Havoc (23 page)

CHAPTER 59

Late the next morning, Anna Wells rolled over to answer her ringing cellphone. “Hello?

“Hello, Mrs. Wells?” asked Inspector Rossi.

“Yes, this is Anna.”

“I’m sorry. Did I wake you up? I thought this would be a good time to call, since is almost the afternoon.”

“It’s okay, Inspector. I probably need to get up, anyway. I’ve been sleeping so much more than usual since Duncan’s death…” She trailed off.

“Mrs. Wells,” said Rossi. “I promised to let you know when we made progress on your husband’s case.”

“That’s right. Did you learn something new?”

“Yes. We had a lot happen in the last couple of days. You want me to tell you over the phone, or you want to come talk to me in person?”

“How long will this take?” asked Anna.

“We learn a lot. It might take an hour.”

“I’ll come down in person, then. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Okay, Mrs. Wells. I see you soon.”

Nearly an hour later, Anna Wells appeared in the lobby of the Roman
Polizia di Stato
building. Rossi, Alton, and Mallory rose to greet her. Alton couldn’t help but lift an eyebrow as he observed Terry Langford at Anna’s side.

Anna appeared to sense his surprise. “Ever since he arrived, Terry has been keeping me company through these hard times. He’s been so good to me. I don’t know what I’d do without him.”

Terry gazed upon the blonde a little longer than might have been expected from a mere friend. He looked at the others and shrugged. “What can I say? I’d hope someone would do the same for me if I found myself in this kind of nightmare.”

“That’s really sweet of you,” said Mallory.

“Well,” said Inspector Rossi, “We have a lot of information to share, so why don’t we go upstairs to my floor.”

“‘We’?” asked Terry.

“Yes,” replied Rossi. “Mr. Blackwell and Agent Wilson helped me on this case.”

Anna looked at them with a vacant eye. “I know you all were on your vacation. I’m sorry you got dragged into this, but thanks for your help.”

“It’s no trouble,” replied Mallory.

Upon reaching Rossi’s floor, the troop filed into a conference room. Rossi ducked down the hall and returned with his supervisor, Captain Moretti. Accompanying Moretti was a large man whom nobody introduced. The man took a seat in the corner and crossed his beefy arms.

“Mrs. Wells,” said Rossi, “Agent Wilson and Mr. Blackwell have helped us research your husband’s murder. We have learned a lot, and we’re gonna tell you what we have discovered. My boss knows most of this, but a few things will be new for him, too. Since you and Mr. Blackwell and Agent Wilson all speak English as your first language, they are gonna explain everything to you.” He nodded at Alton.

“We’ve confirmed that your husband made a deal with a Chinese company called Cúnchú,” said Alton. “They sent an employee, Feng Wu, to purchase the Silverstar files from Duncan. The exchange was to occur via two meetings. In the first meeting, Duncan sold Wu a cellphone containing half of the Silverstar files. Once Wu verified the authenticity of the files, he was to buy the remainder in a second meeting. But this plan was disrupted by Duncan’s murder during the first transaction.”

Anna’s breath caught in her throat, but she made no noise.

“At that point,” said Alton, “we had two questions to answer: who killed Duncan, and was that person acting on his own or hired by someone else? We now know that the murderer was a professional hit man named Zane Crowe. Since he’s a professional assassin and certainly not an IT guy, we know the idea of the murder didn’t originate with him. He only killed Duncan for the money.

“This leads to the next question: who hired him? It must be someone who had a compelling motive to see Duncan dead.”

“Can’t you just ask the assassin guy?” asked Anna. “What was his name again?”

“Zane Crowe,” said Rossi. “But he is a professional, like the Mafia. He is not gonna say anything.”

“So you know Crowe did the actual killing,” said Anna, “but you’re not sure who hired him, right?”

“That’s right,” said Alton, “So now our challenge is to figure out who had the motive.

“Let’s consider the suspects. After the night of Duncan’s murder, several other actors in this drama converged on Rome, each with their own motives and methods for trying to acquire the Silverstar files—and silence Duncan. In particular, several other Vidulum employees came here. Of course, you’ve known that Terry Langford has been here for some time, consoling you. But Brian McFarland, Vidulum’s Chief of Security, also took a flight out here.”

“Brian—really?” said Terry, clearly surprised.

“Yes,” replied Alton. “And he wasn’t alone in his quest. He hired an old acquaintance to help track down the Silverstar files. McFarland knew if he didn’t recover the files, he’d be out of his Vidulum job and probably out of the IT Security business for life.”

“Who was the person Brian hired to help him?” asked Terry.

“An old friend from his childhood.” replied Alton. “A man who possesses a special talent for tracking down people—and ensuring they don’t act against his employer’s wishes.”

“He’s a hit man?” asked Terry with a shudder.

“We’ll get to his exact role in a minute,” said Alton. “In addition to the Vidulum employees and their representatives, an agent of the US government also came to Rome. And he also worked with a contact here in Italy to try to track down Duncan’s cellphone.”

“So did it work?” asked Terry. “Did you find the cellphone?”

Alton stared at the man with a gaze of cold steel. “You’d like to know, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course. My job—the jobs of all of us at Vidulum—are riding on the safe return of those files.”

“Mr. Langford,” said Mallory, “if that’s so, why have you spent so much time with Anna Wells instead of going out looking for the files?”

Terry hung his head and averted his gaze from Anna. “Brian McFarland ordered me to stay close to her, in case the police shared any information about the case. She was our only source of information about their findings, so we figured we’d have the best chance of recovering the files if I stayed on top of the police’s updates to Anna.”

Anna looked at Terry with a wounded expression.

Terry finally glanced in her direction. “But Anna knows I have other, more compelling reasons for staying near her. At least, I think she knows…by now.”

“Oh, Terry…,” said Anna, her expression softening.

“Yes, indeed he does have another motive,” said Alton, turning to Anna. “Selling out his company—and you—to turn himself into a multi-millionaire.”

CHAPTER 60

“What?” exclaimed Anna. “But I thought—”

“You thought what Terry wanted you to think,” interjected Mallory, “that he was falling for you. But that wasn’t true at all. Terry Langford was a key member of Duncan’s project staff, right? What are the odds Duncan could steal the Silverstar files without Terry’s knowledge? Terry helped Duncan steal the Silverstar plans and was paid to keep quiet. When the sale went awry, Terry was desperate to come to Rome to ensure his name wasn’t compromised. He probably couldn’t believe his luck when he was ordered to come out here by McFarland to pursue the investigation.

“Once here, Terry used Brian McFarland’s orders as his first cover story for staying close to you. He also used his ‘concern’ for you as a secondary cover story in case McFarland changed his orders. Terry made a point to appear infatuated with you, simply as a ruse for learning all he could about the sale in a desperate bid to avoid prison time.”

“But while he was here,” said Alton, “Terry received an anonymous e-mail message from Feng Wu, offering to complete the bargain into which Duncan had entered. Again, Terry probably couldn’t believe his luck. Here he was, trying to stave off prison time, and now he had an opportunity to parley this trip into a fifty-million-dollar sale to the Chinese.

“Terry told Feng Wu that ‘Mr. Brookings,’ an associate, would conduct the transaction. There was no Mr. Brookings. It was Terry himself who met Feng Wu.”

“Wait a minute,” said Vega from the corner. “It couldn’t have been Terry. We put a trace on the line in his hotel room. He was saving and retrieving files the whole time Wu met with Brookings.”

“That’s exactly the conclusion Terry wanted you to draw. To that end, he wrote a program that automatically sent and retrieved a stream of files to his private domain on Vidulum servers, giving the appearance that he was in his hotel room when in reality, he was meeting Wu to arrange a sale. He could always point to the date/time stamp on those files as proof he was on the computer.”

“And how did you learn about this program?” asked Vega.

“I didn’t,” admitted Alton. “Two days ago, Mallory contacted McFarland and explained the nature of our investigation. McFarland was happy to exchange information in the hope we’d be able to help him recover the lost files. This is where a childhood friend of McFarland’s comes into the picture. Discovering the program on Terry’s laptop was the type of expertise for which McFarland hired his friend, a world-class hacker.”

“Who is this person?” asked Vega.

“In exchange for this information, I agreed not to divulge his name,” said Alton. “Let’s just call him ‘George.’ After McFarland hired him, George went about searching for information leaks at Vidulum. As a key member of Duncan’s staff, Terry was already under George’s scrutiny. Once Terry traveled to Rome, however, George recognized the opportunity such a trip would represent to a dishonest employee and eventually cracked the passwords on Terry’s laptop.”

“How did he do that? Did he break into Terry’s hotel room?”

“No. He never left Seattle. Instead, he wrote a virus and embedded it in an e-mail message Brian McFarland sent to Terry. After Terry opened the file, the virus recorded Terry’s password and sent it back to George.”

“It’s perfect,” said Vega with a respectful nod.

“Once George had this password, he could then scan Terry’s laptop, even while it was in use. The scan looked like a routine backup job. Eventually, George found the file-transfer program Terry wrote to establish his alibi during his meetings with Wu.

“Since George’s methods weren’t entirely legal, he couldn’t go to the police. However, he did contact Terry the day after Terry’s first meeting with Wu. George threatened to reveal to Brian McFarland Terry’s plan to sell out Vidulum unless Terry abandoned his plan to sell the remaining files. After that, Terry bailed on the subsequent meetings with Wu.”

Alton turned to Terry Langford. “So, did we get anything wrong?”

“I’m not talking to you,” snapped Terry. “I’m not talking to anyone except a lawyer.”

“So did Terry arrange for Duncan to be killed, then?” asked Anna. “Was he trying to take all the money for himself?”

“No,” replied Alton. “The truth is actually a little more complicated than that.”

CHAPTER 61

“What more is there to know?” asked Anna, a look of confusion clouding her face.

“We wondered whether Brian McFarland himself could be mixed up in Duncan’s murder,” said Mallory. “After all, he is Chief of Security at Vidulum. His career was riding on keeping the Silverstar files secure. He couldn’t allow another security breach on his watch, especially after the debacle at Janz Bank, his last IT job. It didn’t seem like much of a stretch to suppose he would do anything—even kill—to prevent Vidulum’s lucrative technology from being sold.”

“So Brian did it?” asked Anna, turning her head from Mallory to Alton.

“Well, as Alton mentioned earlier,” said Mallory, “McFarland did sneak into Rome, but he really didn’t have much success once he arrived. Along with George, he searched the IP black-market blogs, posing as a seller trying to unload the same type of technology Duncan was selling.”

“That explains the two people I’ve been trying to track down,” said Vega, “fellows who go by the names of ‘Yankee’ and ‘Raindog’ in the blogs.”

“Yeah, that’s them,” confirmed Mallory. “Here’s the interesting point about McFarland. The fact that he was using a pseudonym to secretly search for the missing files suggests he didn’t already have them. Otherwise, why bother? Plus, it’s not like he was advertising his search to demonstrate his innocence.”

“That’s true,” said Vega. “He was trying to keep it quiet. That’s the only way he’d keep his job.”

“Exactly. And he certainly didn’t want to tell Vidulum’s CEO about George, the hacker he hired to smoke out Terry Langford—not with all the illegal tactics George uses. McFarland tried to stay as far under the radar as possible, which suggests he wouldn’t have intentionally set this chain of events in motion in the first place.”

“Wait,” said Vega. “McFarland still could have done it. If he had arranged for Crowe to murder Duncan, he’d need to look like he’s trying to recover the files, not because he’s worried about his job, but just so he wouldn’t be accused of complicity in Duncan’s murder.”

“I see what you’re saying,” said Mallory, “but couldn’t the same be said of everyone? Any act that appears innocent is just a smokescreen to deflect suspicion? Why couldn’t it be you, for example? In your NSA role, you’d be privy to this kind of information on a regular basis. What if you tired of government wages and decided to supplement them by orchestrating the sale of key technology, then killing the seller so you could keep the profits—and knowledge of the sale—to yourself?”

“You can’t talk to me that way,” said Vega, clenching his fist.

“Why not?” said Alton, stepping between Vega’s hulking form and Mallory. “You just said yourself that any investigative action could be intended to hide the guilty person’s true motives.”

Vega released a slow breath. “I can’t disprove that any more than you can. But let me share a little information about why I got involved in this case in the first place, and why I’d never orchestrate this kind of transaction. It’s essential to prevent the sale of ionic-storage technology to the Chinese, not just for Vidulum’s sake but for our nation’s.

“Ionic storage can be used to increase the intelligence of smart weapons systems, which makes securing this technology critical to national security. Ionic storage represents a huge advance in both the amount of memory and data transfer rate. Having so much memory at the kinds of blazing-fast access speeds we’re talking about would produce a fundamental change in smart-weapons design. In tandem with faster processors already in development, ionic memory will enable AI—artificial intelligence—to be embedded within each individual weapon. Cruise missiles will be smart enough to evade existing interceptors. That’s one reason memory on an atomic scale has been the holy grail of researchers—in our country and in others. We could lose our military superiority in the space of a few years if other countries obtained the ability to produce ionic storage.”

“Isn’t that inevitable at some point?” asked Alton. “After World War Two, we couldn’t keep the design of nuclear weapons a secret, and the loss of that technology occurred long before the age of the internet and rampant hacking of computer systems.”

“Absolutely,” said Vega. “We just need to delay other countries’ acquisition of this technology long enough for us to develop the next wave of storage devices and countermeasures—maybe five or six years.”

“So you were sent here to keep the Chinese from getting their hands on it,” said Mallory.

“That’s right.”

“But didn’t you tell us yesterday you knew the location of Wu’s hotel room? Why not just recover the phone then?”

“I couldn’t take down Wu until I knew who Vidulum’s new seller was and whether he truly possessed the files or was just bluffing in order to cash in on the technology’s value. Also, remember how I said I was looking for a couple of bloggers, ‘Yankee’ and ‘Raindog,’ who were looking to sell the Silverstar files? I had to wait to figure out if they were lining up to make the same sale just in case Terry was caught. If I had two more renegade Vidulum employees on my hands, I needed to identify them before I moved against Wu and scared them into hiding.”

“Didn’t you tell us yesterday that you have a European contact, a guy who usually supplies good intel but who tends to do his own thing at times?” asked Mallory.

“Yeah, that’s right. He goes by the name of Raven.”

“I’m just curious…once you told Raven that Duncan had brought the Silverstar files here, what’s to stop him from murdering Duncan and taking the files for himself?”

“It’s possible,” admitted Vega. “But frankly, this guy gets most of his intel as a result of his…um…unique placement within the Italian government, shall we say. I don’t think he has the imagination to carry out a crime of that magnitude all by his lonesome. And by the way…I’d rather you not mention Raven to Agent Gantt, my boss. I promised Raven I wouldn’t expose him as the source of my intel. It’s the only way I can convince him to tell me anything. It’s bad enough with you guys knowing, but if Gantt gets wind of it, I’ll never hear from Raven again.”

“Okay, fair enough,” said Mallory while Alton nodded.

“You know,” said Vega. “I’ve spent the last five minutes defending myself, but you still never proved why McFarland wasn’t the guy who offed Duncan.”

“As I said,” replied Mallory, “if acting innocent implies guilt, any one of us could have killed him.”

“Yeah,” said Vega, “But we don’t all have motives like McFarland does. I say he could be guilty.”

“We’d have a hard time proving that,” said Mallory, “but luckily, we don’t have to. We know who the true orchestrator of Duncan’s murder is.”