No Way to Die (11 page)

He paused and sipped his coffee before continuing. “When the BIS found out that Starfire was a cryptology application, they got very prickly about allowing the company to export it to foreign countries. I think they gave us one of the most restrictive commodity classifications possible—right up there with centrifuges and other nuclear reactor components. We got this just before Christmas last year. Like I said, after we got their letter of intent, we submitted MST as a potential buyer for preliminary approval. The investigations staff at BIS must be very efficient because almost immediately they fired back that Nicholas Madoc was on their unverified list and that it could potentially take as long as a year to get him approved. They also included a friendly little warning reminding us that if we went ahead and sold Starfire to MST without official approval, we could be liable for some very hefty fines and some significant prison time. That made it an easy call. Thomas and I talked it over, and he decided that he didn’t want to sell to MST for two reasons—first, he didn’t want to wait months in the hope that Madoc could get approved; and second, he really didn’t want to sell to a foreign interest anyway. He wanted to sell the technology to a domestic interest—a major defense contractor or perhaps a major high-tech firm.

“He had me type up a rejection letter to MST along with a copy of the order from BIS stating that we were prohibited from selling to them. I sent it off to MST in mid-January, and we never heard another word from them. One month later, Thomas was dead.” A very serious expression formed on his face. “Do you think this could be related?” he asked.

I shrugged. “We don’t know. It’s still too early to tell,” I said. “We just started on the case yesterday.” I didn’t know where Ogden’s loyalties were or whom he was talking to, but I wasn’t inclined to open up and let him know everything we were thinking. “As of now, all the physical evidence points pretty conclusively toward the scenario in which Thomas took his own life.”

He thought about this for a few seconds. “Boy,” he said, “I think that’s bizarre. I worked pretty closely with the guy for over four years, and I never once got the idea that there was any sort of mental instability at all. He seemed like a guy who knew where he was, knew where he wanted to go, and knew how to get there. Sure seems like he was on the way to reaching his goals.”

“Along those lines,” I said, “you’re saying he never gave you any indication that he was depressed or disillusioned, no signs that he might be on the verge of breaking down?”

“Not even a hint of that,” Ogden said. “Thomas Rasmussen was one of the most solid guys I ever had the pleasure of working with. I looked at him with a certain degree of envy. On top of his profession, successful business, beautiful wife—” he glanced at Toni here. She was taking notes and didn’t look up, but I could tell she noticed because she smiled when he said it. “—wonderful kids. I tell you—if someone like Thomas Rasmussen can commit suicide,
any
of us can.”

Pretty powerful statement. And one more mark on the “homicide” side of the ledger.

* * * *

“So what do you think?” Toni asked as we drove away in my Jeep fifteen minutes later. Before we left our table, Ogden had phoned Holly Kenworth at Applied Cryptographic Solutions. She agreed to meet with us at two o’clock. The ACS office was in Redmond—we’d have to hustle to make it on time. We’d said our good-byes on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant.

“I think he’s a nice guy.”

“Not about him,” she said. “About what he had to say about the case.”

“Oh. Well, it sounds like ACS couldn’t have sold to Madoc even if Thomas would have wanted to—which he apparently didn’t.”

“Come on, Danny,” she said. “It means more than that. It means we might have a name for the so-called ‘big bad guys’ we’ve been talking about.” She was pretty clearly getting caught up in the case. I, on the other hand, was hung up on the full-body hug and warm smile she’d given to Ogden as we left. A good firm handshake was all he got out of me.

“True, I suppose,” I said. “Although it’s pretty hard to imagine someone bold enough to just up and kill a businessman if he doesn’t get his way.”

“Are you kidding?” she asked. “People kill people around here for a pair of basketball shoes. Do you seriously think that a technology like Starfire wouldn’t motivate a criminal enterprise or even an unfriendly foreign power to kill to get it?”

I thought for a second as I drove. “I understand all that,” I said. “You’re right, I guess. Your thesis would be that the rogue outfit MST makes a legitimate offer to buy Starfire from ACS. ACS checks with BIS, and BIS says no. Rebuffed, MST gets pissed and decides to get even. So they murder the head of ACS. My question is why? Why would they do that? What would they hope to accomplish?”

“They want Starfire,” Toni said.

“Okay,” I said. “We know that. We know what they hope to accomplish. The question becomes, how would they hope to pull it off? And how would killing Thomas get them there?”

She thought about that for a few seconds, and then turned to me. “That’s why they pay us the big bucks,” she said cheerily.

I looked at her. She was happy about seeing John Ogden. Great. I suppose that a better man than me would have been happy for her. I’d have to try harder.

I CALLED KENNY as soon as we left the restaurant and asked him to meet us in the parking lot at the ACS office at five minutes till two.

“Don’t go inside without us,” I said. “Wait for us outside by your car.” If our interview with Holly Kenworth led us into an area of questions that became too technical for me (and that wouldn’t take much, believe me), I needed to have Kenny there so that I could hand the interview off to him. He’s the only one of us who’s even close to being in Holly’s league when it comes to tech proficiency. But in bringing Kenny, I was taking a chance.

There’s a bit of artistry involved in conducting an interview with a potential suspect. On the one hand, you need to ask questions about things you
don’t
know in order to gain knowledge. On the other hand, you have to be careful not to divulge to the interview subject how much you already
do
know. If your subject figures out where you’re coming from and if they have anything to hide—and if they’re halfway smart—then they’ll try to modify and shape their answers to fit in with what they think you already know. It’s always better to keep your cards close to your chest. If you can question people without giving up what you know, you’re more likely to get honest answers—or at least more likely to catch them in an inconsistency.

Toni, for example, is a master at interviewing—I learn from her every time I watch her question somebody. She has the ability to put people at ease and ask them seemingly unimportant questions in a conversational, low-key manner that gives nothing away. It’s as if she’s just having a conversation while waiting for the interview to start. Sometimes, people are surprised when she thanks them and wraps things up. They’ll say to her, “What about the interview? Don’t you want to interview me?”—not knowing that she’d been doing just that the whole time. Like I said, she’s smooth.

Kenny, on the other hand, was an unknown. In the office, he has a tendency to be something of a loose cannon—we’re never quite sure what he’s going to say. His comments have, on occasion, tended to show—how should I put it—a little immaturity?As a result, Toni and I usually cringe at the thought of turning Kenny loose on the public. We’ve been afraid to bring him to important meetings. Now, I needed him, and whether he could come through for us, I was about to find out, one way or the other. Would he be his same goofy self in “public”—in a real-life interview? Would he blurt out something we’d prefer our subject didn’t know? Or would he be in control enough to shift gears and step up his game? Truth be told, I didn’t know. Best I could do was give him a little briefing before we met with Holly.

We crossed the 520 floating bridge and headed east for Redmond. During rush hour, the sixteen-mile trip to Redmond could take upwards of two hours. At one thirty in the afternoon, though, traffic was light, and I figured it would only take twenty-five minutes or so to reach the ACS office. Soon, we passed Marymoor Park on our right. I exited at Redmond Way and turned left. Moments later, I pulled into the office park in which the ACS office was located. It was 1:55.

One minute later, Kenny drove up. I walked him through the game plan and asked him to be careful not to give anything up. He said he understood. Hopefully, he’d remember all the way through the meeting.

* * * *

We walked into the ACS office as a group. I told the receptionist who we were and that we had an appointment with Holly Kenworth. She directed us to three white resin patio chairs and asked us to wait while she disappeared through a doorway. A tall plastic plant sat by itself in a corner.

“They don’t waste much money on foo-foo things like chairs and furniture, do they,” I said quietly to Toni.

“You got that right,” she whispered. “It’s like ‘shabby chic’ without the chic.”

There were a half-dozen framed black-and-white portraits on the walls. “You recognize any of those guys?” I asked.

“That one over there is Isaac Newton,” Kenny said, pointing toward a man with long, curly hair.

“And that one’s Einstein, obviously,” he said.

“Who’s that one?” Toni asked, pointing to the next photo.

He stared at it for a few moments. “I have no idea,” he said.

“That’s Claude Shannon,” said a voice from behind us.

We turned and saw a pretty young woman standing in the doorway.

“I’m Holly Kenworth,” she said. She walked over to us. She had striking red hair and light blue eyes. She was dressed in blue jeans and a Stanford University sweatshirt. She was younger than I expected—Katherine said she was in her early thirties, but she looked to be in her mid-twenties to me.

“Hello, Holly,” I said, standing and stepping forward to shake her hand. “I’m Danny Logan. I think John Ogden called about us.”

“He did,” she said.

I introduced Toni and Kenny.

“Kenny Hale,” Holly said slowly, mulling the name over. “I’ve heard that name. Where’ve I heard it before?”

“I’m not sure,” Kenny said. “I do some consulting work for some of the companies around here, mostly security related things—firewalls, access control, that sort of stuff.”

“That’s probably it,” she said, smiling. “A little bit related to what we do.”

She turned back to me. “Thomas respected the work of the pioneers in our field, so he had portraits put up here in the lobby and throughout the office. They’re our single attempt to decorate.” She pointed at a photo. “Claude Shannon here was the first to develop the forerunner of the modern mathematical cryptograph.” She pointed to some of the other pictures. “This is Whitfield Diffie, and this is Martin Hellman. They pioneered modern public key technology in the ’70s—the same basic methods we use today.”

She studied the photos for a few moments.

“You know, without doubt, Thomas would have joined these pioneers within the next few years,” she said. She paused and stared at the photographs, her face expressionless. A few moments later, she turned back to me and smiled. “Anyway, would you like to come back to our conference room? John told me you’re working for Mrs. Rasmussen. I imagine you must have many questions.”

“That’d be great,” I said.

We followed her through the doorway into a bull pen, which was divided into four cubicles. Six private office spaces surrounded the bull pen. She led us into one of the offices with a window that had been set up as a small conference room. Although slightly nicer than the reception area furnishings, the conference table still looked to be secondhand or thirdhand. Except for the window wall, the remaining three walls were covered with erasable whiteboards, most of which were filled with math equations.

After we were seated, I said, “Thanks for meeting us today on basically no notice. I understand that this is a difficult time for you and for your company.”

She nodded.

I continued. “As you mentioned, our firm has been retained by Katherine Rasmussen. She wants us to look into Thomas’s suicide and make sure nothing suspicious occurred.”

She nodded. “I understand. If I were married, I suppose I’d probably do the same thing.”

“Good,” I said. “I appreciate your understanding and your willingness to talk to us. I should start by saying we know very little about the business here—what it is you guys do. If you don’t mind, we’d like you to fill us in, but before you do, maybe you could tell us about your background and how you came to work here at ACS.”

She nodded. “That makes sense,” she said. She seemed forthright as she explained how she’d met Thomas at a Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics conference four years ago at Stanford where he was a guest speaker. The two shared similar professional interests, and when Holly said that she lived in Seattle—same as Thomas—Thomas asked her to meet him for lunch the following week. Shortly after, Thomas made Holly a job offer that she could not refuse.

“He’d just started the company,” she said. “I’d just recently received my doctorate. He gave me a very nice ownership interest—I think he felt it was necessary in order to get me to leave the job I was in at the time. The fact is, I’d have jumped at the opportunity anyway.”