New York. 22/10/2012. 08:30.
"Nice walk of shame sweetie." Mary said laughing when Nathaniel opened the front door.
"Oh come on mom, you can do better than that. Since I'm not hungover, smelling sex or wearing torn off clothes, it barely qualified. I expected something more like 'Did you use protection' or 'I'm going to be a grandma soon'. I'm a little disappointed to be honest." Nathaniel answered, taking his shoes off.
"I just woke up, I need my coffee in the morning to be 100% operational." She said indignantly. "Wait, you did use protection right?" She continued concerned.
"Yes mom I did, don't worry. Even if that was an expected question, it still makes me uncomfortable to talk about this with you." He said, shaking his head.
"That's normal, even if you are not a normal teenager by any means you are still my son. No son, wants to talk about sex with their mother. To be honest I do not want to either, I just wanted to make sure you thought about protecting yourself."
"I can understand that. Where is mom?"
"Well, I'm right here."
Nathaniel groaned, triggering a fit of laughter from Mary. That was an old joke of theirs. When Nathaniel was little, since he had two mothers, he was calling both of them mom. That led to a couple of funny scenes and after that it became a joke so used that it was almost painful to hear now.
"Mom, I remember that when I was twelve we said that the next one who will make that joke will be called 'other mom'."
"Don't you dare!" She threatened making Nathaniel laugh. "Karine is in the shower by the way."
"Good, I'm just here to change and then I'm off to college." Nathaniel said.
"Not so fast sweetie, look at the newspaper." She interrupted, pushing the journal in his direction.
Curious, he picked it up and started to read the headline. 'Drabs hotel shootout solved, all the persons implicated in the attack arrested.' Reading through the article in his entirety Nathaniel could not help but shake his head. Since the "Black Hand" was located in Korea, there was no one they could arrest considering that the only ones who were on American soil were dead. The FBI must have arrested a couple of criminals to present as their fall guys.
Politically, they could not give no response to the american people without backlash and putting the finger to an asian assassin organisation was not a very good move to make for obvious reasons. Nathaniel was sure that people were on the move in the shadows to get retribution but that did not concern him anymore. He had made a promise and he will keep it. For now, he just wanted his friend back to college.
"Everything is solved then." Nathaniel said with a tone as neutral as possible.
"To the grand public, it is." She responded in the same manner.
Knowing how she felt Nathaniel did not add anything else and just kissed her cheek before going to his room. Sometimes, knowing the truth was worse than not knowing.
*****
Two hours later in One Police Plaza James Mattews, director of internal affairs, was talking about a case with one of his agents when three persons exited the elevator. The thing that made them stand out was the three blue FBI jackets. Cutting the conversation short that he had with his agent, he made his way to them.
"Can I help you?"
"Yes, we want to talk with director Mattews." The female agent responded.
"I am director Mattews, who am I talking to?"
"Oh good. I'm agent Aldrin and this is agent Williams. The one here is our computer expert, agent Zipert. We are from the FBI."
"Thanks for the heads up, that was not obvious enough with your flashy jackets. What do you want?" Mattews said sarcastically. He was not a fan of the FBI by any means.
"Can we talk in a more private location?" Agent Aldrin asked, ignoring the jab.
"Alright, follow me." He sighed, leading them to his office.
Sitting behind his desk he looked at each of them long and hard, not even offering them a seat.
"So, what is going on here?"
"We came today about a case that happened on the third of june. The Piotr Droski case."
"Yes, I remember it quite well. What about it?"
"In the record you said that an unknown individual was caught on camera taking out four armed men in a close combat quarter and dispatched them without even a scratch and he took out more once inside. We are thinking that the same man is involved in our case." Agent Aldrin said.
"I see. You can't tell me which case it is, am I right?"
"You are right, we can't. In the record you mentioned having a video of the event but it was not forwarded with the rest of the evidence and it is not on the Police server. Why is that?"
"I did not want that video ending on Youtube so I kept it on my private server here." He said.
"Can we see it?"
Looking at them, he just sighed.
"Alright, come over here."
Typing in his password, he easily found the file that he was looking for while the three agents were taking place beside him. Double clicking on the video files a cat playing a piano suddenly appeared on the screen.
"What the hell!" Jonathan shouted, cutting the video off.
"What is going on here? Is this a joke?" Agent Aldrin asked crossly.
"No it's not a joke, I don't understand. I have not touched the file since I uploaded it. This makes no sense at all." Jonathan said dumbfounded.
"Can I have a look?" Agent Zipert asked.
"Are you serious?" Mattews said with furrowed eyebrows.
"Agent Zipert is our technical expert if there is a problem with the file, he is the best one to solve it." Agent Aldrin said.
"Okay, I will allow it but I have a lot of sensible files in there if I see you put your nose where it does not belong I will fill charges." The director threatened leaving his chair.
"I will, director." Agent Zipert assured taking place behind the screen.
He started typing on the computer, opening one diagnostic window after the other. His brows knitted more and more as information appeared on the screen.
"The video was hacked." He finally stated.
"What! This is not possible! This server is not even connected to the internet."
"It is not. This was done physically. The time stamp showed that it was done on the sixth of june at two thirty in the morning." Agent Zipert said.
"You are telling me that someone broke into One PP and hacked into my server?" Mattews shouted.
"It looks that way Director."
"Has something else been touched?" He asked. He was keeping a lot of sensible files that could kill a lot of their current cases on his server. It could be catastrophique if everything was erased.
"No, it was specially targeted at this single video."
"Can we retrieve the video?" Agent Aldrin asked.
"That is what I'm trying to do but it seems the one who came here ran some kind of destruction program before leaving. I can't find any trace of the video anywhere in the registry or even a single piece of it, whoever did this had a lot of skill."
"We are looking for a hacker then." Agent Williams said.
"No, you are not understanding me. This kind of work is too sophisticated for a normal hacker. We are looking for someone way more skilled than that. To be honest, it kind of reminds me of destruction software given by the CIA to their agents for destroying any data once received to limit the risk of being seized by foreign nations."
"Wait! You are saying the CIA did this?" Aldrin shouted with disbelief.
"Them or another agency with three letters." Agent Zipert said, a serious expression on his face.
"I need to make phone calls. A lot of them." Director Mattews said darkly.