The Pandora Key aka The Hostage Room

28

AFTER I LEFT WENDY’S, I COULDN’T GET TO FELIX’S FAST enough. I would have called him, but I was busy beeping Kraft. I did it three times before I pulled into the parking lot of Felix’s complex. On the last try, I punched in my call-back number and followed it with 911. Surely he couldn’t ignore the universal code for near hysteria.

When the elevator at Felix’s building proved too slow, I took the stairs, climbing all seven stories without a pause. By the time I hit five, my legs were jelly. By the time I made it to his apartment and found Felix draped across the lime-green beanbag chair, I could barely stand.

“Hey, Miss Shanahan.” As soon as he saw me, he set aside his laptop and popped to his feet. “Guess what? Guess what I found out? I was looking into that stuff you asked me about, the vory, and you know what? Do you know what I found out? It’s kind of hard to believe. I don’t know whether it’s true or not. It could be true, I guess.”

“Felix…” I held up my hand-breathing was an issue. I knew from experience that I had to stop him, or at least slow him down, or he would just roll on and leave me in the dust. Besides, I needed a moment to collect myself. “Give me a second, okay?” I poured myself into his only other seating option, a canvas chair, and closed my eyes. I’d raced over from Wendy’s and Drazen so fast, I hadn’t had a chance to think about what had just happened. When I started to think about it, to feel the enormity of what I was involved in, I decided I’d rather talk. I opened my eyes, and Felix was right there looking at me. Whatever he had to say, he was excited about it, but I had to get my piece said first.

“I just had a meeting with Tishchenko. He’s not looking for Roger. He’s looking for-”

“The lost fortune. I know. That’s what I was trying to tell you about. The lost fortune of Drazen Tishchenko. Pretty cool, huh? Sounds like Lara Croft, Tomb Raider, or one of those really old Indiana Jones movies.”

“Are you talking about the billion dollars that was supposedly on Vladi’s laptop?”

“Hey! Miss Shanahan, you heard about this?”

“I did. How did you?”

“I found it in Russian chat rooms. They have them over there, too. You have to put all the pieces together, and a lot of it was in archived threads, and I had to use translation software, so I’m not sure I got all of it. Translation software is, like, so bogus. Half the time, it’s completely wrong, and the other-”

“Felix, get to the good part.”

“You asked me to check into the vory, and I did, and I thought they were really interesting with the tattoos and everything, and then you said you’d met one, and I was really curious about him, and so I checked him out. There’s a lot out there on Drazen Tishchenko. He is one intense dude.”

“It was on the laptop, right? A list of files…a map to the fortune…two copies…one for Drazen and one for his brother…” I trailed off so he could pick up the thread.

“Exactly. It was, like, a treasure map, because if you had the computer, it would lead you to the money, only Vladi’s copy got lost when he disappeared.”

Treasure map. I had used that phrase with Kraft, and he had laughed at me. “What do they say about Drazen’s? What happened to his copy?”

“Eaten by a computer virus.”

I had to smile. He had given me the first true moment of satisfaction I’d had in a long time. “You’re kidding.”

“I’m not kidding. After Vladi disappeared, Drazen went to find his list, and the file was corrupted. According to the story, Drazen loves porn, and you know what happens when you go to those porn sites. You’re bound to catch something. He got some kind of virus that crashed his hard drive.” He shook his head. “Should have used protection.”

I looked over at him. He was trying to hide his grin, but his ears had turned red, which was his way of blushing. Dan was definitely rubbing off on this kid.

“I guess Drazen was a little hasty when he whacked his computer guy.”

He went from blushing to stricken. “He whacked his computer guy?”

“More like his money guy. What does Russian urban legend say about how Vladi disappeared?”

“One night, he was visiting America and just vanished off the face of the earth. His billion dollars vanished with him.”

“Not necessarily.” I pulled out my Wendy’s napkin with the model and serial number Drazen had given me. “This is the computer where the files resided four years ago. Tishchenko is confident they will still be there. He says they can’t be moved. That’s what I came to ask you about. What would make it so files can’t be moved?”

He took the fast-food document and nodded as sagely as a twenty-something kid could. “That’s how hardware-based encryption works.”

“As opposed to software-based?”

“Right. Software encryption stores the critical information in memory, which means in the end, someone like me can go in and grab it.”

“Critical information like a password?”

“Uh-huh. Hardware encryption encrypts every sector and byte, and it doesn’t leave temporary files and directories unencrypted, which software usually does. In fact, if it’s what I think it is…” He went back to the beanbag, pulled his laptop into position, and started pounding, referring to the napkin for the numbers. When the results came up on the screen, he took in a quick breath, sucking it through clenched teeth. “Oh, man.”

“What?”

“First of all, that porno virus story can’t be true, not with this kind of encryption.”

“What kind?”

“I can’t say for sure, but he could have used something like a KryptoDisk system, which would totally defend it from your average virus. It’s military-grade encryption. The only thing that unlocks it is a cryptographic token.”

“A token?”

“Four years ago, it probably looked like a thick credit card. Here, you can see.” Sensing, perhaps, that he had more energy than I did, he brought his laptop over and showed me the photo on the screen. “You plug it into a slot in the side, the operating system loads, and everything comes up as normal.”

“Is there any chance the files could have been erased or written over without the token?”

“No, except, well…usually, there’s a recovery password in case you lose the key, because if you do, you’re pretty much screwed. But you have to have one or the other or sometimes both to get in. It’s also pretty-”

My phone started to twitter. I whipped it out of my front pocket. Private call, which was how Kraft’s calls had been coming in. I flipped it open.

“Alex Shanahan.”

“What the fuck do I have to do to keep you from calling me every half hour?”

Despite my dislike for Kraft and his battery-acid disposition, it was thrilling to hear his voice. I got up from the chair. Somehow, it made me feel more ready to deal with him if I was on my feet. “I have something you’ll want. I can’t put you in touch with the other reporter, but I have something better. I have his story and all his research notes.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Then fuck you. This man’s son was murdered by Blackthorne, and he took a tremendous risk leaving this stuff with me right before he quit his job, packed up, and fled the city. So, if you want it, let’s talk about a deal. If you don’t, stop wasting my time.”

He had no response to that. Maybe if he couldn’t say something nasty, he said nothing at all.

“The research he gave me includes taped interviews with Tony Blackmon. I haven’t heard all the material, but in what I heard, he talks about Thorne’s background and the things that drove him over the cliff. He calls him Cy, by the way. Did you know that?”

Still no response. I had either shamed him into silence, which had to be hard to do, or he was interested.

“He talks about Thorne’s motives and his own motives. According to the reporter’s notes, he also gives names and dates and describes a bunch of the group’s illegal operations. If this is what you’re writing about, you want this stuff, and there is nowhere else to get it. Blackmon is dead.”

I listened closely to the silence and heard what I had hoped to hear. He was breathing faster. He was interested.

“Can you at least let me hear some of it?”

I had brought the envelope with me. I had not let it out of my sight since I’d been entrusted with its care. I pulled the recorder from my backpack, turned it on, and let it run until I heard Blackmon’s voice. I held the phone close to the speaker and let it run for about thirty seconds. I turned it off. “Convinced?”

“How much tape do you have?”

“Two tapes, probably four hours. Plus a lot of additional notes and research. You can have it all.”

There was another long pause, and I was sick of hanging on his every word and breath, so I turned it back on him. “Do you have the Dell with the files?”

“I have the Dell and I looked for the files, but I didn’t find anything that looked like them.”

I went over to where Felix was working and found the Wendy’s napkin. “Check the serial number on the unit.” I read Drazen’s notes to Kraft.

“That’s it,” he said.

That was troubling. The computer without the files would be very bad news, indeed. “You didn’t find anything?”

“I looked.”

“Hold on.” I covered the phone. “Felix, if these files were on an encrypted hard drive, would you be able to see them without the token?”

“No. The operating system wouldn’t even load.”

Back to Kraft. “You wouldn’t necessarily see them.”

“Who are you talking to?”

“My computer guy, and don’t even start with me. He is completely reliable. He believes Vladi’s computer must have had an encrypted hard drive, which means you would need a key or a token to access them or even to see them.” I went to look over Felix’s shoulder. “Pull up that screen again, Felix.”

He pulled up the picture of the KryptoDisk system. “Look on the side of the unit. Is there a slot there?”

“Yeah.”

Felix cupped his hand to whisper to me. “It’s just a standard PMC slot. That could be for a modem or a networking card or…”

I walked out of his range. I didn’t need to complicate matters with the truth.

“If you don’t have the key,” I said, “you can’t get to the files.”

“Okay. Do you have the key?”

“No, but that shouldn’t matter. It sounds as if Drazen has a way to get in. He wasn’t concerned about the key, just the machine. Bring it to me in Boston, and I’ll have all your materials waiting.”

“I can’t give you the computer, even if it does have your files. I already told you, it has the e-mails on it from the Martyr’s Brigade. I need them for my story.”

“Your story on Cyrus Thorne?”

“Yes.”

I still didn’t understand what e-mails from the Martyrs had to do with Thorne, and I was tired of being in the dark. “I need to know what you’re writing about.”

“No.”

“Tell me what the story is about or, I swear-”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Swear to God, Kraft-”

“You don’t want to know. Believe me, you don’t.”

“I swear to you I will burn this stuff to ashes and it will be gone forever because, let me just say this again, Tony Blackmon is dead.”

He was going to give me the answer. I knew he would. I was just trying to make it sooner rather than later.

“Fine,” he said. “You want to know the big secret?”

“Yes.”

“Here it is. Here’s the big secret.” Even then, when he had me right on the edge, he waited.

“Kraft-”

“It was staged.” The words popped out like a hiccup.

“What was staged?”

“The hijacking.”

“The hi-” It sank in. “Salanna 809 was staged?”

“Planned, funded, and directed by Americans. The group that did it is Blackthorne. The e-mails prove it.”

He didn’t sound crazy. He was an award-winning investigative journalist, yet what he was saying sounded like crazy talk to me. “Are you making this up?”

“No.”

“Why would Blackthorne hijack that plane?”

“They didn’t. They hired the Martyr’s Brigade to do it, and it wasn’t really a hijacking. Thorne considered it an extraction. A complicated one, but an extraction nonetheless. It was called Operation Peloton.”

“Who were they extracting?”

“Ali al-Badat. He was a prisoner in Pakistan.”

Pakistan…al-Badat. This was familiar. I got out my notebook and flipped back to my conversation with Lyle. That seemed like years ago. “Right. I remember this. They caught al-Badat when they were looking for someone else.”

“That’s right. Musharraf had just declared his support for the U.S., which was about as popular with his Muslim constituency as bikinis. There was rioting in the streets, burning of the U.S. flag. The military opposed him. His intelligence people were plotting against him. It was tense. In the middle of all this, he stumbled across al-Badat, the people’s sheikh. He was popular, charismatic, articulate, and fully capable of destabilizing the pro-West secular government of Pakistan. They couldn’t put him on trial. They couldn’t kill him and turn him into a martyr, and they couldn’t let him walk. What do you do?”

“Organize a hijacking?”

“Right. Put on a bit of geopolitical theater and pretend to force Musharraf’s hand.”

Something was trying to make sense. “Was Stephen Hoffmeyer part of this?”

“Hoffmeyer was the Blackthorne operative onboard. It was his operation.”

“Is that why Hoffmeyer disappeared?”

“What happened wasn’t his fault. They had a mechanical problem with the plane-”

“Hydraulics.”

“He ended up in the wrong country with no support. Thorne hung him out to dry.”

“And because of him, nine innocent hostages died, a whole lot of other lives were screwed up, and a perfectly good aircraft was destroyed. Pardon me if I don’t feel a lot of sympathy for the guy.”

“Things got out of hand, obviously. That’s what’s in the files. It’s post-operation communication between Blackthorne and the Martyrs. The terrorists took computers from the victims and used them for-”

“Their own purposes,” I said. “I got all that a long time ago. What kind of communication?”

“Let’s just say the Martyrs didn’t plan on losing eight of their people. Thorne also wouldn’t pay them the rest of their fee. He considered the operation a failure. You could say there was some cyber-discussion afterward between the Martyrs and Blackthorne.”

“All right, look. I agree it’s a big story. I’m all in favor of helping you take down Cyrus Thorne. So copy off your notes or your secret files or whatever, and let me take the computer. I’ll even come to you. Tell me where you are.”

“The computer is my story.”

“You just said-”

“The fact that the evidence is on a computer carried by one of the hostages is part of the story. It’s like a chain-of-custody thing. There is no way I’m separating those e-mails from that hard drive.”

I felt a flash of anger, not so much at Kraft as at the fact that everything had to be so hard. But I had no problem taking it all out on him. “Here’s the bottom line, Kraft. You can give the money files to me, or I can tell Drazen that you have them, and you can be on the run from Blackthorne and the Russian mob.”

“The Russian mob does not scare me.”

I went back to my chair and crumpled into it. How come no one was ever scared by all the things that scared me? I was running out of options, because in the end, he still held all the cards. “Are you willing to give me the files if I can figure out how to get them off your machine without messing with your evidence?”

“Yes.”

“Fine. I’ll call you back. When I do, please get back to me right away.” This time, I got to hang up on him.

I looked at Felix. “He won’t give me the computer, because it has some stuff on it for his story. E-mails and documents and things that were put on after the hijacking. Obviously, he’s accessed them, so they’re not encrypted. Is that possible, given this KryptoDisk hardware?”

“Maybe. There could be a slave drive functioning for stuff that doesn’t need to be encrypted, but that would be a little funky. I’d have to look at it.”

“That’s what I’m hoping, that I can get it for you and you can hack around this need for a key or a token or whatever.”

He shook his head. “No, ma’am. I can’t hack it. That’s what I was saying before he called. Anything over sixty-bit encryption is pretty unhackable, at least by me, unless you can give me, like, six or seven Crays to do it with.”

“How many bits is this one?”

“It’s probably 128- or 192-bit key strength. There’s no way.”

“All right, hacking’s out, and he won’t meet with me unless I can peel those files off. I think there’s only one thing to do.”

“Find the key?”

“Yep, and I’m not sure I’m going to like where I have to look for it.”

There was construction in Kenmore Square where they were tearing down the bus shack. I had to detour around it to get to Harvey’s. As I sat with all the rest of the detouring traffic, I got another call. The ID showed a private caller. I flipped open the phone.

“Alex Shanahan.”

“This is Cyrus Thorne.”

Just what I needed, Drazen and Cyrus within the span of two hours. “What can I do for you?”

“I haven’t heard from you.”

I had to shift my brain over to the Cyrus track to get straight what he knew and what he thought I knew. “I had to talk things over with my partner to get him onboard. He’s not too keen on turning a man over to be executed.”

“Did you convince him?”

“He thinks we’re in over our heads, but he’s in. Turns out he’s more in love with Rachel than committed to his principles.”

“Good. Have you made contact with Kraft?”

“Not yet, but I have figured out a way to get him to meet with me.”

“How will you do it?”

“By promising that the two of us together can make bad things happen to you.”

That produced a satisfied chuckle. I tried to say things to Cyrus that were true. He gave me the feeling that even over the phone, he could tell when I was lying.

“What about Hoffmeyer?” I asked. Maybe I could keep him on the defensive if I could make him have to lie to me. “Have you had any luck finding him?”

“We won’t find him. He’s been trained by the best. The only way we’ll get to him is through Kraft. Then we’ll have a shot at the big dog.”

“Look, what if I can’t get Kraft to come to Boston? Would your plane be available if I had to go to him?”

“Without hesitation. In fact, that might be preferable. When you’re close to locking in your final plans, call me with the details, and I’ll set the wheels in motion.”

“Okay, good. Look, it’s going to be a few days at least. Do you want me to call you, or do you want to check back with me? It’s probably better if I call you.” I waited. He said nothing, and I didn’t know how to interpret the silence. “Do you still have my client’s video?”

“It’s in a safe place. How many days will you need?”

“How about if I call you the day after tomorrow?”