The Night Cafe (10 page)

T
ravis Spielman had a headache and the day had barely begun. He’d left home early, hoping to get a jump on morning traffic and the usual gridlock around the twenty-eight-acre federal campus on Wilshire Boulevard, but he’d gotten trapped behind a fender-bender and ended up at a standstill just yards from his freeway off-ramp, unable to move, breathing exhaust for nearly forty minutes while his office building stood in sight but frustratingly unreachable.

At this rate, he thought irritably, he might as well have stayed home a few minutes longer, given Melanie her breakfast and had coffee with Ruben. He’d been in Seattle the day before and had gotten home well after they were both in bed. There’d been a lot of that lately, travel and long hours of overtime, and it wasn’t going to let up anytime soon. Couldn’t be helped.

He glanced at his watch. He had a series of conference calls and online meetings scheduled to start at nine and it was pushing that already. Damn. He’d hoped to do some quick info mining, see if there were any red flags on that arms dealer Hannah had asked him about the other night. He would have done it yesterday if he hadn’t had to fly up for an emergency meeting with the Microsoft team helping develop Daxo, the new software system he’d been working on for the past eighteen months. He might have had time to run a check on Gladding before his teleconference this morning but now, thanks to the BlackBerry-reading idiot ahead of him rear-ending a Subaru, he was probably out of luck.

He only hoped Hannah wasn’t out of luck, too. Spielman didn’t like the idea of her dealing with a character like Gladding, no matter how innocuous the job. It wasn’t like there’d be anyone watching her back out there. It was a bit irregular, of course, tapping into federal databases for private purposes, but his neighbor was good people and he didn’t like to see her step into a snake pit. He would just check for recent activity concerning Moises Gladding on the federal intelligence files. If anything major jumped out at him, he could sound a warning without giving away the family jewels.

Most intelligence was severely compartmentalized, accessible on a strict need-to-know basis, but Spielman was one of a handful of data wonks in the federal system able to cut across departmental and operational lines. Traditionally, the various components of the intelligence community—CIA, FBI, Homeland Security and others—maintained high walls around their fiefdoms, jealously guarding their little pieces of the puzzle. 9/11, though, had shown how critical it was to share information.

Somebody had to be trusted to create the systems to do that. After fifteen years in government, during which he’d been investigated six ways to Sunday, Spielman’s security clearance was now well beyond top-secret. His domestic arrangements might seem unconventional to some, but he’d never tried to hide who he was, and everything else about him was boringly straight-arrow, from the three-star general father, the computer systems doctorate from MIT, and a solid track record at the National Security Agency and then the FBI and Homeland Security. He was a nerd, right down to his plastic pocket protector.

When he finally arrived at the federal office tower where he worked these days, the elevator ride turned out to be as slow as everything else that morning, a milk run that stopped at nearly every floor on the way up to fourteen. There, the elevator door opened onto the lobby of the western regional office of the Department of Homeland Security. Framed headshots of the president and the director hung to either side of the large departmental crest on the wood-paneled wall. The seating area featured half a dozen comfortably upholstered armchairs and a couple of potted trees. Copies of
National Geographic
and the
Congressional Record
were neatly fanned on low glass-and-steel tables, and the mottled red carpet was plush. The place looked like a doctor’s waiting room, except for the thick bulletproof glass surrounding the reception desk.

The woman behind the desk glanced up and returned Spielman’s wave as he headed left toward the solid steel door guarding the Information Services unit. Briefcase in one hand, he was fumbling in his pocket for his photo ID magnetic key swipe when the door opened and the unit’s office manager came flying out. A rotund, steel-haired grandmother in her fifties, Margie nearly bowled him over.

“Oh, Travis! I’m sorry!”

He recovered his footing and grabbed the door before it could swing shut. “No problem. I couldn’t put my hands on my stupid key card. One of those mornings.” His hand closed on the card. He took it out and clipped it to his shirt pocket.

“I’m just running down to grab a coffee,” she said. “You want one?”

He grimaced. “Cafeteria swill? Oh, Lord, Margie, I need a coffee so bad, but that stuff is undrinkable. I couldn’t persuade you to go across the road to Starbucks, could I? I’ll buy—anything you want.”

She frowned, then gave him an indulgent nod. “All right, I suppose I could. Things are pretty quiet this morning.”

“Bless you. You’re a lifesaver. I’m running really late.” He pulled a wad of crumpled bills out of his pants pocket and dropped it in her hand. “Here. I’ll take the biggest nonfat latte you can get—and an intravenous drip, if they have one.”

“You’ve got it bad, my child.”

“You have no idea.”

“You want anything else? Muffin? Scone?”

He was sorely tempted, but he shook his head. “Better not. Ruben says I’m getting love handles.”

She checked out his wiry frame and snorted. “Oh, please. You need meat on those bones.”

He grinned. “Okay, mom. Surprise me, then. Thanks.” He ducked through the door as she headed for the elevators.

The landscape changed to utilitarian-gray as he entered the unit, a huge room of shoulder-height dividers separating dozens of cubicles furnished with basic-issue desks, bookcases and file cabinets. Simple white Venetian blinds covered windows that overlooked Wilshire Boulevard, Westwood, and the nearby campus of UCLA. There were no carpets here to muffle the ringing of phones, the tap of keyboards and the muttering of voices, only speckled beige linoleum to minimize static buildup, which could play havoc with the section’s sensitive electronics. On the far side of the unit in a glassed-in room, an array of mainframe computers hummed like a cyborg beehive.

Spielman waved and nodded to coworkers as he made his way toward his cubicle outside the computer room door. Created in 2003, the Department of Homeland Security had been charged with the daunting task of coordinating the domestic defense and emergency management efforts of some eighty thousand federal, state and local agencies. He had been one of the first systems designers pulled in to create the new HSIN-CI—the Homeland Security Information Network-Critical Infrastructure, a mouthful of a name for a program charged with disseminating threat warnings to all these agencies.

Tossing his briefcase onto a spare chair in his cubicle, he shrugged out of his sport coat, hung it on the back of the chair, then sat down. His desk was clear except for the small framed photo of their daughter that Ruben had given him for his birthday. Most of his coworkers’ spaces were cluttered with pictures of kids, grandkids, spouses, dogs and cats, as well as trinkets and plants, but not his. Some might think his spartan surroundings were an effort to be discreet about his personal life, but Spielman wasn’t trying to hide anything. He just liked things streamlined. It helped him think.

Anyway, his home was cluttered enough, given the toys and paraphernalia that came with having a toddler, plus Ruben’s flair for decorating with bright colors, tchotchkes and fabrics. His partner had once had a tendency to bedeck himself exotically as well, but he toned it down now in deference to the conservative environment in which Travis worked. Poor Ruben.

Spielman yawned as he flicked on his computer terminal. This morning, he and the implementation team scattered in regional offices across the country would start downloading Daxo, the new software he’d been developing over the past eighteen months.

As his terminal warmed up, he slipped on his telephone headset and dialed into the conference bridge linking his IT colleagues across the country. The automated voice on the system told him that the conference call was already underway. Spielman settled in for a long morning of coordinating the minutiae of the Daxo download.

Only it didn’t happen. The disembodied voices of his colleagues came on the phone line as he was entering his password to log into the internal IT managers’ network. By the curses he heard through his headset, everyone else was getting the same message on their computer screens that now appeared on his: Access Denied.

“What the hell…? Okay, who did this?” Spielman demanded. “Who’s been messing with the security protocols?”

They all insisted they had no idea how or why the system had locked them out.

“All right, stand down, guys,” Spielman said wearily. “I’ll try to track the source of the problem and get back to you.”

As the rest of his team signed off, Spielman disconnected the phone, threw his headset aside and went to work, fingers flying over the keyboard as he tried several back doors to get back into the data stream. No luck. The only thing he could determine was that the problem had begun in the San Diego field office and that the system had been deliberately frozen by someone with an even higher access clearance than his own. Spielman got on the phone to his director in Washington.

“What took you so long?” were the first words out of Alison Walker’s mouth when she answered.

“So you knew about this?”

“I only found out about an hour ago. All I know is that the block was ordered by the FBI.”

“What’s up and how long will it take?” The only reason for his team to be locked out of the system was that some sort of highly sensitive operation was underfoot and the system needed to be maintained in a stable state until it was done. That meant no messing around by the IT guys, lest the system crash at some inopportune moment.

“I don’t know,” Walker said. “I’m out of the loop on this one, too.”

“I’m trying to think if there’s been any increased chatter about an impending border op, but nothing comes to mind.” The San Diego-Tijuana corridor was the focus of various initiatives to counteract the cross-border flow of people, drugs and other contraband.

“Best not to ask too many questions, Trav. If we were supposed to know, we’d know. All we can do is wait until the cowboys have finished doing whatever it is they’re doing.”

“We were right in the middle of uploading Daxo.”

“Stand by. As soon as I know anything, you’ll know.”

Spielman sighed. Murphy’s Law. He hung up and turned back to his computer terminal. Maybe there was a small upside here. If he couldn’t get his work done, at least he could finally take a look at what there was on Moises Gladding for Hannah.

He put Daxo in sleep mode and logged on to one of the interdepartmental intelligence data files. When he entered the name of the arms dealer, however, the Access Denied message appeared again. He tried accessing Gladding’s name on a couple of other lower priority file systems, and got the same message. His gut contracted a little tighter with every denial of access.

A person didn’t work for a decade and half in this community without developing a little paranoia. This had never happened to him before, so what did it mean that it was suddenly happening now? Was the network really having problems, or was he personally being shut out of the system? Why? Did the FBI suspect him of disloyalty? The Bureau was responsible for the security vetting of government employees. He knew he was utterly trustworthy, so what might have happened in the past couple of days to change how he was perceived?

He could think of only one thing—his neighbor had gotten mixed up with Moises Gladding, and Spielman had offered to tap into the system on her behalf. He and Hannah had had the conversation in his open garage. Was he under surveillance? Was she? Why? He was as certain about Hannah’s loyalty as he was his own, but Gladding was another matter. Had they both stepped blindly into a hornet’s nest?

He was about to call her when he thought better of it. If they were under surveillance, either one of them, the phones would be tapped. He drummed his fingers on his desk. Walk away from this, his gut told him. But could he? If there was any chance Hannah would be in danger down in Mexico, shouldn’t he at least try to warn her?

The office manager appeared at his cubicle with his latte. “Here you go, ducks. And I bought a cheese Danish and a blueberry muffin. You can have whichever you want.”

Spielman got to his feet, shrugged back into his jacket and took the coffee from her. “You know what, Margie? The system’s down at the moment, so I’m going to run a few errands while I’m waiting for it to come back online. I’ll pass on the goodies for now.”

“You sure?”

But he was already on his way toward the door. He took the stairs down the fourteen flights to the ground floor and hurried to the parking lot. His sensitive job and his neighbor’s penchant for misadventure fed his paranoia, but if there’d been no one else to worry about, he could have handled it. But he was a father now. He couldn’t risk his job or Mellie’s and Ruben’s security. On the other hand, he couldn’t leave his friend dangling in the wind, either.

Dodging in and out of side streets and heavy traffic, he made good time driving home. He parked in the street so that Ruben could get his car out of the garage. As he ran to the front door, he glanced around nervously, checking for watchers. He had no clue what the signs might be. He was a computer nerd, not a trained spy. He wouldn’t know a surveillance vehicle if it ran over him.

Just in case, he turned on music when he got inside and told Ruben what was going on. “It’s probably nothing,” he said.

Ruben squeezed his shoulder. “If it was, you wouldn’t look so worried.” He frowned and tapped a finger against his lip, thinking. Then, “I know. You stay here and watch Mellie. I’m going to run to the market.”

“The market? Ruben—”

“Trust me. Is the earthquake kit still by the garage door?”