The Patriot Paradox Read online

  The departure gate was located on the B concourse, less than a five-minute ride away. Mason took a seat directly across from Kurt. He gave him a quick grimace of mutual suffering as the train accelerated away from the main terminal. Once they reached the concourse and exited the train, he dropped back in the crowd to give Kurt some breathing room.

  They were departing from gate five, just a few minutes’ walk from the trains. As far as Mason could tell, Kurt was traveling alone. This was what he expected, given the single ticket purchase, but anything was possible in a situation such as this.

  Kurt stopped short in the middle of the concourse, causing a momentary traffic jam as people reacted to the sudden obstacle in their path. Mason ducked into a book kiosk and feigned interest in the bestseller rack while watching Kurt out of the corner of his eye.

  Turning in a circle, Kurt appeared to be looking for something. What the…? Mason tried to follow his gaze. Kurt suddenly took off toward a bank of public computer terminals. Mason checked the time on his phone. Boarding call was still twenty minutes away.

  As he watched, Kurt pulled out his wallet, extracted a credit card, swiped it through the card reader on the machine, and began typing.

  Mason dialed Helen. She answered before the first ring. “Yeah Mason. What is it?”

  “Vetter’s using a public computer terminal. Concourse B…” He strained to read the number posted above the computer. “Looks like number eleven. He used his credit card.”

  Helen breathed heavily on the other end. “I’ve got it.”

  Mason waited, expecting her to say something else. When she didn’t, he prompted, “Is there anything I need to know?”

  “No. He’s in an encrypted browser session. I can’t read his traffic yet. It’ll take a little while to figure out what he’s doing…”

  “Damn.”

  “Is that all?” Helen asked. She sounded frazzled.

  Mason scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Yeah. For now.”

  “Okay. Talk to you on the other side.”

  He ended the connection and pocketed his phone. Kurt was scribbling something on a piece of paper, which he then folded and shoved into his pocket.

  A moment later, he finished whatever he was doing at the computer, pushed his chair back, and stood. With a quick glance around the concourse, he headed for the departure gate.

  Barely able to constrain his curiosity, Mason fell in behind him. He had a bad feeling this was going to be a long assignment.

  Eleven

  Heathrow Terminal Five was a zoo. Everywhere Kurt looked, there were people, some coming, some going, all sharing the same haggard, impatient look of air travelers the world over. In a previous life, Kurt had traveled through Heathrow for both personal and business reasons more times than he cared to remember. Right behind San Francisco International, it was his favorite airport in the world, partly because the United Kingdom looked and felt like home, while at the same time was different enough that he felt like he had really gone somewhere.

  Contrary to his initial fears, customs had proven uneventful. “Quite the world traveler,” the laconic customs agent had commented as she flipped to the back page of his passport and stamped it with a resounding Ka-Chunk!

  Kurt slung his bag over his shoulder and set off toward a dark blue sign indicating the Piccadilly tube stop. The Piccadilly line connected the airport with central London, and from there, to the rest of the city. He had a hotel reserved in the West End, right down the street from the Cavendish Hotel, where he usually stayed.

  As he strolled toward the exit, he pulled a small slip of paper from his pocket and unfolded it. The paper was blank except for Amanda Carter’s London telephone number. He had looked it up while at Dulles, after having forgotten to do so in his frantic rush to get to the airport.

  As he tucked the paper back in his pocket, his fingertips brushed the edge of his mobile phone, and he remembered that he had one more stop to make before he got on the train. He craned his head around and spotted a Vodafone kiosk a few dozen yards down the concourse.

  “Hello, sir,” the young woman behind the counter said with a smoky south-Asian accent. She looked to be in her late twenties, with large brown eyes and a perky, upturned nose. Lustrous black hair cascaded to her shoulders, and she wore a brightly-colored sari. A small red gem, or bindi, pasted slightly above and between her eyebrows completed the outfit.

  “Hey,” Kurt said, fumbling his phone from his pocket. “I need a prepaid SIM card.”

  “Is your phone unlocked sir?”

  “It is.”

  “Will you need data connectivity during your stay?”

  Kurt didn’t know, but decided it couldn’t hurt. “Sure.”

  “How much would you like to start with?” the woman asked, pointing at a laminated price sheet on the edge of the counter.

  Kurt picked it up and studied the rates. He had no idea how much he would need. “Do you take US dollars?” he asked, flustered.

  “We do.” She beamed. “We take most currencies.”

  “Let’s start with two hundred, then.” Kurt dug out his wallet and pulled out two crisp hundred-dollar bills. He placed them in the small plastic tray on the counter.

  “Right.” She scooped them up, and the currency disappeared into her till.

  While she programmed his new SIM card, Kurt removed the back of his phone and ejected the battery. He scraped out the existing SIM with his fingernail and stuffed it into the back of his wallet for safekeeping. Once the new SIM was ready, the clerk snapped it from its plastic frame and handed it over.

  Kurt thanked her and inserted it into his telephone.

  “You can see your number by pressing Menu, six, three,” the clerk informed him.

  Kurt followed her instructions and verified his new number. Satisfied all was working, he thanked her and resumed his trek to the tube stop.

  ~~~

  Mason loitered at a newsstand and thumbed through the latest issue of the International Herald Tribune. He yawned and stole a casual glance over at Kurt, who was fifty feet away at a phone kiosk.

  So far, so good. Upon touchdown, Mason had turned on his phone and sent an encrypted text message to Helen. She had replied right away, telling him there was no news on her end. He noticed movement down the concourse. Shit. What’s he doing now?

  Mason folded his paper and broke into a brisk walk as he trailed Kurt down the concourse. There were enough people milling about that losing his subject was a distinct possibility, one he didn’t want to test.

  Mason had spent copious amounts of time in London over the years, to the point that it felt almost like a second home to him. He could even pull off a passable London accent in a pinch, a talent that was usually only good for party tricks, but one he felt could prove extremely useful on this assignment.

  He followed Kurt onto the tube platform, and when the train arrived, he took a prime seat in the next car with a clear view of Kurt’s movements and those of the people around him. As the train approached the rough and tumble outskirts of London proper, his phone buzzed. Helen.

  Mason placed the phone close to his left shoulder for a moment until he felt a subtle vibration through his fingertips. Then he ran the top of his index finger over the camera on the backside, triggering the built-in fingerprint reader to unlock the device.

  His phone was a new model, styled to look like a common smart phone. It contained an advanced radio frequency identification chip which, in concert with a similar chip embedded deep underneath the muscle of his left pectoral, ensured the phone was useless if lost or stolen. In order to access any encrypted information, he was required to make a close proximity connection between the chip inside the phone and the chip embedded within his body. Mason still didn’t like the idea of walking around with a chip buried inside of him, but the idea of life without access to all of the information provided by his phone was even less palatable. It was a tradeoff he was willing to make—for now. Mason looked at the screen. H
e had an email, containing Kurt Vetter’s hotel information. He recognized the hotel, having stayed there once himself. He put the phone back in his pocket and dug back into the Trib.

  ~~~

  Kurt stifled a yawn as the train pulled into the Piccadilly Circus tube station. He needed coffee, and he needed it now. But first, he wanted to try Amanda Carter.

  He pulled the paper from his pocket, took out his phone, and punched in her number. “Here goes nothing,” he said under his breath. He pressed Send.

  The phone only rang once before a woman answered. “Hello?” He couldn’t tell for certain if it was an American or British accent, it was so fast, but his gut said American.

  He cleared his throat. “Uh, hello. This is Kurt Vetter.”

  There was a moment of silence, then, “I’m sorry, but you’ve reached the Bull and Gate Pub. You must have the wrong number.” The line went dead.

  Definitely American. Confused, he double-checked the number he had dialed against the slip of paper. He had dialed correctly. Then it came to him. She can’t talk on this line.

  He dug through his bag for his London city guide. He opened it and found the Bull and Gate Pub in the index. He flipped to page fifty-six and noted the address. He snapped the guide shut and stuffed it back in his bag. Hurrying outside, he flagged down the first taxi he saw.

  “The Bull and Gate pub. Three eighty-nine Kentish Town Road.”

  “Right.”

  The taxi driver launched them into the thick morning traffic, mashing Kurt back into the seat and sending his bag tumbling from his grasp.

  ~~~

  At the Piccadilly exit, Mason stared in disbelief as Kurt closed the taxi door, and it pulled away from the curb. “Shit!” he cursed. He had only been on the ground an hour, and he was already in danger of losing his target. With one eye on Kurt’s taxi, he flagged down his own. He wrenched the door open, threw his overnight bag across the back seat, and yelled, “Follow that taxi!”

  The driver, a diminutive Sikh with an enormous Turban, turned to him and said, “Which one, sir?”

  Mason looked over the Sikh’s shoulder and saw to his dismay that there were now dozens of black taxis jostling for position on the street. He had no way to tell. He popped his head out of the taxi window, trying to get a better view. It was no use. He had lost his target.

  “Just drive,” he said, climbing back in. “That way.” He pointed in the direction he thought Kurt had gone. For the moment he could only drive, relying on an electronic intercept from Helen to help reacquire his target. It was possible, but not probable that the intercept would occur before Jack found out how badly he had screwed up. His only other option would be to try to intercept him at his hotel, but if Kurt were as smart as Mason thought he was, he wouldn’t go there. He’d hole up somewhere else, somewhere no one knew about.

  No. Waiting was not an option.

  Twelve

  Helen rubbed her eyes and tossed back the dregs of coffee that had been cooling beside her keyboard for the past two hours. She was seventeen hours into a nine-hour shift, and she was feeling every second of it.

  She scrolled her mouse pointer with her index finger, flitting through the latest intelligence intercepts on the Russian Federation, looking for anything out of the ordinary, anything that would indicate a problem with the operation. She couldn’t find anything.

  Jack would be happy about that, and when Jack was happy, Helen was happy. It was like a marriage in that respect, albeit a severely dysfunctional one. Jack could be an absolute tyrant, she had learned early on, but when he was getting his way, he was an angel. At least that’s what she told herself.

  She got up and stretched, running through her usual routine of desk-side yoga poses to get her blood flowing. Her ass was numb from sitting so long, and she had a mean crick in her neck. The yoga wouldn’t solve everything, but it would help. Sleep was still a long way off.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a yellow indicator flashing on her monitor. It was one of her software agents—programs that continuously scanned a host of government databases, looking for interesting information. She slid back into her chair and double-clicked on the alert, expanding it to fill her entire screen.

  “Hmmm.” The message was only a few lines long. According to the header, it had come from the Rapier system, the big brother to the FBI’s infamous Carnivore. Rapier, sent into production only a year before, made Carnivore look like a child’s video game. It was a quantum leap forward, literally, as it relied on cutting-edge quantum computing techniques which allowed it to ingest and process almost infinite quantities of data in near real-time. That meant that what she was reading was only seconds, or at the most, minutes.

  The message said:

 

 

  Kurt Vetter

 

 

 

  London, UK

 

 

  07272015T0800Z

 

 

 

  124AX7FF

 

 

  It was gibberish to the untrained eye, but to Helen it was like finding a needle in a haystack of needles. The Rapier system had intercepted a mobile telephone call containing the words ‘Kurt Vetter’ at eight o’clock London time. The string of text in the detail section indicated there was more information about the call available.

  “Gotcha!” Despite her fatigue, she couldn’t help the grin that lit up her face. She picked up her secure telephone and dialed Mason.

  He answered on the first ring. “Mason here.”

  “It’s Helen. I’ve got something for you.”

  There was traffic noise in the background, the distinctive high-low warble of a UK ambulance somewhere nearby. Helen clicked into a different window on her system and watched as a red dot representing Mason crawled through downtown London.

  “Vetter called someone in London. I’ll have the address for you in a second.”

  “Good…” She couldn’t help but notice the note of relief in his voice.

  Helen double-clicked on the More link, and a new window opened, listing the owners of the phones involved in the call and their addresses, as well as a brief synopsis summarizing each party in the call.

  “It looks like he contacted someone named Amanda Carter. He spoke for ten seconds before disconnecting.”

  “Interesting. Any background—”

  “Hold on a second,” she said, cutting him off. She clicked on the second page of Amanda’s information.

  “It says here she’s attached to the embassy.”

  “What do you mean?” Mason asked. “Is she one of us?”

  “Patience, Mason,” she said, nearly losing her own.

  There was a long list of hyperlinks under Amanda’s dossier, but they were all colored red, and she couldn’t click on any of them.

  “This is strange...”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t get into any of this woman’s background. She’s in our system, but I don’t have permission to access her files.”

  Helen took Amanda’s information, as much as she was able to collect, and pasted it into a new message. She put Mason’s name at the top. “I’m sending you her address and as much background as I have. You’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way. I’ve also got a trace set on the mobile that Vetter used. That’s on the way as well.”

  She clicked Send, and the information shot out across the Atlantic.

  “I’ll keep digging on this end, but first I have to take this to Jack,” she added, as she sent Amanda’s dossier to the color printer behind her.

  “Sure.”

  Helen heard Mason’s phone beep as it received the information.

  “Got it,” he said.

  “Are you still in contact?”

  Mason went silent. “I had a little problem...”

  “Goddamn it, Ma
son! What happened? No—screw it. Don’t tell me. Just fix it! The trace should be active now. That should help.”

  She knew Mason wouldn’t bother explaining. It didn’t matter how he had lost his target, only that he had. “Thanks. I’ve got him on my screen now.”

  “Good. I’m off to brief Jack. I’ll let you know as soon as I find something else.”

  “Same here.” The line went dead. Helen sucked in her breath and got to her feet.

  This woman, whoever she was, could prove to be a major problem for all of them.

  Thirteen

  Kurt exited the cab and stood on the curb in front of the Bull and Gate. The building was old. Victorian-old, he thought, maybe older. The door and the trim on the exterior were bright blue, like the picture in the tour guide. Up close, though, it was obvious the building was ancient. The paint, peeling in places, was thick and dull; the palm-sized panes of window glass were shot through with whorls and imperfections, obscuring his view of the interior.

  As his taxi melted back into the snarled traffic, he surveyed his surroundings. It was a beautiful London morning, and the sidewalks were full of pedestrians enjoying the unseasonably warm temperatures. Although it was only ten thirty in the morning, the pub was open for business. He pushed through the heavy wooden door and stepped into the cool, dark interior.

  The first thing he noticed was the stale odor struggling to compete with the thick smell of decades—no—centuries of fried meals. His stomach rumbled, whether from hunger or disgust, he wasn’t sure. His last meal had been eight hours earlier, so he suspected it was a bit of both.

  The pub was empty except for a few locals, identifiable by their Manchester United football jerseys. They sat at one end of the bar engrossed in a match playing on a large flatscreen television. At the other end of the bar was a young tourist couple, probably American from their dress. They were speaking to each other in hushed tones, holding hands, oblivious to the world.