The Puppetmasters (10 page)

The plan went without a hitch. The weather was perfect, the state troopers a rare site, usually heading the opposite direction. All precautions were taken. Daniel used driving gloves when handling the envelope and messenger slip, and made it to the agreed upon meeting place with five minutes to spare. He had left the datacenter around 10:30 a.m. and told the few employees who happened to be working there today that he was out pricing hardware—something he frequently did—and would then go to lunch and be back before 1:00 p.m.

He handed off the envelope to the messenger while assuming an attitude of youth, irresponsibility, average intelligence, talk of parties and goofing off, and a good measure of English slang … all things the real Daniel would never do. He watched the messenger get in his car and head towards McDougall’s building, and fervently hoped Mickey was in the office today.

Finally, he walked out of the building, down the street, and into a nearby restaurant where he stopped at the restroom and removed his hat, glasses, and gloves and placed them in his large blue backpack. The blue backpack had been rolled up and stashed in the empty red backpack he had carried into the Orion building for his meeting with the messenger.

Daniel then walked through the restaurant and exited out back into an alley. He headed to a parking garage some half a mile away and, more importantly, out of range of the company surveillance cameras. He made sure to pay with cash, leaving no trace of his trip.

It was now noon, and Daniel was sweating bullets. He was about thirty minutes out of the city of Seattle and would be back at the Datacenter in another thirty. Now that his mission was over, with the hat, glasses, driving gloves, and the two backpacks having been stowed away in his trunk, he was replaying everything to see if he had forgotten any details. He felt like he’d just committed a criminal act, but he was simply delivering a message. This was all too cloak-and-dagger for him.

He pulled into the datacenter parking lot and drove around back to his designated spot. He entered the building from his private stairwell, grabbed a banana, and headed down to the floor where it looked as if he had been having lunch in his upstairs quarters.

Of course, if anyone checked surveillance, they would see the time his car drove in. But he felt that was unlikely. Besides, the surveillance footage was on a loop, and would record over the top of the existing data within a week. The one employee he encountered on the datacenter floor amidst the rows of servers, heading to his office, appeared bored and merely grunted as they passed.

Daniel sat in front of his computer screen and breathed a sigh of relief.
He was dying to know what would happen next and figured, at the very least, that some sort of public announcement would be made. At the same time, there was a sense of foreboding deep in Daniel’s gut.

He had unleashed a piece of information that could get him fired, arrested, and even killed. If caught, he couldn’t begin to tell the truth. There were too many operatives with their customized piece of information, not knowing of the others. Any of them could come after him. He couldn’t tell them about each other, because some of them didn’t know that he had knowledge of their existence within the Orion Datacenter world. The final complication was that Fields and Carson didn’t have a clue as to the scope of information Daniel was routinely monitoring as it flowed in and out of the servers.

Each of the parties to the illegal snooping thought they were the only ones to have knowledge about and be using the unregistered, illegitimate intellectual property technology. Removed from it all was Daniel, watching and waiting … but most importantly, keeping his nose clean. He was not doing anything with the data other than to isolate it and place it on a secure server that was used only by Paul Fields. Daniel simply observed who was doing what, and had found the whole thing amusing … until now.

Out in the datacenter ether, another set of eyes was observing the proceedings of the past two days from his shadowy world. He was fascinated at the fast-paced unfolding of this worldwide drama. He was eager to share his knowledge and knew that he would be rewarded for his work. Now, he just had to figure out how much to share and how to get it to the right people.

M
ICKEY SAT AT HIS DESK
in shock. He held the recently delivered note in his hand. It was short and to-the-point:

Paul Fields, Glenn Carson, and Kendall Radcliffe have been kidnapped. Control of their plane was taken over by international operatives. International forces are working to free them. Wait for further instructions.

It was 3:00 p.m. when Mickey’s admin handed him the innocuous looking plain white envelope. He frowned, and his fingers fumbled as he attempted to open it. He read it and sat back. After a few minutes—when his mind froze—he could only think,
“What the fuck?”
He didn’t know if he was more surprised at the kidnapping, or that Kendall Radcliffe was part of the abducted group. And who, he wondered, were the “international forces” that were working to free them?

Mickey quickly scanned the note into his computer and fired off an email to FBI Special Agent Zanders, attaching the scanned note. He used a well-known high-level security utility that scrambled the message and attachment. Zanders, possessing the same high-tech scrambling software, received the email and attachment, both of which were then unscrambled.

Neither of them knew that the so-called high-tech scrambling security device was no barrier for Daniel’s brilliant mind.

Within five minutes Mickey’s phone was ringing. He answered it before the first ring, noting the caller ID, and barked into the phone, “Zanders, what do you make of this note?”

“How did you get it? Who delivered it? Do you have the envelope?”

“It was handed to me by my admin five minutes ago. The envelope looks like plain white stationery store stock.”

“Okay. Please preserve it. Place it inside something, like a large Baggie or
bigger envelope. Try not to touch it anymore. We’ll be running it for DNA and fingerprints.”

Zanders took a deep breath and continued, “I’m going to fly out there. I should be in Seattle late tonight; I’ll touch base with you late this evening for any updates, and will meet you first thing in the morning. In the meantime, you need to trace the delivery of the envelope. Talk to the messenger service, the front desk of your building, and the messenger person who delivered it. Get the exact time when the service took possession of the envelope. If this is your usual messenger service, there should be some form or something that accompanies the envelope, I assume. Get that, too.

“Now, who is this Kendall Radcliffe?”

“That’s what has me confounded. She’s the new director of operations. It’s an upper-level position, but not one that would routinely have her crossing paths with the company executives … so far as I know.”

“Damn! Do you think this Kendall Radcliffe is in on the kidnapping? Get me all the information you have on her by the time I see you in the morning. Take a look at her employee file, and let’s retrace her steps for the past few months or even earlier. I want to know who her friends are—particularly at Orion Premier—any boyfriend, husband, or kids, and anything else that you run across that might be useful. I’ll run a criminal background check and pull her passport records showing her international travel. I’ll talk to you in about six hours.”

Mickey was a bit overwhelmed, and he no longer cared that he be in charge of the investigation. It had taken on international dimensions. Why the hell had the three Orion people been taken? He wasn’t through with Zanders.

“Wait a minute, Zanders!”

“What? I’ve got a shitload of things to do in the next hour, including lining up my ride.”

“What do we do about notifying the public? I don’t think we can keep this quiet any longer. The families need to know some sort of status, and the board of directors need to be involved.”

Zanders frowned and rubbed his throbbing temple. “What do you suggest?”

“Let’s get out in front of the issue. I’ll call our Public Relations Department and get going on a press release providing a vague statement that the executives were on an international trip, and their plane experienced mechanical issues. That it was forced to land in a remote place, and that rescue efforts are now in progress.”

“Hmm … not bad. The country of origin will either be laughing that Orion is scrambling to explain the disappearance of the plane and employees, or it will realize that we may be on to them, because of the reference to an international trip.
The trip was domestic, and therefore, how would we know at this stage that the Orion people are out of the country? That’ll drive them nuts!”

“Yep, I agree. I’ll call the families and again give them a general update, and let them know that a press release will be issued. Zanders, if Kendall is in the clear, we need to include her next of kin in any notifications. I’m looking at her personnel file now. The personal contacts indicate her boyfriend, Jeremy Levy, neighbor, Heather Jacobs, and mother, Kathleen Radcliffe.”

“Fine, but don’t notify Radcliffe’s people until we can clear her … maybe in twenty-four hours.”

“Okay. Also, I’ve checked on Fields’ and Carson’s cell phones. Both phones are dead, and the last calls were made in DC just before they flew out. I’ll track Kendall Radcliffe’s.”

Mickey called both executives’ families and provided a ridiculously vague update that basically told them nothing. At the same time they got the between-the-lines message that their loved one was somehow okay. Both families had been through emergency drills before, so they understood their roles. Given the importance of their husbands on the worldwide stage, they knew that everything that could be done was indeed happening. They also knew that sometimes they would not know all the details up front. That was the reality of their worlds, they had accepted that, and it had been that way for many years now.

Mickey then called the company Public Relations VP and discovered she was in her office in the adjoining building. He needed to stay in his office in the event of additional information, so she agreed to an emergency meeting in his office. He also rounded up the executive in the Investor Relations Department, and the two arrived within seconds of each other. Mickey explained the matter in rather blunt terms. He didn’t dare sugarcoat or put any type of spin on the status.

The two executives left his office with much on their minds. They got to work immediately by first expanding the circle of Orion executives “in the know.” A short, cryptic press release was drafted. Then emergency calls were made to the board of directors, and it was agreed that calling a limited trading halt to the Orion Premier Net Services stock was the best recourse until the gravity of the situation was known. The press release was finalized and the PR agency instructed to release it over the wires to the general public.

Special Agent Zanders called his contact at the NSA in Maryland, gave a status report to his superiors, and assigned several tasks to other agents, including getting back to the charter company that owned the plane. He now pressed for immediate document release and analysis on every task his team undertook.
His agency buzzed with activity as people browbeat anyone who might have information or documentation about all of the players—principal and peripheral—who might have knowledge of the events.