The Short Drop (7 page)

“So if I allow this to continue, with potentially calamitous fallout with my clients, what would be our next steps?”

“WR8TH is hunting for something. I’d recommend luring him in with something he wants. Something new about Suzanne.”

“And write our own virus,” Abe said.

“Exactly. He thinks he’s slick, and he’s already gotten away with it. He won’t be expecting you to play back at him like this. But if we want him to fall for it, we need to embed our virus in something tempting.”

“What about the internal FBI documents we were going to post to the revamped website?” Jenn asked. “Something that hasn’t been released to the public?”

“That would probably do it,” Gibson said.

“I’ll need to make a call,” Abe said. “How long would it take you to write a virus?”

“Already written,” Gibson said.

All heads turned to stare at him.

Abe was smiling. “What will it do?”

“Well, if he goes for it, our virus will travel upstream through the corrupted ad, and when he opens the files at his end, my virus will ‘phone home’ with GPS coordinates and an IP address.”

“If he opens the files,” Hendricks said.

“If,” Gibson agreed.

George glanced at Jenn Charles, and something meaningful passed between them that Gibson couldn’t decipher.

“Make it happen,” Abe said.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

For the next two weeks, WR8TH’s virus kept to its routine—waking up at nine a.m. and systematically nibbling away at ACG’s database. It was a model employee that way. Didn’t take a lunch break and never called in sick.

Gibson knew from studying the code that the virus could be directed remotely and given fresh batch instructions by WR8TH. Otherwise it would just continue relentlessly on its current task forever. But so far nothing. Either WR8TH wasn’t keeping close enough tabs on changes to ACG’s registry to notice the new FBI documents, or he was too smart to go for the lure.

It was a well-laid trap, Gibson reassured himself. Over the last two weeks, he had uploaded a few more FBI files each morning. The idea being to make it appear to be an ongoing ACG project, converting paper files into digital records.

“Come on,” Gibson whispered to his monitor. “You got away with it. You’re smarter than us. We’re a bunch of dummies. Help yourself. We’ll never know.”

When staring at his monitor and willing something to happen lost its charm, Gibson began digging through the boxes of evidence. Curiosity led him to a thick folder labeled “Tom B.” The mysterious boyfriend who had never identified himself. The folder contained a staggering amount of data for a lead that hadn’t gone anywhere. Not surprising given how little the FBI actually had to go on. Besides a name, all they had was a vague physical description cobbled together from her teenage coworkers at the pool: dark complexion, stocky build, thick brown hair, bright-blue eyes. Not even an exact age, only a shared sense that Tom was “older,” which left a disquieting range of possibilities.

Were WR8TH and Tom one and the same? If they weren’t, then why hadn’t Tom B. ever come forward? If they were, could Gibson really see Bear calling an Internet pedophile her boyfriend? Keeping his love letters? Running away with him? None of it made much sense.

Gibson flipped through the rest of the folder and put it back. You couldn’t really appreciate the tedious nature of criminal investigations until you looked at the Everest of paperwork it generated. Looking through it was almost more mind-numbing than staring at his stubbornly unchanging computer screen.

He was about to quit when he stumbled across a box labeled “Family Media.” Inside were CDs of photographs from Suzanne’s school and family get-togethers, all neatly cataloged by date and place. He spent hours hunting in vain for the photograph of him reading to Suzanne in the armchair, but it was nowhere to be found. A CD labeled “Memorial Day, 1998” caught his eye. He couldn’t remember 1998 in particular, but, curious, he slipped the CD into his laptop. He didn’t have any pictures of Duke and hoped to find a few that he could show Ellie. There would come a day when he would have to tell her about her grandfather.

The disk turned out to be a gold mine. Duke seemed to be in every third picture. Unfortunately, Lombard was in most of them too, right beside his father, smiling his unctuous, fox-in-the-henhouse smile. Gibson found a couple of shots that he could crop and moved them to his hard drive. Just to be sure, though, he went back through the CDs one more time. His perseverance paid off with a photo that captured Duke the way Gibson liked to remember him—on the back porch at Pamsrest, beer in hand, grin on his face, holding court, and spinning what you could tell was one tall political tale. His audience hanging on his every word.

Gibson looked at it a long time. He missed that version of his father. He missed being able to think about Duke without bitterness, without his mind leaping to the basement—that miserable, god-awful basement where Duke stepped away from his life, stepped away from his son. It had been easier when he had Lombard to blame. When he thought Lombard had betrayed Duke and not the other way around. That had been wishful thinking. Duke Vaughn was nothing but a criminal, and rather than face the consequences, he’d gone down into the basement. It was his life, his decision to make, and Duke had made it, thinking only of himself. That was the truth, and there was nothing else to be said. Even if there had been, there was no one left to whom Gibson cared to say it.

The sad truth was, Gibson had believed in Duke blindly, and his life had been in free fall ever since. It was a terrible sensation, and he wanted it to be over. There was an old joke—it’s not the fall that kills you but the abrupt stop. Well, a lucky few survived the impact, didn’t they? Gibson would take his chances with the unforgiving ground. Anything was better than this, the series of rash, ill-considered decisions he’d made at the mercy of his high-velocity swan dive. There had been days since the end of his marriage when Gibson thought he understood Duke’s choice. Understood, but not forgave. He couldn’t imagine doing that to his daughter. To any child.

He forced himself to close the photo file, but first he made a copy. For better days . . . if they ever came. He was about to eject the disk when he spotted a thumbnail image that sparked a memory. He opened it to see a photograph of himself: He couldn’t have been more than ten, and he stood in front of a small fountain, holding, at arm’s length, an enormous bullfrog out to the camera. Like the frog was radioactive. The bullfrog just hung there, legs dangling indignantly, like a celebrity who’d been dragged into posing for pictures with a pushy fan.

Beside Gibson, practically attached to his hip, was Bear. Wearing an ill-fitting, saggy-bottomed bathing suit, her hair a chaotic tumble of curls, she looked up at the frog as if he’d wrestled a lion into submission. He’d forgotten all about catching that damn frog. It had taken all afternoon. They’d finally cornered it by the old well on the back of the property, where he’d chased it back and forth while Bear pointed unhelpfully from a safe distance.

Once they’d had it, they both realized chasing it was a lot more fun than actually catching it. The bullfrog agreed and peed on him to drive home the point. But the Lombards’ photographer had spotted them and insisted that they take a photograph with their trophy. They’d kept the frog just long enough to take the photograph by the fountain and then released the savage beast back into the wild. Bear had stood on the edge of the well and waved until the frog disappeared into the brush.

The memory made him smile. It was one of the few times Bear left the safety of her books to go on an actual adventure. What a distance that image was from a teenager with a mystery boyfriend. From the tired girl in the Phillies cap so far from home. Hell, she wasn’t even a baseball fan . . .

Gibson froze. That hat . . . Something about the Phillies cap bothered him, now that he thought about it, but he couldn’t put his finger on the reason.

He made a copy of the frog photo before he ejected the disk. God how he missed that little girl. His ferocious Bear. She was all that was left of his childhood that he loved unreservedly—everything else in his memory was tainted. And someone had stolen her.

Gibson found George in his office. Gibson knocked on the open office door. George looked up and beckoned for him to enter.

“Gibson, what brings you by?”

“Are you going after him?”

“After who?”

“After WR8TH. If he uploads my virus. You’re not going straight to the FBI. You’re going after him yourself.”

Abe’s eyes went to his still-open office door. Gibson took that as a yes.

“I want in.”

“Gibson . . .”

“I need to go.”

“Would you shut the door,” George said and waited until they had privacy. “Please believe me: I have great respect for the work you’ve done, and I will never question your loyalty to Suzanne. But I hired you to help us locate WR8TH. That’s all. In the field, you would be a liability.”

“A liability?”

“Jenn and Dan have thirty-plus years’ experience between them.”

“I was in the Marines. I’m not a goddamn liability.”

“I’m well aware of your military record. But if we do get that far, Jenn and Dan will handle it.”

“No.”

“No?” George looked genuinely taken aback.

“You need me.”

“I need you?”

“Yeah, you do.”

Abe took a long look at him and put his pen down. “All right. Convince me.”

“Seriously?” He hadn’t expected to get this far.

Abe chuckled. “Yes, I’m serious. Assuming we get lucky and your virus produces a lead on WR8TH. Convince me why I should send someone with no experience out there.”

“Simple. You need someone on computers. Who are you going to send? Mike Rilling? I may not have any field experience, but I’m Jason Bourne next to that guy.”

“Isn’t your virus supposed to give us his location?”

“It will give us
a
location. And, yeah, maybe he’s cocky enough to risk his home IP, but I doubt it. Based on what we’ve seen so far, my money is on him being cautious as hell. Odds are, he’s stealing wireless from somebody. What if it leads Jenn and Hendricks to a coffeehouse with free Wi-Fi? Would they know what to do then? Look, WR8TH isn’t a person; he’s a figment of the Internet. Now, if you want to find the man behind WR8TH, then you need a figment that thinks like him. This is my world, George. Let me go with them.”

Abe leaned back in his chair. He sat for a few minutes, mulling it over before finally responding. “I need to sit with the idea for a few days and talk to my people. Acceptable?”

“Acceptable.”

“And if the answer is still no, you’ll respect my decision?”

“I’ll give it a shot.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

“We’ll be on the ground in San Francisco in forty-five minutes, Mr. Vice President.”

“Thank you, Megan,” Lombard said and returned his attention to Abigail Saldana, who was reviewing the latest polling data.

A stern, brilliant woman, Saldana had stabilized his numbers and restored confidence to a floundering campaign since joining the team last month. They weren’t out of the woods by any means, but they weren’t bleeding support the way they had been a month ago.

The California primary was four days out and had the potential to swing the nomination one way or another. It was Fleming’s turf, so there was no expectation of winning, but if he could take 30 percent in her home state, it would serve as a statement and give them momentum heading into the final primaries. It was an aggressive strategy that wasn’t without risk. But Saldana felt Fleming was vulnerable at home, so they had poured time and money into California over the last month. It would all come down to Tuesday.

The vice presidency didn’t come with a dedicated aircraft—Air Force Two simply referred to whichever plane the vice president was on board. It could be any one of a number of aircraft that were shared among the cabinet. The planes tended to be cozy affairs, with fewer amenities than Air Force One—a perk to which Lombard was very much looking forward. At the fore of the plane was a small office, but you couldn’t seat more than three or four comfortably. Lombard preferred his people clustered together, so he spent flights midcabin, where eight could work in relative comfort at a pair of open tables.

At the table across the aisle, his wife was being quizzed on the biographical details of the key individuals on this afternoon’s campaign stop. People responded to a personal connection—ask after their children by name and they never forgot it. It was an old political parlor trick, but it took practice and study. Grace Lombard glanced up and smiled wearily at him. Although she had never been a fan of the campaign trail, he had yet to hear her complain in twenty-five years. In his opinion, it was precisely her disinterest in the trappings of power that made her so appealing to voters. So many in the public eye cultivated an image of being normal and down-to-earth, but his wife was the genuine article. He knew that she helped to balance him. They made an ideal team in that way.

“Leland,” he asked his chief of staff. “What are my dinner plans?”

“Senator Russell. After your speech,” Reed said without looking up from his laptop.

“Push it back. See if he’d let me buy him a scotch at the hotel around eleven instead.”

Reed stood with his phone and walked down the aisle to make the call. Lombard looked back across the aisle to his wife’s assistant, Denise Greenspan.

“What’s the name of the restaurant my wife likes so much with the view of the Bay Bridge?”

“Boulevard, sir. On the Embarcadero.”

“That’s it. Get us in there. Seven thirty.”

“How many, sir?”

“Just two.” He smiled at his wife, who blew him a kiss across the aisle.

Abigail Saldana was nodding her approval at the idea. The personal sacrifice and forced intimacy required of political campaigns was daunting. Duke Vaughn had taught Lombard that lesson. It was hard to work on them without investing in the couple at the center. Particularly to the young, idealistic staffers who did the thankless grunt work, this wasn’t merely a job. This was their family, and they needed to believe in their candidate. A quiet dinner with his wife would be good for everyone’s morale. The same way children were reassured by small acts of affection between their parents.

“Ben,” Grace stage-whispered. “Everyone’s been pushing so hard. How about we send the team out while we’re at dinner?”

Lombard didn’t like that idea at all, but it was Grace to a tee. Too kindhearted for her own good. Or his. Still, he laughed magnanimously like it was the best idea he’d heard in years. Actually, when he thought about it, he liked how it would work itself out. Reed and Saldana would decline, which meant their people would have to skip it. That would leave a few lower-level staffers going out for dinner on his nickel. It would look good without costing him much in terms of work—a win, coming and going.

“And that is why I married this woman,” he said. “But after dinner, right back on the chain gang, everyone!”

That brought laughter all around, but his message was clear: there was work to be done. Things were turning around, and people liked working for a winner. He’d take care of them once he was in the White House, but for now a small taste of his largesse would tide them over.

One of Reed’s phones was ringing, but he wasn’t back from shuffling his appointment with Senator Russell. Reed’s aide glanced at the number but let it ring.

“Would you get that?” said Lombard.

The aide answered the phone, asked a few questions, and covered the mouthpiece with his hand. Lombard knew immediately that he’d made a mistake.

“Sir, I have a Titus Eskridge? He has an update for you on the ‘ACG situation’?”

Lombard kept his expression even and disinterested but felt his wife’s gaze on him. Colonel Titus Stonewall Eskridge Jr. was the founder and CEO of Cold Harbor Inc.—a private military contractor based out of Virginia. Cold Harbor had been a major contributor to his Senate campaigns, and Lombard went way back with Eskridge. Grace could find something redeeming in most people, but she couldn’t even pretend to tolerate the man. Years ago, Lombard had severed political ties with Cold Harbor at her insistence, so he would need a very compelling reason for taking his call. A reason he didn’t currently have.

A career in politics might have taught him the art of the bluff—he could take a knife in the back and whistle a happy tune—but somehow Grace had always been immune to such deceptions.

“Titus Eskridge? Well, they sure do come out of the woodwork this time of year.” He waved the phone away. “Give it to Leland or take a message.”

“Yes, sir,” said the aide.

He glanced over to his wife, but she had already turned away. He would wait for her to bring it up later. One thing was for sure—his quiet, romantic dinner had just been canceled.