The Pharaoh Key

8

AT SIX IN the morning, Eli Glinn lay in bed, still wide-awake after a long restless night. He was bothered by something, but he wasn’t sure exactly what it was, beyond the aggravation caused by the ridiculous visit that afternoon from Garza and Gideon.

It was the damnedest thing. Both of them should have known him well enough to realize he was perhaps the least sentimental person on earth, impervious to the kind of stunt they had tried to pull. Perhaps they did have a legitimate gripe—Garza, anyway—but the fact was they had been compensated fairly, and he had never given the slightest indication he wanted to continue any sort of relationship with any of his employees after his special project was complete. For the first time since the sinking of the Rolvaag almost six years before, Glinn felt unburdened. He wanted to enjoy this newfound freedom and not have anyone around to remind him of those terrible years of self-recrimination.

But this ridiculous extortion scheme had proven a shock. It had, to his profound surprise, shaken him. When he looked into the Quantitative Behavioral Analysis programs he’d run on the two of them, he found no indication this was a possibility. Their plan was so badly executed that he wondered how two highly intelligent operatives could have conceived it. Gideon was always impulsive and unpredictable, so perhaps it wasn’t so far-fetched for him, but Garza was rock-solid. Although not always…he cast his mind back to Garza’s breakdown on the Lost Island, when he had stolen a helicopter and put the mission at risk. Yes, even Garza had his moments of poor judgment.

Still, this confidence trick took the cake. As Garza had essentially admitted, they’d gleaned the information about himself and Britton from the video surveillance tapes recovered from the wreck of the Rolvaag. But then to gin up a story of a hastily scribbled note of Sally’s, entrusted to Garza at the very moment her ship was foundering…It wasn’t in her nature. Even if she’d wanted to write such a note, she would not have had the time. The whole con was transparent. And so easily disproven.

So easily disproven…

Glinn sat up in bed. His heart was suddenly beating fast. This, he began to realize, was the unsettling thought at the back of his mind that had kept him up all night: how Garza and Gideon had not understood how easily their con could be refuted. Maybe they understood—all too well.

Sleep was hopeless. He might as well get up and make coffee. He stood, stretched, and as he did so paused to appreciate the unaccustomed strength once again surging through his legs. Strolling to the nearby floor-to-ceiling window, he gazed over the sweeping views of the Hudson River and the bejeweled skyline of Lower Manhattan. So easily disproven…It seemed extraordinary that two such intelligent individuals would not have realized how flimsy their scam was.

They had come up to his apartment, tried to pull their little trick, and acted like damn fools when he exposed their lies. That was quite a moment, he had to admit: that video segment showing that Sally had never touched the log, never written the note…

Didn’t they realize he would check the tapes?

A chill crept up his spine. Maybe they had realized. Maybe they’d anticipated that. Maybe the con was meant to be easily disproved.

He felt he was letting his mind run away with speculation. But what if, in fact, they’d had another purpose in mind? What could that purpose have been? Had he been “pretexted,” to use a social engineering term? But pretexted to what end? What could they have possibly gained by coming in with that ridiculous story, attempting to extort him, and then getting thrown out?

What had they gained?

For one thing, they had gained access to the highly secure EES computer center. He recalled Gideon leaning over his shoulder, pointing his finger at the screen, demanding that they watch, that the crucial moment was about to occur. When he must have known that moment never would occur. That in itself was strange. He recalled the position of Gideon’s body, leaning over his shoulder, his right hand pointing at the screen, his left hand braced on the side of the computer console…

Where there were various input ports, including USB.

A cold, ugly feeling crept outward from his gut. He turned, picked up his secure intercom line, dialed a number.

“O’Bannion? Could you check the EES central computer system and compile a list of all activity that took place between three and three thirty this afternoon? I need to know specifically what files were accessed, from what location, and at what exact time. Thank you.”

He hung up the phone and waited, staring out at a sliver of moon floating above the Freedom Tower. The sky was just starting to change from black to deep blue, the first light of the approaching day.

The phone rang. Glinn picked it up, listened for a moment, and then slowly replaced it in its cradle. Although it was dark and cool in the private aerie, Glinn felt the heat of humiliation invade the capillaries of his face and spread like an infection over his body. All his self-satisfied sense of comfort and triumph vanished in a moment.

He had been duped. And with the greatest of ease.

This would not stand.