“I don’t like attention,” said Jessie. “It creeps me out.”
“Humility. What a concept.” Linus trained his eyes on Jessie. “Do you know the last person to solve that hack? It was Rudeboy at DEF CON last summer. He did it to win Capture the Flag.”
“Rudeboy solved it?”
“He wasn’t the only one, but he was the quickest. Five minutes flat. I came in third. Three minutes behind. You, Miss Grant, needed thirteen minutes and seventeen seconds.”
“But…how did you know that I’d-”
“I was watching you. None of the other propeller-heads in class stood a chance.” Linus stood and picked up his satchel and his endless cup of coffee. “I’m gone tomorrow. See you after that.”
“Yeah, sure. See you.” Jessie watched helplessly as he walked out of the classroom. “Linus,” she called, rising from her chair and running into the hall. “I need your help with something.”
“Homework?”
“Not exactly. It’s kind of private.”
“Not now.”
“But-”
“Tonight. Crown and Anchor. Nine o’clock.”
The Crown & Anchor was a pub on San Jacinto Boulevard. “No-ten.”
“Even better. Ten.”
Jessie left the classroom and headed downstairs. Outside she sat by the fountain. She put her hand in the cold water, asking herself what she’d done. Meet Linus at a pub at ten? Was she crazy? She wasn’t allowed to leave the house on her own at night. Even if she managed to sneak out, how was she supposed to get all the way downtown…and then back again? And what about going into a pub? Could she even do that?
She took a fruit roll-up from her pack and ate it. How could someone smart enough to solve the hack that won Capture the Flag be so stupid?
“There you are.”
Jessie looked up as a flash of blond hair sat down next to her. “Hi, Garrett.”
“Lucky I ran into you.”
And then it came to her. The solution was in front of her all the time.
“Yeah, lucky coincidence.” Jessie smiled. “Did you say something about having a car?”
41
Ian ran up the stairs of ONE 1 and entered the cabin of his jet without looking back.
“Christ, I hate that place,” he said. “Like the Inquisition without the party favors.”
A flight attendant took his jacket and handed him a bottle of Penta water.
Peter Briggs followed him into the aircraft, pulled the door closed, and locked it. “Activate the ECMs,” he said.
The flight attendant moved to a control panel and turned on the plane’s electronic countermeasures.
Ian collapsed into a chair. “What the hell is she doing now?”
Briggs sat in the chair opposite. “She’s asking about Semaphore. Said it by name in a conversation with her husband’s former partner, Special Agent Randall A. Bell.”
“How is that possible?”
“How do I know?” Briggs’s face was redder than usual, his pale blue eyes brooking no challenge. “Maybe her husband left the case file open on his desk. Maybe she reads his e-mails. Maybe he whispered it to her while he was banging her the night before he died. Does it matter how? She said it. Listen for yourself.”
Briggs set his phone on the table and played the recording of Mary Grant speaking to Randy Bell.
“Sounds like it was a shot in the dark,” said Ian.
“No such thing.”
“But she called Bell back to ask which word she wasn’t supposed to repeat. If she was certain it was Semaphore, she wouldn’t have needed a confirmation.”
“Well, thanks to Randy Bell she has it. He might as well have attached a homing beacon to the word. After the call she performed searches for the word semaphore alone and in combination with FBI, CIA, cybercrime, pirating, you name it.” Briggs banged a fist on the armrest, index finger extended for good measure. “Mason told us she was a pain in the ass. He said she wouldn’t quit.”
“Ed Mason thinks that everyone who doesn’t work for him is either a pain in the ass or a risk to national security.”
Deputy director of the FBI Edward G. Mason III was either his best friend or his worst enemy. Ian walked to the front of the cabin to make sure that none of the attendants were listening. “What else has our intrepid widow been up to?”
“See for yourself.”
Briggs handed Ian a printout of the surveillance data collected from the Grant home. Ian looked over a list of online activity. Someone in the house liked to watch videos of cute animals on YouTube. Kittens, puppies, and sloths. Sloths. Despite his ill temper, he smiled. His own sons spent hours watching cute animals on YouTube. Ian didn’t mind. It beat spending hours watching less cute videos of men and women that were as easily available. Twelve-year-old boys didn’t watch kittens playing the piano forever.
“We’ll deal with this when we get back. Till then-”
Briggs raised a hand. He had his phone to his ear and his face had gone from red to redder. “What did you say?…A who?…What?…Oh, Christ. Fuck me.”
“What is it?” asked Ian.
Briggs dropped the phone onto the table. “She’s got a visitor. A newspaper reporter. Still want to wait till we get back?”
42
Tank sat with Mary Grant at her kitchen table. He was grateful to be out of the heat. And more grateful for the iced tea she’d offered. He knew she wasn’t from the South because the tea didn’t have enough lemon or sugar. But it was cold and wet and he drank down half the glass before he knew it.
“Well, then,” he said, setting down the glass. “Why do you think the FBI is lying to you?”
Mary Grant sat on the edge of her chair, anxiety radiating from every pore. “According to them, it’s an open-and-shut case. Joe let an armed informant get into a car with him and the informant shot him.”
Tank set his phone on the table and asked permission to record their conversation. Mary nodded and went on. She described a voice message she’d received from her husband (Tank assumed that this was the voicemail Grace had referred to) and her fractious interactions with Don Bennett. “First he wanted to take my phone, then he didn’t want anything to do with it. He point-blank refused to help me find the message. Why?”
“Maybe he knew what was on it.”
“The whole thing didn’t make sense,” she continued, more calmly. “The doctor said that the bullet that killed Joe struck his spinal cord. He would have been paralyzed instantly from the chest down. He couldn’t have shot anyone after that. I just don’t get it.” She sighed and looked Tank in the eye. “Mostly, Mr. Potter, I just know they’re lying. I know Joe and I know he wouldn’t get himself into that situation. Your turn. Why are you here?”
Tank finished his iced tea. He wasn’t sure how much to tell her. She didn’t need to know that he too had questions about who shot whom. It was a cardinal rule of reporting to keep your ideas close to your vest.
“I share your opinion that the FBI has been less than forthcoming about the case,” he said. “If we could just find out who the informant was, we’d be a lot closer to figuring things out. Can you tell me anything about what your husband had been working on lately?”
“Supposedly we came to Austin so that Joe could work a municipal corruption case, but it was a lie. There was no corruption case.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do.” She hesitated, then said, “He was working on something else. A case that had begun in Sacramento.”