No Tell Motel, Route 26, Grapevine, Texas
His name was Lawrence M. Wakowski. His nickname, in certain sectors of his life, was Whack Job. In other sectors of his life, it was Mr. Wakowski. To the FBI, the nomenclature was determined by who held the leverage. Sometimes they called him Whack Job and enjoyed making him squirm and whine, other times it was Mr. Wakowski and he was treated with deference, respect, and other trappings of fealty.
“Thanks for coming, Mr. Wakowski,” said Jeff Neill.
“Agent Neill, we meet again. And Agent Streibling, Dallas Field Office, Cyber Division rep, an old friend indeed.”
Streibling, the local agent who’d set this meet-up, nodded but, knowing his place in the pecking order, said nothing.
“These other two fellows, I don’t know,” said Mr. Wakowski. “Kosher, though, I assume?”
“Totally kosher. Names not necessary,” said Neill. “One is high-ranking, experienced, in from Washington. The other is his associate, expert in certain arcane areas, known to be an extraordinary detective. He uncovered the string that led us to you and this meeting.”
“Gentlemen . . .” said Mr. Wakowski, nodding his head.
“The accommodations—suitable?” asked Neill.
“Sure. Out of the way, unavailable to chance encounters. Way off my beaten track, and yours.”
It was a cheesy suite motel near the airport, off the interstate. Left-hand neighbor: strip bar; right-hand neighbor: Best Tacos in Texas, which was true except for the other places in Texas that sold tacos.
“I checked,” said Mr. Wakowski. “I wasn’t followed.”
“Actually, you were,” said Neill. “By us. We’re very good at it. The point, however, was to make sure you weren’t followed by anybody else. You weren’t.”
“I feel secure in the bosom of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
“A good start. Now I’ll turn the meeting over to my superior officer.”
“I’m Nick,” said Nick.
“Nick,” said Wakowski, “I’m Mr. Wakowski. How may I help you—that is, except by going to prison or getting myself killed?”
“Perhaps four months ago, certain parties almost certainly approached you with a job. They had a newly acquired iPhone 8. It had to be cracked. It takes even the best labs weeks to crack them. You are reputed to be one of three men in country who can do it in days. Am I right so far?”
“I could lie,” said Mr. Wakowski. “In fact, the best course for me would be to lie.”
“Not a good idea. We would have to stop calling you Mr. Wakowski then. We would have to call you Whack Job, and there’s an issue outstanding about someone who built software to evade the cybersecurity at the First National of Midlands job a few weeks ago. We know who did it, a fellow named Roy Heinz, because Roy himself told us. It was decided that Whack Job would be left alone, as he might prove more useful to us in the future. That judgment can be rescinded. And if Whack Job goes to Huntsville, being soft and weak and white, what do you suppose happens to him?”
“I’m so disappointed in Roy,” said Mr. Wakowski. “He was recommended to me as a stand-up guy.”
“Everybody talks, in the end. Which is why we’re here.”
“May I ask—”
“No,” said Neill. “But be advised that Nick and his friend wouldn’t be here if this weren’t of highest priority, of national security declination. Let’s be polite, as we’re all wearing ties, which signify politeness. But we do need your help, and we do expect your help.”
Mr. Wakowski took a deep breath. He was mid-forties, with a face lacking singularity or charisma but notable in its ovality. He could have played the title role in the new Egg and I remake. Black frames, thick lenses, receding sandy hair, charcoal suit, black shoes, a face rather like butterscotch pudding. You wouldn’t pick him out in a crowd of one. Except at Huntsville.
“Very dangerous people,” he said. “That is why I hesitate. Betray them, see my kids tossed into acid vats. My wife handled by twenty-five grinning caballeros with eagles tattooed on their necks. All this before they stake me out naked for the vultures, with great big gobs of greasy, grimy cow guts smeared on my genitals.”
“Those guys,” said Nick.
“Yep, those guys.” He shivered. “Why, oh why, did the Good Lord give me so much talent,” he said. “Without it, I wouldn’t end up with the vultures going sushi on my dick.”
“But you’d be living in a tract home, and both wife and kids would hate you for being a failure,” Streibling said.
“True enough,” said Mr. Wakowski.
He swallowed.
“You will protect my future and my children’s future?”
“For now. It could change.”
“Okay. Yes, it was an 8. Hard to beat, those motherfuckers at Apple go to sleep every night grinning about how hard it is. But Whack Job knows the way. Wasn’t easy to figure, and it helps to have an IQ of 450, but he can, with much intensive labor, get it done in four days. I’ll spare you the details. If you ain’t a 450, they’d be meaningless anyhow. So they come to me, the money is, shall we say, quite convincing, as is their reputation. In my world, better to be friends with them than enemies. Enemies get the vulture thing.”
“So you got in.”
“Yes. The guy who set it up had to be some kind of supershooter or something. Most of the data space was eaten up by some program called FirstShot. I gather it helps you put little pieces of metal in certain places from a long ways out. It figures all the little bitty factors and influences, but it’s basically a spreadsheet. It solves the problem at muzzle distance and extrapolates out to infinity from there.”
“Okay, that’s our guy,” said Nick.
“Anyhow, that was important to them. They did need access to it, they made that clear. Excuse me for my lack of curiosity, but I didn’t ask the fellow what this was necessary for. I figured I’d read it in the papers.”
“And you will, right before the vultures come for a visit, if you don’t get on with your story.”
“So I unlocked it for them and got them access to the ballistics data. But they had another requirement: they wanted it hardwired for fast access to the Dark Web.”
“For boys and girls who don’t read Computer Monthly, explain ‘Dark Web,’” said Neill.
“What you see when you click on, that’s about two percent of the web. There’s a whole other region. Its access is guarded, and it is superprotected by three Russians and a Chinaman who are even smarter than me. Only four of ’em, I guarantee you. Getting on it is part of the trick. Navigating it is the other trick. Using it is the final trick. All twisty, complex, under multiple two-factor codes and sliding algorithms. Grad students and psychos only. But it’s where you can find a hit man, snuff porn, actual explosive manufacturing supplies and RPG missiles in bulk at a good rate, that sort of thing. It’s the superego of the ’Net. As I say, hard to get on.”
“And you made it easy to get on?”
“I set up a site for them, but the key ingredient was that it had to be findable, traceable. I had to build factors into it so someone like Agent Neill or one of the Israeli wonderkids could deconstruct it and trace it back to its origin, which would be the i 8 that I had in my hand, presumably linkable to someone else. It sounded like a key to an elaborate plot.”
“You did all this?”
“I did all that.”
“What was the website called?”
“I don’t know. I showed them how to set it up, but they didn’t want me to see what it was. So I just know it’s there, and all that will be revealed when the time comes.”
“Can we find it, Neill?” asked Nick.
“Without a name or a web address, not likely. There’s more—they probably haven’t posted it yet. It’s all set up to go, but they don’t want anyone discovering it prematurely. So it’s ready, and they dump when it’s appropriate to their plans—that is, when they want us to find it.”
“Not helpful,” said Nick.
“Yeah, but you still learn stuff,” said Mr. Wakowski. “I’ll play Agatha Christie here, if you don’t mind. Their plan is to use the ballistics program to snipe somebody. The shot will be taken from Pluto. They will leave the iPhone so it will be found. Agent Neill will hire a lab to crack it, and they will see something that leads to the website, deconstruct it, and track it back to whoever the Mexican vulture keeper stole the iPhone from. Ergo: he’s blamed, no one even knows they were in play. Maybe he’s dead. That’s what I’d do if I were (a) running this thing and (b) totally insane.”
“I think we figured that out on our own already,” Nick said. “But since you’re a genius, let me ask a more general question. Does this seem like the sort of thinking you’d affiliate with the kind of criminal organization we’re talking about?”
“Excellent question,” said Mr. Wakowski. “The answer is no. Our boys—the happy tots who reached out to me—are more forceful and direct by far.”
“What is this thing typical of?”
“It’s got high-IQ intelligence agency written all over it. CIA, Mossad, MI5, Chinese Ministry of State Security, Russian MV—real big boys in the game. Someone used to playing deflection shots, in love with the false-flag paradigm, fully aware of media tendencies and how it’s all going to play out on a stage when the cable morons get on it and distill it to mouth-breather level. In my experience, they love to do that sort of thing.”
“Middle East?”
“A stretch. But I see smarter guys.”
“Okay,” said Nick, “I guess we’ll have to keep calling him Mr. Wakowski. Oh, wait, am I forgetting anything? Gee, I wonder what it could be?”
Wakowski hesitated, then said, “I was hoping you’d forget.”
“Too bad for you, pal, I just remembered it. All that is nothing without a name to put with it. Cartel, yeah. Bad people, yeah. Sworn enemies of all that’s good and holy, for sure. But I need a name, and it better be a right one or . . . vulture chow.”
“You didn’t hear this from me. You don’t even know me. I don’t exist. But the name is Menendez.”