Waverly snorted. “Awfully grandiose for a bunch of little boys hiding in their parents’ basements.”
Eric would have agreed if not for the serious look on Karen’s face. “I may not be familiar with the technology,” he said, “but can groups of nerds actually change the world?”
Karen put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “Nerds changing the world? Really? You know what Dewey can do. Imagine a team of people like him, except without his heart.”
“I’m not sure Mr. Green has a lot of heart,” Eric said.
“You know what I mean,” Karen said. “Dewey’s like a child. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
Eric sat back in his chair, trying to imagine a team of Dewey Greens, and what kind of trouble they might cause the world. A cold ball settled in his stomach as he started to picture just what kind of mischief they could make. “Okay, you made your point. Maybe they could change the world.”
Waverly grunted. “Maybe they could do worse.”
“I just don’t see hackers assassinating people,” Eric said. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“They aren’t just hackers,” Karen said. “They’re true believers. They think wealth is concentrated in too few hands.”
“So, they’re anticapitalists,” Waverly said. “Figures.”
“They’re not strictly anticapitalists,” Karen said. “They just believe that the wealthy elite control the world.”
“Don’t they?” Eric asked. “Didn’t you basically tell me the same thing last year?”
Karen sucked in her breath. “It’s not the same thing—”
“It sure seems like the same thing,” he said. “The wealthy do control the world. The illusion of freedom is just that — an illusion.”
Waverly’s face darkened. “Strange talk coming from the man who controls the OTM.”
“It may not be an ideal system,” Eric said, “but it’s the best we’ve ever had.”
“You actually think the system is rigged?” Waverly asked.
“I’ve been to the White House, and to the most remote little villages in Afghanistan, and everywhere in between. Money makes the world go around. Only a fool would disagree, and no one in this room is a fool. We protect the world, but we also protect the system that keeps the wealthy in power.”
Karen bit her lip but said nothing.
Waverly’s face reddened. “I’m not keeping them in power—”
“John?” Eric said. “I read your file. You grew up poor?”
Waverly hesitated. “Not poor…”
Eric raised an eyebrow.
“Okay,” Waverly said. “My dad was a cop. My mom didn’t work. I had four sisters. Things were tight.”
“You made it through college.”
“I worked my ass off for a scholarship.”
“You excelled,” Eric said. “It was in your file. You joined the FBI right after graduation. Top of your class. You’re successful, John. You did everything right.”
Waverly squirmed in his chair. “Your point?”
Eric laughed. “You believe in law and order. You believe that if you just do what you’re supposed to, everything will happen as it should.”
“So?”
“A lot of luck goes into that,” Eric said. “I’ve seen people so poor they didn’t have a pot to piss in. They believed the same as you, but their lives were destroyed when the Russians invaded and the Americans rushed to their rescue. Except the Americans weren’t there to save them. They were there to use them in a covert war to grind the Russians down.”
Waverly raised his hand. “That’s a deliberate misreading of history.”
“It’s the truth,” Eric said. “I was there, John. I saw the remnants.”
“The remnants?”
“Of what we did to them.”
Waverly frowned. “I don’t think that’s a fair characterization.”
“I’m not saying it wasn’t the right decision for the world. The Cold War was in full swing. Now that I’ve reviewed more of the Old Man’s notes, I realize just how close we came.”
“Close to what?” Waverly asked.
“Extinction,” Eric said. “The decision to fight a proxy war in Afghanistan might have broken the Soviet military, and the decision to outspend them might have broken them economically, but we came close to World War III.”
“We must have been farther away than that,” Waverly said.
“The wealthy and the powerful pushed things in that direction,” Eric said. “They thought they could survive a war. I’ve seen the analysis. They couldn’t have.”
Waverly looked dumbfounded. “We had programs designed to help us survive a nuclear war.”
“All for show,” Eric said. “DARPA created a classified report which showed there was no way to survive.”
“What about the bunkers?” Karen asked. “Congress and the president? At least they would have survived.”
“Look around,” Eric said. “This place can survive a direct hit, but what then? Nuclear winter. Ecosystems die. Animals die. Food supplies are contaminated or disappear altogether.”
“But the bunker’s supplies—”
“Not enough,” Eric said. “The survivors would starve to death, assuming the diseases didn’t get them. And if those men and women try and repopulate the earth, they’ll find there’s not enough genetic diversity. A handful of survivors could make it three or four generations, at most. The earth will recover, eventually. It might take ten thousand years or maybe one hundred thousand years, but life will return. Just not humanity.”
The room fell quiet while Karen and Waverly processed that information. Finally, Waverly said, “I guess it’s a good thing it didn’t happen.”
“It wasn’t luck,” Eric said. “Smith worked with his counterpart in the Soviet Union. Together, they kept the world from destroying itself. Make no mistake. While the men who thought they ran the world prepared to destroy it, two rational men came to an agreement. They would do whatever it took to protect the world.”
Karen nodded her head. “They did terrible things, but they saved us all.”
Eric nodded, and now that he’d finally explained it so that they understood it, he felt a little weight slip from his shoulders. “We do terrible things. I have no regrets about it because the alternative is worse.”
“The deaths in Switzerland,” Waverly said.
“It’s a tragedy. But tragedies happen every day. In the meantime, we need to learn more about the DFA. If they’re just punk kids, we need to know. But if they are enemies of the United States, and possibly the world, we need to know that, too.”
“So, it’s all hands on deck and time to hack the hacker,” Karen said.
Eric smiled. “Damned straight.”
Waverly shut the door behind him, leaving Eric alone with Karen. She smelled of flowers, and he asked, “Are you wearing new perfume?”
“That’s deodorant,” she said.
“It’s nice.”
She frowned. “Are you thinking about me because you’re upset?”
“I’m not upset.”
“How do you explain that little speech?”
“It wasn’t a speech. It was the truth. There’s a cost for everything we do, whether it be blood or treasure. Just look at Abdullah the Bomber. The push to arm the Mujahedeen came from the OTM.”
“I’m sure the CIA would’ve recommended it anyway,” Karen said.
“Smith fed the report through the Heritage Foundation, and it was just one of many, but that wasn’t what finally got it authorized.”
“What did?”
Eric shook his head. “Smith logged every meeting with the president. Presidents. Only the director can review the notes.”