The IRIS Algorithm, page 14
“I strongly suggest you get the details on that before you go to town with a dead VC coyote head in the back seat.” Dishes rattled in the sink. “Oh, my God that thing stinks.” A cabinet door opened with a squeak, rummaging, hiss of aerosol spray. “I think the smell is on you. Please take that thing to the barn and hose yourself off before you come back inside.”
“Hoowee! You’re right about that. Here, give me that air freshener. I’ll take care of the fumigation proper at the barn. I got some soap out there that’ll take the hide off a rhinoceros.” The back door opened and closed. Lester’s voice grew muffled and distant, whooped and exclaimed, profane and philosophical, cursing the dead for their insolence, the insult of being killed not enough.
Logan imagined the lifeless body of the coyote being dragged by its hind feet across the yard, bouncing over the shaggy Bahia grass, yellow empty eyes staring at nothing, taken to the barn for decapitation. Positive identification pays. A ritual not entirely unfamiliar to Logan. After Simone left him, living to be forty-four years old hadn’t seemed likely. A confused twenty-eight-year-old, mathematical genius, she’d just learned the truth about her husband of two years. A necessary truth. A truth best left ignored. A truth no one wanted to know. A truth that came in many varieties. A truth too awful for her to face.
Everyone wanted the coyotes controlled but nobody wanted to get close enough to smell them. Ten years ago, the killing was supposed to be over. He, too, had tired of smelling it. He’d collected the debt owed him in blood and pain and suffering many times over. Still, it was never enough. Until he met Simone. She gave him a reason to hope for something more than the fire that drove and consumed him. Then she walked away, changed her name, and kept his son a secret. He was too bruised to look for her.
The tarnished doorknob to the office squeaked, and the hollow door rattled open. Simone, backpack slung over one shoulder, moved through the doorway. She kicked off her worn leather clogs and sat in the straight-back chair, a bit too straight, a probable early prototype from the Florida Cracker collection.
When Simone was twelve, Lester experienced a brief infatuation with Amish furniture. He admired the craftsmanship and claimed he could actually feel, just by laying on of hands, the difference between handmade hutches and one made with machines and power tools. He attempted to capture the magic in his own line of hand crafted furnishings which he dubbed Florida Cracker Furniture—a marketing angle that was, at best, questionable. According to Simone, that business lasted less than six months. She got a rocking chair out of it. Unfortunately, the chair had a bad habit of flipping over backwards if you rocked very much.
Simone tucked her hair behind her ears, face shining with determination. “I am going to crack this laptop, see if there is anything useful on it. Given everything that has happened, it is statistically improbable that the mix up at the airport was an accident.”
He nodded in agreement. “I’ve already checked it for a tracking device. It’s clean, which was pretty stupid if it was placed on you by the other side.”
“When did you check it?”
“Before we left Houston.” He plastered on a half-smile. “You have your tricks, and I have mine.”
Simone plugged in the laptop and switched it on. While it booted up, she connected a USB cable from her Blackberry to the laptop. “One of my tricks. I have some programming tools stored on my phone’s memory card. This won’t take long.”
“You sound confident.”
“It is just numbers, Logan. All the current encryption methods are based on factoring the product of large primes, not that you cannot factor them. It will just take so long, it is not practical.”
“But you can do it faster because you know the secret shapes of primes, and all that.”
Simone knitted her forehead. “Was that sarcasm? You know I do better with straight forward.”
“It was not sarcasm.” He didn’t look up from his computer screen. “It just makes my head hurt to try to recount what we talked about earlier. That’s the best I could do.” It really wasn’t sarcasm. If she said she could do it, she could. He stole a quick glance in Simone’s direction. She stared contentedly at the laptop screen, unoffended. He learned during Special Forces Assessment and Selection at Fort Bragg, North Carolina that your mind is your best weapon. At the end of the day, all the physical abuse was really just mental. It’s all mental.
He tapped off a quick encrypted inquiry to one of his contacts inside the government. Initial information was starting to roll in. These bastards had no idea the world of hurt he could bring down on them, would bring down on them.
“How are you doing over there?” Simone’s voice was strained. She was making a conscious effort to sound friendly. Brutal honest came naturally to Simone. “I never knew you could type so fast.”
He felt uncomfortable, his words weak and defensive. “I do more typing than anything else these days.” It’s all mental. “I’m confirming and cross referencing some of the initial information. Are you in yet?”
“Yes. I’m running diagnostics on the disk, looking for anything that might tie this machine back to a physical location.”
That took her less than three minutes. Either that was the worst encryption in the world, or Simone really did know something nobody else did. NSA had supercomputers working around the clock trying to crack encrypted communication. It took a long time to even crack consumer grade encryption.
Ten miserable, gut-shredding years. He understood why she left, but he didn’t understand why she never came back. Why didn’t he track her down? He could have done it as easily as she cracked the laptop encryption. Then there’s that truth you really didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to believe. The two happiest years of your life, married to the one person who made you realize life was worth living, that brief encounter, those moments so splendid and fragile. To see the truth would be the final death.
The misery of undying love in an unloving life was exquisite.
“Uh oh.” Simone typed frantically. “There was something embedded on the hard drive. Some kind of hidden application fired off in the background.”
“Kill it!”
“I’m trying!”
Logan rushed over, knocking over the lamp, unplugged the laptop, and snatched the battery out in one quick move.
“Maybe they’re not as stupid as you thought.” Simone said. “It just phoned home.”
CHAPTER 33
Never underestimate your opponent. Logan Ranes, of all people, knew that. He wanted to sling the laptop against the wall, the impudent piece of junk, but he couldn’t because they needed it. The next few minutes were critically important.
“Get some tools. Take the hard drive out.” He controlled his breathing; his mind fully engaged. He let his mind wander alongside some idiotic, self-indulgent pity parade, and it cost them. “I’ve had one of my technical guys sniffing this network since last night. If that laptop established communication then we may have a chance of tracing it.”
Simone moved quickly, rushing to the kitchen.
Logan yelled after her. “Somebody on their side is a professional. I’ve seen this trick before.” His green eyes set deep and hard followed her. “But only from one of our intelligence operations, not from the mutts.” He put on the headset, opened Skype on his computer, and initiated a call. The connection established immediately.
“Check the sniffer results for all outbound and inbound packets from this IP address, starting ten minutes ago. Make that time 10:23 CDT.”
“Standby.” The man’s voice was even and unexcited, an air traffic controller checking the airspace for a commercial flight. “A series of 64KB UDP packets outbound two minutes and thirty seven seconds ago. All other traffic looks like normal TCP/IP from the MAC addresses you gave me last night.”
“Nothing inbound?” Logan knew the answer before he asked. That would be too easy. The man didn’t bother to reply. “Can you trace the outbound packets to destination?”
“We’ll analyze the payload. It’ll take a little time. I’m sure they’re sending these packets to a thousand different locations around the world and then parking it on some compromised computer system to be picked up later.”
“Call me when you have something.” Logan hesitated. “This level of sophistication concerns me. We need to keep the circle very tight.”
“Agreed.” The call ended.
Logan stared at the computer and reconsidered his options. It was early in the game, and he’d already played a stupid card. You usually don’t get more than three.
Simone returned with a small Phillips head screwdriver, turned the laptop over, and took off the access plate. She pried the back of the aluminum hard drive support cage up with the screwdriver then pulled the entire assembly out. “Now what?” She turned the hard drive over in her hand, inspecting it with raised eyebrows. “It’s an aftermarket drive. The manufacturer sticker is still on it, but I doubt that helps us. You can buy these anywhere.” She laid the drive down on the disemboweled laptop. “You said the laptop was clean. No tracking device.”
“I scanned it for active GPS tracking and bugs. Not applications.” He shook his head in disgust. “I really didn’t expect to find anything because…well….”
“Because you thought I was some irrational nutcase who probably made this entire episode up.”
“Maybe.”
Simone shrugged. “That is logical. You didn’t have much to go on back in Houston.” Like a big cat surveying a fresh kill, she slowly leaned closer to the incapacitated laptop. “Jason tried his best to get me to crack this computer back in Houston. I would not do it. That seems like such a long time ago.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Why don’t I just hack into the Federal Reserve and move a billion dollars to a series of untraceable offshore accounts?” Anger and frustration rose in Simone’s voice, water crashing over a dam. “Why don’t I access credit bureaus and lower the ratings to zero for anybody who ticks me off? Why don’t I read everyone’s private email? Why don’t I access the government’s Area 51 files and find out what’s really going on?” She inhaled sharply.
She was on a roll and there was no point in trying to stop her. He’d already stuck his hand in the fan; no point in putting more sensitive parts in there, too. “Why? I’ll tell you why. Because that was not part of the deal. God gave me this curse, this burden, this godforsaken knowledge dumped on an unsuspecting child, along with a caveat. I could not use it. You know it, but cannot use it. Cannot share it. Just know it.” She walked to the window, folded her arms tightly across her chest, and looked over the shaggy front lawn.
Logan now had a glimmer of understanding about the weight of it all, a weight piled on the back of a little girl, a weight hung like a dingy cinderblock around her neck. He’d underestimated the situation entirely, a big mistake. He felt the raised scar on his left cheekbone with the tips of his fingers, his reminder of what losing focus can cost you. It wouldn’t happen again. For the first time, he let himself believe he had a son. Even if Simone only came back to him because she needed him, needed his special skills, needed him to rescue the son she loved, that would be enough. The rest didn’t matter.
Even if it did, he couldn’t help himself.
“I’m going to get him back Simone. I promise.” The fires of his insatiable rage were stoked anew. Vengeance, his faithful addiction, would carry him through at least one more mission. “We’re going to do whatever it takes, whatever the consequences, and we’re not going to fail.”
The cheap ceiling fan wobbled and hummed above them, a precarious help against the gripping heat. The only person that ever stood between him and everlasting darkness, the only person that kept him from becoming nothing more than a murky shadow of the things he loathed and destroyed, that person stared through the streaked glass of her childhood home, probably wondering if he had what it took to save Samuel. If there was such a thing as redemption, this was surely his last shot.
Simone nodded without turning around. “I know.” She grew quiet again. “Samuel will survive. We will not.”
***
The man recognized the staccato chirp followed by the buzzing vibration on his belt. It was the special notification he set up months ago. He’d begun to wonder if he’d ever get the message. He casually removed the Blackberry from the leather holster and tapped in the password with his right thumb. It was true. A pale, crooked smile fought to emerge, but the enormity of the confirmation, the new reality, pressed down with curious effect. This changed everything.
He looked at the message one more time and smiled at his own wit. IRIS, MESSENGER OF THE GODS. A quick press of the red x and the message was gone forever.
It was time to press some more buttons.
CHAPTER 34
DEFUNIAK SPRINGS, FLORIDA
Noon approached and Jason’s anger rose, dank and sticky in the Florida heat. He could do nothing but kill time and wait. He checked his cell phone; he still had a good signal. Those smug do-rights back at Lester’s loony barn were busy contemplating their navels while he worked to get the deal back on track. This was just business. Just a deal that needed the right dealmaker. This whole thing was fixable.
It’d come to him, a gift from heaven, while he waited in Dancing hell for Simone and Logan to return from their hike in the woods. Maybe he thought better under stress. Maybe the special-ops hotshots and weird genius savants should get out of his way. Let the Gluntster put Humpty Dumpty back together.
He started another lap around the perfectly circular Lake DeFuniak, sweat rolling under his twelve-dollar, soot black, George polo from Walmart. The camel colored khakis still showed a couple of horizontal creases that competed with the pleats. He hoped walking in the steam bath would straighten them.
Simone and her unfortunately, not-actually-dead, asshole husband thought he didn’t know about Walmart and thrift shops. They thought he was born wearing a $5,000 Armani suit. They thought they were so smart. They didn’t know anything about him.
Nobody that was anybody knew he grew up in filth and squalor. It was bad when his worthless father lived with them. It got worse after the bastard left. His mother quit her lousy part-time job at the greasy diner and took up drinking and drugs as a full time profession. That, and the occasional man desperate enough to pay for sex from a rundown wasted booze hag, bought food now and then. She called them her special friends. He didn’t really care what she did. He just resented the noise: drunken laughter, muffled uttering, bumping and squeaking, and pleading, then crying after which her special friends stumbled heavy-footed across the hollow wooden floors and out the flimsy front door. He resented the distractions while he labored in the next room stitching up rags of clothes to wear to school the next day. They think Walmart is beneath me. They have no idea. Nothing is beneath me.
Jason replayed the dissatisfying conversation with Martin over in his head. Maybe it was to fortify him for the call to come, or maybe it was some form of self-punishment. Either way, the anger gave him energy he desperately needed.
“Martin, like I said, there’s no cell phone coverage out there.”
“There’s a landline, isn’t there?” Martin’s belittling always rattled him. “Perhaps I wasn’t completely clear when I gave you this assignment. I expect you to provide me a detailed update every four hours at a minimum and immediately if something important transpires. Is there anything about that you don’t understand?”
“I understand.”
“I certainly hope so. The single most important employee of VTI is involved in this… this terrible and extremely stressful situation. Besides that, Simone is a close personal friend of mine.”
Martin referred to her as Simone like Rachael Logan never existed. That was typical of the arrogant prick. He got a new piece of information yesterday and acted as if he’d known it all his life. You were the imbecile for being ill informed.
Martin reverted to the familiar and calm late night FM radio voice, the voice that reassured Wall Street and presided over worldwide company meetings. “Jason, I realize this is far outside your normal job function.” That soothing voice that said everything would be all right, even if you were killed in the process. Under Martin’s hypnotic spell, you listened and believed. “Jason you’re a good man for taking this on.” Here came the BS portion of the program. “Of all the VTI employees, I’m glad you’re the one there, watching out for our interest. I know I can count on you.” Great. Martin Stafford loved me best.
Through the fog and stupor of the snake charmer’s trance, Jason saw his opportunity.
“Yes, Martin. You can definitely count on me. As you point out, this is far outside my normal job function. Very. Far. Outside. In fact, I have some questions about the legality of all this. I’m no lawyer, but I think when a felony is committed, those who aware of it are compelled by law to report it.”
It was a direct hit. The ensuing silence lingered until Jason imagined he heard the snapping and popping of tendons in Martin’s scrawny neck.
“What are you suggesting, Mr. Glunt?”
“Like I said, I’m no lawyer. I’m not going to lose sleep over legal concepts that I don’t understand. I’m going to do exactly what VTI needs me to do. Exactly what you are asking me to do.” He gave the words time to sink in. “I just need to be assured that when this is over, VTI will do what I need it to do.”
“What would that be, Mr. Glunt?” Martin said his name like an expletive.
“I think a $250,000 special bonus would be fair.”
Yeah, there it was, a tendon or two popped. After a brief silence, Martin drew in a long breath.
“Yes, I agree, Mr. Glunt. That would be more than fair.” The line went dead.
That was very satisfying. Jason imagined Martin smashing furniture until he realized that Martin hadn’t agreed to anything. He simply acknowledged that it would be fair. Like all deals, the devil was in the details.
