Mastermind: A Theo Cray and Jessica Blackwood Thriller Page 18

  “At some point I think the man called the Warlock was deeply involved in the intelligence community, building computer systems for them. The problem, or at least what I’ve seen in my experience, is that the people writing your checks have no clue how much power they’ve handed you.”

  That would explain one of the other mysteries about the Warlock. He has no past. A man who helped install systems for intelligence agencies could also have erased his own history.

  “How does this happen?” I ask.

  “He could have been a brilliant college kid with a clever paper that the intelligence community saw potential in. They recruited him in some company they contract with. In time, he creates his own company and sells them on some application they’re willing to throw money at.”

  “That’s also a chance for fraud,” I reply.

  “Maybe. But not in the way you probably think. Those agencies are used to throwing dump trucks full of money at projects, but they like to see receipts. At least for what you spend your money on. With one exception.”

  “And that is?”

  “The power bill. If you’re running some supercomputer cluster that’s trying to intercept North Korean radio transmissions and build an org chart based on each official’s digitized speech patterns, then the CIA isn’t going to care if you spent thirty thousand or four hundred and fifty thousand dollars on your monthly electric bill. They assume it’s the price of running that kind of complex computer system.”

  “How do you defraud the government that way?” I ask. “Besides stealing computer time?”

  “Lots of ways. It’s a commodity in and of itself. I don’t know what he might have done. Run his own research, for sure. See, you have to look at computation as a valuable commodity. Amazon is one of the largest companies in the world, not because they deliver your flat-screen television the next day, but because of their computer-services division, which runs the computer systems for half the internet. That’s what makes them powerful. Heywood likely had access to that kind of power.”

  “And used it to make chat bots?”

  “I don’t know what he was doing, and that’s what scares me. And here’s another thing: I suspect that the heists he pulled off in those data centers may have been to steal his own data.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m just guessing, but let’s say he managed to get a government computer cluster or somebody else’s supercomputer to run a huge computational problem. Maybe running in the background or masking itself as a background process. Getting it to run is one thing, but if the result is terabytes in size, or if they’ve locked down the system, then the only way to get it out might be to physically steal it.”

  “But why, Theo? What is he doing?”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t know. I just can’t think that way. Not yet, at least.”

  “Well, we need to think of something.” I gesture to my laptop. “I think he wants us to keep playing twenty questions with his virtual self. You can have at it if you want, but I want to take a more physical approach.”

  “What do you mean?” asks Theo.

  “If Heywood was up to all this while he was supposed to be in custody, that means he had somebody looking the other way pretty hard. Until they decided to ‘move’ him to another facility, that is . . . at which point he escaped.”

  “Have you considered that he was moved to a different facility because someone in the intelligence community finally realized who he was?”

  “Or maybe someone knew all along. Yeah, I’ve been thinking along those lines. That’s why I think I might need to go through channels that aren’t official,” I reply.

  “What do you mean?”

  “If Heywood was able to reach out from a detention facility that he was specifically put in because he wasn’t supposed to be communicating, then that means somebody was doing their job pretty badly. I say we go talk to them.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  ACCESS

  Theo and I pull up to a Tudor house in an affluent Virginia neighborhood where I’m fairly certain nobody has so much as touched the mowers that keep their Wimbledon-short lawns so well trimmed. Two trash cans sit out front—one for garbage and one marked for recycling, which will end up in the same place as the garbage.

  It’s ten past seven in the morning, and at any moment we expect Nick Weir to leave his house and get into his car to go to work as general manager for Mesa Detention Facility.

  Before Heywood escaped custody during the ill-fated transfer, he was an inmate at Mesa Detention Facility outside Richmond, Virginia. What makes MDF unusual is that it’s a small private prison that houses federal prisoners who are considered intelligence risks. The owners of MDF are part of a conglomerate that provides services to military installations and is allegedly the operator of numerous black sites overseas where suspected terrorists have been held and interrogated.

  Heywood’s transfer caught even the FBI off guard, and—in retrospect—it had all the earmarks of something plotted by the intelligence community. Such exploits are not unheard-of. Sometimes a suspect in federal custody turns out to have information relating to the war on terror, like a drug-cartel accountant who has knowledge of illicit arms sales to the Middle East.

  If the intelligence community’s powers that be decided Heywood was useful to them, there’s little they couldn’t do to make him available at their discretion. And, much as he probably gained privileges while assisting an intelligence agency in jail, he must have also been assisted by somebody high up inside the prison. Private facilities are scrutinized to make sure this doesn’t happen, but it happens. All the time.

  In the case of Heywood, it’s not only that he could have been given access to a computer or even a phone that he could use to carry out his plans remotely, it’s also that the people who should have been monitoring his jail time closely didn’t do so.

  Someone was looking the other way . . . a lot.

  Theo made the case that all Heywood would have needed was an iPhone or an Android device with internet access. Therefore, any corrupt guard would have sufficed.

  While Theo’s technically correct, I know Heywood better than that. He needs to control everything and everyone around him. He wouldn’t want to wait until late at night to use the phone when nobody is watching. Nor would he risk having a random search of his cell turn up the device. No, he’d want to do whatever the hell he wanted, when he wanted. And to achieve that, he’d need to corrupt the man in charge of the whole facility. But to corrupt an official who’s already well paid and works under the scrutiny of government officials, Heywood would have needed to come up with something incredibly persuasive.

  “Here he comes,” says Theo, indicating the middle-aged man with a military haircut emerging from his house.

  Nick Weir immediately notices us.

  Prior to working for the company that operates MDF, he served as the commanding officer for several military prisons. From the look of the man, it’s easy to see why he’d be a good candidate to run a facility for federal inmates.

  I climb out of the driver’s-side door. “Excuse me, Mr. Weir? I’m Jessica Blackwood with the FBI. I spoke to your office yesterday.”

  I meet him at the bottom step. Theo hangs back in the car, texting on his phone, or at least making it look like he is.

  “Yes, Agent Blackwood, I thought our appointment was supposed to be at 2:00 p.m. at the facility?”

  He’s looking a little frustrated. That was the point of intercepting him here. I wanted to catch him off guard and see how he’d react. Right now, not so well. He keeps glancing over at Theo.

  “That’s Dr. Theo Cray. He’s advising the FBI,” I explain.

  “Advising them on . . . ?”

  “The Void events. That’s why I wanted to speak to you.”

  Weir was led to believe that I had some background questions on Heywood, which should have him alarmed but not panicked. If he has something to hide, he’ll want to be helpful . .
. to a point. As a contractor running a federal facility, he can only be so defensive before it starts to look suspicious. Weir’s a smart man who will try to play it as safely as he can. It’ll be interesting to see at what point he tries to shut me down.

  “Can this wait until later?” he asks.

  “Unfortunately, no. We got an update and are under extra pressure. This will only take a few minutes of your time.”

  “Okay,” he says, crossing his arms. “What can I help you with?”

  “Do you know how frequently Michael Heywood had visitors at Mesa?”

  “I sent your office the logs. All that’s in there. You know that, Agent Blackwood.”

  He’s being condescending. That’s a tell. I need to play with his expectations a little and see how he answers.

  “Yes. But I’ve been told that meetings with national security officials wouldn’t be logged. Is that correct?”

  This is a safe question for him. He knows I already have the answer to it, and it gives him an opportunity to deny any lapses in procedure.

  “In some situations, with approval of the court, inmates can receive visitors that are not officially logged.” He says it like it’s a prepared response.

  Theo gets out of the car and Weir glances in his direction, but Theo just stands at the front bumper, drinking his coffee and texting on his phone.

  “In instances where Heywood might have had off-the-record visitors, would the rules of his confinement not be applied?” I ask.

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Yes, you are. If Heywood met with someone from the CIA, would that interaction be monitored?”

  “Not necessarily. If a prisoner is a low risk or the agency that wishes to speak with him takes responsibility for their own safety, the visit would not be monitored by us . . . if the agency so requested,” he hedges.

  “Were they allowed to bring in computers or other items that Heywood was forbidden from using?”

  Now he sees where I’m going. This actually comforts him, because he’s not obligated to lie for the CIA or whoever was “consulting” with Heywood.

  “It’s outside our jurisdiction. In instances like that, a prisoner’s custody enforcement is the responsibility of the agency that requested the interaction,” he answers dryly.

  “So Heywood could have had access to computers while he was meeting with them?”

  “I wouldn’t know what he or anyone else would have access to in that situation.”

  “Not even if you see them enter with a computer and they ask you for an extension cord?”

  “Agent Blackwood, you understand that legally I can’t give you any details about that hypothetical situation. These are questions you should be taking up with whoever you think was accessing Heywood.”

  He’s trying to draw the conversation to a close, comfortable that he’s not the real target. I’m planning to lure him in a little bit more before switching up on him, when a new question suddenly comes to me. “Did any agency ever take Heywood out of Mesa for any period of time?”

  Weir hesitates, making me think I’m onto something I hadn’t expected.

  “I would not be able to disclose that.”

  I’ll take that as a yes. More importantly, I think I have a better understanding of how Heywood was able to escape. It happened when the CIA or another agency was bringing him to a different location, possibly Langley or an off-site office where they could interact with him outside prison. Maybe they only sent an SUV and one or two armed escorts.

  For someone like Heywood, this would be an easy extraction to pull off. He could do it with a handful of armed men and a bluff—like having a “police car” pull over their vehicle.

  Something like this would be so profoundly embarrassing for the agency responsible, it would explain why we only learned that he escaped during a “transfer” and not how it happened.

  Weir still believes my suspicions are about an intelligence agency giving Heywood computer access. What he doesn’t realize is that I’m fairly positive that Heywood would have been extremely closely monitored while he was cooperating with the intelligence agency. While their physical security may have sucked, they’re no dummies when it comes to computer security around suspect hackers.

  The suspicious stuff that Heywood was doing probably didn’t happen when he was drinking lattes and typing away on one of their laptops in a conference room.

  “Outside of access to computers or the internet that he may have had via a government agency, was Heywood ever allowed unsupervised use of computers while he was your responsibility?” I ask.

  Weir doesn’t answer right away, because this is the question he didn’t want me to ask him. “I’m running late and need to continue this conversation later.” He glances over as Theo lifts the lid to his garbage can and tosses his coffee cup away, then looks down the street at the approaching garbage truck before returning his attention to me. “Look, Agent Blackwood, I’m just as frustrated as you are about Heywood’s escape. Unfortunately, my hands are tied about what I can speak to you about. But it seems like you have a pretty good idea who you should talk to.”

  That was a smooth way of saying he’s stopping the conversation because he doesn’t want to be found guilty of lying to a federal agent. Go talk to the CIA, it’s their fault . . . It’s a credible gambit.

  Weir nods at me and heads back into his house. “I have to go take a conference call I was supposed to have at the office,” he says over his shoulder. “If you have follow-up questions, please email them to me.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Weir.”

  I get back into the car, where Theo is sitting in the passenger seat examining his nails. “How did it go?”

  “About as well as I predicted.”

  “He’s still watching us,” Theo says.

  “I’m not surprised.” I spot the garbage truck in the rearview mirror heading our way, so I start the car and drive up the street and out of view of Weir.

  “When you called yesterday and asked to meet at the detention center to talk, do you think it spooked him?” asks Theo.

  “Definitely.”

  “Did you notice how nervous he was when I went near his garbage can?”

  “A little. Why? Oh shit.” I glance back in the direction of his house. If Weir had incriminating information like bank slips or anything else connecting him to Heywood, he might have tried to dispose of it after I called him.

  The garbage can’s still there, two houses away from being picked up. Do I go back and grab his garbage? Legally, I think I can do that. Although I wouldn’t be surprised if Weir put up a legal fight.

  One house away . . .

  I take the car out of neutral, then hesitate. If I run out and grab the garbage with Weir watching, he’s liable to lawyer up and prepare for whatever else we may try next, including destroying other evidence.

  “Considering the legal options?” asks Theo.

  “Should I?” I ask, deflecting the question to a civilian with a reckless relationship with the law.

  “No,” says Theo.

  Behind us, the garbage haulers are dumping both types of receptacles into the same truck. The recycling illusion apparently ends at the curb.

  “Did you manage to see anything when you opened the can?” I ask Theo.

  “Not exactly,” he replies.

  “What does that mean?”

  “We should probably follow the garbage truck.”

  “And stop them?” I ask.

  “No. Just wait for them to dump the garbage. Weir might be paranoid enough to contact the sanitation company if anybody stops their truck.”

  “Okay. But you understand that by the time the truck is full, there could be several tons of garbage bags mixed in there.”

  “Yes. But only one has my cell phone.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  TREASURE HUNT

  Theo and I are watching the garbage truck that picked up Weir’s trash back up to a small ridge and prepare
to dump out its contents. A bulldozer sits idle nearby. Once the day’s garbage is emptied into the landfill, the bulldozer will flatten it out and lay down a covering of dirt and clay to create a barrier below the next layer of refuse. We need to get to Weir’s trash and Theo’s phone before that happens.

  I used my badge to get us through the gate. The guard had no questions for us. I’m not sure if that was indifference or if they’re used to law enforcement making frequent visits to landfills.

  I know that in some missing-persons cases they send cadaver-sniffing dogs to landfills as a first step. Often, the first place people choose to dump bodies—especially those of small children, sadly—is in the garbage.

  The truck releases its haul, spilling its contents onto the piles of garbage below. We wait for it to drive away, then exit our car.

  I open my trunk and take out gloves, a pair of sneakers, and the orange vests we use when we work near traffic. “Put this on,” I tell Theo, handing him a vest.

  “Ah, a disguise,” he says, sliding it on.

  He’s not wrong. If you don’t have a badge, an orange vest can be very useful for getting into places that would otherwise be hard to sneak into. You become almost invisible. When I was a teenager and working on my grandfather’s magic show, I found I could go into the audience and not be recognized if I wore glasses and had on a lanyard and a walkie-talkie—even when I’d been onstage minutes prior.

  “First time I wore a vest like this was when I was fifteen,” says Theo.

  “What for?”

  “Picking up roadkill,” he replies as we walk toward the ridge where the garbage was dumped.

  “Community service?” I ask.

  “Not directly. I was collecting dead animals out of personal curiosity,” Theo says over his shoulder.

  “Uh . . . didn’t Jeffrey Dahmer do that, too?”

  Theo stops and turns around. “I really should provide more context for these things. Some of the pets in my neighborhood had been acting erratic and run away. I was curious if it was rabies. So I started inspecting roadkill.”