Ridley Pearson - The Body of David Hayes

“But what you don’t do,” Matthews said, “is try anything too overt: dialing the lieutenant’s number, or 911 from a telephone or mobile phone. That would put you at risk, even if you see the opportunity.”

“Check that,” Riz said, interrupting Matthews. “If you dial 911 from a land line, even if you hang up immediately, we’ve got you, so don’t rule that one out completely. Same with a pay phone, a car phone-a cell phone,” he said, glancing at Matthews, “anything you can get your hands on.”

Liz took note of the contradiction and sided with Matthews. Riz and O’Brien sounded more like they wanted her to keep the game going than to protect herself.

“Try to stand out of the crowd whenever possible,” O’Brien said. “If they’ve got you moving, and they very well may, then cross on the red lights, jaywalk, use the stairs, avoid the crowds. It’s the simple little things that allow us to stay with you better.”

“The computers,” Foreman said suddenly from his bench. He glanced at Liz. He had told her his and Geiser’s intentions-that she wire the money to a government account regardless of what people like Riz told her to do. “Yes!” Riz said. “Should you find yourself logging on to the AS/400, about to gain access, first please type either Miles6 or Sarah4 as your password. The server won’t allow you access, but you’ll try again, using your correct password, and you’ll be in. By doing so, you drop a handkerchief for us to follow.”

“A handkerchief?” Liz inquired, not appreciating the analogy. It made her into a Victorian woman trying to garner attention.

“We could tell you more, but we’d have to kill you,” a smiling O’Brien joked before thinking. The comment sobered and silenced the room. O’Brien apologized and said, “We believe Hayes possesses some way to erase all record of whatever he has you do while inside the server. If you signal us ahead of time, using Miles6 or Sarah4, it greatly increases our chances of tracing whatever it is you initiate.” She fought herself to not look over at Lou. “It has to do with network IP addresses, and things I don’t even understand, but White Collar Crime made it clear that they need you to send us the smoke signal if they’re to have a chance.”

Riz said, “Miles6, Sarah4, spelled exactly as they sound with the numeral following. We thought they’d be easy to remember. You type in either password, and we’re piggy-backed with you as you go in.”

“It’s like uncoiling a ball of string as you walk through a maze,” Foreman said, lifting his head again and meeting eyes with her. He didn’t want her giving them that string to follow. He wanted her doing this his way. Message received.

Liz found herself in a staring contest with Danny.

Matthews broke in. “You need your rest. We’re done here.”

Not long thereafter, everyone left the house. She and Lou rounded up the coffee mugs.

“So?” he asked.

“Ugh,” she said.

Lou put on some music-plaintive jazz-and gently steered her by the elbow to a dead space in the room that offered no clear line of sight through a window, despite all the shades being drawn. He whispered, and it caused her shivers.

“I can’t imagine what you’re going through. They mean well, for what it’s worth.”

“Not much,” she said.

“Is it possible, what they said about tracking you inside the bank servers?”

“Oh, yes,” she replied. “If key tracking is present, then every time I touch a key they’ll follow it.”

He considered this for a long moment. “Then whatever you do, you mustn’t enter those passwords they gave you. You mustn’t turn on the key tracking.”

“They don’t know David,” she said, immediately regretting the intimacy that implied on her part.

He glanced up into her eyes. She saw disguised hurt.

She explained, “He’s far too sophisticated a programmer to leave any of this up to human error. Yes, anyone using the AS/400 would have to log on to do so, and to move the money out will require routing information and an account number, and it’s possible, though not certain, that account data will have to be manually input. But would he allow a key-tracking program to run? Absolutely not. My value to him is that I can get past the physical security to reach the AS/400 and I have a password that will allow access into it. But do you think he would allow their software to record whatever account numbers are input? He’s smarter than that, Lou. Even if I type one of those passwords, David will have already thought of a way to defeat it. Trust me, they’re not in his league, Lou.” She added, “I don’t mean for that to be hurtful.”

“It’s good information,” he said, though his voice cracked, belying his true emotions.

“Danny gave me this look,” she said. “He’s still expecting me to transfer this money where he says to transfer it.”

“It’s not Danny I’m worried about. It’s the idea that whoever gives you an account number risks your remembering it. By phone, by note, it doesn’t matter how it’s delivered-it’s your recalling it later they can’t afford.”

“They are typically enormously long strings,” she said.

“Doesn’t matter,” Lou returned. “You’re a banker. They can’t rule out that you have a head for such numbers. And if you memorize the destination account, the money can then be traced and found, right?”

She nodded, understanding immediately the subtext and why her husband was reluctant to say it aloud. “If I’m around to repeat it,” she said.

Lou did not look at her, nor did he speak directly to her comment. Instead, he backed away and mumbled something about needing a cup of tea.

This, she realized, had been his fear all along.

“Are we going to talk about this plan of yours?” she asked, the two of them eating ham sandwiches at the kitchen table. Lou had stayed at the house following the meeting, something she hadn’t expected but found comforting. At first she’d thought him exhausted and in need of the rest, but she amended that opinion as he then spent two hours working over a yellow legal pad.

He said, “It’s occurred to everyone that you’d be at extreme risk. We know for a fact that my guys will expect me to insist you use a stand-in. I will demand it, of course. I have already. They will never, in a million years, believe I would arrange for you to double-cross them.”

“So they’ll expect an undercover woman to play my part, and we’ll go along with that.”

“We’ll go along with it on the surface. Anything else would be out of character.”

“So it’s kind of a race,” she said.

“If we play it right, that’s exactly what it comes down to, yes. The real Liz beats the fake Liz to the AS/400s.”

“And we accomplish that, how?” she added.

“We beat them off the starting line. We deliver the unexpected-something they didn’t plan for. It’s not easy to fool the fooler. Not when they have as many as a dozen undercover officers watching our every move. But I know their training. I know the contingencies they plan for. Our bigger concern is Svengrad. He lost Hayes and the software; he lost everything. He knows that you are needed to accomplish this. It’s inevitable that he comes after you. Remember that none of the people here this afternoon, except LaMoia, knows I have Hayes locked away.”

“Gaynes does,” she said, playing devil’s advocate and immediately regretting it, for she saw the consternation it caused.

“She wasn’t here for the meeting, and she’s on our side anyway.”

She wasn’t sure why she corrected him this way, as she so often did. To gain the upper hand? To show him who the clearer thinker was? To be noticed? In the short term it felt good to correct him, but within a few seconds she typically wanted to crawl and hide, knowing her timing was terrible. She apologized to him, saying, “I do that all the time and I’m not sure why.”