Born with Secrets: A Political Thriller Page 6

  Sometimes, they would hire him for jobs that required two people, or even more. He gained experience at hiring muscle.

  Eventually, he built a solid living for himself as a dark operator firmly riding the fence between law enforcement and crime. But his connections to the Federal intelligence agencies presented an opportunity.

  His brother Doyle was a university researcher plugging away in the field of genetics. But when his research began to hint at the existence of a “gene for criminal behavior,” Luther was in a position to connect him with people who could use that kind of thing.

  Doyle got a steady stream of grant funding.

  Luther got increased prestige and status within the inner circles of the government agencies that liked Doyle’s work.

  Everyone was happy.

  Until one day Luther was reading his hometown paper and discovered that their U.S. Senator was resigning. The leading candidate to take his place was none other than the very man who had once cost Luther his job: Mike Vincent.

  Luther Cobalt couldn’t pass up the chance. Why sit by and let that jerk get promoted when he happened to know a successful academic who could be every bit as good a Senator?

  And of course, with Doyle in the U.S. Senate, he could make a few choice adjustments to his deal with the national security people. They liked what he was offering: the ability to identify criminals and terrorists before they even knew they were criminals and terrorists. But they hadn’t seen the real potential yet. Even Doyle didn’t see the real potential yet. Only Luther did.

  All that stood between him and victory was Mike Vincent. It almost made him laugh. Instead it made him swear. When Luther was first starting out, Mike Vincent ruined his first big break. Now, the guy was trying to do it again.

  Not this time, Vincent. Not this time. Once I’ve got LeBlanc, you’re going to find every single door closed. And then we’ll see who puts who out of a job.

  ***

  The lights of Middleburg, Virginia gave the rainclouds an unearthly glow as Luther Cobalt grabbed an arm roughly and pulled the girl out of the back seat. The duct tape over her mouth muffled her noises of protestation, but he didn’t really care how she felt. She was the key to getting his brother into the Senate, and that was all that mattered.

  They were at the main headquarters of Cobalt Data Mining Systems. The building was part office space but mainly a server farm. Uncounted thousands of terabytes worth of hard drives hummed in the basement and on the ground floor. CDMS was in the business of digitizing and storing genetic data and that required huge volumes of storage. The building could easily have been designed as a simple warehouse, but his brother Doyle had paid for more expensive steel and glass architecture. After all, he had Federal contracts to pay for the construction.

  The five-story building was completely unlit. Luther had ordered all the low-level security guards home an hour ago to avoid witnesses and when he did, he also ordered them to leave the place dark. Luther knew the electronically-secured back door well, though. He didn’t need lights to get it open.

  He opened the back door of the vehicle and grinned. There sat the key to getting his brother in the Senate, passing the Genetic Probable Cause Bill, and gaining the kind of power that could change everything.

  He had opened the HVAC duct from the server room to the outside. He had lain in wait in the server room and as soon as Alyssa’s back was turned and Moira LeBlanc wandered within his reach, he had dragged her outside to some waiting hired muscle.

  The fact that the entire prison believed she had escaped, rather than been kidnapped, just meant he could hold her without fear of discovery.

  Moira’s hands were cuffed behind her back, her mouth was taped shut, and she wore a black hood over her head, the better to keep her from knowing where she was being kept. Restrained like that, Luther never doubted his own ability to keep her under control.

  But just in case, he was pretty rough about shoving her in the door to his brother’s server farm. He dragged the girl down the hall, down a staircase, through several heavy steel doors, and finally into a large windowless room in the basement.

  He shoved Moira roughly into a hard wooden chair. He gripped her wrists hard to keep her immobilized as he transferred her restraints from behind her back to in front of her so she could have her arms and legs tied to the chair. He didn’t need to hear her muffled whimpers from behind the gag to know he was gripping hard enough to hurt.

  He wasn’t planning to ease up. A little pain was part of the fun.

  Once she was tied to the chair, Luther tugged the hood off her head, holding his face only inches from hers. At first, she squinted against the sudden bright light. As she gradually opened her eyes, her head jerked back in surprise when she saw Luther’s crooked nose only an inch or so from hers.

  “Welcome to your new home, LeBlanc,” he growled. “You’re going to find that Federal prison was much more comfortable. They have rules there.”

  She made some noises under the duct tape, but Luther just laughed.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not going to kill you. I may hurt you a little bit, but that’s just entertainment, nothing serious. Nothing that will leave a mark. You’re here so I can make you famous. We can’t have you all bruised up if you have to go on TV.”

  She made some more noises under the tape. She was trying to shout. Even muffled as she was, Luther had no trouble figuring out what she was trying to ask.

  “What do I want with you? Oh that’s easy. It’s about making money, Moira, but it’s also about revenge. I’m not satisfied with just putting my brother’s technology to work. I’m not even satisfied with getting more out of it than anyone has even imagined so far. But revenge? That’s satisfying. I’m going to get some payback, Moira.”

  ***

  Congressman Michael Vincent was an early riser; he had to be. Contrary to popular belief, the job of being a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives actually took much more than 40 hours a week. Of course, a very large portion of those hours were spent raising money for the campaign. But the difference in duties didn’t make it any easier to sleep in.

  His normal morning routine called for getting up at four, being in his home gym by four thirty, and being out the door for the Longworth House Office Building by five thirty. Usually, his wife was awake enough for a kiss before he left. Usually.

  All of which made it extraordinarily annoying that someone was pounding on his door at 3a.m.

  As the rain hammered his window, the Congressman whispered to his wife to stay put and wrapped himself in a bathrobe. Then he took a small pistol from the nightstand and dropped it into his pocket. Only then did he go investigate the disturbance.

  It turned out the precautions weren’t necessary. Pounding on his door in the middle of the night was a bedraggled, soaking-wet version of his friend Matt Barr.

  “Matt? What’s going on? It’s three in the morning!”

  “My house just burned down, Mike.”

  “What the—”

  “And it was deliberate. It was arson. And whoever did it chased me in a car and tried to shoot me.”

  The Congressman simply stared at his friend for a moment, open-mouthed. Then he said, “Well, get inside. You’re soaked. Let’s get you dried off and in some fresh clothes. Then I want to hear everything.”

  Mike brought him in, sent Matt to the bathroom to use the towels, and laid out some of his clean sweats for his friend to wear. He started the morning’s coffee, grabbed a pair of thirty-pound dumbbells, and worked through some sets of concentration curls while he waited for Matt to come tell him what the heck was going on.

  Since he got married, Kathy had improved the bachelor-pad-efficiency in which Mike used to live. Now the furniture matched, he had a real couch rather than a futon, and decorations adorned the walls.

  When his friend changed clothes, Congressman Vincent gave Matt a cup of coffee. Then the two of them went to sit in the living room.

  Matt said
, “You know I went to visit Alyssa yesterday.”

  “Of course. How is she?”

  “She said she got into a fight again. I’ve got a lot to say about that but now’s not the time. The point is, I got home and tried to get some sleep. I woke up sweating buckets, which I guess was pretty logical since the doorway of my bedroom was catching fire.”

  “Are you OK?”

  “Well, I’m pretty messed up emotionally right now but physically I’m OK. I got out through the window and two things happened at about the same time. One, I noticed that the fire was completely unaffected by the pouring rain, which made me think someone had put some chemical accelerants on it. Two, I also noticed someone was shooting at me. I…”

  Vincent interrupted and said, “Wait, what?”

  “Yeah. Shooting at me. I know, right? It seemed like a strategic retreat was the only maneuver that made sense. I got in the Camaro and tore up the road to get here. They chased me, too, but I lost them as I started to get anywhere near the White House.”

  The Congressman leaned forward in his seat. He said, “Matt, I love you and you’re my friend. I do trust you. But are you sure? Shooting at you?”

  Matt found it hard to believe, too. Why? Why would someone want to kill him? Yes, he had just been to talk to a famous criminal, but she hadn’t told him any information worth killing over. She only said she interrupted a prison fight. Not that Matt ever considered using his relationship with her for news but even if he did there was nothing even close to newsworthy in that.

  He could not imagine any reason to shoot at him, other than that conversation he’d overheard with Doyle Cobalt. If there was something about the Genetic Probable Cause Bill, was that worth killing him over? The trouble was, he hadn’t really heard anything. He didn’t have enough to know why someone would kill over it.

  Matt finally replied, saying, “I understand why you’re asking. I’m not offended. It seems insane to me, too. But it happened. I’m sure about that.”

  Vincent sipped coffee, leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes. Matt assumed he was praying.

  Finally, the Congressman asked, “Well, what should we do about it?”

  “That’s why I came here,” Matt said. “You told me you had an experience like this once where someone tried to kill you. Other than Alyssa, you’re the only person I know who might have some advice to give. And she’s two thousand miles away. As much as I want to see her right now, she’s not the easiest person to get to.”

  Vincent nodded and said, “When Kathy and I met, she had made the wrong people angry. We spent some time hiding and running. There was a company that made electronic surveillance gadgets for the FBI and NSA and pretty much most of the Federal government. Kathy had stumbled on some evidence that they were planning to massively defraud not just the government, but everyone they could lay their hands on. I helped get them shut down. You covered it, remember? The Electron Guidewire scandal?”

  Matt replied, “Yeah, I remember writing a few stories about it. So did the experience teach you any lessons that I should know? I mean, I’m assuming the police and fire department have shown up at my house by now. I want to be a good citizen and talk to them, but someone was shooting at me with real live bullets. The last time I went through that it was with Alyssa, so I want some guidance before I trust the authorities.”

  “The cops themselves are probably trustworthy,” Vincent replied. “But the problem is before and after you’re with them. Sitting in an interrogation room, you’d be safe. If this really is happening the way you describe it, then I wouldn’t place any bets about how safe you’d be walking back to your car afterward.”

  Matt said, “That doesn’t make me feel very good about talking to them.”

  “Go off the grid,” Mike advised. “No phones and no credit cards. No going home. No going to work. No place you’ve ever been.”

  Matt sighed and said, “I don’t feel like I can just run away without telling the police something about the attack. Wouldn’t that place me under suspicion?”

  The Congressman shrugged. “Maybe. But if someone genuinely pulled the trigger on a firearm aimed at you, then you’re in the middle of something big time. They’ll look for you to go to the police. It’s what any ordinary citizen would do. If someone wants to kill you, that’s the place they’ll look.

  “Here’s what I’d recommend,” Vincent continued. “They’re looking for you, not for me. So let’s use my plastic. I’ll check you into a hotel and get you a bunch of cash from an ATM. That way you don’t show up in any electronic way. Once you get there, stay off of anything electronic.”

  Matt said, “I don’t like missing work, and I don’t like borrowing money from you.”

  Vincent clapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about the money, brother. I know you’re good for it. And as for missing work, you’d just be writing about how I’m going to lose. No one wants to read that.”

  With his hand still on his friend’s shoulder, Vincent said a quick prayer for safety and guidance. Then the two of them went out to find a suitable hotel.

  CHAPTER 8

  Luther and Doyle stood in the basement storage room, staring down at Moira. They’d taken her hood off when they let her go to the bathroom and now her eyes nervously went back and forth between them. She had tried asking what they wanted — at least, they assumed that had been what she asked; it was hard to tell through the gag, but their refusal to answer any of her questions eventually wore her down and now she didn’t ask any more.

  “Here’s the deal,” Luther said. “As the race stands right now, you win. You’re ahead in the polls and pretty boy Vincent has less money to spend on changing that than you have to spend on keeping it that way. If nothing else happens, you’re in the Senate in a little less than a year.”

  Doyle nodded. “Thanks to you, brother.”

  Luther nodded in answer and then went on, “The wild card is the President. He could endorse Vincent in the primary. He could announce that he won’t sign the Genetic Probable Cause Bill. The effects are pretty much the same. Either way, Vincent will get a big boost in the polls and in his fundraising. If that happens, the race becomes a complete wild card. Anything can happen.”

  Doyle just nodded.

  “So LeBlanc here wipes out all that risk. Now we’ve got living proof of exactly how big a dirt bag the President really is. When the public learns about her, his popularity is going to dive like Jacques Cousteau. Then, he can endorse Vincent all day and I won’t care. That’ll make us more popular and him less.”

  Luther continued, “I already sent the email to his guy. Right now, the entire administration is probably changing their underwear.”

  His brother asked, “So that’s it then? We just sit back and wait for me to be elected?”

  Luther shook his head and said, “Probably not. They’re going to respond somehow. They have to.”

  “Like what?”

  Luther shrugged and replied, “No telling. The most obvious choice is a Secret Service investigation to find the blackmailers.”

  Doyle said, “They’ll come right to us. I mean, who else is going to want him to sign the Genetic Probable Cause Bill? If they investigate, aren’t we ruined before we start?”

  Luther’s lips stretched into an aggressive grin. He wrapped an arm around his brother’s shoulder and guided him out of the locked storage room so there was no risk of Moira overhearing.

  “That’s the fun part,” he said. “We’re not the only people who care about that bill. The NSA wants it. It’ll strengthen their surveillance efforts in unbelievable ways. The CIA wants it. They think they can use the genetic behavior prediction technology to figure out who’s a potential terrorist. The entire intelligence community is salivating over that bill.”

  The two stood in a bare concrete corridor with an unshielded bulb providing the only illumination. Dusty boxes were stacked along one wall.

  Luther added, “So I hired a specialist to fake the IP
address and other tracing information on my email. To the White House, this should look like it’s coming from a conspiracy inside the government. Unless something goes wrong, the Secret Service will start by investigating the CIA.”

  Doyle gave his brother a wide-eyed look.

  “That can’t possibly go over well with your pals in the intelligence community,” he said.

  “They can be as mad as they want,” Luther replied. “Once we have this system in place, they’ll need us. They’ll have to do business with us, even if we do tick them off.

  “Doyle, once we get you in the Senate and get that bill passed, no one’s going to have a choice. We’ll be indispensable.”

  ***

  After dropping Matt off at the hotel, Congressman Vincent hurried to the party national committee headquarters. He had a ton of fundraising phone calls to make, and he was behind schedule because of the business with Matt.

  When he entered, he pressed his finger to his lips as he passed the receptionist, giving her a wink. Then he whispered, “Don’t tell Gina.”

  He was arriving really late, and he wanted to avoid the yelling from the campaign manager that always came with reduced production in fundraising calls.

  The receptionist grinned and didn’t say a word as Mike walked down the hall to the office they let him use. The party kept space where members of Congress could come and conduct political business since they couldn’t do that in their official, taxpayer-funded offices. However, the space was barely large enough for Mike and for his campaign manager when she was in town.

  Alas, today she was in town. Mike was barely finishing his fourth call when Gina came in, sat in the guest chair across the desk from him, and calmly waited until Vincent hung up the phone. The moment he clicked off the line, the yelling started.

  “Mike, two hours of no calls being made costs us twenty thousand dollars in lost donations!”

  She had a spot of ink on her lower lip. She’d been chewing on a pen and had it explode again. It happened to her frequently. Gina’s gray hair looked like she hadn’t had time to wash it in a couple of days. That was well within the realm of possibility, Mike knew.