“Narayanan. But I think he’s at Stanford now,” Decker said.
“Whatever. Didn’t they prove that by examining correlations between various online accounts, you could identify more than a third of all Twitter and Flickr users, even when the accounts were stripped of identifiers?”
“Thirty percent,” Decker said.
“And those two professors from Carnegie Mellon. You know… Grossman and Christie.”
“Acquisti and Gross?”
“Yeah, that’s them. They predicted the full, nine-digit Social Security numbers for one out of every ten U.S. citizens born between ’89 and ’03. That’s five million people.” He stabbed a tomato. “I tell her all this — I’ve been collecting these factoids — yet she still posts pictures of herself drunk on her Facebook page. As if college admissions counselors won’t find them. What’s next, sexting? You know, some private caller sent me a picture of her snatch the other day on my smartphone. Wrong number, I guess, trying to reach some guy named Perry. Anyway, it was at such an odd angle and so close, it took me a full minute to even figure out what it was.”
“I’d still be trying to figure it out. You sure it was a wrong number?” Decker laughed. “But what’s your point, Rex?” he added. “What are you going to do about Lisa?”
McCullough said that he was tracking his daughter’s movements online through Norton’s Online Family program — like her search terms and browser history — although her mother resented it.
“June claims that I’m violating Lisa’s personal freedoms, that I’m anti-American,” McCullough continued. “Can you fucking believe it? The words ‘joint custody’ have no meaning to her. Meanwhile, I don’t know why Lisa even bothers. All this technology hasn’t helped me. I’ve been on that e-Harmonize site for six months now and it still hasn’t paid off. No one’s ever like they are in their profiles. They lie about their age, their weight, their everything. When you chat with them online, they’re spunky and interesting. Alive. But when you meet them in person, they change. They wilt in the flesh. You’d think it’d be the other way around.”
McCullough had grown up in Stratford, Connecticut, the son of a Sikorsky engineer. After college and a brief stint as a Ranger, he’d joined Army Intelligence. Not long after, the Bureau. He was a lifer, a year from KMA, or Kiss My Ass—only twelve months from being eligible to retire with full FERS Basic benefits, and therefore pretty much immune from all the bullshit the Bureau could throw at you. A twenty-year man. And not just career-wise. He’d married June, his high school sweetheart, while still at the University of Connecticut. They’d had a good run, but he’d come home early one day from the office and found her pretzeled in the arms of a neighbor.
Same old story. He was never around. He was married to the Bureau. He… was.
It was like that old joke about the divorcée complaining about her ex-husband to friends: It was this, it was that, and that breathing… In and out. In and out.
“I’m the wrong guy to ask if you want to talk about dating,” said Decker.
“I thought you were seeing some professor from Georgetown. The one who likes sushi and jazz.”
“She works in a bookstore, Rex. And we only went out a few times. I’ve given up.”
“It’s been more than two years since the accident.”
Decker glanced sideways. “With everything that’s happened to Becca, I just won’t have time anymore. Plus, with all these new break-ins…”
McCullough looked over at Decker. “You mean Westlake,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “Who you kidding?”
Decker shrugged.
“You know,” said McCullough. “If you really want to find out what happened with Westlake, you should contact Xin Liu.”
“Who’s Xin Liu?”
“MIT adjunct professor. Consults with NSA’s TAO off and on. Has the clearance, believe me. Probably higher than yours. Fucking brilliant, you’ll love her.” McCullough stuffed another forkful of salad into his cavernous mouth. “If anyone can figure it out,” he said, chewing, “it’s Lulu.”
CHAPTER 14
It was always the same whenever Decker went to the hospital. There was that fuss about visiting hours, although that didn’t particularly bother him. Nor the perennial request for ID from those already familiar with him. As an agent, he was more than attuned to security protocols. No. It was that look from the nurses, that insufferably pitying stare. That he would never get used to. And then the long walk down the corridor in the harsh glare of the hospital lights, past the agent on duty, to that first glance of Becca through the door as it opened, as she lay there in her bacteria-controlled nursing unit, hooked up to a dozen purring machines.
She was barely a bulge in her bedclothes. Wrapped in bandages, enshrouded in plastic, she looked like a doll on the shelf of a toy store, trotted out just in time for the holidays.
It was always the same. He stood there, looking down, fighting an irrational urge to reach out and rip the clear plastic tenting apart in his hands. To hold her. To feel her in his arms once again.
Before, of course, he had done everything in his power to keep her away. You’re a fool, Decker said to himself.
He sat on the white plastic seat at the head of the bed, one hand on the monitor, watching her breathe, watching the sheets rise and fall, rise and fall. They were so white, so bleached and well-starched that they looked like a blanket of snow, and he remembered a moment when Becca and he had gone out to the Old Stone House Park after a particularly heavy snowfall some years earlier. The plows had left a small mountain of packed powder at the edge of the park, behind the Post Office parking lot, and they were having a hard time climbing over it, he remembered, when they’d stopped at the top so they could both catch their breath. It had been an overcast morning but a strong Arctic wind had blown the snow clouds away, and Decker had pointed this out to his four year old.
“All gone,” he had said, gesturing toward the brilliant blue sky. “All the clouds, Becca, look. Blown away.”
“No they’re not,” she had answered, most seriously, as she pointed at the snow at their feet. “There they are, Daddy, see! They fell down. And now we can walk on them.”
Beep. Beep. Beep.
This was the sound now that measured her breathing. No longer the panting rush of her laughter, the white condensation of her breath as she looked up at the sky, with her sparkling gray eyes, as she started to slide down the side of that mountain of snow.
Decker fidgeted in his white plastic seat.
Beep. Beep.
He sat there and tried not to remember.
It was around six-thirty or so when his uncle finally arrived. Tom Llewellyn was married to his Aunt Hanne, Decker’s mother’s sister. It was Tom and Aunt Hanne who’d raised him after his parents had been killed in the car accident.
Of Welsh extract, Tom was a big, affable man, large of heart, though not particularly tall. In reality, he was only five eight, on a good day. Short and stocky. But he exuded a kind of strong, avuncular charm — like the aroma of pipe tobacco, though he no longer smoked — which made him seem larger than life. And he had competent hands. Hands you could trust.
He owned a small hardware store in Davenport, Iowa, and as a boy Decker had wondered how his uncle could pull apart any machine in the house and, with uncanny precision, determine exactly what ailed it. He was also a man of deep faith, a deacon in the local Episcopal church. Married to a fanatical Lutheran. That had kept things pretty lively in the Llewellyn household.