Monday
Monday dawned with one of those crystal-blue Chicago skies that says spring is imminent and it’s time to pack away one’s winter clothes. I didn’t; when you live in Chicago, you know better. I brewed a pot of coffee and waited impatiently until eighty thirty, when I could start making business calls. The first was to Charlotte Hollander. I still wanted to get rid of the flash drive and extricate myself from everything having to do with Delcroft—video or no video. It was time to withdraw into white-picket-fence land.
But I didn’t get the chance. My call went to voice mail. I left a message for her to call me.
A minute later my phone rang. I picked up, fully expecting Hollander to be on the other end. She wasn’t.
“Hi, Ellie. Zach Dolan.”
“Zach! Are you okay? I was shocked to hear about the explosion at your office. What happened?”
“That’s why I’m calling. We’re fine. Joshua and me. We weren’t there when it happened.”
“I heard. Still, it’s got to be devastating.”
“It’s all right. I’m working out of my brother’s house until the insurance adjusters cut a check. He sends his regards. Hey, do you want to meet for a cup of coffee?”
“You have news?”
“We haven’t had coffee in a while,” he said.
I got it. “Sure. Coffee would be great. I have something for you anyway.”
He didn’t answer, but we arranged to meet in thirty minutes at the Starbucks closest to my house. I arrived first and parked in the lot. I was just climbing out of my car when Zach pulled up in a Beemer. Clearly ethical hacking had its rewards.
He slid down the window and motioned for me to get in. Joshua occupied most of the backseat. I hadn’t realized how large he was. And how wolfish he looked, though he was a shepherd. Thankfully, his tail was wagging furiously.
I hopped in. Zach pulled away.
“Why the change in plans?”
“You know our phones are tapped.”
“I figured that’s why we’re meeting.”
“Exactly,” he said. “And they think we’re going to that Starbucks, right?” He yanked a thumb behind him. When I nodded, he added, “Well, let’s just make it a little more difficult for them.”
“There’s a Dunkin’ Donuts a block away,” I said hopefully.
“I think we should just walk around somewhere. It’s safer.”
I swallowed my disappointment. I didn’t need the calories anyway. I dug into my pocket and pulled out another flash drive. “I made another copy before I gave it to you. So here you go.”
“Thanks. But there’s something I haven’t told you,” he went on. “About the drive.”
“I want to tell you something too,” I said. “Things are getting out of control. Like us having to meet in person. And people following me. Then I found out there’s an executive at Delcroft who knows I have it. In fact, the explosion at your office may be connected to it.”
“Is the executive’s name C. Hollander?”
My jaw hit the floor of the car. “Charlotte Hollander. How did you know?”
He turned down a side street off Willow Road that bordered a park. With the mild weather, lots of little people had converged on the slide and swings, releasing excited screams, the kind children make from the sheer joy of being alive.
“Let’s take Joshua for a walk,” he said. He shoved the drive into his pocket, opened the glove compartment, and took out a leash.
We climbed out of the car and Dolan put the dog on the leash. We started walking toward the park.
“I don’t know if this is going to make a difference, but before the explosion, I started playing around with the drive.”
“And?”
“You know what metadata is, right?”
“Data about the data.”
“Right. So, a lot of systems include logs of who emailed who, when, sometimes even the subject. As a user, you wouldn’t normally see them, but they end up in a file. And, if you know what you’re doing you can extract them.”
I halted on the sidewalk. “And you found the log?”
“I did. In fact I made a printout of it. I’ll give it to you, although you might not be able to read it. It’s in—well, it’s in computerese.”
I inclined my head. “What did the log say?”
“It looks like three people were communicating regularly. Almost every day. Most have cc’s on them.”
“Who were the three? No, wait. It’s got to be Parks and Hollander. But who’s the third?”
“A General Gao,” Zach said.
Joshua took that moment to sniff a pile of leaves and twigs on the ground. Then he issued a whine.
“Damn straight, Joshua.” I looked at Dolan. “Who is General Gao?”
“I Googled him. He’s a big shot in the Chinese military. Like a five-star general. Or higher.”
I rubbed a hand across my forehead. “This doesn’t sound right.”
“Look him up. But don’t do it from home. Go to the library, okay?”
I couldn’t help the quiver that rolled through me. My phone was hacked. My computer, too. What was next? “You don’t have any content from the correspondence, though?”
“Not yet. I haven’t been able to crack the encryption. It’s probably a Chinese system. But I’ll keep trying.” We turned, making a circle around the playground.
“So what do you make of it?” I blurted out.
“I couldn’t say. That’s your job.”
I thought about it. Hollander had told me Gregory Parks was a spy. But she’d been in daily communication with this so-called spy, as well as a general in the Chinese military. Instead of clearing things up, Hollander’s behavior was making everything murkier.
Joshua barked as if on cue. I jumped. A poodle on a leash held by a woman who looked like she was on her way to Nordstrom strolled by.
Zach looked over. “You sure you want me to go ahead with this?
I gulped. “I don’t know.”
Our village library occupies only three rooms, one of which includes five computers that were all in use, so I waited. Eventually I presented my library card. Then I sat at one of the computers and Googled “General Gao,” confident in my relative privacy. Libraries, bless them, set their computers to delete everything a user has done once they log off, including their search history.
Zach was right. Gao was a hotshot. He was one of only eleven men on China’s Central Military Commission, which essentially ran the army. The commission made all the senior appointments and supervised troop deployments and arms spending. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much about General Gao the man. He was in his fifties, young by Chinese standards. He had been raised in Shanghai but studied at Oxford. Which meant he was educated and spoke English. It didn’t say what he studied, but I suspected it had something to do with aeronautics.
There was one image of a young Gao grinning in a racing shell, brandishing a paddle. He must have been on crew at Oxford. But aside from a 1994 group photo of about two dozen Chinese officers in front of a palatial building, I couldn’t find anything recent. I made notes on my iPhone, printed out the two images, and logged out.