Dark Magic

18

Liza was furious. Peter had been gone for hours, and hadn’t responded to her calls or texts. She knew that her boyfriend had mood swings, and often took long walks to clear his head. There was nothing wrong with that, but it wasn’t right that he didn’t stay in touch, especially after the attack at the theater last night.

Fuming, she sat at the kitchen table. Peter was a psychic, and he was also a flake. He hardly seemed to care about her feelings, or what she thought about their relationship. There were times when she wondered if he’d been raised by wolves.

A pad of paper sat on the table. On it she’d written the words Order of Astrum. The man who’d attacked Peter was a member of the Order, and she’d overheard Peter and Detective Schoch talking about them on the stoop. They were the key to the puzzle.

She pulled out her BlackBerry to try and learn more. To her surprise, her Google search turned up nothing but a vague reference on Wikipedia. She decided to call in reinforcements, and dialed Snoop.

“Hey, it’s me,” she said. “You at home?”

“I’m sitting at the bar at the Waverly Inn watching the beautiful ladies,” Snoop replied.

“I have a favor to ask. Can you meet me at Peter’s place?”

“I’m game. The girl I was hitting on just blew me off.”

“Her loss. Do you still have that hot laptop you told me about?”

“Hot isn’t the word. It’s steaming.”

“It can’t be traced back to you, can it?”

“Not in a hundred years. What have you got in mind?”

Liza stared at the pad. If the Order of Astrum was sending assassins out to kill people, then some government agency had to know about them.

“I want you to hack a government mainframe,” she replied.

“Yipes. Which one?”

She had to think. Secret Service? No. CIA? Not them, either.

“FBI,” she said.

“Now you’re talking. I’ll grab the laptop from my apartment.”

“Thanks, Snoop. I owe you big time.”

Liza ended the call. She assumed that breaking into the FBI’s computer was a federal offense, punishable by jail time, waterboarding, and who knew what else, yet she had no qualms about doing it. Peter was in danger, and she was going to find out why.

She fixed a pot of coffee while waiting for Snoop. When it came to hacking, Snoop had few peers. At fourteen, he’d gotten caught downloading a hundred thousand music files off the Internet, which he’d distributed to his entire high school class. At sixteen, he’d been tagged for breaking into a dozen Fortune 500 companies. At nineteen, he’d hit for the cycle, and been arrested for hacking three government servers deemed impenetrable. When a judge had asked him why he’d done it, Snoop had replied, “Because they’re there, Your Honor.” Snoop had never hidden his past. If anything, he was proud of his accomplishments, and boasted that there wasn’t a computer in the world whose defenses he couldn’t penetrate. Liza hoped he was right, because it was the only way she was going to find out what was going on.

The front buzzer rang. She bounded down the hall and opened the door.

“That was fast.”

Snoop entered with a shoulder bag draped over his shoulder. His hair hung in his face like a shaggy dog’s, and his purple sneakers were untied. They walked down the hall to the kitchen. Taking a Dell Latitude laptop from the bag, he placed it on the table.

“So who’s our target?” he asked.

“I told you-I want you to hack the FBI.”

“I thought you were kidding.”

“Afraid not. Is that a problem?”

Snoop picked up the coffee mug Liza had set for him, and sipped the steaming brew. “Depends on what your definition of problem is. Is spending ten years of your life making license plates inside a federal prison a problem?”

“You can back out if you want to.”

“Me? Back out? Never. But we need to take precautions. The FBI doesn’t screw around. Once they realize we’ve hacked their computer, they’ll come after us.”

“I thought a hot laptop couldn’t be traced.”

“It can’t be traced to me, but it still can be located. The FBI has developed a special tracing system which allows them to lay an invisible thread into a hacker’s computer,” Snoop explained. “That thread lets them pinpoint a hacker’s location anywhere in the world. I found out the hard way when I was in college. I wanted to find out what the FBI knew about Roswell, so I hacked their computer. Ten minutes after I’d signed off, an SUV with tinted windows pulled up to my dorm, and four guys in black suits came and arrested me.”

“The men in black ran you down? Come on, be serious.”

“I am being serious.”

Liza drank her coffee. Snoop looked nervous. That was hardly like him.

“Look, I don’t want you to get in trouble because of me,” she said. “Just show me how to get into the FBI’s mainframe, and I’ll take care of this myself.”

“That could take years. I’ll get us in, but on my terms. Deal?”

“Deal.”

Snoop drained his cup and returned the laptop to his shoulder bag. “There’s a sports bar on Second Avenue called Ball Four that has Wi-Fi and roasted peanuts. We’ll go there.”

“Why not use the Internet here? It’s secure.”

“Nothing’s secure on the Internet. Besides, I like peanuts.”

He left the kitchen before Liza could reply. A moment later, the front door banged open. She got the hint, and hurried to catch up.

Ball Four had all the charm of a college frat house. Liza got two Cokes and a bowl of roasted peanuts from the bar, and brought them to the corner booth where Snoop sat typing. His boyish features were a study in concentration, his fingers a blur.

“Someday, you’re going to have to explain how you hack a computer,” she said.

“Hacking isn’t as hard as you think,” he said. “Most passwords use lowercase letters, and the numbers zero through nine, or thirty-six total characters. A five-character password has a total of sixty million possibilities. I can run a sixty-million simulation on my software program in five minutes.”

“It can’t really be that simple.”

“It just takes practice.”

He fell silent, and continued to work his magic on the laptop.

“Okay, I’ve broken through the FBI’s firewall and bypassed the security system,” he said. “With one click, I’ll be inside the mainframe. Now, what are we looking for?”

“The Order of Astrum.”

“Didn’t the guy who attacked Peter belong to that group?”

“Yup. I need to find out who they are.”

“Does Peter know about this? You know how he gets when we do things and don’t tell him.”

Liza thought back to Peter’s shocking revelation of this morning. It had felt like a betrayal, and she had to know what else her boyfriend was hiding.

“Do it anyway,” she said.

“Whatever you say. Once I log in, you’ve got ten minutes to find what you’re looking for. Then we get out of here. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

Snoop clicked his mouse. “Okay, we’re in the FBI’s system. Nice home page. I’m typing the Order of Astrum into the search engine. You hit pay dirt. They’ve got a file on them.” He spun the laptop around, and slid it across the table. “The clock’s running. Go!”

Liza started reading. Her skin was tingling, and she felt like Alice jumping down the rabbit hole. The first paragraph practically knocked her sideways.

“Holy cow,” she said. “It says the Order of Astrum has been linked to several ruthless dictators who are enemies of the United States, and they are considered a threat to national security.”

“You were expecting the Boy Scouts of America?”

She tossed a peanut at Snoop, and continued reading.

“This is amazing,” Liza said a few minutes later. “According to this, the Order of Astrum wasn’t always bad. There are five members, four boys and one girl. In 1942, when they were little kids, they used their psychic powers to help the British fight the Nazis. It says a group of American generals asked for a meeting, and were taken to a town called Marble in southern England. The children conducted a seance, and made furniture move around the room. When the seance was finished, the children told the generals which towns the Germans were stationed in. It says this information was used to plot the Normandy invasion.”

“Sounds like there’s a movie here,” Snoop said.

Another peanut hit Snoop in the face.

“Better hurry. You’ve only got a couple of minutes left,” he cautioned.

“Afraid of the men in black running you down again?”

“You think I’m kidding? Just wait.”

Liza went back to reading the file.

“Oh, my God,” she said. “It says that the Order of Astrum went silent after the war. In 1988, the FBI’s New York field office was contacted by a British couple who claimed to be members of the Order, who had fled England with their son to escape the other members. The couple’s names were Claire and Henry Warren.”

“So?” Snoop said.

“Those were Peter’s parents.”

“What? Are you sure?”

“Positive. Peter showed me their pictures.”

“Let me see that.”

Liza slid the laptop across the table. Snoop found the spot, and read aloud.

“‘The Warrens claimed the other three members of the Order were selling their services to the highest bidder, and were in league with the Devil. When the Warrens were asked to rejoin the group, they refused, and were threatened by the other members.’

“The FBI protected the Warrens for six months. Right after the protection was lifted, the couple were abducted and murdered after attending a show in New York. The FBI believes the Order was behind the killings.”

Snoop looked up from the laptop. “Wow. Do you think Peter knows any of this?”

Liza shook her head. Peter had confided in her that he knew little about his parents. Now, she thought she understood why.

“Who’s going to tell him?” Snoop asked.

“I guess it’s up to me.”

Snoop looked at his watch. He slid out of the booth, and made a bee-line for the front door. Going outside, he looked back at her through the window and rapped loudly on the glass.

“Damn it,” Liza swore.

She wanted to read the file again. There were still many things she didn’t understand. The town of Marble had produced five psychic children. Two of those children had produced Peter. She tried to imagine what could have happened in that small town to cause such an amazing thing to occur. Had something mysterious happened that had caused the children to become psychics? And if something had happened, what was it?

Snoop was jumping up and down, waving at her. He’d already been arrested by the FBI once, and she didn’t want him to get arrested again. She joined him outside.

“Did you turn the laptop off?” he asked.

“No-was I supposed to?”

“Yes. Leaving it on makes it easier for them to find us. We need to get out of sight.”

They crossed Second Avenue and ducked into an alley where they stood hidden in the shadows. Soon the ground was littered with peanut shells.

“Maybe they’re not coming,” Liza said.

“Fat chance.”

A black GMC Terrain sport-utility vehicle braked across the street. The doors sprang open, and four figures wearing hoodies piled out, and entered Ball Four.

“Is that the FBI?” she asked.

“Sure is. They always drive GMC vehicles. The hoodies are new.”

A deafening noise came out of the sky. A black chopper without visible markings hovered over the office buildings on Second Avenue like a giant insect waiting to strike.

“Chopper’s new, too,” he added.

A minute later the four figures emerged from the bar. There were three men and one women. The man in charge was a stocky African-American, mid-forties, with graying temples and a deep scowl. Cradled against his chest was Snoop’s laptop. He talked into a cell phone while staring across the street into the alley where they were hiding.

“He sees us,” Liza squeaked.

“Maybe not. Just be still,” Snoop replied.

The four FBI agents got back into the van. As it drove away, the chopper rose into the sky, and was swallowed by the dark clouds. The air trapped in Liza’s lungs slowly escaped. She wouldn’t have believed this if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes.

“Sorry I doubted you,” she said.

They emerged from the alley. Liza checked both ends of the street. Something didn’t feel right, only she couldn’t get a handle on what it was. The city seemed almost too quiet.

They headed up Second Avenue, ducking raindrops.

“That was intense,” Snoop said.

“I really didn’t mean to get you involved with this.”

“You don’t have to apologize.”

She squeezed his arm. “Thanks.”

They had reached 62nd Street. As they came around the corner, they both stopped dead in their tracks. The black Terrain was parked by the curb, and the four FBI agents stood on the sidewalk, wearing laminated badges around their necks. The man in charge pointed an accusing finger.

“You’re both under arrest,” he declared.

“Shit,” Snoop swore. “Busted again.”