Homeland were worth and would he be losing the department’s business. Another reporter yelled a question about how much business he’d already lost in the past six months, and it was an effort for Hector not to flinch as he walked away.
He retreated from the conference room to the sanctuary of his own office. Alone. He sat at his desk and pulled from a locked drawer a photo, yellowed with age. The man in the photo was big-built, plain-faced, with brown hair. His name had been Randall Choate. He was supposed to be dead, but he was not.
Sam Hector wanted Choate dead. Soon. The stakes were far too high to let a man like Pilgrim-Choate- interfere with the operation.
Contractors are sometimes each other’s most important client-much of the large contracts handed to companies are then subcontracted out to other, more specialized concerns. The resulting network of suppliers and firms made for a considerable intelligence advantage.
Hector started leaning on his network to find Pilgrim. Quietly.
Lockhart Technologies, a fast-growing company based in Alexandria, Virginia, handled communications and IT support for Hector Global. Sam Hector owned a software engineer inside Lockhart named Gary, whose online gambling addiction required money. Lockhart also provided customized software design and support to the National Security Agency’s mainframes for tracking, analyzing, and cataloging millions of phone calls to and from, and now within, the United States. The software was a critical component of the NSA’s parabolic satellite listening stations in Yakima, Washington, and Sugar Grove, West Virginia. Gary kept an admin account alive on a mainframe used to analyze the torrents of data-and this morning, at Hector’s request, he was secretly loading programs to listen for and identify any phone conversations, happening anywhere in the country, using the word “Choate.” He wanted to know if the CIA knew one of their lost heroes was alive and well.
A financial services contractor-who handled credit card charges for the military and for Hector employees in Baghdad’s Green Zone-was told by Sam Hector to alert him to any new credit card accounts opened in the name of Benjamin Forsberg or Randall Choate, or of any new credit card accounts opened with any of the aliases he had identified as used by the Cellar. He also asked for alerts on the use of cards which had been dormant for a month, specifically on charges for hotels, travel, or gasoline, in a fivestate area.
The contractor got a number of immediate hits. Hector noticed three from last night in towns between Austin and Dallas, including a charge for James Woodward. That was one of Pilgrim’s aliases found by Adam Reynolds. So were they headed for Dallas-or just headed away from Austin? He called the contractor back, told him to call immediately if there were any further charges on the James Woodward card.
Pilgrim must eventually show his head, and Hector wanted to be ready to lop it off.
He slid the old photo of Randall Choate back into his desk. Soon enough, he thought, you bastard, you’ll be in the coffin you belong in. He expected that Ben Forsberg-if Choate had not killed him-would be calling for help soon. Both men should be dead within twelve hours, hopefully, if Pilgrim did the expected thing and went to Barker’s house. Nice to have people to do the dirtiest work for you; Hector preferred having clean hands.
His phone rang, the cell phone he kept in his pocket, the number that fewer than ten people in the world had. He glanced at the cell’s readout. He didn’t recognize the number.
“Hello?”
“Uh, yeah. Hi. Mr. Hector? My name is Delia Moon.”
He said, “You’re Adam’s friend.” He knew this not because of Adam confiding in him but because he knew all pertinent details about Adam Reynolds’s life.
“Oh, yeah. Did he mention me to you?”
“With the warmest regard, Delia. He was so fond of you.”
“Oh, God, um…” A choked sob, controlled with effort.
He waited for her to compose herself.
“I need help, Mr. Hector.”
“Of course.”
“Adam mentioned that you were going to help him with his project. His software to track illicit banking activities to find terrorists.”
Hector squeezed the bridge of his nose and thought: Idiot couldn’t keep a secret. That was unfortunate. “Well, yes, he talked to me about such a project… but I didn’t know he was far off the ground with it.”
“Well, he is very far along in developing the program. I think that’s why he died. And Homeland Security, they’ve confiscated his computers, and they’re going to sit on his software or take it for their own use, and well, it doesn’t belong to them. It belongs to.. him, to his estate now, I guess.”
“And you would be his estate?”
“No,” she said, sounding horrified. “His mom. She’s sick, she needs money. But it’s not the government’s. I’m scared they’re going to take it and keep it… it’s not right. I need your help, Mr. Hector. They won’t listen to me but they’ll listen to you. Or your lawyers.”
“Yes,” he said. “We should talk. But privately.”
“All right.”
He considered. “May I come to your house? I’m afraid the press are all over my place, and I’m constantly interrupted with calls from Homeland Security.”
“Yes, that’s fine.” She gave him directions and he said, “I’ll see you shortly then,” and he hung up.
He called in his assistant.
“I’m going to work from home today.”
The assistant-a former army clerk who was not easily rattled-went pale. “Sir. You’ve gotten another twenty interview requests including CNN and Fox and The New York Times, you’ve got that noon meeting with the lawyers if the guards’ families sue, the PR firm wants to give you a strategy update…”
“Cancel it all. I’m not giving further interviews; I’ve said the words that matter most to me, they can rerun the press conference. I’m simply not available.” He knew he didn’t have to explain, but he believed so fervently in the power of his own company to do good, he added: “I have to assist the government in its investigation. Are there still a lot of press camped out in front of the gates?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell the driver to get a car with tinted windows. I don’t really want the world knowing where I am right now.”
The two men from the Cellar had not returned or reported their progress. Teach sat at the conference table. A laptop, not connected to the Internet, sat before her. She had been typing into a document a detailed history of the Cellar, its agents, and its operations, as ordered that morning by Hector.
He slid into a seat across from her. “Your boys aren’t back. Do you think Green and De La Pena abandoned you?”
“No.”
“You think Pilgrim intercepted them.”
“Maybe.” Hate filled her eyes. “Making us your puppets won’t work.”
“It won’t work today,” he said, “but it will tomorrow. If I get any inkling that those two took off, I start killing people on the Cellar roll calls.”
“You may end up killing us all.”
“I may.”
“Don’t believe for a second that it will be easy.”
He leaned over, printed her draft report on the Cellar’s activities. As the paper spooled from the printer, he scanned each sheet. At one page his gaze widened slightly; but he felt her gaze on him and he put his poker face back in place.
“What?” she said.
“I’m both impressed and disturbed by the scope of your activities. Would it sound contrary to say I admire you?”
“Yes.”
“As you say, this won’t be easy, but I know you’ll smooth my path. Keep writing.” He set the draft on the table and left the room, locking her inside. He leaned for a moment against the door; it was reassuring to know he’d made the right business decision. He felt an inappropriate, insidious urge to laugh, but he choked it down.
Hector found Jackie sitting in a guest room. He’d sent an aide to buy him clothes: black pants and black
