Even though Caitlin knew the pressure pad just inside the door had been deactivated, she still manoeuvred around it, taking an exaggerated step to the right to avoid tripping the device. She closed the door behind her with one foot, looking for all the world like a ballerina as she did so. Or possibly a ninja who dabbled in ballet as a hobby.
With the door closed, and the last of the sensors disabled, she moved quickly. Before turning on the laptop, she plugged in the unusually heavy Siemens phone and activated the software package she’d pulled down from the satellite before leaving Temple. Agent Monroe had attended a number of Technical Services training seminars over the years, where a number of excellent teachers had attempted to instruct her at a basic level in aggressive ELINT incursion programming. She had failed every course. Caitlin had no more idea of what was happening between the phone and the powered-down laptop than your garden-variety couch potato had of the magic that delivered their favourite cable shows. But she recalled enough of the general principles to know that, somewhere inside her very smart phone, a malign assortment of software sprites were arranging themselves into a formation designed to penetrate the in-depth defences of Tyrone McCutcheon’s ruggedised Toshiba.
Complex multi-level passwords, dual factor authentication, full disk encryption and file protection were subjects she had never really understood. But she did understand that when the progress bar on the phone showed
Another person might have been tempted to go rooting around in the laptop’s directory to hunt for particular documents. Caitlin stood well away from the keyboard and resisted any such urges, however. She’d once turned off Bret’s Xbox while it was doing something not entirely dissimilar to the Siemens phone, dumping its system software and updating from a remote server. Or something.
In the end, it was all about one machine butt-raping another. And she had learned from the unfortunate Xbox episode, if not from her instructors at Tech Services, to keep her fucking hands to herself while the machines got their awesome on.
After seven-and-a-half excruciating minutes, the phone vibrated again. The data had been extracted and uploaded to the satellite. It was already unpacking itself into a dedicated directory on a dark server in Vancouver, where the same systems operator would be scanning it to check for exactly the sort of malevolent digital magic he had just wielded to extract the files. It was safe to disconnect.
Caitlin unhooked her cell and waited until the suicide agents left behind by the phone had shut down McCutcheon’s computer, after obliterating all trace of their passage through its silicon hallways. The Toshiba winked off shortly afterwards.
The room seemed preternaturally still and quiet.
And then the door opened.
51
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON
The drive to Madison Park was too far, even with a government car and driver. Jed called Marilyn and told her he’d be staying in the townhouse for the night. She had a couple of friends over and was already three sheets into the wind, so at least he wasn’t in trouble there. Neither of the kids, Melanie and Roger, could tear themselves away from their games consoles to say goodnight. Jed didn’t much care by that point. He just wanted a shower, something to eat, and sleep. If he could sleep.
It was a calculated gamble, turning somebody like Caitlin Monroe loose on Blackstone. He had no doubt that within a couple of days the impasse would be ancient history. But whether Monroe would deliver to him the information he needed to quietly remove the Governor of Texas, or whether they were hours away from some violent, nightmarish blood swarm, he couldn’t say. And not having control was killing him.
He couldn’t control the fact that Blackstone had sent special operators to Florida and stumbled across an apparent piece of villainy by Roberto down there. Just as he couldn’t control the fact that a certain ‘Colonel Murdoch’ had now loomed into the President’s consideration.
Kip had no idea who Murdoch was, of course. For James Kipper, one more military officer writing one more report was a matter of supreme indifference. For Jed, however, the President’s sudden, inconvenient awareness of the existence of ‘Murdoch’ was a source of diabolical uncertainty. It was just so frustrating having to wait on other people to finish something he had set in train. Especially since the end result could see him remembered as a national hero, or sent to jail.
His indigestion felt like a fist squeezing tightly just below his rib cage. Pizza was the worst thing in the world for it, but pizza was what he felt like. And for the moment, at least, it was about the only thing in his life he could control. Plus, he knew that for half an hour or so, the food would be a blessed relief as it sopped up his stomach acids. After closing the door of the apartment behind him, and silently thanking Marilyn’s forgetfulness - she hadn’t turned off the heating system when she’d left for home - Jed dialled up for a four-cheese pizza from the place on the corner, and poured himself a double measure of Mylanta as an aperitif.
He channel-surfed the news stations for a few minutes, but that did nothing to settle his stomach or his nerves. Fox News, as usual at this time of night, was taking its feed directly from Sky in the UK. The Greens leader, Sandra Harvey, was on MSNBC, causing him to rapidly surf away from that channel, and the local news station was still obsessing about the weather. In the end, he left it on a movie channel, where John Wayne was trying to remake his image in
Jed knew he shouldn’t have been inhaling so many tons of cheese and starchy carbs that late at night. Marilyn was already on his case about the extra weight he was carrying, and she had a point.
‘Soon as I put this asshole away,’ he promised himself as he levered out the first slice. ‘I will bury Mad Jack Blackstone, and then I’ll get myself back into shape. Maybe even go back to wrestling. But there’s not much fucking point pretending it’s going to happen before then, is there, Duke?’
He saluted the TV with his drink.
He probably should’ve had a glass of wine with the pizza, but he was on a roll with the bourbon and didn’t want to change drinks. It would just make for a worse hangover in the morning.
After sluicing down the last piece with another slug of antacid, Jed washed his hands and took a legal pad and pencil to bed with him. There he began to sketch the outlines of the problems he was dealing with, and what if any solutions he might apply.
‘Blackstone, for now, I can’t do anything about,’ he said aloud. But he wrote down the name
Of course, he had never intended for Kipper to find out about Agent Monroe’s mission in Texas. Since the President had expressly forbidden any such mission, there was a fair chance he would be unhappy to learn of it. Especially if he found out before Monroe was able to effect a result. Jed imagined she would do so quickly, but he would have to build a firewall around her to prevent Kip from having any contact with the fictional air force colonel. At least until she was done.
He wrote the word underneath the first entry and followed it up with another question mark.
Jed had done some preliminary work on the question of what to do with the prisoners they still held from the fighting in New York. It was an issue the President wanted to deal with and move past. It was also an issue that spoke to the better angels of Kipper’s nature, unlike his own, and that made it ripe for exploitation.
The next hour passed quickly as Culver mapped out a plan for dealing with the prisoners in a way he knew would appeal to Kip. As a bonus it would also meet with the approval of Secretary Humboldt, meaning that he should be able to whip up a small shit storm of enthusiasm for it in the short term. Like, tomorrow. Kipper’s natural inclination would be to let Tusk Musso make the running on any initial response to this bullshit in Florida. For once, Jed had reason to be grateful for Kip’s natural scepticism about national security issues. Give him the choice
