worldwide gathering information around the clock, in addition to the fourteen staffers in Sam’s office. Detectives were checking credit cards, phone traffic, looking for disgruntled former associates, people with ties to law enforcement, and into all manner of databases. Each iota of information was funneled into Big Brain, which stored images, driver license numbers, car VINs, Social Security numbers, telephone numbers, cell phone information. If it could be rendered digital, Big Brain stored it.
In the beginning, before the computer began to draw correlations and aggregate people who knew each other, it all seemed somewhat useless. Gradually, however, patterns emerged. Even more significantly, for years Sam had kept records that could not lawfully have been retained by many law enforcement agencies even after the war on terrorism. A few people in law enforcement did not like the limitations and had private webs kept at home on large PCs, and Sam had downloaded several of these. Much more significantly in off-the-record trades with the U.S. and other governments, he had downloaded various government databases. It was a dumping ground that hungry government spooks could come back to-a place they could find things that had to be wiped from government computers.
Terrorism had helped create the flexibility that Sam needed, but it had started long before the 9/11 attacks. Since bad guys tend to run in packs and deal with (or screw) each other, Sam already had information on both DuShane Chellis and Samir Aziz, along with hundreds of thousands of others. It was now becoming apparent that Samir and Chellis seemed to know some of the same unsavory people. Scotland Yard suspected that DuShane Chellis used a hired killer who had been employed by other criminal types.
“I’m so impressed,” Anna said when the short tour was over.
“Everything here is backed up on the East Coast every day so if something happened, not a great deal would be lost. If both Paul and I die, a board of my employees along with five other guys, law enforcement and former law enforcement, get it all. Ultimately it would be used by the government for antiterrorism and organized international crime. Of course they may have to delete a lot of it Legality for government data is a big issue.”
“I’ll bet the government would love it right now.”
“Actually they get pretty much what they need. But in bits and pieces. They don’t have the software to handle much at a time, and they aren’t even close. The database without the software to search it is not nearly as productive as it could be. My data warehouse programs are proprietary. The problem with sharing everything with the government is that my clients are not always odor free. But there isn’t really a bad person among them, inasmuch as it’s for me to discern such things.”
“Can’t they subpoena stuff?”
“Paul is a licensed attorney and our general counsel. I also am a licensed attorney. I went to correspondence school and passed the bar a long time ago, when I was young and could sit on my ass for hours. You also sign a contract with Paul and me acting independently as your attorneys. There is a clause that, at least purportedly, makes information that you give us subject to the attorney-client privilege. Much of the rest of the data is covered by the attorney work-product privilege. I have the best lawyers in the country protecting my stuff and the government, of course, has learned that the hard way. Not because I beat them in court but because we never get there. They know they would have to fight and go to court to get the stuff. That takes time and they have to ask what happens if they lose. And if they win they have to ask whether it will be there and whether they will be able to retrieve it and more importantly whether the public would stand for the government having this stuff.
“Not to mention, if Grogg goes quiet on them, or wants to screw them, they have a real problem. I have far too much that they want for them to fight with me. For them, cooperation and trading is the preferred alternative. And sometimes I have to get signed waivers from my clients to give them certain material.”
“This is impressive,” Anna said. “So how do you detect associations between people?”
“If we are doing an investigation and we see people in a car or at a meeting together. If other people are mentioned in a person’s garbage, maybe just a Christmas card, or a simple note, it all goes in. Every person that comes in contact with someone we might be even remotely interested in goes in the database-everything we can get on them. That’s one of the things the technicians do all day long. We try to search every public record on every person significant to any investigation. Maybe they show up on real estate title reports as buyer and seller or maybe partners in property or in a corporation. When we are gathering information nothing is too trivial to go in our database-even things that seem completely unrelated at the time. We love phone bills. And the computer remembers forever that Jack Jones had a postcard from Nick Smith in his garbage can. It’s a link, and we will never lose that link.”
“I’ll worry about the moral and ethical quagmire after we rescue my brother.”
“Uh-huh. My clients tend to look at it that way.”
Next Sam showed her the bunk rooms. For the women there were twenty bunks, dressing rooms, four tiled baths, and color. The room was cocoa with white trim, art and photos on the walls, dressers with wooden name placards, a wooden bookcase with some books and more photos.
“Now for the men.”
Although the color was the same and the baths were similarly tiled but with boy blue, there was no art or photographs; metal lockers stood in place of solid hardwood dressers, benches instead of chairs. It was much smaller, and the eight bunks were crammed together.
“Maybe you should ask the girls to fix up the boys’ place,” Anna said.
“Yeah. Maybe.”
“Inside you’re saying ‘Go to hell.’ ”
“It’s a place to sleep. When you’re awake enough to enjoy the scenery, you’re supposed to be outworking or on your way home.”
“I knew it.”
“And what were you talking to my mother about?”
“I’m way too sleepy and I’m going to go try one of the pretty bunks in the girls’ room.”
“This smells like revenge.”
“You can handle it.”
They walked down the hall to the larger dorm. Anna stepped inside and turned around.
Sam gave her a peck on the cheek.
“Not truly an inspirational kiss. But nice nevertheless.”
Sam turned to leave, anxious to get back to work. And somehow he didn’t like what had just happened to him. Turning, he walked back to her. As if she were expecting it, his lips met hers and their tongues explored their passion, which he found considerable.
“I shouldn’t be doing that,” he said. “But the only thing that seemed worse was not doing it.”
“Sam?”
“Yeah?” He stopped as he turned to leave.
“Now that I’ve seen where you work, I want to see where you live.”
Early in the morning Anna rose and found Sam sleepy-eyed and hunching over a cup of coffee in front of a computer screen. There was a certain oddity in this sculpted gym rat staring wide-eyed at dull narratives and mind-numbing details about lists of people that probably had nothing to do with anything that mattered. Sam was a jock in geek land, she thought. The entire main portion of the office was a myriad of computer screens, server lines, and phone lines, information coming in from France, Lebanon, and other faraway places, all supposedly relating in some manner either to her brother or to the men who seemingly had controlled him.
“Come to my place for brunch,” she said, watching him as he pointed and clicked.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m going to get a few winks in the boys’ room.”
“I’ll take a cab. And I’ll see you at eleven,” she said.
She had decided to remain in her Los Angeles home for the duration of the hunt for Jason. Like many other houses in Hollywood Hills, it was large and white and stucco with a red-tiled roof, something of a standard formula for the area. Individuality in the architecture of such mansions lay in shapes, corners, windows, what was round and what was square.
This house had two stories and about four thousand feet per story, with a third-floor lookout turret in which she occasionally read. The view from the tower was of brown hills and other white adobe red-tile-roofed homes. The turret had a bar that she seldom used because she drank only wine and the occasional Tom Collins. The house had a screening room, a library, a family room, a gathering room, and a living room. Most of the time she lived her
