The God's Eye View (29 page)

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43

M
anus lay on his back in one of the beds, one eye closed, the other open just a crack. Evie had been in the bathroom for almost an hour, presumably composing her message to Hamilton’s editor. And then she had come out and sat on one of the chairs in the small room, keeping watch through the window as she had said. Now Manus was waiting for her to do what he thought she was planning next.

He knew they were already at cross-purposes. And while he respected her determination, he also thought confronting the director head-on was suicidal. They had no good options, but Manus was sure returning the thumb drive and a promise of silence would be the least worst of the realistic possibilities. If he could get the drive, he would do what he had to, and hope Evie would understand after that it was for her own good. And Dash’s.

He thought about where she had told Delgado she had hidden the drive. There was no way to be sure, of course, but Manus sensed it was someplace she had in fact considered and then rejected. The best lies were generally the ones closest to the truth, and in the confusion and terror of the Sprinter, a smart person like Evie would have reached for something familiar, something real.

Besides, the director had said her cell phone geolocation records indicated she hadn’t been home since retrieving the drive. Manus had searched her car—and, he thought with a jolt of fury and disgust, Delgado would have been no less comprehensive in searching her person. A good hiding place had to be both secure and accessible, with familiarity also a plus, and for Evie, the senior center would have been all three. If she had hidden the drive somewhere in the women’s room, she had chosen an exceptionally clever spot, because Manus had searched the room carefully on just this kind of hunch. Or she’d chosen poorly, and the drive had been discovered by a third party. It was also possible she’d placed it somewhere in her father’s room. Regardless of the exact location, Manus had a feeling the senior center was the place.

He waited another half hour, then deepened his breathing. He couldn’t hear it himself, but he could feel it and knew it would be audible to Evie. A few minutes went by, and then he was gratified to see her walk over to Dash’s bed. Manus couldn’t see what she was doing without turning his head, but he thought he knew.

A minute later, he saw them heading to the door. The boy had on his backpack; Evie was holding her bag in one hand and the laptop under her arm. Manus imagined the conversation she must have had with the sleepy child:
We have to go, Dash. We’re going to meet Mr. Manus later. For now he needs to sleep. No questions, okay? I’ll explain everything soon.

Something like that, anyway.

The moment they were gone, Manus got up and watched through the window as they headed into the front office.

She was on her way to get the thumb drive, as he’d expected. And he would be there waiting for her.

CHAPTER
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44

E
vie and Dash walked into the front office. There was an old guy sitting behind the desk—the one Marvin had described, presumably—watching a small television that appeared not much newer than he did. He looked up and said, “Help you?”

“I just wanted to return the laptop,” Evie said, trying to sound blasé.

“Oh,” the man said, apparently realizing she must have been the person for whom Marvin borrowed it. “Sure.”

“And if you could call us a cab.”

“At this hour? You must have an early flight.”

“That’s right.”

The man looked at her swollen lip and his expression darkened. “Say, how’d you get that lip?”

“Hmm? Oh, just a stupid accident.”

“A stupid accident, huh? That big fella hit you? There was something about him, I could tell.”

“What? No. No. Nothing like that.”

“You protecting him? I’ve seen this kind of thing before. Now you’re running off with your little boy to protect him, too. Sneaking out while the big bastard is sleeping off a drunk. And probably not for the first time, is my guess.”

“Look, I appreciate your concern, but it’s really not like that.”

“The hell it isn’t,” the old guy said, picking up the receiver of a landline phone. “I’m calling the cops.”

“No!” Evie said, alarmed at how quickly and weirdly her simple plan was being hijacked by this codger. “No, please, I promise you, it isn’t what you think. Please.”

The old guy paused, the receiver halfway to his ear. Then he shook his head as though doubting his own judgment, and put the receiver back in its cradle. “You sure you know what you’re doing?”

The question was obviously pro forma, but nonetheless for an instant it caught Evie off guard because, good God, could she have any
less
an idea of what she was doing?

Then she got it together. She nodded and placed the laptop on the counter. “Quite sure. And really, thank you for your concern. Even though I promise you it’s misplaced.”

The old guy looked at Dash. “You all right, son?”

In his sleepiness and confusion, Dash hadn’t managed to read the man’s lips. He looked at Evie, and she signed a translation. Dash turned back to the old guy and gave him a tired thumbs-up.

“Oh,” the old guy said, nodding as though this explained everything. “Deaf, is he? Like his father?”

Evie smiled. The smile felt overbright, but at this point she had no idea how else to react.

“That cab,” she said. “If you could.”

CHAPTER
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45

R
emar closed the door behind Delgado and turned to the director. He tried to keep the concern—no, the outright distress—out of his expression, but he doubted he was notably successful.

“I know,” the director said, pacing. “It’s bad.”

“Bad? We’ve got a thumb drive all about God’s Eye floating around with no idea where. We’ve got your junkyard dog helping the woman who took it. Oh, and gutting our own operatives while he’s at it. Have you ever thought about how much Manus knows? How badly he could incriminate us if he turns? Or make that, now that he has turned.”

Of course, there was some nuance Remar was deliberately leaving out. Manus was the director’s man, having done God knew what on the director’s orders. The truth was, and as far as the world would be concerned, Remar had nothing to do with Manus. Everyone knew the director was a fanatic about operational security. It stood to reason that whatever existed between the director and his personal contractor was between them only.

The director stopped pacing and tugged at his chin. “I don’t think he has turned, actually. As I said, I think he wants to get us that drive. But he doesn’t want the woman harmed, either. I think he’s going to cooperate. Possibly even contact us. At which point, we thank him for his troubles and have Jones’s detachment put him down.”

Remar didn’t respond. There was something so cold about the matter-of-fact way the director had put it. Whatever else Manus was, his loyalty had always been exemplary. To hear the director so casually describe . . . euthanizing him was unnerving.

“Well,” Remar said, “I’m glad we have a plan, anyway. There’s just one thing missing. Where the hell are they? Gallagher is fundamentally a civilian, but Manus is CIA and Spec Ops trained. Between the two of them, they know a hell of a lot about our capabilities. Sure, eventually we’ll find them, but I don’t think ‘eventually’ is quite going to cut it here. Unless you’re planning on just waiting for Manus to call in?”

The director started pacing again. Remar could sense the mental gears turning. But it was taking a long time for them to spit something out.

Finally, the director stopped. He looked at Remar and said, “What’s the status of God’s Ear?”

Remar shook his head, realizing just how desperate the director had become. “Ted, you can’t be serious.”

“What’s the status?”

“It’s not even close to being ready for—”

The director slammed a hand down on his desk and shouted, “Well, make it ready!”

Remar had about had enough. “How, Ted? You want me to suspend the laws of physics? It’s too much data, too many false positives, requiring too much processing power to sift through. Maybe in a year, maybe six months, if we’re lucky. But not now.”

“Why? The data’s there, Mike. Every cell phone has a microphone. If we’re not going to listen in, why the hell did we develop WARRIOR PRIDE and NOSEY SMURF? We can even use the phone’s gyroscopes like microphones—what was the point of that program if we’re not going to use it? Every new car has Bluetooth, and voice recognition, and a microphone that gets activated when an airbag deploys, or when the driver wants to access some concierge service. Home entertainment systems are getting equipped with voice recognition. People are installing personal electronic assistants like that Amazon Echo in their homes. All voice-activated. And how many baby monitors are there? The whole world is being wired for sound, every vehicle, every room, every person. We need to access that. We need to use it.”

“But we can’t make sense of it yet. God’s brain hasn’t caught up to God’s Ear.”

“Damn it, you’re not thinking. The parameters here are small. Only a certain radius from Gallagher’s apartment. We can redeploy the sensors in the JLENS blimps—we were going to do that anyway. That is a huge multiplier on what we can perceive in the DC area.”

The Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System was a pair of surveillance blimps the army had managed to launch over Maryland, ostensibly to defend against cruise missiles. In Remar’s view, the near-three-billion-dollar program was a giant white elephant. On the other hand, as the director said, it could be redeployed. But still.

“And the dirtboxes,” the director went on. “That joint CIA/US Marshals cell phone tracking program. We’ll repurpose that, too.”

Remar thought that one might make a little more sense. The program involved the use of planes that mimicked cell phone towers, tricking phones into reporting unique registration information. CIA and the Marshals had most of the US population covered, but for Gallagher and Manus they would need coverage only of the DC area.

“Okay, fine,” Remar said. “You’re saying the data set is manageable because we’d only be listening for two voices.”

“That’s right. Gallagher’s. And Manus’s.”

“Manus barely talks. He signs.”

For a moment, the director looked crestfallen. Then he shook it off.

“It doesn’t matter. We only need a snippet. We know that. It’s been prototyped. And his voice is unusual, too, because of his deafness. When he does talk, we can pick it out from the background noise more easily than the norm. Anyway, they’re together—we don’t need both of them, just one or the other.”

“Look, even within the parameters you’re describing, the processing power we’d need would be massive. What do you want to do, shut down everything else?”

“Yes! Yes, if that’s what it takes. Why not?”

Remar couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You’re saying you want us to go dark on all the terrorist chatter, on the Kremlin’s plans for Ukraine, on the launch of new Chinese spy satellites, on the cartels in Mexico, on the disposition of nukes in India and Pakistan . . . so we can try to listen in on Manus and Gallagher?”

“If we don’t find Manus and Gallagher, if someone puts out God’s Eye, we will be shut down. Game over. We’ll be deaf and blind anyway. All I’m proposing is a short . . . hiatus. Probably no more than twenty-four hours, possibly a good deal less than that. Divert all the processing power we need to locate Manus and Gallagher, roll them up, and we’re done. We save God’s Eye. And who knows, maybe we learn from field-testing God’s Ear how to bring it on line faster.”

“How the hell are we even going to explain this? We can’t divert that much processing power discreetly. Half the technical side of the organization is going to know.”

“Intel on a second bomb threat. All need-to-know.”

“A bomb threat? For something like what you’re describing, they’ll think we’re under nuclear attack. There will be leaks. You’ll cause a panic.”

“Not if we clarify that the parameters are extremely tight and the time frame extremely limited. By the time anyone even has a chance to think too much about it, it’ll already be over.”

Remar didn’t answer. He was no longer asking himself whether the director had lost it. That question had been answered, and there was no time to be emotional about it. He just needed to figure out what to do.

But the director seemed to take his silence as assent. “Don’t you see? We need this. It’s like I said, every time some civil liberties extremist leaks another one of our capabilities, we have to develop new ones. Well, God’s Eye is at risk now. At a minimum, we have to have God’s Ear to replace it. And Manus and Gallagher will have no idea it’s out there. They’ll walk right into it.”

CHAPTER
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46

H
ello, miss, hello, son, where may I take you this morning?”

The man had a sunny Maharashtra accent. For some reason, Evie found it reassuring.

“Is there a Walmart around here?”

“There is indeed, a twenty-four-hour facility on Route 30. Will that be your destination today?”

“I just need to stop there to pick up a few things. My destination is in Columbia. Is that all right?”

“Of course, as long as you don’t mind the meter running.”

“I don’t mind at all. Thank you.”

She and Dash were in and out of the Walmart in less than ten minutes—Evie with a new prepaid cell phone, Dash with some new comic books—and a little over an hour later, they were standing in front of the senior center, watching the cab drive off. Evie pulled on the door but it didn’t open. Of course. They’d keep it locked at night.

She knocked on the glass. She didn’t recognize the person behind the desk—a big man in scrubs, unlike the attractive women in business suits they seemed to favor during the day. An orderly, she supposed, more than a receptionist.

The man looked up, then stood and came to the door. “Can I help you?” he asked.

“Yes, thank you, my father lives here, and . . . well, would it be all right if I see him?”

“Ma’am, visiting hours don’t start until seven.”

“Yes, I know. And I know it’s odd, but . . . look, could you at least open the door? It feels strange to have to talk to you through the glass.”

The man looked dubious, but it was a retirement home, for God’s sake, not a bank. He unlocked the door and opened it, but didn’t step out of the way or invite her in.

“Thank you,” she said. “The thing is, my son and I are going on a trip. On our way to the airport, in fact. And . . . I had this terrible dream, just before I woke up, that my father would be gone when we got back. I know it’s silly, but it felt so much like a premonition. I just wanted to make sure we saw him before we left. In case. Would that be all right?”

The man was still wearing the dubious expression, but Evie thought she detected some softening in it. There was a pause, and he said, “What’s your father’s name?”

“Kevin Gallagher. Room 717. And I’m Evie, by the way.” She extended her hand and the man shook it.

“And I’m Cooper. I know Mister Gallagher. Very nice man, very polite with the staff, though he doesn’t always remember where he is.”

She didn’t know whether Cooper was a first name or a last. Either way, apparently it was what he wanted to be called. “I know. He’s been . . . declining. But yes, he’s the same nice man he always was. There’s that, at least.”

Cooper looked at Dash. “Here to see your grandfather, son?”

Dash nodded.

That seemed to seal the deal. Cooper nodded and held the door open. “Don’t be too long, all right? It’s not exactly the crime of the century, but I could get in trouble letting you in here after hours.”

“Thank you so much, Cooper. I promise, we’ll make it quick.”

She and Dash went and looked in on her father, who was asleep and snoring loudly. She was actually afraid he might wake up—if he was lucid, it would make it hard to leave quickly, which they very much needed to do. She wondered about the story she had made up for Cooper. Was that her unconscious speaking up? Because she did have the dreadful sense that this really could be the last time she saw her father. She pushed the feeling away. She couldn’t be emotional. She couldn’t let herself be afraid, or it would just consume her. She had to focus.

On the way out, she asked Dash if he needed the bathroom. He shook his head.

For a second, she was afraid to leave him alone and considered bringing him in with her.

You’re jumping at shadows now
, she told herself.
No one’s here. It’s practically the middle of the night. The doors are locked.

Okay, you wait here
, she signed.
I’ll be right out.

She headed into the women’s room and went straight to the hiding place. The thumb drive was exactly where she’d left it. Well, why wouldn’t it be? But she was almost surprised. The director, and Delgado, and Marvin being involved with them . . . she realized she’d almost started to suspect they were omniscient, and that they would have gotten here ahead of her. But no, everything was fine. So far.

Back in the corridor, she signed, Y
ou know what? I just need to use one of the computers in the rec center for a minute—a work thing. Want to play an online game?

Dash loved his online baseball games, but for once his enthusiasm was muted.
I guess.

What is it, hon?

I’m tired. What’s going on? Why are we here?

It killed her that he was being such a trooper. And that he looked so zonked.
Just some things I need to take care of. And I wanted to see Grandpa. Only a little while longer, okay?

They walked into the rec center. The rest of the facility was dead quiet, and she’d been expecting the same here. But there was a white-haired man at one of the two terminals. She recognized him—Mr. Bollinger, who she knew played checkers with her father when her father was able.
Shit
.

Mr. Bollinger looked up when they came in. “Oh, Evie, what are you doing here? Is your father all right?”

“Thank you, Mr. Bollinger. He’s fine. Just checking up on him.”

“At this hour?”

“It’s a long story. And what are you doing up?”

“Oh, I don’t sleep well since my wife passed. Sometimes I’ll find a fellow insomniac in here and we’ll chat. Otherwise, I read the news online.”

“I see. Actually, I was just going to use one of the terminals myself. A work thing.” She signed to Dash,
Okay if you wait on the baseball, good-looking? Only one terminal.

Dash nodded. And though he couldn’t have known what they were saying, Mr. Bollinger seemed to understand the gist. He said, “Oh, why don’t you both have a go? I need to attend to a call of nature, anyway.”

“You sure?” Evie said, wanting desperately to just say
thank you
instead.

“Oh, these days never surer of anything than that. Here, have at it.” Mr. Bollinger got up and shuffled out, and suddenly, mercifully, they had the room, and the terminals, to themselves.

Dash sat and started working the keyboard. As soon as she saw he was engaged, Evie downloaded Tor—not exactly shocking that none of the residents seemed to have done so earlier—and checked the SecureDrop file she had established at the
Intercept
. There was a reply. Her heart kicked and she opened it.

Call me at the number below as soon as you can after getting this message. The number belongs to a burner phone, purchased for cash, never used before. To make the call, you should first purchase one of your own.

If after talking we decide to proceed, I propose we meet at the Pennyfield Lock boat launch on the C&O Canal. It is very important that we do NOT discuss the location on the phone. We can talk about a time, but not a place. Given the precautions we’re already using, I doubt anyone could be listening, but we should also be extra careful and not take anything for granted.

The boat launch is easy to find. Don’t search for it online—again, just an abundance of caution. Use paper maps if you have to, but the directions are actually quite simple: it’s at one end of Pennyfield Lock Road, the other end of which is at River Road in Potomac. Turn onto Pennyfield and follow it to the water, at which point you have to turn either right or left. Turn right and you’ll see the boat launch just ahead of you. There’s a gravel parking area just above it. That’s where we’ll meet.

Do NOT use your own vehicle or one that could be associated with you. If you have a cell phone with you, make sure the battery has been removed. If it’s a model where you can’t remove the battery, you CANNOT bring it with you.

I’ll be holding something, probably a newspaper or magazine in both hands. If either of my hands is empty, it means either that the person you’re looking at is someone else, or that there’s a problem and you have to abort. Do the same. Unless both your hands are occupied, I will NOT approach.

If I see you with both hands occupied, I’ll ask you if there’s a way to rent a kayak. You tell me you think they’re closed for the season. At that point, we’ll each know we’re dealing with who we’re supposed to be dealing with.

There was a phone number at the bottom. She wrote it on a piece of paper, double-checked, and closed and purged everything.

She touched Dash on the shoulder. He looked over and she signed,
Come on, hon, gotta go.

Dash looked back to the screen, then to her again.
Just five more minutes? I’m at level four in—

She laughed, glad he was distracted.
Later, okay? Got a lot to do this morning.

They headed back to the front desk.

Cooper looked up as they approached. “Your old man doing okay?”

“He’s fine. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.”

Cooper waved a hand. “Ah, it was nothing. Glad you got to see him. Nice man, like I said.”

“Could I ask you one more small favor?”

Cooper raised his eyebrows. There was something about the man’s face that lent itself to dubiousness.

“I, uh, forgot my cell phone—”

Cooper cocked his head as though this visit was getting less plausible by the minute. A suffocating sense of despair started to close in on her. Everything she was doing was so transparent. If a drunken motel clerk and a tired nursing home orderly could see right through her, what the hell chance did she have against NSA?

But she forced the feeling away. She had to stay focused. She had to get through this. For Dash. For Dash.

“I know,” she said. “It’s a long story and it’s been pretty crazy. But . . . if I could use your phone to call a cab? I’d really, really appreciate it.”

“It’s no trouble. I just hope you’re okay.”

“We’re fine. I just need that cab.”

“Hang on.” He leaned forward for a closer look at something behind his monitor—a list of frequently called numbers, she guessed—punched some digits into the desk phone, and handed her the receiver. She told the person who answered that she needed a cab from the senior center in Columbia to Baltimore/Washington International Airport. As soon as possible. Oh, there was one right in the area? Five minutes? That would be perfect.

She handed the receiver back to Cooper. “Thank you. We’ll wait outside, okay? I don’t want to cause you any more trouble than we already have.”

“Hey now, listen, it’s no trouble. You can—”

“No, no, it’s really okay. It’s starting to get light, and we don’t get to see that many sunrises. Besides, they said it would be just a few minutes.”

“All right, if you really don’t mind waiting outside. If you change your mind, though, I’m right here at this desk. Just knock on the glass again.”

Dash signed,
I need to use the bathroom after all.

She nodded.
Okay, but hurry up. Cab’s coming in five minutes.

She made a little small talk with Cooper while Dash was gone. There were so many nice people around her. She didn’t know why she’d never really appreciated that before. She was going to change that.

If she got through this.

Dash came back, and Cooper came around and let them out. The sky was pink in the east, she was pleased to see, and it really was lovely. It had been a long night. She was glad it was almost morning.

Manus sat in the pickup, watching from a parking lot across the street as Evie and Dash emerged from the senior center. For a cab, no doubt, the same way they had arrived. She would know not to use Uber or Lyft; the services tracked user movements so closely it was hard to imagine NSA hadn’t found a way into their systems, covertly or with their cooperation.

He’d thought she would go to the senior center, and it had been easy enough to take an alternate route and arrive before they had. He’d watched them go in, and now that they were out, he could tell from the relief in her expression that she’d retrieved the thumb drive. He hated what he had to do next, but there was no other way. He started to get out of the truck.

A cab pulled up. He paused, his hand on the door handle. Rush the cab? No, they were already getting in, it was too late. Damn, he should have waited somewhere closer to the entrance. But he hadn’t wanted to take a chance on being seen, and he hadn’t expected to have so little time to move in.

He considered running them off the road, but was concerned someone could be injured. Maybe a fender bender? The driver would stop to exchange information. But it would be a lot to manage: the woman, making a hell of a fuss; the driver, growing increasingly concerned, possibly intervening. Manus didn’t want a scene in front of the boy. Didn’t want to hurt him in any way. Better just to follow them for the moment.

He’d get another opportunity. And this time, he wouldn’t wait.