She closed her eyes, shook her head. “That’s not how it sounded when they presented it, with all that hoo-ha about optical signal feeds and getting full feeds on the bad guys. And how it’s only inspected by machines, not human beings. It sounded safe — and necessary.”
“It’s mass surveillance, and the American public’s going to freak out.”
The senator stared at him for a long while. “Will, do you think we made a mistake?”
We? he thought. He’d argued against it! But no, there was ISIS and al-Qaeda, and the tragic terrorist attacks last year, and her constituents wanted scalps. “I think that’s irrelevant at this point,” he said. “There’s already rumors about how the government has ways of turning on the camera on your computer. People are going to feel humiliated — they’ll feel violated — and they will come for us with pitchforks and torches and there will be no forgiveness and no bargaining.”
“Will, the data won’t actually be accessed unless there was—”
“Unless some secret court makes a secret authorization with no real oversight? That’s how they’re going to play it. We are turning the sanctity of the home into a... a movie set. Every house a glass house. Big Brother stuff. I’m not arguing the rights and wrongs of this. I’m talking about the optics. That’s how it’s gonna play. On CNN, the volume dialed up to eleven. These US senators just abolished privacy.”
“With the proper explanation—”
“Susan, it’s that rule of politics you taught me on day one: when you’re explaining, you’re losing.”
He wondered if he’d gone too far with her, been too candid, too blunt. He expected her exasperated gaze, but to his surprise she looked pained.
“Then there’s the question of what happens if the NSA gets it before we do.”
“That can’t happen. They’d hold it over me, use it as blackmail — use it to control me. They’d turn me into a marionette, with its strings in their slimy hands. You realize that cannot happen. You cannot let that happen.”
“I won’t,” he said. “I have a plan. I may need to be out of the office for a couple of days, but Jodie can take over.”
“Fine.”
“I’m on it,” he said.
51
Tanner became aware that he was talking, or maybe mumbling, to someone in front of him, in a very white room. His vision was blurry, and everything seemed strangely bright. He felt hungover. He was able to make out a woman with short blond hair sitting across a table from him.
“A brother and a sister,” Tanner was saying, his words slurred. He must have been asked if he had any siblings. Who was this woman asking him questions, and where the hell was he? His feet felt cold, and he realized he was wearing socks and no shoes.
“Hey, where the hell are my shoes?” he said, his voice hoarse.
He was in a white room that seemed to have nothing in it except the long table he was sitting at across from the blond woman. On the wall behind her was a large mirror. He was still dressed in his clothes, but they’d taken away his shoes and his belt.
He hurt in a number of places. The knuckles on his left hand. His right side. A painful spot at the back of his neck, at the base, where the wasp had stung him. No, he remembered, it wasn’t a wasp, more like a needle, a hypodermic syringe. A large area on the back of his right arm felt bruised and tender. His lower back, around his right kidney, was painful and covered with a bandage.
He remembered now: he’d been grabbed outside the sports club, he’d fought with a couple of guys, and he must have been injected with something, and then he was hustled into the back of an SUV. They’d put opaque goggles over his eyes and earphones over his ears, and then he couldn’t see or hear anything.
“And where were you born?” the woman went on.
“No,” he said slowly. “I’m done here. Where the hell am I?”
“This shouldn’t take much longer.”
“Not gonna take any longer. Because I’m not answering any more questions. I want to know where am I, and am I under arrest or not? What’s the deal?”
The door came open and a man stepped in. He said, “Excuse me, Deborah. I’ll take over now, thank you.”
He was middle-aged and stoop shouldered and wore an ill-fitting navy-blue suit with a dress shirt and no tie. He had dark hair, which looked colored, cut short, cut into short bangs atop a high forehead.
He gave a lopsided smile. The man had a craggy, pitted face. A homely face, but somehow a friendly one.
Deborah got up with her clipboard and exited the room.
“Who are you?” Tanner said.
“Earle.” He put out his hand as if to shake.
Tanner ignored his proffered hand. The guy smelled like Irish Spring soap.
“You’re Michael,” the man said. “Mike?”
“Tanner.”
“All right, Mr. Tanner.” He spoke with a deep-southern accent. His voice had an abrasive edge, like a buzz saw. It sounded familiar. It had been the voice over the headphones earlier, when he’d just been taken.
“You have a last name, Earle?”
“I think my Christian name is good enough for now. You certainly did a number on my friend Joshua.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Pretty sure you broke his nose.”
“Oh, right. It got in the way of my fist.”
“The reason we brought you here is that you are in possession of a laptop computer that doesn’t belong to you, on which there are numerous top secret classified documents. Are we in agreement on at least this much, Mr. Tanner?”
“Who are you?”
“National Security Agency. You’ve probably heard of it.” When Tanner didn’t reply, the craggy-faced man went on: “Let’s just make this simple. You need to hand over that laptop forthwith.”
“You want to tell me what laptop you’re talking about?”
Earle sighed, like the disappointed father of a wayward son. “Mr. Tanner, please don’t waste your time and mine. My agency has the legally established right to read your e-mails and your texts and much else besides. And not just you but anyone and everyone you’re in touch with. Which includes your wife, from whom you appear to be separated, your friends, and your employees at Tanner Roast.”
“You’ve been reading my e-mails and listening to my goddamned phone calls?”
He smiled, displaying a spread of crooked teeth. “I didn’t say we did anything. I merely said we have the right under United States law. It’s perfectly legal.”
“So was slavery.”
“Fair enough.”
“And so much for my constitutional right to privacy.”
“Privacy? Really?” He shook his head. “Get over it. No such thing anymore.”
“Says who?”
“Last time you upgraded software on your computer, I’ll bet you clicked that little Agree box, right? But did you actually read what you were agreeing to? Who the hell’s gonna read twelve thousand words in seven-point type, right? You don’t know what it says. What if it requires your first-born child? A pound of flesh? Welcome to America, land of Click Agree! You didn’t read the privacy policy, and you wouldn’t understand it if you did.”
“That’s got nothing to do with—”
“Fitbit knows how much you exercise and how long you sleep, and Netflix knows when you stopped watching Legends of the Fall and when you’re binge watching Arrested Development. You’ll give away data on all your purchasing habits in order to save a quarter on Honey Nut Cheerios.”