Jake Needham - Killing Plato

“You could have just asked for my word that I wouldn’t give them to anyone.”

Smith snorted audibly, but I thought I saw a flash of something like embarrassment slide across Kathleeya’s face.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Shepherd. We felt this was the appropriate security to impose under the circumstances. Please don’t take it personally.”

“So it’s not personal, it’s just business.”

“You will also find a text file on the disk which contains nothing but a nine-digit number,” she continued without looking at me. “That is my private cell phone number. After you have read the materials on the disk, I would appreciate it if you would call me and tell me whether you have decided to help us.”

“You mean help Plato Karsarkis, don’t you?”

Kathleeya smiled and I allowed myself to enjoy it this time.

“Interests frequently have a way of getting tangled up in odd ways, Mr. Shepherd. You have heard the saying, “The friend of my friend is also my friend.”

“As is the enemy of my enemy,” I said.

“Something like that.” She smiled again.

Smith leaned forward and spoke to the driver and the big Mercedes swung off the Expressway and made a U-turn. No one said much while we were driving back to the city, but as I juggled the DVD case in my fingers I couldn’t help but think about what I might find on that disk.

Her personal cell phone number, huh?

Maybe later when I told Anita about all this I’d skip over that part.

After the black Mercedes dropped me off I went straight upstairs to my office, locked the door, and picked up the telephone. I dialed a number, let it ring once, and hung up. That might not be the usual way to reach someone by telephone, but then I was calling Darcy Rice and there was absolutely nothing usual about her either.

Darcy had retired to Bangkok following a career with the US government doing things about which she was now professionally vague. A lot of people figured Darcy for CIA, certainly back when she was an active government employee and maybe even still, but I doubted that was true. I was pretty sure Darcy had spent her career with the National Security Agency. The NSA monitors and intercepts all sorts of communications, breaks encryption, tasks spy satellites, and engages in a whole range of technology-driven black arts that most people would dismiss as science fiction even if they somehow found out about them, which they wouldn’t anyway. That was exactly the sort of stuff Darcy seemed to know everything about, which was why I had made her for NSA right from our earliest conversations.

These days Darcy was like so many retired government types who had learned their trades in the Cold War. Now that peace had broken out, or at least the game had changed into something nobody understood anymore, she had taken her considerable experience and talents into private enterprise. Darcy ran a small company that operated out of a stylish if aging mansion in the oldest part of Bangkok, a place she had remodeled from dilapidated elegance into a high-tech marvel. She described her business as an information gathering and analysis consultancy, which was vague enough to cover most anything. What it actually was, of course, was a private intelligence agency.

At first I had been amazed an operation of such technological sophistication existed in a backwater like Bangkok, but the more Darcy and I had become friends and the more I learned about what she was doing, the more I understood Bangkok was a perfect place for her. Bangkok was where international criminals, law enforcement personnel, intelligence agencies, terrorists, drug runners, arms peddlers, and the inevitable collection of scam artists, hangers-on and wannabes mingled in teeming streets and grimy bars under an unspoken understanding. They could let down their guard in Bangkok. They could just hang around or even party a little without taking all the usual precautions since it was understood they would all leave each other alone while they were here. Even the Thai government didn’t much care what anyone did in Bangkok, as long as it didn’t involve them. The cantina in Star Wars was a run-of-the-mill saloon compared to the bars of Bangkok.

The moment I heard the warnings about the traps the NIA had supposedly built into the disk I had been given, I decided there was no way in hell I was going to touch the thing without talking to Darcy first. I gave her a little help with her projects from time to time and she paid me back by doing me favors when I needed them. I figured I needed one now.

Darcy was very careful about her own security, probably because she had so little difficulty shredding everyone else’s. The only way to reach her was by calling and hanging up. The call went to a computer somewhere and I didn’t have a clue what happened then although I figured it was something really cool. But Darcy always called me back right away so I didn’t really care.

After hearing the one ring and hanging up, I surveyed my desk and briefly examined the pile of mail Bun had left stacked on top of The Wall Street Journal . If I hadn’t had to move it off the newspaper, I probably wouldn’t have bothered. No one in Thailanne in Thd was foolish enough to use the postal service for anything that actually matters. Tossing the mail in the garbage, I swung my feet up on my desk and unfolded the Journal . I hadn’t even made it past page one before my direct line rang.

“Jack, baby,” Darcy purred when I answered. “You called?”

“You have my mobile number, don’t you?”

Darcy cut the connection without another word and a few seconds later my mobile beeped.

“Okay, baby,” Darcy said when I answered, “so what kind of shit are you in this time?”

“The usual, I guess. The brown kind.”

“You figure your phone is monitored?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Just because you’re talking on a GSM cell now, you’re not invulnerable.”

“I thought it was pretty solid,” I said.

“Depends on who you’re up against.”

“Everything always does, Darcy.”

“Uh-huh,” she said. “So, baby, enough of the happy talk, huh? Let’s have it.”

I told her about the disk Kathleeya had given me and about the security measures she claimed it contained. Darcy didn’t ask for any details of why I was riding around town chatting with the head of the National Intelligence Agency, nor did she ask me what was on the disk. Her standards of professional discretion ruled out both questions.

“So what do you think?” I asked. “About the disk.”

“Everybody underestimates the Thais when it comes to technology,” Darcy said. “Besides, stuff like that is pretty common now. You can buy off-the-shelf software that will prevent copying, printing, and emailing of any file just by pasting a transparent image over it. The part about the disk corrupting itself after a set period would be a little harder to do, but it’s probably a variation on the built-in detonation a lot of corporate users are putting into their email now.”

“You lost me.”

“It doesn’t really matter. If Kate told you your disk was rigged to corrupt itself, my guess is it’s true.”

“You call her Kate?” I asked. “So you know here pretty well?”

Darcy ignored my question.

“Just in general,” she asked me instead, “do you have any idea what type of files are on the disk?”

“Some text files, I think, or maybe PDFs. Nothing fancy that I know of. I asked the NIA for some stuff and they decided to give it to me, at least with all this security attached.”

“And you want to know if I can beat their security measures.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Something like that.”