Hidden Agendas Part 29

"No. Just you, Jo."

She sat up, the covers falling away to reveal her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She reached out and hugged him. "Thank you. You can say that all you want too. And I can't remember ever having a better time with my clothes off either."

"I told you I had hidden talents."

"You want to shower?"

"No, ma'am, what I want to do is lie here in this bed with you until they come and haul us away to the nursing home. But I stink pretty good, so probably a shower is a good idea."

"Go start it. Holler when you want me to come in."

"I'll holler now then."

"No, first you warm it up. What's the point in having a lover if he won't heat the shower up for you?"

"I hadn't thought of it that way," he said. He slid out from under the covers and started for the bathroom.

"Julio?"

He stopped. "Yeah?"

"Turn around for me, would you?"

He grinned and did a three-sixty, hands held out. "Like so?"

"Yes. Okay, you'll do. Start the shower, please."

"Yes, ma'am. On the double."

Chapter Thirty-Five.

Sunday, January 16th, 7:40 a.m. Quantico, Virginia Jay Gridley was still tired, having managed only an hour or so of sleep, but he felt good, the tiredness notwithstanding. Contrary to what the boss had said, he had camped out on his office couch, then gotten up and hit the nets early. Platt was the key to this whole thing, and while he had vanished, not leaving any real trail under that name, he might not be as smart as he thought he was. Few people ever were as smart as they thought they were, and Platt had made one giant mistake, no matter what-he had dared face off with Net Force.

There are some basic mistakes you want to avoid. You don't p.i.s.s into the wind, you don't eat at a place called "Mom's," and you don't pull your program on Lonesome Jay Gridley. Bad idea.

Marietta, Georgia The inside of the telegraph office smelled of must and pipe tobacco. A cast-iron potbellied coal stove and steel chimney in the center of the room glowed with warmth that kept the hardest of the chill off, but the place was still cool. Behind a counter sat a small man puffing on a corncob pipe. The man wore a long wool coat and gold wire-rimmed spectacles.

"Good mornin', suh. Can I hep you?"

Jay smiled and tipped his hat at the telegraph operator. "Mornin', suh."

Gridley wore the dress uniform of a Confederate captain, a soft gray wool unlike the b.u.t.ternut colors most of the enlisted men wore. A lot of officers had their own designs cut and sewed by their personal tailors, there being little real uniformity in officers' uniforms in the Confederacy. This early in the war, in 1862, the South was not only still in it, they had won major battles against the North. First Mana.s.sas-the Battle of Bull Run-had been a rout. The South had kicked some major Yankee a.s.s. Things had already started downhill for the Rebs after Perryville, but right now most folks here felt pretty good about their chances of winning the War Between the States.

Jay said, "Well, suh, I am Captain Jay Gridley, detached from General Lee's staff, and you could do a great service for your state and the Confederacy. We are seeking a Yankee spy, a Southerner who goes by the name of Platt. We do believe he might have been sending coded messages by wire to his Northern masters from this area."

"Well, I do declare!" the telegrapher said. "Can it be?"

"Yes, suh. Of course, we don't think he'd be so foolish as to do these treasonous acts under his own name, but perhaps he was. Could you check your records for us, suh?"

"I would be more than happy to, suh."

Polite folks, the Southerners.

After a minute of thumbing through a stack of yellow paper, the telegrapher shook his head. "Captain, I'm afraid I cannot find any messages sent or received under the name of Platt."

"This is not unexpected, suh. However, let me describe the traitor for you, and show you a drawing we have of him. He might have used another name."

Jay laid out the general description of Platt, then proffered a pen-and-ink sketch he withdrew from inside his coat.

The telegrapher frowned at the drawing. "I am sorry to report that I do not recognize this man, from word or this representation. However, if you will wait a moment...?"

The telegrapher got up and walked to the back window, a barred affair with the gla.s.s portion closed against the chill. He raised the window and yelled out, "Buford! Put down that broom and git yourself in here!"

A moment later a tall and gangly boy of thirteen or so, dressed in gray wool trousers held up by leather suspenders, a homespun gray s.h.i.+rt, and scuffed brown boots, appeared. "Yessuh?"

"This is Captain Gridley, from General Lee's staff. He has something to ask you." To Jay, the telegrapher said, "Buford sometimes watches the office when I take supper. He's got a fair hand with the key for such a young age, although he'll be enlisting as soon as he turns fourteen."

Jay wanted to shake his head. They did that, went off to war as young teenagers.

A lot of them never came back. Stupid thing, war. Stupid.

Jay repeated the description and showed the boy the drawing.

"Why, yessuh, Captain, suh. I do recall him. A large fellow, although he did not go under the name Platt, suh. I recollect that he called himself Rogers." He glanced at the telegrapher, then back at Jay. "I believe he was in just yesterday, suh."

Jay caught a glimpse of something in the boy's face, though he wasn't sure what it meant. He said, "And did this Mr.Rogers send or receive a message?"

The boy hesitated. "I-I think so, suh. I'm not exactly sure. Last evening was pa.s.sing busy, suh."

The telegrapher, meanwhile, thumbed through the stack of telegrams for yesterday. "I don't see one to or from Rogers here, boy. You did keep a copy, didn't you?"

The boy licked his lips, which seemed to have gone very dry all of a sudden. "I-I don't remember, suh. I must have done, if he sent or got a wire."

"I cannot find one here."

Jay stared at the boy. "Buford, you love your country, don't you?"

"Suh, yes, suh!"

"Then y'all better come clean. Something was unusual about this telegraphic event, wasn't it?"

The boy looked as if he was about to cry. His face clouded over, and tears welled.

"S-S-Suh. Mr.Rogers, he sent a message and-and he give me a nickel for the copy. He took it with him. Am I goin' to jail?"

"What? How could you do that, Buford? That's strictly against regularity!"

Jay held up one hand, asking for the telegrapher to keep silent. "I'm not worried about the nickel or what you did, son. You can square that if you can answer one question for me. Do you remember who Mr.Rogers sent the wiregram to? The name? Or the station?"

"Y-Yes, suh, I remember the station."

Jay grinned. Hah Hah! Now I Gotcha, Platt I Gotcha, Platt!

Sunday, January 16th, 8:05 a.m. Quantico, Virginia Jay thundered into Michaels's office, waving a hardcopy print out and yelling "Boss! I got him, I got him!"

"Slow down, Jay. You got who?"

"Platt. Who he's working for! You're not gonna believe this!" He shoved the paper at Michaels, who took it.

"See, the thing is, the guy was smart enough not to use his own name, but not smart enough to change his appearance. I did a scan of all new phone service in Georgia-temporary lines, mobile units, new installations-crossed them with Platt's ID. I figured once he gave up the Platt name and ran, he'd want new com gear under a new name. I threw out female names and corporation names, then checked all the logs at phone stores and service companies in the state. It took a while, but I got it narrowed down to a few, and when I started running those, I came up with a security cam shot of him buying a new mobile!"

Michaels listened with half his attention. There were several numbers on the list Jay had handed him. Circled in red was a number and written in red next to it was a name: Thomas Hughes.

It sounded familiar, but Michaels couldn't place it. He knew the name. Where did he know it from?

"So then I got the new number and ran a trace on the calls-"

"Jay," Michaels broke in. "Cut to the finish line. Who is this Hughes you have circled?"

Jay smiled and straightened himself up to his full height. "He's chief of staff for a United States senator."

Michaels made the connection. Of course. "White? This guy is Robert White White's COS?"

"Yes, sir. And isn't it funny that our thug computer guy is calling Hughes? What could the two of them possibly have in common, do you suppose?"

"Jesus," Michaels said.

Sunday, January 16th, 8:55 a.m. Quantico, Virginia Toni met Alex and Jay in the conference room. She was on her fourth cup of coffee, but she wasn't fully awake yet. She hadn't slept that well, and the worry that had kept her awake wasn't about the job. She had relived that long pa.s.sionate kiss in the Miata at least a hundred times. He wanted her, there was no question about that. The question was, was he going to let himself go with his feelings? Or was he going to suck it up and go stoic on her?

"Toni, what have we got?"

"Having a word with Hughes right now is going to be difficult. He's gone on a trip out of town with the senator."

"To Africa?" Michaels asked. "Ethiopia?"

She looked at him. "How do you know that?"

"From his staff guy when he called to schedule me for a committee meeting."

She shook her head. "Yes, well, we've had somebody there check, and while the senator is making the rounds and giving speeches, Hughes isn't with him. We know he got that far, he talked to the press on the flight over and shortly after landing, but n.o.body has seen him since."

Jay said, "Well, we have his private number here, don't we? Doesn't matter exactly where on the Dark Continent he is. If he's got a virgil, he can't be out of signal range."

Alex said, "The thing is, Jay, we don't really want to talk to him on the virgil. This is the kind of thing you need to do personally."

"You think he might run if he knows we're on to him?"

"Right now, given what we suspect, we're talking about an end to his career and fifteen years in a federal penitentiary-if Platt is working at his direction. He might decide that retreat is the better part of valor. And if he is somewhere in Africa, extradition might be iffy.

"And we have to consider the idea that maybe White is implicated."

"Wishful thinking," Toni said.

"Probably, but you never know. We might get lucky." Alex smiled.

"What I don't understand is what he would have to gain from this," Toni said. "Yeah, he gives his boss a platform to stand on, makes Net Force his whipping boy, but that seems a small payoff for such a big crime."

"I think I have the answer for that," Joanna said from the doorway.

They all turned to look at her.

She waved her flatscreen. "I just got back from the federal money hounds. While we all were running around stamping out little fires on the bank incursion yesterday, somebody snuck in and siphoned off almost two hundred million dollars."

"Now there's a coincidence," Jay said.

"d.a.m.n!" Alex said. "Of course! It was misdirection! We thought somebody wanted to take the system down! It wasn't about terrorism at all, it was about money!"

"That lets White out," Alex said. "He's probably got more money than that in his personal checking account."

Joanna continued. "The hounds have traced part of the funds through a Caribbean bank and two Swiss numbered accounts, but they are stonewalled at some Indonesian trust company."

"Part of the funds?" Alex asked "A hundred and sixty million," Joanna said. "Forty went somewhere else."

Toni said, "That would be a pretty good reason to break into a few computers to raise h.e.l.l."

"It gets better," Joanna said. She looked at her flatscreen. "Seems an anonymous tip to the FBI has just resulted in the arrest of one Jamal S. Peterson, a former bank employee wanted for a similar kind of sting in South Dakota last month. They recovered the money from that, a couple hundred thousand, but Peterson was not apprehended at the time. The tip claimed that Peterson was responsible for this theft too."

"And he's been picked up?"

"About fifteen minutes ago. I just got off the phone with the special agent in Charge. Peterson had a forged pa.s.sport, a one-way ticket to Rio, and a new account in Switzerland with forty million dollars in it, transferred in last night."