The Beautiful and the Wicked (31 page)

 

CHAPTER 30

I
T WASN'T UNTIL
Teddy joined Lila at the St. Francis Memorial Hospital and smoothed things over with the local police that Lila was finally able to see Jack Warren.

“You got banned from interrogating the man you caught? You must've really showed them the classic Lila charm, huh?” Teddy said to her with a tired smile. They were both exhausted. It had been a full twenty-­four hours since that car had sent Jack sailing through the air, but in that brief time, Lila felt as if her whole world had changed. The despair and doubt she felt had been eradicated. And she had been vindicated. She finally knew she was right about her sister and, most importantly, she had the best proof imaginable to show that Ava had been falsely accused of murder. She had Jack Warren, alive, breathing, and in handcuffs.

Finally, she could clear her sister's name.

She had only phoned Teddy with the news once she finally convinced the cops on the scene that this bleeding man on the pavement was indeed Jack Warren, the billionaire who the whole world believed was murdered eleven years ago. Teddy, in total shock, had hopped on his private plane within the hour, desperate to be with Lila as fast as he could. “I can't believe it,” was all he could manage to say on the phone. “I just can't believe it.”

He arrived in San Francisco before midnight, joining Lila outside Jack's hospital room, which was flanked by two police officers. Both Lila and Teddy looked down at the scrum of journalists gathering in the parking lot outside. Each was jockeying to get the scoop on the story of the year: Jack Warren had been resurrected from the dead.

Teddy reached for her hand. “Lila, listen,” he said softly. “I know you may not want to hear it, but I feel terrible about what I said to you the last time we spoke. I had no right. You would do anything to protect the ­people you care about. And that's what you did for Ava. I should've been more understanding. I was wrong.”

Lila kept her eyes on the news cameras. She squeezed his hand. “I was wrong, too.” Lila paused and turned to look at Teddy. She brushed his dark blond hair out of his face with her fingertips, only realizing at that very moment how happy she was that he was once again by her side. “I know I pushed too hard.”

“True. But if you hadn't, you'd never have been able to prove Ava's innocence. I should know by now to listen to you.”

“I don't know. This whole case has been so complicated and confusing that at the end, I didn't think I could even listen to myself. I stopped trusting myself.” She felt a palpable feeling of sadness about the whole thing. “But now all the confusion will be put to rest, once we get in there to talk to Jack.”

Traveling in time couldn't erase the decade that her sister had spent on the run. It made Lila hate Jack even more than she already did. His actions had cost Ava so much. Now she wanted him to lose everything.

“Well, you got him, Lila. No one else could have done it but you.”

Lila started to say something, but fell silent for a few seconds. “But, about visiting you in the past—­”

Teddy held up his hand to stop her. His face was stern. “I was going to mention that, too. Yes, that was dumb. With everything I told you, you should've known better.” Then his face broke into a devilish smile. “But with great risks come great rewards.”

Lila gave him a confused look. He continued, “Spending time with that nasty bit of software that you brought into my office was one of the most important moments of my life. Reading source code that Jack Warren wrote was like taking a master class in the power of technology. I learned more in that afternoon than in all my years at MIT. Without it, I wouldn't be where I am today.”

“Wait,” she said. “Are you telling me that you owe all your success to my bullheadedness?”

“I wouldn't go that far. From now on you still have to stick to my rules.”

“I promise to try,” Lila offered.

“I guess that's the best I'm ever going to get,” he said with a smile.

Though she felt better that she'd patched things up with Teddy, Lila's mind was focused on getting answers out of Jack. With Teddy looking on, she kept pacing up and down the hallways, desperate to talk to him, needing an explanation as to how—­and why—­he'd done what he'd done. But thanks to Teddy's charm, and a few hundred bucks slipped to one of the sleepy police guards—­one bribe Lila was glad to see accepted—­they were finally able to stand face-­to-­face with Jack Warren.

When they walked into his room, they were both taken aback by how small and withered he looked in his hospital bed. The man whom Lila considered the scourge of her sister's life was just an old man now. He was propped up at a weird angle, as if the nurse had struggled to get him upright and just kind of left him where he was. His wrists were handcuffed to the bed. His neck was in a brace and a morphine IV was dripping painkillers slowly into his veins. The doctors had told Lila that Jack would make a full recovery. There were some broken ribs and a sprained neck, but the injuries weren't too bad. Lila had been relieved. At least he'd be fit to stand trial.

Neither Lila nor Teddy said anything for a minute or so. Jack was just lying there, blinking at them. But he kept staring at Lila. She returned his gaze defiantly.

“I know you,” Jack finally said. His voice was raw sounding, and syrupy slow from the heavy narcotics.

“You sure do. I'm the one you shot at yesterday.” Lila walked closer to him, leaning over his body. “I'm also Ava Day's sister. Do you remember Ava?”

Jack closed his eyes and nodded. “Of course. Of course I do.”

“Do you also happen to remember that you framed her for your murder? Or did the car knock that straight out of your head?”

“Mistakes were made. I'll be the first to admit that. I am not a perfect man.”

“Are you kidding me?” Lila said with an outraged laugh. “You call framing my sister and ruining our family a
mistake
?”

“Lila,” Teddy said in a warning tone. She knew she had to fight to stay as professional as possible. Otherwise her rage would stop her from getting the answers she so desperately needed.

“I don't expect you to understand.” Jack stared out of the hospital window, which overlooked a brick wall. “I don't expect anyone to understand. But I know that history will absolve me.”

Teddy and Lila exchanged glances.

Jack continued, “What I did, I did for my country. And every great patriot has to make sacrifices. Ava was a small sacrifice. Giving up my life was a much greater one.”

He wasn't making sense. Lila continued her questioning: “If history will absolve you, you must first explain yourself.”

Jack turned toward Lila and gave her a conspiratorial smirk. “Ah, see! You understand me. Many times,” he said, lowering his voice, “great men are terribly misunderstood by their contemporaries.”

“Yes,” Lila said, turning to Teddy with a shrug of her shoulders. Then Jack began to nod off as the morphine worked its magic. Teddy leaned over Jack, lightly tapping him on the cheek to bring him back to coherence.

“You were telling us that you are a great patriot,” Lila said. “But you haven't told us why.”

“I was?” Jack said. He was confused, looking around the room as if he were seeing it for the first time.

“Maybe we should wait,” Teddy said. “He's totally out of it.”

Lila shook her head. She knew this was the ideal time to get the old man talking. When the morphine drip was turned off, he might not be as chatty.

She sat herself down on Jack's bed, causing him to wince in pain as he held his hand against his ribs. Jack Warren trained his widened eyes on Lila. “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants,” he rasped.

“And which one are you?” she asked.

“I told you, I'm a patriot.”

“But you still haven't told me why.”

“Because I made the ultimate sacrifice that any freedom fighter can make. I died for my country.”

“You seem pretty alive to me,” Lila said. “Banged up good, but still breathing.”

Jack shook his head and a dry, wheezing cough overcame him. He picked up a cup of water, which dribbled over him as his shaky hand brought it to his lips. “It seemed like a decent bargain at first,” Jack said. “I didn't have any money and his family had more than they needed.”

Lila didn't understand what he was talking about, but then it clicked. “The Campos family,” she said. She translated for Teddy: “When Jack was just starting Warren Software, his college buddy Thiago convinced his dad, who was a Brazilian general, to pony up the seed money.”

Teddy nodded, signaling that he understood.

“Yes. Thiago Campos,” Jack answered. His eyes were closed, as if he had been transported back in time. “I needed investors for my company, but I was young . . . untested. Thiago said that his father was willing to give me what I needed. I knew about his family. I mean, everyone did. That's why Thiago was so unpopular at Harvard. All those liberal twits didn't want to be seen with the son of a right-­wing general. But I didn't care.”

“Why would you?” Lila said.

“Exactly!” Jack exclaimed. “But let me tell you, now I know that the Campos clan deserved their terrible reputation. I should've seen it coming, but I was too anxious to build my own company. There was no way I was going to turn down that money.”

A nurse walked in and put an anemic-­looking tray of food down in front of Jack. Lila delighted in watching this erstwhile gourmet who feasted on caviar and oysters be given a cold grilled cheese sandwich.

Jack continued, “It was fine for a decade or so, but then everything fell apart. It was 1988. Warren Software was growing beyond my wildest dreams. I was a newlywed. And Elise had just found out she was pregnant. That same year
Time
magazine named me Man of the Year. I brought the personal computer to the world. It was around this time I heard from Thiago again. It had been over a decade. I figured he was calling to congratulate me on the whole
Time
magazine thing, but he sounded strange, saying he was in town and could I meet him that night. He said it was a matter of life or death. So I met him. Of course I did. He was acting totally nuts. Said his country was on the brink of a coup, that his father had been arrested and thrown in jail. It was crazy stuff. But you know how unstable third-­world countries can be.”

“Sure do,” Lila said, willing to say anything to keep Jack talking.

“Where was I?” Jack asked.

“A coup in Brazil,” Teddy offered from his seat by the window. He gave Lila an encouraging wink.

“Oh, right. Right. Well, Thiago asks me for a favor. And, looking back on it, this is where I made the one crucial error. This is the thing I wish I never did. By that time Warren Software was the default operating system in every personal computer on the planet. Thiago wanted to know if I could somehow hack into the computers of his father's rivals. Then he could find out what information they might have on his dad. And I said absolutely not. But Thiago begged me. He had once been a good friend and I owed a lot of the success of the company to the Campos family. Plus, Thiago said these men were terrible thugs. And could kill his father. So I did it.”

“Sometimes you have to do bad to do good,” Lila said.

“Hacking into the system was remarkably easy. But of course it was for me. I designed it.” Even in these terrible circumstances, Jack was still vain about his talents. He continued, “I gave Thiago the information he needed, and he went away. But it didn't last. He came back again, and this time his request was much worse. So I refused. I told him I wasn't afraid of him or his father. Thiago said it was way bigger than that. These were dangerous men that would ruin me in a second. They'd ruin me, and they'd murder my family. So I did what they asked. I didn't think there was any other choice. Starting in 1995, I did whatever they wanted. Using a back door in the software, I was able to hack into the operating systems of the CIA, the FBI, British Petroleum, GE, you name it.”

“Do you know what they did with the information?” Lila asked, amazed at what Jack was saying.

“Never. I didn't want to know anything.” He began to whimper slightly. “And then September eleventh happened. I remember it so clearly. That was the morning I knew I had to change everything. If I kept helping foreigners access secrets of my government, I was no better than the men who flew the planes into the World Trade Center.”

“So you faked your own death?” Lila asked, still not seeing how the pieces fit together.

“That wasn't my first plan, let me tell you. I tried everything to sever my ties with those Brazilian scumbags. But nothing worked. That's when I started palling around with Senator Baines. I had him sic the CIA on those South American bastards, but that only made them angrier. They started having me followed. Then I started spending more time on yachts.” He paused. “At least out there in the middle of the ocean, you know when you're being tailed.”

Lila couldn't believe what she was hearing. For years she'd thought Jack had been killed by a jealous wife. The truth was a million times more complex.

“Campos's thugs threatened to kill me if I refused to cooperate. They threatened my daughter and my wife. That's when I knew I had to really give it all up to be free of them. Including the company that I spent my life creating.”

Lila and Teddy sat there, stunned. “The source code,” Lila whispered, figuring out the final piece. Jack realized that if his software had a weak spot that allowed hackers to access every user's private data, he'd need to destroy every hard drive that was vulnerable.

“I had it all planned. I was going to take myself out and destroy Warren Software, leaving that prick Seth Liss to clean up the carnage. I wrote a source code for a software update that should have destroyed the hundreds of millions of PCs with my operating system. But that didn't make its way through the system as I had intended. My declaration that all manufacturing would be returned back to American soil knocked some of the stuffing out of the company's share price, just as I had wanted, but it eventually rebounded. And our acquisition of Peregrine, which was a lousy-­piece-­of-­shit company that I thought might spell the end for Warren, also fell through. Seth, unfortunately, turned out to be less of an idiot than I had thought. He kept the company alive even after I was gone. All I managed to do was take care of myself, and my family. And now I haven't even done that.” He laid his head back and closed his eyes.