Blood Line (21 page)

“I guess so.”

“Now, take your uncle’s car and go to your grandparents’ house right now,” I said. I hugged her so tight that I thought she might break. “I love you. I’m so glad you’re safe.”

“I love you, too, Dad. See you at Reuben’s.”

“See you at Reuben’s.”

I saw Zach was still in the front seat of Moore’s SUV and walked over to see what he’d found on the USB drive. He saw me coming and said rather formally, “Mr. Granger, hey.”

“What did you find, Mr. Zach?”

“Everything, if this is indeed real. We got it all. How did your wife know his password? That was pretty amazing.”

“She made an educated guess and then read his face. She watched his reactions. When she said ‘secret key,’ she knew she had it.”

“Really?”

“Now, if you’ve got everything, let’s get to it.”

“After you, sir,” he said, and then asked somewhat awkwardly, “Mr. Granger, can I ask you something?”

“Sure, Zach; what’s on your mind?”

“That stuff you said down there… was that real Indian stuff or did you make it all up?”

“The words are all real, Zach, but the act was just an act. No different from one of your computer programs. You turn on a program, and it performs a specific function to achieve a desired result.”

“So you were acting in a made-up role. Playing a part in your wife’s production.”

“To some extent, yes. Just remember that all the good lies have an element of truth to them, Zach.”

“Tom, Tom,” I could hear Valerie saying as I re-entered the old jail with Zach in tow. “Stop your crying. You need to verify your laptop data, and then you’ll be free.”

I could see Tom was trying to identify the three wet masses on his chest, but he couldn’t raise his head high enough. He finally gave up, accepting they were what he’d been told they were, and exhaled. His body went limp again.

“Fine. Where do you want to start?” Tom asked.

Taking the computer from Zach, Val said, “Let’s start at the beginning. I have a file here named DOD. Tell me about it. I’ll read along while you explain.”

There was little doubt Tom was a beaten man. I listened to his monotone telling of the story. I thought Julia’s computer-generated voices had more life than his voice had now.

“I got bored with my life and work, and I needed more money. I knew the CIA had some million-dollar DOD contracts. Now, I’m good with the computer, but I don’t have the skills to hack into the DOD. I needed help. This was where Julia came into the picture. Julia and I had been seeing each other for a few months, but I knew she was a straight arrow. She wasn’t going to do anything illegal unless she did so out of fear. I had to create an environment where Julia felt threatened, but not so threatened that she’d leave. Julia was withdrawn from her coworkers, overly shy, a loner type that made poor eye contact when she talked to people. She used her work as the excuse to never be available.

“That vulnerability is what drew me to her in the first place, and in the end, what I used to manipulate her. I started talking about my time with the task force. I told her the human trafficking stories. I introduced her to my old Army buddies, and would talk about the gang rapes with those guys while she was in the room.”

Moore began to wiggle from side to side as if he was making himself more comfortable in his restraints. He was beginning to relax. Not only that, but his tone changed. I could see Val standing on the edge of the darkness. Her face was cast in the soft glow of the flashlights. I was about to motion her to stop the interrogation when I saw her left hand was waving me off. She knew Moore was feeling emboldened. The more he talked about his control over Julia, the stronger he’d become. She wanted him to feel that way. I wanted to know why.

Moore started again. “It didn’t take too long, about a month, I’d say, before Julia was begging me to stop talking about the human trafficking conditions, and to stop bringing my old Army buddies around so much. I had her right where I wanted her. All I had to do was tell her that my old buddies thought she was real pretty and that they couldn’t stop talking about her. I told her they were into the swinger lifestyle and had asked me to bring her along for some fun.”

Moore was smiling now.

“That was all bullshit, but she bought every word. She said she’d do anything for me if I promised to keep them away from her. That was it. She was hooked. After that, all I had to do was periodically reinforce the threat by having one of the guys come over to the apartment, or if I really wanted to scare her, leave one of them alone with her. One time, I even had Travis and Briggs bump into her while she was out shopping. It was so easy. I’d given her a version of the pendant by that time, and that one had a tracking device built into it. I assume you found the transmitter and recorder inside the one she was wearing today. Anyway, she was hooked and under my thumb, as the song goes.”

That was it. Moore was all the way back. His original swaggering arrogance had returned. He tested the parameters his regained confidence gave him by asking, “Is that how you got onto us? The pendant?”

“Not how this works, Tom. You verify the information first. Then we can answer your questions,” Valerie said.

“Could you at least allow me to blink my eyes?”

“Remove the tape,” Valerie ordered.

Ryan appeared out of the shadows and removed the tape from Moore’s eyelids. Why was Valerie giving into a demand? I would never have given an inch until I had all that I wanted from him, but Valerie was working another angle. Was she setting Moore up for something else?

“Okay, where was I?” Moore asked, and then remembered his place, “Right, with Julia hooked, I started looking for a way to target in on a big military contract. We spent a couple of months searching the DOD database for anything with a huge price tag. Breaching the security on the DOD system wasn’t easy by any stretch of the imagination, but I have to admit, Julia made it look easy. I don’t know how she got in or how she covered her tracks, so don’t ask me, ask her. All I know is it took her about eight hours one Sunday, and we were in. It wasn’t long after that I got onto this blimp deal. Yeah, that’s right. The DOD had contracted for a blimp to be produced for aerial surveillance in Afghanistan. The damn thing was longer than a football field. I was about to jump on this blimp project, because the DOD was paying $30 million for it, but before I could act, the DOD pulled the plug. They sold the damn thing back to the company that made it for $300,000. I was livid. The waste of taxpayer money was enough to upset anyone, but the fact that I’d missed a golden opportunity to make a fortune was what really incensed me. I went back to the drawing board.

“And then I found it. I remember it was a Sunday afternoon last June. I literally stumbled across this little family business in Georgia. I read the DOD file on INESCO and thought it was too good to be true. I mean, INESCO is just a mom and pop outfit with fifty employees. I showed Julia what I’d found. We got so excited that we called in sick the next few days so we could research INESCO. When we discovered INESCO had a relationship with NASA, we hacked NASA to find out what you’d done for them. But that relationship was so long ago that it was dead end.

“So, we kept on searching through countless files. I was ready to give up. Honestly, I was, and then we found it. We found DOD code 97CLK after opening hundreds of files and reading hundreds of dead ends. File 97CLK was the jackpot. The DOD classified the project as next generation stealth and a threat to national security. Project 97CLK was the closest thing to cloaking an object the DOD had ever seen. The DOD was excited, but their internal memorandum urged caution and asked to proceed with the typical approval and procurement process so as not to draw unwanted attention to the project. Idiots, I thought at the time, because the normal approval process could take up to ten months or a year. I didn’t want to wait that long to get paid. That’s when I changed my plan. I decided to steal the project and sell it to the highest bidder.”

“So far, so good, Tom. Tell me about the buyer.”

“No, I want you to hear it all. I want you to know everything. You see, I called Porter, Travis, and Briggs. I brought them up to speed and sent them down here to Georgia. They started their recon a year ago. None of you dopes knew it was happening. They worked night and day for a couple of weeks, looking for a way to steal the technology. When they determined they couldn’t steal it, they zeroed in on Anderson. The head of R&D for INESCO was the most likely candidate. We decided to make him steal it for us. We ran our little scam on him. We scared the shit out of the guy. He’d have done anything we asked him to do, but I have to admit, I believed him when he said he couldn’t steal it. We put eyes and ears on him just in case he ran to the cops. We soon realized there was only one person that could give us what we wanted, and that person was you, Valerie. So the recon started all over again. We kept watching Rod and his family, but you and your family were the targets. Porter was primary. He was tasked with gathering information on family Granger. I used my CIA clearance to run background checks on you three and your extended family. Everything was proceeding just as planned. Rod had told us you, and you alone, could identify the project file. Porter had determined that your kid was your one weak spot. The background checks came back clean on you and the kid, but we had the red flag on Granger. I asked around. I made discreet inquiries and came up empty on the guy, so we didn’t worry about him.”

“The buyer. Who’s the buyer?”

Moore wasn’t having any of it. He was back in control of his emotions and the situation. “Look, if I’m spending the rest of my life in some deep dark CIA hole, then I’m telling this story my way. And another thing: you’re answering my questions when I’m finished. I want to know how you got onto us. You don’t like it? Kill me.”

The silence lay heavy in the air. No one spoke. I knew enough to know Valerie wasn’t thinking about how to respond. She’d led Moore to this point for a reason. The lights went out, but Moore didn’t scream this time. When the flashlights came back on, Ryan was holding two of them and shining them on Moore. Hodges and Franks could be seen cutting the bindings away from Moore, sitting him up and turning him around with his back now to the entrance of the old jail and me. Moore was now facing Valerie, Wakefield, Zach, and Julia, but I don’t think he could see them. The flashlights were placed on the floor in such a manner as to make the beams of light cross each other a few feet in front of Moore’s face. Moore was sitting on the floor rubbing his arms and legs, now free of their restraints.

“Porter came up with the kidnapping plan,” Moore said, “but I liked the idea. I know we made a mistake not taking Ron’s CIA past more seriously,” he added before pausing. He looked up at the group standing in front of him, and then down at his chest.

“What in the hell is this?’

“Those are damp paper towels smeared with a fake blood product called Truclot, by LUNA Corporation. The military uses Truclot to train field medics. The product resembles human blood in every way, especially smell.”

He peeled the fake bloody towels off his shirt and tossed them on the floor. Moore looked from side to side, and then behind. If he noticed me near the open cast iron door of the old jail, he didn’t show it.

“It was all an act?” he asked.

“The buyer, Tom. Tell me about the buyer,” Valerie repeated.

“But how?” he asked, and then, answering his own question, “Julia! You’re in here, Julia, aren’t you? You ran that little program on your little box and fooled me,” he said. He cupped his hands over his eyes and searched the group until he found her. “My other mistake was you. I should’ve taken it to the next step with you.”

“You’ll have plenty of time to enumerate your mistakes later. Right now, I want to know about the buyer,” Valerie demanded.

“I’m getting to it. Ease up. Tell me something; did Julia crack and spill it all for you?”

Valerie walked out of the shadows and squatted down so she was face to face with Tom.

“No, you self-righteous pig.” She dropped an earpiece on his lap before she walked away. “Julia remained loyal to you till the end. Unlike you, she never said a word. The buyer. I want to know about the buyer.”

“What is this?” he asked, holding the earpiece in the light. “It’s an earpiece. So what?”

“You wanted to know how we got onto you. That’s how. That earpiece was in my daughter’s ear you dumbass. Now, tell me about the buyer.”

Seemingly unfazed Moore asked, “Don’t you want to know the rest?”

“Fine. Go ahead. I can see you have a deep desire to hear yourself talk. So go ahead and talk, Tom.”

“Everything was in place. The plan was flawless. We take the kid and then you exchange the project associated with DOD file 97CLK for your daughter’s safe return. But the DOD screwed it all up. They moved up the approval date. They decided to fast-track the project. We had to scramble. That’s why we hired the local boys to kidnap Leecy, and not real pros. Another mistake, I admit, but in the end we accomplished the goal. We had the girl, and then I got greedy. I lost sight of the original plan. I wanted to make you, Valerie, work for me, and that clouded my judgment.”

Valerie’s laughter filled the room.

“You egomaniac. You actually believe that if not for a few mistakes, this colossal cluster-fuck of a plan of your design would’ve worked? Are you really that arrogant? Look where you are right now. Hodges and Franks have their firearms trained on you. It took me twenty minutes to get you to break. You picked an emotionally compromised woman to try and recondition. She wasn’t under your spell, Tom; she was reliving a past event. But you, with your superior behavioral analytic skill, missed it. You thought she was responding to you. She wasn’t. I saw what Julia was going through. How do you miss a thing like that? She was only looking for a way out. I gave her one. You underestimated Granger, and didn’t even uncover one thing about my past. The shot I made in the dark from twenty-five feet away should’ve been enough to tip you to something, but it didn’t. No, and now we have your laptop. The identity of the buyer and the specifics about his bag and payment are in your notes. We know who he is. Julia’s already tracked his passport. We have his flight information. I just want you to confirm what we have, but at this point it doesn’t really matter. You’ve confirmed enough of what’s in your files for us to know the rest is accurate.

“Zach was right about you. You’re so convinced that you are the smartest person in the room that you fail to give anyone else any credit for being intelligent. That’s what screwed you, Tom, not Julia, or the mistakes you made. Because if you were as smart as you thought you were, those mistakes could’ve been overcome. But you’re not. Your exaggerated sense of self was your undoing. It was your own hubris.”

The sound of footsteps on the stone floor replaced Valerie’s words. One by one, the room began to empty. First to leave the old jail were Franks, Hodges, and Ryan. Julia and Wakefield followed them out of the room. Zach was bringing up the rear when it happened.

Moore sprang to his feet, grabbing the young MIT grad around the neck with his left arm and holding a gun to Zach’s head with his right hand.

“My hubris? What about yours?” he screamed at Valerie. “Who doesn’t disarm a prisoner? Now, I’m walking out of here. I’m driving away in one of the SUVs, or I’ll shoot him. Do you understand me?”

Wakefield spoke for the first time.

“Thanks Tom,” she said. “I wanted this to end cleanly, with no loose ends.”