Gone Tomorrow (29 page)

SIXTY- ONE

SPI INGFIELD TOOK A LONG DRINK OF WATER AND THEN smiled briefly and said, ‘Slow, hut you got there in the end.’

‘So what was her job?’

‘She was a systems administrator with responsibility for a certain amount of information technology.’

‘I don’t know what that means.’

‘It means she knew a bunch of master passwords for the computers.’

‘Which computers?’

‘Not the important ones. She couldn’t launch missiles or anything. But obviously she was authorized for HRC records. And some of the archives.’

‘But not the Delta archives, right? They’re in North Carolina. Fort Bragg. Not the Pentagon.’

‘Computers are networked. Everything is everywhere and nowhere now.’

‘And she had access?’

‘Human error?’

‘What?’

‘There was a measure of human error.’

‘A measure?’

‘There are a lot of systems administrators. They share common problems. They help each other. They have their own chat room, and their own message board. Apparently there was a defective line of code which made individual passwords less opaque than they should have been. So there was some leakage. We think they knew all about it, actually, but they liked it that way. One person could get in and help another person with minimum fuss. Even if the code had been correct, they would probably have deleted it.’

I remembered Jacob Mark saying:
She was good with computers
.

I said, ‘So she had access to Delta’s archives?’

Springfield just nodded.

I said, ‘But you and Sansom quit five years before I did. Nothing was computerized back then. Certainly not the archives.’

‘Times change,’ Springfield said. ‘The U.S. Army as we know it is about ninety years old. We’ve got ninety years’ worth of crap all built up. Rusty old weapons that somebody’s grandfather brought back as souvenirs, captured flags and uniforms all mouldering away, you name it. Plus literally thousands and thousands of tons of paper. Maybe millions of tons. It’s a practical problem. Fire risk, mice, real estate.’

‘So?’

‘So they’ve been cleaning house for the last ten years. The artefacts are either sent to museums or trashed, and the documents are scanned and preserved on computers.’

I nodded. ‘And Susan Mark got in and copied one.’

‘More than copied one,’ Springfield said. ‘She extracted one. Transferred it to an external drive, and then deleted the original.’

‘The external drive being the memory stick?’

Springfield nodded. ‘And we don’t know where it is.’

‘Why her?’

‘Because she fit the bill. The relevant part of the archive was traced through the medal award. HRC people keep the medal records. Like you said. She was the systems administrator. And she was vulnerable through her son.’

‘Why did she delete the original?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘It must have increased the risk.’

‘Significantly.’

‘What was the document?’

‘I can’t volunteer information.’

‘When was it dug out of the box room and scanned?’

‘A little over three months ago. It’s a slow process. Ten years into the programme and they’re only up to the early 1980s.’

‘Who does the work?’

‘There’s a specialist staff.’

‘With a leak. The Hoths were over here more or less immediately.’

‘Evidently.’

‘Do you know who it was?’

‘Steps are being taken.’

‘What was the document?’

‘I can’t volunteer information.’

‘But it was a big file.’

‘Big enough.’

‘And the Hoths want it.’

‘I think that’s clear.’

‘Why do they want it?’

‘I can’t volunteer information.’

‘You say that a lot.’

‘I mean it a lot.’

‘Who are the Hoths?’

He just smiled and made a circular
once again
gesture with his hand.
I can’t volunteer information
. A great NCO’s answer. Four words, the third of which was perhaps the most significant.

I said, ‘You could ask me questions. I could volunteer guesses. You could comment on them.’

He said, ‘Who do you think the Hoths are?’

‘I think they’re native Afghans.’

He said, ‘Go on.’

‘That’s not much of a comment.’

‘Go on.’

‘Probably Taliban or al-Qaeda sympathizers, or operatives, or flunkies.’

No reaction.

‘Al-Qaeda,’ I said. ‘The Taliban mostly stay home.’

‘Go on.’

‘Operatives,’ I said.

No reaction.

‘Leaders?’

‘Go on.’

‘Al-Qaeda is using women leaders?’

‘They’re using whatever works.’

‘Doesn’t seem plausible.’

‘That’s what they want us to think. They want us searching for men that don’t exist.’

I said nothing.

‘Go on,’ he said.

‘OK, the one who calls herself Svetlana fought with the mujahideen and knew you captured the VAL rifle from Grigori Hoth. They used Hoth’s name and his story to get sympathy over here.’

‘Because?’

‘Because now al-Qaeda wants documentary proof of whatever else it was that you guys were doing that night.’

‘Go on.’

‘Which Sansom got a big medal for. So it must have looked pretty good, once upon a time, way back when. But now you’re worried about exposure. So I’m assuming it wouldn’t look so good any more.’

‘Go on.’

‘Sansom is miserable, but the government has got its panties in a wad, too. So it’s both personal and political.’

‘Go on.’

‘Did you get a medal that night?’

‘The Superior Service Medal.’

‘Which comes directly from the Secretary of Defense.’

Springfield nodded. ‘A nice little bauble, for a lowly sergeant.’

‘So the trip was more political than military.’

‘Obviously. We weren’t officially at war with anyone at the time.’

‘You know the Hoths killed four people, and probably Susan Mark’s son too, right?’

‘We don’t know it. But we suspect it.’

‘So why haven’t you busted them?’

‘I work security for a congressman. I can’t bust anyone.’

‘Those feds could.’

‘Those feds work in mysterious ways. Apparently they consider the Hoths to be A-grade enemy combatants, and a very significant target, and extremely dangerous, but not currently operational.’

‘Which means what?’

‘Which means that right now there’s more to be gained by leaving them in place.’

‘Which actually means they can’t find them.’

‘Of course.’

‘You happy about that?’

‘The Hoths don’t have the memory stick, or they wouldn’t still be looking for it. So I don’t really care either way.’

‘I think you should,’ I said.

‘You think that’s their place? Where you were?’

‘This block or the next.’

‘I think this one,’ he said. ‘Those feds searched their hotel suite. While they were out.’

‘Lila told me.’

‘They had shopping bags. Like window dressing. To make the place look right.’

‘I saw them.’

‘Two from Bergdorf Goodman, and two from Tiffany. Those stores are close together, about a block from those old buildings. Their base was on the block east of Park, they’d have gone to Bloomingdales instead. Because they weren’t really shopping.

They just wanted accessories in their suite, to fool people.’

‘Good point,’ I said.

‘Don’t go looking for the Hoths,’ Springfield said.

‘You worried about me now?’

‘You could lose two ways around. They’re going to think the same as us, that even if you don’t have the stick, then somehow you know where it went. And they might be even more vicious and persuasive than we are.’

‘And?’

‘They might actually tell you what’s on it. In which case from our point of view you would become a loose end.’

‘How bad is it?’

‘I’m not ashamed. But Major Sansom would be embarrassed.’

‘And the United States.’

‘That, too.’

The waiter came back and inquired as to whether we needed anything else. Springfield said yes. He reordered for both of us. Which meant he had more to talk about. He said, ‘Run down exactly what happened on the train.’

‘Why weren’t you there, instead of the chief of staff? It was more like your line of work than his.’

‘It came on us fast. I was in Texas, with Sansom. Raising money. We didn’t have time for proper deployment.’

‘Why didn’t the feds have someone on the train?’

‘They did. They had two people on the train. Two women. Undercover, borrowed from the FBI. Special Agents Rodriguez and Mbele. You blundered into the wrong car and rode with them all the way.’

‘They were good,’ I said. And they were. The Hispanic woman, small, hot, tired, her supermarket bag wrapped around her wrist. The West African woman in the batik dress. ‘They were very good. But how did you all know she was going to take that train?’

‘We didn’t,’ Springfield said. ‘It was a huge operation. A big scramble. We knew she was in a car. So we had people waiting at the tunnels. The idea was to follow her from there, to wherever she was going.’

‘Why wasn’t she arrested on the Pentagon steps?

‘There was a short debate. Those feds won it. They wanted to roll up the whole chain in one go. And they might have.’

‘If I hadn’t screwed it up.’

‘You said it.’

‘She didn’t have the memory stick. So nothing was going to get rolled up anyway.’

‘She left the Pentagon with it, and it isn’t in her house or her car.’

‘You sure about that?’

‘Her house has been torn down to the slab and I could eat the largest remaining part of her car.’

‘How well did they search the subway train?’

‘Car number 7622 is still in the yards at 207th Street. They say it might take a month or more to rebuild.’

‘What the hell was on that memory stick?’

Springfield didn’t answer.

One of the captured phones in my pocket started to vibrate.

SIXTY-TWO

I PULLED ALL THREE PHONES OUT OF MY POCKET AND LAID them on the table. One of them was skittering around, an eighth of an inch at a time. Vigorous vibration. Its window said
Restricted Call
. I opened it up and put it to my ear and said, ‘Hello?’

Lila Hoth asked, ‘Are you still in New York?’

I said, ‘Yes.’

‘Are you near the Four Seasons?’

I said, ‘Not very.’

‘Go there now. I left a package for you at the desk.’

I asked, ‘When?’

But the line went dead.

I glanced at Springfield and said, ‘Wait here.’ Then I hustled out to the lobby. Saw no retreating back heading for the door. The scene was tranquil. The greeter in the tail coat was standing idle. I walked to the desk and gave my name and asked if they were holding anything for me. A minute later I had an envelope in my hands. It had my name handwritten across the front in thick black letters. It had Lila Hoth’s name up in the top left corner, where the return address would. I asked the desk clerk when it had been delivered. He said more than an hour ago.

I asked, ‘Did you see who dropped it off?’

‘A foreign gentleman.’

‘Did you recognize him?’

‘No, sir.’

The envelope was padded, about six inches by nine. It was light. It had something stiff in it. Round, and maybe five inches in diameter. I carried it back to the tea room and sat down again with Springfield. He said, ‘From the Hoths?’

I nodded.

He said, ‘It could be full of anthrax spores.’

‘Feels more like a CD,’ I said.

‘Of what?’

‘Afghan folk music, maybe.’

‘I hope not,’ he said. ‘I’ve heard Afghan folk music. At length and up close.’

‘You want me to wait to open it?’

‘Until when?’

‘Until you’re out of range.’

‘I’ll take the risk.’

So I tore open the envelope and shook it. A single disc spilled out and made a plastic sound against the wood of the table.

‘A CD,’ I said.

‘A DVD, actually,’ Springfield said.

It was home made. It was a blank disc manufactured by Memorex. The words
Watch This
had been written across the label side with a black permanent marker. Same handwriting as the envelope. Same pen. Lila Hoth’s handwriting and Lila Hoth’s pen presumably.

I said, ‘I don’t have a DVD player.’

‘So don’t watch it.’

‘I think I have to.’

‘What happened on the train?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You can play DVDs on a computer. Like people watch movies on their laptops on airplanes.’

‘I don’t have a computer.’

‘Hotels have computers.’

‘I don’t want to stay here.’

‘There are other hotels in the city.’

‘Where are you staying?’

‘The Sheraton. Where we were before.’

So Springfield paid our tea-room bill with a platinum credit card and we walked from the Four Seasons to the Sheraton. The second time I had made that trip. It took just as long. Crowded sidewalks, people moving slowly in the heat. It was one o’clock in the afternoon, and very warm. I was watching for cops the whole way, which didn’t aid our progress. But we got there in the end. The plasma screen in the lobby listed a whole bunch of events. The ballroom was booked by a trade association. Something to do with cable television. Which made me think of the National Geographic Channel, and the silverback gorilla.

Springfield opened the door to the business centre with his key card. He didn’t come in with me. He told me he would wait in the lobby, and then he walked away. Three of the four work stations were occupied. Two women, one man, all of them in dark suits, all of them with leather briefcases propped open and spilling paper. I took the empty chair and set about trying to figure out how to play a DVD on a computer. I found a slot on the tower unit that looked fit for the purpose. I pushed the disc in and met with some temporary resistance and then a motor whirred and the unit sucked at the disc and pulled it from my grasp.

Nothing much happened for five seconds. Just a lot of stopping and starting and whirring. Then a big window opened on the screen. It was blank. But it had a graphic in the bottom corner. Like a picture of a DVD player’s buttons. Play, pause, fast forward, rewind, skip. I moved the mouse and the pointer arrow changed to a chubby little hand as it passed over the buttons.

The phone in my pocket started to vibrate.