Waiting For Don La Greche
Special Agent Jack Bartholomew on his own in Hadleyburg
It was nearly one in the morning, and Special Agent Jack Bartholomew was wandering around the streets of Hadleyburg, while his father and the others were still inside the police building facing questioning. It had taken much longer than the two hours for La Greche to arrive and Jack wondered where he was. Jack found a bench near the civic centre and was nodding off when his phone began to ring. He recognized the Virginia area code and reluctantly answered it.
“Well, I’m here finally. The craziest drive I’ve ever had. Felt like was driving in circles for hours. Where can we meet?” Don told him. “I didn’t think my car could drive ninety miles per hour.”
“There’s a gazebo in the main square near the Carver Civic Center. I’m waiting here.”
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” La Greche told him.
Jack sat anxiously on a bench at the base of the large white gazebo, and he could see La Greche in a blue circa nineteen seventies Volkswagen beetle. Don parked the car on the northwest corner of the square. He was a large man, five feet eleven, a hundred and eighty pounds, and about sixty years old with greying red hair. Don exited his car and opened his trunk and removed a tan briefcase, and he stopped a moment to readjust his large rimmed eye glasses before walking towards the Gazebo. Jack sat pensively, with his head propped by both hands as he watched La Greche lumber towards him with a slight limp in his left foot.
“Thanks for giving me this opportunity, Jack,” La Greche told him, “I’m sure I won’t disappoint you.”
Jack didn’t tell him he was already disappointed. If he had a choice, he would have even taken a neophyte NSA analyst, if one were available over La Greche. But he was the only one available for such a clandestine task. Jack was especially concerned that the more coherent La Greche appeared initially, he would go off the rails before he completed his tasks. La Greche had a reputation for just such behaviour. He’d be completely paranoid in the midst of an investigation and just disappear. Jack hoped that this time La Greche would keep his antics at a minimum.
Don reached out to shake Jack’s hand. “Thank you for this opportunity to get back in the game. I’m certain I won’t disappoint you.”
“As I told you before, I don’t have the disc. I don’t know what use you can be in these circumstances.”
“Was the disc in the computer?”
“Yes, it was.”
“Sometimes these discs leave a residue on the hard drive of the computer in which they’ve been used. Where is the computer?”
“It’s in Burgess Kingman’s apartment. But the place was shot up pretty bad, and I’m not so sure we can even do as you suggest. The monitor was damaged by several bullets as well.”
“That’s not a problem. I have a monitor with me,” he paused. “So let’s go over there. You show the way.”
“It’s one in the morning,” Jack lamented.
“I do my best work at one in the morning.”
Don began to walk toward the Beetle.
“I hear that you were out on the parkway directing traffic once in a matador costume,” Jack asserted.
“True.”
“And you came to work one day dressed in a sheep’s costume. There were rumors even wilder than that.”
“All true. I’m not dead yet, so it must be working for me!”
“They’d say you’re crazier than a loon.”
“I kind of like ducks,” Don answered. “The loyalty they have to each other. They fly in patterns, you know, for hundreds of miles. How many humans do you know who can cooperate at that level? So show me the way to Mr. Kingman’s apartment. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
After removing a large box from the front passenger seat and putting it on a stack of other boxes in the back seat, Don opened the passenger door for Jack, who reluctantly climbed inside.
“I hope we don’t need all of this equipment,” Jack complained.
“This is for another job, as soon as I finish this one.”
“You have another job tonight?” Jack asked.
“I have four jobs tomorrow. I’ve never been busier in my life.”
When they arrived at Burgess’ apartment building, it was fifteen minutes before two. From the curb where they parked, Jack could see the broken front windows on the second floor where the bullets had shattered the glass.
“We’ve had a busy twenty-four hours,” Jack began to explain as they exited the car.
“It’s better that you don’t go into too many details. Less information to torture out of me. Just show me the computer and I’ll get it to work.”
Jack led him upstairs to the second-floor landing. Police tape and a District Attorney’s evidence notice were posted on the wall, directly beside the door.
Placing his fingers over his mouth, he removed a business card from his pocket and held it close to Jack’s eyes for him to read.
We’re Being Watched. Silence!
He removed another small box from his trouser pocket and removed what looked like a stopwatch with a digital display. Within five seconds, the device emitted an audible signal and then Don returned it to its box. Then he gestured for Jack to follow him back down to the landing on the first floor. When they reached the first floor, Don stood there a moment, as if he was pondering something.
“Well, tell me, what do you think?” Jack finally spoke. He was reluctant to accept Don’s actions at face level. “What was that device?”
“This machine,” he answered as he removed the box from his pocket, “detects unusual electromagnetic radiation over normal ambient conditions at certain frequencies. Since all electronic equipment emits waves of a particular frequency, it’s helpful.” Don looked at the display and it read the number twelve.
“It appears there are twelve different devices in Burgess’ apartment. Four cameras, two listening devices, and something even odder. Five transmitting beacons, I’d say with the range of at least four hundred yards.”
“And this isn’t some paranoid delusion of yours. Let me see that,” Jack reached for the box.
“I don’t think you want to touch it. It has quite a shock factor.”
“Let me see it.” Jack grabbed it abruptly from Don’s hands. He was immediately shocked by at least a hundred volts.
“Be careful. It’s only a prototype.” Don remarked.
He put the detecting device back in the case and returned it to his left pocket.
“So what then?”
“We stand at a threshold, Jack. What you want lies ahead. Do you violate your oath of office and enter that apartment? Your call. I can get us in there, neutralize surveillance, and get us out. No problem.”
“I’m not sure how prudent that is. Mr. Kingman may tell us all that we need.”
“You always were a fence sitter, Jack. For once in your life, it may be wise to climb out on the ledge.”
“I’m out on the ledge, Don. I don’t know if I’m ever coming down.”
“I can’t help you off the ledge, Jack.”
“Ok, then. Do your work.”
“It will take just a few minutes to set up.”
After opening his trunk, La Greche removed a small duffel bag. Then he lifted four retractable poles about eighteen inches long and laid them against the side of the car.
“What is this?” Jack asked him.
“This is a ladder.”
“It doesn’t look like a ladder,” Jack questioned.
“Exactly.”
“Why would we need a ladder?”
“Because we’re not going in through the lobby. There’s a window in the back of the apartment which is the least secure and the best path for incursion into the building.”
“It doesn’t look strong enough to hold a monkey.”
“It’s made of the same synthetic materials as the federal reserve bank vault. Special ops use these materials.”
“Besides, I don’t remember a window in the back.”
“I have blueprints of the building.”
“Where did you get blueprints for Mr. Kingman’s apartment? I haven’t even told you about Kingman.”
Jack was beginning to wonder where La Greche would have acquired such equipment, and he was having serious misgivings about including him at all in recovering any data from the OMEGA CD.
“I also have blueprints for the Ambassador Hotel where you and your father are staying, for Mr. Jacobson’s apartment, and for the offices of the Hadleyburg Times. I don’t like surprises. I’m always over-prepared.”
Carrying the bag and the poles, La Greche proceeded to the back of the building, while Jack reluctantly followed him. Surrounded by a solid red brick wall was an open second-floor window barely large enough for someone to crawl through.
“The more I think about this, the crazier it seems. I’m sorry to have wasted your time like this. Just go back to Alexandria and forget about it.”
From the darkness came a familiar voice, “I’d kind of like to see how the ladder works,” Burgess spoke as he stepped out of the shadows.
“Where have you been, Mr. Kingman? Everyone is looking for you.”
“I’ve been to another universe,” he responded. The significance of his words went unheeded. “And what would you possibly want to see in my apartment?”
“Don wants to see your computer. But it would save a lot of trouble if you were to give us the Omega CD.”
“If I had it — ,” Burgess replied.
“So where is it?” Jack asked.
“I don’t know where it is.” He paused a moment. “So what is it that you hope to accomplish with this ladder? Maybe I should go inside. I don’t think they can prosecute me for breaking into my own apartment?”
“Tampering with crime scene evidence is a serious infraction, even for you, Mr. Kingman,” Jack observed.
La Greche opened the canvas bag and began to construct the ladder. First he extended the poles to double their length and then he linked them together. After removing the twelve steps from the bag he began to attach them to each of the poles. It took no longer than three minutes to complete the task. He pulled two hinged anchors from the back and secured them. After checking the ladder for tensor strength, he leaned the ladder against the brick back wall of the apartment building.
“So are you ready to climb to the window, Mr. Kingman?” Don asked.
“I’m not so sure how safe this ladder is,” Burgess complained.
“It’s safer than it appears,” Don asserted.
Don climbed up and put his full weight against the steps and one of them broke loose. He nearly fell off the ladder.
“That inspires confidence,” Jack remarked.
“My error,” Don responded. “I forgot to lock the mechanism.”
He placed the step back into position and turned a lever on the bottom of the pole. “It should be fine now. Give it a try.”
Burgess reluctantly stepped onto the first step and it held his weight. He cautiously climbed up each of the steps until he was at the open window. Once there, he struggled to position himself so that he could climb into the window. Fifteen minutes of false starts and failed attempts followed, until Burgess finally found a way to crawl through the window and enter his apartment. Jack and La Greche watched nervously until Burgess disappeared into the room.
“Please go, Jack. I’ll follow behind you.”
“In one moment of folly, I could destroy my career,” Jack affirmed.
“You’re career was over the moment you agreed to call your father. There’s always more at play,” La Greche warned him.
Jack reluctantly climbed up the ladder himself. He was surprised at how solid it seemed. When he reached the top, he turned back to see that La Greche had disappeared. For a few moments, he waited for Don to return. Five minutes passed and Don was again at the street level below carrying a briefcase, walking towards the ladder with a limp. Jack was genuinely afraid, as he looked on and reflected. Don climbed awkwardly up each rung, and with each step, it seemed he would fall from the ladder and tumble to the ground. It took ten minutes for him to climb the twelve steps.
“Take my case,” he told Jack when he reached the top and handed him the briefcase.
It was not easy for a man of Don’s size to fit through a small window that fed into Burgess’ apartment. Jack and Burgess had to help pull him the rest of the way, and Don fell to the floor once inside.
They didn’t turn on the lights.
“This should take just a few minutes.”
Don opened his briefcase and removed a thin glass tablet measuring eleven inches square. Directly beside it, he rested a disc burner.
“Just give me a few minutes.” Don told them. “I’ll have the computer up and running.”
After opening the computer tower, he replaced the CD burner in less than two minutes. He hooked up the tablet to the computer with a long black wire and then turned on the machine.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Jack remarked, lifting the tablet.
“It’s a flat-screen design Touch-screen. Ten years ahead of anything on the market.”
“Where did you get this machine?” Jack asked him.
“I have my sources. You’d be surprised what’s in the pipeline. They’re going to have these mini-computer phones in the not-so-distant future. Part of the tracking and control grid system the NSA is putting into place.”
As Jack kept staring at Don who began to examine the computer., he had no idea what Don was doing. All he could see was the monitor flickering with a wave of words and numbers as Don was typing a series of command strokes rapidly on the keyboard.
“There’s a key-logger on this computer.” Don explained, “At least this makes this job easier. I can reconstruct the registry from the original keystrokes and their data entry times.”
“Who would be logging this information?” Jack asked.
“It could be anyone,” Don responded. “Give me some time.”
Burgess and Jack returned to the living room and sat down next to each other on a plump sofa. Staring at the bullet casings on the floor, Jack began to speak.
“I didn’t think I’d be back in this apartment. It’s been a crazy two days, hasn’t it?”
“Even crazier,” Burgess commented. “Even crazier than you can imagine.”
Twenty minutes passed, while Burgess and Jack sat quietly and watched. Don was working feverishly, typing line after line in code, so quickly that the sound of the keys sounded like pebbles falling on the ground. Don leaned closer to the keyboard. He was sweating profusely and breathing hard and his hands were trembling.
“Is everything OK?” Burgess asked him. “Would you like something to drink.”
“No, I’m close. I’m very close.”
Five minutes more passed and then the resolution came and Don was smiling.
“I found the files. As I suspected, they did leave a residue on the hard drive.”
Once Don had discovered the lost documents, the more difficult task of decrypting them began. It proved far more difficult than he initially suspected. He tried every known algorithm he could remember, all to no success.
“This is quite an impressive job,” he commented. “this Omega group must have a highly skilled cryptologist.”
Jack stood watching in the dim light as La Greche worked his magic with the machine. Command after command, he entered keywords and program functions into a modified compiler, only to end each attempt in frustration.
“I’ve tried a dozen agency inscriptions and it’s not one of them,” Don announced.
He continued his barrage at the keyboard, his keystrokes increasing their pace, entering his commands incessantly. Numbers, letters and symbols flanked across the tablet faster than Jack’s eyes could process them.
“Don’t look at the tablet too closely. It will hypnotize you,” Don warned.
Jack turned away for a moment. Fifteen more minutes passed. and then came a breakthrough. He smiled and closed the DOS command prompt and the computer returned to the Windows desktop. A folder he named the Omega Conspiracy opened and revealed over two hundred files, many of them videos.
“How did you do this?” Jack asked him.
“Do you have a particular preference which one I open first?” Don asked in turn.
“Enigma,” Jack answered, “That was the name of the file, wasn’t it, Mr. Kingman?”
Burgess seemed distracted and walked back to the window to look out. “I’m not so sure how safe it is to be here?” he remarked. “They’ve tried to kill us earlier in the daylight. Now at night, things are much more dangerous.”
“If they wanted to kill you, you’d be dead Mr. Kingman. You’re much too valuable to them alive.”
La Greche opened the enigma file. It was a long document with random letters. The arrangement of symbols and letters cascaded as the document page count extended. He tried several encryption keys, all of them unsuccessful in unscrambling the letters.
“I’m not so sure even if you unscramble the letters, you’re just at the first level of encryption,” Burgess told him. “I’m not so sure the letters or even the words are important. As we attempted earlier, to ascertain words may just be a way to find numbers, and then numbers may open a clearer way to find the words.”
“Like a circle,” La Greche answered.
“Yes, like a circle. Omega is a circle if you remember.”
“Mr. Kingman, there is a special quality to your voice that I have noticed, as though English is not your first language. What is your native language?”
“I don’t hear anything in his voice to suggest he speaks another language,” Jack countered.
“’You never could hear, Jack. I’d say one of the Bengali dialects from your inflection. You taught yourself to speak English this way?”
“No, I’m not from Bangladesh,” Burgess answered. “And I did not train myself to speak English. I’ve spoken English since I was a child.”
Fifteen minutes passed. Don finally managed to open one of the two hundred video files and it revealed a long description of a film called “La Trattoria.”
“Do either of you read Italian?” Don asked.
They both shook their heads, ‘no.’
Of the two hundred documents, Don only managed to open three, and all three were detailed descriptions of films.
“You’re certain that this isn’t simply a video club disc?” Don asked Burgess and Jack. He could sense their apprehension as he paused. “I’m joking. I need more time.”
“We don’t have more time.”
“My dad said you’re the best in the game. Prove it.”
They were both surprised by La Greche’s sudden change of attitude.
Burgess came closer to see what La Greche was doing. It was at this point, that he was reading a document called, “Obsession.” It was yet another video description. There was something about what Don read that made him change his appearance. His attitude shifted, and then he quickly closed the document.
“I need to see the enigma file again,” Jack told Don.
“Why? I can’t decipher it.”
“My father said you’re the best cryptologist in the country and you can’t decipher this?”
“There is only one man who is capable of deciphering the encryption key used on this disc. It’s not like anything I’ve seen. That man is Agamemnon.”
“Who is Agamemnon?” Jack asked him.
“He’s a phantom, a cypher, a shadow,” Don responded. “There is no machine anywhere that he cannot breach. The rumour is that he created algorithms, which form the basis of all search engines, query searches, and data mining operations. It’s claimed that he can breach any firewall. Yet no one can find him. No one knows who or where he is.”
“Sounds like a myth or a fairy tale to me. The NSA must know who he is, if he exists at all.”
“I’ve heard of Agamemnon,” Burgess interjected. “Internet boards within the IT community say he was credited with breaching the NSA and Pentagon computers in minutes.”
“He’s breached more than those; banks, electronic companies, The Saudi Royal Family. Within the intelligence community, he is notorious.”
La Greche kept typing intensely on the keyboard. His fingers were making rhythmic waves. With each unsuccessful attempt, he was obviously seemingly agitated.
“Frustration, thy name is ignorance,” he recited as though a proverb.
Burgess approached him to calm him. “Take your time. Slow and steady is the horse which wins the race.”
“Intense, persistence and focused pressure can breach the most fortified walls.”
Jack hated this kind of verbal jousting. Burgess was about to respond when Jack intruded, “No more proverbs, I’m not in the mood. Give me more info about this Agamemnon.”
“Maybe we can find the guy,” Burgess proposed.
“You’ve got intelligence agencies worldwide looking for him.” La Greche snapped back. “You’re not going to find him.”
He stopped.
“That’s it. That’s all I can do.” His fingers abruptly stopped. “I can’t decrypt this. Not under these conditions.”
“Is that it? You’re just giving up?” Jack confronted him.
“A reasonable man recognizes his limitations. I don’t know the key. It’s not like the movies. It takes months and months of tedious work to break a code finally. You can’t expect me to solve this mystery in fifteen minutes in the dark. I’m sorry I can’t be of more help.”
“Do you want a copy of the files?” Don continued. “I could burn a disc for you? I won’t carry one myself. It’s too risky.” He turned his head to Burgess, “And you Mr. Kingman?”
“No, I don’t need the disc.”
“It’s getting late. I’ve got another job tomorrow. I’ll be on my way in a few minutes.”
La Greche gathered his things together and prepared to leave the apartment.
“Where do you think you’re going? What is this other job you keep talking about?”
“I’m not at liberty to speak about it.”
“No more secrets. I’m sick to death of secrets.” Jack said.
La Greche began to climb out the window. “Just an old man with an idea or two,” he whispered.
“He’s liable to take his ladder and leave us trapped in here.” Burgess acknowledged. “Let’s just leave. I have to go back into hiding before they catch me here.”
“Where are you hiding?” Jack asked Burgess.
“All in due time, Jack Bartholomew.”
La Greche began to climb down the ladder and Burgess followed him out. Jack was the last to leave. When he reached the bottom of the ladder, and his feet landed on solid ground, La Greche quickly disassembled the ladder and returned it to his car.
Burgess then told them both, “I’m sorry. But I have to go now before I end up in custody like the others. “
“Where are you going?” Jack asked. “Where are you hiding?”
“I can’t tell you that now.”
Burgess walked a half block and suddenly disappeared.
“What is this other job? Who else are you working for?” Jack turned to Don La Greche and asked him again.
“I can’t answer that. I’ve made a promise. Go back to New York, Jack. There’s nothing but death on the road you’re on.”