WASHINGTON, D.C.
THE CIA DID NOT have the only computer in town, and many experts considered the system rather primitive. Lieutenant Commander Benton Freedman of Task Force Trident thought the Agency’s Directorate of Intelligence was about five years behind the curve on hardware alone, and losing ground. They were barely in the game on software development.
Technology was constantly evolving, but the Agency was always slow to adapt. It was not unusual for public sector companies to ramp up new programs and tweak techniques faster than the Agency could follow. The CIA believed in keeping secrets, while the rest of the computerized world was dedicated to sharing as much knowledge as possible, as fast as possible. Just a routine task like moving an e-mail from an unclassified computer system over to a classified channel was tantamount to hard labor for a CIA worker. Swapping vital information with other government agencies did not work smoothly, and the entire World Wide Web was never really embraced at the Langley headquarters, because it could not be controlled.
Other intel agencies were doing only slightly better in stumbling around the secrecy problem: Anything put into a computer became prey for some dedicated hacker, and Freedman was a shadowy god to hackers everywhere. They were aware of his prowess but never discovered his identity. Bolstered by Top Secret clearances, the superhacker known as the Lizard trolled with ease through the CIA’s internal system.
“What do you have, Liz?” asked General Brad Middleton when Freedman tapped on the open door of his Pentagon office. Middleton respected Freedman’s electronic prowess but sometimes needed a translator when the Lizard lapsed into rapid-fire geek.
“Sir, you told me to follow the money, and I did.” The brows behind the thick eyeglasses arched.
“And…?”
“I can now prove for a fact that former agent Hall is a thief.”
“That is excellent work, Lieutenant Commander Freedman. However, no one gives a healthy crap that he stole some money. We want to find him because he is a treacherous bastard and he set up Kyle Swanson to take a mass murder rap.”
“He stole quite a bit, sir. Thought you would like to know.”
Middleton felt his eyes beginning to cross as the Lizard ignored his comments and took a chair, uninvited, then opened his notebook. “You’re going to tell me anyway, aren’t you?”
“Why, yes, sir. Of course.”
“I’m a general. I have rights.”
“Sir, you are the very model of a modern major general, with information vegetable, animal, and mineral.”
“Don’t go there.” If Freedman launched into The Pirates of Penzance, he might never shut up. “Stick with the money.”
“Sir, Agent Carson, in her debrief before she left, gave me a list of former agent Hall’s secret bank accounts that she had memorized. She has a remarkable ability of recall and, on instructions from Agent Hall, had not written them down anywhere. He believed that he alone had the codes, but she did, too. As I say, she is remarkable. And quite beautiful. Did you know that she was in the Miss America-”
“Back to the money, Liz.”
“Sir. This is information that the CIA does not possess. The Agency still thinks the single account set up for the Pakistan operation was the only one Agent Hall looted, and he took the five million dollars that was left in it. That isn’t even close.”
“How much?”
“In total, sir, or in each individual account?”
“I have a pistol in my desk drawer, Lizard. I am going to take it out and shoot you in the head.”
“One hundred and three million dollars and change, sir. Total. That’s just rounding it off to the nearest million.” He gave the general a printout with the names of the banks, the account numbers, and the amounts currently in each.
Middleton blew a low whistle as he studied the numbers. Coax the Lizard a little bit and eventually he would say something worthwhile. “Can you track all of these?”
“Oh, yes, certainly, sir. Money goes in, money goes out, and it’s all routed through other banks. Former agent Hall cannot let it all just sit there, but false names on the accounts won’t matter, just the numbers. For instance, his last electric bill at his apartment in Georgetown was for a hundred and thirty-eight dollars and twenty-six cents. It is now overdue. That is how we’ll get him, sir.”
“The electric company will send out a bill collector to find a CIA assassin?” General Middleton began to scratch the stubble of his short hair, a sure sign of impatience. Liz has something important to say. He would not be in here otherwise.
Freedman looked puzzled for a moment. “I don’t think that would work very well…”
The general threw him a stern look. “Get back on track, please. Back on track, and stay there!”
“Umh. Yes, sir. Even traitors and sources and snitches have to pay their bills. Former agent Hall is going to have to dip into those accounts at some time, perhaps not for a million dollars, that would be unlikely, I think, but to pay a credit card or start a new checking account or rent a car or buy a dinner. Something cheap. When he does, the trap programs I have set in place will locate the banks involved and the billing source. When he moves money, I will see it.”
Middleton tapped his pen against the desk a few times. Frustration was growing. “So has he paid some utility company a hundred and thirty-eight bucks?”
“And twenty-six cents, sir. Oh, no, sir. I would not expect him to start paying routine bills for some time. I, I doubt if he’s ever going to pay that bill.”
“Has he made any withdrawals at all?”
“No, sir. Not that I can tell. I would have known.” The Lizard smiled like a college freshman who had finished a chemistry experiment.
General Middleton made a little spinning motion with his right index finger. “So, Lieutenant Commander Freedman, you are sitting here… why?”
“The deposit, sir, not the withdrawals! He hasn’t taken any money out, but yesterday a wire transfer of funds was made into his Paris account from a casino in Monaco: fifty-seven thousand dollars.”
“Son of a bitch went gambling. So he was in Monaco as of yesterday.”
“And evidently won a substantial amount, too, sir. I can now backtrack and find the name he is using and where he is staying. He has already opened up for us, and I anticipate a lot of new information very soon as I become able to establish more specific criteria. Should I inform the CIA?”
“Oh, hell no. Keep this information within Trident for the time being. We’re only a day behind him. Good job, Liz. Now get out of my office and go back to work.”
AT THE AGE OF four, in his home in Groton, Connecticut, Freedman stuck his right index finger into an empty light socket, and the electrical jolt threw him across the room. His nanny was listening to rock music on tape and never heard his cries. It stung! It burned! Eventually the pain eased, and the fright was replaced by curiosity. Benton Freedman had discovered electricity, and his world would never be the same.
At dinner that night, proudly wearing a Band-Aid on his injured finger, the little boy discussed the incident with his father, who took apart the offending lamp to show the boy how it worked. For months afterward, Benton roamed the two-story house with a screwdriver and needle-nosed pliers, disassembling toys, light switches on the walls, plugs at the ends of cords, and anything that remotely looked as if it ran on electricity. Within two years, he was devising simple programs on a basic Apple computer.
Freedman’s father was an engineer who helped build submarines for the U.S. Navy, and he took Benton aboard one of the huge boats for a seventh birthday present. The Electric Boat yards on the Thames River was a howling seventeen acres of pure construction bedlam, where some twenty-five thousand workers worked with heavy machines performing some of the most intricate construction work in the world. Benton had often watched submarines gliding soundlessly up the smooth river with only part of the long black hull and the conning tower showing above the water. His dad took him across a rickety gangway in a huge dry dock, down a hatch, and into a new world. Lighted dials, pipes and valves, television screens and bundles of rubber-coated wires and sprawls of schematic diagrams. He was given a blue baseball cap with the sub’s name woven in gold thread, and a birthday doughnut in the galley.
His father then showed him the most special part of the boat, the space where a nuclear reactor was being installed to power this war beast. Benton quickly grasped the techniques, and the experience spurred his academic interest in science. He graduated from high school at fifteen, and took an associate’s degree in mathematics at a state college while waiting to grow into the age limit for admittance to the U.S. Naval Academy. He was known among his classmates there as “the Wizard,” graduated with honors, and went into the boats. Two undersea tours won him the coveted gold dolphins badge of a submarine officer. Then Freedman took a PhD in computer technology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was swept up into the dark world of military special operations.
Despite his normal frazzled looks, Freedman never forgot the harrowing combat drills aboard the nukes, where he had honed his skills of working quickly and with total concentration in tight quarters, while under immense stress. Tons of ocean were just on the other side of the hull, waiting to crush you for a mistake. When General Middleton hand-picked the young genius for Task Force Trident, the lieutenant commander thought that it was the best thing that had happened to him since he stuck his finger in that light socket. Although the Trident Marines changed his nickname to “the Lizard,” he tolerated the teasing because the organization’s ultra clearances were the keys to the toy box, allowing him to draw from resources throughout the government to build a complex computer network that was secure, fast, and efficient.
For the present, his work was narrowed to supporting Kyle Swanson and Agent Lauren Carson and trying to track the renegade Jim Hall. With the financial sniffing programs in place on the secret accounts, the Lizard could spend more time patrolling the internal communications network of the CIA with his computer sweeps. The FBI was the prime agency hunting Kyle Swanson. The Lizard had plenty of access there, too.
There was also quite a bit on the Carson hunt, and much of the traffic seemed to be coming from the desk of a man named Jack Pathurst in the CIA Security Office. It was clear from the messages that her current whereabouts were unknown. That was as it should be, thought the Lizard, since he had worked with Major Summers to spirit the beautiful agent out of the country undetected and rendezvous with Sir Geoffrey Cornwell. Canadian passport, a wig of long, dark hair, a clean history, and presto, she was gone. Kyle was vectored in from another direction through Sir Geoffrey’s extensive arrangements.
Now Freedman would build a protective information fence around the two fugitives. If anyone approached them, he would have plenty of tripwires in place.