He was lamenting the pile of Monday morning messages and decisions to make when his office door flew open and Delcroft’s chief of security, Warren Stokes, barged in. There had been no intercom warning from Gena, Phillips’ executive assistant.

  Phillips looked up from his desk. He didn’t like Stokes, but the ex-Agency guy had been forced on him by Delcroft’s CEO, Brian Riordan, to whom Phillips reported. Delcroft thought they had a secure system in place, Riordan said, but their contacts in the military persuaded them that the escalating concern about corporate espionage, particularly by offshore hackers, made people like Stokes a necessity. He had a clean record, Riordan added. Phillips, himself a member of the Ivy League old boy’s network, had no choice. The days of han
dshake deals and honor codes were long gone.

  Stocky, with ruddy cheeks, a buzz cut, and a web of tiny spider veins on his nose, Stokes looked like he’d be more comfortable in a bar than Phillips’ office. As the man pulled up a chair to the edge of his desk, Phillips noted his denim shirt and khakis. You’d think with all the money Delcroft was shelling out to him, he could afford a suit.

  Phillips pulled the plug out of his desk phone and switched off his cell, as he’d been instructed. Only then did he let his temper show.

  “Okay. Tell me what the hell is happening around here. Ever since Hollander saw that video I’m hearing strange things.”

  Stokes replied in an even voice. “I talked to Hollander. She was concerned about Gregory Parks when he showed up in the video.”

  “Parks…Parks…why do I know that name?”

  “I’m sure you remember. He was the guy in the video that Hollander went bat-shit crazy over. The guy who—supposedly—jumped off the subway platform last week.”

  “Yes. I remember. But what does ‘supposedly’ mean?”

  “It means that Parks turned out to be a huge security risk. I had to neutralize the threat.”

  Stokes had had a thirty-year career at the CIA, with postings in Eastern Europe, Afghanistan, and Iraq. But, according to the CEO, he’d exited the Agency several years earlier. He went on to create his own security firm and, apparently, had become highly successful. He now operated a mini-CIA, staffed with more than fifty former intelligence operatives from the Agency, the Bureau, Secret Service, even Blackwater. The company was known for getting results fast. Which was both a blessing and a problem.

  “Wait a minute, Stokes,” Phillips said. “Are you saying you had something to do with his death?”

  Stokes didn’t answer, but his smug expression told Phillips what he needed to know.

  “Goddammit, Stokes. This is not something we do at Delcroft.”

  “You didn’t. I did.”

  “Yeah, but I sure as hell didn’t authorize you to push the guy off a subway platform.”