Rick Mofina - Free Fall

“I’m not misleading you.”

“You threatened the air industry,” Steiger said. “That’s a criminal offence. You threatened Kate Page and her family, and that’s a criminal offence.”

“Hold on,” Gold said. “I object to this line of questioning.”

“Your client agreed to cooperate. He agreed to be interviewed.” Varner turned to Sloane. “Your response?”

“I didn’t threaten anybody.”

“You knew about the Zarathustra communication,” Varner said.

“You’re talking about the email sent to Kate Page?”

“Yes.”

“A lot of people knew about Zarathustra. Word got around the newsroom.”

“You were working with Kate Page on stories concerning the plane that crashed in London and the plane that had problems before landing at LaGuardia,” Steiger said.

“Yeah, so?”

“You were at odds with Kate Page and your editor about the stories. You tried to dissuade her from pursuing them. You tried to downplay them. Why’s that?” Varner asked.

Silence.

“Did it have anything to do with your family connection to Richlon-Titan?”

Sloane licked his lips but said nothing.

“You were fired for violating Newslead’s rules, weren’t you?”

“So what?”

“Agent Varner,” Gold said, “we are contesting Newslead’s dismissal of my client.”

“You’re not being very cooperative, Sloane,” Steiger said. “You’d better rethink your strategy, pal.”

“I’m answering questions.”

“Do you know who Connie Lopilla is?” Varner asked.

“No.”

“Are you familiar with Infinite Guardian Shield?”

Sloane didn’t answer.

“Infinite Guardian Shield is a private investigation agency and Connie Lopilla is a private investigator who was hired to conduct surveillance on Kate Page. Tell us, who wanted Kate Page followed?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” Steiger reached into the folder and plucked out pages bearing text underlined in red. “See this?” Steiger jabbed his finger on the pages. “You sent Infinite Guardian Shield Kate Page’s address, information about her daughter, her sister and other private data you took from Newslead’s employee contact list, which you had access to. Now, why would you do that?”

Sloane didn’t answer.

“You can’t keep pretending not to know,” Varner said. “The evidence is sitting in front of you. We’ve studied these emails, especially those between you and your uncle, Hub Wolfeson, who sits on Richlon-Titan’s board. Your uncle wanted you to do anything possible to prevent RT from looking bad. Isn’t that right?”

Sloane said nothing.

“And, as luck would have it, you were in a perfect position to take care of it, weren’t you?”

Sloane remained silent.

“You went to Harvard, didn’t you?” Varner said. “We obtained your school records. Seems you took a philosophy course that included the study of Friedrich Nietzsche’s work.”

Varner slid him a page showing a photo of one of Nietzsche’s most famous works, Thus Spake Zarathustra . “We found this on a shelf in your apartment.”

“Agent Varner,” Gold said, “I’d say many college graduates across the country have that book.”

“I’m asking Sloane. Now, I’ll ask you again. Did you make the communication to Kate Page as Zarathustra?”

Sloane said nothing.

“Threatening harm to an airliner is a felony,” Varner said. “Now’s the time to come clean, because in about five minutes we’ll be talking to the US Attorney, and what you tell us will have an impact on what we tell her.” Varner looked hard into Sloane’s eyes. “And I gotta tell you, she lost people in 9/11, so she won’t be taking any of this lightly.”

Sloane cupped his hands in his face, then looked to Gold, telegraphing that the interview had not gone as he had been told it would go.

A moment passed before Gold nodded for his client to answer.

Sloane exhaled.

“All right. Not long after the EastCloud thing happened, my uncle contacted me. I don’t hear from him for months and suddenly Hub Wolfeson is talking to me.”

“What did he want?” Varner asked.

“He wanted me to see if I could influence Newslead’s coverage of the incident by ensuring that anything reported about Richlon-Titan was not damaging. The stock was shaky. He promised me a position with the corporation if I succeeded. So yes, I tried to downplay the story and deflect attention from RT, to get a different story out there, another version.”

“Was it your idea to follow Kate Page?”

“No. It was requested through Richlon-Titan’s corporate security, at my uncle’s insistence. He wanted to know who Kate was talking to. I just passed on information.”

“Why go to these lengths?”

“Several deals with airlines in India, Saudi Arabia, Brazil and Japan, amounting to two hundred new RT jetliners, or jets with RT systems, were pending. A lot was at stake.”

“So you created Zarathustra in a further effort to draw attention from the company after the crash in London and the incident with the EastCloud plane?”

“No. I had nothing to do with that.”

“Don’t start lying now.”

“I admit to what I’ve just told you, but I swear I’m not Zarathustra.”

“Would you agree to submit to a polygraph examination as soon as possible?”

“I would.”

Linthicum, Maryland

“Damn. So close,” Keith Dorling whispered to himself, his chair creaking as he leaned back to think in the subdued light of his workstation.

He’d shifted his focus from his three monitors to the faces of his wife, Eve, and their little girls, Hayley and Ariel, smiling back from the framed photo beside his keyboard, taken during last summer’s trip to Cape Cod.

What I do here keeps them safe.

Dorling worked at the Defense Cyber Crime Center. Known as DC3, it operated under the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. He was a civilian analyst, an expert in cyber crime, and he held top secret security clearance with DC3’s Analytical Group.

The group was a member agency of the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force and was helping the FBI. Dorling, regarded as one of the center’s best investigators, had been tasked to help investigate the Zarathustra emails.

For the past several days, he’d been attempting to track the source of the potential threat arising from emails sent to Newslead, a news agency in New York, and the Kuwaiti Embassy in London. This case was unlike any he’d pursued. The subject was remarkably skilled. Dorling had marveled at the beauty of the encryption work that the sender, Zarathustra, had employed. It reflected a level of sophistication and understanding that Dorling had rarely encountered in his work. His target had used rented servers in Thailand and Romania. Dorling had been tight on the trail, discovering that Zarathustra’s path then went to Sweden, and then to servers in Estonia.

With the Kuwaiti email, he’d found a glimmer of something that took the trail to the United States, suggesting that the end point-or source-was here.

But it had vanished.

That’s where I lost it. I can’t find the source. Not yet.

Dorling exhaled, reviewed the logs and dates, then rechecked all the notes supplied by analysts in the UK who were also pursuing Zarathustra.

I must’ve missed something. Okay, back to square one.

He shook his head and resumed working.

Manhattan, New York

Sloane F. Parkman’s polygraph results were consistent with the truth.

“It’s unlikely he’s responsible for creating and sending the Zarathustra emails,” Nick Varner wrote at his desk.