Capital Crimes

27

KATE HAD BEEN AT HER DESK in Langley for half the morning when the mail arrived. She had a personal mailbox at CIA headquarters, just as she did at the White House, but mail rarely arrived that way. This morning, though, there was one letter, and she recognized it immediately.

Kate,

How long does this have to go on? How many people have to die before you will address the issue at hand? I can help you take this guy out of circulation within a very short time, if only you will help me. I’m old, I’m ill, and I don’t want to spend my last days in this joint.

You ask, how could a man in prison help to catch a rampaging murderer on the outside? The answer is, I once knew him, and I recognize his technique. I want to be a good citizen, but I want to die free, too. Help me help you.

Kate slid the letter and its envelope into the shredder, which, after shredding, reduced the paper to ashes. First of all, she didn’t believe Ed Rawls; second, she was still extremely angry with him because of his betrayal of the Agency. He had been her mentor for all of her early career, and a close, personal friend.

She thought about it some more, and decided that she did believe Ed. But if Ed knew this guy, it would have been through work. She might even have known him, too. Still, they had run all the records of former employees of the technical services department and had come up with nothing. She buzzed her secretary. “Please call Harold Broward in personnel and ask him to come up here soonest.”

Broward appeared within minutes. “Yes, ma’am?”

“Harold, I want you to do another personnel search-same time parameters, but I want you to expand it from technical services to the whole of operations. Some of our agents have had the training it would take to pull off these murders, and I want to isolate all possible candidates.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“How long do you need?”

“We’re talking about more files, but I’ll try to have something for you by the end of the day.”

“Bring all the files to me, just like last time, and we’ll go through them together.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Broward went back to his office, and Kate called Bob Kinney.

“Good morning,” he said.

“Morning. It’s occurred to me that some of our operational people have the training it would take to pull off these murders, so I’m expanding our search to other areas of the Agency.”

“Excellent idea,” Kinney replied. “I’ll look forward to the results.”

“I suggest you do the same at the FBI and at the other agencies you’ve been looking at.”

“I’ll issue the instructions immediately, Ms. Rule, and I appreciate your suggesting this.”

Kate hung up and tried to think about something else.

KINNEY WAS ANNOYED that he had not thought of this; it was simple enough. He called Kerry Smith in and issued the instructions.

“I’ll get on it, sir, and a man in computer operations has some information for you. Shall I send him up?”

“Right away, please.”

THE MAN LOOKED like no more than a boy. He had an awful haircut and a scraggly beard. The kid could not be an agent; he would never have made it through Quantico, Kinney thought. “What have you got for me? And skip the gobbledygook, because I won’t understand it.”

“Okay…” the kid began.

Kinney hated people who started sentences with “Okay…”

“Okay… this guy is very smart. He changes his setup daily, sometimes more often, which makes it harder for us to trace him back to his home server. But I’ve got it, now.”

“Let’s have it.”

“Have you ever heard of Sealand?”

“No. Sounds like a contradiction in terms.”

“It’s an island in the North Sea, off the coast of England.”

“What does this have to do with our suspect?”

“As I understand it, we don’t have a suspect, exactly, but let me finish.”

Kinney sighed.

“A few years ago a group of-I don’t know-anarchists, radicals, whatever…”

Kinney hated the use of “whatever.”

“… landed on this island, claimed it for themselves, and proclaimed it the Republic of Sealand. They waited for the Brits to come get them, so they could get on TV, but they didn’t bother, and they haven’t bothered since. So these people stayed on the island, and to support themselves, they set up an Internet support and cell phone service, offering confidential Internet access to individuals who didn’t want to be traced. It’s sort of like the electronic equivalent of a Swiss bank. Our guy’s website is based there.”

“Can you hack into it and find out who he is?”

“Well… not yet is the best answer I can give you. It involves more than hacking into his website. That doesn’t contain his identity. It involves breaking into the Sealand company records for the information, and they have very good and constantly updated security software in place.”

“And, I suppose, he could be registered under a false name.”

“Possible, but not likely.”

“Oh? Why would he use his own name when he could use an alias?”

“Because the Sealand people are punctilious about checking out their subscribers. They don’t want to be liable for, say, protecting a pedophile or, as in our case, a murderer.”

“But by concealing his identity, they are protecting him.”

“Of course, but the way they see it, as long as he’s registered under a real name, they’re not protecting him.”

“That doesn’t make any sense at all.”

“I didn’t say these people were logical, though they’ve been smart enough to succeed at what they’re doing.”

“Can we get a court order through the British?”

“Since they consider themselves a separate nation, they would ignore a court order, and it would require a good-sized police or military operation on the part of the Brits to enforce it. The Brits regard Sealand as something less than a flea on a dog, and, since the island isn’t much more than a rock in the sea, with no harbor, it has no strategic or tactical significance for them. There’s a case on record of Interpol’s trying to track down one of their subscribers, and they hit a stone wall with the Brits.”

“So what you’re saying is, that if we want the name and address of this murderer, we’re going to have to launch a military invasion of Sealand?”

“That’s about the size of it. And although the Brits obviously care nothing about Sealand, they might take umbrage if a foreign nation invaded what is, after all, British soil.”

“An international incident,” Kinney muttered.

“Exactly.”

“How does one communicate with these people?”

“They started their own cellular phone company some time back, and they’re plugged into all the usual networks. You can call or fax them-I can get the numbers-or you can email them.”

“All right, give my secretary the fax number, and thanks for your help.”

“You bet,” the kid said, then left.

Kinney dictated a letter to the Sealand Company requesting the name and address of the operator of the website, and gave his reasons.

“Fax it,” he said. “Let’s see what happens.”