Black List (46 page)

He held no illusions as to what they were probably doing to Powder at this very minute, the poor bastard. He had pretty big balls, but everyone broke eventually. Sooner, rather than later, Vignon was going to give him up, which was why he had to move fast.

He had already made up his mind. Too much sand was getting in the gears. He had no idea if Harvath had helped in the ambush or not, but at this point, it didn’t matter. He needed to launch the attack. It was the only thing left that mattered.

Pulling out his cell phone, he dialed Schroeder again, but once more it went straight to voice mail.
Of all the nights to have sent him home.
God only knew where the man was or what he was doing, and Middleton shuddered at the thought. Schroeder’s personal life was not only a wreck; it was disgusting.

After copying the files he needed onto his portable drive, he removed a stack of currency from his office safe and dropped it into his briefcase along with the drive and his encrypted laptop. Then he turned his attention back to his computer and thought about the repercussions of what he was about to do.

Once the attack was launched, every corner of the country would descend into utter chaos, including D.C. His board members knew this and had scheduled a team-building exercise for members and their families at the retreat so they could be there safe, sound, and well stocked when pandemonium broke loose. Many had children and grandchildren across the country they were bringing with them. It gave them perfect cover and plausible deniability for why their loved ones would survive. They could watch the country melt down from the safety and warmth of Walworth, all without raising a single eyebrow, as the event had been planned months in advance.

But now, Middleton was about to unilaterally move up the date. The board would be very upset and would have to scramble. Staring at his screen, he tried to figure out a way they could all mobilize their families yet avoid revealing that they had advance knowledge of the attack.

As his mind sorted through the options, an entirely different thought came to him. What if the board disagreed? What if they didn’t want to launch immediately? What if they wanted to wait a week, or two? It would be a disaster and he couldn’t allow that to happen.

He rolled it around the hallways of his mind a little more, and then it hit him. The best way for him to get what he wanted was simply to avoid
blame. There was no reason the attack couldn’t go early, as long as he had a scapegoat. Of course, that’s exactly what he and the board had been positioning the Carlton Group to be, at least publicly. What he needed was a scapegoat
inside
ATS; someone to take the blame completely for the attack being launched prematurely. Not only did he have such a person, he had someone who would never contradict any of the narrative he was rapidly crafting in his head. That was the great thing about dead men, or more specifically, dead women—they told no tales.

All he had to do was make it look like Caroline Romero had not only discovered what they were up to but had attempted to thwart them by hiding her own program within their attack package. The board didn’t have enough technological savvy to even begin to investigate such a charge on their own. If he told them that was what she had done, they would believe him.

He’d explain that she had inserted what she thought was a time bomb into their software, but in reality it turned out to be a fifty-gallon drum of accelerant and a pack of lit matches. In attempting to stop ATS, she had actually sped up the attack. And the way the program was written, once the horse was out of the barn, there was no getting it back.

It was brilliant, and a smile quickly spread across Middleton’s face. Pouring himself a scotch, he sat back down at his desk, flexed his fingers, and pulled up Caroline Romero’s workstation on his computer. All he had to do was backdate a small amount of digital evidence. Once the attack package began running, it destroyed itself, so even if someone wanted to challenge him by searching for Caroline’s Trojan Horse, there’d be nothing to find. It would be like looking through the remains of a nitroglycerin factory for a match. Once it had been vaporized, you were never going to find it.

Within an hour, Middleton had sprinkled just the right amount of bread crumbs, most of them buried so deep they’d probably never be found. Not that it mattered. Once he gave the board the heads-up that the attack had been set in motion, all they would care about was getting themselves and their families to the safety of the estate in Virginia.

Pouring himself another scotch, he shot off a handful of e-mails and ran through the script he had prepared. Then, after inserting one of his Crypto Cards into the STE on his desk, he dialed the first board member.

“Allan, it’s Craig,” he said when the call went through. “We need to talk.”

CHAPTER 62

W
ASHINGTON
, D.C.

K
urt Schroeder’s loft was located in Columbia Heights, just north of the U.S. Capitol Building. It had rough-hewn beams, exposed brick and looked every bit the single, twenty-something, bachelor pad. There was a huge flat-screen television, multiple gaming systems, and a retro stand-up arcade unit, but no dining table.

The couch and other few pieces of furniture were straight out of an IKEA catalog, as were the unchanged sheets in his bedroom and the towels in the grungy master bath. The one thing Harvath didn’t see, though, was any computer equipment; not until Schroeder unlocked a small second bedroom.

The door and its frame were of heavy, reinforced steel designed to look like a regular interior door. Beyond was a room that stood in sharp contrast to the rest of the pigsty. It was perfectly clean—there wasn’t an empty cereal bowl, a half-eaten bag of Doritos, a stray article of clothing, or an empty beer bottle to be found. The room was pristine.

A wall of flat computer monitors hung from a series of polished nickel poles and gave the impression that they were floating above Schroeder’s sleek glass desk. All around were racks and racks of equipment with lights blinking in a myriad of colors. It looked like a mini Mission Control.

“Sometimes I work from home,” stated Schroeder as he pulled over an extra desk chair and offered it to Harvath.

As he sat, Rhodes entered with a plastic bread bag filled with ice. “This was all I could find,” she said, tossing it to him.

Harvath caught the bag and handed it to Schroeder, who placed it upon his swollen right hand. Using his left, Schroeder navigated to the log-in page for ATS and went through the hoops required to access their servers remotely. As he did, Casey brought in bar stools from the kitchen for her and Rhodes.

Once he was logged on, a string of icons appeared. He clicked on the one second from the left, and the picture of a gaunt man, made up to look like an evil clown with sharpened teeth, appeared.

“What’s that?” said Casey, turning up her nose.

“It’s my avatar for Middleton. Fits him perfectly. Chuckles, the laughing boss.”

Harvath rolled his index finger, signaling for Schroeder to get on with it.

“I’m going, I’m going,” replied Schroeder as he typed in a few more passwords.

“How’d you ever get access to his computer anyway?” asked Rhodes. “I thought he was paranoid about security.”

“He is, but the guy practically shits e-mails. I get hundreds from him a day. So, one time, I just included a little Trojan I had created in my response. I set it up so that he wouldn’t find it and neither would any of the tech people who are constantly sweeping our systems for viruses and things like that. This rest is what I told you while we were in the car.”

And what he had told them was that Middleton was a fetishist when it came to data, even his own. The man recorded and analyzed everything. If Harvath wanted to know where Middleton was going to be, when he’d be there, and whom he might be with, the best way was to look at his planner. It would tell him everything he wanted to know, everything.

“That’s funny,” Schroeder said suddenly.

Harvath leaned in closer to see what he was looking at. “What is it?”

“A couple of hours ago, Middleton wiped his planner.”

“Wiped it?”

“Yeah. He totally nuked any future appointments. All of them.”

“Why would he do that?”

Schroeder shrugged. “I have no idea.”

“Could it be a mistake?”

“Mistakes aren’t exactly Middleton’s style. He’s the kind of guy who makes backups of the backups of the backups.”

“Then he had to have a reason. What was he doing before that?” asked Harvath.

Schroeder pecked away at the keys with his left hand, followed by three mouse clicks, and a log window opened up. He scrolled through its contents for several moments. “Hmmm…,” he remarked.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. It looks like he was over on the dark side of things, areas that even I don’t have access to, but what’s weird is that he did it via Caroline Romero’s workstation.”

“Really?”

Schroeder nodded. “And he backdated all of it to make it look like she did it before she was killed.”

“He must be setting her up for something.”

“Why else would you do something like that?”

Harvath nodded. “The question, though, is if he’s setting her up, what for?”

The young man scrolled further down and then clicked on something. “That flash drive Caroline smuggled out of ATS. You said there was a code name on it for the digital Pearl Harbor that was being planned?”

“Blue Sand,” replied Harvath. “Why?”

“Because he also buried that term in Caroline’s internal search history.”

“By
internal,
you mean a search of ATS servers?”

“Right. It wasn’t a search out on the Web, it was strictly limited to inside.”

“But she’s dead,” said Rhodes. “What difference would it make what she looked at?”

Harvath had the same question. But more to the point, Middleton
was planting evidence to make it look like Caroline Romero not only knew about the attack, but that ATS did too. Why?

That was the hardest piece for Harvath to figure out. You plant evidence to implicate someone for a crime. What crime was Middleton trying to frame Caroline for? Of simply
knowing
about the attack? She was dead. What good would that do?

Was he trying to frame her for causing it? No, that couldn’t be it. That was the Carlton Group’s role. They were the ones who had been set up to publically take the fall. Besides, ATS wouldn’t want to be associated in any way, shape, or form with the attack. Whatever Caroline Romero was being made to look like or to have done, it wasn’t for outside purposes, it was for something inside.

So what would that be? Why would Middleton need an internal scapegoat for an attack he and the powers that be at ATS all wanted to see take place? What would you need to blame someone for, and why would someone who was dead and couldn’t defend herself be the perfect patsy?

The simplest reason he could think of was if the attack failed. Was that it? Had Middleton had a change of heart, and was he now trying to sabotage the plan and blame it on Caroline? He doubted it. There had to be something else.

Harvath kept running possible scenarios through his mind, filtering all of them through what he knew about Caroline Romero from Nicholas. None of them explained why Middleton would want to set her up. Finally, he gave up and asked Schroeder, “Was that it, or is there more?”

The young man looked at the log and replied, “He was inactive for a while. Maybe he got a phone call or something, because then he was back, and he sent three e-mails and logged off.”

“Can you pull them up?”

Schroeder nodded and pulled them up one at a time. “The first one has the subject line ‘Walworth.’ That’s the name of the company’s corporate retreat out in Virginia. It went to the security scheduler and told him to get a full contingent out to the estate ASAP. The second e-mail also had the ‘Walworth’ subject line and went to the estate manager. It says that an emergency board meeting has been called and that members would begin showing up shortly and they’d be bringing family members.”

“And the third e-mail?”

Schroeder pulled it up. “The last one is for me. Subject line, ‘Hey Shithead.’ He’s such an asshole. He says he’s tried to call me, but my ‘fucking’ phone has been turned off. When I get this e-mail, I’m supposed to pack a bag and get my ass out to the estate as soon as possible. Then he adds, ‘P.S. Keep it quiet. Don’t tell anybody where you’re going. Hurry up.’”

“Have you ever spent the night there before?”

“Me?” replied Schroeder with a shake of his head. “No. It’s only for board members.”

“And their families,” Harvath clarified.

“They have the families out once a year in the summer, but never for board meetings. Those are always very private. They don’t want kids and grandkids running around. They don’t even allow spouses. That’s what doesn’t make any sense. Why would they be bringing family members to an emergency board meeting?”

“Because they’re about to launch their attack,” said Casey.

“But the next big family event at the estate was going to be in about three weeks,” Schroeder replied.