The Lights of Tenth Street

  The room was filling up fast with people—hardened FBI agents sprouting notebooks, laptop computers, and tape recorders.

  Their leader—the man who had pulled Ronnie from the street—identified himself as Special-Agent-In-Charge Paul Jackson. He swept his arm around the packed conference room, introducing the group merely as “my team,” then took a seat at the end of the long table.

  Doug and Ronnie sat in comfortable chairs immediately to his right, with the others standing or sitting around the conference table in no apparent order. Agent-in-Charge Jackson pointed toward the empty chair beside Ronnie and said that, with luck, her friend Tiffany would be joining them soon.

  He was explaining that the young lady was fine, she just had a slight concussion, when the door opened behind them and Tiffany was ushered in, looking slightly sheepish.

  She sat down beside Ronnie, who gave her a relieved hug.

  “Now.” All eyes in the room turned to Agent Jackson as he stood. “As an update, we’ve heard from our colleagues on the police force that they took statements from all the club employees, but that our agent was not among them. She was apparently removed by force only moments before law enforcement officials arrived. There has been no further contact with her.” His deep voice was heavy with regret. “And then we received a string of phone calls from Mr. Turner here, trying to call in some information that we eventually figured out—once we’d put all the pieces together—was extremely relevant. So now we very much need to hear what our guests have to tell us. I’d like to ask Ronnie Hanover to start.”

  The room suddenly became very quiet as Agent Jackson invited her to tell of the events of the last twenty-four hours, how she came to be in the possession of the Palm Pilot, and anything else of import she could think of.

  Ronnie’s voice sounded small in her ears as she relayed the story, trying not to tear up as she told how Maris had drawn off the men, allowing Ronnie to escape.

  Doug picked up the story, explaining how, with no immediate response from the FBI, he had taken the Palm Pilot into work to see if his boss could decrypt it. He described the young whiz kid breaking into the device and finding the encrypted file Maris had downloaded. Described how he’d given his boss, Jordan, a copy of the file on disk. Described, with slow puzzlement, the message Mary had left about Jordan burning the disk, and how someone had broken into his office and taken his computer.

  After a long moment, Agent Jackson pulled something out of a box at his side and laid it on the table. Ronnie strained forward and saw Maris’s Palm Pilot, shattered beyond repair.

  “Can … can you fix it?” Ronnie stammered.

  “I’m afraid not.” Agent Jackson’s voice was grim. “Unless you can provide us with any new information, we may be back at square one. So we need to get into some more detailed questions.”

  “Excuse me. Can I cut in?” Doug’s voice broke the depressed silence.

  “Certainly.”

  He got up and went over to his bloody coat, still lying across a chair by the door. “I disobeyed whichever FBI agent I spoke with, when he told me to leave my office immediately.”

  A man across the room spoke up, surprised. “That was me.”

  “Well, sorry. But I’m glad I didn’t do what you told me.” He fished in the pocket of his coat and pulled out a disk. “I took an extra minute and made a copy of the encrypted file.”

  The room exploded in astonishment as Doug brought the disk over to Agent Jackson, who began to laugh, shaking his head.

  “You might make a believer out of me yet, Mr. Turner!” He tossed the disk down the table to one of the notebook-wielding agents. “Get someone working on that right away. If it’s a Bureau encryption, you’ll need to check the relevant ops file for the code.”

  “Yes, sir.” The young man darted out the door, disk in hand.

  Agent Jackson turned to another woman, sitting halfway down the table. “And get someone looking into the background of Mr. Turner’s boss—” he flashed a glance at Doug—“what’s his name?”

  Doug gave the agent Jordan’s full name and what little he knew of his personal information. Once the woman had also hurried out the door, Doug turned back to Agent Jackson, his voice slow.

  “But—how could Jordan be involved in this? He’s just a businessman. I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Turner, but it seems clear that he must be, somehow.” He raised an eyebrow as if curious. “That surprises you?”

  Doug felt as if his world were turning upside down and rearranging itself while he watched, dumbfounded. “But … what you’re saying … is that there’s a connection between my boss and these girls sitting here.”

  “Looks like it.”

  SIXTY-ONE

  Special Agent-In-Charge Paul Jackson again stood at the front of the room, his voice commanding attention as he asked for silence. He pushed back a panel in the wall, revealing a large video screen, then lifted a remote control and pushed a few buttons.

  The lights in the conference room dimmed just slightly, and an image appeared on the screen.

  Ronnie and Tiffany both gasped. It was a picture of Maris—an official FBI picture, with profile information posted beside it.

  Agent Jackson’s manner was hurried. He gestured to a senior-looking man at the table. “For our visitors, and for those in this room who aren’t already up to speed, I’d like to introduce Agent McKendrick from the New York Bureau office. He’ll take it from here.”

  Agent McKendrick took Agent Jackson’s place at the front of the room. He looked directly at the three visitors, his face severe.

  “For reasons I will explain shortly, I’m about to discuss some matters rarely shared outside the Bureau. This information must not be repeated outside of this room, to anyone. Is that clear?”

  The three nodded, and he continued. “I believe that if you have this information, you can help us put the pieces of the puzzle together more quickly. As you may know, the New York office of the FBI has one of the most experienced teams in combating everything from organized crime to counterterrorism.

  “The woman you know as Maris is actually Larissa Madrid, a fourteen-year veteran of the Bureau. For several years, the Bureau has been following the operations of a large, well-organized national crime ring that appeared to be based not out of the usual cities, such as New York or Chicago, but out of the Atlanta metropolitan area. Agent Madrid—I’ll call her Maris for your sake—moved to Atlanta to apply for a job at The Challenger, which was one of the establishments we had identified as playing a leading role in the crime ring.”

  Another picture appeared on the screen. Marco, caught on camera in the staff hallway, unaware the photograph was being taken.

  “Maris spent most of her time monitoring this man and his contacts with the larger ring. Marco, the manager of the club, was believed to be one of the top operatives, having ascended in trust and power after his predecessor was bumped off.

  “Maris was fairly new on the job when Marco’s predecessor blabbered to the club one night about a secret drug-running tunnel off the coast of Florida. She passed the information along to us, we conveyed it to the local authorities, and the tunnel was raided. Marco’s predecessor was bumped off shortly thereafter, and we learned a valuable lesson about the quick-trigger tactics of this particular crime ring. We also began to suspect that there was something else going on.”

  He gestured to the screen as another photograph appeared. Another official FBI picture. The agent gave Ronnie and Tiffany a few moments to look at the picture, then asked. “Have you ever seen this person before?”

  Ronnie shook her head, but Tiffany frowned. “It’s been a long time—”

  “Yes, it would’ve been over a year.” The agent looked interested. “Go on.”

  “I think I remember Maris talking to someone I took for a common street punk, outside the club a couple times. The first time I was worried for her safety, but she waved me off and said it was okay. I think this was the
guy she was talking to. But he sure didn’t look like an FBI agent.”

  “No, he was one of our best undercover operatives. He went by the moniker of Snoop and infiltrated the crime ring, acting as an informant. We gave him bits of information to pass along so he’d be more and more trusted by the higher-ups. And it worked. He eventually learned some big changes were coming; there were some major reshufflings going on. He learned that the leader of the entire national ring—a man known only as Proxy, who somehow directed the operations from afar—that Proxy was ready to do something very different. The higher-ups were clearly preparing for something. Snoop understood it to be a new business line, but felt it would be vastly different from one of the usual criminal sidelines of drugs or prostitution.”

  Agent McKendrick turned back to the screen, not seeing the uncomfortable expressions that crossed the young dancers’ faces. He sighed. “Unfortunately, Snoop was trying to get more involved in the operations side of the ring, and he got caught in a botched op. Our communications with local police broke down, and since they didn’t get the message that we had an undercover agent trying to gain high-level trust, they conducted an unexpected raid. Snoop insisted on going back to business afterward, believing that the value of his information would keep him safe. Unfortunately, we never heard from him again. He was eliminated before he could learn and pass along the details of just what it was that the leadership was branching into. But Maris spent the next year on heightened alert because of his murder, and she gathered a great deal of good information.

  “Over the course of the year, she became convinced that the people involved were not normal criminal masterminds. In fact, based on conversations she overheard, and people who met with Marco at the club—and elsewhere, when she managed to tail them—she became convinced that there was planning going on for a number of breaches of homeland security. Of most concern, she believed they were arranging some sort of massive terrorist attack inside the United States.”

  “You mean—are you saying that Marco was a terrorist?” Ronnie said.

  “A terrorist, a helper of terrorists; I don’t know what you’d call it. But certainly, he appeared to be one of the top operatives of the group, and the group was planning something. We just don’t know what.”

  “Well, can’t you get someone else to infiltrate the team again?” Tiffany asked. “I guess the club would be too risky, but what about like what this Snoop person did?”

  “It’s too late for that. We believe there may already be an attack planned and set in motion. We don’t have much time to stop it. That’s frankly why we’re hoping that the information you brought with you—and what you carry in your heads—might be the key to unlocking the puzzle.”

  “Why the urgency?” Doug asked. “I mean, I feel it, too—but if you don’t know what the plan is, why do you think it’s so urgent?”

  “Because, Mr. Turner, Marco appears to have been taken out. We don’t know why—whether he knew too much, whether he was viewed as disloyal for some reason, we don’t know. But he was killed. In our experience, when a top-level operative is killed unexpectedly, it’s usually a signal that something major is about to happen, and happen quickly.

  “Although it’s not quite the same, an infamous example of this was the assassination of Ahmed Shah Massoud, the opposition leader of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan just two days before the 9/11 attacks. The terrorist masterminds knew that the U.S. would respond militarily in Afghanistan and that Massoud was the one man able to unify the opposition troops and lead the country if the terrorist network was driven out. So he had to be taken out before the 9/11 attacks could proceed. When he was assassinated, our colleagues at the CIA knew that something must be coming, but they didn’t learn what, in time.

  “So in this case, we can only move ahead with all speed and try to ascertain whatever we can about what may be coming, in the hopes that we can do something to stop it.”

  Doug felt light-headed. No wonder the Lord had moved heaven and earth to get them all together in this room right now. He prayed that they would be able to put the pieces of the puzzle together in time.

  “No, Jordan, I’m sorry.” Sherry stared at Doug’s boss, puzzled. “He’s not here. He had to go to an urgent meeting downtown.”

  Sherry had offered Jordan a drink, had offered him a seat, but the man just stood in the middle of the foyer, a strange look in his eyes. Jo and Vance watched the exchange from the kitchen doorway.

  “What meeting?” Jordan asked. “His phone is turned off. Where is he?”

  Sherry started to open her mouth and felt almost as if she was being physically restrained. She smiled at Jordan and gave him an apologetic shrug.

  “I wish I could tell you, but it’s a confidential matter. A personal thing … nothing related to work.”

  She heard the chirp of Jordan’s cell phone at his belt, and Jordan checked the display.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  He walked out the still-open front door and down the path until he was out of earshot.

  Sherry heard Vance come up behind her, his brows raised to the ceiling. “That was strange.”

  “Yes.” Sherry shivered. “He’s not usually this … odd.”

  Tyson was sending last-minute e-mails, checking in with his various lieutenants as he talked to Proxy. He relayed the welcome news about the shattered Palm Pilot, sure Proxy would be as relieved as he. Instead, he was met with stony silence.

  “He had the file on his computer, you know. I checked.” Proxy’s voice was cold. “He could have made a copy.”

  Tyson swore. “I didn’t know that, no. But what are the chances that he actually did make a copy? And even so, what are the chances that the Bureau can figure out anything critical in just a few hours? The Palm Pilot—and all the information Maris had stored there—are gone.”

  “We can’t risk it.” Proxy’s voice went distant again. “We must ensure that nothing goes wrong.”

  He explained what he had in mind, and Tyson allowed himself a cold smile. The man might be odd at times, but he was a strategic genius.

  “Good,” Tyson said. “Of course, it won’t work unless you can get in touch with Doug.”

  “He’s got to check his messages or answer his cell phone eventually. After all, he’s a good family man. And his family will be wondering about him.”

  Doug watched as Agent McKendrick sat down beside Ronnie and Tiffany, a sheaf of papers at his side.

  “It’s hard to know where to start digging, especially if time is short. So let’s start with the reports Maris filed over the past year. I’ll walk you through what she found and what she surmised, and see if you can provide more details that will crack open an area for further inquiry.”

  He picked up the first piece of paper, but before he could open his mouth, the door burst open behind him and the young agent hurried back in with the disk.

  Agent-in-Charge Jackson gestured the young man over.

  “Sir, we cracked the file. It’s a basic audio file containing machine noise of some kind. We haven’t had time to analyze it, so we don’t have a guess as to its purpose.”

  “Play it for us, would you … in case it means anything to any of us or our guests.”

  The young man slipped the disk into his laptop and fiddled with the settings. After a few moments, a faint sound emanated from the laptop’s speakers. Machine noise, as he had said.

  One of the men across the room spoke up. “Three years ago I worked at headquarters—the decoding department. There’s something … familiar about that, but I can’t put my finger on it.”

  Agent Jackson barked at him. “Well, get out there and help them.” He turned to the young man. “Get a team of people together and get every brain working on what this could possibly be. Come back once you have some reasonable ideas, even if you’re not sure what the final answer is. We’ll run it by everyone in the room and see if it breaks something loose. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir!”

/>   The young man and the decoding expert hurried out, just as a female agent stuck her head back in, waving a file at Agent Jackson.

  “Speak!” he growled at her. “Time is ticking. What’d you find?”

  The woman rapidly described what she had found in Jordan’s file. In the military as a young man, served in intelligence with several technical specialties, including decryption, satellite development, and strategic security. Posted in Iran (before the fall of the Shah), then Japan, then the Pentagon before leaving the service. He was an early adopter of computer technology, understanding computers and programming before most people knew what computers were. After the service, he worked in the security industry, regarded as not only a great technician but a strategic thinker and good businessman. Upright citizen, serving on many corporate and civic boards. Not a blemish, except for an odd note from his Iran days that he had taken too much time off, earning a reprimand for disappearing for weeks at a time to enjoy the countryside (he had said).

  The woman flipped a page and kept reading. In recent years, Jordan started an information-technology company with his brother: the company—she nodded in Doug’s direction—where Mr. Turner now worked. After the death of his brother last year, Jordan took full control of the enterprise, and it appeared to be prospering, making a number of aggressive but apparently profitable acquisitions, partnerships, and other deals.

  The woman set the file down on the table beside Doug.

  Agent McKendrick sighed. “So nothing obvious.”

  “Not right now, sir.”

  Doug pulled the thin file toward him and looked at the picture stapled to the top. It was a digital photo from the company’s official website, Jordan smiling in his authoritative way and looking anything but a menace to society. There was just no way that Jordan was involved in this.

  “What’s that?” Ronnie asked.

  He lifted the file so she could see the photo. “That’s my boss.”

  Her eyes widened. “But … that’s the mean guy from the boat party!”