by Thomas Waite
“I worked hard on those AAC files. Did you think I couldn’t figure out who developed it just because you tried to hide that from me?” She made her fingers dance on the invisible keyboard again, but Oleg noticed her eyes. On fire. “It was Professor Brian Ahearn, and he was murdered! So was his wife. They had two children, little girls even younger than Alexandra. And the prototype was stolen. Where is it? What did you do with it? And I want to see the rest of his files. You have everything, Oleg, because you took everything, or someone working for you did. I know you’ve got it. And don’t try to tell me that the plan to bomb Antarctica isn’t yours. It closes the circle, doesn’t it?”
“Circle? What circle?” He poured her some juice. “Maybe her, too?” He looked at the cancer kid. “She looks like she could use some sunshine.”
“Her? You mean Alexandra? Say her name. You haven’t used it once since I told you about the leukemia. Show some guts, Oleg. Don’t pull away because someone you love is sick.”
Someone I love? Oleg found that most presumptuous.
He watched her glance at the TV. The woolly mammoth looked like he’d been eating ashes for hours, but he was still talking. All politicians can talk. But his words hadn’t caught Galina’s eye, and they didn’t snag Oleg’s for long, either. What held their attention was a simple declaration crawling continually across the bottom of the screen: “He lies! He lies!”
Oh, that’s good. Definitely the work of Uno, who would get a bonus for his most creative thinking.
“I did not have the professor killed.” Oleg walked over to the couch, where Galina had settled next to Alexandra, who was sleeping. He tried to hand Galina the orange juice. She shook her head.
“I don’t want it. I want to know why the professor suddenly showed up dead. With his wife’s finger chopped off.”
“I think I know the answer,” Oleg replied, putting the juice on an end table. “Maybe others tried to steal his secrets after we got them. Maybe they were a day late and a dollar short, so he had nothing to give up but his life.”
“Hers, too.”
“Could be. Very sad.”
She looked like she believed him. He put that to a test by resting his hand on her knee, half covered by her summery skirt. Pale-yellow cotton. He loved her skirts, the delicious way they made secrets of her legs—and surprises of all her other wonders. With Alexandra asleep, they could scoot into the bedroom.
“No, I don’t believe you,” she blurted suddenly. “I don’t believe in coincidence. Someone else tried to get secrets of the AAC just after your people got them? No. And that finger business? That sounds like KGB. Are you working with them? You must be.”
He shook his head. “And it’s not KGB. It’s FSB now.”
“Same thing, and you know it.”
“I will talk to my people, find out the truth,” Oleg vowed. He thought he sounded convincing. “I will ask if they did anything to hurt the smart professor and his wife. I will take care of them if they were bad. How about you, Galina girl? Are you bad?”
“Stop that ‘bad’ business. I’m not here for that. How are you going to take care of them? You’re not even taking care of us.” She looked at her daughter. “She needs the best medical care in the world and you still haven’t paid me enough to get it for her. You owe me millions, and she needs help.”
“I have paid you something. Everybody’s getting paid everything in the end.”
“That’s what you said last time, after you came from your papa’s.”
And you looked so bad, he remembered. At least she had lipstick on now.
“So tell me, do I get paid before or after the killers? Afterward, I’m sure, because they would kill you otherwise.”
“No killers, I promise. And you are first on my list.”
“What list?” She sounded alarmed.
He knelt in front of her and began to rub her foot.
She jerked it away, showing her underpants for a second. Long enough. Flashing the green light. Go-go-go.
No, he realized a moment later. Just means she should go.
And take cancer kid with her.
But Galina wasn’t done yet: “I was back at PP’s last night because Dmitri was upset and your papa couldn’t get him to stop his tantrums.”
Oleg leaned closer to her, saying, “Yes?” But he said it in a new way, and she pressed her back into the couch as though she were scared of him. She’d never done that before. He’d never seen her fear. Only her anger, her accusations. Fear was better. Much better. “I told you I didn’t want you going over there.”
“They’re my friends.”
“Papa and Dmitri? Friends?” He leaned so close he could smell her lavender oil.
She stiffened, turning as still as Lenin in his tomb.
“Are you scared, Galina girl?” he asked softly, but not a whisper. A whisper wouldn’t have been right. That would have sent the wrong signal. But he spoke those words directly into her ear, where they couldn’t escape, where they would go straight to her soul. He repeated the question. Then he said, “You shouldn’t be scared. But have you heard from deadbeat dad?”
She shook her head.
“You will,” Oleg told her. “I’m making sure he pays you everything he owes you—and more!”
“What did you do to him?”
Oleg didn’t reply. He placed both hands on her knees and then pointed his index fingers at her just as she had pointed to him only minutes ago, before making the most outrageous claims. Tit for tat. Then he curled them back so he could flick her hem high onto her thighs.
“Not now,” she said.
But she was trying too hard to be firm. He heard the slightest quaver in her voice. He pushed his hands up under her skirt, watching the outline of his knuckles move under the yellowy fabric. Almost as soft as her skin. He started kneading her sweet soft flesh. Alexandra looked asleep. Her mother’s legs were pressed together, unforgiving.
“Please. My baby’s sick.”
“She’ll get better. I will take care of everything.”
He let her push his hands away. Why not? He’d made his point.
She was shaking when she scooped up her daughter and hurried to the elevator. But she couldn’t leave unless he unlocked the door.
Oleg strolled over, and from behind saw her bare shoulder. Alexandra’s weight was pulling down on her mother’s shirt. He wet his lips and kissed her warm skin, then her neck. He felt her shudder. Didn’t mind. That was the nature of their relationship now: fear. He would make sure the insurance company spoke to her soon. He would also make sure the police had her identify the body. Even the rendering of deadbeat dad’s face had been done with great care. Half of it remained just as it was when they made the cancer kid. It would be easy for her to say, “Yes, that’s him.”
Oleg inserted a red key and turned it, hailing the elevator. They listened to the soft hum as it rose, never saying a word. But he saw bumps on her arms, and said nothing to break the stark symphony of their silence.
He felt like a conductor again, waving his baton, leading the darkest orchestra of all.
The elevator doors opened. She stepped inside and turned around. He reached in and pushed the button for the garage. Then he ran his hand over Alexandra’s brow. Galina stepped away.
“I’ll see you soon,” he said to her.
She was staring at where he’d just touched her child.
CHAPTER 9
LANA AWOKE AS IF she’d been catapulted from sleep in her small dormitory room at Fort Meade. The middle of the night, to judge by the darkness beyond the blinds—and the cosmic clock in her core. She wasn’t far off: 3:05, according to a digital readout on the nightstand next to her bed.
She sat up and swung her legs over the side. Couldn’t hear a sound, a silence so complete it felt eerie. She wondered if Emma was sleeping well at Tanesa’s
. She also wondered if her daughter would ever forgive her for all the times she’d had to leave her in the hands of nannies and babysitters. But Lana took comfort in knowing that the latest arrangement needed no apology, for Tanesa had proved the best caregiver of all.
It also occurred to her right then that although she had Tanesa’s address in Anacostia, she had never, in fact, visited her home. How safe is it there? Am I gambling with Emma’s safety?
When Emma was little, Lana wouldn’t have even considered a childcare provider without carefully inspecting the premises. And now she’d sent her girl off to one of the toughest neighborhoods in the entire District?
Hold on, she told herself. It was safe enough to raise a great kid like Tanesa. And safe enough for the wonderful family that raised that courageous young woman.
Safe enough, she decided at once, for Emma, who had lived a life of relative privilege. Maybe it was time she saw how the other half lived.
Half? Try the other 99 percent.
Lana figured Tanesa’s home was far safer and saner than letting her daughter spend much time with Doper Don, who was about to be released on parole after serving four years of his six-year sentence. Out early for “good behavior.” Lord knows, she’d seen little of that when she’d been with him. And now he was saying that he wanted the company of his “long lost” daughter as much as possible.
He’d be getting out just in time for a catastrophe, Lana realized.
Maybe it’ll get him.
She forced herself to take a breath. Then, exerting more effort, she forced herself to say, “You don’t mean that,” as she headed to the bathroom to freshen up.
Minutes later, she left her room for the walk to her NSA office.
A marine greeted her as she exited the dormitory, as though he’d been waiting all night for the opportunity. Then he stepped to her side, clearly ordered to escort her on the short walk.
“Quiet tonight?” she asked him.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Did you get any sleep?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Replies as crisp as the creases in his uniform.
She wouldn’t pester him anymore. They were almost at the entrance. She spotted a scattering of office lights up above, including Holmes’s. When she looked back down, her escort was turning her over to fellow marines. Two of them accompanied her up the elevator.
Lana stopped to look in on the deputy director. The pair of marines slipped away behind her. Odd to find Holmes without his loyal gatekeeper, Donna Warnes, who apparently got to sleep through the night.
“You too?” Holmes asked, when she poked her head in the door.
“I got three hours. I’m good to go,” she replied. “How are our allies in NATO reacting?”
“There’s some anger directed toward the President.”
“Why?” He’d been working overtime to try to solve the crisis. She wasn’t his biggest fan, but she would never begrudge his genuine efforts.
“There’s a growing body of opinion overseas that we wouldn’t be in this mess if the U.S. hadn’t antagonized most of the world.”
“That’s the very definition of misplaced anger. Blaming a victim.”
“Come in. Close the door and grab a seat.” Holmes turned his screen aside, but remained at his desk.
She settled into a chair across from him. His eyes, always dark and clear, looked gray, as if they’d lost their luster.
“Imagine you live at 10 Downing Street and your city is about to be flooded, quite possibly right out of existence, because the U.S. and Russia, after the briefest détente imaginable, at least from a historical perspective, are back at each other’s throats. How would you feel?”
Holmes didn’t wait for a reply. “Or you’re living in Rotterdam or The Hague, and you know for certain your country might cease to exist within days. That no matter what you and your fellow citizens do, you can’t even begin to evacuate all your children, the elderly, all the infirm, even the healthiest young adults of your nation.”
The deputy director fixed those graying eyes back on her. “We’re not blameless, Lana. It may surprise you to hear that coming from me, but just look at how the rest of the world views our Congress. Well, tonight I was ready to drown them. Those buffoons displayed the most deplorable behavior I have ever seen in the White House. And I’ve been around a long time, so that’s saying a lot.”
“I take it you mean during the meeting with the President?” He’d been scheduled to powwow with the Senate Majority Leader and the Speaker of the House, along with lesser-ranking members of both bodies.
“Yes, the wrecking crew. First, you have to understand that the President had just managed to get Canada, Norway, and Denmark to withdraw from the Arctic, along with us, of course.
“He was sticking his neck out politically, knowing the Russians would continue to refuse to withdraw, but he also knew that if the other Arctic nations pulled back, and only Russia remained, it would put their leaders in a very peculiar position if we’re correct that the terrorists are Russian, or ‘patriotic hackers’ working for them. It would make it appear that they do, in fact, know something the rest of us don’t. Well, whatever doubt I had about Russian culpability was all but crushed when a few minutes before the meeting, the Kremlin announced that they would never give in to the demands of terrorists, and that no nation with any courage or self-respect should ever take such a cowardly step.”
“Their posturing is certainly taking a U-turn back to the bad old days,” Lana said.
Holmes nodded. “It sure is, but I knew right then that the real audience for the Russians was the House and Senate leadership. As soon as the President explained the agreement he’d reached with the other three Arctic nations, the wrecking crew jumped up and started bellowing ‘coward’ right on cue. The speaker actually called him a ‘quisling.’ I’m sure he had to pull out his thesaurus for that one. Our dimmest bulbs played right into the hands of our greatest threat. The President’s going to cave. And you know why? Because they’re threatening to start impeachment proceedings if he pulls our two measly icebreakers out of the north.”
“That’s outrageous,” Lana said. But not unexpected. The Senate and House leaders were a wholesale embarrassment. Not that the denizens of Capitol Hill cared what people outside their states or gerrymandered districts thought.
“I may be seventy-eight years old,” Holmes went on, “but I had all I could do not to punch out those demagogues. At the very least, if we’d pulled back with the others, the Russians would have looked like the most belligerent of the Arctic nations, and that could have taken some of the international heat off us. Now we’re going to be seen as having backed out of an agreement with our close allies that could have thwarted a nuclear attack. Damned if we do, damned if we don’t.”
“Were the House and Senate leaders briefed about where our investigation is pointing?”
“Absolutely.” Holmes nodded heartily. “By me. They knew. But they don’t care as long as they can make the next news cycle and drive down the President’s numbers a little bit more. I’m sure the morning news shows are going to be full of leaks, so in a few hours the echo chamber will also be calling him a coward.”
How do you rule the unruly? she asked herself.
“I’ve had some ideas about where to move with this,” she said. “I should get on them.”
“Anything you’d like to share right now?”
“Just something Jensen and I have been working on. You’ll be the first to know. You always are. Try to get some sleep, sir.” She glanced at his couch, on which he had spent many a night.
“After that tirade, I believe I’d better.”
Lana settled at her computer and brought up the Ahearn murders. She reviewed all the forensic evidence, physical as well as the little they’d gleaned from Ahearn’s computer. Her effort yielded nothing new, which didn’t s
urprise her. But now it was time to apply the new data analysis techniques that she and Jensen had been working on and take another look at the metadata.
Metadata was data about data itself. It provided information about the kind of communication taking place—different from traditional intelligence gathering, which focused on the content of the information. Metadata would note that telephone calls had been made, but not what was actually said. But drill deeper into the metadata and you could well find patterns of phone calls that might prove damning. Patterns could also be found with email addresses, their times of communication, locations of users, along with ample technical detail about the nature of the data being distributed.
For this case, she and Jensen had been developing sophisticated link analysis tools for both structured and unstructured data, which could help establish larger patterns of communications. These rarefied data analysis techniques might also let them track individual devices, making it possible in some cases to determine the identities of users who were doing all they could to hide who they were.
She started by putting the new tools to work mapping out the geographical areas with the most data flows related to the Ahearn murders. More of a simple test of their model because that task was relatively easy and highly predictable. The greatest concentration centered on Massachusetts, Boston in particular, and for obvious reasons: outside of intelligence circles, no one had reason to connect Professor Ahearn and his wife to the threats against the WAIS.
Next, she applied their link analysis across all of North America. Beyond a two-hundred-mile radius of the crime scene, the interest in the Ahearn murders diminished notably. Where it did exist, it was confined mostly to academic institutions. The California Institute of Technology, for example, had a fair amount of metadata that appeared related to Ahearn. So did other institutions of that nature.
That also proved true of scientific journals based in major urban areas.
Comfortable that the link analysis was passing its initial challenges, Lana extended it across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
