“This is NSA Deputy Director Ellington and NSA Agent Badger.” Briggs gestured to Jake. “Special Agent Jake Hunter.”
Jake didn’t like where this was headed. “I told you I didn’t want any more partners.”
“You want the intel,” Briggs said. “This is the only way you get it.”
“I think you will find Agent Badger more than capable,” Ellington said. “The level of intel you requested can be shared only internally, within the NSA. She will have access, you will not. She will decide exactly what gets shared with you and what doesn’t.”
“That’s not acceptable to me,” Jake replied.
“That’s fine,” Ellington said. The two of them turned and headed toward the door. Jake recognized the posturing; he had used the same tactic many times with suspects. This was the style of the one-time offer: If you didn’t stop them and take the terms, you were screwed.
“Wait,” Jake said softly. Ellington and Badger slowly turned around. “What are the other terms?” This is where I find out how bad I’m going to be treated.
“She answers to me, not to you,” Ellington said. “You step out of line and she’s gone, along with the rest of the intel you want.”
“What else?”
Ellington paused, apparently thinking of what else he wanted to impose on Jake. “That’ll do. The simpler things are, the better they work.” Ellington turned toward Agent Badger. “Any problems, call me. Be careful, and Honi, be nice for a change.” She glared back at him. Ellington turned and left.
Jake checked out a Bureau car for the day. He and Honi headed over to the Metro Police first precinct station.
“I didn’t want a partner either,” Honi said.
Jake glanced over at her. “Don’t you usually have one?”
She shook her head. “I have my own section now, so no partner.”
Obviously the internal structure of the NSA is different from the FBI, Jake realized. It would take me another decade to become a head of section.
“But you had a partner before?” Jake asked.
“Yep. Not a satisfactory experience.”
“I can relate. What was the problem?”
She looked over at him. “Attitude. For some reason men can’t have an equal partnership with women. They think they need to be in charge.”
“The senior partner is usually in charge, so what’s the problem with that?”
“Age doesn’t always equate to experience and ability, or intelligence for that matter,” Honi said. “In my experience teams with equal members are more efficient than leaders and followers. It doubles the effectiveness if partners are equals.”
“Well, we’re not really partners, so I don’t see how it would matter.”
She turned her head away from him and looked out the side window.
Their badges and IDs quickly got them to Detective Traeger’s desk in the large open homicide squad room.
“Anything new on Jacobson?” Jake asked.
Kurt Traeger couldn’t take his eyes off Agent Badger. “Who’s this?”
“Agent Badger, NSA,” Jake replied. “She’s working this case with me.”
She shook Traeger’s hand and returned his smile.
“Why this case?”
“We’ve got connections to possible international money laundering and to China, so we may be able to help with motive or suspects on your vehicular homicide.”
Traeger nodded. “Any help will be appreciated. By the way, initial tox screen on Jacobson came back negative. So if your guy was delusional, it wasn’t because of drugs.”
“I had hoped for a simple explanation. Looks like things are more complex.”
“As usual. The ME’s about to start the autopsy. I’ve got to be there. You two are invited if you want to come.”
Jake glanced at Honi. She seemed uninterested. “We have some other things we need to follow up on. Can you get me a copy of the Medical Examiner’s Report?”
“Sure.”
Jake and Honi returned to their car.
“You drove all the way over here to get the results of a tox screen and request an ME’s report?” Honi asked.
“Yeah.”
“It’s a waste of time and resources. You could have accomplished that with a thirty-second phone call.”
“It’s my investigation,” Jake said firmly. “We’re doing it my way.”
“It’s still a waste of my valuable time, and a waste of my agency as a resource.”
I knew this wasn’t going to work, he thought.
“Do we have ears inside the Federal Reserve Bank office yet?”
She still looked angry, but she seemed to be settling down.
“Since yesterday, when we received the request from Briggs. I turned the speaker on for the phone that sets on the International Funds Transfer Desk. It acts as a microphone. We’re recording everything. It’s all sound activated and time stamped.”
“And they can’t tell?”
“No. The phone will perform normally. It’s a function we had built into the chip that controls the phone. All phones now have that capability. As long as the phone is plugged into the phone line, we can listen through it. We send the access code, and it’s ours.”
“And cell phones?” Jake asked.
“Even easier.”
Jake thumbed his cell phone in his pocket, wondering who had been listening to his conversations. “So potentially, you could record every phone conversation in the country?”
“With Echelon, we have the capability to record every phone conversation on the planet. The problem isn’t with the technology, it’s with people.”
“I’ve heard of Echelon. What does it do, exactly?”
“Echelon was created as a global system of antennas for the interception of all private and commercial communications, what we call Signals Intelligence. It’s the result of the UKUSA Security Agreement between Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States, and dates back to 1946.”
“And it’s limited by people?”
“Yes. We have a limited number of surveillance technicians. Nobody can listen to 18,000 phone conversations an hour. The computer system breaks all the words down into text, and sorts the text according to key words. It flags all conversations that contain any keywords, just like a search engine would do on the Internet.”
“So what happens if someone substitutes an ordinary word for what they suspect is a keyword in their conversations?” Jake asked. “And all the people they talk to know what the substitute word means? ‘Bomb’ has to be a keyword, right? What happens if someone substitutes, say, ‘banana’ in place of ‘bomb’. Then what?”
“Encoded conversations are our biggest problem,” she said. “We know who talks to whom. If we can identify the substitute words, we can tag the conversations and listen to what is being said. But that’s a big if.”
“E-mails?”
“Same deal, it’s all keyword driven. We don’t have enough people to look at everything. Just knowing how much information can fall through the cracks scares me. We know what we know, but what we don’t know is so huge, we can’t even get an estimate as to how big it might be.”
“I know the keywords help us catch criminals.”
“And terrorists. But only the stupid ones. The smart ones, the tech savvy ones, never even show up on our radar.”
“The people we’re looking for aren’t stupid,” Jake said.
“Which is why you have me.”
“So, this is where you live?” Honi asked as she carefully stepped from the dock onto Jake’s 40 foot sailboat. The deck was smooth Teak wood. The boat was white fiberglass with medium blue trim.