Authors: Douglas Preston
“Go feed yourself somewhere else!” the man shrilled. “This is a decent neighborhood! That’s my trash!”
“Come on, man, don’t be like that.”
The man took out his cell phone. “You see this? I’m calling the cops!”
“Hey, no harm done, man.”
“Hello?” said the man, speaking theatrically into the phone, “there’s an intruder on my property, rifling my trash! Thirty-five seventeen Kearny Street Northeast!”
“Sorry,” Gideon mumbled, shambling off with the drumstick in one hand.
“I need a squad car, right now!” shrilled the man. “He’s trying to get away!”
Gideon tossed the drumstick in the direction of the cat, shuffled off around the corner, and then picked up his pace. He quickly wiped his hands and arms as thoroughly as he could on his cap, discarded it, turned his Salvation Army coat inside out—revealing an immaculate blue trench coat—and put it on, tucked in his shirt, then slicked back his hair with a comb. As he reached his rental car a few blocks off, a police cruiser passed by, giving him only the briefest of glances. He slipped in and started the engine, rejoicing at his good fortune. Not only did he get what he’d come for, but he’d met Mr. Lamoine Hopkins in person—and had such a lovely chat with him.
That would come in handy.
From his motel room, Gideon began cold-calling the numbers on Hopkins’s phone bill the next morning. He worked his way through a succession of Hopkins’s friends until on the fifth call he struck pay dirt.
“Heart of Virginia Mall, tech support,” came the voice. “Kenny Roman speaking.”
Tech support.
Quickly, Gideon turned on a digital recorder plugged into a line-splitter on the phone line. “Mr. Roman?”
“Yes?”
“My name is Eric, and I’m calling on behalf of the Sutherland Finance Company.”
“Yeah? What do you want?”
“It’s about the loan on your 2007 Dodge Dakota.”
“What Dakota?”
“The loan is three months overdue, sir, and I’m afraid that Sutherland Finance—”
“What are you talking about? I don’t have any Dakota.”
“Mr. Roman, I understand these are difficult financial times, but if we don’t receive the amount currently overdue—”
“Look, buddy, dig some of the wax outta your ears, will you? You’ve got the wrong person. I don’t even own a pickup. Suck—My—Dick.” There was a
click
as the line went dead.
Gideon hung up. He snapped off the digital recorder. Then he listened three times to the exchange he’d just recorded.
What are you talking about? I don’t have any Dakota,
Gideon mimicked aloud.
Look, buddy, dig some of the wax outta your ears, will you? You’ve got the wrong person. I don’t even own a pickup.
He repeated the phrases many times, in different combinations, until he felt he had the inflections, tone, rhythms down just about right.
He picked up the phone and dialed again: this time, the IT department at Fort Belvoir.
“IT,” came the response. It was Lamoine Hopkins’s voice.
“Lamoine?” Gideon said, whispering. “It’s Kenny.”
“Kenny, what the hell?” Hopkins sounded instantly suspicious. “What’s with the whispering?”
“Got a fucking cold. And…what I got to say is sensitive.”
“Sensitive? What do you mean?”
“Lamoine, you got a problem.”
“Me? I got a problem? What do you mean?”
Gideon consulted a sheet of scribbled notes. “I got a call from a guy named Roger Winters.”
“Winters?
Winters
called you?”
“Yeah. Said there was a problem. He asked me how many times you’d called me from work, that kind of shit.”
“Oh my God.”
“Yeah.
“He wanted to know,” Gideon-as-Kenny asked, “if you’d called me on your office computer, using VoIP or Skype.”
“Christ, that would be a violation of security! I’ve never done that!”
“Man said you had.”
Gideon could hear Lamoine breathing heavily. “But it isn’t true!”
“That’s what I told him. Listen, Lamoine, there’s a security audit going on over there, I’ll bet you anything, and somehow they’re on your case.”
“What am I going to do?” Hopkins fairly wailed. “I haven’t done anything wrong! I mean, I couldn’t make a VoIP call from here even if I wanted to!”
“Why not?”
“The firewall.”
“There are ways to get around a firewall.”
“Are you kidding me? We’re a classified facility!”
“There’s
always
a way.”
“For Chrissakes, Kenny, I
know
there isn’t a way. I’m IT, remember? Just like you. There’s only one outgoing port in the entire network, and all that it allows past is passphrase-encrypted packets from specific nodes, all of which are secure. And even then the packets can only go to certain external IPs. All the classified documents in this archive are digitized, they’re super-paranoid about electronic security. There’s no way in hell I could call out on Skype! I can’t even send out e-mail!”
Gideon coughed, sniffed, blew his nose. “Don’t you know the port number?”
“Sure, but I don’t have access to the weekly passphrases.”
“Does your boss, Winters, have access?”
“No. Only, like, the top three in the organization get the passphrase—director, deputy director, and security director. I mean, with that passphrase you could pretty much e-mail out any classified document in here.”
“Don’t you guys in IT generate the passphrases?”
“You kidding? It comes down from the spooks in a secure envelope. I mean, they
walk
the sucker over here. It never enters
any
electronic system—it’s written down by hand on a piece of frigging paper.”
“Problem is that port number,” said Gideon. “Is that written down?”
“It’s kept in a safe. But a lot of people know it.”
Gideon grunted. “Sounds to me like you’re being framed. Like maybe one of the top guys screwed up and is looking for someone else to take the fall. ‘Let’s pin it on Lamoine!’”
“No way.”
“Happens all the time. It’s always the little guys who get shafted. You need to protect yourself, man.”
“How?”
Gideon let the silence build. “I have an idea…it might be a really good one. What was that port number again?”
“Six one five one. What’s that got to do with anything?”
“I’ll check some things, call you back at home tonight. In the meantime, don’t say anything about this to anybody, just sit tight, do your job, keep your head down. Don’t call me back—they’re no doubt logging your calls. We’ll talk when you get home.”
“I can’t believe this. Listen, thanks, Kenny. Really.”
Gideon coughed again. “Hey, what are friends for?”
H
anging up the phone, Gideon Crew began flinging off his clothes. He slid open the closet door and laid a garment bag on the bed. From it he removed a fragrant, custom-cut Turnbull & Asser shirt, shifted his lanky frame into it, and buttoned it up. Next came a blue Thomas Mahon bespoke suit. He pulled on the pants, belted them, whipped on a Spitalfield flower tie (where did the English get those names?), tied it with a crisp tug, shrugged on the jacket. He massaged some hair gel between his palms and used it to slick back his floppy hair. As a final touch, he combed a smidgen of gray into his sideburns, which added an instant five years to his age.
He turned to look at himself in the mirror. Thirty-two hundred dollars for the new persona—shirt, suit, shoes, belt, tie, haircut—twenty-nine hundred for travel, motel, car, and driver. All on four brand-new credit cards obtained and maxed out for just this purpose, with virtually no hope of being paid off.
Welcome to America.
The car was already waiting for him in front of the motel, a black Lincoln Navigator; he slipped into the back and handed the driver the address. Gideon settled himself into the soft kid leather as the car pulled away, arranging his face, composing himself, and trying not to think of the three-hundred-dollar-an-hour price tag. Or, for that matter, the much higher price tag attached to the scam he was about to perpetrate, if he were to get caught…
Traffic was light and thirty minutes later the car pulled into the entrance to Fort Belvoir, which housed INSCOM’s Directorate of Information Management: a low, 1960s-modern building of exceptional hideousness set amid locust trees and surrounded by a huge parking lot.
Somewhere inside the building sat Lamoine Hopkins, no doubt sweating bullets. And somewhere else inside the building was the classified memo written by Gideon’s own father.
“Pull up to the front and wait for me,” said Gideon. He realized his voice was squeaky with nervousness, and he swallowed, trying to relax his neck muscles.
“I’m sorry, sir, but it says
No Standing.
”
He cleared his throat, producing a smooth, low, confident voice. “If anyone asks, say Congressman Wilcyzek is meeting with General Moorehead. But if they insist, don’t make a scene, just go ahead and move. I shouldn’t be more than ten minutes.”
“Yes, sir.”
Gideon exited the vehicle and headed down the walkway; he pushed through the doors and headed for the reception/information desks. The broad lobby was full of military personnel and self-important civilians briskly coming and going. God, he hated Washington.
With a cold smile, Gideon went up to the woman at the desk. She had carefully coiffed blue hair, neat as a pin, clearly a stickler for procedure—someone who took her work seriously. Couldn’t ask for better. Those who followed the rules were the most predictable.
He smiled and—speaking into the air just a few inches above her head—said, “Congressman Wilcyzek here to see Deputy Commander General Thomas Moorehead. I’m…” He glanced at his watch. “…three minutes early.”
She straightened up like a shot. “Of course, Congressman. Just a moment.” She lifted a phone, pressed a button, spoke for a moment. She glanced at Gideon. “Excuse me, Congressman, can you spell your name, please?”
With a sigh of irritation he spelled it out, making it abundantly clear that she should have known the spelling already—indeed, he was careful to cultivate an air of someone who expected to be recognized, who had only contempt for the ignorance of those who did not.
She pursed her lips, got back on the phone. A short conversation followed, and then she hung up. “Congressman, I’m terribly sorry, but the general is out for the day and his secretary has no record of the appointment. Are you sure…?” She faltered when Gideon fixed her with a severe look.
“Am I
sure
?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
Her lips were now fully pursed, her blue hair beginning to quiver with suppressed offense.
He looked at his watch, looked up at her. “Mrs.…?”
“Wilson,” she said.
He slipped a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to her. “You can check for yourself.”
It was an e-mail he had concocted, allegedly from the general’s secretary, confirming the appointment with the general he’d already known would be out. She read it and returned it to him. “I’m very sorry, he doesn’t seem to be in. Shall I call his secretary again?”
Gideon continued to glare at her, fixing her with a subzero stare. “I should like to speak to his secretary
myself
.”
She faltered, removed the phone from its cradle, and handed it to him, but not before dialing the number.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Wilson, but this is a classified matter. Do you mind?”
Her face, which had gradually darkened, now flushed rose. She stood up silently and took a step away from her desk. He put the receiver to his ear. The phone was ringing, but turning to block her view, he depressed the button and, almost imperceptibly, dialed another extension—this time, the secretary to General Shorthouse, the director himself.
Only, like, the top three in the organization get the passphrase—director, deputy director, and security director…
“Director’s office,” came the secretary’s voice.
Speaking quietly and rapidly, and summoning the voice of the man who’d confronted him at the trash cans the night before, he said: “This is Lamoine Hopkins in IT returning the general’s call. It’s urgent—a security breach.”
“Just a moment.”
He waited. After a minute, General Shorthouse came on. “Yes? What’s the problem? I didn’t call you.”
“I’m sorry, General,” said Gideon, speaking like Hopkins but now in a low, unctuous tone, “about the lousy day you must be having.”
“What are you talking about, Hopkins?”
“Your system being down, sir, and the backup not kicking in.”
“It’s not down.”