Temptation

Part 6

Brendon’s mind was racing as he got his laptop; the life of a powerful Senator, the man who was most likely to become the next president of USA. What kind of information would he find in those files? His thoughts were still on Eleanor when his shaking fingers plugged in the flash drive.

“Alright, Lightman. Let’s see your secrets.”

The first files were – surprise – of personal pictures. Lightman was a very careful man, he filed the pictures by year and added the locations to the info; Brendon smiled as he went through pictures of a 5 year old Eleanor dressed in a Little Mermaid’s costume. Smiling, Brendon had to force himself not to spend too long seeing the family pictures. He finally saw, though, Lightman’s deceased wife, Emily, from whom Eleanor had inherited the magnificent hair and the delicate nose. She stopped appearing when the twins were born, and Eleanor looked around 12 years old, no longer smiling vibrantly, but solemn and sober in every picture. Lightman started growing his white hair by that time.

Apart from pictures, he had homemade videos of family events, notes and documents of less importance and many downloaded papers and publications from his opponents. There was nothing incriminating on his personal files.

Feeling half relieved and half frustrated, Brendon moved on to checking the trace installed on the Senator’s email account. Usually, depending on the company, the tracer would quickly get installed, disguised as a spam email. As soon as it reached the account, even if the person deleted, the tracer would have converted itself and been programmed without anyone knowing. For some servers, the whole process would take only a couple of hours. But Brendon had not been very lucky: Lightman’s personal email was from an anonymous company, where the clients would pay a monthly fee for the email address generated by the anonymous company, that would be directly connected to their real accounts; this way, they would be able to exchange messages privately, without tracking, if someone else emailed the anonymous email address instead of the actual one. They were, in theory, really safe and guaranteed the complete anonymous use of the email account. In practice, it was merely an extra stone in NSA’s shoe. The tracer would be able to come back to Brendon with the name of the real account, and the interactions performed on the anonymous mode. But then, he would have to place a second trace on the Senator’s real mail account to access the content of the messages.

Slightly annoyed, he checked for the trace; it would take a bit longer for it to come back. Nothing new, up to that moment. Cussing, he called Carl.

“There’s nothing on Lightman’s personal files,” he said. “Nothing alarming, at least. I will send it to you now a copy of it so the Cryptography can have a go at it, but I don’t think there is anything to be found. As for his email, the son of a bitch uses the anom service. It will take some time.”

“Damn, it was too easy to be true. When do you think the tracer will come back?”

“Two, three hours? Hard to say.”

“Well, we can wait. Where are you now?”

“I’m on a bar fifteen minutes from Lightman’s house.”

“Do you still have to work today?”

“I will pick up Eleanor Lightman when she calls me.” The sound of those words was incredibly warm to him.

“Alright. Get the girl, finish for today, and don’t leave the front of the computer until the tracer comes back.”

“Got it, Carl.”

Brendon finished his drink and switched off his laptop; there was a woman on the other side of the room sending him suggestive looks as she crossed her legs, but Brendon didn’t pay much attention to her; there was work to be done that night and he couldn’t take any girl to his place.

His phone rang about half an hour later and Eleanor announced she was ready to leave. Brendon paid for his drinks and left to meet her. She was standing in front of the café with another girl, laughing at some joke, when he arrived.

“Why were you outside?” Brendon asked.

“We just left. It’s only been a few minutes we’re there.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re okay. Did you have fun?”

“Oh, yes, it was fun,” she replied, and then went quiet. They did not speak all the way back to Eleanor’s house.

Once they got there, Brendon stopped Eleanor before she could leave the car.

“Do you have plans to go out tomorrow? Any appointments or anything? I would need to know beforehand.”

She hesitated. “Well, yes, but I don’t know if I want you to go with me.”

He frowned. “I thought we had been over this, Miss Lightman. We have a deal– ”

“I have an appointment at the gynecologist,” she said, blushing. “And I don’t really want you around.”

Brendon looked down, smiling. “I will drive you there, and we can do it like today, alright?”

She sighed. “Alright. 10 AM tomorrow.”

Eleanor left the car, and only when Brendon’s eyes followed her until she entered the house. It was amazing how they had progressed from total hostility to a cordial relationship. He did not see her as the spoiled girl she appeared to be at first, but as a rather careful and vibrant woman who couldn’t stand to be controlled, and that he could understand well, really well… His thoughts were still wandering on Eleanor when his phone rang.

It was an email; the tracer had finally arrived with Lightman’s real email and anonymous contacts. Completely distracted, he clicked on the little envelope icon anxiously.

Lightman’s real email was hosted by a well-known server, and he had not tried to hide his identity, since his username was ‘orelightman’. But what called his attention was that he kept only one contact on the anonymous account.

“zhenshchina.svet” Brendon whispered the strange username, completely intrigued.