Termination Orders (30 page)

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Authors: Leo J. Maloney

BOOK: Termination Orders
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C
HAPTER
46
M
organ was up most of the night going over in excruciating detail everything that had happened since Eric Plante visited him at his home. Earlier that evening, they had let him contact Jenny and Alex, who had been staying at an out-of-the-way motel in Pennsylvania. There was no harm in disclosing their location at this point and no reason to prolong their anxiety and discomfort. Two agents were sent to pick them up. Morgan would have liked to go himself, but they wouldn’t let him leave. He also told them where to collect Natasha’s body.
At about 3:00
A.M.
, they gave him some fresh clothes, a cot, and an electronic ankle monitor, the kind used for people under house arrest. He resented being treated like a prisoner, but it was no use arguing with them. Then they told him to get a few hours’ sleep. He couldn’t, so he lay on his cot, still in his undershirt and pants, thinking about the chip he had taken from Natasha. They had taken it on his arrest, but promised to give it to Lowry for analysis.
“I’ve seen this before,” said Lowry the next morning, turning the chip over in his hand. He had also been kept overnight but had managed to find a shower and a change of clothes. They were now in his office, which was about as big as a broom closet and was plastered with comic strips clipped from the newspaper. “Data storage, but far from your garden variety USB flash drive.”
“So what can we expect to see here?” Morgan asked.
“On a chip like this? The more advanced ones can store upward of one terabyte of data.”
“Which means?” asked Morgan.
“Which means she could have put everything on there. Documents, recordings, video. You can fit more than a hundred DVDs’ worth of video in a terabyte. I assume this was her insurance, something to keep the people she works for from disposing of her. So there might be some seriously damning evidence in here. This might be everything we need. To put the final nail in Kline’s coffin
and
get Nickerson.”
Then this was it. This little thing could put an end to this whole situation for good.
“It’s got some impressive hardware-based encryption,” Lowry continued. “Very difficult to crack.”
“Can you do it?”
A sly smile played on Lowry’s face. “We’ll have to brute-force it. Luckily, we have just the tool for the job.”
“How long will it take to decrypt it?”
“On your average home PC? About thirty years.”
“Thirty
years
?”
“Yeah,” said Lowry. “But don’t worry. In our machine, it shouldn’t take more than a couple of days. I just have to log it in, and we’ll get it started.”
“Log it in?” asked Morgan. “You mean, tell them about it?”
“There’s no way I can keep this a secret, Cobra. I’m here, but I’m on thin ice. They’re watching my ass so closely, they’ll know if I get a wedgie before I do.”
“Lowry—”
“What are you afraid of, anyway? It’s over already, Cobra. Relax. Everything will be fine.”
 
 
Jeffrey Boyle was sitting at his desk when his personal assistant announced that Julia Carr was there to see him.
“Send her in.”
Carr walked into the office, her confident façade cracking around the edges.
“I’ve been working on getting up to speed on this Cobra/Cougar situation,” she said. “It’s a lot to take in. We’re looking at a government contractor gone rogue—it’s the only term I can use to describe it—coupled with a mole in the CIA and—get this—a senator mastermind. Edgar Nickerson.”
Boyle looked at her, deep in thought. “Do they have the evidence to back up all of this?”
“Oh, there’s no doubt Acevedo International is into some serious illegal activity,” she said. “We’re talking treason, and they have the surveillance photos to prove it. Lawyers might get the higher-ups off, but if we allow this to get out, the company’s finished when it comes to government contracts.”
Boyle nodded. “And what about the link with Nickerson?”
“They’ve got nothing conclusive to show for it, although they seem thoroughly convinced.”
“I see. Well, keep me posted, Julia. This situation even now calls for special attention. Remember, I want you to oversee this personally. Nobody else gets the full picture, and none of this information leaves this department. And I want to be informed of any new developments. You understand?”
“There is one thing, sir,” she said. “Cobra apparently took a memory chip of some sort from Natasha Vasiliyevna’s corpse.”
Boyle looked at her with rapt attention. “What was on it?”
“We don’t know,” said Carr. “Apparently, it’s got some serious encryption. But we have Lowry looking at it, and he says cracking it will be a real intelligence coup.”
He frowned. “I see. How long until he is done decrypting it?”
“He says not for a few days, sir.”
“Good,” he said. But she didn’t move. “Anything else?”
“Well, sir, I thought I might tell you that Cobra’s wife and daughter are about to arrive at headquarters. Within the next”—she checked her watch—“fifteen minutes.”
“Thank you for letting me know, Julia. Is that all?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then, if you’ll excuse me, I need to report to the Director.”
She took her leave and shut the door behind her. Boyle picked up the phone. “Jordan? Clear my schedule. I’m going to be absent from the office for the rest of the day.”
“But sir, you have a conference call with the Director of National Intelligence at three.”
“Tell him I’m up to my neck. Reschedule it for tomorrow,” he said. “You know the drill.” He put the phone back into its cradle. Then he got up, picked up his briefcase, and walked out the door.
 
 
“I’ll take over from here,” said Boyle to the two agents accompanying the Morgans. Then he turned his attention to the wife, whom he knew only from her pictures in Cobra’s file. Jenny Morgan. She was younger in the photos, but her beauty had aged well. What the pictures hadn’t shown was the innocent gullibility betrayed by her eyes, even while her body language showed tension and mistrust.
“Mrs. Morgan,” he said, extending his hand to her. “My name is Jeffrey Boyle, and I’m director of the National Clandestine Service.”
“Nice to meet you,” said Mrs. Morgan, not entirely convincingly.
“And this must be Alexandra,” he said, looking at the girl. She had her mother’s looks, but there was definitely something of Cobra in her. Young as she was, she sported a distinct fortitude and shrewdness.
“Please accept my sincere apology, Mrs. Morgan, and Miss,” he added, nodding to Alex, “for our involvement in this affair. We were deceived by one of our own, and that led to some bad decisions. I am very sorry.” Jenny looked at him without friendliness in her eyes. “I’m afraid I need to follow that up with a request,” he said. “I’d like you to answer a few questions about the events of the past two weeks.”
“I’d like to see my husband first,” replied Jenny.
“That will be arranged. But he isn’t here right now. We put him up at a hotel a few miles away. Needless to say, your husband can use some rest.”
“Then we’ll go right to him,” said Jenny.
“I’m sorry, but I thought this was explained to you. We will have to interview you right away. We have to ask you to remain here at headquarters for a few hours.”
“A few
hours
? I’m not going to wait that long to see my husband, Mr. Boyle.”
“It’s important for us to determine everything that happened as soon and in as much detail as possible. I promise you that we’ll get you to your husband as soon as we’re finished.”
“Mr. Boyle—” began Jenny.
“Mom,” interrupted Alex, touching her arm, “it’s fine. Let’s just do this and be done with it.”
Jenny sighed. “I suppose that would be all right, if you feel up to it,” she said uneasily. “Let’s go, then.”
“I’m afraid you can’t be together for this,” he said. “We need to interview you separately. It will give us a more accurate picture of what happened.”
“Frankly, Mr. Boyle, I don’t care what picture you get. My daughter is a minor, and I’m not leaving her side,” she said, instinctively moving between him and Alex.
“What if we were to take her directly to see your husband?” said Boyle. “I will personally see to it that your daughter gets there safely. You have the word of the director of the NCS.”
“With all due respect,” said Jenny, “I don’t think your word is worth very much to me right now.”
“Mom,” Alex interjected, “it’s okay. I’ll go with him.”
“But, Alex—”
“I appreciate it, Mom, but I’ll be fine.” Jenny looked at her daughter, her forehead lined with concern. “Really. Let’s just get it over with, okay?”
“You are a brave young woman,” said Boyle. “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure that she gets to your husband right away. I will go personally, as a small token of apology. We do appreciate your cooperation, Mrs. Morgan. Now please, Miss Morgan, if you would come with me, I’ll take you to your father, myself. Hopefully it will help me make amends to him.”
As Jenny made her way through security, Boyle escorted Alex out of the building, into the chilly, bright sunshine outside.
“Is it just you?” she asked. “No . . . guards or anyone?”
He chuckled. “Of course not. You’re not my prisoner, are you?”
They walked in silence for a few seconds, and then Boyle spoke again, asking tentatively, “How are you feeling, Miss Morgan? Eager to see your father, I’m sure.”
“Yeah,” she said sullenly, looking away. Boyle glared at her, unseen. In another situation, he might be tempted to teach her a lesson in manners.
“He’s certainly eager to see you.”
“I know he is,” she said.
“It must be difficult for you,” he said. “This whole situation. How your father’s work put you into danger.”
“
You
put me into danger,” she said.
The cheek!
“And I can only apologize for that. This is the car here,” said Boyle, stopping at a navy blue Mercedes. He unlocked it with the remote on his key chain and held open the passenger door for her. “But still,” he continued, as he got into the driver’s seat and buckled in. “I can’t imagine it’s easy for you, finding out about his secret life like this.”
“My father loves me,” she said stiffly.
“Oh, I’m counting on it,” he said, and he turned the ignition key.
She shifted uncomfortably in the passenger’s seat as the car rolled out.
 
 
After he finally received the required clearance to walk around freely, Morgan joined Lowry in his office, where the analyst was huddled in a chair, his face inches from the screen.
“Sit down, Cobra,” he said, without looking away from the monitor. “I haven’t started the brute-force decryption yet, but so far, this isn’t presenting any challenges beyond what I expected. I suspect the protections on this thing go a little beyond encryption, but it’s nothing we can’t get around.”
“It’s all Greek to me,” said Morgan. “But I’ll trust that everything you’re saying makes sense.”
“God, I need an energy drink,” said Lowry. “Something for you, Cobra?”
“Nah,” he said distractedly, “I’m good.”
“Okay, then, I’ll be right back. You, behave. Oh, also, the bigwigs said they might need you soon, and they know you’re out here. So if the phone rings, pick it up. It might be for you.”
Morgan waited to sit at the computer until Lowry’s footsteps faded away. He had been hoping for some time alone with this thing ever since he was brought to headquarters. Lowry had left the code-cracking program open and ready to begin. But Morgan had a hunch. It didn’t take long for him to find a field labeled
ENTER PASSWORD.
His hands hovered over the keyboard.
If she had wanted the drive to be accessible to no one but herself, the password would be a random string of letters, numbers, and symbols, and guesswork would be a waste of time. But Morgan knew that this drive wasn’t only for her. It was insurance, something that she would want others to be able to access if she died. She had taken it out to give it to him as her last living act. Natasha had wanted him to have it. He tried to put himself in her situation. If he were giving this to someone as the last thing he did on this earth, he would damn well want to make sure they had the password. And the easiest way to do that would be . . .
To tell them. Of course. It was obvious; how could he have missed it? He typed in
andrei
, but he knew it was too short without even trying. But that, of course, wasn’t his full name. He carefully typed:
andrei-vasiliyevich
. He hit the Enter key. He fully expected an error message, but instead, a window opened with a long list of folders, each with a separate date on it. He was in.

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