“Possessions,” he said.
I looked at Hayes. She nodded, so I picked up the bag and filled it with my keys, Brian’s cell phone and charger, and the money he’d lent me. I’d dropped the chauffeur’s phone in one of the Dumpsters outside the gallery along with the old guy’s suit carrier and clothes, not wanting to explain how I came to have them.
“Sign.” The officer slid the bag to his side of the counter and handed me a worn wooden clipboard with a blank form attached to it. A cheap ballpoint pen dangled from it on a length of filthy twine.
“It’s not filled in,” I objected.
“Sign,” he insisted.
Hayes nodded, and I figured it wasn’t worth making a big deal out of. Aside from the keys, none of the stuff was too important. The phone wasn’t mine. The cash could be replaced. And soon I’d be home with this living hell safely behind me. I smiled and scrawled my name across the bottom of the page. Although I did use the vague “deniable” version of my signature I’d developed years ago in my first job.
The officer took the clipboard back, grunted, then hit a button that released a door to our right. It opened onto a long corridor with more doors, evenly spaced along both sides. The detectives led me to the second from last on the left. Hayes opened it, and Wagner shoved me through. She pushed a lot harder than she needed to, and concentrated the force through one knuckle which gouged into my back, but when I turned to complain the door had already closed behind me.
The room was very simply laid out. There was a table in the center, and a chair on either side. All three were made of metal. And all three were bolted to the floor. A thin rubber strip ran around all four walls at waist height—probably a trigger for a panic alarm—and there was a CCTV camera in a metal cage in the corner above the door. The only other feature was a large mirror on one wall, but I’d watched enough cop shows to know that this would be made of one-way glass. So, in keeping with my new cooperative image, I sat down, clasped my hands on the table in front of me in my best Roger LeBrock pose, and tried hard to look innocent.
There wasn’t a clock in the room, but I guess they kept me waiting for over an hour. My sense of well-being was ebbing rapidly and when I moved my arms and saw a line of words that had been crudely scratched into the tabletop, my spirits sank even faster:
your screwed theyll never let you go
It’s a joke. It’s not aimed at you, I was telling myself over and over, when the door opened and a woman walked into the room. She was very tall—over six feet, even in the flat shoes she was wearing—and very skinny, with shoulder-length auburn hair and a long, pointy nose. I couldn’t help thinking that if you dyed her hair black and gave her a tall hat and cape, she’d sweep the board as a Halloween witch.
I stood up and held out my hand but she brushed straight past me, went to the spare chair, and sat down.
“My name’s Agent Brooking. I’m sorry to keep you waiting, Marc, but I was on the phone. To my boss. He’s not happy, because of you. And you know how these things go. Shit rolls downhill. Which means I’m not happy, either. So, now’s a bad time for you to be playing games.”
“I’m not playing games. I came here of my own free will. Because I want to help.”
“When you come out with shit like that, remember Homeland Security still has agents in the hospital after your performance last night. Now, do you still say you’re not playing games?”
“I do. People tried to kidnap me last night. I nearly ended up in the hospital myself.”
“Yada yada yada. I won’t ask again, Marc.”
“I’m telling you. I’m not playing games.”
The woman flashed a sour smile, then pulled Brian’s Motorola out of her jacket pocket. She straightened a tag attached to its antenna, which showed its number. Then she placed a sheet of paper next to it—a call log—with an entry from that morning highlighted in yellow.
“You acknowledge this is your phone?”
I nodded.
“Do you really need me to do this?”
“Do what?”
She shrugged. Then she took out an iPhone, tapped the screen, and a sound file began to play. It was a recording of the call I’d made that morning. To Homeland Security. My tip-off about AmeriTel.
She let the recording run right through to the end. “No games, huh?”
I was stunned. My plan was unraveling before my eyes. It had never crossed my mind that they’d connect me with the phone call. All the confidence I’d built up earlier had deserted me and I suddenly felt stupid and out of my depth.
“Please. Let me explain. What happened was—”
“What happened was, on top of the six guys I’ve got on the disabled list till goodness knows when, because of you, I had another four tied up all morning on a wild-goose chase. Because of you, Bowman. So, stop bullshitting. And start explaining.”
“The four guys this morning. They weren’t on a wild-goose chase. Unless—you did send them to AmeriTel?”
“Oh, I did. Just like you wanted me to. I swallowed your story, hook, line, and sinker. Only, after going over AmeriTel with a fine-tooth comb, what do you think they found?”
“The virus. The one that was on my computer. AmeriTel’s the only place it could have come from.”
“Nope. They found nothing. No virus. Nada. Zip. Zero. AmeriTel’s computers are as clean as the day they were installed.”
“That’s impossible. There’s no way—”
“Forget this. We know the AmeriTel thing was just a diversion. You won that one. I concede. Now, let’s talk about the virus. Did you create it?”
“No. Of course not!”
“Are you being pedantic with me, Mr. Bowman? Because I may not be a big computer expert like you, but I know enough to understand that a virus as complex as this one would be created by a team of people. What I’m asking is, are you a part of that team?”
“No. Absolutely not. I’ve never written any malicious code in my life. I’m a victim of this virus. I have no idea where it came from. If I didn’t catch it from AmeriTel, I’m completely stumped.”
“Oh, I doubt that. I doubt that very much. See, our programmers have been working around the clock, picking the virus apart. They’ve got a ways to go, granted. I’m not saying we know everything about it. But we know what it’s designed to destroy. A particular combination of very specific machines. A combination that exists in only one place on earth. And unless the virus finds that exact combination, it lies dormant. Which makes it almost impossible to detect.”
“Like Stuxnet?”
“Just like Stuxnet. Only this virus isn’t aimed at Iranian nuclear centrifuges. Its target is the White House.”
Thursday. Lunchtime.
TWO WORDS WERE BOUNCING AROUND INSIDE MY HEAD. Collateral Damage.
They were words I’d only read before. In relation to hostage rescues in faraway, train wrecks of countries or drive-by shootings in the written-off, gang-ridden neighborhoods of distant inner cities. Dramatic events. Sometimes exciting. Usually tragic. But always completely divorced from my own life.
Until now.
Until I’d fallen down a rabbit hole and woken up, mute, in an alien universe. The virus on my computer was akin to Stuxnet? That was so far out of my league I could hardly comprehend it. Stuxnet was a bleeding-edge cyber weapon, used to cripple a foreign enemy’s nuclear arsenal. Something from a world where a single misstep could mean all-out war. It could bring death and destruction on an unimaginable scale. Not the loss of a wife. A job. A new product. Another painting. What chance did I have, dealing with stakes like these?