37
TATIANA GOT THE LAPTOP HUMMING. CYRUS HAD PUT the key back into its protective case. He removed it from its shell, and handed it to her. She carefully slotted it into the side of the unit. Then the two of them stared at the screen, mesmerized with anticipation. We all stared at them, waiting to see what would happen. They waited. They waited some more. For Cyrus, the anticipation turned to frustration and then anger.
“Goddammit, what now?”
Tatiana was calmer. She seemed more intrigued than angry. “I don’t know.” She worked the token in and out a few times. That didn’t seem to do the trick, so she pulled it out and checked the receptors, wiping them clean with the sleeve of her shirt. That didn’t work, either.
“Is it the right computer?”
She turned it over and checked the back of the laptop against the back of a business card Cyrus handed her. It took me a few seconds to realize where he’d gotten the serial number. I had read it to Kraft over my phone. There wasn’t much I knew that they didn’t.
“The computer is fine,” Kraft said. “If there’s something wrong, it has to be the key.”
Everyone turned, and now the spotlight was on me. “I dug the key out of Vladi’s grave. It can’t be the wrong key. It might be old or damaged, but it’s the right key.”
Kraft started to bat that one back, but Harvey interrupted. “It requires a password.” The room went quiet. Now everyone was focused on him.
Thorne walked over and gave Harvey his best commander’s stare. “What did you say?”
“My ex-wife knew how to get into it. She and Roger Fratello believed the password would be enough. They did not understand that it required both the key and the password. She told me the password.” He took a breath and set his shoulders. “Let my partner and Mr. Kraft go, and I will give you what you need.”
“Is he telling the truth?” Thorne looked at me, and so did Harvey, and I knew what was happening. Here was the chance he had spoken of. Here was the opportunity that I was supposed to take.
Tendrils of panic made their way up from my gut and started to wrap themselves around my heart and my lungs. I didn’t know if what Harvey was claiming was true. I knew this. If I contradicted Harvey, Cyrus had no reason to keep either Harvey or me breathing. If I supported his story, it at least bought us some time.
“Yes…he’s right. Rachel was supposed to call back with the password once she felt safe. She must have given it to him before she left. I didn’t know.”
Thorne looked to Tatiana. “Is that possible?”
She shrugged. “It could be configured that way.”
Thorne knelt again in front of Harvey so they were eye-to-eye. “Give me the password.”
“First, let them go.”
“You know, I’ve learned a few things in my time about how to make people talk, a few interesting techniques.”
“I am already a dying man, and I have learned to live with pain.”
Thorne rose slowly and wandered over behind my chair. I felt his hands on my shoulders. “I’m not talking about physical pain.”
“If you hurt her, you will never get the password. Never.”
Harvey sounded less afraid than I felt. He was playing his last hand, and he was all in. The moment was both thrilling and devastatingly sad, and I didn’t know what I was supposed to feel.
“You let them walk away, and I will give you the means to open the files. Whatever else is there, there is more than a billion dollars available to the one who gets there first.”
Thorne didn’t move. Harvey kept going, more anxious this time. “I know of no cause that would not benefit from the infusion of a billion dollars in cash that is free and clear. No one knows about this money.”
Again, the heavy silence. I didn’t think Thorne would let Kraft go, a situation that had its own implications, but it seemed he was considering some kind of deal.
Tatiana broke the silence. “He’s lying.”
Harvey looked stunned. He tried to stutter a response, but Tatiana rolled over him.
“There’s nothing here that looks like money. No hidden files. No encrypted files. No account numbers or serial numbers or passwords. I looked for anything in English or Russian. There’s nothing like that on here.”
Cyrus was crunching cough drops like mad, one after another. He probably wasn’t used to dealing with something as frustrating and mundane as computer problems. “But the serial number matched.”
“I think someone must have swapped out the hard drive. The one that’s in there now is not even encryption hardware. It doesn’t need the key. There’s nothing on the drive except the Martyrs’ documents, and those were moved onto it a couple of days ago.”
I looked at Kraft. “You swapped out the drive?” Drazen had said the files could not be removed from the drive without the key. He had said nothing about the drive being removed.
“No. Fuck, no.” He squirmed to sit up straighter. “That can’t be right. Those files should be three and a half to four years old. It’s the key. It’s the damn key. If it’s been buried for four years with a decomposing body, it’s got to have gone bad.”
We stared at each other, and Thorne stared at us, and Harvey just looked lost. Someone had pulled the stopper out of the floor, and we were all fighting to keep from swirling down the drain.
Thorne turned to Harvey. “It was a noble effort, friend. As a soldier, I appreciate what you tried to do. But I don’t believe you.”
Harvey seemed genuinely confused. He studied the floor as if he could read the answer there. “No. I am telling the truth. Please-”
Thorne picked up the radio and called for Red. The eager soldier came quickly and stood, waiting for orders.
“Red, start packing the gear. We’re going.” He looked at Tatiana and nodded in our direction. “Take them down to the basement.”
I could see in the way they looked at each other what that meant. We were going down to the basement and never coming back up.
“Wait.” Harvey tried to stand and almost pitched straight forward. Thorne pushed him back with one hand.
Tatiana hadn’t geared back up since coming back from Staples. She did it now, slipping into her vest and throwing her rifle strap over her head. She swung the rifle around to free her hands, then she lifted Harvey out of his chair. As she carried him in her arms, she made a face. “You stink, old man.”
I could hear Harvey wheezing all the way down the basement stairs, and I was afraid Tatiana would kill him and I would get down there and find his dead body.
“Cyrus…” I tried to climb out of the chair, but Red pushed me back. “You’re talking about a billion dollars. Probably more.” I tried to look around Red so I could see Thorne. “Isn’t that worth a few more hours? No one would ever come looking for it. We can figure this out. Harvey is telling the truth. He never lies.”
But the truth was, I didn’t know if he was lying or not. He was certainly clever enough to have made up the password story. Rachel was also clever enough to have kept one last secret for herself. It didn’t matter either way, because Thorne and Red were talking as if I didn’t exist.
Tatiana took Kraft next, easily hoisting him over her shoulder and carrying him the way a fireman would. He spewed venom at her all the way down the stairs, using his best weapon-words.
When she came for me, I fought her, at least as much as I could with my hands tied. I couldn’t stand not to at least make it hard for her. I fought her all the way down to the basement. At the bottom of the steps, she dropped me onto the concrete. With no hands or feet to break my fall, my hipbone and the side of my knee took the worst of it, hitting the concrete with blunt force. It hurt like hell, but at least I managed not to land on my head.
Harvey was on the ground on his left side facing me. I hoped he hadn’t been dropped. The only evidence that he might have was that his glasses were somewhere beside his face. His breathing was level. His wheezing had stopped. He was calm, which meant he’d already given up. That pissed me off.