James Huston - Marine One

"What does it mean?"

"Somebody who really knows what they're doing has access to your server and has built a tunnel."

"Can you tell what it's been used for?"

"Not really. It's like a real tunnel. Things go through it coming in, and things go through it going out. And unless the things are actually in the tunnel when you're looking, you won't be able to trace them. But…" He raised his hand and pointed his finger toward the ceiling as if he had one piece of information that was much more significant. "Sometimes there are wires through the tunnel, just like in a real tunnel. They have to sometimes have air and light, and they need wires or things that you can follow. This one has a wire. It may be traceable."

Ralph worked on the keyboard for some time, then turned toward me with the laptop still perched on his knees. "It's a tunnel, like I said. Somebody has attached a stairway from your e-mail to the tunnel." He could see my puzzlement.

"What it does"-he thought-"what it does is take every e-mail that you send or receive and duplicates it and sends it through the tunnel."

"So I don't get them?"

"No, you get them. What you'd see is just what you'd always see. But somebody else sees it too."

"Somebody else is reading my e-mail?"

"At the very least."

"Who the hell is doing this?"

"Impossible to say."

"How? Would they have to get into the firm physically? Has someone broken into the firm?"

"No, they wouldn't have to be here physically. I said it's like a wire. It isn't a physical wire. Every computer is easily identifiable on a net, and they identified yours, and that's the one that is being used. I can tell you that this is from outside the firm."

"Shit, Ralph. Can you fix it?"

"Sure." He started typing away on his computer. "Are there any others? Would this be like an individual's e-mail site or log-in address?"

"Yeah, it is individual, but I checked all the others. Yours is the only one that has this."

"Does it have access to my computer? Can it get in and see my outlines and my Word documents and the like?"

"Only if you send them as attachments in e-mail."

"How sophisticated is this? Is this hard to do?"

"Top one percent of computer geeks might know how to do this."

I jammed my hands in my back pocket and started pacing back and forth in the room. I stared at his screen for a minute or two, considering. I said, "Tell you what. I've got another idea. Just leave it like it is."

IT HAD BEEN a long day. Too much going on. I was the only one left at the firm, except of course Rachel and Braden, who were always there. My eyes felt like sandpaper, and I found myself taking deep breaths for no particular reason. As I got up to leave and shut down my computer, my phone rang. It was a D.C. area code, but it wasn't Tinny. I answered it.

"Evening, Mike. You're working late."

"Who is this?"

"Thompson."

"My good friend from State. What do you want?"

"I'm just outside. Why don't you come down and talk to me here."

"Why should I?"

"Because I'm a suspicious type, and sometimes I don't like places that are fixed, like offices. Sometimes I like to be outside."

"You can be outside by yourself. You don't need me."

"I need to talk to you. Actually… you need to talk to me. I'm in the gray sedan." He hung up.

Well, shit. That's all I needed. I grabbed my suit coat, closed my briefcase, turned out my office lights, and headed downstairs. I checked my watch. Ten thirty pm. What did this asshole want? He was nothing but trouble. He was probably the one who had screwed with my computer system.

I closed the front door of my office building behind me and looked for a gray, government sedan. I didn't see one. It suddenly hit me that I had been lured out of my building at a predictable time with no one else around. I stepped off the porch and walked to my car. I unlocked it and put my briefcase on the floor behind my seat. I closed the door and looked again. I saw a car parked on the side street down the block. The headlights flashed briefly. So I was supposed to walk over to him in the dark. Not a chance. I leaned against the driver's door of my car and shook my head. I motioned for him to come to me. Nothing happened. I waited. Still nothing. Fine. I opened my driver's door to get in and was about to leave when the door of the sedan opened. Thompson got out. I could see he wasn't alone. Probably the same guy who came with him before.

Thompson passed under a streetlight as he approached me. He was wearing dark clothes and a leather bomber jacket. He had his hands in his pockets. I waited. He walked around to my side of the car. "Don't trust me?"

"No. I don't trust anybody, and that would include you."

"I'm here for your own benefit."

"Just like last time?"

"Yes. Just like last time. You may not agree, but if you had done what I suggested, you wouldn't be stirring up the things you are stirring up."

"What exactly am I stirring up?"

He glanced around. "You have a recording device?"

"No. You?"

"No."

"So what do you want?"

"You have done what I told you not to do. Your investigator continued to talk to my acquaintance in the Secret Service. I warned you."

"I have to protect my client's interests. I have to defend the case."

"No, you don't. If you were smart, you would have listened to me." He turned toward me. "And stayed the hell away from the Secret Service, and your digging about Camp David. All you've done is stir up a hornet's nest, and you can't even see the hornets. They're all around you. And now you can't get them back into the nest."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"I told you I'd have to tell the people involved that you were digging. I told them. They didn't appreciate it. That's all I know. And then you kept digging, and I told them that. Now they really don't appreciate it, and frankly, there's nothing I can do about it."

"So you set them on me?"

"I didn't do anything. I told you how to avoid this problem, and you ignored me. I told you I would tell them, and I did. When you put a stick in the eye of some people, they don't say thank-you, they put a stick in your eye. Simple as that. Especially when it has nothing to do with the accident. If you had just done your job, if you had left Camp David out of this, you'd still be the big attorney with the biggest case in the country. But no. You had to keep going. You had to send Byrd back."

"We follow the truth-"

"Save it. I don't care about what you think you were doing. I'm just here to tell you that you've put a noose around your own neck and it's tightening. I can't do anything about it. And the closer you get to trial, to putting on any evidence, the tighter that noose is going to be."

I shook my head. "This is unbelievable. My government comes to tell me that things are out of its control and I need to watch out?"

"Basically, yes. Your government is telling you that you dicked it up, Mike. You were forewarned and laughed it off. That was your choice."

"Who's so concerned? That's the least you can tell me."

"No, I can't. That's the whole point. I can't even hint at it."

"You talking about violence? You think they'd come after me?"

"No idea. All I know is that the people I told you would be upset, are."

"I've got to find out what happened. The public deserves to know. So does my client."

"You just don't get it, do you? Camp David had nothing to do with it! You're banging on the wrong door, and the people behind that door are sick of it! You can tell the public anything you want! But you should have stayed away from this, like I told you. Now I don't know what will happen." He stepped toward his car. "You probably won't hear from me again. I've got nothing else to say. I tried to stop all this, but now I can't. You're on your own." He walked away.