by AC Fuller
"I agree with you on the 'security related' part, but not the 'anything important' part."
"Gossip? Stuff we know but don't print? Info you can blackmail people with? What would you want from me?"
He leaned forward, like we were conspiring together. He said, "In my business, there are formal assets and then there are 'hip-pocket' sources. People who work elsewhere but are happy to share info from time to time. We'd like you to become the latter."
I didn't like the thought of being in anyone's hip pocket, of course, but it was dawning on me that this was real. This could be over in a few minutes. He seemed not to know that I had the recording, and he was offering me a deal, and all my mind could do was calculate how long it would take to get back to Greta. "If I say yes, what happens to Quinn?"
"People like your companion can't do any real damage," he said. "She's been right that someone has been watching her, but it was never the CIA. Those guys make twice as much money as we do, so they farm people like her out to people like us."
"You didn't answer my question."
"I assure you that she'll be fine. You head back to Seattle, let her go wherever she goes, and we'll pretend like this whole thing never happened."
"Can I go back and see her? Just let her know what's going on?"
He stood and walked around to my side of the desk. "That won't be necessary, Alex. We already have people outside the coffee shop. They'll tell her."
I leapt up. "You what?"
He stepped back. "Oh, don't worry, Alex. We're not going to hurt her. We'll be taking her back to Vegas."
"Her place in Vegas burned down."
"Yes, we know."
"So—"
"Look, Alex, this is the real world. We know that you had no intention of joining the likes of her. She's not…our kind. She's crazy. She's paranoid. We will not hurt her, but we need her back in Vegas where we can keep an eye on her."
I wanted so badly to believe him. I mean, he had two beautiful kids who played sports. He seemed to genuinely care about America, about safety. Plus, he was just doing his job, and we've all done things we didn't feel great about because it was our job at the time. Lord knows, I have.
"How did you know where Quinn was?"
"We've been tracking you since Duck Valley."
I felt like a fool. "Do you already have her?"
"No. Like I said, two of my guys are outside the coffee shop where you left her. Cute dog, by the way."
I don't like being played. But Amand had played me and won. I was way out of my league. And then the full weight of what he'd been saying hit me. He was asking me to become a source, the twenty-first century version of the journalists who were part of Operation Mockingbird. Instead of newspapers, it was the web. And instead of the CIA, it was ARDS.
But I wasn't going to go down without a fight. "Tell you what," I said. "If your guys approach her, she might run, or be violent. She'll be more receptive if I explain this to her. We'll drive over to the coffee shop, you give me two minutes with her, and we'll part ways once I know she's gonna be okay. Like you said, she's a little crazy."
But that doesn't mean she's wrong, I thought.
Chapter 26
Amand called his men at the coffee shop and told them to wait for us. We took separate cars because I told him I wanted to leave straight from the meeting. On the drive over, I was trying to figure out what I'd tell Quinn. The whole situation was beyond screwed up.
Quinn had been right about Baxter being framed, but wrong about who had done the framing. I knew America had a vast web of private security contractors. But I didn't know they could be authorized to carry out a shooting like the one at The Gazette, at least not within the United States. Which led me to the thought, maybe they hadn't been authorized to do so. Maybe they'd been tasked with bringing back the drive and had tracked it to Tudayapi, then to Baxter. And when they'd reached Baxter, maybe they'd panicked. If they had been ordered to get back the drive, only to find it in the hands of two notorious data hackers, they might have panicked. Obviously, they were ex-military or ex-police. Those private security firms were a revolving door to the military and the official intelligence agencies. So, I could see the possibility that the shooting at The Gazette had been a last-minute thing, an on-the-spot response to learning that James and Innerva were involved. Then, probably by tracking Innerva, they'd found me and the second drive.
At first, I'd assumed that the drive had something to do with ending up on the No Fly List. But Greta had been behind that. So the whole show in the airport had just been a feeling out, of sorts. Amand and Holly had fully intended to let me get on the plane all along, to head back to Seattle and live out the rest of my life in peace. Clearly, they knew who I was, they knew what kind of stuff we published, and felt like the drive would be safe with me. Or, more likely, they had planned to have another member of their team meet me in Seattle and get the drive from me then. Not that it mattered now.
It was around nine in the morning and the coffee shop was bustling. Couples with dogs and strollers sat at outdoor tables in the morning sun, and a steady stream of customers came and went, holding paper cups and bags of pastries. But Smedley wasn't out front, as I'd expected.
I parked in the last open spot across the street, and leaned on the car while waiting for Amand to find a spot. When he emerged from around a corner a couple minutes later, he looked like he should be boarding a private jet, headed for Tangiers. He wore a long, tan coat, and was way too handsome to be a private security contractor outside Eugene, Oregon.
He gestured across the street, where two men in cheap suits were waiting, trying and failing to look casual. I had just one more question for Amand, but I had to ask it in a way that didn't let him know that I knew about the shooting. "If the drive was important enough to follow me to the airport, why are you letting me go with it now? How'd you find out what was on it?"
He frowned at me, like he was disappointed, then started crossing the street. I followed him, and it hit me as I stepped onto the curb in front of the coffee shop. "Tudayapi?"
"Sure," he said, patting me on the shoulder like we were old bros walking into a bar on a Friday night before the big game.
"She somehow made a copy?"
"She was just doing what we told her to do."
"But she said she couldn't back up the data."
He shot me a look, disappointed that I could be so naive.
"But how?"
"You don't need to know how, Alex."
I stepped up onto the curb, wondering how Quinn had failed to notice if Tudayapi had somehow backed up the data on the drive. But I wouldn't use my two minutes to ask her. My plan was to help her escape. As much as I trusted Amand to leave me alone, I didn't trust him, or any of his goons, to be as gentle with Quinn.
Amand shook hands with the two guys in front of the coffee shop, then tried to introduce me, but I was already at the large window, looking in. I didn't see Quinn, so I turned to Amand and said, "You're gonna give me two minutes, right?"
"Sure."
The coffee shop smelled like muffins and fresh roasted coffee, and they even had a bearded guy in the corner, hand-roasting coffee in small batches. It was a magical smell, and it brought me back to reality in a way nothing had for days. I missed Seattle.
I scanned the tables, which were full of older folks drinking coffee and young people drinking fancy, coffee-like beverages and staring at phones. But I didn't see Quinn.
I found two single-patron, unisex bathrooms in the back. Both were occupied, and I waited until the people came out. No Quinn.
I scanned the coffee shop again, making sure there wasn't an upstairs or a separate seating area I'd missed. But toward the back, next to the guy roasting coffee, there was a red door with a silver handle marked "Emergency Exit."
"Does an alarm go off when someone opens that door," I asked the guy.
"Uh, no. We use it for breaks and stuff. Boss doesn't like us smoking out front."
I speed-walked back out to the sidewalk, trying to conceal a smile. "Did you ever see her in there?" I asked the two meatheads next to Amand.
"Well, no," one of them said. "We just figured—"
I made a quick calculation that I should pretend to be shocked, but the truth is, I wasn't. Right when I'd realized she wasn't there, it seemed like the most obvious thing in the world. Of course she wouldn't wait around for me.
I turned to Amand. "What the hell?" I said. "I thought your guys knew what they were doing."
Amand just stared at them. I got the sense that he didn't like surprises, but he wasn't going to rip these guys a new one in front of me. But I could tell he wanted to. "This is unfortunate," he said. "You two start a scan of the area, talk to the people inside. Find her." Then to me, "Alex, walk with me to the car."
I followed him back across the street and he leaned on my old Thunderbird like he was posing for the cover of BMW Owner Monthly. "This is too bad, but it really doesn't matter. You're free to go. Head back to Seattle. We'll look for her, just to let her know what's going on. But if we don't find her, well…it's no biggie."
"But she has the binder. The print out. You know that."
"We do, but, like I said earlier—"
"You said you trust me with the information. You never said you trusted her."
"I'd recommend that at this point you just head home, Alex. Your anniversary is tomorrow, right?"
I wanted to tell him to go to hell. But, for Quinn's sake, I bit my tongue. "I'll go home, and I'll take your calls, if you promise nothing bad will happen to Quinn."
He held out his hand for me to shake. I shook it tentatively, slowly, looking him in the eyes. I believed that he wouldn't hurt Quinn. Maybe I was misreading him, but I believed that he believed we'd struck a deal. He smiled broadly, then gripped my hand with a strength I hadn't expected. The kind of handshake that is meant to intimidate. He said, "And you promise never to speak of this again."
"Yes," I said, and he let go of my hand.
With that, I got back into the car. Quinn had taken her duffle bag, so she had at least a few hundred bucks, a friendly dog, and a fake ID. Not to mention a pistol.
She'd been planning to disappear for years, and I guess she'd decided that now was the time. She was probably in some big rig truck, halfway to Canada by now. At least I hoped it was something that benign. I knew she could take care of herself—she'd been doing it for years—but I was concerned about how she'd freaked out when we arrived at ARDS. I honestly had no idea what she'd do next.
I got into the car quickly, waving at Amand as he walked back across the street, probably to give the two staffers a good dressing down. I hoped they wouldn't find Quinn. I really did.
But there wasn't much I could do about it, and Eugene was only four hours from Seattle.
Chapter 27
I was energized as I left town, but I crashed soon after. Halfway home, I had to stop at a rest area and sleep for a few hours because I was nodding off behind the wheel. Before I left, I got a few cups of coffee from one of those ridiculous coffee machines, and was pretty wired for the final push north.
Of course, I was eager to get back to my apartment, eager to see Bird and Mia, and eager for tomorrow. For my date with Greta. But I was preoccupied with Quinn.
We were bound to go our separate ways eventually, and I was surprised we'd stayed in the same location for as long as we had. Almost four days, altogether. Probably more continuous time than Quinn had spent with any one person in fifteen years. And more than I'd spent with anyone other than Greta. But Quinn wasn't the kind of person who would just quit and disappear. She had the binder, and my guess was that she'd try to get it out somehow.
I just hoped she wouldn't do anything to get herself in trouble.
With Quinn out of the picture, my biggest struggle during the last couple hours was resisting the urge to check my phone while driving. It was strange to be back to not looking at my phone for the ordinary reasons—safety, responsibility—rather than because it could get me killed. But I did pull off the road into a rest area once to check it, and was happy to discover a note from Mia, who wrote to confirm the plan for tomorrow.
Everything was still a go for my meeting with Greta. Mia fully expected her to show up at 10 am, expecting to meet a new client for an all-day, hands-on coaching session. She assured me that things were going fine at the office, too. Bird has mastered the art of the image-based listicle—the sort where you promise a reader a list, but the list turns out to be made up of image cards you're forced to scroll through one by one. In case you're wondering, we do that so we can sell more ads. She assured me that website traffic was up, and the office was running smoothly. She wanted to know what was going on, of course, and I wrote back promising to fill her in when I got back.
By the time I reached Tacoma, the nap and coffee had caught up with me and I felt like a new man. I passed the car dealerships, the casino, and the outskirts of the somewhat depressed, post-industrial city, and loved every billboard and building along the way. Then I saw the lights of Seattle in the distance, twinkling at me like they were welcoming me home.
The evening was gray and dreary, but the air was warm enough to roll my window down. The smell of Seattle started to fill the car: moist air, tinged with salt and exhaust fumes. I felt I'd lived a thousand lives since I'd smelled it last, and I became filled with memories and memories of memories. It was the finest smell in the world, and I was nearly in tears.
By the time I stumbled through my door, I was in love with the city again. I still have the king-sized bed I bought back when I lived in New York, which Greta and I used to keep in our guest room. As I flopped down, the bed felt softer and more supportive than ever. I pulled the thick comforter over me and knew I'd be asleep within minutes. But, as I often do, I decided to check my phone one last time, just in case anything had happened in the last couple hours.
I opened up Twitter and Facebook. A few notifications, but nothing interesting enough to keep me awake. I was no longer trending on Facebook and, with no new quotes from Greta, and no one else who would go on record, the story of my impending divorce had dried up. People were tagging me in stories here and there, but nothing major and, most importantly, nothing new.
I was about to close my phone when the little endorphin rush hit me. A new Facebook message. I swiped over to the Messenger app and saw that it was a "Message Request," a Facebook message from someone who wasn't on my "Friends" list. I got a lot of those, so I was about to ignore it. Then I saw who it was from.
Smedley Vegas.
If the name hadn't tipped me off, the link would have soon enough. I clicked it and landed on a Chinese site, The Dissident Blog. I couldn't understand any of the characters, of course, but I was so tired I started scanning them like I was reading in English.
根据自由新闻中国收到的文件，一个美国首席执行官，接近达成一项协议，将媒体内容提供给中国，已经是CIA最重要的资产超过50年。这些文件列出了美国中央情报局计划对美国媒体系统的秘密控制 - 一个已经公开四十多年的计划 - 家庭媒体控股公司CEO Dewey Guntstott是中央情报局的资产。在过去六年里，他一直在谈论将他的公司的电影，音乐和其他财产投入市场。中国现在必须问自己是否想让中情局管理他们的媒体。
I noticed the two words in the center, a knot forming in my stomach.
I tapped the "Translate" button at the top of the page, a new option from Google that I barely believed would work. The text on the page changed quickly, and I read the poorly translated article.
According to Liberty News China, received the document, a US chief executive, close to an agreement to deliver media content to China, has been CIA's most important asset for more than 50 years. These documents list the CIA's plans to control the US media system - a plan that has been in public for more than 40 years - Dewey Gunstott, CEO of the home media holding company, is the CIA's asset. For the past six ye
ars, he has been working to putting his company's films, music and other properties on the market. China now must ask whether it wants the CIA to manage their media.
Despite the bad translation, I picked up enough words to understand that Quinn had somehow leaked the story to a rogue Chinese website.
Below the summary story there was a link to the full piece. I followed the link and clicked translate. It was hard to tell, but there didn't seem to be any more details than in the summary on the front page. Just more background about Gunstott, about Operation Mockingbird, and more references to a "secret source." Thankfully, there were no quotes from Quinn.
It made sense that she would have leaked it to China, rather than the U.S. She was banking on the fact that, in the U.S., the news that Gunstott had once been on a list of CIA assets wouldn't make much news. But in China, it was possible that it would cause a much bigger stir. For starters, Gunstott's deal was already on shaky ground. But the bigger reason was that the citizens and government of China don't believe that the CIA is out to serve their interests, as most Americans do.
Quite the opposite.
Starting with the failed attempts at arming a Third Force against Mao in the 1950s, and continuing through the multiple American attempts to spy on Chinese nuclear facilities, the Chinese were famous for their distrust and loathing of the CIA. And having this news reported on a dissident Chinese site was sure to piss people off because it would involve national shame in a way that didn't figure in American news stories.
One thing I couldn't figure out was how Quinn had managed to get the documents past the Great Firewall, and how she'd managed to do it so quickly. She'd assured me that it was nearly impossible. I imagined I'd find out soon enough, but tomorrow morning was what mattered, and I needed to sleep.
Chapter 28
Sunday, June 18, 2017
I slept hard, harder than I had in years. The kind of blackout sleep where you wake up and don't know who or where you are or what day it is.