No Way to Die (30 page)

“Really?” Richard said. “You’re saying the FBI is arrogant? Say it ain’t so.”

“What I mean is, I know for a fact that the FBI’s worked out a by-the-book plan that they’ve all been trained on. They do that because they've analyzed a dozen guys similar to Marlowe and they've formed a composite character—just ask their profilers. Based on the composite, they think they can tell you every last detail about Marlowe. And the hell of it is, they've never even met the guy. Their ivory-tower model has Marlowe reacting in a predictable manner. They do this, Marlowe does that; then they do this, and then he does that, and then they nail him—right on schedule. Bing, bang, boom. Then, just to be safe, they work up a few contingency plans based on what they feel are other potential ways that Marlowe might act. Potential, but less probable. The trouble is,
all
of these courses of action are based on the way they
think
he might act. And that comes from some model of theirs that they have stashed away somewhere. And, of course, it's all bullshit."

Richard looked at me, puzzled. I continued. "The reality is, doesn't matter what their composite man might do, they have no friggin’ idea how an
individual
like Marlowe’s really going to act. He might be on a completely different page. No one gave him the script—not that he'd follow it anyway.”

Richard digested this. “Hmm,” he said. “As is usual around here, Toni is right on, and you’re correct in recognizing this as an issue. You see, Toni understands intuitively what it takes most of us years and years of accumulated failures and nasty surprises to grasp. I think there’s a universal rule—let’s call it Taylor’s Universal Rule Number Two. It applies to all criminals, and it goes like this: a bad guy is going to do what a bad guy thinks is best for said bad guy at that particular moment, pure and simple. Nothing else matters to him.”

I nodded. “Makes sense. What’s Rule Number One?” I asked.

“I’ll get to that,” he said. “But first, the corollary to Taylor’s Universal Rule Number Two goes: bad guys are by definition a little twisted and sometimes illogical—that's why they're bad guys. This means it can be damn difficult for a sane, rational, logical person to tell exactly what it is that an illogical bad guy thinks is best at any particular moment—how he views his alternatives, that is.”

“In this case,” I said, “I don’t know if they’re considering his viewpoint at all. Their model assumes that he’ll do anything to get the key. He might. But then again, he might not.”

“That’s true,” Richard said. “Despite the Taylor Universal Rules, some criminals can be very complex thinkers. Mind you, this is not always the case—many, if not most, are simpletons and easily deciphered. But some are not. Some of them are completely baffling—never ending up where a rational, logical person would expect them to be. But in
their
own mind, they’re always acting completely logically and rationally. These people can be very dangerous.” He looked at me. “In the case of Marlowe, I think you’re right to be concerned, Danny. The man hasn’t successfully avoided capture all these years by being predictable.”

I nodded.

“Which means, in practical application, anyway, that you can never forget about Taylor Universal Rule Number One, which is: never forget about your defense while you’re busy planning your offense. Make sure at all times that your people, your property, and your witnesses are protected.”

* * * *

Our office has a wraparound balcony that’s situated off my office and off the conference room. It’s a great place to sit outside on a warm, sunny summer afternoon and watch the sailboats and the seaplanes on Lake Union. I like to haul my laptop out there and enjoy the fresh air.

It’s a little less enjoyable on a March evening. It was cold, dark, and raining, and we were all huddled outside under umbrellas. (We keep umbrellas for out-of-town guests; being true Seattleites, we shun them ourselves except in the case of cold, dark, rainy nights. Like tonight.) Toni was giving me the evil eye, as if to say, “WTF?”

“Listen up,” I said. “You’re probably wondering why I called you all out here on this beautiful evening. Well, an important thought just occurred to me.”

“Lucky us,” Toni muttered.

I ignored her. “This has just occurred to me: What if Marlowe’s guys weren’t here only to find something? What if they weren’t here only to take something away? What if they were here to leave something, instead?” I paused for a second. “Toni said something a little earlier this afternoon that got me thinking. She said that we can count on Marlowe to do the unexpected. Anybody doubt this?”

Everyone shook their heads.

“Me, neither. Then I just finished talking to Richard, and he said something pretty profound, as well. He said that with Marlowe, we have to focus on our defense as well as our offense. I can vouch for that, right?” I pointed to my bandaged head.

“We’re doing that,” Kenny said. “I have to spend the night with this ape.” He elbowed Doc. Doc didn’t respond.

“That’s a start,” I said. “But it’s got me thinking, if Marlowe were playing offense, what would he do?”

“First thing: gather intel,” Doc said.

“Exactly,” I said. “Spoken like a true army warrior. Gather intelligence. And how would he do it?”

“Surveillance,” he said. “Monitoring.”

“Again, my thoughts exactly, my large Apache friend. Surveillance and monitoring. That being the case, before we do anything else, particularly before we have a strategy meeting in the conference room where we spill out everything we know, I think we should sweep the room for bugs. Actually, I think we should sweep the whole office for bugs. Maybe, in addition to looking for the key, Marlowe’s goons were bugging our office when I walked in on them. Anyway, it’d be nice to know that our conversation’s secure.”

I looked at them. Everyone was serious now. “Kenny, you’ve got the electronic sweepers, right?”

He nodded. “Two of them.”

“Good. One for you; one for Doc. You guys get started. Everyone else, visual search. We’ll start in the lobby and work our way back. Try to keep the conversation normal, but reveal nothing until we know we’re clean. Got it?”

Everyone nodded again.

“Good. Let’s do it.”

* * * *

Our office isn’t that big. An hour later, the search was done, and we were confident that the office was clean. Doc and Kenny’d swept every ceiling, wall, desk, and shelf with their electronic sniffers. They’d found nothing. The rest of us—me, Toni, Richard, and Bobby—had visually checked under desks, under tables, in the lamps, behind the pictures—everywhere. We also found nothing.

“I think we’re secure,” I said as we settled in the conference room. “We’ve done a pretty thorough electronic sweep and a reasonably thorough visual search. They could still be tapping our phones, but they can do that remotely—we’d never even see it in here. So be careful what you say on the office landlines. Kenny, can they tap our cell phones? They’re digital, right?”

“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “They can be tapped. We should use the prepaid cell phones.”

I nodded. “Good idea. I was just in the safe last week.” I said. “I think we have a few prepaid phones left in there, right?”

“I think there should be four left,” he said.

“Good. Go get ’em and hand out one to me, one to Toni, one to Richard, and keep one for you and Doc to share. Make sure all the numbers are programmed in.”

“Okay.”

He went to get the phones.

“Let’s think,” I said while he was gone. “What other purpose might these guys have had in our office?”

“Might not be another purpose,” Doc said. “They might have simply wanted the device and the key.”

“They didn’t know it at the time, but they weren’t going to get the key,” I said. “It’s not even here.”

“What about the Starfire Protocol box?” Toni asked.

“Presumably, they already have one,” I said. “They probably have the one that ACS is supposed to have. I imagine Holly probably gave it to them.”

“Maybe,” Toni said. “Or maybe not. If Holly told them we have one, maybe they just figured that since they were going to break in to take the key, they may as well take the other box, too.”

“Could be,” I said. “But after they looked around and didn’t see it, they’d have to figure we had it in the safe. And they’d figure the key was probably with it. But the problem was, they weren’t looking in the safe. I found them looking in my filing cabinet.”

“Any way they might have already checked out the safe?” Toni asked. “Maybe they already looked inside and decided the key wasn’t there?”

“The only way they would’ve been able to get into that safe without leaving signs of visible damage is if they had the combination,” Richard said. “And I was just in the workroom—I didn’t see any signs of damage or even tampering on the safe. That’s the good news. Unfortunately, the bad news, of course, is that there are several ways they can gain access to the combination. They can use birthdays, anniversaries, and the like. Those are the most common combinations.”

“We’re good there,” I said. “I just reset the combination last week, and it’s completely random.”

“That’s good. And since you’ve recently reset the combination, that eliminates another way to figure it out. If you don’t change combinations, a crook can sometimes look at the digital keypad and see the wear patterns on the numbers. Knowing the numbers greatly reduces the number of potential combinations they’d have to try in order to gain access. But far and away the most common method used is simply to look around people’s desks and see where someone’s written down the combination—especially if it’s changed often. Happens all the time.”

“Who’d be dumb enough to do something like that?” I said.

At that moment, Kenny walked in carrying the cell phones. “Forgot you changed the combination,” he said. “Had to go to my desk to get it.”

Everyone turned to look at him. He froze.

“What?”

“The combination for the safe is on your desk?”

“Well,” he said slowly, “not really on my desk. It’s on a card in my top drawer.”

I looked at Richard.

He nodded. “See? That’d probably work just fine,” he said.

I turned back to Kenny. “Please tell me that the Starfire Protocol box is still in the safe.”

“Yeah, it is,” he said, relieved. “Relax.”

“You’re sure?” I said.

“Yeah. I had to move it to get to the cell phones.”

“Good,” I said. Then I thought for a second about what he’d said.

“Wait a second,” I said. “Say what you just said again.”

“I said it’s in there,” he said.

“No, the other part.”

“I said I had to move the box to get to the cell phones.”

“What do you mean, ‘move it’?” I asked.

He looked confused. “The Starfire box was on the middle shelf, in the front. The cell phones were on the same shelf, but behind it. I had to move the Starfire box to reach the phones.”

I thought about this for a second.

“Has anyone been in the safe in the last few days? Since last Monday?”

Everyone shook their heads no.

“That’s pretty funny then,” I said. “When I put the Starfire box in the safe, I was careful to put it at the
back
of the middle shelf, with the cell phones in front of it. I kind of wanted to hide it. Now, you’re saying that the box was in
front
of the cell phones. How’d it get there?”

“Maybe it’s trying to escape,” Doc said.

“Yeah, maybe,” I said. “Why would someone find the combination, open the safe, and not take the Starfire Protocol box? In fact, the only thing they do is move the box from the back of the shelf to the front of the shelf? What the hell kind of sense does that make?”

“Maybe they forgot where it went while they were looking for the key,” Richard offered. “Or maybe you interrupted them and distracted them from putting it back into its original position when you crashed their party.”

“Maybe it’s a different box?” Toni said. “Maybe they swapped it out and left us with a real modem instead of the Starfire protocol.”

I thought about this for a second, and then I started getting worried. Maybe that third guy wasn’t in the conference room when I walked past him the other night. Maybe he’d been in the workroom opening the safe.

“Kenny, go get the Starfire box. Let’s have a look at it.” He started to leave. “And Kenny?”

He paused. “Yeah?”

“Bring me your card with the combination on it, please.”

* * * *

Kenny returned a couple of minutes later with the Starfire box. He handed it to me.

“Here’s the card, boss,” he said, handing it over and looking sheepish. “I screwed up again, didn’t I?”

“No harm, no foul,” I said. “We learn as we go, right folks?”

Everyone nodded.

“Let’s have a look at this thing,” I said, holding up the Starfire box and examining it. I twisted it and looked at it from different angles. “Looks like the same box I put into the safe last week.”

“How can you tell that just by looking at it?” Toni asked. “One blue plastic box looks pretty much like the next blue plastic box, doesn’t it?”