ZerOes (20 page)

Hollis pounds on the wall next to him. Shane gives a quizzical look, but understands soon enough when the door to Copper's office—er, “office”—opens up and Rivera steps inside. Rivera's a field gone to seed. He's ex-DEA out of Tucson. Unshaven. Hollis isn't sure what Golathan has on him. But it doesn't matter.

“Finally,” Rivera says. “I can handle my own pod, Copper.”

“Not anymore you can't.”

“What?”

“You're done. You get to go home.”

“Shut up and quit fuckin' with me, Copper.” Rivera laughs, but it's a nervous laugh, a stuttering
heh-heh-heh
. “You're not my boss,
brother
.”

“No, but Golathan is, and turns out even
he
isn't willing to turn a blind eye to you doing absolutely not one iota of your job these days.
So pack your shit. You leave tonight. Metzger will drive you to the Allentown airport. Also, so you know, the agency put a hold on your bank account to examine it for untoward criminal activity. Seems someone's been hacking money into your account—surely as some sort of ploy to incriminate you, since I know you'd never
willingly
accept bribes. Right? Good news is, they'll shut that account down and clean all of that naughty hacker money out of it.”

Rivera's eyes squeeze shut in a flare of anger. He's about to speak, but Copper gets ahead of that:

“I wouldn't say anything more except ‘thank you.' Thank you, Agent Copper, for doing your job and exposing those who would have done me harm.”

Through gritted teeth, Rivera says: “Thank you, Agent Copper.”

“Good. Now scoot.”

And then Rivera's gone. Leaving Copper and Graves alone once more.

Shane licks his lips. Chuckles a little. “That's cool. Rivera was weak meat. I like a challenge.”

“A challenge. I'm glad you said that, because, like they say on those infomercials,
but wait, there's more
.” From his pocket, Copper pulls out the USB drive taken off Shane. “A list of all the guards here. Spreadsheets showing their bank account numbers and home addresses and other bits of pertinent data.”

“I . . . took that off Chance.”

“Chance Dalton? Who couldn't hack a candy bar in half?”

“I hear he's doing better.”

“Just the same, this is naughty business, Shane. If you were anybody else you'd be washing out to some supermax prison right now. But you're not. Golathan likes you. He reminds me that you aren't like anyone else here. You
wanted
to be here. You offered yourself up to us.” He sees Shane shift uncomfortably in his seat. “Trying to get away from those enemies I was talking about?”

“I'm just a proud American.”

“Well, now you're a proud American who really is like everyone else.”

“I don't follow.”

“I'm balancing the books with you. Taking away all your tricks and treats. All your little luxuries. Now you get to return to the basic privileges everyone else has. And the guards will be told about what you had on that USB drive.”

“You're making a mistake.”

“Am I? Is that a threat?”

“Just a statement.” Graves hesitates. “This is a ploy. Reagan Stolper is doing me dirty. You check right now. Check my cabin. I'll bet she's there.”

Hollis shrugs. He turns around, pulls up his computer. Takes him a few awkward minutes to figure out how to pull up the camera feeds and navigate to them—at first he feels a little embarrassed, but then he notices how it's agitating Graves. Copper once read that when people watch other people make mistakes often their own brains react as if it's
them
making the mistakes—they internalize the errors of others. Owning the mistakes personally. And it makes them uncomfortable, embarrassed, frustrated. So Hollis delays a little, dicks around, opens solitaire, pretends he doesn't know what he's doing. Finally, he gets around to opening the camera feeds.

The camera pointing to and inside Shane's cabin is just static.

“See?” Graves says.

Copper shrugs. “Malfunctioning cameras. What a shame.”

Reagan swipes the card. Shane's cabin pops open.

Aleena hesitates.

“Hey, Kardashian,” Reagan hisses. “Come
on
.”

“I don't know why you keep calling me that. The Kardashians are hot.”

“They're not. Okay, Kim's
kinda
hot. But that one sister looks like a shaved Wookiee. She's basically a giant thumb with a wig.”

“So you're saying I'm ugly.”

“No, I'm saying I have a stupid-ass nickname for you that means essentially nothing except I keep using it because it upsets you. Are we seriously talking about this? Jesus,
c'mon
.” Reagan grabs Aleena and pulls her in.

“What is all this?” Aleena asks, looking around.

Over by a laptop, Reagan says, “These are the thousand luxuries of Ivo Shandor.”

“No, I mean, what's
this
? What's your angle? Why am I even here with you? You hate us. You're a horrible monster.”

For a moment, Reagan actually looks stung. Then she frowns and waves it away. “I'm helping us.”

“Are you helping us or hurting Shane?”

“Ennnnh, six to
may
toes one way, half a dozen to
mah
toes the other way.”

“Are the cameras really off?”

Reagan nods. “Dumb-ass gave me a cryptophone to shut them off.”

“Are you just setting me up?”

“Not this time.”

“I don't believe you.”

Reagan shows her teeth like a cornered animal. “God, fuck, can you just help me over here? The guy's got a laptop, a drawer full of USB drives, another drawer with a handful of fucking Floydphones. Shane Graves has had it too good for too long. Thinks he's David Blaine or some shit. So he can go piss up a flagpole.”

Hesitantly, Aleena steps farther into the cabin. She's half afraid that at any second some comically large iron cage is going to drop over her, but she admits curiosity. She steps forward, opens one drawer, and sees the USB keys. Opens the other drawer, and sure enough: black matte phones. Cryptophones. No carriers. Entirely encrypted. Hacker treasure.

“Is this why you've been messing with Chance?” she asks Reagan.

“The answer is more complex than ‘yes,' but for now, sure.”

Aleena feels a faint shudder in her feet a few seconds before she hears footsteps on the planks outside. She throws Reagan an angry look, but Reagan is already grabbing her shoulder and pulling her down behind the desk. “Get down!”

Chen and Ashbaugh slink by—Chen laughing,
haw-haw-haw
, Ashbaugh's words muted, but it sounds like he's telling a story or maybe a joke. They stop in front of Shane's cabin. Aleena can only make out a few words: . . .
believe
. . .
shit Graves
. . .
?
. . .
punk owns us
. Then, more clearly:
He's Copper's problem now
. Her blood turns to an icy river when Chen says:
We should go take his stuff
.

The door starts to rattle.

Ashbaugh:
Cameras, Chen. Cameras. You want Copper on your ass, too?

Chen is again all
heh-heh haw-haw, oh yeah okay
, and then the footsteps retreat until they can't be heard any longer.

Aleena presses her thumbs in her eyes so hard she sees blue stars smearing across her vision. “That was scary.”

Reagan stands, says, “Scary? Don't you, like, hack tyrannical governments and mess with terrorist organizations and whatever?”

“Yes. But this is different. That's . . . distant. This is personal. They catch me . . .” She feels tears hot at the edges of her eyes. “They catch me, I don't know what happens to my family. What happens if they catch you, Reagan?”

There's a moment of quiet between them. Uncomfortable, tense, uncertain. Reagan finally shrugs and says, “Nothing. I got nothing to lose, nobody to love. And I like it that way.” But the way she says it, Aleena isn't so sure.

“Graves is going to go to war with us over this.”

A manic smile spreads across Reagan's face. “I know. But it won't matter.”

“Why is that?”

She holds up his laptop. “Because he's going to help us escape.”

NSA HEADQUARTERS, FORT MEADE, MARYLAND

G
olathan checks his watch. 10:15
P
.
M
. Night's gotten its claws in. The building here is mostly empty. He sits in his office, feeling tension coil around his neck and shoulder muscles like a python.

Then his monitor goes from dark to light. And there on his screen is Leslie Cilicia-Ceto.

“Leslie,” Golathan says. “Was beginning to think you weren't going to call.”

Her smile is pinched—the smile of a tired, suspicious woman. “I apologize. Caught up in diagnostics.”

“Typhon,” he says—a question by way of a statement, a question to which he already knows the answer.

Her pinched smile relaxes slightly. So, yes: Typhon.

“Leslie, I should be there. I need to be on-site. I need a demonstration.”

“We're almost there. Patience, Ken.”

Off-screen where she can't see, he wraps a hand around a stapler and squeezes. He has a momentary fantasy where the stapler crushes up like an empty Coke can. He sucks air between his teeth and says, “Leslie, I like to think I've been patient. But we're about a hundred
miles past that. I've got people perched on my back like rabid monkeys, and they're all chattering for bananas or blood. I need some bananas, Leslie, or I gotta give them blood. Which means I need to do a site visit, and I need to see what's going on there.” He lowers his voice. “The thing with that mess in Beallsville—”

“Was an error,” she interrupts. “And I'm thankful you corrected it.”

“A cop
died
. Other cops don't just look the other way when one of the boys in blue gets got. They will continue to kick the shadows till something squeals.”

“Nothing will squeal. Everything is buttoned up. Thanks, in part, to you.”

“Leslie, is Typhon not working?”

She opens her mouth but then closes it again, as if thinking better of what she was about to say. “Typhon is operational. But a real test, a
true
test—”

“We're not doing that. You have the environment to test. We've given you as much as we can, Leslie. The Hunting Lodge—”

“Has been invaluable.” Another interruption. It's not really like her—she seems agitated tonight. Normally she's as placid as a mountain lake. “In fact, I am willing to predict that the Lodge's purpose will soon be fulfilled.”

“The penetration test is complete?”

“Almost. Collectively they've uncovered far more vulnerabilities than we had imagined—and with each discovery, the castle grows stronger. Typhon is already smart, but I am happy to know that the system is also safe. So thank you for that.”

“I need to do a site visit, Leslie. Soon.”

She nods. “I know. Soon! I promise. I just don't want to show you a program operating at eighty percent. I want to show you the butterfly, not the chrysalis.”

“Two weeks is all you get.”

“Three,” she says. At times like this the faint chirp of her British accent just makes her sound all the snootier. “I think . . . yes, three weeks should be about right. I anticipate that is when the Lodge project will be complete.”

Two weeks is already too long, Golathan knows. People don't know what Typhon even
is
at this point. He's been keeping it that way on purpose. If there's something he's learned—and it's something that
applies particularly well to the NSA—people tend to object more to plans than they do to executions. Tell somebody you're going to build an addition to the house and they're likely to find a reason to balk. But show them one in progress or, even better, already done? It's as if reality asserts itself in their minds and they just go with it. His wife always says, “Better to ask for forgiveness than permission.” It's how he sees Typhon—just get it done, have something to show, and everyone will applaud. But tell them about Typhon? Describe the
plans
? They'll throw him in some far-flung black site prison quick as lightning.

The burden of the patriot, he thinks. Doing things for his country, a country he loves deeply, that the country might not easily support. Nobody wants to hear about torture or war or prisons, but the gears need to turn, and blood lubricates them.

He breathes a sigh of acquiescence. “Fine. Three weeks. No more.”

“Thank you, Ken.”

“How's your husband?”

“Simon is fine,” she says. “And how is Winifred?”

He tenses up. “You mean Susan.”

“Susan. Yes. Of course.”

Ken narrows his gaze. “She's good. Thanks.”

They exchange a few more pleasantries—it all feels more than a little hollow, an act of artifice—and then the call is over. But he can't get over that. Winifred.

His wife is Susan. At least, that's what everyone calls her. But on her birth certificate, it damn sure says Winifred. A fact she tells absolutely no one because she hates the name—not only does she think it sounds too “old-ladyish,” but the grandmother she's named after was, according to Susan, a crotchety old cat lady whom everyone hated. Winifred is a name even their own children don't know.

That means Leslie is spying. Poking, prodding. At him!
And his family
.

And maybe, just maybe, she's using Typhon to do it.