Invasion of Privacy (35 page)

Tank Potter was not dead yet. He lay on the floor of his cabin in a netherworld of pain.

Standing above him, Fergus Keefe finished his call. “Hear that, Potter? Directions from the boss himself. Eliminate all loose ends. That means you, my friend.”

Tank turned onto his back. “A drink. One last one.”

“You wouldn’t rather say your prayers?”

“He and I aren’t on speaking terms.”

Keefe poured two fingers of tequila into the glass and returned. “This is good stuff. I won’t argue with you there.”

“A buck a bottle.”

“No shit. Hope you don’t mind if I help myself to the other one.” Keefe propped Tank up and put the glass to his mouth. Tank tried to take a sip, but the tequila no longer smelled so enticing. It came to him that if he hadn’t stopped to take a drink, he would have gotten away. Right now he’d be driving somewhere near Hutto with the article on the seat beside him and Hal Stark’s files safe and sound on the key and the tablet. He thought of Mary and her girls and knew that Keefe, or someone like him, would be visiting them very soon.

With the last of his strength, he pushed the glass away.

“What is it?” said Keefe.

“I can’t,” said Tank.

Keefe shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He drank down the tequila with relish, then stood. “You ready?”

Tank laid his head down. For the first time in many a year, he prayed. He prayed for Mary and her girls. He prayed that Ian Prince and Edward Mason would die terrible deaths. And he prayed for forgiveness. It didn’t take long.

“Now’s as good a time as any.”

There was the hollow thump of footsteps on the porch. Keefe moved eagerly toward the door. “Who’s that? Mary Grant still here?”

Keefe raised his pistol and yanked the door open. Tank saw his eyes
widen. There was a terrific, ear-splitting noise. Fergus Keefe dropped to the floor as a hail of machine-gun bullets tore up his chest.

Don Bennett advanced into the cabin, firing a second burst into Keefe’s prone body.

“Not you, too,” said Tank, his heart sinking.

Bennett knelt at Tank’s side. “Hang on,” he said. “We’ll have an ambulance here soon.”

An older man with shaggy gray hair and a belly followed. He picked up the key to the LaFerrari off the floor. “This it?” asked Randy Bell.

“Is it, Potter?”

Tank nodded. “It’s all there.”

Bennett shouted for Bell to get a first-aid kit out of the car, then returned his attention to Tank. “I’m sure we’ll read about it in the paper.”

But by then Tank wasn’t interested in the paper or in writing an article that would win him the Pulitzer Prize or in pulling down a hefty book contract. He took hold of Bennett’s arm. “Find Mary.”

The Mole touched the blade to the pouch of flesh below Jessie’s eye. Her skin was so smooth. She was pure. Untouched.

“Stand up. I don’t want to embarrass you in front of your mother.”

He saw the hate in her eyes and he felt himself stir. The Mole pushed the point against the skin. He saw fear, too, and this excited him more.

Jessie stood.

“Go into the bedroom.”

Mary Grant rose to her feet and charged. The Mole kicked her and she fell backward over the coffee table. He was on her in a second, the knife puncturing her neck, a rivulet of blood besmirching the blade. “Stay here. Don’t move. Don’t make a sound. If I hear you, I’ll bury my knife in your baby girl’s belly so deep it won’t ever come out. And then I’ll bury it in yours.”

The Mole flipped the knife in his hand and brought the weighted handle down on her forehead, shutting those pleading eyes. He had plans for Mary, too.

He stood and pushed Jessie forward toward the bed.

He closed the door behind them. But not all the way. If Mary Grant made a noise, he’d be listening.

Seconds after the door closed, Mary struggled to her feet. She was dazed, nothing more. If anything, the pain acted as a prod. She slid off her shoes and glided soundlessly across the room to where her purse lay on the floor. She got to her knees and opened it, and her bound hands delved inside, pushing aside her wallet, the envelope containing $36,000 before finding the grip of the nickel-plated .38 revolver. An old-fashioned Saturday night special—$295 at the Pawn Stars shop.

She freed the pistol and, using both thumbs, cocked the hammer. Step by step she advanced toward the bedroom. Her neck was bleeding terribly, leaving a crimson trail on the marble floor. The door stood
open an inch. She saw his naked buttocks. She moved faster. She would not allow anyone to hurt her daughter.

She was beautiful.

She was his.

The Mole held his phone in his left hand and the knife in his right. He wanted to film his first time. He looked forward to watching it again and again. Watching was better.

Jessie lay on the bed as he’d told her. He approached warily, ready for any outburst. He slipped the knife beneath the Ninjaneers T-shirt and cut it open down the center of her chest.

“That’s right,” he said. “Stay still and look at the camera.”

He drew nearer, smelling her, wanting all of her.

Jessie kicked out at him. He dodged her blows easily, pressing the knife against her.

“Now take the other shirt off,” he said.

He wanted to kiss her, too, but he couldn’t risk taking off the tape. He’d kiss her later, when she was still warm.

Jessie didn’t move, and he nicked her cheek.

“Next time it’ll hurt more.”

Jessie pulled off her shirt and looked away.

“Eyes open, Jess,” he said. “I want you to see everything.”

Later, when he watched, he wanted to see the life drain out of her eyes.

The Mole laid the knife against her bra, then slid it lower, against her jeans. He felt powerful, in control. He was in charge, no one else. Not Briggs. Not Ian Prince. The world was doing as he commanded, no differently than if he’d programmed its every action.

“Now these.”

Jessie tugged off her pants. He looked into her eyes as he touched her. A flicker of fear, of apprehension. And then the fear vanished. He caught a reflection in her iris, a flash of movement behind him.

Jessie wrenched her head to one side and squeezed her eyes shut.

Something hard and cold touched the base of his skull.

The Mole began to protest, desperately needing to see who was behind him, who was disobeying his program.

There was a bright light. The sun.

Then darkness.

Mary held Jessie in her arms and let her cry until there were no more tears.

“How’s Grace?” was the first thing her daughter asked. “She sent me a message saying she was going to the hospital.”

“We don’t know yet.”

“But you’re here with me.”

Mary nodded. “Of course I am.”

At this, Jessie began crying anew. “I love you, Mama,” she said.

“I love you, too.”

Mary had moved Jess back to the living area. The door to the bedroom was closed.

Jessie sobbed a last time and wiped at her eyes. “I’m sorry. I should have told you I was coming. I knew you’d say no.”

“You were right. But we can talk about that later, okay?”

“Okay.”

“And about that e-cigarette, young lady…”

Jessie drew back. “You looked in my desk?”

“Jess.”

“It’s okay. I know you were just worried.” She sat up straighter. “So why are you here? Why does Ian Prince want to hurt us? Is this because of Dad?”

“Dad was investigating him,” said Mary. “Ian Prince had your father killed to stop him.”

It took Mary ten minutes to tell Jessie everything that had happened over the past forty-eight hours. She left nothing out. She spoke to Jessie as if she were an adult because that’s the way the admiral would have spoken to her. In a few months Jessie would be sixteen. If she was anything like her mother, she was as good as gone the moment she passed her driver’s test. There comes a point when you have to let go. Mary wasn’t ready yet, but she didn’t have a say in the matter.

“Tank really killed that guy?” Jessie asked afterward, needing to process all she’d heard.

“He had to. That guy was going to kill me.”

“And you really hit Briggs over the head with our steel bowl?”

“I had to.”

“Holy crap,” said Jessie. “My mom’s Wonder Woman.”

“No,” said Mary, “just your mom. That’s enough.”

“But how does Ian Prince know so much about me?”

“Somehow he hacked into our computer and got hold of our passwords. I guess he was able to see everything.”

“He took all our money.”

“For now, at least.”

“That’s fucked,” said Jessie. “Sorry, but it is.”

“You’re right,” said Mary. “It’s really fucked.”

“Mom!”

“I thought I was Wonder Woman.”

“Wonder Woman does not have a potty mouth.” Jessie buried her head in Mary’s shoulder. After a minute or so, she began to laugh. “What is it?” asked Mary.

“I have an idea.”

“What about?”

“I know how he hacked into our computer.”

“Oh?”

“I told Grace not to open messages from people she didn’t know.” Jessie got up off the couch, moved to a desk, took a seat, and tapped away at Greg from MIT’s laptop.

“What are you doing?” asked Mary.

Jessie didn’t look up. “Getting even.”

Ian Prince was exultant.

Semaphore was behind him. Mary Grant was no longer a worry. As important, Titan was up and running.

Back in Austin and seated contentedly at his desk, he opened the software designed by David Gold and Menachem Wolkowicz and the brain trust at Clarus, his Praetorian Guard. He logged in for the first time, creating a username and password. Seconds later he was inside.

Clarus was already hard at work, shadowing Titan’s every iteration. The NSA had wasted no time in feeding intercepts for decryption. Ian counted over fifty thousand documents in the queue. The intercepts were grouped by geopolitical source and prioritized from one to three stars, three being the most important. There were requests from Europe, Asia, the Middle East. The requests came from all the NSA’s “customers”: the Pentagon, the CIA, the FBI, MI6, and many, many more.

Ian went directly to the economics directorate, specifically, to the U.S. corporate subsection, and then to “Internet.” He was rewarded with a cornucopia of intercepts from his largest competitors. There was news of pending mergers, of contracts with foreign governments, of new product development. It was an all-seeing eye into every CEO’s suite, their research laboratories, their strategic planning.

Ian knew better than to act rashly. For now there was nothing to do except harvest, store, and study. He planned on remaining invisible for years to come. Knowledge, even for its own sake, was power.

He gazed across the office at the black satchel. Nearly twenty-six years ago to the day, his father had disappeared. As soon as he familiarized himself with the system, he could peek into British intelligence’s files. He had little hope of finding anything within the files of the British Foreign Office. Documents dating from 1989 would be far down the list to be digitized and placed on the Net. Records from secondary consulates in Bruges and Leipzig would figure at the bottom of those.

MI6 was a different story. Ian knew he’d find everything he needed
there. The problem was that the U.K. was the United States’ sacrosanct partner. The countries exchanged information on a “per request” basis. MI6 was a customer of the NSA, just as the CIA was a customer of GCHQ, the Government Communications Headquarters, the NSA’s counterpart in Cheltenham, England. They did not spy on each other. Getting into MI6 would merely be a question of learning proper protocol for these exchanges. Nothing beyond his skill set. Not with Titan at his beck and call.

Ian pushed his chair back, crossed his office, and took a seat next to the satchel. He made an oath to his father that he would uncover his service record and let the world know of his accomplishments.

“Boss.” He glanced up to find Peter Briggs in his office. “You wanted to see me.”

“It won’t take long. Everything under control?”

“Last I heard from Mason, his man had recovered the flash drive. I have confirmation that the Mole took care of our problem in Vegas. Our men should be at the hotel presently. The situation is tied off, once and for all.”

“Good,” said Ian. “Seems like the right moment, then. I’m letting you go, Peter.”

“Pardon me?”

“I can’t have my chief of security going behind my back and disobeying me. Your job is to protect me, not get me into trouble.”

“What are you referring to?”

“That nasty knot on your head, to begin with. As I was doing some work last night, I happened to see you at Mary Grant’s home. You know how that works. I heard you speaking to the Mole about Mr. McNair. I told you to leave her alone.”

“I was only trying to cover your back. You’re a busy man. Sometimes you get…removed from how things really are.”

“I ordered you not to lay a finger on Mary Grant or her children. You disobeyed me. There’s nothing more to say except goodbye.”

“You’re letting me go—with all I know?”

“You’ve been paid handsomely. A call to Edward Mason will quiet any accusations should you be that stupid.”

“I took care of Merriweather and Joe Grant. Without me, you’d never have gotten the contract with the NSA.”

“Goodbye, Peter.”

But Briggs didn’t leave. He unbuttoned his jacket and advanced on
Ian, his ruddy face flushed nearly crimson. He eyed the satchel mockingly. “Find anything about your father yet?”

“That’s none of your concern.”

“Or is it that you don’t want to look too hard?”

“What are you getting at?”

“All the time you spend staring at this silly case, daydreaming about him. Come off it, Ian, you know better. He wasn’t a secret agent. He was a drunk. He drowned facedown in his own puke in a gutter outside a Brussels whorehouse.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Ask your mother.”

“We don’t speak.”

“She told you the truth twenty years ago.”

“She was lying. She hated him.”

“With good reason.” Briggs picked up the satchel. “I looked, too. On my own. I wanted to help you find out the truth. She told me everything. About the gambling. The fights. Mostly about the drinking. Still, I wanted to believe you. Most women are skags anyway. But it’s all there in the Belgian police’s files. I’ll be sure to leave you copies on my way out.”

Ian grabbed the satchel away from Briggs. “He wasn’t a drunk. It was cover. He was an agent with MI6. He was killed while on duty. They never found the body.”

Briggs was laughing at him. “Of course they did, only your mother refused to claim it. The British government refused as well. Do you know why? Because your father had been sacked six months before. Your dear old dad’s buried in an unmarked grave in a potter’s field, or whatever they call it over there.”

“You’re lying.”

“Am I?” Briggs jabbed his finger into Ian’s chest. “I’m going to tell the world, Ian. I’m going to tell everyone the truth about Peter fucking Prince. Everyone’s going to know what a drunken lowlife your father was.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Yes, I am. Bank on it.”

Ian shot him. Peter Briggs staggered back a step. Ian dropped the satchel, the Walther gripped in his right hand. He fired again. Briggs fell. He was dead before he hit the floor. “Banked.”

The crack of the gunshots brought Ian to his senses. His rage vanished.
Self-preservation took hold. He kneeled and freed Briggs’s pistol from his holster and placed it in his hand. It was a matter of self-defense. Anyone could see it.

He waited for his assistants to come running to his aid, but it was nearly eight and everyone had gone home. No one had heard the shots. He walked to his desk and called Edward Mason. He would tell him that Briggs had been threatening to go to the authorities. Mason would send someone. They were all in this together. There was no other choice.

The call rolled to voicemail. “Ed, this is Ian. Call me. It’s an emergency.”

Ian put his pistol in his top drawer, then returned to the body. Briggs was single. He had no family in the city. No one would miss him for days. Maybe it wouldn’t come to self-defense. There was ample time to dispose of the body. Maybe he could even tie it to Mary Grant somehow.

His personal line rang. Eight o’clock meant it was the daily call from his children in Los Angeles. The timing couldn’t be better. He would say he had been talking with his family when Briggs was killed. Ian turned the camera away from Briggs and positioned himself in front of the lens.

“Hello there,” he said with false merriment.

The screen came to life. He saw his boys, Tristan and Trevor, in the kitchen of the home in Bel-Air.

“Dad, Dad,” Tristan, the younger boy, was shouting. “We’ve got a surprise.”

Ian did his best to smile. “Really? What’s that?”

“We know you said no more animals, but this one was special.”

“Another one? What is it this time? Not another dog?”

“Just wait, Dad,” said Trevor. “You’re going to freak. It’s so cool.”

“Take a guess,” said Tristan.

“I don’t know…a cat.”

“Of course not.”

“A snake?”

“It’s easy, Dad. I mean, you sent us that video for a reason.”

“Did I? Which one was that?”

Just then Tristan picked up the animal and held it in his arms. It was large and furry, with great big claws and sad black eyes. “Say hi to Joey. He’s a three-toed South American tree sloth.”

“A sloth?” said Ian, blinking, sure he was imagining this.

“Don’t be mad,” Tristan went on. “Isn’t that why you sent us the video of the sloth trying to climb out of the crib? You knew we couldn’t resist.”

It was the video he’d sent to the Grant girls, to which he’d attached the malware. But how in the world had his sons received it?

“You’re sure I sent it to you?”

“Yeah, Dad,” said Trevor. “We know better than to open messages that come from strangers.”

“I made Mom go to the exotic pet store in Beverly Hills. Don’t you think he’s cute?”

Ian dashed to his computer. If they’d downloaded the video of the sloth, they’d imported the malware. The family’s machines were networked. The malware would grant a user free rein inside all of them—desktops, laptops, tablets. It would be simplicity itself to locate his passwords and access his files, both personal and professional. There was no telling what someone might find.

Ian logged on to his e-mail and saw that it was true: he had sent them the video. Or rather, the person who had hacked into his computer had sent it from Ian’s account.

He drew a breath, wondering how this had happened. How all of it had happened.

A shriek came from somewhere in the kitchen behind the boys. “Ian!”

It was his wife, Wendy. She came through the butler’s pantry, clutching her laptop, the screen open. “What have you done? It’s everywhere.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Is it real? Tell me, Ian, is it?” Wendy aimed the laptop at the camera, but he could see the images only faintly.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said.

“Did you shoot him? Did you?”

“Shoot who?”

“Briggs! Did you?” Wendy was bawling hysterically, screaming at the boys to get out of the kitchen.

Ian brought up Rivalfox, a website devoted to the highest-trending topics and personalities on the Web. To his horror, his name was ranked first. He double-clicked on his name and was given a link to a video on YouTube titled “Ian Prince Murders Peter Briggs in cold blood.”

He hit Play, and there he was, standing in his office, speaking with Peter Briggs only five minutes earlier.

“He wasn’t a spy,”
Briggs was saying.
“He was a drunk.”

Ian froze as the rest of the encounter played out, filmed in high definition by the camera in his desktop.

“Your dear old dad’s buried in an unmarked grave in a potter’s field, or whatever they call it over there.”

“You’re lying.”

“Am I?”
Briggs jabbed his finger into Ian’s chest.
“I’m going to tell the world, Ian. I’m going to tell everyone the truth about Peter fucking Prince. Everyone’s going to know what a drunken lowlife your father was.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Yes, I am. Bank on it.”

Ian shot him. Peter Briggs staggered back a step. Ian dropped the satchel, the Walther gripped in his right hand. He fired again. Briggs fell. He was dead before he hit the floor.

“Banked,”
said Ian.

He looked away from the screen. Only one person could have done this: Jessie Grant. He’d sent her the sloth video, too. She possessed the skills. She’d nearly defeated him at Capture the Flag. But she was dead in a Vegas hotel room. Briggs had confirmed it.

Or was she?

Ian refreshed the page. The views were increasing exponentially.

2,000…10,000…100,000
.

The video was going viral.

The entire world was watching.

“Ian, is this real?” Wendy Prince continued to shout. “Ian!”

He ended the call.

From afar he heard a siren, and then another. He hurried to the window. A dozen unmarked cars were barreling over the Meadow toward his office.

His phone rang. Edward Mason.

“Ed, hello, thank God you called. There are—”

“Mr. Prince, my name is Dylan Walsh. I’m chief of the Cyber Investigations Division at the FBI. Edward Mason is presently in custody. Our agents have surrounded your office. We ask that you surrender yourself immediately. Please walk out the front door with your hands up.”

Ian hung up the phone. Mason was in custody. The FBI had Stark’s files. They knew everything. His office was surrounded.

The number of views continued to spiral upward.

500,000….600,000
.

He’d be at a million soon, and that was only the beginning. He was looking at what was certain to become the most-watched video of all time.

Ian opened the drawer and stared at his father’s pistol.