DEAD BEEF (Our Cyber World Book 1) (2 page)

Martin couldn’t have that. He’d worked too hard to live in this world. He’d given up too much to stay in it. That’s what he told himself, but down deep he knew he was too proud to share his inner most weaknesses with a therapist. Ironically, now that very veneer he had been protecting was all gone, therapist or not.

In non-rush hour traffic, his drive from InfoStream headquarters in Milpitas, California to his ranch house in Pleasanton took less than 30 minutes. By the time he walked through the front door, he had prepared his own mini-script, how he would tell his wife Cynthia.

He found her in her office, looking over documents, no doubt related to her fairly successful winery business. “You’re home early.” She looked at the clock then frowned. “It’s only 10:30. Feeling OK?”

“Yeah, a little earlier than my earliest days.” He smiled, reflecting that when he came home early, that usually meant no earlier than mid-afternoon. “That’s what happens when you get laid off.”

She turned in her swivel chair. “Jesus, Martin. What did you do?” The morning sun coming through a large window across from her desk caught in her brown hair and highlighted its hints of auburn. Her blue eyes glinted sharply, and for a moment Martin allowed himself to see her face, eyes and hair as they had looked during their honeymoon.

He sat in a small sofa, about six feet from her desk. “It’s not what I did or didn’t do. It’s what I’m not. Not young or motivated or innovative. Washed out. And now, down-sized.” He did his best to hold his smile in place.

“Are you happy about this?”

“A little relieved, actually.”

She sighed. “So what now?”

“You’re going to be OK, Cynthia.”

“I’m going to be OK.”

“Sure. The winery I bought you with my big fire sale of InfoStream stock options is doing great. Making great wine, too, a glass or two of which would come in handy right now.”

Her frown deepened into a scowl then dissipated, her expression softening. She came over and sat next to him in the couch. “Well, I guess now we have some time to take a nice long vacation. Maybe that trip to Bordeaux we’ve been talking about?”

When he didn't answer she added, “Or maybe even that long cross-country trip. I know I haven't been totally for it before, but maybe now—”

“Right before the harvest?”

“I don’t personally pick the grapes, Martin. I don’t have to be here.”

Martin felt his lips forming the kind of smile that wants to cry. “As it turns out, I’m the one that doesn’t have to be here.”

Cynthia’s expression hardened again. “So what now?” she asked.

“Now you are a rich woman. In a few minutes I will open the safe and sign a few papers that will hand over all of InfoStream's creator's remnant riches, just north of $2 billion in investments, property and cash last time I checked. Then I walk away.”

“Sounds like you’ve thought about this.”

“Long and hard.”

“Martin, the planner,” Cynthia said. “The consummate chess player. Your tombstone will say, 'he planned and calculated everything to the last move.'“

“And he still lost,” he added.

They sat in silence for an interminable minute before she broke in with, “And now the chess player is resigning. Except instead of laying down the king, it's the queen that takes a header.”

“The queen is hardly taking a header if she keeps the whole chess board,” Martin said.

“It must be what you want.”

“What I want is irrelevant,” Martin replied. “It’s what must be.”

“Where will you go?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“That’s presumptuous of you. Don’t you think I care about you?”

“I know you do, Cynthia. And I care enough about you to keep you very rich and just as ignorant.” Martin stood up. “When the Feds come calling, you’ll be able to tell them the truth. That you don’t have the foggiest clue where your nutty genius husband has gone or what he’s up to.”

An hour later, Cynthia stood by as he stowed a backpack with photographic gear, and another backpack with camping gear and a few items of clothing in the back of his 1983 Toyota FJ-40 Land Cruiser. A set of hiking boots went in next.

Martin turned to face her, and she hugged him, burying her face in his chest. “The cross-country drive you’ve always wanted,” she whispered.

The one she never wanted to make because she preferred first class air travel and four star hotel rooms, Martin reflected. “That’s right,” he said. “I’ll drive across and up and down this great land of ours, and in year or so, I’ll have my ‘Photogenic America’ coffee table book on every book store shelf.”

Cynthia held him a few more seconds before she stepped back. “Take care of yourself, Martin. And please be careful.”

“And you take those papers to your lawyer as soon as I drive away, OK?”

She nodded then pointed at the Toyota. “I know you loved restoring this one, but why not take something more comfortable?”

“You mean less conspicuous?”

“That, too.”

Martin smiled. “After years of working on stuff that runs on electrons and software, it’s time to go back to carburetors and gasoline.”

A tear rolled down her left cheek. “You’re going to find her, aren’t you?” she asked. When he didn’t reply, she added, “If you find Sasha — when you find Sasha, tell her I send my love.”

Chapter 2

Notifications of termination of clearance fell below Stan Beloski’s pay grade. When he saw the email come across 9 AM Eastern, he ignored it, assuming it had come to him by mistake and that someone else was handling it. He left the message unread until shortly after 10 AM, when upon re-checking it he realized his name was the only one in the To: line, with no other names in the CC: line. Before he read the message body, he only intended to scan it quickly before drafting a quick and terse reply to the sender saying something far less kind than “you sent this to the wrong person, stupid.”

The first line in the email stopped him short. “Termination of Clearance for Martin Spencer, InfoStream Corp.” He read the line three times, mouthing the words as if that would make more sense of it. “What the—?”

Stan Beloski recalled his last full field operation with Martin Spencer, the one Martin called “my one and salient failure.” Beloski recalled the stranded payload, Martin’s stranded payload, as Martin would always think of it. Beloski wondered if Martin was out there now, angry, dejected and ready to cooperate with whoever could bring him back his long-lost payload. Stan Beloski winced at the thought. This is why you didn’t just fire people like Martin Spencer.

Beloski printed the email, locked his terminal and headed down the hall and into the vault, printout in hand. Once inside, he located the security officer on duty. “Marti,” he said, handing her the email. “Need you to check something quick.”

“What got into you?” she said.

“Let’s verify this guy’s clearance status.”

“OK, but you look like a ghost took your candy on Halloween.” Marti typed a few commands into her terminal, pulled up a couple of screens then said, “Yup. This guy was out-briefed yesterday. InfoStream is notifying us of his clearance termination. Usually there’s a 90 day grace period, but for this type of clearance—”

“I know,” Beloski said. “It’s final. You’re sure? This is not a glitch?”

“Not for this type of clearance. Never seen a glitch or inaccurate entry.” Beloski could feel her looking at him as he stared at the screen. “Sounds like you really want this to be a bad dream.”

“Yeah,” Beloski sighed.

“Anything you want me to do?”

“Can you put a hold on it? Freeze it?”

“That’s way above my pay grade, sugar,” she said.

He shook his head and grabbed the email printout. “This has gotta be a mistake,” Beloski said as he walked away.

“And if it isn’t?” she asked.

“That’s way above your pay grade.”

Beloski tried to call InfoStream from the vault, using one of the classified phones. He quickly learned that the InfoStream executive who had signed off on Martin Spencer’s clearance termination, some joker by the name Richard Desmond, didn’t have the clearance required to communicate at the project’s classification level. That meant Beloski had to make a call via an open line, with all the verbal dancing around one had to do to avoid a security infraction.

It was 10:40 AM Eastern, 7:40 AM Pacific, by the time Rich Desmond from InfoStream, Milpitas, California came on the phone. The conversation was short and terse, but long enough for Beloski to confirm that yes, Martin Spencer had been fired from his job, automatically terminating his clearance, and that Rich Desmond had no concept whatsoever of what implications that held.

On a classified line Beloski would have enjoyed berating Desmond for not pre-notifying the Information Technology Assurance Agency (ITAA) of Spencer’s pending termination, as was the protocol for clearances of this caliber. Beloski might have also vented something or other about national security risks. The best he could do on an open line, however, was to ask for a transfer of Spencer’s personnel file for full documentation of the circumstances surrounding his dismissal. Then Beloski reluctantly thanked Desmond for his time and assistance and hung up as gently as his rising blood pressure would allow.

It was now 7:52 PM Pacific, nearly 24 hours since Martin Spencer had walked out of InfoStream. Could Beloski have done anything if the notification had come across his desk sooner? He decided he had little time to bother with that question.

Chapter 3

All InfoStream employees with the type of clearance that Martin Spencer had held were subject to random home scrubs, a nice euphemism for a search without a warrant. Martin and his colleagues voluntarily signed away their fourth amendment rights when they accepted their clearances.

It was a part of married life Cynthia Spencer did not enjoy. After experiencing the first search first hand, she decided that having a crew of strange men dressed in blue neck-to-ankle onesies surgically explore her house wasn’t for her. When the scrub team would arrive onsite, she would go shopping and let Martin deal with it.

Cynthia didn’t have that luxury when they arrived this time, though she was very tempted to simply hand over the keys and let them have at it. Instead, after carefully confirming their credentials, she let them go in and took a seat on the front porch. She held her phone in her hand until it buzzed five minutes later.

“Cynthia Spencer speaking,” she said in the most even voice she could muster.

“Good afternoon, Cynthia. This is Stan Beloski.”

Cynthia recognized his voice. “Hi, Stan. Isn’t this kind of call beneath your labor category these days?”

“Not today,” he replied. “I’m calling to confirm our team has arrived and to ensure that all is well with you.”

“Yes, all is going swell. I’m very satisfied with the quality of scrubbing my house has gotten so far. Wish your boys came twice a week.”

She recalled the first time a scrub team came to their house, how Martin had explained they were mostly concerned with checking their computers and examining any papers they could find to ensure no classified materials existed on the premises. She remembered Martin telling her that unlike police searches, this would be orderly, and she would scarcely know that a thorough search had been conducted.

“He’s gone,” she said. “He left yesterday. Not coming back. It’s been grand, Cynthia, but I need to go find myself. You know, the typical way men react when a midlife crisis and an involuntary layoff collide.”

“I see,” Stan said.

“When did I see you last?” she asked. “Last year during that Cyber-something party at Ebbet’s Grill in D.C.?”

“Two years ago,” he replied.

“Time flies even when you’re miserable.”

“How are you holding up?”

She considered her answer for a few seconds and decided she didn’t want to dive into personal territory. “If you’ve been trying to get a hold of him on his cell, that won’t work. He left his phone here.”

“I see. Is it off?”

“By now you know it’s not on the grid, so the answer wants to be yes. Back cover is off, battery is gone, and if I knew anything about electronics, I might be able to swear he ripped out one or two microchips.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Stan said in a very even voice. “The team will check into it. Were you there when he left?”

“Yes, he left shortly before noon. I remember because I made myself a sandwich and had lunch a few minutes later. He packed his photo gear and a duffel bag with clothes, and drove out in his beloved Toyota FJ-whatever-something-cruiser. It’s green, hunter green, but unfortunately I didn’t memorize the license plate. Does that pretty much cover it for you?”

“Did he take anything else?”

Cynthia remembered the camping gear and the hiking boots. She recalled how a few months back Martin had told her several times about doing a multi-day hike along the Pacific Trail through the Sierra Nevada. Even now she could hear herself saying she didn’t do camping.

“Not that I can recall,” she answered after a short pause. “He seemed to want to keep his luggage simple. But I may have missed something in my grief, scorned wife and all.”

“What about his computer? His laptop?” Stan asked.

“Got rid of both a year ago. Since then he’s pretty much only used a tablet I gave him for Christmas. And that’s sitting on his desk, as I’m sure your scrub team will confirm shortly.”

“You won’t mind if we take it along for a deeper look?”

Cynthia shook her head and flashed a bitter smile. “As if I have a choice. Keep it as long as you need. Martin obviously didn’t think much of my Christmas present.”

“Did Martin say where he was going?”

“Not really, and no, I don’t really care, thank you. Away is a good enough answer for me. And even if not, it’s all he would give.”

Stan Beloski hung up the phone and took a moment to take in the conference room, now converted into a temporary war room. Papers and pictures depicting the life and work of Martin Spencer covered two full walls. Flat monitor screens and computers sat atop the mahogany conference table. Cables routing power and data ran in every conceivable direction.

“Well?” he asked, turning to the two analysts who had listened in on the call.

“Mixed, I’d say,” the younger one replied. “Somewhat of a pause when you asked if Spencer took anything else. Very quick response when you asked about his computers. Voice pattern was pretty even throughout,” he added pointing at his computer screen.

“Probably not worth mentioning,” said the more senior analyst, “but she seemed intent on being sarcastic.”

“Yeah, well, thanks.” Beloski sighed. “Not much one can do with polygraph by remote control.” His terminal beeped with an incoming message notification.

“The contents of his tablet might be more of a clue,” a computer forensic analyst said from the other side of the room.

Beloski opened the message and said, “I’d say so.” A screenshot of Martin Spencer’s tablet filled his screen.

He turned his monitor so others could see it. Hand-written large letters spelled out “LEAVE ME ALONE AND NOTHING GOES BLINK-BLINK.”

“Is Robert Odehl still in that briefing?” someone asked.

“All day long,” Beloski replied.

“Might be time to bring him in.”

Stan Beloski nodded. “Yeah, I’d say so.”