Seven Unholy Days (13 page)

22

4:15 PM CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME (LOCAL)

HART COMPLEX

              Hart watched Stanson’s hollow threat with amusement, then switched the television off and turned back to his computer. Three clicks later, clandestinely collected audio from the control room at Great Central Electric again streamed from a pair of Harman/Kardon speakers. The eavesdropping device had been a pleasant surprise, a nice and thoughtful gift from Dane Christian. So had Jana Fulton, who sat on the nearby sofa. Dressed in a simple white gown with black trim, she took the definition of beauty to a new and unexplored height. Her eyes were so blue as to appear electric, not unlike his own. Silken blond hair that approached her shoulders before turning up at the ends in a teasing flip. Medium breasts rising and falling in slow waves against the satin fabric of the gown.

She was consumed with raw desire for him; she said nothing but he could see the blue-hot flames of passion burning in her eyes. Such was to be expected, but she would simply have to wait until the time was right for him to grace her with his stu
nning man-talents.

“I still want to hear about this pattern you thought you found.” Hart recognized the voice as that of the FBI agent, Ro
bert Rowe.

“Checking on it now if this site will ever load. Geez, this r
eminds me of the fifty-six-k days, for crying out loud.”

Hart’s lips tightened into a thin line and his nostrils flared. This Decker was entirely too stubborn. After ample warning to stay off the Internet, he dared to defy Abraham Hart. Was he insane? Perhaps so, but that did not mitigate the risk of Decker stumbling onto information that could jeopardize the operation.

He typed and sent another warning to Decker, one that should keep him busy for a while, then leaned back in his chair and rested his chin on steepled fingers. Fewer than four days remained, and for the first time, Hart began to think that continuing the game with Decker might be a bad idea. Taunting him was great fun, but too much was at risk. Decker was already ruined, and for now, that was enough. Time for him to make an exit.

He picked up a secure satphone that was linked to an up-top antenna and dialed a number.

4:21 PM CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME (LOCAL)

YELLOW CREEK

Potella had been off the grounds for several hours with Sheriff Litman, so I set the trap and waited for his return. He had been back for about five minutes when Rowe walked up and said, “I still want to hear about this pattern you thought you found.”

“Checking on it now if this site will ever load. Geez, this r
eminds me of the fifty-six-k days, for crying out loud.” I had throttled back my bandwidth in order to slow down the surfing. I wanted to be online, but I didn’t want Potella to see me do any genuine fact-finding and a molasses mission was the best way to accomplish that.

He watched over one shoulder and Rowe over the other. Within two minutes Potella said to Rowe, “I have things to do. Let me know if this asshole finds anything.”

“Give it a rest, Walt. We’re on the same team,” Rowe said as Potella was walking away.

“Yeah, right,” he said as he walked into the side office and shut the door. Bingo.

I busied myself plunking around on the FNC site, all the while complaining about the snailesque speed for the sake of authenticity, and waited. Rowe pulled up a nearby chair. Less than five minutes after Potella’s exit, I heard: “You have new mail.”

Return-Path:

Delivered-To: x7ijljAweRRv -deckerdigital:[email protected]

X-Envelope-To: [email protected]

X-Originating-IP: [66.156.171.40]

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Thy Clock Doth Run

Mr. Decker:

You have apparently chosen to willfully defy my instructions by going online again. You are beginning to anger me. I am quite certain your little Persian lapdog has been trying to break the encryption of the DECREE OF DARKNESS code within CEPOCS, so inform him that we are now playing a game of very high stakes, Mr. Decker.

If you have not produced the password within eighteen hours, I will impose another harsh penalty upon this nation, I will make you pay a dear personal price, and I will dispose of your friend’s family in Iran. If you do obtain the password, you may not use it. Do so and Los Angeles will pale it comparison to the consequences I will invoke. Since you seem so fond of the Fox news web site, should you discover the password you are to place it prominently on their front page in unwritten form. The game clock is ticking, Mr. Decker.

              Rowe read the message and started to say something but his cell phone rang. Make that a satphone; when did the Bureau start issuing fifteen-hundred-dollar phones to field agents? Rowe walked outside to take the call. Two minutes later, he was back, reading over my shoulder. I read it again and shook my head, drawing Julie’s attention. She walked over and read it.

“Has it occurred to you that the subject is monitoring your Internet connection? Seems to me he knows every time you go online,” she said.

Julie was leading the conversation exactly where it needed to go but I wanted them to have a handle on the tech basics before I dropped the Potella bomb in their laps. “Not possible. He could have a packet sniffer out there watching for my machine, but it would draw a blank because of the routing I’m using to log on.”

“Can you put that in English?” Rowe said. “We’re cops, not nerds.”

“Geeks,” I said.

“Whatever. Give us an abbreviated explanation of how someone might monitor a certain computer, and why it can’t be happening to you.”

“Data sent and received on the Internet is handled in little chunks called packets. Each packet also has an electronic ID tag attached to it, providing information about the origin and destination machines, which each have a unique identifying number for Internet purposes, called an IP address. Devices called routers interpret these ID tags and direct the packets to their destination, sort of like a traffic cop. So when I request information from the Fox site, for example, the request packet is labeled as coming from my machine with an intended destination of whatever Fox machine has the information I need. The routers direct it to that Fox machine, it assembles the data I requested, and sends out a stream of packets containing that data, this time flagged with a destination of my machine. Am I making sense so far?”

“Yeah, I’m with you. So a packet sniffer is like the online equivalent of an eavesdropping device?”

“Exactly. Given all that’s happened, it’s safe to assume this guy has access to the IP of just about any machine he wants, meaning he’s hooked into our two-way satellite feed. So he could instruct his packet sniffer to watch for any traffic coming from or going to the computers here at GCE.”

“Then why did you say it’s not possible that he’s monitoring your activity? Sure sounds possible to me.”

“He may be monitoring GCE’s machines, but I didn’t log on through a GCE machine. I tied in through my laptop, and you won’t find a more secure machine. Right now it may be disguised as a public computer in a Barcelona cyber-café. Five minutes from now, a library in London, and so on. It constantly changes and takes on the appearance of some innocuous machine far away that can’t be linked to any individual. Like I said, he’s not monitoring me.”

“Maybe it’s just coincidence,” Julie said.

It was time. “No, I think this latest one,” I tapped the email on the screen, “rules out coincidence. He knew when I went online.” I let the hook take hold. “And I think I know how.”

“Oh?” Rowe said. Something akin to surprise flashed across his face at the speed of light, present only for a flicker. Julie’s eyes grew in anticipation and she gave a “come on” gesture with both hands.

“We have a mole among us.” This time the look of surprise on Rowe’s face didn’t flicker. It appeared and stayed. Julie’s eyes darted at Rowe and back at me.

“There’s no way it’s coincidence, and as I just explained, my machine is not being monitored. That means someone is kee
ping the subject informed on our activities here.”

Julie cleared her throat. “Someone here, you mean, at this f
acility?”

“I think it’s Potella,” I said. You could’ve parked a bus in e
ither of their mouths.

“Decker, what the hell do you base an accusation like that on?” Rowe said. Julie’s face was frozen in time, a pretty spire decorated with a gaping cave.

I focused on Rowe. “First, he—”

“On second thought, hold up a minute. I won’t be a party to discussing this behind an agent’s back. I’ll go get him.”

I grabbed his arm and said, “He can defend himself later. Let me finish explaining to the both of you first. There’s value in keeping this quiet. He could—”

“Nope.” He wrenched his arm loose and headed toward P
otella in the side office.

So much for the idea of discreetly following the mole to see where he might take us. “Julie, we already discussed this poss
ibility. Now you seem blown away. Why?”

“I had no idea you suspected my partner, Decker. Someone in the chain of command, maybe. Walt? No way.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Tell it to him.”

Rowe was on his way back, with Potella lumbering close behind.

“What is it?” Potella said when they arrived.

“Tell him, Decker,” Rowe said.

I leaned in close to Rowe and quietly said, “This is a bad idea and a very unprofessional way to handle it.” He stepped away from me.

“Potella, Decker thinks you’re dirty.”

“The hell you talking about?”

“Says you’re keeping the UNSUB enlightened on our investigation.”

Potella’s beady eyes burned. “That so, Decker?”

“Yes,” I said. “There’s no doubt 69, my code name for the subject, is being tipped off as to what we’re doing. Take this last incident. Shortly after I went online, you retired to your office. Minutes later, in comes the latest threat.”

“You ever hear of coincidence, big shot?”

“There’s more. Your finances don’t add up. You make fifty grand and spend like you make ten times that.”

Rowe chuckled. “Everyone in our office knows Walt won over a half-million dollars in a lottery about a year ago,” Julie Reynolds said.

“Why wouldn’t something like that be in his fi—” I stopped myself too late. This was coming unraveled in an ugly way.

“You been snooping around in my files?” Potella lunged at me and Rowe grabbed him.

“Let him finish, Potella. If he’s made unauthorized entry into federal files, he’ll pay.”

“You brought in that team of incompetents on one of the most important cases in Bureau history. Explain that,” I said.

Potella looked puzzled. Reynolds explained. “The hacker team. They’re not the technicians assigned by Quantico.”

“I had nothing to do with that. I showed up here like I was told to and they were here.”

I stared at Rowe and he looked away. “Agent Rowe, surely you don’t deny what you told me earlier?” Rowe said nothing. Why wasn’t he backing me up on at least this point?

Potella continued, “You know what I think? I think we got a rat here all right, and I think it’s you, Decker.”

“You’ve lost your mind,” I said.

“Oh yeah? Remember that Swiss bank account you denied earlier?”

“What account?” Rowe said.

“Seems our pretty boy here has quite a little sideline going. He made computer programs to help terrorists buy and sell arms that we couldn’t trace. This sonofabitch is a damned tra
itor and I have proof.” Potella stomped back to his office and returned with a piece of paper. “What the two of you don’t know,” he said to Rowe and Reynolds, “is that this information came to me yesterday. I confronted him about it and he denied it. I actually wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, so I decided to verify it some more before mentioning it to either one of you. I’ve done that now.”

“Let me see that,” Reynolds said, and Potella gave her the paper. She studied it for a minute, then shoved it at me. “I’d like to hear your explanation for this myself, Decker.”

It was a faxed copy of the same bank statement had shown me earlier. “I’ve already seen this and it’s bogus.”

“That’s not exactly what you saw before, Decker. Look clo
ser.”

Potella was right. The top of the page was a reduced-size photocopy of the bank statement, but the bottom held new i
nformation.

To the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation: