Biowar (6 page)

Not that Desk Three couldn’t have bugged the place if Rubens ordered it to.

“Mr. Rubens. We’ve been waiting you.” Sandra Marshall was the Deputy Director of Homeland Security and generally rated as the heir apparent to Greg Johnson, who was spending less and less time in Washington as he tested the waters for a run at the Texas governorship.

“But that’s not a problem,” Marshall added. “We told your secretary the meeting was a half hour earlier than it really was, knowing you’d be late.”

This was a joke, and Rubens deeply resented it. But he smiled and sat down, pretending for the others that he was both good-natured and a regular guy. He feigned interest in the chitchat nearby, then watched Marshall as she called the working group on Internet security recommendations to order and began the meeting.

Marshall had made a small fortune in Silicon Valley before joining the President’s campaign as a consultant on high-tech industry. She had parlayed that role into a post at the Pentagon, hopping from there to State and on to Homeland Security in a matter of weeks. For a woman of thirty-three (she gave her age as twenty-eight, a modest and passable fib as such things went) her body remained well toned. She was not conventionally beautiful or even pretty, but of special interest to Rubens were her eyes; in his experience, every woman in Washington, even the young ones, had thick, puffy eyes from overwork and lack of sleep—or from partying, depending on the woman in question. Sandra Marshall’s eyes were smooth and clear.

“I had breakfast with the President last Thursday,” said Marshall, “and he mentioned how very interested he is in our project, and he specifically endorsed something to apply to all computers at all times. Something radical, and something that will provide the highest level of security to all people. To individuals, not just to the people downstream, the servers and companies.”

“The initiative should end identity theft as we know it,” said Griffin Bolso, who was representing FBI Director Robert Freeman.

“Exactly.”

Rubens had heard various proposals to improve Internet security for individual users over the years. With a few notable exceptions, most were either unworkable or futile. A few were both. His mind drifted; he began thinking of the Kegan operation until the words “portable biometric identification is the future” fluttered across the room.

“There are many applications,” Marshall continued. “And just as many ways of selling it to the public. I hope we can move ahead then with the report. Obviously, we’ll need a full-blown technical study. That’s the next step. Perhaps my staff can pull together a report and present it to the working group next week?”

Until this moment, Rubens had seen his involvement on the committee as necessary—his boss had assigned him to attend—and potentially beneficial, inasmuch as it allowed him to hear what other elements of the government were up to. But this was something else again.

“What you’re suggesting is a scheme that would eliminate on-line privacy completely,” he said.

“Scheme? That’s such a difficult word,” said Marshall.

“I don’t think it would do that,” said Bolso. “Do we even have complete privacy now? Of course not. Server addresses are routinely recorded. E-mails can be identified.”

“That’s not the same thing as knowing a user’s precise identity every time he signs onto the Net,” said Rubens. “The American public won’t go for it.”

Marshall’s eyes met his.

“There will be arguments, yes. But nodes on the Net are tagged now, and it is possible to identify who is doing what at any given moment,” said Marshall. “Your agency does so routinely.”

“Not without proper authorization,” said Rubens.

“A voluntary program to aid in authentication would greatly increase confidence in transactions, and that would be the place to start.”

“There would be many ways around it,” said Rubens.

“Not with the proper devices.”

“Then it would not be voluntary.”

Bolso took up the argument. Rubens—somewhat appalled that an official who ran a secret spying agency had to argue for personal privacy rights—considered pointing out the uproar that had ensued when it was rumored that the FBI asked libraries for lists of books that patrons took out. But then he reconsidered.

Why not let Marshall and the others push the idea further along before squashing it? People were always suspicious of the NSA, calling it Big Brother and whatnot. How better to counter that image by opposing this sort of plan as obtrusive?

A public relations coup.

Not that the NSA was interested in public relations. But if an opportunity like this presented itself, could it be ignored?

Let this dumb idea move along a bit, then start discreetly leaking information about it, along with the all-important tidbit that the NSA had found it necessary to oppose the initiative?

Yes.

Ultimately, such a proposal was unlikely to get beyond the study stage. But that only argued in favor of letting it proceed for now.

“So, we’ll give it to my staff,” said Marshall, with a note of finality. “All agreed?”

A vote. Or a quasi-vote. In any event, it would be a record of his position.

Rubens snapped up straight.

“I have to go on record as recusing myself, and the agency,” he said, leaning over the table as he smiled at the secretary who was presiding over an automated transcription machine at the far end of the room. “Any involvement would be inappropriate, given the executive order governing our formation.”

It was a rather shabby demurral, and Rubens half-expected that the others would point that out—or follow his lead and propose their own excuses. But no one else spoke up.

“Very good then,” said Marshall, as cheerfully as if he hadn’t spoken at all. “We’re unanimous. Until next week.”

Marshall managed to slip up next to him in the hallway.

“I hadn’t expected you to oppose the initiative,” she said. “After all, it’s just a study.”

“I don’t know that we have any opinion, really. We’ve just taken ourselves out of the debate.”

He expected her to argue, but instead she reached out and gently squeezed his arm. “We should discuss it further.”

“I don’t know if that would be useful,” he said.

“Useful?” She tilted her head back ever so slightly. “Pleasurable at least.”

Is she trying to seduce me? wondered Rubens.

“Perhaps over lunch?” she added.

“My lunches are generally not my own.”

“Well, neither are mine,” she said. “But are you going to the benefit for the Kennedy Center Thursday?”

She was trying to seduce him.

Hardly. Her purposes were surely political.

On the other hand ...

“As a matter of fact, I am going to the benefit,” said Rubens, knowing he could call on one of his many relatives for a ticket. “Yourself?”

“Yes. Perhaps we can talk then.”

“I’ll see you there.”

“Maybe something to eat afterward?”

“Perhaps.”

“I’ll look forward to it,” she said.

8

Karr had seen bus stations bigger than the airport he landed in at Newburgh, New York. But that made it easier to spot the state Bureau of Criminal Investigation agent waiting to meet him.

“Hey.” Karr pointed at the detective as he approached, his voice booming in the low-ceilinged room. “I know you, right?”

Achilles Gorman stopped a second, temporarily puzzled. The NSA agent threw his arm around him without breaking stride, leading him toward the door.

“I’m Tommy. Whole name’s too long to worry about. Let’s hit the road.”

“You’re here from Washington?”

“That’s what the sign at the airport said.”

“You’re NSA?”

“Say that out loud again and I’ll have to kill you.”

The doors snapped open and the two men headed across the parking lot to a green Impala. The double antennae and grille lights made the unmarked car so obvious Karr wondered why they bothered. The Deep Black op paused next to the car, stretching his arms back as if he were stiff but actually taking the opportunity to make sure they weren’t being followed. Karr got in the car and pushed the seat back as far it would go, his legs still bumping against the dashboard.

“I’m sorry about inside,” said Gorman. “My boss said you were NSA and he didn’t make it sound like—”

Karr laughed. “Hey, don’t sweat it. I’m just busting your chops. I’m working for CDC as kind of a loaner on this. Communicable diseases—because the guy who’s missing is a disease expert. Germs. They told you all this stuff, right?”

Gorman nodded grimly.

“You all right?” Karr asked.

“Stomach’s giving me trouble.”

Gorman was silent until they found the Thruway, which took about five minutes.

“I didn’t recognize you at the airport,” said Gorman. “I expected someone in a suit.”

“Hey, these are my best jeans,” said Karr, who hadn’t worn a suit since giving up the black one he’d worn, briefly, as a member of the NSA security force. “You named after the heel or the hero?”

Gorman looked at him with the pained expression of a man who had wandered into an insane asylum and couldn’t find the exit.

“So tell me about Kegan,” Karr said.

“We’re looking for him,” said Gorman. “I was hoping you’d tell me about him.”

“All I know is he likes bugs.” Karr laughed, but the BCI investigator didn’t. “You think he killed the guy you found?”

“He’s the number-one suspect,” said Gorman.

“You find a murder weapon?”

“No.”

“ID the victim?”

“No.”

“Motive?”

“Unknown.”

“Not much of a case.”

“No kidding.”

Karr had spent part of the flight north reading the preliminary reports on the investigation, as well as news reports and some background on Kegan and the investigators themselves. The state police’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation handled homicides in most jurisdictions outside of cities north of New York; they had a decent track record in closing up homicides, but this didn’t look like it was going to be closed anytime soon.

The victim’s identity remained a mystery even to Desk Three. The man was around twenty-three years of age, of Asian descent, in decent shape, unarmed when he was found. He had no wallet, no jewelry, and no watch. His clothes could have been purchased in any Wal-Mart across the country. He had been shot once in the back of the head, execution-style, with a .22-caliber pistol. The pistol had probably been equipped with a silencer, according to the BCI’s ID division, which handled the forensic end of the investigation. The man’s prints didn’t match any the FBI had dug up, nor did they match those recorded of known foreign agents, at least not according to the common agency files that Desk Three had double-checked.

It occurred to Karr that the victim would have been better suited to have been the executioner.

“Kegan’s car was on the property,” said Gorman. “We think he drove away in the victim’s car.”

“Makes sense.”

“About the only thing that does.”

A uniformed trooper sat in his patrol car at the side of the driveway. Karr smiled at his disapproving glare as they came up the drive.

Big old house, in very good repair. Great view, but nobody was just wandering up here without having some sort of reason.

The NSA op got out of the car and walked up to the porch, letting himself in ahead of Gorman. He walked down the hallway to the office and stood in front of the scientist’s two computers. One had a DSL link as well as a wireless portal for other devices; the second wasn’t hooked up to anything, physically firewalled from the rest of the world.

That was the one he was interested in. Karr knelt down to the CPU, sliding a disk into the floppy drive.

“Whatcha doin’?” asked Gorman.

“Snooping around,” said Karr, hitting the power switch.

“We’ve already looked at the machines,” said the BCI investigator. “They’re clean.”

The investigator meant that literally. There was nothing at all on the two hard drives of the machine Karr turned on—the program on his floppy revealed nothing more than assembler-level zeros. Which meant it either was brand-new or had been scrubbed by a low-level formatting program sophisticated enough to defeat Karr’s snooper.

“I want to send the drives to my guys,” he told Gorman, pulling the computer out from its shelf beneath the desk. “Be easiest just to send the whole computer.”

“I guess that’s okay,” said German. “We haven’t found anything. I’ll just need a receipt. We have a form—”

“Whatever paperwork you want is yours.”

Karr went to the other computer and once more slipped his boot disk in. This one had the latest version of Windows, along with an intact file structure. Besides the system programs and files, Office, three different organizer programs, Quicken, and Turbo Tax accounted for most of the used space. Karr quickly recovered the deleted files; most were just Internet sites routinely deleted.

A calico cat came into the room, meowing as he curled against Karr’s leg. Tommy reached down and patted him; the cat licked his finger.

“Nice cat,” he said, wiping the cat slop onto his pants.

“Just hungry.” The detective shrugged. “No more cat food in the house. Gave it some tuna last time I was here. I don’t know if there’s any more left. Thing comes and goes. Probably somebody in the neighborhood feeding it. Hopefully they’ll adopt it.”

“No ASPCA?”

“Only take dogs in this county, not cats. Too many, I guess. I’d adopt it, but my wife’s allergic,” added Gorman. “Thing loves to be petted. Slobbers all over you so much you’d think it was a dog. What’s all that stuff?” Gorman asked, pointing at the screen.

“Things someone was looking at the day before the body was found,” said Karr, flipping through the recovered files on the second computer.

“Anything interesting?” asked Gorman.

“URL for a page showing what time it was in Asia. Couple of them.” Karr keyed up the DSL dialer to connect to Desk Three, which would siphon the contents for examination. Gorman watched him for a while, scowling but saying nothing.

“Mind if I take some pictures?” Karr asked after the modems connected.