Emerson stood rigid in front of Landau’s desk. He looked at the foreign minister, then took the envelope, and said, “You have my word, sir. I will look into this immediately.”
Emerson did precisely that.
The formal complaint was routed directly to State Department headquarters, and within the hour it arrived squarely on the desk of a flummoxed secretary of state. There was no getting around it — the facts were damning. Someone was interfering with a police investigation in Austria, and there seemed only one nation with both the necessary technical prowess and a motive. That being the case, the secretary of state, a seasoned and long-tenured veteran, saw things in much the same light as the government of Austria. Someone was culpable, and he would do his damnedest to find out who.
He envisioned three primary suspects: CIA, NSA, and NRO. Even so, he decided a comprehensive inquest would be best, and so he included on his list the FBI, U.S. Cyber Command, all military intelligence agencies, and a little-known and near-black cyber initiative that fell under Homeland Security’s purview.
A clipped message was sent to each agency asking for information regarding American involvement in the goings-on in Austria. The secretary of state made a point of putting his name at the bottom, leaving no doubt as to the seriousness of the inquiry. The results arrived sporadically over the next forty-eight hours and, while essentially the same, were best encapsulated by the curt reply from the director of the CIA: We know nothing about this.
65
The hilltop was in Styria, somewhere north of Graz but not yet to the mountains. It wasn’t the biggest hill, nor the smallest, only a middling swale that would show wide contours on any map. It certainly wasn’t worth a name, and neither of the two people who stood near the crest made any effort to record where they were or how they’d gotten there. No effort at all.
For autumn in Austria, it could not have been a more ordinary day. The skies were partly cloudy, the temperature moderate, and the wind stirred occasionally from no particular direction. Altogether, hesitant conditions that gave away nothing about what would come in the following days.
DeBolt stood back from his job. He was shirtless, and his exposed skin gleamed with sweat from his exertions. He limped toward the rock where Lund was sitting and put down the shovel.
“Leg holding up?” she asked.
“More or less. The knee’s pretty swollen, black and blue both above and below … but it’ll be fine.”
“I think you tore ligaments.”
“Maybe.” He sat down next to her.
She chinned toward his work. “I could have helped with that.”
“No, I wanted to do it.”
Neither spoke for a time, and they sat in silence staring at the freshly turned plot of earth.
“Should we say something?” he asked. “Maybe put a marker on it or a cross?”
“Was he Christian?”
“I don’t think he was anything. Thomas Alan Heithusen, Marine Corps gunnery sergeant. I found out that much.”
Lund didn’t ask how. “Sounds Christian,” she said. “But from what little we know … I think bringing him here was enough.”
DeBolt nodded.
“I wonder,” she said in contemplation, “what makes a man like that?”
DeBolt didn’t have to ask what she meant. He looked out over the hills, and said, “What makes any of us like we are.” He recognized the bleakness of his tone, and how it reflected the mood he’d been in for far too long. Would there ever be an upswing? he wondered. He remembered better days, before the crash, before Alaska, but they’d somehow been rendered vague and distant. Almost untouchable.
Lund said, “I have to go back to Kodiak. I’ve got a lot to face up to there. Not sure how long it will take, or if I’ll have a job when I’m done.”
He nodded. “Yeah … I’m sorry about that. That you might lose your job because of me.”
“Not your fault, DeBolt.”
“I liked Kodiak.”
“Me too,” she said. “Civilized isolation.”
He stood, took the camping shovel in hand, and with a big arcing swing heaved it far out into the forest. There was a rustle as it landed in the distant brush, then silence returned. DeBolt regarded the forest around them. “This isn’t a bad place. It’s peaceful.”
“I wonder where Patel will end up.”
“Don’t know. He was a smart man with big ideas. But he never considered what META would cost others. He only saw what it could do for him. Same with Delta, I suppose … in the end it got the better of them both.”
“And now you’re the only one left. What will you do with it? Use META to get rich?”
He turned and looked at her, saw the smile. “I guess going back to the Coast Guard is out of the question. But I have prospects.”
“Like?”
“Given what I’m capable of … there are a lot of possibilities. I could become a scientist or a journalist.”
“A detective,” she offered.
He laughed out loud, his gloom lifting in a flash.
“What’s so funny? CGIS could use someone like you.”
“Sure. And what happens when I tell them in the interview that the NSA has put radio waves in my head? People who say stuff like that end up in straitjackets.”
“Not if it’s true.”
He took a seat on the rock next to her. “I was already working on a degree, majoring in biology. I thought I might try to go to med school.”
“There’s an entrance exam for med school, right?”
“The MCAT.”
“Bet you’d score pretty high.”
He smiled. “Maybe. But who knows how long I’ll have META. Someone could flip a switch tomorrow and turn it off forever.”
“But if they don’t?”
“Right now, I need some rest. Honestly, if I had to do something tomorrow … I think I’d go to Fiji and surf.”
After a long pause, she said, “That’s it? You’ve got the most amazing gift a human has ever known … and you want to go surfing?”
“Not just surfing—Fiji. The best waves on the planet.”
“It’s not much of a long-term plan, DeBolt.”
“I need time to think things through. Maybe I’ll get a job, something simple. Something that doesn’t involve information at all. A lifeguard or a bartender. I can make a few bucks and get by, deal with people without having to learn anything about them.”
“Bartenders learn about people — they just do it the old-fashioned way. Can you mix a Manhattan?”
“No.”
“Then lifeguard it is.”
He was silent for a time, and his good nature faded as quickly as it had come. The darkness closing in again. He said reflectively, “I see things differently now.”
“How’s that?”
“I don’t know. I guess you could say I’m more … cynical.”
“About what?”
“Everything.”
“Trey, you’re not old enough to be jaded.”
“Age has nothing to do with it. I’ve had more near-death experiences in the last month than in a career of rescue swimming. I’ve seen people do horrendous things to one another. If that’s what META brings, I want no part of it.”
“But you can’t turn it off. It’s there in your head, connected, whether you like it or not.”
“I can ignore it.”
She looked at him questioningly. “Can you?”
He fell quiet.
Lund dug a heel into the wet grass. “Computers, information … where does it all end? I mean, compare technology a generation ago to what exists today. Smartphones, Google Glass, Wi-Fi everywhere. Now you’ve got META. What will it be like in fifty years?”