The Paladin Read online

  “Come on, Roger, these Wiki bastards are bad news. They’re like journalists, but worse. They print anything they want, and they don’t give a shit. If Strafe wants to look up their butts, what’s wrong with that?”

  “A lot. This so-called information space is getting crowded, brother. The black arts have spread far and wide. Don’t go making trouble. You’ll step on your dick.”

  Dunne opened his palms. What was he supposed to do? Gilroy had asked him to take on a special mission, but she wouldn’t say why, and his best friend had just told him to refuse, and he wouldn’t say why, either.

  “Cut the crap, Roger. Why should I refuse?”

  “Because if it was straight-up, Strafe wouldn’t need you.” He wagged his finger. “Don’t fucking do it.”

  “I thought you’d say that. The problem is, I already said yes, pretty much.”

  “Well, shit.” Magee leaned back in his chair and swallowed the rest of his drink in one gulp. “You are one sorry-ass hillbilly, you know that? That being the case, I don’t want to hear any more about it. Deaf and dumb. Shut the fuck up. That’s my credo, brother, especially when I’m not invited to the party. Let’s talk about something else.”

  So, they talked … about sports, and music, and girls. And mostly, they drank beer and remembered the good old days, which were so long before Dunne joined the agency that he could only pretend to recall.

  * * *

  Dunne kept at home a gift that Magee had given him when he first joined S&T. It was the unit’s unofficial crest in the 1960s, before Dunne was born, back when it was called the Office of Technical Services. It showed a rotary telephone atop a castle and a drawing of a goofy guy with earphones and various other electronic paraphernalia, with the motto: “Stand By to Bug.”

  Dunne was always ready to plant a bug, or hack a computer, or otherwise break the laws of foreign countries, so long as he was given official permission. Many people who have a similar mischievous streak get into trouble, but they’re reckless and stupid. Dunne was smart. He did well at McKeesport High School, and he got a scholarship to the University of Pittsburgh, which allowed him to take fancy computer science classes at Carnegie Mellon and to consider graduate school.

  Then 9/11 happened, and like a lot of people from McKeesport and everywhere else, Dunne wanted to join the military. The Army recruiter was ready to offer him a bonus and a ticket to signals-intelligence school, but he flunked his physical because of a game leg from high school football.

  Dunne was upset and asked the recruiter if he could suggest any alternative. He was thinking about the Coast Guard, maybe, or the Corps of Engineers. But the recruiter wrote out an address on Liberty Avenue and a room number that turned out to be a cover address for the local CIA base, and gave Dunne a letter of recommendation. Dunne filled out some paperwork, came back to take a bunch of tests, and a few months later he was taking a polygraph examination.

  Dunne found that he liked having secrets. He gave his parents a lame explanation about a civil service job. His girlfriend went into a snit because he was leaving, so he dumped her and partied with a different girl every night. On St. Patrick’s Day, just before he reported for CIA training, he dyed his red hair green.

  * * *

  Because Dunne was a geek, the CIA steered him toward a career as a technical operations officer. He bypassed the Clandestine Service Trainee Program, aka “the Farm,” which was fine with him because CST trainees seemed to think they were better than other CIA recruits, whereas his tech colleagues liked to hang out with lock-pickers.

  By 2010, Dunne was a rising star. S&T offered him a path to the management job that Sarah Gilroy had now, running the unit, which would have meant a fancy title and more money and a slot in the Senior Intelligence Service. Dunne said no. He had fallen in love with something other than his job.

  * * *

  Dunne married a beautiful Afro-Brazilian woman named Alicia Silva. They were living in Paris then, where Alicia had a job with UNESCO. She was a tall, vivacious, honey-brown woman who charmed everyone she met. Dunne sensed from the first that this was it; he had met the girl of his dreams; it was time to stop playing around.

  A secretary in the CIA station in Paris, who had served in Rio and spoke Portuguese, had introduced them. She brought Dunne to a hipster cocktail party at the Palais de Tokyo, near the Trocadéro. The art was weird, and the food was worse, and Dunne was about to leave when his friend tugged him over to meet the stunning Brazilian woman by the window overlooking the Seine. As Dunne approached, a Frenchman was harassing Alicia; she recoiled, and her heel slipped on the marble floor. Dunne caught her.

  The Frenchman, intimidated by Dunne’s bearing, slunk away. Dunne asked her out that night leaving the art gallery, but she said no. He asked her again.

  “Eu só me apaixono uma vez,” she whispered the night they made love for the first time. Dunne asked what the Portuguese words meant. Her answer lingered in his ear. I only fall in love once.

  Alicia’s mother had been born in Mozambique, but she was a naturalized American citizen, which made it easier for the agency. Her Brazilian father was a doctor who had been studying in America when Alicia was born, but he had died when she was a toddler. He had never been there to catch her when she fell, never made her feel safe.

  “I belong to you,” she told Dunne when they got married, and then she laughed and gave him a little slap. But he knew: She was his, to cherish and protect.

  Alicia loved to sing Portuguese songs to her new husband. She sang in the bathroom when she got up, in the car, walking down the street, whispering in his ear when they were falling asleep. She sang Afro-Brazilian capoeira songs, with call-and-response, in a deep voice that made Dunne laugh; she chanted maracatu songs she’d heard at Carnival; and she whistled the tunes of choro songs that were little laments of the heart.

  But most of all, Alicia liked to sing samba music, and she had a favorite that she sang to him the summer after they were married, when they took a vacation on the beach in California, in Carmel. She eventually translated it into English, so Dunne would know: “We’ll make such sweet music / Until the night is done / Just dance the samba with me… / This is the time for that song / And this is the time for that dance / I don’t feel alone because / I know that you’ll stay with me / To samba through life with me.”

  She would lean back her beautiful head as she sang, and shake her braids, and when she was done, she would give Dunne a kiss and take him to bed.

  Alicia never asked Dunne about his work. But he had sensed, from the first encounter when he intimidated the Frenchman who was bothering her, that she knew what he did. He was strong, and he knew his way in the world, and he worked at the embassy. She said to him once, just before they married, “I’ll never tell anyone your secrets.”

  They had a child when they moved to Frankfurt, a beautiful girl they named Luisa, who liked to sing with her mother as she was falling asleep. Alicia began teaching Portuguese at a German university, and she loved the work. She would save up stories about her little triumphs with difficult students and share them with Dunne when he returned home from long trips.

  “I love my teaching,” she would say. “But my family is my world.”

  Alicia and Dunne moved to D.C. in the summer of 2016, when the Frankfurt assignment ended. The crazy presidential election was in full swing, but they barely noticed. Alicia wanted to put down roots. Luisa was four, almost ready to start kindergarten. They bought a house in Arlington, near a golf course. Alicia got a part-time job teaching Portuguese at George Mason University. She was expecting their second child.

  * * *

  Dunne came home after his meeting with Gilroy and his drinking session with Magee. It was late. Alicia had been waiting up for him. He told her that his boss wanted him to take a new assignment and unfortunately he would be traveling again, at least for a while. He hated having to be away, especially with a new baby coming, but people said they needed him, and Dunne didn’t know how t
o refuse. He promised that he would get home when he could.

  “Nunca me esqueça, minha querida,” she whispered in his ear when they were in bed that night. Don’t ever forget me, my darling.

  Alicia loved and believed in her husband so totally that when the crack came, it was shattering.

  5 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – May 2018

  After Dunne’s release from prison he found an apartment in Shadyside, just off Fifth Avenue. When he was a college student, this had been the Pittsburgh neighborhood that seemed edgy and cool, but over the years it had gone upmarket, with the same stores you’d find in any prosperous suburb. Dunne bought some furniture from the IKEA out by the airport. He put up pictures of his daughter, now six, by the bed. The photos were out of date. His ex-wife refused to provide new ones, and she wouldn’t post shots of her child anywhere he could find them on the Internet. He had a picture of Alicia, too, from early in their marriage, but he couldn’t bear to look at it.

  Dunne made himself dinner that first night in his new home, spaghetti with clam sauce. He opened a bottle of red wine, but after he drank a glass, he poured the rest down the sink. He watched the Pirates lose a game on his new television set. The Bucs’ mediocrity had deepened in the years he had been away. The last time they had won a World Series Dunne had been less than a year old. Their theme song back then had been “We Are Family.” That seemed like a joke now, in Pittsburgh and everywhere else. “Family” was what we weren’t.

  Before Dunne went to bed, he trimmed his red beard with a new electric razor he had bought at the appliance store along with the television. He thought of shaving the beard off entirely to make a new start, but, staring at his face in the mirror, seeing those hard, sunken cheeks through the whiskers, he decided against it. He couldn’t sleep, so he took one of the pills they had given him in prison.

  Dunne visited the lawyer that his FBI friend had recommended. He drew up papers for the LLC, and helped Dunne rent an office on Forbes Avenue. The lawyer asked Dunne what he wanted to call the dummy company. It had to be “Something LLC”; Dunne said he didn’t have a name yet but would think about it.

  * * *

  The first call Dunne made from his new office was to Richard Ellison, his best friend from college and the only person whose letters Dunne had answered while he was in prison. Ellison was an African American from Oakland. His father had been a friend of August Wilson, the playwright, or so he claimed. His father might have been one of Wilson’s characters; his life plan was to play by the book and win – make it or die. Ellison Junior had made it. He had moved back to Pittsburgh recently, too, to take a job as general counsel for one of the local banks.

  The two men had become friends at Pitt. One night during freshman year when the dining hall was crowded, Dunne had taken a seat at one of the Afro tables. All the other black students got up and moved. Ellison stayed. They talked about computers. Dunne thought of him as his friend; not his black friend, just his friend.

  Ellison was the sensible, risk-averse person that Dunne would like to have been. Ellison didn’t want to break into anything; he liked to fix stuff. He had gone to law school after they graduated from Pitt, and then, after clerking for a federal judge, he had become an assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia.

  Ellison had been finishing his assignment in Alexandria when Dunne’s case was prosecuted. He had asked not to be involved because of their friendship, but he had been troubled by the case. Ellison had said, in several of his letters, that his colleagues thought the one-year prison sentence the judge had imposed had been outrageous. The prosecution had assumed Dunne would get work release, or a few months at most.

  * * *

  “I’ve been waiting for you to come home, brother,” Ellison said on the phone. “We need to talk. There’s something I’ve been waiting to give you.”

  They met at a bar on Grant Street, near Ellison’s office. The lawyer was wearing a gray pin-striped suit and a regimental-stripe tie. His dark skin was glowing as if it had been buffed. The bartender called out his name.

  “You look like a movie star,” said Dunne, giving him a soft pat on the cheek.

  Ellison laughed and put his arm around Dunne’s shoulder.

  “You look like a guy who just got out of the joint. Didn’t they feed you in there? Shit! And that red beard! Did you join Aryan Nation?” He laughed. “But you’re home now, man. That bullshit is over.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” answered Dunne.

  Dunne asked about Ellison’s wife and family. His wife was a lawyer, too. They had just bought a new house in Fox Chapel, where the rich people lived. The children were going to a private school. Ellison didn’t ask about Dunne’s family. He knew that was an open wound.

  They ordered beers, even though it was the middle of the afternoon, and they talked about people they knew from college. Ellison understood that he was talking to a man who was trying to put his life back together, and he didn’t push. It was Dunne who eventually asked the question.

  “You said you wanted to give me something. What is it?”

  “It’s a letter for you. It came after you went into Club Fed.”

  Ellison reached into the inside jacket pocket of his pin-striped suit and removed a long, thin envelope. He handed it across the table to Dunne.

  Dunne read the envelope cover once, turned it over, and read it again. Typed on it were the words:

  For Michael Dunne. To Be Delivered Upon His Release from Prison. From a Lemon Squeezer.

  The letter was sealed tightly with several layers of plastic tape and embossed with seals that would show if the letter had been opened. There was no return address. Dunne laid it down on the table.

  “Who sent this?” asked Dunne.

  “I don’t know,” answered Ellison. “It was sent to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. It arrived in a FedEx package. I tried to track the sender’s address in New York. Nothing there. It’s a mail drop.”

  “Did you keep the shipping label?”

  “Yes, indeed.”

  Ellison removed the red, white, and blue document from another pocket and handed it over.

  Dunne read the address. It was a post office box number in Manhattan. The sender obviously had taken precautions not to be discovered.

  “Did you dust for prints?”

  “Did that, too. Nothing.” Ellison looked at his friend. “Come on, man, aren’t you going to open it?”

  Dunne shook his head. “Not now. When I’m back home. If I opened it here, you’d want to know what it says, and I’m not sure that’s a good idea yet.”

  “Aw, shit! I should have just opened it back in Alexandria. That’s what the other assistant U.S. attorney wanted to do. But I said no. It’s a private communication, to be opened by Michael Dunne, personally, when he’s a free man.”

  “I appreciate that, Rich. You’re the only person who cares what I want. I’ll tell you what’s in the letter after I read it. Probably.”

  “Okay. Just one question. What’s a ‘Lemon Squeezer’?”

  Dunne laughed.

  “It’s CIA slang, from the part of the agency where I worked. In the old days, a ‘Lemon Squeezer’ was someone who specialized in secret writing. You’d write the message in lemon juice, and then when the agent got the letter and heated the paper, shazam, the words would appear.”

  “Meaning the letter was sent by one of your former colleagues?”

  Dunne nodded and put the envelope in his own pocket, along with the FedEx label.

  “So it seems,” he said. “Unless someone is just squeezing my lemon.”

  * * *

  On the way back to his office on Forbes Avenue, Dunne bought a pair of surgical gloves. He put them on before he opened the letter. It was one page, neatly printed, no letterhead or markings, and, Dunne was sure, no prints that would give away its author. He laid it out on his desk, went to the cooler and brought back a glass of water, and then began reading:

  Dear Mr. Dunne:

&
nbsp; Like many people, I am very sorry about what happened to you. If we could have prevented it, we would have done so. You chose to say nothing publicly about your case, and we respect that. But if you are reading this, it means that you have finished your prison term and are thinking, as others are, about how to right the wrong that has been done to you. The advice from your friends is to be persistent but be careful.

  When you were arrested, you were pulling on a thread that touches many powerful people. We hope that you will keep pulling. Look for other victims like yourself and try to help them. That’s the best way to get started. Eventually, you will find the network that tried to destroy you. It operates more widely now. It is as efficient as a machine, for a reason. It is a machine.

  Here are some tools that will help you.

  First, here is the most recent IP address for the computer used by Jason Howe: 52.222.232.38. The domain registry is 1837442_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN. The server name is NS-2038.AWSDNS-00.ORG. Howe is very hard to find now, but it will be worth the effort.

  Second, here is the serial number for the iPhone most recently used by Howe. DDJXFDML6JC4D. The Sim card ICCID used most recently for this phone is 89148000004050207996.

  Third, here are the registry numbers in the National Vulnerability Database for the zero-day exploits that have been used recently by Howe’s group: CVE-2015-1425, CVE-2015-3690, CVE-2015-1763, CVE-2015-2029, CVE-2015-5078, and CVE-2015-6372.

  Fourth, this network has been using as its principal malware a rootkit that intercepts application programming interfaces in the kernel and erases its tracks as it extracts data. The most recent software that can detect this kernel-mode rootkit is: http://www.antirootkit.com/software/IceSword.htm.

  We wish it were possible to send you more information, or to update what we are sending in this message. But our points of access have disappeared. Anyone who is monitoring these accounts now is subject to surveillance and possible prosecution. Any serious investigation will have to be done outside government agencies. You have the motivation and skills to penetrate and disable this network. If you’re successful, others will find you.