Total Control (60 page)

"Liz, I owe you an apology. I've been letting this case get to me a little bit and I took it out on you. I was out of line and I'm sorry."

Liz smiled. "Apology accepted. We're all under pressure. What's up?"

"I need your resident computer expert skills. What do you know about computer tape backup systems?"

"Funny you should ask. My boyfriend's a trial lawyer and he was just telling me the other day it's the hottest topic in the legal sector right now."

"Why's that?"

"Well, tape backups are potentially discoverable in litigation. For example, an employee writes an interoffice memo or e-mail that contains damaging information about the company. The employee later erases the e-mail and destroys all hard copies of the memo. You'd think it was gone for good, right? Nope, because with tape backup, the system might well have saved it before it was erased. And under the rules of discovery, they may have to turn it over to the other side.

My boyfriend's firm advises clients that with documents created via computer, if you don't want someone else to ever read it, then don't create it."

"Hmmm." Sawyer thumbed through the papers in front of him.

"Good thing I still opt for invisible ink."

"You're a relic, Lee, but at least you're a nice relic."

"Okay, Professor Liz, I've got another one for you." Sawyer read her the password.

"That's a pretty good password, isn't it, Liz?"

"Actually, it's not."

"What?" That was the absolute last response Sawyer had expected to hear.

"It's so long that it would be easy to forget a portion of it or otherwise get it incorrect. Or if you were communicating it to someone else orally, they could easily get it wrong in the transmission, transpose a number, that sort of thing."

"But because it's so long, it wouldn't be capable of being broken, right? I thought that was the beauty of it."

"Certainly. However, you don't have to use all those numbers to accomplish that goal. Ten would've been ample for most purposes.

With fifteen numbers you're pretty much invulnerable."

"But these days you've got computers that could crank those combos through."

"With fifteen numbers you're looking at well over a trillion combos and most encryption packages come with a shut-down feature if too many combos are tried at one time. Even if it didn't have the shut-down feature, the fastest computer in the world doing a numbers crunch still wouldn't pop this password because the presence and placement of those decimal points make the possible combinations so high that a traditional brute-force assault wouldn't work."

"So you're saying--"

"I'm saying whoever put together this password went way overboard.

The negatives far outweigh its imperviousness to being cracked. It simply didn't need to be this complex to avoid being penetrated. Maybe whoever put it together was a novice about computers."

Sawyer shook his head. "I think this person knew exactly what he was doing."

"Well, then it wasn't solely for protection purposes."

"What else could it be?"

"I'm not sure, Lee. I've never seen one like this before."

Sawyer didn't say anything.

"Anything else?"

"What? Uh, no, Liz, that's it." Sawyer sounded very depressed.

"I'm sorry if I wasn't much help."

"No, you were. You gave me a lot to think about. Thanks, Liz."

He brightened. "Hey, I owe you a lunch, okay?"

"I'm going to hold you to that one and this time I get to pick the place."

"Fine, only make sure they take the Exxon card. That's about the only plastic I have left."

"You really know how to show a girl a good time, Lee."

Sawyer hung up and looked down at the password again. If half of what he had heard about Jason Archer's mental prowess was true, then the complexity of the password had been no accident.

He looked at the numbers again. It was driving him nuts, but he couldn't shake the feeling that they somehow seemed familiar. He poured himself another cup of coffee, took out a scratch piece of paper and started doodling, a habit that helped him think. This case seemed to have been with him for years. With a start he looked at the date on the e-mail message Archer had sent his wife: 95-11-19.

He wrote the numbers down on the scratch paper: 95-11-19. He smiled. Figures a computer would kick it out like that, more confusing than anything else. Then he found himself staring at the numbers more intently. His smile faded. He quickly wrote them down another way: 95/11/19 then, finally, 951119. He quickly scribbled again, made a mistake, scratched it out and kept going.

He looked at the finished product: 599111.

Sawyer's face turned whiter than the paper he was writing on.

Backwards. He read the e-mail from Jason Archer again. All backwards, Archer had said. But why? If Archer were under so much pressure that he had mistyped the address and not finished the message, why take the time to type two phrases--"all wrong" and "all backwards"--if they meant the same thing? The truth suddenly dawned on Sawyer: unless the two phrases had entirely different meanings, both quite literal. He looked at the numbers comprising the password one more time and then started to write furiously.

After several mistakes he finally finished. He numbly drained the last of his coffee as he took in the numbers in their true (unback-ward) order: 12-19-90, 2-28-91, 9-26-92, 11-15-92 and 4-16-93.

Archer had been very precise in his selection of passwords. It had actually been a clue within the password itself. Sawyer didn't need to consult his notes. He knew what the numbers represented. He took a deep breath.

The calendar dates of the five times Arthur Lieberman had changed interest rates on his own. The five times somebody out there had made enough money to buy a country or maybe lost that much.

Sawyer's question had finally been answered. He had one case, not two. There was a connection between Jason and Lieberman. But what was it? Another thought struck him. Edward Page had told Sidney he hadn't been following Jason Archer at the airport. The other person he could have been dogging was Lieberman. Page could have been shadowing the Fed chairman and walked right into Archer's switch. But why follow Lieberman? With a scowl, Sawyer finally put the message aside and looked at the videocassette recording of Archer's exchange at the warehouse, which was sitting on the table. If Sidney was right about Brophy knowing far more than Jason Archer, what the hell had been passed off in that warehouse?

Could that be the connection to Arthur Lieberman? He hadn't looked at the tape in a while. He decided to fix that oversight right now.

He popped the tape in a VCR that rested under a large-screen TV in one corner of the room. He poured some more coffee and hit the control; the tape started. He watched the scene twice through. Then he watched it a third time, in slow motion. A frown spread over his features. When he had watched the tape for the very first time in Hardy's off'ice, something had made him frown then too. What the hell was it? He rewound the tape again and then hit the start button.

Jason and the other man were waiting, Jason's briefcase was visible.

The knock on the door, the other men came in. The old guy, the other two in sunglasses. Real cute. Sawyer looked at the two burly men again. They looked oddly familiar, but he couldn't...

He shook his head and continued to watch. Here came the exchange, Jason looking extremely nervous. Then the plane going over. The warehouse was on a flight path to the airport, he had learned. Everyone in the room looked up at the thundering sound. Sawyer jerked so hard he spilled most of his coffee on his shirt. Only this time it wasn't from the sound of the plane.

"Holy shit!" He froze the tape. Then he planted his face a bare inch from the screen. He grabbed the phone. "Liz, I need your magic, and this time, Professor, it'll be dinner." He quickly told her what he wanted.

It took Sawyer two minutes, running fiat out, to reach the lab.

The equipment was all set up, a smiling Liz standing next to it.

Sawyer, puffed hard, handed her the tape, which she put into another VCR. She sat down at a control panel and the tape began to play. The screen it appeared on was a good sixty inches across.

"Okay, okay, get ready, Liz. There! Right there!" Sawyer almost jumped off the floor in his excitement.

Liz froze the tape and then hit some buttons on her panel. The human figures on the screen grew until they spanned the whole screen. There was only one person Sawyer was looking at. "Liz, can you blow this part up right here?" His thick finger stabbed at a specific section of the screen. Liz did as he asked.

Sawyer shook his head in silent amazement. Liz joined him in looking at the startling scene. She looked up at him. "You were right, Lee. What does it mean?"

Sawyer stared at the man who had identified himself to Jason Archer as Anthony DePazza on that fateful November morning in drizzly Seattle. More specifically, Sawyer zeroed in on DePazza's neck, which was clearly visible, since he had jerked his head up when the plane had gone over. In fact, Sawyer and Liz were both staring at a clear break in the neckline, real and false skin.

"I'm not sure, Liz. But why the hell is the guy with Archer wearing some sort of a disguise?"

Liz stared wistfully at the screen. "I used to be into that when I was a thespian in college."

"Into what?"

"You know, costumes, makeup, masks. For when we put on a performance.

I'll have you know I was one wicked Lady Macbeth."

Sawyer looked at the screen, his mouth wide open as the word she had just uttered pounded through his head: Performance?

Chewing on this new information, Sawyer hustled back to the conference room. Ray Jackson was sitting there with several documents in his hand, which he waved at his partner. "By fax from Charles Tiedman. Page's handwriting samples. I've got copies of the letters I found in Lieberman's apartment. I'm no expert, but I think we've got a match."

Sawyer sat down and looked over the letters comparing the writing.

"I agree with you, Ray, but get the lab to give us a definite."

"Right." Jackson started off to perform that task, but Sawyer abruptly stopped him. "Hey, Ray, let me look at those letters one more time."

Jackson handed them over.

Sawyer only really wanted to look at one of them. The letterhead was impressive: Columbia University Alumni Association. Tiedman hadn't mentioned that Steven Page had attended Columbia. Page had evidently, at some point, been active in alumni affairs. Sawyer did some rough arithmetic in his head. Steven Page was twenty-eight when he had died five years ago. That would make him thirty-three or thirty-four today, depending on his birthdate. So he probably would have been a 1984 graduate. Another thought suddenly flared into Sawyer's head.

"Go ahead, Ray. I've got some calls to make."

After Jackson went off with the documents, Sawyer dialed information and got the number for Columbia University's information office. Within a couple of minutes he got through. He was told that Steven Page had indeed been a 1984 graduate of the university, in fact a magna cum laude graduate. Sawyer looked down at his hands as he prepared to ask his next question. Every finger was quivering. He did his best to keep his emotions under control as he waited for the woman on the other end of the line to consult her records. Yes, Sawyer was told. The other student was also an '84 grad; indeed, this one had graduated summa cum laude. Quite impressive, the voice said, to achieve that at Columbia. He asked another question and was told he would have to talk to Student Housing for the answer. He waited, his nerves humming with electricity. When he finally got someone at Student Housing, the question was answered within a minute. Sawyer quietly thanked the person for his help and then slammed down the phone. The veteran FBI agent jumped out of his chair and yelled "Fucking bingo!" to the empty room. Under the circumstances, Sawyer's excitement was quite natural.

Quentin Rowe was also a 1984 graduate of Columbia University.

And, far more importantly, Steven Page and Quentin Rowe had shared the same residence during their last two years in college.

When it occurred to Sawyer a few seconds later why the two guys in sunglasses on the videotape looked so familiar, his happiness quickly faded into complete disbelief. There was just no damned way. But, yes, it did make sense. Particularly if you looked at it for what it was: a performance, all a sham. He picked up the phone. He had to find Sidney Archer as fast as possible and he knew where he wanted to start looking..Jesus, Joseph, Mary, has this case just taken one big U-turn, he thought.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

Traveling in a rental car, Mrs. Patterson and Amy were on their way to Boston, where they would stay for a few days. Despite arguing about it until the early morning hours, Sidney had been unable to persuade her father to accompany them. He had sat up all night in the motel room cleaning every speck of dirt and grit from his Remington twelve-gauge, his jaw clenched tight and his eyes staring straight ahead as Sidney had marched back and forth in front of him pleading her case.

"You know you really are impossible, Dad!" She said this as they were heading back toward Bell Harbor in her father's car; the battered Land Rover had been towed to a service shop for repairs. She breathed a quiet sigh of relief, though, as she leaned back against the seat. Right now she didn't want to be alone.

Her father looked stubbornly out the window. Whoever was after his daughter would have to kill him in order to get to her. Ghosts and bogeymen beware: Papa was back.

The white van trailing them was a good half mile behind and yet had no trouble mirroring the Cadillac's movements. One of the eight men in the van was not in particularly high spirits. "First you let Archer send an e-mail and then you let his wife get away. I can't believe this shit." Richard Lucas shook his head and angrily eyed Kenneth Scales, who sat beside him. His mouth and forearm were heavily bandaged and his nose, although reset by his own hands, was crimson-red and swollen.