Dark Angel, page 20
“All right. We’ll be up there in a couple hours. Barry might have to find a babysitter. I think this is girls’ night out for his wife . . .”
Back at home, Step sat at the kitchen table and told Victoria all about it, as she drank a glass of green juice the consistency of snot; watching her do it made him shudder.
When he’d finished telling the story, she said, “Not the GRU. If they wanted the chips, they would have shown up and taken them. All of them. At noon. And they would have shaken your hand on the way out. But it really doesn’t sound like the train nerds. What it sounds like is some kind of semiprofessional hijack team. Might not even have known what they were stealing. People like that work the port. That’s where the whole ‘It fell off a truck’ joke comes from.”
“That could be,” Step agreed. “But . . . we did Delph, and then we did that couple who engineered the train hack and then the boys over at Ventura got hit, almost instantly, and now somebody’s fuckin’ with the port . . . To me, it feels like there’s a string there. Should we pull it?”
“As long as you keep a plane on the runway at Santa Monica.”
“Yeah. Yeah, there’s that. I’d hate to go back to Moscow, after this.” He waved his arms, meaning the house, the pool, the town, and the United States of America. “Doesn’t get better than this.”
“Could get a lot worse, though, even here in the USA,” Victoria said. “Way worse, like, dead.”
Sixteen
Letty called Able, identified herself and asked, “You gone?”
“No, I’m home. I gotta do some things here. Then I might take off,” Able said.
“We’re coming over,” Letty said. “We need to show you some computer things.”
“Computer things . . . like what?”
“If we knew that, we wouldn’t have to show you,” Letty said. “Paul thinks they could be a big deal, but he’s software, not hardware.”
“You sure nobody’s tracking you?” Able asked.
“Maybe ninety percent sure . . . no way to be a hundred percent,” Letty said.
“Do some countersurveillance stuff,” Able said. “You can look it up on Google under countersurveillance technique for cars.”
“Okay,” Letty said. She was looking at Cartwright, who rolled her eyes. “We’ll do that.”
When she got off the phone, Cartwright said, “Google, my ass. Why don’t I drive? I do countersurveillance and it might not be a bad idea.”
“Okay with me, as long as you don’t wreck my truck,” Baxter said. Baxter had known all about the Intel chips, but Letty had lied to Able about it, because they needed to talk to Able again.
They worked their way to the 405, curling up and down side streets on the way. Once on the freeway, Cartwright put the pedal to the metal, pushing the truck to a hundred miles an hour, weaving through the evening traffic. “What are we doing here?” Baxter asked, lifting his feet to place them on the dashboard.
“Bracing yourself won’t help, if we hit somebody,” Cartwright said. “The airbag will blow your feet up over your ears and dislocate your hip joints. Anyway, we’re not being followed, but we might as well make sure we don’t have a drone above us. A drone with a video transmitter won’t make more than fifty or sixty miles an hour, and if one was up there, it won’t be able to reacquire us after we’ve lost it.”
Baxter took his feet down. “So we’re clean?”
“Unless somebody stuck location transmitters under the truck when you weren’t looking,” Cartwright said.
“Seriously unlikely,” Letty said.
“I agree. The biggest problem will come at this Able guy’s place,” Cartwright said. “I’ll want to get out a few blocks away, and have you guys wait until I’m in place, to see if anything moves when you show up.”
“There’s a handy alley and banana tree . . .” Letty said. She told Cartwright about watching Able’s house from behind the tree.
“Sounds good,” Cartwright said. “That’s what we’ll do. We’ll run more countersurveillance on the way over . . .”
On the way to West Hollywood, Baxter said he was becoming reluctant to further expose Ordinary People to possible attacks by the Russians. The hackers, he said, were basically his people and if he hadn’t been picked up by the NSA, he might have been doing what they were doing.
“Probably too late to back out,” Cartwright said. “Listen, from what you’ve told me, you were originally sent out here to find out if Ordinary People were going to take out a municipal gas system?”
Letty: “Right.”
“I’ve been around the intelligence community six years, and I can tell you, there’s something else going on. I think we all know what it is,” Cartwright said.
“You’re right: we do know,” Baxter said.
“Let me say it,” Letty said. “They knew about the gas thing and sold it to Senator Colles and Baxter and me, but their main interest was the train hack. The gas thing was a way to get at Ordinary People and get Baxter to go along. He might not have done that if they’d told him he had to fight the Russians. What they really want is a bunch of hackers who already know how to mess with the Russian rail system but have no connection to the government. Ordinary People are not only deniable, but even arrestable if they complain too much.”
“Got it in one,” Cartwright said. “I’d be amazed if that’s not what your Ms. Nowak has been up to the whole time. We represent a small investment for what could be a huge return. A small investment for them, not us.”
“We could tell them we’re bailing,” Letty said. “Just not give them a choice.”
“And I could kiss my career good-bye,” Baxter said.
“So could I,” Cartwright said.
“Wouldn’t do me any good, either,” Letty said.
They sat in silence for a moment, then Baxter said, “So we keep on keepin’ on, though I’ll probably get killed.”
“I don’t see that we have much choice,” Letty said. To Baxter: “We’ll miss you when you’re gone.”
They dropped Cartwright at the CVS pharmacy on Melrose, with directions to the banana tree that Letty had used to hide from Barron and Wolfe. They gave her ten minutes to get settled, then headed for Able’s.
“I’m surprised the guy’s still here. He seemed determined to get out, when I talked to him at Poggers,” Baxter said.
At Able’s, Letty forgot the cane and knee brace, and after knocking on the door, and identifying herself, she walked inside with Baxter, and Able looked at her and frowned and asked, “What happened with your knee?”
Letty looked down and all she could come up with was an old Monty Python line, “Got better,” and, a beat later, “Hurts bad either way. I left the cane and brace in the car, to take a break.”
Baxter was carrying one of the boxes they’d stolen from the warehouse. He said, “I think I know what these are, but I wanted an expert to look at them.”
He put the box on top of Able’s washing machine and Able cut it open with a kitchen knife. Letty fished out one of the smaller boxes, and shook out one of the smallest and handed it to Able, who opened it and said, “Wait! The whole box is full of these?”
“We’ve got six boxes full of these,” Letty said.
“If they’re all the same . . .” He rummaged through the box. “There are twenty-four chip boxes in each one of the small boxes, and there are ten small boxes in the big box. Man, I could sell a big box for ninety or a hundred K, maybe more,” Able said. “I even know the guy who’d take them. He could come up with the cash in an hour. Where’d you get them?”
“Stole them from an illegal warehouse, probably getting packed to be shipped to Russia or someplace that would pay a lot for them,” Baxter said, picking up one of the chip boxes, peering at the chip through the transparent panel on top. “There were probably a couple hundred boxes of these things.”
“How did you . . .”
“We saw a guy watching Annie Bellado’s place and followed him. He took us to the warehouse, and we watched that, and when they got down to one guy inside, we . . . borrowed the boxes from him,” Letty lied.
“Is the guy still alive?” Able asked.
There was a knock at the door. Letty said, “That’d be Barb.” She went to the door, peeked out, and opened it.
Cartwright stepped in, looked around, and said, “Cool,” and she looked at Letty and said, “Nothin’.” And to Able: “Nobody followed us.”
“Where are you from?” Able asked Cartwright.
She said, “Texas. Old girlfriend of Charlie’s. Don’t know nothin’ about computers.”
Able nodded, shook his head. “To get back to the original question . . . the guy you stole these from, is he still alive?”
“He is,” Cartwright said. “We’re not killers. I mean, we are, but we didn’t kill anybody. Today. Well, in the last couple of hours.”
Able chuckled, but insincerely: “Very funny.”
Letty said, “Back when we were dealing with Harp, he said there was a guy at the center of Ordinary People. Said he was nuts . . . Craig Sovern?”
“Craig . . . He’s a little off-center, I guess. Yeah, and he’s a savant. Got OCD, pretty bad. He’s a good guy, though.”
“Here’s the thing,” Letty told Able. “We talked to Annie Bellado, and we didn’t tell her this, but we think her friend Daniel . . . He’s missing and we went to his apartment, did some social work on the manager, and got inside. There was blood on the floor. We think the Russians got him and he’s probably dead. We think they’re taking down Ordinary People because of the train ransomware. It’s not only revenge—they want to take down anyone who might go after the trains again, right when they’re about to invade Ukraine. We need to warn this Sovern guy.”
“Ah, Jesus, I gotta get out of here,” Able said, looking around the place, as if the Russian army might be coming through the doors.
“Your friends William and Melody are heading for Las Vegas, last we heard,” Letty said. “Maybe you could call them, see what they’ve got set up.”
Able bobbed his head, looked around his house. “Vegas sounds . . . okay, I guess. Better than anything I’ve thought of.”
“I dunno. If you can’t hide in LA, you can’t hide,” Cartwright said. “You could probably hide six blocks away, as long as you didn’t come back here. These guys aren’t the FBI or the NSA, they’re crooks.”
Baxter: “Russian intelligence must be involved somehow, if they’re going after the train people. Why would gangsters care about that, if all they were, were gangsters?”
“You’ve got a point,” Cartwright conceded.
“Anyway, could you call somebody about this Craig Sovern guy, find out where he is?” Letty asked. “He doesn’t answer his phone. If he was big in Ordinary People, he’ll be a target.”
“Yeah, yeah . . . This can’t go on too long. I got six grand in the bank,” Able said. “Vegas will eat that up in three weeks, even staying in a dump.”
Baxter shrugged, waved a hand at the box of Intel chips. “Take the box. We got more where that came from.”
Able brightened: “Seriously? That’ll make a difference. I can hide out for six months on that.”
Able called his friend Jan, the bass player, who Letty and Baxter knew from the meeting at Able’s and had seen again at Poggers. On the phone, Able said “uh-huh” a couple of times, made some notes on a yellow legal pad, agreed with Jan that they should both get out of sight. When he rang off, he handed the legal pad to Letty.
“He lives in Oxnard. On a boat called the Green Flash, in a private marina at the Motel California.”
“Get me online for a minute, we want to look at Google Earth,” Baxter said. Able lit up one of his desktop computers and they found the Motel California on the north side of Oxnard. The harbor on the ocean side of the motel had two dozen slips, all of them with sailboats. They looked at a street view of the front of the place—long low motel with an orange vacancy sign and twenty doors facing a parking lot—and shut down the computer.
“We’re going,” Letty told Able. “And you should get lost.”
“I’ll call you when I get to Vegas,” Able said. “When I unload these chips, I’ll call everyone who knows about Ordinary People and get some hideout money to them.”
“Great,” Letty said. “Give us a little credit for it.”
They left the box of chips with Able, followed a navigation app to the 101 freeway and took it north and west.
“Boat seems like a strange place for a guy with OCD,” Baxter said. “It’d always be moving around, stuff would get jumbled up.”
“Actually, a sailboat would be the perfect place,” Cartwright said. “You gotta be a little OCD just to sail. The best sailors are really OCD—nothing can be too well adjusted for them. Everything is tied down. Always with appropriate knots. It’s the fussiest hobby in the world.”
“You sail?” Letty asked.
“I have, yeah. I’ve got some friends down in Annapolis, they’ve got a sailboat. You ought to come along sometime,” Cartwright said.
“Not me,” Baxter said. “Worst environment in the world for computers.”
“That might be true for computers in general, but I’ll tell you, on new boats, it’s one marine computer after another, front to back. It’s all fly-by-wire now.”
* * *
They talked for a few minutes, locked into the scarlet stream of weaving taillights getting out of LA, then Cartwright, in the backseat, said she was going to take a nap. Letty yawned and said, “Good idea.”
“Go ahead,” Baxter said. “I’m fine.”
Letty dozed in the passenger seat, with the usual jerky half-waking dreams people have when they sleep in a truck, waking again when they came down to city streets and a stoplight. Cartwright woke at the same time, yawned, cracked her knuckles, and asked, “Are we there?”
“We’re in Oxnard, a few more miles to the motel,” Baxter said. “You guys were down for almost an hour.”
“I needed it,” Letty said. “Thanks.”
Oxnard, the part they saw of it, was a low town of blacktopped streets, small houses with tiny lawns, fences everywhere, strip malls and auto stores, and, unusually for California, it didn’t get much better as they got closer to the Pacific.
The Motel California had vacancy and Letty used the NSA credit card to rent two rooms for the night. The clerk was an unsightly man, wearing a white dress shirt sweat-stained at the collar, and a thin brown nylon necktie. A room at the motel came with the right to walk out the back door and down to the boat slips, he told Letty, when she asked. As the clerk was giving her the keys, and warning her that the two rooms were both nonsmoking, she asked, “Does Craig still keep his boat here? Green Flash?”
“Yup. He’s in A1. You a friend of his?”
“More like an acquaintance,” Letty said. “We thought we’d drop by to see if he’s in.”
“He was here a couple hours ago, barefoot, hitting the candy machine,” the clerk said. “He didn’t look like he was going anywhere.”
Letty thanked him. Outside, they moved the luggage from the truck into one of the rooms and put the five remaining boxes of computer chips in the other. That done, they walked back to the office and the pass-through glass door that took them down a flight of steps to the boat slips. The night was quiet, almost silent, so any noise at all jumped out like a dog’s bark.
A couple were walking up the dock toward the motel, towing an aluminum wagon full of garbage bags. They nodded at Baxter, who was leading, and he asked, “Where’s Craig’s boat?”
The man pointed down the dock and said, “The Pacific Seacraft, the slip on the end, left side. He’s got some shirts hanging from the boom.”
Baxter thanked him and as they continued down the dock, Letty asked, “What’s a boom? I mean, I’ve heard of them . . .”
“You don’t know what a boom is?”
“I’m from Minnesota,” Letty said.
“It’s the thing the shirts are hanging from,” Cartwright said.
“Ah.” As they got to the end of the dock, they saw a long canoe-shaped sailboat with three shirts hanging from the boom, a surfboard neatly tied along the deck, and lights in the cabin; they could hear Everlast doing “Smokin & Drinkin,” the guitar trickling up from below.
The boat had been backed into the slip, so they could see into the small cockpit and down into the cabin. The extra lengths of the lines from the boat to the cleats on the finger docks were carefully curled in perfect spirals, lying flat on the docks. Up and down the dock, stainless steel hardware was clinking against metal masts, a constant tinkle in the light ocean breeze.
Letty called, “Craig? You in there?”
The music muted, and a moment later a long-haired man, wearing only cargo shorts, came to the cabin hatch and asked, “Who’s there?”
“Some friends of Ben Able. We need to talk to you,” Letty said.
“Let me get my flip-flops. I’ll be right up.”
They heard some shuffling around and then Sovern appeared, climbing out of the cabin and into the cockpit. He was a tall, tanned, broad-shouldered man, with an oval face and shoulder-length, slightly curly blond hair.
Cartwright said, “If you had a puka necklace, you’d be perfect.”
“If I had a puka necklace, I’d have to shoot myself,” Sovern said. “What’s up?”
“We need to talk . . . privately,” Letty said, looking up and down the dock. “The boat looks like it’d be a little tight for all of us.”
“We could probably walk out, if it’s important . . .”
“It’s important and we have two motel rooms here,” Baxter said. “We also have, like, a half million dollars’ worth of advanced computer chips we don’t know what to do with.”
