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It was highly unusual for three of them to meet together anywhere aside from the prearranged time and place; operation safety and security had dictated that be a nearly unbreakable rule between them. But given what Cavanaugh had learned in the dark hours of the morning, he felt a breakfast meeting in a more public setting was required. Even if the said breakfast consisted of three cups of bitter coffee to wash down a box of very cheap donuts in the meeting room of Wells’ office.
Charles’ office was the best alternative under the circumstances as no one was expected to be in the office for another three hours at the earliest. Such hastily convened clandestine meetings were nothing new for Cavanaugh in his line of work, while Wells seemed inconvenienced at the early wake-up call that he’d received. Soors, on the other hand, and true to form, was anything but.
“How did this happen?” Soors demanded in a tone no one used on Cavanaugh. “I thought the area had been properly secured?”
“So did we all,” Cavanaugh replied calmly, letting Soors’ tone go unchallenged. He’d spent the last few hours since his early morning visitor had departed speaking with his military contacts, trying to figure out why the sub had turned up where and when it had, and where it had gotten off to. “For whatever reason, the Los Angeles was well southwest of where she was supposed to be and up on the surface. The best guess we’ve been able to come up with is that she had to surface for some sort of mechanical issue and the Captain felt it was minor enough not to report in.
“Once they pulled Cashman out of the water, he must have relayed to the Captain whatever it was Karpov told him in Nassau, which was enough to convince the Captain to decide to run silent until he can figure out what his next step will be.”
“Those damn Del Rio’s,” Soors raged, drawing an amused chuckle out of Wells. “What exactly do you find funny about this situation, Charles?”
“I was just wondering how much more of a thorn in your side the Del Rio brothers would be if they actually knew your history with their family?” Wells jibed.
Soors glared daggers at Wells who merely responded with a smile that was more insulting than any uttered slur could have been.
“One way or the other,” Cavanaugh interrupted before another round of open verbal warfare could erupt between his compatriots. “The Los Angeles must be found and the threat she poses to us eliminated.”
“And the younger Del Rio?” Soors asked, ignoring the raised eyebrow of Wells.
“We have someone close to him that will alert us if his brother even attempts to reach out to him,” Cavanaugh said. “For now, we do nothing about him. In fact, an attempt to do anything to him might be counter-intuitive as he would be investigating as to the reason why.”
“Perhaps some preemptive action is needed,” Soors said. “Dead men can’t take phone calls.”
“It’s a bit early in the morning to be so bloodthirsty isn’t it, Georgina?” Wells queried. “Even for you.”
“Charles is correct,” Cavanaugh broke in, heading off the inevitable sharp retort. “We’ve been lucky so far in that no one has put even a part of the puzzle together. If we have an FBI Agent, who is officially connected to the inauguration security team I might add, suddenly turning up dead on the heels of the death of the Vice President-elect, you’ll have just enough conspiracy theorists out there clamoring to make someone start seriously looking into areas that we don’t want looked into right now. We’re too close to our goal to risk that; so much so, we can afford to sit back and see what move the Captain makes and counter it. I suspect that with the assets that we already have in place, we can keep him from doing anything at all until it is far too late. The worst thing we can do right now is to make a rash move that will lead to a fatal mistake on our part.”
“As you two seem to be in agreement,” Soors snapped, “then I will leave it to you both to take care of the matter.”
With that, she rose out of her chair and stormed out of the room. Cavanaugh watched her depart with a lightning thought. Charles is a very stable man; a man who could be reasoned with, worked with, toward a common goal in a calm, effective manner. And he’s also smart enough to protect himself, if matters suddenly turned sour.
Georgina, on the other hand, is far too emotionally connected to the conspiracy for her own good. Her usefulness to her two co-conspirators would end once she used her political clout to get their puppet embedded in the White House. She would, he decided on the spot, make the perfect scapegoat to hang certain criminal activities on should it become necessary to further our goals. I am certain Charles would agree.
The more Cavanaugh thought about it, the fewer hours after the inauguration concluded he expected Soors would live to see.
***
THE FIRST HINT OF THE dawn peered over the horizon just as Jack slipped quickly and quietly back into his apartment by way of the back stairwell.
As soon as he’d reached the safety of the shore, he had pushed the tough-but-light little boat up against a convenient sandbar and, using a silencer, shot enough holes into it to fully deflate it. Rolling it up into a bundle as best as he could, he kicked enough sand from the top of the bar to bury the remains of the little craft. He had no doubt that it would be discovered by someone in a few days, but that would be long enough to prevent anyone from finding out that the Los Angeles had been anywhere near the area; until it was too late to matter any longer.
The drive home was nearly as quick as the drive out had been, with very little traffic out and about just yet, and he was relieved to find Sara was still sound asleep when he had returned. Not wanting to wake her, and too keyed up to attempt to get anymore sleep, he silently made his way to his desk and plugged in the back-up thumb drive, one Cashman had made for him from the original thumb drive before he left the sub, into his computer. While the files downloaded Jack made his way into the kitchen area to make some coffee. He knew he was going to need it and then some.
Just as he made his way back to his desk and sat down with a fresh mug of steaming coffee in his hand, Sara walked up from behind and wrapped her arms around him.
“Everything okay?” she asked sleepily, not quite stifling a yawn. It wasn’t the first time he’d been called away in the early hours by work, so she didn’t ask for details, and he didn’t have to lie to her about where he’d been. “You’re back pretty quick.”
“Just some unexpected business that needed to be dealt with,” Jack replied, hating himself for the lie of omission, even though it really was for her own protection. “I’m going to be going back in soon, so you might as well go back to bed and get some sleep for both of us.”
Sara walked around and sat in his lap and kissed him.
“Hmmm,” she said without pulling away. “You're being very mysterious this morning, Jack. Maybe I should drag you back to bed and make you talk.”
“What a tempting offer.”
“But knowing you, it wouldn't work. This has to do with your job I take it?” she waited for him to nod affirmatively before continuing. “Well, I have some packing to do, so you're off the hook at least for now.”
Sara treated Jack with another kiss before getting up and reaching for the flight itinerary she’d left on the desk, not even noticing the downloading files on the computer screen. She placed one copy back in her purse and placed the other in the letter holder on the shelf above the monitor on Jack’s desk.
“And you had better get everything you need to do done in time to make this flight, mister,” she added.
“Yes, ma'am,” Jack replied with a smile that faded as soon as Sara turned back toward the bed. He returned his attention to the files now fully downloaded onto his computer. “I sure as hell hope I do.”
The problem Jack faced was that he simply couldn’t just log in on the Bureau’s servers and start searching away with abandon. So many red flags would immediately be raised for anyone watching out for such a search that he doubted he would be alive to have lunch much less see the sun set at the end of the day.
But, fortunately for him, he had spent a few too many days with a certain childhood friend who had been quite the wizard at hacking computers. Some of the tips and tricks he’d picked up back then had proved to be very useful to him as a law enforcement officer through the years, and he would need every one of them now.
The first order of business was to set up a fake back trail, so that when he cracked into a watched system, and someone noticed his unauthorized presence and tried to trace the intruder’s origin, they would wind up following a fake trail to a destination far away from his. They would eventually find the true origin point, but if he set it up correctly it would take nearly a week for them to do so, and by then it wouldn’t matter anymore one way or the other.
Once the false path had been laid down, sending any tracer off to a dozen countries, across four continents, before ending up in a small coffee shop in Salzburg, Germany, Jack decided to use the access codes Karpov had provided to first worm his way into the intelligence agencies in Russia.
Karpov had claimed to have provided them everything available regarding the matter at hand, but Jack saw no harm in double checking. “Trust, but verify” seemed to be the catch phrase to keep in mind at all times whenever America and Russia were involved. Karpov’s drive had not provided any information on his own father aside from his original involvement in the project initiated by Stalin. Within a half hour, Jack had opened up the full file on the elder Karpov which led to a classified file on the project that would not open no matter what command or computer trick Jack tried on it.
What troubled him most, aside from the fact that he had just blatantly committed espionage without so much as a moment’s hesitation, was a log that he uncovered that showed who had been able to fully open this very same file all along: Vladimir Karpov.
The old Russian had not been nearly as forthcoming with his friend as Cashman had thought. Which had Jack wondering what was in that file that Karpov found the need to keep so secret despite the dire circumstances. The original names and the American identities they were to assume once in place had to be in that file; those names would have been valuable to have. Karpov had to have known this and still he had withheld it. Jack did not for a minute believe it was as innocently explained as a mere oversight either.
Having gleaned all that he could from the Russian computers, and surprised that his wandering through their systems hadn’t been detected, he cut loose the web of connections overseas. Even if the breach was discovered later, hopes of tracing it back to its source died once Jack severed the electronic pathways.
Jack began building a new pathway, one that would let him start working his way into the computers in the CIA and the FBI. Those firewalls would both be easier and much more difficult to get into without attracting too much attention. Easier because of the familiarity he had with those systems and harder because the security on them was a level or two higher than the Russian systems apparently had in place.
Without a hard starting point to begin with he was flying blind once he broke through the firewalls. Jack tried several different searches based on some of the code words Karpov had provided from the Russian project. When those failed to produce any leads, a result that he had actually expected even before he’d started, he looked for other clues. These people were too deeply embedded not to have some presence in a server somewhere.
But no matter what search term he tried, nothing came from the results that proved useful. There was one last search that he wanted to give a go, but before he ran it, he opened a special security program that very few people on this side of the Atlantic knew actually existed.
He had picked this one up during his time in London from an MI-5 agent in the cyber unit. The man had handed him the program, on a drive remarkably similar to the one Karpov had given to Cashman, with a wink and a stern admonishment not to tell anyone what was on it or where he had gotten it from, if it was discovered in his possession.
This program would tell him if anyone had begun tracing him and was getting too close for comfort. He hadn’t run it earlier due to one of the drawbacks: the program itself tended to increase the chances of a hacker being detected in the first place.
With nothing really left to lose, Jack quickly entered in the names Arthur and Cashman along with the names of the Directors of the CIA and FBI and the Joint Chiefs to see if anything would surface beyond the obvious.
The hits that appeared were normal results that general information searches would produce for each person he had entered and their respective offices. But no sooner had those results appeared than the security program flared to life.
He was being traced, and it had begun a hell of a lot faster than it should have under normal circumstances, a fact that concerned Jack quite a lot. With one eye on the results list and the other reserved for the security bar as it tracked the progress of the trace, Jack looked for any hint of a clue as the seconds ticked away to the tracer finding him right here in his own apartment.
He waited as long as he dared, hoping to see just one shred of useful information, before shutting down the connection and physically disconnecting the internet cable from his computer to be safe. The results screen remained, but there simply was nothing of use to be found there. The security program showed he’d cut it close. Another three seconds and the trace would have been complete.
Whoever had been on the other end of the trace had blown right through his false trail and had headed straight for him. At best, they’d know someone on the eastern seaboard of the United States had run the search. They wouldn’t know why of course, but for the speed of the reaction to his hack someone had apparently set some impressive tripwires in case of any potential search for any combination of certain people.
But Jack hadn’t had time to experiment with different combinations to see exactly which names warranted such an unusual response. All he’d done is confirmed that someone very high up in the federal government had something to hide, and was willing to go to great lengths to protect the secret.
He wouldn’t dare use this computer to crack in again. He’d need to set up shop elsewhere if he felt it necessary to make another attempt. With that, and knowing he was due for the briefing on the preparations for the inauguration inside of an hour, Jack shut the computer completely down and headed for the shower in a very dark mood.
Cashman had spoken of playing chess. Jack had just made his opening move and had gained nothing from it, while alerting the people he was hunting that someone might very well be on their trail.