Night Talk (17 page)

“In today's world, it's no longer possible to categorize any activity as solo male or female except childbirth and peeing in the shower. There has to be a connection between the woman driving the car and someone involved in our investigation. Let's see if Hops can identify her. Specifically try Ethan Shaw, Greg Nowell and Rohan, the writer. Include the real Neal woman. She might be lying about knowing the woman driving her car.”

Hops was a data-mining program used to find people through their interconnections—e-mails, telephone calls, blogs, chat rooms, addresses and any other connection that went over communications lines that carried phones and the Internet.

The system was originally launched to spy on U.S. citizens in 2002 through the Information Awareness Office (IAO). Called Total Information Awareness, the program was a mass surveillance tool that collected literally every electronic movement of every U.S. citizen—via land phones, cell phones, faxes, e-mails, chat rooms, social networking, tweets, blogs, Internet searches, credit card charges, the whole nine yards of personal and business communications.

In 2003 the IAO was disbanded due to public outcries against domestic spying. However, the Snowden NSA revelations in 2013 revealed that the mass surveillance programs had not been eliminated; their names were simply changed and they had been operating for the past ten years.

Mond thought of it as similar to the theory of six degrees of separation—that by way of introduction, each of us is only six people away from anyone else on the planet. That any one of us, even one of the great unwashed masses, could be introduced to someone who in turn refers us to someone else, and by the time the sixth introduction is reached, you could be in contact with anyone else in the world, even the queen in London, the pope in Rome or whoever it was that you were seeking to meet.

With Hops, the search started with one name, usually the name of a suspected terrorist. A three-hop query meant that the government could look at data not only from a suspected terrorist, but from everyone that the suspect communicated with, and then from everyone those people communicated with, and then from everyone all of those people communicated with, until from the thousands of results it could end up with a few interconnected people who are part of a terrorist organization.

The process was called “hops” because the search hopped from one person to another. By going from Ethan to Greg to Rohan and the car owner, the objective was to find not just a connection among them but a link to someone else—in this case the car driver.

After the search was done, Novak said, “There are many connections between the three main subjects, Ethan Shaw, Greg Nowell and Rohan, but none between any of them and the car owner. And nothing pops up with any of them that provided a clue as to the driver's identity.”

“There are connections, but they've been erased. Shaw was a master hacker, capable of erasing the tracks. But there's one track here that Greg Nowell and the woman aren't going to be able to erase. They're in an easy-to-spot car.”

She started to point out that they hadn't tracked the car yet because it had left a main street and gone into a residential area where there were no cameras they could bring online, but she shut her mouth, knowing she would just get put down.

Mond said, “Put out a stop-and-detain order to all police agencies. The two suspects are to be apprehended but under no circumstances are they to be questioned. Instead, they're to be held and transferred to our agents.”

“No questioning? What if there are federal agents, the FBI—”

“I just told you, no questioning.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Keep a drone in the air. Just one. There will be questions about it but if we have more up it will attract attention and cause a social media buzz, not to mention news stories that would forewarn the subjects. Start searching freeway and street cameras for the red car in all directions they could have taken.” Mond scowled at Megan Novak. “I want those two found. Include in the directive to police agencies not to ask questions, that their contact with the subjects other than detaining them is limited to verifying their identities.”

“Should I keep trying to identify the driver?”

“Yes, but there's little chance we'll succeed, though we found out two things about her.”

“Sir?”

Mond looked up at the war board as he spoke. “She's not working alone. I agree with you about the car thief. She didn't look like someone who would steal a car, which means she had help. And someone covered her tracks. A very clever hacker. Probably Ethan Shaw. So keep working on a Shaw connection. If we dig deep enough, we will find her. No one can go completely undercover.”

He swiveled in his chair to face her.

“No one can drop under the radar today. You can't exist without leaving electronic tracks. Even if you pay cash for gas, the cameras at the station record images of you, your car and the vehicle's license number. The same thing happens if you walk into a store to pay cash for a cell phone. Not only are you and your vehicle captured on video outside and you inside, but every call you make goes through the government's surveillance network.

“We'll identify and find the woman.”

 

35

“We found a connection between Nowell and the woman driving the red convertible,” Novak said.

“What is it?” Mond asked.

“A woman left a note for Nowell at his apartment building's security desk.”

“We got her on camera?”

“No—”

“Wait. It was out of order.”

“Exactly. Someone knows how to tap into security firms and shut off CCTV cameras. But the security man at the desk read the note.” She grinned at Mond. “Jose Ramirez, the security officer, denied to our investigators that he had read the note before giving it to Nowell but a review of the building's CCTV showed he read it after she left. Naturally the cameras started working as soon as she was gone.”

Mond waved away the man's lie. “What did the note say?”

“‘Get out—they're coming.'”

“‘Get out, they're coming,'” Mond repeated.

“She was telling Nowell that we were coming to search.”

“I understand that. The question is, how did she know it? I didn't even let the Los Angeles police know my plans. What else did this security man, Jose, tell us about Nowell and the note?”

“He's under the impression that Nowell wasn't expecting a message, didn't know the woman and didn't understand the message.”

“Play the building's video.”

Mond watched the interaction between Jose and Greg Nowell. He observed Nowell's body language for clues because the video didn't have sound.

“No question,” Mond nodded, “Nowell is surprised by the note. But that doesn't establish that he didn't know the woman before she left the note.”

“There's another tape. Two, actually. One shows Nowell and a woman entering the Angels Flight rail car separately and sitting apart. Not enough of the woman's face is shown for facial recognition, but she has been identified by her body language as the woman posing as Alyssa Neal.”

“No interaction between them in the train car?”

“None. But after he exits at the top she says something to him that causes him to pause. Again we have no sound.”

“Show me both tapes.”

Watching Nowell and Neal seated apart in the train car, Mond said, “He's curious about her. He moves his eyes, not his head, trying to get a look at her without making it obvious. Show me the second film.”

Mond watched Nowell's reaction to something the Neal woman said when Nowell was walking away.

“Not enough of her features are shown to permit us to have her lips read,” Novak said. “But you can see he's surprised.”

Mond shook his head. “He's not just surprised, he's puzzled. I think she dropped another cryptic remark on him, as she did with the note. Notice his body language—he's ready to go after her but stops and backs off.”

He got up and paced. “We can imply from what we've seen that Nowell didn't know the woman before he saw her in the railcar. Probably got his first introduction to her when she became his getaway driver leaving Rohan's. But she knew things she shouldn't have known.”

What really got under Mond's skin was that the woman knew things about his own investigation, right down to what his next move was when she tipped off Nowell that his place was about to be searched. But she contacted Nowell in strange ways—a comment made at the funicular, a cryptic note left at his building, not really telling him much, just that she knew something—and giving him warnings that turned out to be true.

She was setting Nowell up to be receptive when she finally made face-to-face contact with him.

That was it. She was softening him so when she made her move, he would be approachable because he realized she had information that he needed. Fat chance of him getting into that car after he left Rohan's if he didn't have some reason to believe she was on his side.

What did she have to offer Nowell to get him to team up with her—beyond getting a set of wheels under him when he was walking away from a suspicious death? That was enough.

For what purpose had she entered the game? That was an easy question for Mond. She had the same motive Nowell had. She was in the game for the hacked NRO file. He had it. She wanted it.

Who was she? Where did she get her information? Who did she work for? Was there another intelligence agency involved? FBI? CIA? DIA? Maybe even an agent for one of the civilian contractors that got billions in NRO contracts that would be jeopardized if their secret activities were exposed?

Mond was sure that she wasn't with any of the major agencies. The HumanID, Hops and other identification systems used by Interagency were the most sophisticated in the world and would have even picked up on members of other secret agencies. But she didn't have to be with a major agency. There were hundreds, hell, thousands of agencies and subagencies floating in the big bureaucratic pond that made up the U.S. intelligence service.

The fact that she had insider information about his movements was outrageous. Mond considered it an invasion of his privacy even if it turned out to come from another governmental agency.

Novak interrupted his thoughts. “Sir, the red convertible was spotted by a drone in a Venice Beach parking lot. The drone also picked up two people on the boardwalk who appeared to take cover when the drone approached. They were too far away to identify but it was a man and woman who had on the right color clothes.” She paused and read a message on her screen. “We also brought a CCTV store camera online through the security company that provides it and confirmed that was Nowell and the woman in Alyssa Neal's red car.”

“How much time are they ahead of us?” Mond asked.

“They left the boardwalk store eleven minutes ago. The red convertible was still in the parking lot three minutes ago.”

“They were heading away from the car as they progressed along the beach. They can't get far on foot. By now they have made up their minds to get another car and are heading for it.”

“Rent a car? Steal a car?”

“Or borrow a car. We'll know soon enough. Get all the boardwalk security cameras online that can be brought on. Add another drone in the area and get our field agents in position to move in.”

As Novak went back to her control panel, he interrupted her.

“I want to know who this woman is. Dig deep into all government intelligence agencies. She may work for one.”

 

36

Leaving the parking lot, Greg turned back in the direction of Venice Beach.

“Isn't Topanga the other way?” she asked.

“They'll check bus, street, ATM and other cameras in every direction from Rohan's. It's inevitable we'll be spotted sooner or later, but let's give them a run for their money and make it as later as possible. I'm going back toward where we started in the hopes they would think that's the last direction we would take.”

He turned onto a side street and went up a ways and turned again, repeating the maneuver to get the car headed in the direction of Topanga Canyon but staying on side streets.

“If we keep to the straight and narrow it's going to be easy for them to track us.” He grinned. “A woman from Philly calls in regularly. She's sure that she's under surveillance and has worked out this tactic just to make it harder to keep track of her.”

Ali shook her head. “Amazing. There's a whole world on talk radio I didn't know existed.”

“That's because you've been one of the people looking down the microscope lens at the rest of us. But now you're not just another bug under the scope, but one that the authorities want to dissect.”

“Thanks. I needed that to keep from panicking. Now that you've completely destroyed my confidence, why don't you let me out so I can stand in front of the car and let you run over me? I'd rather be roadkill than dissected.”

“‘I'd rather be roadkill than dissected,'” Greg repeated. “It's a good thing you didn't say that to Cowboy Hank. He would have made a song out of it.”

As they drove along the Pacific Coast Highway, which would take them through Santa Monica and almost to Malibu to reach Topanga Canyon Boulevard, he continued the evasive movements before suddenly pulling over at a strip mall.

“I want to get a look at the people in the car behind us.”

After an ordinary gray car with two ordinary-looking men in it went by, he put the glowing Cadillac back on the road.

“Just checking. There's a CIA field rule that if you see the same person or vehicle twice, assume you're being followed.” He answered her questioning look. “Another one of the things I learned on talk radio. I also know you're supposed to ditch your phone but I was slow on the draw about that. Still in shock.”