Thorne, sitting with Encarnación in the offices of Politics As Usual, felt his mobile buzz against his thigh as it lay in his pocket. He ignored it, nodding encouragingly at Encarnación. It had taken him months of complex negotiations with a succession of underlings to get Encarnación, the president and CEO of SteelTrap, to agree to be interviewed. SteelTrap, the world’s largest Internet security firm, was an anomaly in the world of business—so large, so influential, so successful, yet privately held, therefore beholden to no one. Its internal structure was entirely opaque.
In the end, Thorne had lucked out. Encarnación, on his way from Paris to Mexico City, where part of his vast staff maintained one of his palatial residences, had agreed to the interview while his private jet was being refueled. He had insisted that no photos be taken of him. This hardly surprised Thorne since, as part of his research for the interview, he had discovered a curious fact: there were no photos of Encarnación anywhere online. He was a bear of a man, curiouslooking owing to the fact that he was entirely hairless. Thorne found himself wondering if this was a deliberate deforestation or the result of a congenital condition. Another curious thing that he typed into his iPad: Encarnación had not once looked directly at him. His eyes were restless things, like caroming marbles, in constant motion.
“These days,” Encarnación said, “no scrap of information, no matter how small or well hidden, is safe. All of it can be, and is, hacked. This is an indisputable fact. Every hour of every day, encrypted sites behind so-called firewalls are hacked. The latest and most devastating form of terrorism. To counteract these cybercrimes is something of a divine calling. This is my business. This is what I do.” He paused to absorb everything in the office with his colorless eyes. He held his sunglasses between his thumb and forefinger, as if ready to don them at a moment’s notice. “In the Internet age, this is how fortunes are made.”
Thorne’s mobile buzzed again. Ignoring it, he said, “Tell me, Mr. Encarnación, how you first became interested in Internet security.”
Encarnación produced a thin smile that Thorne found horribly disquieting. “I lost everything, all the money I had made trading in equities online. My account was hacked, my hard-earned money stolen.” That mysterious smile again, signifying an apocalypse, as if Thorne were looking into the face of a large, hungry carnivore. “It vanished into the colossal void of Russia.”
“Ah, I see.”
“No,” Encarnación said, “you don’t.” He rocked his sunglasses back and forth. “I fought my desire to go to the place that swallowed my money, to find the person or people who had stolen what was mine, because I knew that if I went to Russia it would eat me alive.”
Thorne pursed his lips as his mobile vibrated insistently for the third time. “What precisely do you mean?”
“I mean that if I had gone to Russia then, ignorant as I was, I would never have returned.”
Thorne could not help a small chuckle. “That sounds a tad, oh, I don’t know, melodramatic.”
“Yes,” Encarnación replied. “Yes, it does.” The smile returned, insistent as the buzzing of Thorne’s mobile. “And yet, it is the absolute truth. Have you been to Moscow, Mr. Thorne?”
Thorne did not want this to turn into an interrogation. “I have.”
“Done business there?”
“Uh, no. But I’ve heard—”
“You’ve heard.” Encarnación threw his words back into his face. “If you haven’t been to Moscow, haven’t engaged in business there, you have no idea.” He shook his completely bald head, which Thorne could not now help thinking of as a skull. “Money, corruption, rotten politics, coercion. This is Moscow.”
“I suppose you could say that about almost any big city.”
Encarnación’s gaze made Thorne feel small and, worse, weak. “Moscow is different. Special. This is why. Having money is not nearly enough. These people with whom you are forced to do business want more from you. Do you know what that something is, Mr. Thorne? They want to be able to shine in the eyes of the president. They curry his favor so badly, so absolutely, that if negotiations do not go the way they want, they will not hesitate to have you shot in the back of the head, or, if their need to be amused is such, to have you poisoned with plutonium long after you have left the rat’s nest of Moscow behind.”
“Plutonium poisoning christ almighty!” Thorne wrote on his iPad.
Encarnación did not blink an eye. “I decided then and there to find a way to retrieve my money. The authorities were worse than useless; in those days, they had even less knowledge about hacking the Internet than they do now.”
Thorne felt as if he were in the presence of a reincarnated Baron Munchausen, the legendary teller of tall tales, except that he had the distinct impression that everything Encarnación was telling was the truth. “Then this is how SteelTrap came into being.”
“That’s correct.”
“And that was...”
“Seven years ago.”
“Did you ever recover your money?”
Encarnación’s expression turned infernal. “With interest.”
Thorne was about to ask for details when his mobile went off for the fourth time. He frowned, but at this point his curiosity overrode his annoyance.Excusinghimself,hesteppedoutoftheofficeashepulled out his mobile. Four text messages from Delia Trane. He had met her several times. He’d had dinner with her and Soraya twice, and he’d been grateful that she had agreed to be their cover for the evening.
Call me ASAP
His frown deepened. One text from her he could ignore, not four. Scrolling through his phonebook, he pressed in her number, put his mobile to his ear. She answered on the first ring.
“Where are you?”
“Where d’you think I am?” His annoyance flared into renewed life.
“Dammit, Delia, I’m in the middle of—”
“Soraya’s in trouble.”
At the mention of her name, he looked around the corridor. People were striding by. Minions who knew nothing about the impending FBI investigation. He went into the empty conference room. “Charles?”
She never called him Charlie, as Soraya did. He closed the door behind him. He was in darkness.
“What kind of trouble?” He had his own troubles to worry about.
The last thing he needed was—
“She’s in the hospital.”
His heart skipped a beat. “Hospital?” he parroted stupidly. “Why?
What’s the matter?”
“She was hurt in Paris. A concussion. Apparently, flying home made it worse.”
“What? Delia, for the love of God—!”
“She has a subdural hematoma. Her brain is bleeding.” Thorne felt the sudden need to sit down.
“Charles?”
“How...” His voicebox seemed to have shut down. He cleared his throat violently, swallowed convulsively. “How bad is it?”
“Bad enough that they needed to do an emergency procedure.”
“Is she...?” He couldn’t say it.
“I don’t know. I’m at the Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, but she isn’t out of surgery yet.”
He found his thoughts drifting back to Maceo Encarnación, who even now was cooling his heels in his office, while Delia was further complicating his already overcomplicated life. He wanted to forgive her, but could not.
“They have to relieve pressure in her brain, stop the bleeding,”
Delia was saying now.
“The procedure is normally fairly straightforward, but in Soraya’s case there’s a complication.”
Christ, there’s more? he thought. “What...complication?”
“She’s pregnant, Charles.”
Thorne started as if jolted by a surge of electricity. “What?”