Undercover Genius (21 page)

How the devil could she upload her interview with Rhianna if
she couldn’t insert a USB? Of all the paranoid…

She rolled her eyes. Of course, this was Broderick Media,
supporter of the Party of the Paranoid, who hired generals instead of
journalists. If one believed their stories, they feared everything from
communists to alien invasion. Straightening her short skirt, she approached the
senior manager.

In his thirties and wearing a wedding ring, he still ogled
her legs before he straightened his glasses and found her face. “Miss
Llewellyn, what can I do for you?”

“Give me permission to upload my interview with Rhianna? I
don’t see how I can work the late hours required for the international news if I
can only access the computers during office hours.” She confiscated a spare
chair and wiggled her hips into it, bringing his gaze to breast level. She
hoped he wouldn’t drool.

“Rhianna?” She’d startled him into actually looking at her.
“You have an interview with Rhianna? She never gives interviews!”

Patra smiled sweetly and held up the USB. “She does to old
friends.”

She loved watching him swallow his tongue. Without another
word, he plugged in the USB, uploaded her files — she had only the
interview on there because she wasn’t dumb — and opened the document.

“You can access it now,” he informed her, skimming the
interview to verify the contents. “Just bring any files you work on at home to
me, and I’ll load them for you.”

What a pain. Instead of expressing her disdain, she smiled
again, took the USB back, and gave him another wriggle as she rose and thanked
him. “Do I have access to an email account? I’ll have to communicate with my
Hollywood list somehow, since most of them are sleeping at this hour.”

His eyes widened in appreciation. “I’ll arrange an email
account and access to the Internet. Don’t use them for personal reasons.
Everything goes through a secured server and is monitored.”

“I used to work for the BBC. I understand that,” she said
gently, humoring him, even though she was lying. The BBC had never paid a bit
of attention to whom she was talking.

She swayed off to purportedly play with the interview, which
was already as good as it was going to get. She needed to be able to email Ana
or Tudor for advice in hacking the archives, but how could she do that without
being caught?

She sent off a batch of legitimate queries to the people
Rhianna had recommended. Entertainment news was easy with the right
connections.

Investigating media corruption was a whole other problem.

Before she could figure out anything, an email arrived in
her brand new box.

Don’t look now but Big
Daddy’s watching you
was all it said. The sender was one [email protected].

She didn’t have to look. She’d already noted the two-way
mirror near the ceiling on the far wall. When had distrust begun ruling the
workplace? Maybe she could write a psychological study on the debilitating
effects of fear.

If SAdams didn’t fear his email would be read, he must be
one of the IT guys reading it. Cool.

When I returned from dumping the workload of Bill’s vault
on Sean, I found an email summons from Graham. I ignored it. Graham was
probably steaming that I’d given all that material to reporters, but the truth
just wants to be free. Graham is stingy.

I knew I was daring the lion, but speed was of the essence. I
didn’t even have time for a horizontal tango if he’d offered. My family was in
danger, and nothing came between me and them.

First thing I did when I was back in my office was call
Oppenheimer. He hadn’t liked my earlier threat and refused to come to the
phone. “Look,” I told the receptionist, “I have a witness who might be able to
identify Reggie’s murderer. I can call the cops, or your boss can talk to him
first. Ask him which he prefers.”

Oppenheimer picked up the line. We had a polite discussion
about Lemuel. Rather than reveal his location, I set up a meeting so everyone
could have a nice chat in a safe place. I was hoping a lawyer could arrange Smythe’s
arrest without having to involve me. I preferred Graham’s obscurity to
notoriety for lots of reasons, but security is a major one. Oppenheimer was
welcome to the credit.

In exchange for my information, our lawyer generously
revealed that we might have a chance of getting some of the yacht insurance in
a few months — after the court debated which of Reggie’s debtors ranked
highest on a long list. At least a court wouldn’t consider claims from his drug
dealers.

The odds of reclaiming our half million still didn’t look
good from my perspective. We needed to find out who blew up the yacht and sue
them. Not sounding much better. If it was Reggie’s pals, they wouldn’t have
visible assets.

Family business completed, I finally inserted Bill’s CD #1143
into the DVD slot of the Whiz. Graham could snoop if he liked. I’d give him
that much.

I listened carefully, but if these were the voices referred
to in Bill’s memo, I couldn’t identify two of them. I wouldn’t recognize the
voice of the
current
vice president.
I certainly didn’t recognize one from years back when I’d been in Timbuktu or
buried in my Atlanta basement. I recognized a reluctant respect from others on
the tape who spoke to Voice #1. Assuming Bill’s email analysis applied to this
recording, I assigned Voice #1 to the vice president. The date on the digital
file was five years ago, but if this was a copy of a tape recording, I didn’t
know if that was when it had been originally recorded.

Bill’s email analysis had simply named the VP, Broderick, Senator
Paul Rose and possibly a voice on a speaker phone. I recognized Rose. He was
all over the media these days. And I recognized the “speaker phone.”
Graham
. How could I not have guessed?

I checked my time-line files. Graham had been dismissed from
his cushy government job in early 2002, a victim of PTSD from the terrorist
explosions of 9/11/01, according to rumor. Some months later, Dr. Smythe had
left his advisory job with the Veep to create the R&P. And Riley had been
charged for tapping the Veep’s phone line.

I did a quick Google search on some of the names and events
being discussed on the tape. The al-Askari Mosque had been bombed in early
2006. The Hay al Jihad massacre occurred in July. So the file was from after
that time period — like about the same time as Patrick Llewellyn’s death. He
had died in the Mideast a little over
five
years ago. My pulse beat a little faster.

So Smitty — no longer in the veep’s office but head of
R&P — had consulted Bill Bloom for scientific verification of speakers
on a recording he probably shouldn’t have had. How had he obtained it and why?
And how did Patra’s father work into any of this — besides dying in that
war zone.

Not all of the conversation on the tape was clear. Some of
it was decidedly angry — especially the voice I had to assume was
Broderick. Accusations of political dirty tricks flew. Hardly anything new. I
perked up when Graham accused Broderick of using the media to promote war for
the sake of the defense industry and oil companies. That was kind of old news
now, except Graham punched them with facts instead of just making baseless accusations.
Very nice.

And then Paul Rose said Broderick was working in the
interest of national security and Unnamed Speaker Phone would be tried for
treason if he released data only accessible by the military.

“Since no one in the presidential office or media would
listen, I gave that data to Patrick Llewellyn,” my desk lamp said, interrupting
my concentration. “He took it and added it to the files he was working on the
Brit end of the manipulation. And then he died, along with thousands of
soldiers and innocent civilians.”

I didn’t hear regret in his voice, but he was talking
through wires. Graham didn’t do personal well.

I rocked in my chair a little after the line went dead and
decided that wasn’t sufficient information. Patra’s father had
died
for this data? And that’s all
Graham could tell me?

I put one foot in front of the other and climbed stairs from
basement to attic to beard the lion in his den. Graham’s door was open. He was
in his chair when I entered. He was monitoring street scenes outside both
Sean’s office and Patra’s — two media centers.

“You had clear-cut evidence that this country went to war,
spent gazillions of dollars and thousands of lives, nearly bankrupted the poor
and destroyed the economy, f
or the sake
of corporate greed
, and you didn’t give that evidence to the world?” I
asked in a deceptively calm tone. “And because of that, Patra’s father
died
?”

“Five years ago, I didn’t exist,” he said without looking
up. “No one believed me when I left office, and they wouldn’t believe me after
I’d been off the map for so long. Your grandfather told me to have a more
objective, more respectable third party look at the data. Llewellyn was as
objective and respectable as it got. He was right there in the field.”

“And he
died
. You
think Broderick and Senator Rose killed him to keep him from reporting their greedy
operation?”

“Nothing’s that simple,” he said scornfully, still focused
on his monitors and keyboard and not me. “You know that. There won’t be a
single trace back to them. The entire United States Congress voted for war. Do
you think they’d admit they were manipulated?”

I hated politics. I didn’t bother voting because I thought
all politicians were self-serving crooks. But I’d known some of those soldiers
who had died in Iraq. I’d been in some of the embassies that had burned in the
Mideast. And that had been Patra’s charming, intelligent, handsome Brit father
who had been murdered by
our side.

“The voices on Llewellyn’s recording are not Rose or
Broderick but probably their minions,” Graham said. “Llewellyn could have been
killed for stealing someone else’s story for all we know. Maybe an angry
husband killed him. Just because he knew too much doesn’t mean he was killed
for that knowledge.”

“I’m taking Broderick down,” I warned. “No man should have
that much power. You must have still been around when Dr. Smythe left the VP’s
office to help found the Righteous and Proud. Five years ago, he was the man
who paid Bill to analyze a private conversation with a different VP. Why would
he do that?”

“If you don’t understand politics well enough to know that,
then stay out of this, Ana. Keep your sister out of it. And keep that damned
pest O’Herlihy out of it or Llewellyn won’t be the only one who sacrificed his
life in vain.”

Graham infuriated me on a hormonal level as well as
intellectual. I wanted to pound his head for the sheer relief of releasing my
pent-up frustration. But here’s the thing… I would defend my family with my
dying breath — and take his head off if he threatened them — but in
this case, I agreed with the damned man. I didn’t want friends or family hurt
for politics. Talk about frustrating!

“Knowledge is power,” I threw at him. “And murderers go to
jail. You’ve been in the spy business too long.”

He donned his earphones and tuned me out. I was officially
dismissed.

I walked out. Reluctantly, I admit. But we weren’t going to
get physical in a computer room, so there was no point in my staying. Every
cell in my body screamed in protest as I raced back to my mouse hole. But I’d
had a lot of practice in controlling myself. Graham would know it when I
decided to let go.

I didn’t like coincidences but the whole case lacked good
motivation.

Remembering the partial license plate Patra had got off the
limo that had been at Bill’s apartment, I pulled that up on the screen. Graham
had apparently already run the partial and matched it against DMV records. D.C.
was overrun with vehicles that could pass for black SUV limos but only three
had the combination of numbers that Patra had caught on her phone. Out of those
three, one was registered to an embassy, another to a local businessman, and
the third to a limo service owned by Salvador DeLuca.

My resources were limited. I was going to profile this one
and start with DeLuca. He’d been mentioned in the papers as a suspected crime
boss. Thugs who broke into apartments struck me as more likely to come from the
old-fashioned gangster school than an embassy.

If I’d been a cop, I’d have brought Smythe, this DeLuca
person, and Toreador, the arsonist, down to the precinct and put them in the
same room for questioning. I think that would have been a lot of fun. Instead,
I had to start running searches on DeLuca and Toreador to find connections. I
wanted gunman Harry’s last name so I could draw him into this too, but all I
could do was keep an eye out for any stray “Harry” in my search. Unfortunately,
Google couldn’t turn up a list of gunmen in the D.C. area and gangsters are
real sloppy about not having websites. My virtual research unfortunately has
limitations.

I called up the video Graham had copied of the street
interception that had allowed the stolen car to hit Bill. The Hummer had muddy
plates and the angle was all wrong for the camera to catch any numbers. But I
could tell it was a D.C. plate, which narrowed the search, if I could hack the
DMV for car titles. I could see the advantages of being a cop, except for the
abide-by-the-rules part. After wasting an hour attempting every back door I
knew, I still couldn’t get through to the DMV.

I had the fingerprints Patra had snatched from Riley and his
goon. I added those and the Hummer search to a file Graham could access and
hoped for the best. Fingerprint searches were not the easy magic seen on TV.

The biggest, fattest detail in my notebook was Dr. Smythe of
the Righteous and Proud. Why would he kill Max’s lawyer? I wanted it to be
because Reggie knew Top Hat secrets, but what would Top Hat have to do with the
R&P?