It was a cash-only place, which was fine with him, because he now had lots of it. He sat at the counter. The waitress poured coffee without asking, as if she knew. It was not bad. A little watery, but freshly brewed, good beans. Everything at this diner was supersized. Pancakes were the size of dinner plates. Hash browns were heaped up high. Even the coffee mugs were unusually large.
He thought of Lanny — he couldn’t help it — and felt guilty. His mistake, picking up the wrong computer, had led directly to Lanny’s death. A good person had lost his life.
There was no way to undo what he’d done.
The counter filled up with customers. He had more coffee, ate eggs and bacon and buttered toast, with pancakes on the side. Nothing healthy. He was risking his life, being out here, on the run. Watching what he ate seemed pointless.
The guy at the counter next to him smiled, watching Tanner eat ravenously. “Good stuff, right?” the guy said.
Tanner smiled.
“Coffee’s okay too, huh?”
“Yep, it is.”
“But it doesn’t compare to yours,” the guy said.
65
Tanner felt jolted by a shock of electricity.
They’ve found me.
But just as quickly, he thought: Don’t freak out, maybe the guy recognizes me from a trade show, a sales call, something like that.
The man on his left was soft and middle-aged, with a round belly under a loudly patterned, acid-trippy red-and-black-and-green sweater. He wore steel-rimmed aviator glasses, had deeply inset eyes like raisins and a bristly gray mustache. He did not look like one of the members of the NSA team he’d filmed in the woods. He was professorial, physically unprepossessing.
“Do I know you?” Tanner asked.
“Seattle, wasn’t it? The coffee expo?”
Tanner stared. He slowly shook his head. “I wasn’t there.”
“Too much of a coincidence?” The man shrugged. “When something seems that way, it usually is.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying you’re a man who needs help,” the man said quietly, “and I’m offering mine.”
“What?” He felt the adrenaline start to course into his bloodstream.
“You’re a hunted man, Mr. Tanner. But you need to know I’m not one of the hunters. I’m your friend. I’m an admirer.”
Tanner sat back. “Who are you?”
“Call me Gregory.” The man spoke with a barely detectable accent of some unidentifiable kind. He flattened his A’s too much, a foreigner trying hard to mimic an American accent.
“But that’s not actually your name.”
“Close enough.”
What was the man’s real name? Gregorio, Grigor, Řehoř...? Where was he from? His American accent was extremely good. But he wasn’t American; of that much Tanner was sure.
“Mr. Tanner, you’re a man who, through no fault of his own, has made a lot of enemies. Now they’re trying to run you off the road. But I look at you and I see someone who’s incredibly brave. Someone who’s been given an extremely rare opportunity to change the world. And I want to help.”
The waitress refilled Gregory’s coffee mug and then Tanner’s, moving away quickly, discreetly. She could see the men were talking about something heavy.
“Help how?”
“You know, there’s a great tradition. Men of conscience who expose terrible abuses. Like it or not, you’ve been thrust by history into an extraordinary position.”
“To do what?”
“All you need to do is to share your documents with my people. They’ll know what to do with it. You know the saying, ‘Sunlight is the best disinfectant,’ yes?”
“And who are ‘your people’?”
“My associates, I should say. An organization devoted to that disinfecting sunlight. We believe that secrets, especially government secrets, must be disclosed whenever it’s within our power.”
“You mean like WikiLeaks?”
He nodded, smiled. “I work with them, yes.”
“You work ‘with’ them?”
“But let’s not get caught up with prepositions. With, from, of; the filaments can get pretty tangled. The bottom line is this: we want to help you. What I want you to know is, there are people who are rooting for you. People who care about openness and transparency.”
“And then what happens to me? Do I get killed?”
Gregory shook his head slowly, soulfully. “This is what I’m here to tell you. When it comes to threats on your life, we have some powerful assets. We can give you as much protection as you need — and I’m talking about the full resources of a rather powerful state.”
Now he understood. “You’re talking about Russia.”
Gregory didn’t reply.
“Wait, so you’re in a position to offer full protection of the Russian security services?”
“I am.”
“Are you Russian?”
He shrugged, said nothing: a simple acknowledgment.
“Are you WikiLeaks or are you — Russia? Which is it?”
“Do I have the support of certain Russian assets? Distinctions like that have become meaningless these days, really. There’s no clear line, and it doesn’t finally matter. It’s complicated, but the world is a complicated place. What does matter is — I can help you. I can protect you.”
“In Russia.”
“We’re talking a luxury apartment, a dacha — the life. You’re not going to be like Philby, drinking yourself into obscurity. We’re a capitalist paradise now. And I’ve had your coffee. It’s great. Your coffee could be huge over there — it’s an untapped market. Point is, we can protect you. You can have any kind of life you want.”
“And, what, I have to move to Moscow for the rest of my life?”
“May it be a long life. Which I wouldn’t put odds on over here.”
“I’m still alive,” he pointed out.
“I’m impressed; I really am. You’ve done well in the last few days, staying out in the cold as long as you have. You are an amateur, after all. Not a trained operative. Clearly, some combination of resourcefulness and luck has served you well. But how long do you think you can keep going? Even a hot hand cools eventually.”
Tanner shook his head.
Gregory picked up a fork and traced a pattern on the countertop. A windy sigh. “Mr. Tanner, listen to me, please. You go back out there, and they’ll grab you. It’s only a matter of time. Now, will they kill you, an American citizen? I don’t know. Then again, they have ways to do that untraceably these days.”
“Well, you’ve got the wrong guy.”
“The wrong Michael Tanner?” Gregory asked with a glint of amusement.
“I’m not a whistle-blower, and I’m not a hero.”
He set down the fork carefully, like a surgeon handing off his instruments. “You know, Ed Snowden didn’t plan to be a hero either. One day he just woke up and realized, enough is enough. That’s all. He did the right thing. He listened to his conscience.”
“That’s got nothing to do with me.”
“You can decide to be a hero. And change the world. Do you realize how powerful you are? If we’re right about what you’ve got, this could change everything. Mr. Tanner, there are moments in history — hinge moments, they’re called — when the world suddenly changes. This is where we are, I think. Will America become a surveillance state, eventually a dictatorship? Or do you have it in your power to stop all that in its tracks? See, you can become the Nathan Hale of our time. Nathan Hale could have remained a schoolteacher, but he made a decision and he became a hero. To save the American Revolution.”