Authors: John Whitman
His bloodhound was on the scent.
6:58
A
.
M
. PST Senator Drexler’s Office, San Francisco
Debrah Drexler straightened her back and opened her office door. There were two camera crews there and a couple of reporters—she recognized the local girl from Associated Press, and the
San Francisco Chroni
cle
’s political reporter. They all looked sleepy and just a little put out for having to come to her office so early.
Debra Drexler had faced much harsher audiences before. The national spotlight during confirmation hearings had failed to wither her. Scathing op-ed pieces in the
Wall Street Journal
and the
Nation
hadn’t fazed her. But at the moment this tiny contingent of the Fourth Estate was the herald of her doom. It didn’t matter if there was one or four or forty. Once they put her on the record, the news would get out, and everyone would know that Senator Drexler had backed off her hard line on the NAP Act.
“Thanks for coming . . .” she began. There was no sign of Amy.
6:59
A
.
M
. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
The bloodhound sent back information. There were two digital counters, one for files checked and another for matching files found. The “files checked” counter was racking up numbers faster than the eye could follow. The other one remained at zero.
Kelly checked his watch. She’d be talking to them now. It was over.
The right side counter changed from 0 to 1. Then, almost immediately, it seemed to skip 4 and 5 and go right to 6—the total number of pictures.
6 FILES FOUND. DELETE FILES?
“Yes,” he said as he typed.
TRACE BLOODLINE FOR THESE FILES AND DELETE?
“Oh, yeah,” he said again.
DELETE ALL OTHER FILES?
Kelly hesitated. That hadn’t been his plan. It was just one of the evil features of the virus he’d written. He typed in yes with malicious grin.
He picked up the phone and dialed Debrah’s office. “Senator Drexler’s office,” said a young female voice. He checked his watch. 6:59. “Tell her it’s done. Tell
her right now. Go!”
1 2 3 4
5
6 7 8
9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
18 19 20 21 22 23 24
THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLAC
E
BETWEEN THE HOURS OF
7 A.M. AND 8 A.M.
PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
7:00
A
.
M
. PST Senator Drexler’s Office, San Francisco
“I hope you don’t mind the early morning statement,” Debrah said. “You guys always get my quotes wrong after you’ve had your coffee, so maybe you’ll do a bet
ter job before the caffeine kicks in.” Her office door remained closed. No Amy.
They gave her a polite laugh behind their cameras and notepads. She could see the sleepy and impatient looks on their faces. They assumed that a U.S. senator would have some significant reason for giving a statement this early in the morning. They were waiting for it.
She swallowed her pride. “As you know, I’ve been an outspoken opponent of the NAP Act, which goes up for vote in two days before the Senate. Probably the most outspoken. I’m flying back for the vote tomorrow. In the intervening time, I’ve had time to reflect on the current war on terror, and on our activities inside our own borders to keep our people safe. I’ve come to the conclusion that—” she choked. She’d danced around the truth, she’d withheld information, she’d reserved judgment. But in more than twenty years in politics, she had never outright lied. Until now.
“I’ve come to the conclusion that—”
Her office door flew open. Amy appeared. She gave two thumbs up.
Debra Drexler felt warmth and comfort wash over her, a rejuvenating mixture of relief and love and pure, unqualified gratitude. Her knees nearly buckled, but she held herself up. She took a deep breath and gathered herself again. These were cameramen and reporters, and she was a United States senator.
“I’ve come to the conclusion that,” she repeated, “I was absolutely right in my opposition. The so-called New American Privacy Act is the epitome of double-speak. It takes away the rights of our citizens. It violates due process and the right to privacy...”
The woman from the Associated Press groaned audibly. She might as well have gotten up to report that there was fog on San Francisco Bay.
7:03
A
.
M
. PST Westin St. Francis Hotel, San Francisco
In a hotel room not far away, James Quincy fumed at his television screen. That bitch. Did she think he was bluffing? Did she think he wouldn’t release those pictures? Hell, he was planning on releasing them in a few months anyway, just for spite. Now, he’d make sure they were above the fold in every major newspaper in the country if he had to paste them there himself.
But that was for later. First he had to salvage his sinking ship. Quincy picked up a cell phone and dialed a number. It rang only once. “I’m watching the news, too,” said a voice on the other end.
“I can’t believe it,” Quincy said.
“I can. She’s got big balls. You gotta admire it.”
“There’s no other choice now but to make her irrelevant. Everything’s in place for our other plan, isn’t it?”
“Like I said it would be. I’ve been moving that little project along as though this one wasn’t going to work. Which it didn’t.”
“Stop saying I told you so,” Quincy said irritably. “Just get it done.”
He hung up. He hit the mute button on his remote to silence Debrah Drexler, but that gave him only mild satisifaction. He picked up the phone to call his office. At least he could console himself with the release of the pictures.
7:09
A
.
M
. PST Senator Drexler’s Office, San Francisco
“Thanks for coming. Thanks!” Drexler said to the tiny squad of reporters now grumbling and exiting the conference room. Her press people were going to hear some gripes about this, but she didn’t care. She was giddy with excitement.
She practically floated back into her office and closed the door, then dialed Kelly Sharpton’s number. When he answered, she trilled, “You, sir, are hereby granted divinity. You’re a god. How did you do it?”
“It wasn’t that hard.” Kelly’s voice was flat.
“What about—are there any other copies anywhere?” she asked, some of the happiness leaving her voice. “I mean, if it’s digital . . .”
“My bug will keep tracking down any links to those pictures and wipe them all out.”
“What about hard copies?” she asked
“I doubt there are any. This was old stuff, and there was no one attached to the crime anymore. If it’s from the San Francisco archives, which it probably was, they transferred all their data to digital years ago, except for forensics, of course. Odds are the actual pic was destroyed once they had a clean scan. They’re even lucky they had this much.”
“We should get together again. For a drink,” she added quickly. “I owe you, Kell. God, do I owe you. So much.”
He heard the euphoria return to her voice. He felt proud to have saved her, he had to admit—it was some kind of ridiculous digital age version of a caveman protecting his mate. But he also knew that something was missing. It wasn’t just that he felt dirty, which he did. He had just exercised a gross abuse of power, and he’d done it with an ease and lack of conscience that horrified him. But no, it wasn’t just remorse for an ethical lapse that bothered him. It was personal. The clean sharp edge had been shaved off his longing for her, leaving a jagged scar. “You don’t owe me, Deb. And I don’t think drinks are a good idea.”
The heavy tone of his voice dragged her out of the clouds. “What?”
“You were going to do it, weren’t you? Give up your vote. Just like that.”
She stammered, “I hoped you’d...I mean you al-ways...I would have—” She stopped. This wasn’t the press or the public. This was Kelly. “Yes,” she said at last. “I was going to give in.”
He nodded. “You definitely don’t owe me, then. What I did just now, I did my job. Bye, Deb.” He hung up on her.
7:16
A
.
M
. PST Beverly Hills
Jack never remembered his dreams. His wife told him that he often muttered in his sleep, and even jumped out of bed some times, but he never recalled what he’d said or why he’d jumped up. For him, unconsciousness passed by in a blink—the split second of darkness that separated one moment of awareness from the next.
That’s how it was for him then, as his eyes popped open. He was lying on his side on the floor of the library. The bookcase was on its side, but at least it wasn’t on top of him anymore. Books lay were they fell, scattered in ones and twos. Jack tried to move, and immediately he knew three things. First, his face had been bleeding and might still be bleeding. Second, he wasn’t alone in the room. And third, his hands and feet were tied.
He pulled his knees up to his chest and rolled to a sitting position. The room shook back and forth before his eyes and his stomach twisted, and that gave him more information, none of it good. Nausea. Possible concussion. Worry about it later. There was another change in the room, aside from the fallen bookcase. Another prisoner. The old woman was now completely bound, as were the husband and wife. But the young man had been taken away, and Nazila Rafizadeh had joined them.
Jack shook his head. “I told you to wait.”
She shrugged.
The man whispered, “They said they’d kill us if we talk.”
“I bet they did,” Jack replied.
The man and the woman were frightened. The older woman, probably the mother of the husband or the wife, looked the toughest. The man and woman were plump and well-fed, the man’s salt-and-pepper hair so smoothed by hair spray that even dragged from sleep he looked well-coiffed. The grandmother was thin and sharp as a hawk, her nose bent like a beak and her small black eyes glaring at him as though this was all his fault.
“Are you okay?” Jack asked Nazila.
She nodded. “I’m sorry. I saw you draw your gun and I thought you were going in to arrest him . . .” She trailed off without finishing.
The wife, her eyes glazed with tears, whispered, “Are they ...are they going to kill us?”
Jack said quietly, “I don’t know. Just stay calm and don’t make any trouble and you’ll be okay. They don’t want you. You’ve seen them, but they’re not professionals. They might let you go.”
He didn’t tell them that they’d been professional enough to station a layoff man who’d snuck up behind him, or that that man had been professional enough to catch him by surprise. He also didn’t tell them that on the sodium cyanide job, the one where he’d betrayed them, they’d planned on killing the plant manager. Jack mentally kicked himself. He’d been in too much of a hurry. He should have cleared the entire house before making contact with the first two. Then he shook those thoughts from his head. There was plenty of time for a postmortem later, as long as it wasn’t
his
postmortem. Right now he had to focus on getting out.
He listened. They were in the next room, talking in angry voices. He heard a fourth voice pleading. That was Ramin.
“Where are your friends? Tell us where they are!”
“I don’t know what you mean. Please, no!” The sound of a hard slap interrupted his words.
“Fucking raghead,” said one of the militia men. “We know you know them. We know they’re here. Tell us!”
Ramin sobbed.
“My hand’s starting to hurt,” said one of the Greater Nation men. “Let’s try something else.”
“Get him over to the wall,” said another. “Cut the cord off that lamp.”
Jack examined the bindings at his ankles. Rip hobble cords. He could feel the same tight plastic strips cutting into his wrists behind his back. Rip hobble cords were strong and unbreakable, a heavy-duty version of the plastic ties people used to seal garbage bags. Police officers used them during mass arrests when they’d run out of handcuffs. If you pulled them tight enough, they were nearly impossible to wriggle out of. There was no release mechanism—they had to be cut off.
He searched the room and made a mental inventory of its contents: four other prisoners, floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with books, one fallen bookcase, small couch, small desk with a reading lamp.
“How long has that lamp been on?” he asked.
“What?” the husband asked.
“That lamp. How long?”
The man said, “I don’t know. I was in here doing work when they came in. It’s been on for perhaps two hours.”
That might be long enough, Jack thought. He lay down and straightened himself out, then rolled himself over to the desk. When he reached it, he curled back up, sat up, and slowly got himself to his feet. With his ankles fettered, it was hard to maintain balance. He leaned against the desk to keep from falling.
“They’ll come back in here!” the woman hissed. The old lady, probably her mother, said something sharp in Farsi, but she said it to her daughter.
Jack hopped around the desk until he reached the lamp. It was a modern looking directional lamp, designed for reading. A brushed metal stand rose up from the base, and a flexible coil curved away from the top, ending in a bell-shaped metal shade that pointed down toward the desk top. The bulb inside was bright. Jack leaned his face near it and could feel the heat radiating off it. It might be enough.
He turned his back on the lamp and leaned over, raising his bound hands toward it. The heat singed his skin. He ignored it and touched the rip hobble cord to the bulb. A few seconds later, the faint, acrid smell of burning plastic filled the air.