Invasion of Privacy (19 page)

As ONE 1 began its initial descent into the Austin area, Ian stood in his personal quarters, humming a song from a favorite musical. ONE 1 was essentially a bespoke 737-900ER designed to his requirements. There was a screening room and a fitness room, an office, and a bedroom. His quarters took up the rear of the plane. The office was identical to his offices in Austin, Palo Alto, Guangzhou, and Bangalore, if on a smaller scale: dark carpets, birch furnishings, minimal, spare, efficient.

“You wanted me?” asked Briggs.

“Come in,” said Ian. “Shut the door.”

“Did you ask to see me so we could sing show tunes?”

“Do you know any?”

Briggs regarded Ian as if he were mad. “What are you so damned happy for? We have a problem and we need to tie it off.”

“I thought you already told me it was ‘banked.’ Once—or was it twice?”

“Call me a gentleman. I have a soft spot for women.”

“And your suggestion?”

“You don’t need to know.”

“Didn’t you hear what Mason said? Mary Grant apologized for damaging the investigation. She promised not to disturb things further.”

“You believe her?”

There was no point in answering the question. Belief was subjective. Ian trafficked in certainties. “Show a carpenter a nail and he hits it with a hammer.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re the carpenter,” said Ian. “An excellent carpenter, to be sure, but a carpenter nonetheless. Sometimes a more elegant solution is called for.”

“The woman has to go. How’s that for elegant?”

Ian walked to his desk and sat. He’d spent the past half hour sorting through the angles. Eliminating an FBI agent was one thing: a single,
orchestrated act with all pieces in place to control any possible damage. Eliminating the agent’s wife was something else entirely. Her death only days after his would not go unnoticed. Questions would be asked. The story had all the makings of a tabloid sensation. Edward Mason was a powerful official, but he had no means of controlling the investigation into the murder of a private citizen, or the press coverage it would garner.

There was more. Ian refused to orphan two young girls. He knew about growing up without a father. He hadn’t wanted to get rid of Joseph Grant, but in the end there had been no other choice. Grant was too tenacious, and Hal Stark had far too much information. In the end it was Ed Mason’s decision as much as his.

“About the reporter,” said Ian. “The one with the pictures. What’s his name again?”

“Potter. Tank Potter.”

“Yes, about Mr. Potter and his indiscreet friend at the medical examiner’s office…”

“Cantu.”

“Yes, Mr. Cantu.” Ian drummed his fingers on the desk. “Those two are nails. Feel free to use your hammer.”

Briggs appeared happier: a horse given his reins. “And the pictures?”

“Tell the Mole to make them disappear. I believe that’s well within his skill set. Let me take care of the woman.”

“You’re sure about this elegant solution?”

Ian spun in his chair and gazed out the window.

“All right, then,” said Briggs. “We’ll do it your way.” He paused at the door. “What’s that song, anyway? I think I’ve heard it.”

Ian kicked his feet onto the desk and sang aloud.
“How do you solve a problem like Maria?”

Briggs looked away, sickened, and hurried fore.

Ian shook his head. Of course Briggs hated
The Sound of Music
. No one was killed in it.

He continued singing, his voice growing louder, his hands moving theatrically. “
How do you catch a moonbeam in your hand?
”

He had the answer.

Sloths.

Tank Potter made a beeline across the newsroom to Al Soletano’s office. “I’ve got proof,” he said, holding his phone above his head. “I told you I had a story. Here it is. Proof.”

The few reporters at work popped their heads above their cubicles to see what the commotion was all about. A few called his name. Tank paid them no heed. His wrists burned from the flex cuffs. His back ached from the kidney punch. But worst was the injury to his professional integrity.

“Al!” he shouted. “You there? Come out of your hobbit hole.”

Soletano emerged from his office, a sheaf of paper in one hand, a cup of coffee in the other. “What are you doing here, Potter?” he asked wearily.

“I was right about the story—about Joe Grant.”

“I don’t want to hear.”

“Proof,” said Tank, brandishing his smartphone.

“Take it somewhere else. You no longer work for this newspaper.”

“The FBI was stonewalling. I knew it all along.”

“Did you hear me?

“I have pictures showing that Grant and the informant weren’t killed by a handgun. They directly refute Bennett’s official account.”

“Sorry, Tank. Can’t help you.”

“Did you hear me? Pictures. Evidence.”

“Did you hear me? Get lost.”

“Fine. I’ll take them over to AP. I’m sure the Associated Press will be happy to look at them. And when they do, it’ll be their story.”

Soletano stared at him a second, then inclined his head in the direction of his office. “In. Sit. Talk.”

Tank entered the office and sat down. “By the way, do you have a glass of water? I’m dying of thirst.”

“Look who’s the smartass,” said Soletano, following him in and closing the door. “One day without a drink and you think you deserve a
medal.” He perched on the edge of his desk, arms crossed over his belly. “I’m listening.”

Tank struggled to fit his bulk into the chair. With painstaking detail, he described his visit to the medical examiner’s office the night before and his certainty that both Joseph Grant and the informant had been killed not with a handgun but with a high-powered rifle. Before showing Soletano the photographs of the corpses, he recounted his interview with Mary Grant that morning, beginning with the troubled voice message left by her husband (then mysteriously erased) and ending with her call to Randy Bell, Joseph Grant’s former partner. “She thinks the case her husband and Bell were working on was called Semaphore.”

Finally he gave Soletano a blow-by-blow narrative of his visit to the medical examiner’s office three hours earlier and the race to reach the airport before the FBI in order to chronicle its shipment of the corpses to Quantico.

“You rammed your Jeep into the FBI?” said Soletano.

Tank nodded.

“And they didn’t arrest you?”

“I’m here.”

“You got balls, Potter. I’ll give you that. It’s a wonder you’re not in jail.” Soletano pushed himself off the desk. “Let me see your proof.”

“You can show the photos to a forensic pathologist. No way a handgun did this. Wounds this size come from a rifle.”

Tank opened the photo roll. The pictures of Joseph Grant and the informant were the last he’d taken, and as such should have been the first he saw. Oddly, the pictures weren’t there. “Just a sec,” he said. “I’m getting them.”

Soletano looked unimpressed.

Tank closed the photo app, then reopened it. The last picture taken was always visible in a frame placed in the lower left-hand corner of the screen. He double-tapped the image and got a topless picture of Jeannette, a buxom blond favorite from Pedro’s.

“Any time now,” said Soletano.

Tank went back to the photo roll.

Nix. Nada. Zip.

The pictures he’d taken at the medical examiner’s office were no longer there. Tank was a master at jumping to conclusions. First Joseph
Grant’s voice message had been erased from his wife’s phone. Now it was Tank’s turn. In the time it had taken him to drive from the airport to the
Statesman
, someone had hacked into his phone and deleted the photographs.

But who?

No one knew about the pictures except himself, Mary, and of course Carlos Cantu. The FBI might infer that he had pictures from the fact that he had admitted to seeing the corpses, but they had no proof. Unless Mary Grant had told Mason. Either way, they didn’t have his phone number or the unit’s IP address.

Or did they?

Tank recalled Mary Grant asking him if he’d “leaned on her to spill.” If the words sounded familiar, it was because he’d e-mailed a buddy from the paper earlier that he was heading over to her house to do exactly that. And why had the FBI been tearing out of the ME’s building when Carlos Cantu had told him barely fifteen minutes earlier that they didn’t appear to be in any hurry? Somehow they’d known he was coming. Even before Tank and Mary reached the airport, they’d been listening in.

All this came to him in a second.

“Well,” said Soletano, “are you going to show me or not?”

Tank put down the phone. “Actually…
not
.”

“What do you mean? Let me see ’em.”

Tank shook his head. “You know what, Al? You’re right. I’m not sure I do have a story.”

“You bullshittin’ me? You get me all hot and bothered, and now you’re giving me nothing?”

“Sorry, Al. My bad. I’ll be back when I’m sure.”

“Don’t bother. You’ve wasted enough of my time as it is. Now get out.”

On the ground floor, Tank stopped in the break room and bought a can of Coke. The loss of the photographs didn’t discourage him. On the contrary. The fact that the FBI—or another interested party—was hacking into his phone and listening in on his conversations was a tonic. You didn’t destroy evidence unless there was a crime. Tank was on the right track.

He looked at his phone.

Traitor.

There was only one punishment for treason.

Outside the building, Tank walked briskly back to the Jeep. Crouching, he placed the phone beneath the rear tire, wedging it between asphalt and rubber. Once behind the wheel, he put the Jeep into reverse. He heard a crunch, and then another as the tire passed over the handset. Still he wasn’t satisfied. Phones were tough little bastards these days. He’d dropped his a dozen times, and though the screen was cracked and the case was chipped, it still worked.

Sliding the transmission into park, he stepped out of the car and examined the handset. The phone was crushed but looked more or less intact. He imagined that somewhere inside it a battery was still connected to a transmitter that still emitted a signal that someone somewhere with the proper technology could track.

Tank dug his heel into the metal and glass and ground it into the asphalt. Finished, he picked up the phone. He had to marvel at its design. It just didn’t look dead.

He had an idea.

Tank threw the phone onto the passenger seat and drove around to the front of the building. Twenty yards away flowed the green, fast-moving waters of the Colorado River. He got out of the car, strode to the riverbank, and threw the phone as far as he could. He watched the handset tumble end over end, sparkling in the sun, before dropping silently into the water.

Let ’em track that, he thought.

Satisfied that he was alone—really and truly alone—and that no unseen witness was tagging along beside him, keeping a record of his every word and movement and reporting them to his master, he returned to his car and accelerated out of the lot.

It was almost five.

Happy hour.

There was only one place he wanted to be.

“Do you know who Odysseus is?” Ian asked Katarina as he entered the spa. ONE 1 had landed a while ago, but he needed to stay at the airport to greet the Israelis.

“A Greek,” said Katarina. “Was he a god or a man?”

Ian closed the door and disrobed. “Man. A warrior. The chap who led all the others inside the Trojan Horse.”

Katarina was wearing shorts and a tank top, her admirable biceps on display. She handed him his third batch of supplements. No magic drip today. After taking his pills, Ian lay down on the massage table. Katarina disrobed and when she was naked began to massage him, concentrating on the shoulders and neck, kneading his muscles with her strong fingers.

“Why do you ask about Odysseus?”

“Just curious.”

Katarina found a knot deep down and applied pressure to it for a full minute. Ian sucked in air through clenched teeth. The pleasure was excruciating.

“You are never curious,” she said. “Why are you thinking about the Trojan Horse?”

“Ah, Katarina, you’re too smart by half.”

The German moved her hands lower, working each arm, then his chest, then lower still. Ian gasped. The hands moved expertly, clinically, one professional working with another. He closed his eyes and let the pleasure engulf him. He was not thinking about a woman or a man or anything remotely physical. He was thinking about Odysseus. Not the warrior, but the software of his own creation, and it was far, far sexier.

Odysseus was malware, a piece of software designed to take control of a computer independent of its user. He’d written it to perform three tasks—to surveil and transmit every keystroke of its host; to copy and transmit the contents of the host’s hard drive and any attached flash drive, backup drive, or auxiliary memory device; and to grant Ian complete
control of the platform so that he might roam around it at will and edit, amend, copy, steal, or otherwise corrupt things as he saw fit.

Upon landing, he’d shut himself inside his private quarters and spent much too long surfing the Net in an effort to find the most amusing video of an animal he could. He looked at Zen kittens, talking puppies, dancing fish, laughing giraffes, and a dozen other cute, cuddly, and altogether adorable creatures.

Of course he also looked at the clip of the sloth. The sloth wasn’t the cutest by a long shot, but according to their browser log, the Grant girls must have thoroughly enjoyed it.

Ian quickly found three additional clips of sloths that he found particularly irresistible.
Irresistible
was the key word in this endeavor. Finally he chose the one he thought the girls would like best.

The trap was simple enough. E-mails would arrive in the mailboxes addressed to Grace and Jessie Grant carrying the header “Cutest Sloth Ever!” Opening the mail, the girls would be presented with a link to the video Ian had selected. The success of Ian’s ploy rested on one of the girls clicking on the link. Once they did, the video of the sloth would begin playing. Attached to it, ready to crawl into the deepest, darkest crevasses of the Grants’ computer, was Odysseus, as stealthy and cunning as the Greek warrior of ancient lore.

Katarina’s fingers stroked him expertly, dispassionately. His back arched and she put her mouth on him. Ian allowed himself release, lips pressed together to stifle any escaping sound.

Katarina cleaned him quickly and neatly. “Ian, may I ask you a question?”

“Yes.”

“What happened to Odysseus?”

“No one knows. He died, I suppose. Everyone must.”

Katarina laughed, fixing him with her cold blue eyes. “Yes, Ian, everyone must. Even you.”

Ian slapped her. “Don’t ever say that again.”