The Carolina Coup: Another Rwandan Genocide? (The Jeannine Ryan Series Book 4) (13 page)

In Dillon, South Carolina, Jeannine Ryan sat at the kitchen table, hunched over her laptop.  Beside her was a stack of papers from Bill Hamm’s briefcase.  She looked up as Bill entered the kitchen.

“Bill, you’re walking on your own.  You look better.”

“I buzzed for my nurse, but she wouldn’t come.”

Jeannine handed him a glass of water and two capsules.

“I’m here now, and here are your antibiotics.”

“But I feel good.”

“Forget it.  You’re a sick puppy.  You had bacterial pneumonia from near drowning.  You have three more days of these.  You can’t stop, no matter how you feel.  Swallow them.”

Bill threw his head back and downed the pills.  Jeannine looked at his face and arms.

“Your cuts are healing OK, and the bruises are fading, not bad.”

She added.

“And hopefully the IV’s at the hospital flushed that damned Sodium thiopental out of your system.  Now maybe you’ll answer questions about the briefcase.  How about it?”

Bill went to the fridge and poured himself a glass of orange juice.

“All right, but have you heard from Wayne.  Where is he?”

“Not a word.  I don’t know where he is.”

The sound of a motor in the driveway interrupted the conversation.

Bill took Jeannine’s shotgun from the corner and stood by the window.

A moment later a knock sounded on the kitchen door.

He held the shotgun ready and nodded to Jeannine.  She peeked through the slit in the half-curtain.

A man stood on the stoop.

She turned back to Bill and grinned.

“Relax, it’s Wayne!”

She swung the door wide.

“Wayne, come on in.  We were just wondering about you.”

She smothered him in a huge hug.

In South Carolina, Hugh Byrd congratulated himself.  He was a damned good investigator.  Once again he had outwitted his foes.  The blip on the screen of his laptop was stationary.

Wayne Johnson had arrived at his destination.  The blip, Wayne’s car, had stopped moving.

Hugh frowned.  Truly he deserved a better adversary.  This had been too easy.

When Hugh had visited Wayne Johnson at the house on Topsail, the latter had said nothing of Ryan’s whereabouts.  Johnson had thought himself clever in not revealing anything about Ryan or Hamm.  The idiot.  He was unaware that Hugh had attached a location-monitoring device to the car parked outside.

The poor sap had led Hugh straight to his target.

Hugh congratulated himself.  He was right.  Ryan had headed south and not north.

South Carolina!
  Very clever Ms. Ryan, but not clever enough!

Hugh stopped his car.  He must plan carefully, even a partially disabled Hamm was more dangerous than Wayne Johnson.  But he could not delay, it was not wise to give Hamm more time to recover.

Hugh glanced at his laptop.  The blip that was Johnson’s car had not budged.  Good!

At their “safe” house in Dillon, South Carolina, Jeannine Ryan, Bill Hamm and Wayne Johnson gathered around the kitchen table.  Papers from the briefcase were spread over the surface.  Jeannine, put one of them in front of Bill.

The graph was of data that she and Wayne had found were faked.

“Bill, Wayne and I know that these data are fake.  They show that after some sort of ‘event’ the Strontium-90 levels are high at 42 miles from the source.  What does all this mean?”

Bill frowned.

“In France there are about 60 nuclear reactors to generate electricity.  All of their electricity is from nuclear power.  Some Frenchmen are against nuclear energy.  The government plans to phase out the older reactors, one half of the total, in ten years or more, but there are extreme elements that want to get rid of all the reactors.  These fake data pretend that the Strontium-90 levels are worse than they really are.”

He took a deep breath.

“So the RadGuard report is a lie.  They used fake data to bolster their argument.  Now let me see the real graph.”

Jeannine put another graph in front of Bill.  This time the Strontium-90 levels dropped rapidly and were near zero at 42 miles.

Bill whistled.

“Damn.  That’s a much bigger drop.”

Wayne jumped in.

“It is.  That explains the fake graph in the report.  RadGuard made the environmental contamination from a nuclear plant look a lot worse than it is.”

He hesitated, then continued.

“But so what?  A little political skullduggery in France doesn’t warrant a vicious attack on you, or on Jeannine and me.  The other papers must be important too.  Those thugs tried to kill us to get them.

A cloud blocked the sun and shadowed the window.  Bill looked from Wayne to Jeannine to the window and back.

“You’re right, Wayne.  There’s a lot more.”

But Bill was tired.  He settled back in his chair and spoke slowly.

“The CIA assigned me to a ‘broom closet’ in the Torbee Building in Manassas to get me out of the way.  It was a ‘nothing’ assignment, but I discovered that Torbee’s Chief of Security, Hugh Byrd, was allied with a corrupt group inside the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Maryland.  Through Byrd they funnel classified information from the NSA to Guerry Electronic Systems in Chantilly, Virginia.  GES is a subsidiary of a French company,
Systèmes Électroniques Globals Alphonse Guerry
or SÉGAG.  A French woman, Denise Guerry, is the CEO of GES.  She is the granddaughter of Alphonse, and her uncle, Roland Guerry, controls SÉGAG.”

He took a deep breath.  Jeannine touched his shoulder.

“Bill, take it easy.  Take your time.”

“All right.  The corrupt group inside the NSA has found a way to decrypt RSA-encrypted communications between several European governments.  Moreover, they have copied their computer security tokens that give them access to their secure networks.  Hugh Byrd is the group’s liaison for GES and SÉGAG.”

Jeannine jumped in.

“Bill, what you say is impossible.  Not even the NSA can break RSA encryption.  That would mean the NSA has factored many large integer semi primes.  It’s impossible, no way!”

Bill waved his hand at the papers on the table.

“These documents prove otherwise.”

Wayne broke in.

“Jeannine, wait.  What Bill says may be right.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that special software is needed to generate the random primes that multiplied produce the semiprime, right?”

“Yes, but extended precision plus a good random number generator will do, and anybody can have access to those.  Any government can generate their own random primes, and test them too.”

“True, but they would want validated routines, and a superior well-tested random number generator, with thoroughly debugged code to test for primality.”

“So?”

“So suppose the NSA had a way to secretly hack and tamper with the validated routines of whoever was offering them.  They might be able to insert traps in the code to catch the large primes before they are multiplied to make a semiprime.  That way the problem of integer factorization is avoided, and keys are easily found.  A dedicated group at the NSA, with lots of smarts, time, and supercomputers at their disposable, could compromise the ‘validated’ software of others and trap and steal the primes as they are generated.”

“Stealing the primes certainly avoids the mathematical problem, but?”

Wayne shook his head.

“No ‘buts.’  While mathematically it may not be possible to ‘attack’ and decrypt a good RSA algorithm, human flaws can always compromise its use in practice.”

Bill stood up.

“You guys let me finish. A major client of SÉGAG and GES is a group of conspirators in France who want to return Rwanda to the same Hutu cabal that caused the genocide in 1994.  Thanks to the decrypted communiqués, the conspirators know that several major nations, including their own France, would welcome the return of Rwanda to the Francophone circle of African nations.”

He took a breath.

“I don’t know how the decryption is done, but the conspirators are well-informed and flourishing.  And a group of Hutus here in this country is planning an event that will tip international opinion to their cause.”

Jeannine spoke.

“But Bill, what kind of event?  Do you mean nuclear?”

“I doubt that, but whatever it is, we have to stop them!”

Neither she nor Wayne could answer.

Hugh Byrd braked his car and checked the laptop.  The blip had not moved.  Wayne Johnson’s car was here, but it was not visible.  Hugh studied the house.  It was set back from the street.  Doubtless, the car was parked in the back.

Hugh drove around the corner.  The back yards had no fences, just broad expanses of coarse grass and azalea bushes, topped by stately pines.  Hugh moved easily from tree to tree.  Ahead was the Honda that Johnson had rented in Wilmington.

Hugh smiled.  He would recover the papers and eliminate Hamm, Ryan and Johnson all at once.

He slipped out his Glock, chambered a round, and thumbed the safety off.

As Hugh prepared to move in, the back door to the house swung wide and a shapely young brunette in tight jeans and a tighter tee-shirt bounced out. 
Who?

“Jake, I’m going to get a six-pack.  Watch Bobby for me.”

Jake appeared at the door.

“Julie, make it Budweiser, will you?  But whose Honda is that?  Where’s the Ford?”

“It’s in the shop.  I rented this from Avis this afternoon.  I’m working at the club tonight, I need it.”

Hugh Byrd withdrew behind a pine and leaned his forehead against the bark. 
Damn!

Evidently Johnson had returned the rental Honda with the tag to Avis in Myrtle Beach where this “Julie” had rented it.

Johnson, you lucky idiot, I’ll get you for this!

He looked at his watch.  The rental office was closed.  Tomorrow he would visit Avis to find out what Johnson was driving. He would stay in Myrtle Beach tonight.

In Dillon, Jeannine covered Bill Hamm with a blanket and left him asleep on the sofa.  She returned to the kitchen where Wayne waited.

“Jeannine, I’m sorry the FBI impounded your Subaru.”

“Forget the Subaru.  I’m glad you’re here and that you’re OK, but what about your Buick?  Do you need it?”

“No.  After they impounded the Subaru in Wilmington, I rented a Honda to go back to Topsail and secure my house.  I started to come here to meet you, but I was too cramped in the Honda.  I dropped it off in Myrtle Beach and rented a Buick.”

He smiled.

“Bottom line, you keep using my Buick.  I’ll use my rental.”

“Wayne, how can I ever thank you for all you are doing?  Can you forgive me for getting you into this mess?”

“I’m just glad to be of use, but you look beat.  Go upstairs and get some sleep.  I’ll take the chair and keep watch on Bill.”