The Art of War: A Novel (36 page)

“That’s him,” I said. “Who is he?”

“His car is registered to Jerry Chu. Wears Virginia plates. He transferred the registration from Massachusetts eighteen months ago. He used to work for Whitewater Encryption Systems. Born in California to Chinese immigrant parents, educated at Cal Poly. Whitewater was the fifth high-tech company he worked for. The personnel department there told the local police he resigned eighteen months ago. He left no forwarding address.”

“Encryption systems,” I mused.

“Yeah.”

“This guy got a bank account?”

“At least one, at the Potomac Valley Bank.”

“Safety deposit box?”

“No.”

“Can I use my cell without screwing you up?”

“Go ahead.”

I called Sarah Houston and kept it on a high professional plane. “Tommy. I have a question. Ever hear of Whitewater Encryption Systems?”

“Yes.”

“Talk to me.”

“They signed a contract a while back with Los Alamos National Laboratory to commercialize a new technology the wizards thought up. Supposedly it took the geniuses twenty years to develop. The tech harnesses the quantum properties of light to generate truly random numbers to encrypt data and messages. Not a prime number or square root of something. Quantum mechanics. Einstein would be impressed. In theory, using their technology, they can generate unbreakable crypto codes.”

“How about in practical terms?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen one.”

“Why didn’t NSA glom onto this and classify it?”

“Obviously they didn’t want it. Perhaps because they didn’t invent it. I don’t know. You’d have to ask them, and of course, they won’t answer.”

“Thanks,” I said, and started to hang up.
Very
professional.

“What do you want for dinner tonight?” she said.

That caught me a little off guard. I thought we had just had a one-night stand. But—

“Pizza?” I suggested.

“Ugh. Chinese.”

“You got it.”

I hung up. “Got any coffee?” I asked the tech team, who had pretended they weren’t listening. Good guys. The coffee was from a thermos, and still warm. I drank it black.

I watched people come and go. Most went out the front of the building, of course, but the folks who came home late last night and couldn’t find parking in front went out the back. Most of them seemed to be young professionals and were gone by nine in the morning. Then things really slowed down.

I was working a crossword puzzle in the
Post
at noon when Nate got a phone call. He listened a bit, then grunted and hung up. “He went out the front three minutes ago. Got in his car and drove away.”

I got out my cell phone. “Give me your cell number.” He did so, and I entered it. “Keep him out until I come out or call you.”

“Sure.”

I donned my jacket and put on my latex gloves. “The fire department has been briefed?”

“Of course.”

I got out of the van, walked around the front of the vehicle and headed for the back entrance to the building. The day was not pleasant—a low overcast and a wet cold wind that was cutting on exposed flesh. I let myself in with a pass card the FBI had supplied and headed for the elevator. Was lifted all the way to the top floor. I didn’t see anyone. So I took a smoke grenade out of my pocket, pulled the pin and tossed it down the corridor.

Then I took the elevator down to the second floor. There was a fire alarm mounted on the wall by the elevator. I broke the glass and pulled it. It went off with a noise loud enough to wake the almost dead.

I stood there a moment watching people trickling from the apartments. A couple of them got in the elevator, but it was disabled, so they used the stairs. I waited a few moments to ensure that everyone who was leaving was out, then went to work on the lock on 209. It only took two minutes; I knew what kind of lock it was and had the right picks. As I was working I heard the first fire siren.

I walked in, closed the door behind me and ensured it locked, and stood surveying the place, memorizing how the room looked, where everything was. It was automatic. The tough part was I didn’t know what I was looking for. Something that tied Mr. Chu to espionage. What it might be I had no idea. And it might not be here, or I might not recognize it if I saw it. Sort of like hunting Easter eggs without knowing an egg from a rock. On the other hand, I had to make Chu believe no one had been in here. It was a nice problem. The good news was I had as much time as I needed. The fire department would keep everyone out of the building until I locked up and left.

I looked at the bedroom, the bathroom, the closets. This apartment was a mirror image of Zoe Kerry’s. A desk in the bedroom with a laptop on it. A flat-screen television made in Korea. A wire for charging his cell phone on the nightstand beside the bed. No landline phone.

Remembering the recently departed Miss Kerry, the first thing I did was look under the bed. Chu didn’t vacuum under there, apparently. I used a flashlight to examine the visible springs underneath and gave it a pass.

The way I figured it, if there was anything in this apartment to find, it would be something innocuous. The truth is, most spies don’t keep anything, not a scrap of paper or a jar of invisible ink or a list of drops or code words … nothing that would indicate they are not who they say they are. Everything they need is in their heads. What I needed to establish was whether there was any physical thing here the FBI would like their experts to look at, and if so, what. If there was, they could get an arrest warrant and search warrant and remove Mr. Chu from the board. On the other hand, if he was indeed the control for a watcher in Norfolk, removing him from the board would take a serious gambler. Jake Grafton was that kind of guy, but I doubted if Harry Estep, the interim FBI director, was, and I suspected the folks at the White House didn’t have that kind of guts. So I was sent to look. Everyone would be relieved if I found nothing. Including me. Especially me. Postpone the evil day.

I started looking. For something. Anything. I was careful, making sure that everything was put back as it was when I arrived. First I inspected the ceiling. It was plasterboard. The light fixtures would need attention. I examined the chairs to see if they had been used as stepladders. Apparently not. I looked at the bottoms. I decided to save the light fixtures for last, if I didn’t find anything.

I went through the closet, looked in every pocket, took out the drawers inspected and repacked them, looked in the pillow cases, in the couch. Checked the cushions, unzipped the coverings, zipped them back up, examined the couch, lifted one end and looked at the bottom. Checked the pictures on the walls, which were prints of Chinese art.

Outside in the hallway I could hear the firemen as I worked. Dragging a hose, it sounded like, knocking on doors. Voices. They had been briefed not to bother with this apartment, and they didn’t.

I did the bathroom. Looked in the water closet, felt around under the rim of the commode. Looked at everything. The only thing I didn’t do was squeeze out his toothpaste. After a last look around to ensure I had left everything as it was, I moved on. The screws holding the faceplates onto the wall sockets had no marks on them.

In the bedroom I stood looking at Chu’s laptop. The hard drive held the secrets, if there were any. But dare I steal it? I went through the desk. It was almost empty. A few pencils, a notepad … I held it up to the light at an angle and looked to see if anything had left an impression. Not that I could read Chinese characters. It was clean.

No books, no magazines. How in the heck did Chu spend his day? Watching Oprah?

The television sat on the dresser near the desk, arranged so he could watch it in bed. The back of the television looked benign. I examined the cable connection, saw that it came through a splitter; one wire went to the television, and one was trapped under the computer. So that was how he got on the Internet.

He was a tech guy, an expert in crypto, I assumed. I doubted if he was Whitewater’s finance officer.

So did he have software on the computer? Doubtful. Only a fool would do that, and a fool he probably wasn’t. He had spent years stealing high-tech secrets and passing them along to Chinese intelligence. That meant a thumb drive. Some people called it a jump drive. Some device that the computer’s USB port would take.

Where the hell was it? Probably the same place as his cell phones—he supposedly had two—and that was in his pocket.

I went into the kitchen and stared at the boxes and cans of coffee. I glanced at my watch. I had been here for an hour and a half.

That was when I lost it. I dumped the ice tray from the freezer into the sink. Then the contents of the refrigerator and freezer into a garbage bag he had under the sink. I was getting frustrated. The place was too clean. It looked like a high-end hotel room, cleaned every day. Real people didn’t live like this. I knew,
knew,
that this guy was dirty and
it
was here. Somewhere.
It.
I dumped contents of the boxes in the pantry in the middle of the kitchen floor. The coffee cans.

Nothing.

I got a chair and used a kitchen knife as a screwdriver on the light fixtures. They were empty. I left them dangling.

The kitchen had linoleum as a floor covering, and the rest of the place had wall-to-wall carpet. I moved furniture and got down on my hands and knees and inspected the edges, looked for holes. Saw none. Examined the faceplates on the electric outlets.

Finally I gave up. I stood looking. I had done it all. No cell phones and no thumb drive. I glanced at my watch. Two hours and forty minutes. I got out my phone and called Nate in the van.

“Carmellini. Chu out there?”

“Yeah. Watching the fire department. The smoke stopped rolling out about two hours ago, but they are still doing hoses and stuff.”

“Grab Chu. I’m coming down.”

“Arrest him, you mean?”

“Grab him. One man on each arm. Then get his keys and search his car.”

I picked up his laptop and walked out. The door locked behind me. No one in the hallways.

They had Chu standing beside the van. He was surrounded by four agents. He saw me coming toward him carrying the computer. Our eyes locked as I walked up. This guy was probably Kerry’s control, and he had helped kill Anna. I handed the computer to an agent, spun him around and made him lean against the side of the van with his hands on it. Spread his legs.

“Am I under arrest?” he said tightly.

I began feeling him all over. The agents had frisked him for weapons, but I wanted everything in his pockets. I turned them inside out. I laid everything on the ground. The phones and thumb drive had to be on him or in his car.

And by God they were on him! A thumb drive in his left coat pocket. Three cell phones. I jerked his belt off. Made Chu take off his shoes.

“Cuff him,” I told the agents. As one of the agents bagged his personal possessions, I took the computer, thumb drive and phones into the van.

“You got something?” Nate asked.

“We’ll soon see,” I muttered. “Let me borrow your computer.”

He pointed toward it. It was already on. I slipped the thumb drive into a USB port and clicked on the icon when it appeared.

A logo came up. Under the logo were the words
Whitewater Encryption Systems
. Under that was a prompt for a password, which of course I didn’t have.

A sense of relief flooded over me.
Yes!

I managed to smile at Nate. “He had it on him,” I said.

*   *   *

When I called Jake Grafton to give him the news, he listened without a question. After I ran down he remarked, “The folks at the FBI and Justice aren’t going to like that warrantless arrest.”

“They aren’t,” I agreed.

“Why did you do it?”

“He was a neatnik. Nothing personal in the apartment. It felt like a hotel room, but with a little food and coffee. Whatever he had had to be on him.”

“Well … let’s hope what you found takes us somewhere. I’ll call Harry Estep and kiss his ass, and you give Sarah that stuff as soon as you can get here. After she’s mined it, she can pass it along to the FBI.”

“That will add to their unhappiness.”

“Everyone’s unhappy,” Grafton shot back. “All of us.”

He hung up.

*   *   *

FBI Interim Director Harry Estep had already heard about the arrest when Grafton called him.

“That son of a bitch Carmellini was just supposed to search,” Estep said bitterly.

“I know. He used his judgment and discretion, based on experience. We have Chu’s laptop, a thumb drive with an encryption system on it and three cell phones. I’ll let you know what we find, then send them over.”

“Grafton, you bastard! Counterespionage is our goddamn turf. Not to mention the two agents that traitor Zoe Kerry shot dead. I agreed to let Carmellini search because I thought he knew the rules. I should have known better. You damned people don’t play by the rules. I want that gear and I want it
right fucking now.
”

“Get a warrant,” Jake Grafton said, and dropped the phone onto the cradle.

CHAPTER
TWENTY

For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.

—Sun Tzu

When Captain H. Butler Spiers, the commanding officer of Naval Base Norfolk, got home after McKiernan’s brief he poured himself a glass of Jack Daniel’s, added one ice cube and, still wearing his coat, went out onto the enclosed porch of his quarters. The temp was about fifty, and there was a breeze. The lights of the base made the overcast glow. He lit a cigar to go with the whiskey.

He knew what he was going to do, although he had refused to admit it to himself. When he had told Admiral McKiernan he wanted leave because his daughter was going to have a baby, he had been a wee bit less than honest. His daughter lived in an apartment complex just a few blocks from the community college where her husband was a history instructor. In Norfolk.

Spiers was never going to make admiral, and he knew it. Command of NB Norfolk was the final tour of a thirty-year career that had started in minesweepers. He then went to destroyers and after commanding one had been chief of staff for an admiral. After a tour as an instructor at the War College in Newport, he became CO of the base here, which was, by the way, a major command for an officer of his rank.