‘I couldn’t talk to you over the phone at Quantico. Does that suck or what? Whom do you trust?’ she said when I walked up to her.
‘You can trust me. Of course I don’t expect you to believe that, Monnie. You have news?’
‘I sure do. Take a load off. I think I have some good news, actually.’
I took a stool beside Monnie. The bartender came and we ordered beers. Monnie started up as soon as he walked away. ‘I have a good friend at ERF,’ she began. ‘That’s the Engineering Research Facility at Quantico.’
‘I know what it is. You seem to have friends everywhere.’
‘That’s true. I guess not at the Hoover Building, though. Anyway, my friend alerted me to a message the Bureau got a couple of days ago, but dismissed as a crank call. It’s about a website called the Wolf’s Den. Supposedly, you can buy a lover at the Den, as in, have someone abducted. The site is supposed to be impossible to hack into. That’s the catch.’
‘So how did he get in? Our hacker.’
‘She’s a genius. I suspect that’s why she was ignored. Want to meet her? She’s fourteen years old.’
Chapter Sixty-Six
Monnie had an address for the hacker in Dale City, Virginia, only about twelve miles from Quantico. The agent who’d fielded the original call hadn’t followed up very well, which bothered us, so we figured the agent wouldn’t mind if we did his job for him.
I wasn’t actually planning on taking Monnie along, but she wouldn’t have it. So we dropped her SUV off at her house, and she rode with me to Dale City. I’d already called ahead and spoken to the girl’s mother. She sounded nervous, but she said she was glad the FBI was finally coming to talk to Lili. She added, ‘Nobody can ignore Lili for long. You’ll see what I mean.’
A young girl in black coveralls answered the front door, and I assumed it was Lili, but that turned out to be wrong. Annie was the twelve-year-old sister. She certainly looked fourteen. She beckoned, and we stepped into the house.
‘Lili is in her laboratory,’ said Annie. ‘Where else?’
Then Mrs Lynch appeared from the kitchen and we introduced ourselves. She had on a plain white blouse and a green corduroy jumper. She was holding a greasy spatula, and I couldn’t help thinking how casual the domestic scene was. Especially if what Lili thought she had come upon was actually true. Had a fourteen-year-old found a possible trail that would lead us to the kidnappers? I’d heard of cases solved in stranger ways. But still…
‘We call her Dr Hawking. Like Stephen Hawking? Her I.Q. is up there,’ said her mom, waving the cooking utensil upward for emphasis. ‘Smart as she is, Lili lives on Sprite and Pixie Stix. There’s nothing I can do to influence her dietary habits.’
‘Is it all right if we talk to Lili now?’ I asked.
Mrs Lynch nodded. ‘So I guess you’re taking this seriously. That’s so wise with Lili. She’s not making any of this up, believe me.’
‘Well, we just want to talk to her. To be on the safe side. We’re not sure that this is anything, really.’ Which was true enough.
‘Oh, it’s something,’ said Mrs Lynch. ‘Lili never makes a mistake. She hasn’t so far anyway.’
She pointed the spatula down the hall. ‘Second door on the right. She left it unlocked for a change, because she’s expecting you. She instructed us to stay out of it.’
Monnie and I headed down the hallway. ‘They have no idea what this could be, do they?’ she whispered. ‘I almost hope it’s nothing. A false lead.’
I knocked once on a wooden door that sounded hollow.
‘It’s open,’ came a high-pitched female voice. ‘Come.’
I opened the door and looked in on a pine bedroom suite. Single bed, rumpled cow-pattern sheets, posters from MIT, Yale and Stanford up on the walls.
Seated behind a blue halogen lamp at a laptop was a teenage girl – dark hair, eyeglasses, braces on her teeth. ‘I’m all set up for you,’ she said. ‘I’m Lili of course, of course. I’ve been working on a decryption angle. It comes down to finding flaws in the algorithms.’
Monnie and I both shook Lili’s hand, which was very small and seemed as fragile as an eggshell.
Monnie began, ‘Lili, you said in your e-mail to us that you had information that could help with the disappearances in Atlanta and Pennsylvania.’
‘Right. But you found Mrs Meek already.’
‘You hacked on to a very secure site? That’s right, isn’t it?’ Monnie asked.
‘I sent out some stealth UDP scans. Then IP spoofing. Their rootserver bit on the false packets. I planted a sourcecode for the sniffer. Finally hacked in using DNS poisoning. It’s a little more complicated, but that’s the basic idea.’
‘I get it,’ Monnie said. Suddenly I was very glad she was there with me at the Lynch house.
‘I think they know I was on with them. Actually, I’m sure of it,’ said Lili.
‘How do you know that?’ I asked Lili.
‘They said so.’
‘You didn’t get into too many specifics with Agent Tiezzi. You said you thought someone might be “for sale” at the site.’
‘Yeah, but I blew it, didn’t I? Agent Tiezzi didn’t believe me. I also admitted I was fourteen, and a girl. How dumb of me, right?’
‘I won’t hold it against you,’ Monnie said and smiled kindly.
Lili finally cracked a smile too. ‘I’m in big trouble, aren’t I? Actually, I know that I am. They might already know who I am.’
I shook my head. ‘No, Lili,’ I said to her. ‘They don’t know who you are, or where you are. I’m sure they don’t.’
If they did, you’d already be dead.
Chapter Sixty-Seven
It was so eerie and strange, being in the young wunderkind’s room – with her life, and her family members’ lives, possibly in great danger. Lili had been a little coy in her message to the Bureau, so I understood how the tip might have fallen through the cracks. Also, she was fourteen years old. But now that we’d met and spoken to Lili one-to-one, I was sure that she had something real that could help us.
She’d heard them talking.
Someone had been purchased while she’d listened.
She was afraid for herself, and for her family.
‘Do you want to go on-line with them?’ Lili suddenly asked in an excited voice. ‘We could! See if they’re together now. I’ve been working on some cool anonymizing software. I think it will work. Not sure though. Well, yeah, it’ll work.’
She smiled broadly, showing those beautiful braces.
I could see in her eyes that she wanted to prove something to us.
‘Is this a good idea?’ Monnie leaned in and asked me.
I pulled her aside, I lowered my voice. ‘We have to move her and the family anyway. They can’t stay here now, Monnie.’
I looked over at Lili. ‘Okay. Why don’t you try to get on-line with them again. Let’s see what they’re up to. We’ll be right here with you.’
Lili talked constantly as she went through the various steps to get the site’s passwords and encrypted protection. I didn’t understand any of what the fourteen-year-old had to say, but Monnie got most of it, and she was enthusiastic, supportive, but mostly impressed.
Suddenly, Lili looked up in alarm. ‘Something’s all wrong here.’ She went back to her computer.
‘Oh shit! God damn them!’ she swore. ‘Those creeps. I can’t believe this.’
‘What’s happened?’ Monnie asked. ‘They changed the keys, didn’t they?’