Hellfire (Sisters In Law Book 2) Read online

“Seems simple enough. Okay, I can live with that,” Althea decided. “Let’s get this done.”

  “I’ll talk to Jamie. We’ll move the records out of Haiti but you won’t know where.”

  “Then I can’t tell.”

  “Then you can’t tell.”

  “Who ordered this stuff?” Winona said. “My turkey is dry.”

  “You ordered it,” said Sevi. “It’s your office.”

  “I did,” said Winona. “I did order it. Short memory.”

  21

  It was a systems administrator by the name of Don Nelson who discovered her theft. Althea was at her cubicle inside the Watergate in Washington when Nelson leaned inside her cube. "See you a minute?" he said. It wasn't a question. He crooked a finger at her and walked off, expecting her to follow.

  Always the systems administrators, Althea thought as she fell in behind Don Nelson.

  SA's were the bad boys who tracked and traced everything that happened on a company network such as Blackguard's. They knew everyone's password. Check.

  They knew all data sent and received by all users. Check.

  They knew modifications users made to all data and systems themselves. Check.

  They knew all attempts to jack their data. Check.

  But did they know that Althea had scored a SA's credentials and had been downloading tons of documents and transferring them to the real world? That was something she was about to find out.

  She swallowed hard and watched the bouncing globe of Don Nelson's bald head as he led her through Blackguard's labyrinthine halls. Everything in her wanted to resist, turn and run, but she knew she'd never escape. Not by running. So she had to use her head. Then it occurred to her: the only thing these people understood was a threat. She would threaten them, manipulate them--and hope she lived to tell about it.

  After a final left turn and oblique march of another thirty yards the SA threw open the door to a dark conference room. Althea passed him by and went in and switched on the lights. The neons blinked and threw their icy light around the small room. Althea sized it all up. Table, four chairs, ubiquitous conference phone in table center, tray with pitcher (empty) and four upside-down water glasses. Best of all, no one else there. She took a far chair, sat, and clasped her hands before her. See? I have nothing to hide, her body language trumpeted. She was many things, but she was not afraid. She had the goods on them and the goods were in a safe place where Blackguard could not reach them. They could threaten her, but she could threaten them right back.

  Nelson took the chair closest to her and turned in his chair so he was facing her. He was maybe eighteen inches from the side of her face when he spoke first.

  "Well, Althea, you know, and you know I know, what you've been up to."

  "SA's know everything. That's my beginning premise," she said. "But you brought it up, so tell me what you know."

  "We know you've taken data. And we want it back. If you refuse then bad things will happen to you and your family. This isn't a game we're playing."

  "Oh, that's where you're wrong. It's a game of keep away and I won two weeks ago when I began downloading terabytes of data and storing it off-site. Where it is--that's the game, because you'll never find out and you'll never make me tell you."

  "You can't be made to tell us? Are you serious? Are you sure?"

  "Serious and sure."

  "We have our methods, dear woman. Never forget that Blackguard is populated with some of the heaviest hitters in the world. Men and women who create new modes of torture as a contest among themselves. I can assure you that when your eyes are about to be cored of their pupils you will speak up. Or when snakes are introduced into your body, you will want to cooperate. Don't flinch, dear woman. There, there."

  She had recoiled at the suggestions. Recoiled and scowled in disgust--against her will, of course. Just like that--snap!--she had been cowed. And he knew it. Then she caught herself. She had practiced this answer many times before:

  "See, even if you make me talk, I don't know where the data is. Someone else does and you don't know who. But if you even so much as frown at me, then it's over. My person will upload your data to WikiLeaks and the world will come after you."

  "Then let's talk about who else has seen the data you've stolen from us."

  "So far, no one has seen it."

  "And how do we know that? Do you have proof?"

  She shrugged. "Guess you'll just have to believe me."

  "Already we don't believe you. No, you'll have to do better than that."

  At that moment Nelson removed his eyeglasses and tugged a white handkerchief from the breast pocket of his beige shirt. He wore no tie--systems administrators wouldn't be caught dead wearing ties. He held the eyeglasses up to the neons and peered through first one lens then the other. As he passed each lens by, his eyes jumped to twice their size, magnified in the frail light.

  Althea watched this display with disgust. Try as they may, SA's always reverted back to the geeks they were. He'd had her there with the cored eyes and the snakes--but then he'd lost the rhythm and meter of his presentation when he stopped to spot clean his eyewear. What a doofus, she thought, and relaxed in her chair. Now he wouldn't get squat out of her.

  But then he surprised her. Surprised her in a way she'd never forget.

  He cleared his throat several times. "Miss Berenson--do you mind if I use your real name? We have one of your children."

  Althea froze. Then she slowly turned in her chair so that her face wasn't twelve inches from his.

  "Mister, you'd better be kidding. If you've touched one of my children I will take down this entire place. Everything goes on WikiLeaks immediately."

  "Do that and your child disappears forever."

  "Do that and I will hunt you down and personally kill you, your wife, your children, your parents, your siblings and your friends. Then for fun I'll take out the DuMont brothers themselves. And their wives and their children--you get my drift?"

  "I hear what you're saying. Should I be frightened?"

  Her back stiffened. "Know this, mister. If anything happens to me, your documents are automatically delivered to WikiLeaks. If anything happens to anyone or anything I love, your documents are automatically delivered to WikiLeaks. Now, if I were you, I'd assign someone to me and to my family and to my dog to make sure nothing bad happens to any of us. Are you frightened yet?"

  He smiled.

  "So we're at an impasse," he said. What do you suggest?"

  The power play was hers.

  "I don't suggest, I demand that my child be returned to my home immediately. Once that is done I will return the documents in my possession. Except the Sevi al-Assad documents."

  "I don't know what those are. Sevi who?"

  "Your missile killed her family in Syria. The lawyer who employs me is suing you. Those documents I keep."

  He frowned. "No, no exceptions, dear woman. You keep nothing."

  "Then we don't have a deal. Time to hide your loved ones because my sisters and I are coming after you."

  "Your sisters have what to do with all this?"

  "My Sisters in Law. Believe me, you don't want that pack coming after you."

  "Please, no threats. That doesn't work here."

  "Then I'll tell you what. You keep my kid and I'll upload Blackguard's entire universe to WikiLeaks. Everything. From Vietnam forward, every black deed, ever homicide, every evil ever done by the DuMont brothers becomes public knowledge around the world. We're done here, Mr. Nelson."

  She stood to leave.

  "Hold it. What makes you think you can just leave? What if I have security waiting outside that door?"

  She leaned down and placed both hands on the table. She leaned toward him.

  "WikiLeaks."

  "That's it?"

  "That's all I need. Now I'm leaving. You better damn well hope you can bring Malie home by six o'clock tonight because at six-oh-one I'm clicking UPLOAD on the WikiLeaks page. Now, we're done here."
r />   She turned and abruptly strode from the room.

  Nelson rubbed both hands back over his bald head. He punched the green button on the conference phone.

  "What?" he spoke into the phone.

  A metallic voice came back.

  "Return the kid."

  "You're sure about that?"

  "Are you seriously challenging me?"

  "No, sir."

  "Six o'clock, Nelson. Have her home."

  "She isn't actually out of the country."

  "How stupid do you think we are?"

  "She's on her way."

  22

  "When I flew to London I drank too much," Winona confided to the sisters.

  They were gathered like birds on a wire at Moe's Grill, a slum name for an upscale eatery on North Wacker Drive. As they waited at the bar for a table, Winona made her announcement to the group. "I drank too much and I cried myself to sleep."

  "Girl," said Althea, directly to Winona's left, "That scumbag ain't worth that. Uh-uh."

  "Have you found a lawyer?" asked Christine.

  At Althea's left, Sevi studied the menu. Without lifting her eyes, she asked, "Scumbag? Is that a real American word?"

  "You'll get the hang of that word once you're in the American singles scene," said Althea, patting Sevi on the arm.

  "Which we don't recommend you get involved in until you've lived in the States at least a year," said Christine. "Too toxic for newbies like you."

  Then Althea's face darkened. "They caught me yesterday."

  All faces turned to her.

  She nodded.

  "Yep. Systems admin found out I've been stealing documents."

  "Why didn't you call me?" said Christine. "You knew I needed that kind of development without delay!"

  "Sorry, sister. I know you do. But I knew we were meeting today. It's all been taken care of. I'm terminated from Blackguard. They even found the bugs."

  "What are they going to do?" asked Winona. "Cops called?"

  "You kidding? No way the criminals are calling the cops. I just dropped one word on them and it all shriveled up and blew away."

  "What was that?" said Christine.

  "WikiLeaks."

  "Yes."

  "Yes."

  "It did the trick. And...I wasn't kidding. I still might do it."

  Christine's eyes grew wide. "Uh-uh. We don't need that kind of news traffic now. The feds would be all over us if you did that. No, you're going to sit tight and hang onto what you have. I'll tell you when it all changes, if it ever does. But for now, no WikiLeaks. For God's sake, please."

  "All right, all right. They just shouldn't have threatened me. I hate bullies. Speaking of," said Althea as she changed the subject, "Winona, how's that trim your man Gorman is playing house with? Is he still hitting that?"

  "'Course he is. The little head's doing all his thinking anymore."

  "So your husband is dipping his wick in his secretary. That's a load on, girl," said Althea. She snorted scornfully.

  "Yep. My turn in the barrel."

  "How can we help?" asked Christine. She took a long drink of her tonic water. No alcohol for her at lunch---that was forever a no-no.

  Winona toyed with her cocktail napkin, slowly wiping away the drink condensation beneath her glass when she moved it away. "Hard. To. Say. Point me toward a good divorce lawyer, I guess. What about you, Chris? Can you take my case?"

  "That's an option. Someone needs to give Gormie a good drubbing. It's definitely time."

  "Think about it."

  "Let me talk to Ed. I would be more comfortable with Ed Mitchell actually doing the case."

  "Ed would be great. Maybe he would even take me to his breast and pat me on the back. I could do that with Ed."

  Christine laughed.

  "Or do you have first dibs on him?" asked Winona. "I see how you two stalk each other around the office. Always just happening to bump into each other at the copier, or in the kitchen, or going or coming from the restrooms, or talking to paralegals--it happens constantly, ladies. There's a real game going on here."

  "All your imagination," said Christine. "Ed's my employee."

  "But he comes to our house all the time," chimed in Sevi. "He helps Christine around the house, plays catch with Jamie, and studies me like I'm from another planet or something."

  "Comes to your house?" said Althea. "Exposed to the kids? Now we're talking serious, honey."

  "It's not like that," Christine protested. "He comes around to play with Jamie. More like a big brother to him since Sonny's gone. I appreciate everything he does."

  "Really?" said Winona in a needling tease of voice, "What all might it be that he does?"

  "Rubs my back, kisses my toes--you know, the typical big brother stuff," Christine laughed. "Get outta my face, you two."

  "I haven't seen him rub your feet," Sevi said, her look perplexed. "But I have seen him take your hand and kiss you."

  "Oh God," said Christine, "it's definitely time we find you your own place."

  "I could do that," said Sevi. "I need my own place. You've been wonderful but I make enough now to pay my own way."

  "Plus you've gotta know your way around town by now," Winona said.

  "Plus you probably want to throw your leg over some dude by now," said Althea, "am I right? Do you need your privacy so certain physical violations and inspections can proceed?"

  Sevi slapped the mahogany bar. "I'm not like that! Stop, please, even if you are teasing. Only Hussein is my--"

  "God, sorry," said Althea. She pulled her head into her shoulders turtle-like, and shrugged at the other two women. "I honestly didn't realize. Please forgive me, Sevi."

  "You're forgiven," said Sevi. "I know you're trying to be good to me. It's just not easy for me to move on from my love."

  "Got that," said Christine, raising her glass of tonic water. "Here's to lost loves."

  "Lost loves."

  "Lost loves."

  "Lost loves."

  They touched glasses and drank deeply. Each had her own private look on her face. And each face was somewhat pained, to varying degrees, for they all had suffered losses that still niggled at them.

  "Better to have loved and lost--"

  "Than never to have loved at all."

  And at that moment the hostess came to lead them away to their table. They fell in behind her, twisted and turned around tables to the rear of Moe's Grill, and were shown to a dark corner with a candlelit table. Two candles, in fact, a foot apart in the center of the table. The cutlery was silver inlaid with pearl and the napkins were linen. The women made themselves comfortable, unfurled napkins, and began going over the menus.

  23

  "I understand the FACCE software for falsehood recognition. And it's amazing work, Jamie," said Sevi.

  They were sitting in Jamie's office in the spare bedroom on the third floor of Christine's house. It was windowed on two walls and sprawled beneath dormers and a raised ceiling. The ceiling beams were oak and the framing stanchions were left uncovered but faced with oak too. He had done the room in blood red and written favorite words vertically in a wide orange font. "Singularity," said one word on the front wall. Four feet west was another, "Non-locality." Above his two-wall desk ran the phrase "quantum makeover," upon left wall and right wall. Jamie loved words and, obviously, was deep into quantum mechanics.

  "Thank you, Sevi. FACCE is now patented, like I might have told you. It's being tested now nationwide. That's new. But we're a year away from our first sale. So now I'm working on this," he said, and hit RETURN on his keyboard, which brought to life a slide show of the same person doing various things such as standing at a gas pump; handing a credit card to a clerk; squeezing mustard onto a hot dog in a convenience store; looking into a camera lens in a rest stop restroom, and on and on.

  "What are we looking at?"

  "It's a montage. A montage of the same person traveling from Illinois to Missouri and his face and features being recorded on CCTV
as he makes the trip."

  "And what is unusual about this? Couldn't that easily be done by hand?"

  "It could. But let's say the police are looking for someone who kidnapped a child and must be found without delay. Using my system, all closed circuit TV video is fed onto my server in Chicago."

  "Then what?"

  "Then my software analyzes a mug shot of the suspect or even an old yearbook photo. Using my facial recognition software algorithms, my new creation then searches all video feeds, locates the same person as he is traveling from point to point, and returns a slide show of his movement. Along the bottom of the screen is the location, time and date of each piece of video. This way the authorities can determine a direction and route of travel and all-points-bulletins can be narrowed to a known route and direction of travel."

  "Allahu Akbar!"

  "Yes, God is great."

  "This is amazing. Have you shown it to anyone?"

  "No, and I'm at a point where I could use your help. With the video resolution. I'm trying to jack it up--computer enhance the resolution--but it's slowing the product way, way down. It's becoming much too slow for those emergency cases. Well, too slow for any usefulness, truth be told."

  "I've done video enhancement. Can you copy the source code onto a thumb drive and let me take it to my room and check it out on my computer? This will take some time."

  "Sure, then you can just feed it back into my code repository. We'll make a branch in the code and I'll put your name on it. I'll email you a user ID and password. We good?"

  "Good. We are great, Jamie."

  "Okay."

  He unplugged the thumb drive and passed it back over his shoulder to where Sevi was standing behind him.

  "Can you get back to me in twenty-four?"

  "More like half that, I should think," she said.

  "That would be cool. Okay. Onward and upward."

  Sevi, the thumb drive in hand, walked down one flight of stairs to the second floor and entered her bedroom. She closed the door behind her and quietly slid the latch, locking it from within.

  She sat at her desk and entered the password on her MacBook. The screen resolved and she checked her email. Two messages from Hussein, one attachment: