Net Force Part 25

"Hey, June, it's Alex Michaels. He in yet?"

"Since six, Commander. Hold on a moment, I'll put you through."

As he waited for Carver, Michaels looked up and saw Toni pa.s.s by his window. He nodded at her, but she didn't make eye contact as she headed for her office. Well. Probably she was tired--they'd all been working without a break for too long. He'd call her in and let her know what Jay had found, as soon as he was done telling the Director. She'd be happy to hear the news.

"Good morning, Alex. You have good news for me?"

"Yes, sir, I believe so. Very good news."

Wednesday, October 6th, 9:11 a.m. Long Island The Selkie stood on the doorstep, holding a small box wrapped in expensive paper. She wore crisp, dark blue cotton slacks, a matching long-sleeved s.h.i.+rt and a baseball cap the same color. A few wisps of the blond wig peeped from under the cap, and she had on just enough makeup to look five years older than she was. The wrapped package was the size of a box a diamond necklace might fit into. The van parked behind her on the street was a rental, plain, white, with stolen tags in place. She looked the part of a delivery woman in the upscale neighborhood.

She rang the bell.

A minute pa.s.sed. The Selkie rang the bell again.

"What?" came a sleepy voice from the intercom.

"I have a delivery from Steinberg's Jewelers for a Miz Brigette Olsen?"

"A delivery?"

Jesus, honey, which part of that didn't you understand? The Selkie glanced at the clipboard she held. "From a Mr. Genaloni?"

"Hold on a sec."

The woman inside opened the door only as far as the chain latch would allow. From what the Selkie could see through the gap, Brigette was young, blond, busty, what the Irish called a fine strapping girl. She wore black silk pajamas and a faded blue bathrobe. And if the phone call that the Selkie had listened in on last night was correct, Brigette would receive a visit sometime today from Ray Genaloni. The Selkie was ready. Brigette extended one hand for the package. "Give it to me."

"I'll need you to sign for it, ma'am," the Selkie said. She waved the clipboard. She glanced at her watch, as if she had places to go, things to do.

Brigette hesitated.

The Selkie could probably boot the door and pop the safety chain loose. Those things were nearly always tacked on with short and useless screws, but she didn't really want to take the risk of somebody seeing her--kicking in the front door of a gangster's mistress in broad daylight was not the smart way to go. Or she could pull the small .22 pistol she had tucked into the inside-the-waistband holster, under her s.h.i.+rt, behind her right hip and threaten the woman--Open up, honey, or get drilled. But that was risky. And she definitely didn't want the woman dead.

One more bit of business and neither way would be necessary. "Oh, sorry, I almost forgot, there's a note I'm supposed to read." She unfolded a piece of paper from the clipboard. "Says here, 'Ray says wear this and nothing else for me this evening.' "

The Selkie stared at the ground, as if embarra.s.sed.

Brigette laughed and undid the safety chain. "That's Ray, all right."

She opened the door.

People were so gullible.

Wednesday, October 6th, 11:46 a.m. Quantico Alex Michaels was on his way to the cafeteria, though he wasn't really very hungry. The hot leads of just two days ago had petered out. Jay Gridley's winnow of programmers living in Russia had come up blank. And the DNA and fingerprints of the woman who had collected Scout at a Schenectady, New York, hotel hadn't found a match on any of the systems they had checked.

Gridley had moved his search for the programmer into the surrounding CIS countries, and was also widening the net he'd thrown for the a.s.sa.s.sin, but so far zip on either.

Toni Fiorella had, it seemed to Michaels, been avoiding him. She'd missed a staff meeting, left early and generally looked at him as if he'd developed some highly contagious disease she didn't want to get close enough to catch.

Well, at least he still had his job. Once the Director had told the President they had pictures of Day's a.s.sa.s.sin and were going to be able to run her down in the near future, that had been enough.

Whether that was true or not was another matter, but certainly they were better off than they had been. It was was going to happen sooner or later. going to happen sooner or later.

Ahead of him in the hall, Michaels saw John Howard walking toward the cafeteria. Howard saw him as he reached the entrance. He nodded. "Commander." He was polite, but no more.

Michaels didn't understand why the colonel didn't like him, but it was apparent he did not. "Colonel."

Howard moved off, not offering to eat and visit with his boss.

But Jay Gridley came bustling up, grinning, and Michaels filed Howard away to deal with later.

"Tell me you've got good news and that raise is a done deal," Michaels said.

"Well, I dunno how good it is, but, lemme see, I, uh, got the programmer. How's that?"

"No!"

"Yep, yep, yep! I was right, he's a Russian. Emigrated to Chechnya, been living there for years, that's why we missed him on the first pa.s.ses." Jay held up his flatscreen so the image on it was visible.

"Commander, meet Vladimir Plekhanov."

Wednesday, October 6th, 3:30 p.m. New York City Genaloni glanced at the clock on his desk. Enough. He needed to get out of here. Shuffling forms, electronic or paper, was enough to drive you nuts after a couple of hours. He waved the intercom on. "Roger, get the car. We're going out to Brigette's."

"Yes, sir."

What he needed after being cooped up with the pressures of business all day was a place to unwind and somebody to cut loose with. Nothing like getting your ashes hauled to mellow you out. And if they left now, they'd beat most of the rush.

Being rich had its perks, all right.

Wednesday, October 6th, 3:40 p.m. Long Island Brigette had been extremely cooperative. As soon as she'd gotten over her surprise at seeing the pistol in the delivery woman's gloved hand, her first words had been: "Oh, s.h.i.+t."

The tone hadn't been one of fear, but of irritation. As if she'd just discovered it was raining when she'd planned to lie in the suns.h.i.+ne.

Now, the van was parked a block over, in the driveway of a vacant house for sale--a ch.o.r.e the Selkie had done while Brigette had been handcuffed to her kitchen plumbing.

Back in place, she'd uncuffed the woman and allowed her to dress.

As she had been slipping into her black silk panties, Brigette had turned those sweet cornflower-blue eyes on the Selkie and said, "Are you going to kill me, too?"

No doubt in her mind as to why the Selkie was here. No brainless bimbo, this one.

"No, why should I? You do what you're supposed to do, Genaloni goes down, I'm gone."

"He'll have bodyguards with him. They'll be out front."

"How many?"

"A couple."

Apparently being cooperative again--but lying. Genaloni would have at least four guards, five if you counted his driver. One of them would be watching the back, too. Brigette was trying to cover her a.s.s--more than the silk G-string she had on did. If her sugar daddy took the hit, she could hope his killer would let her live because she'd helped her. If Genaloni survived and the delivery woman fell, sweet Brigette could tell him how she'd lied to protect him.

"You don't seem too upset that your ride is about to get erased."

The blonde slipped on a natural-colored raw silk blouse, no bra under it, and b.u.t.toned it. She noticed the other woman's look. "He likes to see my nipples," she said. Then she shrugged. "He's a mob guy. It's a risky business. I have a little put away, and I don't figure I'll have much trouble getting another honey. If it was good enough for Genaloni, there will be other mob guys who'll want a taste."

The Selkie grinned. No sentimentality for this girl. She knew what she was and meant to make the most of it. The Selkie kind of liked that about Brigette, her being straight up and no bulls.h.i.+t.

"Somebody might blame you."

"Why should they? I'll let them wire me with a stressbox and I'll tell them the truth. You stuck a gun in my face--what could I do?"

"I guess that means you'll tell them what I look like, too, right?"

There was a moment of hesitation as Brigette scanned that, tried to put some spin on it. Then she said, "Yeah, I'll tell them. But that's a disguise, right?"

"What if they ask if it's a disguise?"

"I can get by that one."

This was getting interesting. "Really. How?"

Brigette pulled a microskirt up over her long legs, zipped it and tucked the blouse into it. "Depends on how you ask the question. If they ask, 'Do you think Ray's killer was wearing a disguise?' I can say, 'No,' and it'll scan as truth."

"Really?"

"Sure. Because I don't think think you're wearing one, I you're wearing one, I know know you are. I've been around makeup before." you are. I've been around makeup before."

The Selkie grinned. "Why would you do that? Cover for me?"

"You could come back later and delete me if you think I ratted you out."

Her logic was frail, but the Selkie didn't point that out. If Brigette did a good enough job ratting her out, the mob might find and kill Ray's a.s.sa.s.sin, and she wouldn't be around to threaten sweet Brigette's peace of mind.

Could she trust her? Uh-huh. Right. The Selkie had no doubt that her target's mistress would sing an entire opera when asked by those who wanted to hear it.

Brigette found a pair of silk stockings, bunched one into gathers, then slipped it onto her left foot and up her leg. The Selkie watched, intrigued by the woman's complete lack of modesty and emotion regarding the upcoming deletion.

Brigette caught the look. She smiled. "You like women? I can show you a good time while we wait."

The Selkie shook her head. "Thanks. Not while I'm working."

Ray's girl was a cool one, all right. The Selkie wouldn't want to be dangling over a cliff with sweet Brigette on the other end of the rope--not unless she had a wad of cash in her hand to bribe her to hang on to the lifeline.

Still, Brigette would be helpful. The Walther TPH .22 pistol the Selkie held was kind of a scaled-down version of James Bond's PPK. It was an excellent example of the gunmaker's art, the TPH, high-grade stainless steel, small and compact, very accurate. But the tiny .22 round was not a man-stopper out of a pistol unless it hit the central nervous system. A spine or brain shot was necessary for a certain kill. If, as Ray came up the walk, Brigette started screaming, a head shot would be difficult. Not impossible--she could make that shot with this piece out to twenty yards--but by that time, the TPH would be wearing the suppressor, to cut down on the firing noise. The barrel wasn't long enough to let the Stinger ammo achieve supersonic speed, and the suppressor would cut the velocity even more as it absorbed the exhaust gases with the sound. Unless you put the round into an eye, the target might survive. The skull was hard, bullets had been known to glance right off. And hitting an eye with the suppressor blocking the sights, well, that was iffy.

No, with a .22 handgun, you wanted to put the muzzle an inch or two from the back of the target's head, and pump three or four sound-suppressed rounds into the hindbrain while his bodyguards were sitting in their cars unaware. And be long gone before anybody came knocking.

She needed privacy to do this right. Brigette would get Genaloni into the house. Once the door was closed behind him, the Selkie would handle the rest.

Wednesday, October 6th, 6:00 p.m. Quantico The five o'clock meeting began an hour late. This was a small group--Michaels, Toni, Jay, Colonel Howard, and the new FBI computer liaison, Richardson--though the FBI guy couldn't stay long. From here on out, the information concerning this case was going to be NTK--need to know--only.

"All right," Michaels said. "You've all gotten the info-packet Jay put together. Any questions?"

Richardson said, "Yes. Once you've done a verification that this . . . Plekhanov is for certain the programmer we want, how do we proceed?"

Michaels said, "It is a little tricky. Ideally, we would contact the Chechen government and ask to have him extradited under the Net Criminal Agreement of 2004. This might not be a good idea. Jay, if you would?"

Jay nodded. "Plekhanov probably has a standby security program for his most sensitive files. If the local police go barreling into his office or house and start tapping keys or pulling wires, chances are his system will lock itself up tighter than spandex before they figure out how to pull the plug. And even if not, his sensitive files are certain to be encrypted, 128s or maybe even 256s. He used to write the Russians' military ciphers. Without a key, it would take our SuperCray going full blast something like ten billion years to break the code. That's probably a little longer than we want to wait, so we can't get his system files without the key. If we don't get the files, we can't prove it's him, not enough for the legal guys to ask for indictments."

"So, how do you do it?" Howard asked.

"The ideal way is to look over his shoulder while he's got his system lit. Either that, or get the key."

"And that's only part of the problem," Michaels said. "Jay?"> "I've done a little background on this guy. Turns out he's got links to some pretty high government officials all over. He's done a lot of legitimate security work, for the Russians, the Indians, the Thais, the Australians, you name it. He's got money--a nice chunk on the legal books--talking a couple of million personal net, and no doubt a lot more illegal money stashed. That bank robbery in New Orleans probably wasn't his first."

"So we have a rich guy with clout," Toni said. "And even if the Chechens were willing to nab him and hand him over, we can't nail him without evidence we can't get?"

"That pretty much sums it up," Michaels said.

Howard said, "If this guy is rich and powerful, why is he doing this? Why take the risk?"

Michaels nodded, glad to see his people were paying attention. "There's the big question. What does he want?"

"More money, money, more more power," Richardson said. "He's greedy." power," Richardson said. "He's greedy."

"Probably," Michaels said. "But I've been going over the information, and what it seems like to me is that he's driving at something specific. Some of the system crashes have been directly beneficial to him--Jay has the particulars--but some have not. Even if some of that is just blowing smoke to cover his trail, there seems to be a pattern. He's going someplace in particular. Before we try to grab him, it might be wise of us to see if we can figure out where that place is. He might have help, and it would be good for us to gather them all in."

Before he could continue, the door to the conference room opened. Michaels's secretary stood there. She wasn't supposed to interrupt unless it was an emergency, and Michaels's first fear was that something had happened to his wife--ex-wife, dammit--or his daughter. But before he had more than a flash of panic, his secretary put that to rest: "Commander, there is some news from New York you need to hear. It's about Ray Genaloni."

Wednesday, October 6th, 4:40 p.m. Long Island Brigette's doorbell rang. "Oh, Jesus," she said.

"Go let him in. Remember, I'll be standing where I can see you and he can't see me. If there are any sudden moves, anything at all, I'll drop you before I do anything else."

"Okay. I understand."

Brigette headed for the door.