John Sandford - The Devil's Code

We also got five names with the FBI, including the personal home phone number of the director. If we used it, I thought, we should get some attention.

And finally, Bobby said,

ran bloch server clients against nsa roster. of three thousand clients, 1844 appear to be nsa.

amazing. nsa is firewall.

maybe.

get out of server. i may talk to fbi.

yes.

If I was going to talk to Rosalind Welsh personally, I needed to cover my face and hair. LuEllen recommended a Halloween mask, since Halloween was coming and they should be easy to find, and because from any distance, they don't look like masks. We drove all the way to Philadelphia to get it: a full-face molded rubber mask of Bill Clinton. It worked fine, except that I couldn't talk very well through the mouth slit, and we wound up snipping off the lips with sewing scissors. We got a plastic water pistol from a toy store, and a baseball hat to complete the outfit.

We went to Philadelphia because it was only two hours away by car, and LuEllen had contacts therea gun guy who I'd met once, and now, it turned out, a phone guy. We got another cold cell phone, guaranteed for a week, for $300. We were back in Baltimore a little after seven o'clock. Glen Burnie is south of the city, and we were scouting Welsh's house at seven-thirty.

"Lights; she's home," LuEllen said.

"So we cruise it a couple of times, and I hit the door,"

"You're gonna scare the life out of her. and the other problem is, what if there's somebody in there with her?"

"There's a garage window," I said. "I can check the garage on my way upsee how many cars are in there."

"Not perfect," she said.

"Nothing is."

We didn't need to do it, anyway. We were cruising the place for the third time, picking out a place for LuEllen to wait with the car, when Rosalind Welsh walked out the front door of her house, did a few stretches in the driveway, and jogged off down the street. We rolled slowly past, and I got a look at her. She was probably fifty, and ran with the earnest, hunched-up stance of somebody who hadn't been running long, but was determined to lose the armchair ass.

"Let's do it on the street," I said. "Stop ahead of her and let me out in front of a house without lights. I'll bend over the car like I'm saying good-bye, and when she comes up, I'll stop her."

"She'll see the car. Maybe get the plates."

"Pull into a driveway, so we're sideways to her. When I stop her, I'll turn her around, and you pull out and go around the corner. When I'm done, I'll get her jogging the other direction."

"This worries me."

"Yeah, well. It's better than the door."

"If she screams?" LuEllen asked.

"I'll run."

This was the only part of what I do that bothers methe involvement of innocents in ways that might hurt them. For the most part, when I'm working, I'll take information from one place and deliver it to another. In most cases, I can make at least a thin argument that what I do benefits the population as a wholeencourages competition, saves jobs, etc.

But sometimes, although I regret it, I involve an innocent. Like this lady, a bureaucrat, a little too heavy, earnestly chugging off the pounds on a quiet suburban street. Whatever else came out of it, I was about to scare the hell out of her. I wouldn't do it, if not for the Firewall thing.

I pulled the mask over my head, put on the cap, and got the plastic gun out. LuEllen guided us past her again and pulled into a driveway a half block ahead. I got out, and bent over the open door: LuEllen said, "A hundred feet, seventy-five, fifty, forty, shut the door and make your move."

I stood up, slammed the door, and turned to the sidewalk. Rosalind Welsh was twenty feet away and smiled reflexively as I turned toward her. I said, feeling the rubber edges of the mask flapping against my lips, "Mrs. Welsh. Stop where you are. I have a gun pointed at you. Don't scream, just stop, and I won't hurt you."

As I said the words, I moved to block her; she tried to turn, but I said, sharply, "Don't," and when she saw my face she opened her mouth and shrank away, and I said, sharply, "Don't scream: I won't hurt you. I just want to talk."

She looked all around, and I stepped close, directly between her and the car and said, "I have to ask you to turn around. We're going to back the car out of the driveway and we don't want you to see the license plates. If you do. well, you don't want to see them. Just turn around and look straight ahead, and when your back is to the car, I'll walk around and face you."

I tried to keep talking quietly, in a nonfrightening way, explaining what was happening: giving her something to focus on. When she was turned, I edged around her and said, "Don't look at the car." LuEllen backed out of the driveway and turned at the corner.

"I'm one of the people the NSA is putting out rumors aboutI'm supposedly a member of Firewall, along with several friends. But we are not," I told Welsh. "We began researching the situation, trying to figure out what was going on. Are you aware of the source of the Firewall rumors?"

"Sir, we don't have much to do with trying to find Firewall. That's the FBI." She was scared, on the edge of bolting. Calling me sir.

"The Firewall rumors are coming from an ISP called Bloch Technology in Laurel," I said. "It's a private server whose clients are almost all NSA employees. We believe that the NSA is Firewall and will inform the FBI of our conclusions tonight."

The fear was receding; I could see it in her eyes. She'd become interested in what I was saying. "You think the NSA is attacking the IRS?"

"We think a group of European morons is attacking the IRS and jumped on the Firewall name because it was already notorious and it sounds neat."

She asked, "Have you ever heard of a man called Bobby?" I hesitated, but in hesitating, answered the question. "So you have."

"Yes."

"The FBI and our security people are debriefing him now," she said. An implied threat, showing a little guts.

Again I hesitated; but they'd find out soon enough what they had. "That would very much surprise me," I said, "since he's the one who got me your name. This afternoon."

Her eyebrows went up: "You're joking."

"I'm afraid not. The guy you picked up may be named Bobby, but he's not Bobby."

"What about Terrence Lighter?" she asked.

Now I had to make a decision, again, a tough one, but what the hell: "Have you heard the name Jack Morrison?"

"Yes." Nothing more.

"Then you know he was supposedly shot to death by a guard at one of your contracting companiesAmMath, in Dallas "

"He was definitely shot to death by a guard."

I held up a finger. "We don't think so. We think he was killed by the same people who killed Lighter. Look at Lighter's outgoing e-mail; he's on the Bloch server. Then look at Morrison's travel. He came to see Lighter twice last week, the last time, the night Lighter was killed. The Lighter and Morrison murders go together, and they were coordinated through an ISP that's basically a server used by your people."

She shook her head. "Why should I believe you?"

"Don't. Just investigate. You're a security executive. Do your job."

I glanced back over my shoulder: we'd been talking for two or three minutes, I thought, but it felt like an eternity. "I've got to go. I will call you, to find out if you're moving on the case. If you are, we won't have to. If you don't, we will, and we make no guarantees about who gets hurt. We will call the FBI, tonight, about the Bloch Technology server."

I took a step back, and she said, "Would you have shot me if I screamed?"

I looked down at the pistol in my hand, shook my head, and tossed it to her. She picked it out of the air as I jogged away "It's not loaded," I said as I went. "I didn't want it to leak on my pants."