The Enraged (A Jonathan Quinn Novel) (21 page)

He checked the clock and cursed. No way was he going to make the deadline.

He switched over and checked the logs, not only the ones associated with the national database, but also those that were DC specific. With his trained eye, he rapidly scrolled through the data, looking for anything unusual.

He stopped on an entry from the previous day. A file deletion notice. In and of itself, that wasn’t unusual, but what had caught his attention were the last four characters of the file name. They corresponded exactly to the license number in the picture.

He followed the trail and realized the deletion had gone a lot deeper than just the DC and national databases. The worm that had removed the file had also gone through backup servers for both systems, destroying all previously saved versions.

The Mole’s fear of Griffin started to fade into the background as his curiosity grew. Why had someone felt it necessary to make this car disappear? He leaned back in his chair, thinking. There had to be somewhere else he could find what he was looking for.

Pistol
, he realized.

He pulled his headset on, plugged it into the vocal modulator, and used one of his anonymous Skype accounts to make an audio-only call.

“Yay?” Pistol answered, his rough, smoker’s voice making him sound twenty years older than he actually was.

“It is…me,” the Mole said, falling easily into his work persona.

“Hey, buddy. What’s going on?”

“I…have a…question for you.”

“Shoot.”

“Motor vehicle databases…do you have?”

Pistol was a collector, only he didn’t collect baseball cards or
Star Wars
action figures. He was interested in digital information, illegally obtained by hacking into databases and downloading them onto his own server farm. One never really knew what might capture Pistol’s fancy. Some things the Mole was sure Pistol would have? Turned out to be of no interest to him. While other things, esoteric crap no one would ever need, took up large chunks of space on Pistol’s drives.

“Depends,” Pistol said. “Are we talking in or out of the States?”

“In.”

“Hmm. Hit or miss. I got some, not all, though. Now, if you were interested in India, I got you covered. Of course, not everyone there registers their car.” He laughed.

“My interest is specific…to…Washington, DC.”

“DC, huh? Hold on.”

He was gone for less than a minute.

“You’re in luck,” Pistol said. “I do have it, but it’s about a year out of date.”

The car in the picture was considerably older than that.

“I…need you to…run a plate…for…me.” He gave Pistol the number.

“Hey, it’s not like I’m just sitting around, you know.”

“I will pay…you.”

“It’s a grand per request.”

“Understood,” the Mole said. Last time it had been only five hundred bucks, but a check of the clock told him he only had ten minutes left before Griffin’s deadline, so quibbling over fees was not a luxury he could afford. If he at least had the name of the woman, that might mollify Griffin.

He could hear Pistol enter the number on his keyboard. After a pause, the man said, “Here we go. You got a pen?”

The Mole had already opened a blank document on his computer screen. “Go…ahead.”

“The license plate belongs to a 1994 Toyota Camry. Color dark gray, no reports of accidents.”

“The owner,” the Mole said, impatient.

“Let’s see. It’s registered to Misty Blake.” He read off an address that was located in the Dupont Circle area of DC. “Anything else?”

“Hold…please.”

The Mole brought up the national auto database again, changed the search parameters from vehicles to licensed drivers, and entered the woman’s name.

Three seconds.

NO MATCH

Surprise, surprise
.

“Is your…information…limited to vehicles…or do you have…driver…data also?”

“I got both,” Pistol said.

“Please…retrieve Misty…Blake’s information.”

“That’s another grand.”

“I am…aware.”

Pistol’s illegal database copy came through again. Instead of writing down the information, the Mole requested that Pistol make screen grabs of the data, and e-mail it all to him.

“That’s not covered under the retrieval cost,” Pistol argued.

“Two thousand…you are getting…I…believe…it is covered.”

Pistol grumbled for a few more seconds before saying, “Fine.”

The e-mail containing the screen grabs arrived four minutes before the hour was up. The Mole quickly opened them and confirmed that the woman in Griffin’s picture was the same one on the driver’s license for Misty Blake. He still had no idea what this woman did or why she would be important, but he did have a name and address.

When the final minute ticked off, he expected ringing to blare from his computer speakers, but they remained silent. He waited a full sixty seconds before deciding he should use his time to see if he could find out anything more. He thought about starting in on the second man, but now that he had the woman’s license picture and name, he could check several other databases.

Since she lived in DC, he thought there was a decent chance she was a government employee. So that’s where he went first, typing her name into a system that would tell him if the US government paid her salary.

He found three Misty Blakes in public service. Two were on the West Coast—one in the forest service in Washington State, and the other an FDA inspector in Bakersfield, California. The third had switched jobs within the last year, moving into a support role at the Labor Board in DC. But her new position wasn’t the most interesting detail. It was the fact that the title of her previous role and the division she’d worked for had been redacted.

The Mole glanced down at the phone icon on his screen to make sure he hadn’t accidently turned off the ringer and missed Griffin’s call, but it was on.

He looked at Misty Blake’s picture again.
So what exactly were you doing before?

He ran her name through a couple of the other databases he had access to, but came up with nothing new, so he decided to use his photo recognition software. It would search criminal, military, and intelligence databases for likely matches. To cut down on the search time, he limited it to Caucasian females between twenty-eight and thirty-six, living in the DC area.

After he started the search, he got up to take a leak.

He’d just flushed the toilet when his computer rang. He ran his hands under some water, and grabbed the towel to dry them as he sprinted back into the living room. Plopping down into his seat, he pulled on his headset.

“Hello?”

“Turn that crap off,” Griffin told him.

“What are you talking about?”

“That voice crap. Turn it off.”

The Mole realized he was still plugged into the vocal modulator. “Just a second.”

As he was shoving the jack into the direct connection at the bottom of his computer screen, his monitor dinged. He looked up. His face recognition software was designed to notify him whenever there was a hit, even if the search was ongoing. Apparently, a potential match had been found.

“Okay, I’m back,” he said as he clicked on the link to see what the program had come up with.

“Your hour’s up,” Griffin said.

“I realize that. These aren’t exactly…” He paused. How about that? The search had found her. He started to read the information under her name.

“Something wrong?” Griffin asked.

“What? Oh, no,” the Mole said. “I was just saying these aren’t easy searches.”

“Tell me you at least found something.”

The Mole opened his mouth to say he had, but the words died in his throat.

“Hey! Are you listening?” Griffin said, growing angry.

“Yes, sorry. I’ve been concentrating mainly on the woman, but, well, there’s a problem.”

“What kind of problem?”

“I ran the car through the DMV database, but it appears that it has been completely removed from the records. Even the backups.”

“There’s got to be something there. The files can’t be completely written over, can they?”

“Whoever did the removal was pretty thorough.” So far everything the Mole had said had been true. The next part, though, wasn’t. Which was why he hesitated before he spoke. “I’m optimistic that I’ll be able to dig something up, but it might take me a little while.”

A pause. “And nothing on the men.”

It took all of the Mole’s will to keep his voice from cracking. “The men, no. The BMW, though, is registered to a—”

“I know about the BMW. I need to know who the
people
are.”

“I understand that. I was just thinking—”

“How much more time do you need?”

“Uh, well, a day would be good.”

“A day?”

“Like I said, these aren’t easy searches.”

“You have four hours,” Griffin said, then hung up.

What the hell am I doing?
the Mole thought.

He knew he should have told Griffin what he had learned, but his gaze strayed back to the facial match result on his monitor. Misty Blake had indeed worked for the government several years before transferring to the Labor Board. The agency she had worked for, however, had been a semiautonomous one. It was this agency’s demise that had undoubtedly necessitated her moving to a new job.

The Office.

The Mole knew it well. While he had never worked directly for them, he’d done enough tangential jobs through third parties—mainly Orlando, and once for her partner Quinn—that a fair amount of the Office’s cash had passed through his accounts. He had talked once to Orlando about the sudden dismantling of the organization, and she’d been very sympathetic toward those who worked there, telling him they’d been given a raw deal.

Hey
,
maybe one of the men in the other pictures is the guy who used to run the place. What was his name? Paul? Peter? One of those apostle names.

He tried to concentrate on what he should do next. He had never met or talked to Misty Blake. He’d never had any contact with the guy who had run the Office, either. So, technically, he had no reason at all to protect either of them.

But they were Orlando’s colleagues, maybe even her friends. And Orlando was definitely his.

The Mole didn’t have a huge conscience, but he did have one. And before he sold anyone out to Griffin, he knew he had to talk to Orlando first.

He adjusted his headset and opened Skype again.

__________

WASHINGTON, DC

G
RIFFIN SAT WAITING
in his Lexus sedan, his demeanor darkening with each passing minute. He had hoped to have some good leads by now, and while he did have the photos of the intruders, they didn’t seem to be getting him anywhere.

The Mole had so far proven useless. Griffin had given him a deadline that had been completely ignored, and he knew if he let that go unchecked, it would likely happen again. Which meant once this project was over, he would have to make a trip out there. But the more pressing matter at the moment was, what if the asshole didn’t even come through in four hours? That would be a huge problem. Not only for the dumbass techie, but also for Griffin. What Griffin needed to do was branch out and get some others working on this.

Several names came to mind. He finally settled on three, and sent them all identical e-mails with the images attached. He’d barely set his phone down when it rang. The name on the display was one of the people he’d just contacted.

“This is Griffin.”

“It’s Keenan. I got your e-mail. I’m happy to do what I can.”

Griffin sensed a “but” coming, as in “but I don’t have time right now,” so he said nothing.

“It’s…um, I don’t know who the woman or the guy in the car with her are, but the other one, I know him.”

“You do?”

“I worked with him once, maybe eighteen months ago. Also seen him a couple times since. Parallel projects.”

“So he’s in the business?” Like Griffin thought.

“Yeah. Been in longer than I have, I think. His name’s Howard.”

“Howard what?”

“No, no. That’s his last name. First is…uh, crap, um…” Keenan went silent for a moment. “Steve,” he said, blurting out the name. “Steve Howard. That’s it.”

CHAPTER
23

ISLA DE CERVANTES

N
OT LONG AFTER
Orlando had fallen back asleep, Liz had come into the room and offered to stay for a while so Quinn could freshen up and get something to eat. Once she promised to call him if Orlando woke again, Quinn allowed himself to leave.

After a quick shower and change of clothes, he went to the small cafeteria and took a table in the corner, where he could work on Orlando’s laptop without anyone looking over his shoulder.

The problem was, Orlando had dozens of different decrypting programs. He’d gone through as many as he could the night before, looking for any that mentioned a code called Hansell IV, but had struck out.

For the first thirty minutes he sat in the cafeteria, he was having more of the same lousy luck. Then he opened a program called Juniper Lemon 23. What the title meant, he had no idea, but under the selection menu was the option:
HANSELL IV
.

When a nurse at a nearby table looked over, he realized he must have grunted in triumph, so he smiled his apologies. She returned a disapproving scowl, but turned back to her meal and seemed to forget he was there.

He imported the first image he’d taken of the microfilm into the program and clicked the
START
button. As the computer was doing its thing, Nate entered the cafeteria and joined him.

“Still at it, huh?” Nate said as he sat down.

“Think I might have it this time,” Quinn told him.

“Really?”

Though the program was still processing, Quinn turned it so Nate could see the screen, too. A status bar lay across the center of a white page, the progress marked as the bar filled with red. The bar disappeared when the red hit the end, and a finished image took its place.