The Merchant of Secrets (19 page)

Mike lifted his head from underneath the covers. “Where
are you going?” he asked.

“Boots is downstairs,” I replied. “We’re going back to
the house to look for more evidence.”

“Huh?” he asked in a sleepy stupor.

“Honey, just go back to sleep,” I told him.

Keisha was waiting downstairs brimming with energy early
in the morning, and projecting a cool confidence about the case when it
wouldn’t have occurred to anyone else to be optimistic. She summoned the
sheriff’s deputy to drive us back to Jones’ house where we scaled the wall like
I had done the day before, and walked across the lawn and into the house.
 I was fixated on finding the evidence that would put Jones in prison for
a very long time but I was tired and still groggy from the night before which
wasn’t helping the situation. The two of us crawled through the house,
searching everywhere from behind loose bathroom tiles, to inside the hollows of
curtain rods, and everywhere in between until we had nowhere left to look.
 We were looking for documents, discs, portable drives, cell phones, or
laptops.
Anything that would connect Jones to missing
classified material.
Three hours later, nothing.
 Not even a clue. I was beginning to panic as time was running out. Jones,
Qureshi
and the mechanic would be released from jail
in about 24 hours if we had no evidence.  
An
that
was the least of our
problems. If we failed, Mike would have to account for the money he had spent
in labor hours, and travel expenses, for a failed project, all because I got
started on
Qureshi
in a restaurant in D.C. last
winter. Jones could sue us for arresting him, I’d probably get fired, Keisha’s
boss wouldn’t be happy that she took so much time off.  Plus the Palm
Beach County Sheriff’s
  Department
wouldn’t be
too pleased that we had spent their time for nothing. It was all bad.
Very bad.
If we didn’t find the evidence.

“Does that boat actually move?” Keisha asked, staring at
a big white cruiser.

“I think so.”

“Let’s get in and take a ride.”

“You’re kidding. I don’t think we’re allowed to do that
Boots.”

“Hey Deputy!”
She shouted.
“We’re taking the boat for a spin.”

“Get in, I’ll drive,” she commanded.

I climbed the mini-ladder from the dock into the boat and
sat down on a white vinyl seat cushion, Keisha turned the key on the engine,
and
steered  the
boat  away from the dock.
The wind was blowing against our faces and we each took a whiff of the salty
air, this was better than being in an office all day.  The boat was
humming along, managing the waves without any problem until we were about a
mile from the shore. Then she slowed the engine and the boat rocked back and
forth from the push of the waves hitting the sides.

“Now pull out your cellphone and turn it on,” Keisha
ordered. I reached in my pocket and pulled out my phone.

“Now think. If you were Jones, what would you be doing
with that phone right now?” she asked,
  placing
me in the role of the perpetrator to recreate the scene.

I stared at my phone and gave it some thought.
“Hm.
If I were a crook, I’d probably be hacking into
somebody’s network.
Yea.
Cruising the shoreline and
eavesdropping on people’s network connection. ”

“Okay.
Now what if it’s the other way
around.
Reverse your thinking. Instead of stealing information from
people who live on the shore, what if you had some information that you wanted
to send out to somebody else.  How would you do it?”

“
Ohhhhh
.
Good question.  I’d dial into an email address that had a link already
set-up.  I’d copy the link, paste it to a new email then send it.”

“Who would you send it to?”

“Well, if Joe’s in China to deliver information in
exchange for money, I’d send the email with the link in it to him.”

“Good. Then what would you do?” she prodded.

“I’d throw the cellphone in the ocean so there’s no
evidence.”

“Then what would you do?”  She said, prodding again.

“Nothing.
I’d go back to
Virginia and pretend that I was just on vacation in Florida. I’d wait for the
mechanic to come back from China. And I’d check to verify that funds had
arrived in my bank account in Abu Dhabi,” I replied.

“Okay, now forget you’re Jones, and remember that you’re
an analyst. How do we find that link with the stolen information?’

“The device is gone, so I’d have to find it on the
network.”

‘Well how do we do that?” Keisha asked.

‘We can’t. Sailing the shoreline, next to so many houses,
he could have hacked anyone one’s network. Look at how many houses there are
along the shore,” I said, pointing to the line-up of multimillion dollar homes
along the beach. “That’s precisely the reason for sending the email sitting
aboard a boat instead of sitting by the pool at his house. If he sent the email
from his house it would have gone over his network, and we could have found it.
But this way, we can’t possibly find it.”

“What about the guy who received the email when he was in
China.
Joe the mechanic.
Wouldn’t he have the same
issue?” Keisha asked. “Wouldn’t he have in his possession a cellphone with
downloaded information that was being delivered to the buyer?”

“Maybe Joe still has the cell phone he used in China to
receive the email from Jones with the link.”

“Right
, ”
acknowledged Keisha.

“So we really should be searching the mechanic’s house
and office for a cellphone, not here, right?” I asked, seeking confirmation.

“Yep!” she said.

 “Keisha, you’re brilliant!”

“It’s the detective in me!” Boots exclaimed. It was a
worthy assertion given that she’d added her talents to some impressive cases in
the past. “We’d get into the mind-set of the criminal and retrace his steps. We
cracked a lot of cases that way,” she said. Getting it right was a
near-obsession for both of us.

The temperature was soaring past the 85 degree mark with
the sun blaring down and we were sweating through our shirts. Keisha was at the
wheel, turning the boat back in the direction of shore.  I called Mike.
“Mike, we can’t get the information from this end, we need to get any
cellphones or laptops belonging to the mechanic.”

“Why him?” he asked.

“Jones would have thrown the cellphone in the ocean to
get rid of the evidence.
And used someone else’s network to
send the information.
From Jones’ end, we have neither the phone nor the
network. It’s a dead-end. We have to get the link from the receiving end, which
had to have been the mechanic because he was the courier who delivered the
stolen information in exchange for the money. ”

“All right.
We’ll give it a try.
Come on back and we’ll head back to Virginia and see if we can still get some
search warrants,” he said, not sounding very hopeful.

“Okay Keisha, Mike’s ready to get search warrants on the
mechanic.”

“Yea, about that,” Keisha began.

“About what?”
I asked.

“You and Mike?” she asked.

“Oh, yea… well…”

“Oh my God, intra company relationships aren’t allowed,
and yet my friend sitting here is having sex with two company guys?” she said
into the air as
if  she
were telling it to a
third person. Then she started to laugh, clearly amused by it all.  Then
turning around, face-to-face with me, she asked, “Do you want to get your butt
fired or what?”

“No, no you’ve got it wrong. Colin and I aren’t together
anymore.”

“You were together as of yesterday
?…
”
She teased.

“Yea,” I sighed “but I called him to give my flight
number and his wife picked up the phone.”

“
Whaaat
?
He had a wife this whole time? Oh,
no
,no
.
My buddy Colin is a two- timer?” She shook her head from side to side in
disbelief.
“ I
swear I would’ve never seen that
comin
’! That guy is a prick.
Holy shit.
Okay, we’re doing margaritas on me, as soon as we get back to
D.C..
Ladies night out!”
 

By then the boat was at the pier and the deputy was
sighing with relief, grabbing the lines to tie it up quickly before Boots and I
could do any damage to it.

Keisha rode next to me on the private plane back to
Dulles airport and we were impatient for the plane to land. “Do you think he
got rid of the phone?” Keisha asked.

“Maybe not.
He wouldn’t have
left it behind in Asia; he
probably  would
have
still had it when he boarded the return flight back to the U.S.. Once he
landed, he probably thought nobody would figure it out, and kept it.”

 Turning to the row of seats across the aisle from
us, Keisha asked “Hey, Mr.
Mulally
, you’ve got the
mechanic in custody right now, don’t you? He must have been carrying a
cellphone when he was picked up. Can Caroline and I have a look at it?”

Mike laid his newspaper down on his lap.
“Probably.
He replied. “It’ll be in an evidence locker
somewhere. I’m sure we can get you access.”

“Good. Let’s go there and have a look. Maybe we’ll get
lucky.” Keisha sunk back in her seat and waited for the plane to land. If the
information was on a cell phone already in the possession of the police, we
wouldn’t need a search warrant.

While I sat near
Mulally
,
memories of Colin were slipping further into the past.

We were met at the gate by one of Keisha’s colleagues
dressed in army fatigues who said that he would take us to Alexandria to get
the cell phone from Joe who was in custody.  As the car rolled down George
Washington Parkway in Virginia along the Potomac River and toward the detention
center in Alexandria I looked over at Mike gazing out the window at the
national monuments. It was a little annoying to me that Mike sat there calmly
unable to consider the possibility that I might fail. His over assurance of my
abilities put us in different moods, I was tired, anxious and biting my nails,
whereas he seemed to be relaxing.   

 Keisha went inside the detention center first, and
asked to see the personal belongings in Joe’s possession when he was arrested.
A police officer came back with a small clear plastic bag with the words
Evidence Bag, printed on the front. There was a place to write the name of the
person examining it, and date. It tracked the chain of custody over the
evidence.  The evidence bag contained keys, a cellphone, and a wallet. The
police officer handed us some plastic gloves.

“Here you go, Miss Network Analyst. Try this out,” Keisha
said as she turned around and
  handed
me the
phone.

“Do you know what you’re looking for?” Mike asked,
hovering over me as I gripped the mechanic’s phone.

“I’m looking for incoming emails from Jones  to the
mechanic that would correspond to the dates that the mechanic was in
Asia…..scrolling……here we go!

‘You found it?” he sounded astounded.

“I found an email, now let’s open it up and
check….there’s a link…. there’s….there’s…..a whole lot of encrypted data…..”

“Let’s bring our equipment here to decode it,” he
interjected.   

Keisha disagreed. “With all due respect Mr.
Mulally
, it’s a Department of Defense issue, since he’s
selling defense equipment. It should be our programmers at the Defense
Intelligence Agency who decode it.”

He looked directly at Keisha. “Okay, Ms.
Lebron
, you’re on. But we want to see the files when you
decode them.”

“Understood,” Keisha nodded.

The four of us, Mike, Jose, Hugo and I went to get
something to eat while waiting for the guys from the Defense Intelligence
Agency to show up and work on the files. We left Keisha behind at the jailhouse
to wait for her colleagues. As we sat down at the table, the server handed us
the menus, but Hugo put his down.

Hugo looked at Mike, “So what’s going to happen with
Caroline after this project?”

‘I don’t think she’s thought that through yet,” Mike
replied, intimating that there were career options available at my discretion,
and with a subtle sub-context reference to our relationship.

“An uncertain future seems so ominous,” I said, half
joking.  

“Hey,” Mike said softly, leaning over his seat. “Do you
want to hear something funny?”

“Sure, tell me, what’s so funny.”

“Jones assumed he still held a bargaining position, even
though he’s facing a lengthy list of federal criminal charges, and tried to
negotiate his way out of handcuffs,” Mike laughed.

“Well it worked for him once. That was enough,” I replied
more disgusted than amused that
Jones  actually
thought he could escape with a slap on the wrist despite the evidence mounting
against him.  

“I agree,” Mike replied, still brimming with delight at
the thought of Jones squirming in his handcuffs. “We shouldn’t waste the
taxpayers’ money on another trial. Let’s send him on a one way trip back to
Afghanistan and hand him over to the Taliban,” he smiled.  

“I think you’re on to a good idea Mike,” I said. “Let’s
trade him for an American soldier held in captivity.  I know of a couple
of families who would love to see their sons to come home. For once Jones could
really do something for his country!”