‘He’s a computer nerd.’
Everyone looked round in surprise. It was Kennedy who had interrupted.
‘Yes, well, he seems versed in computers,’ Brisko agreed, ‘but these days, who—’
‘He’s a computer nerd, believe me,’ Kennedy continued. The Scottish guy’s voice was a low, easy drawl that sounded effortlessly sardonic. Kind of tone that could wish you good morning and part of you would suspect he was somehow taking the piss. ‘And he is one guy, working on his own. He’s Nigel No-Friends, sitting at home every night with his PC, his X-Files posters and his Believers albums. This is obviously a social group the FBI don’t have a typing profile for, which if you ask me is negligent, because there’s fuckin’ thousands of them.’
‘How can you possibly—’ began Steel, but Kennedy was in flow.
‘Listen. There’s a difference between being computer-literate or even a computer expert and being a computer nerd. The difference is that the former use computers to achieve something, and the latter think use of computers is a worthy achievement in itself. The former might take pride in their work, but the latter is proud simply of having done their work on a computer, whatever that work might be.
‘Take these messages, for a start. He didnae need to tell umpteen TV and radio stations and news agencies in order to get the result he was looking for. He only needed to tell the one. And he didnae need to tell them all at the same time, either, with some smart-arse programme that keeps the bomb icon cloaked until an appointed moment. He was showing off. Showing off to himself and showing off to you guys. He’s also running the signal from his TV cameras into his computer instead of into a telly, or as well as into a telly, so he could show off by putting those video playback windows into his wee electronic press release. If he only wanted to prove he had surveillance running, he could have quoted the frequencies and let you check it out for yourselves.
‘But if you want conclusive evidence, you just need to take a look at the text. His English is fuckin’ appalling. Dead giveaway.’
‘What?’ Steel asked. He seemed happy to go along with the previous theorising, but this had lost him.
‘Have you ever seen any of these news-group things on the Internet? It’s like syntax meets chaos theory. Problem with computer nerds is they were always happiest in maths and science lessons at school. This guy knows how to use state-of-the-art digital electronics, but he doesn’t know how to use a fuckin’ apostrophe.’
‘He’s right,’ Bannon observed. ‘From the message, it looks like this guy took English at Dan Quayle Junior High. But wait. If he sent these messages to so many computers, isn’t there a way of tracing the source?’
Steel shook his head. ‘I asked our own computer nerd the same question already. He told me a guy like this wouldn’t be dumb enough to send anything direct; he’d do it all through the Net, and probably through a firewall, which would totally cover his tracks. The most we could hope for – and even this would be a long shot – would be to identify which service provider the files emanated from, on the off-chance that he hasn’t bounced the stuff all round the globe en route. But even then, these servers have thousands of people hooked up at the same time. He said it would be like trying to unravel a ball of string the size of Jupiter. It can be done, but only if you’ve got a spare thousand years. Forget it.’
‘All right, Peter, have ’em cross-refer Christian fundamentalists and computer, er, enthusiasts,’ Brisko instructed.
‘Sure thing. I can get our analysts to sift through fundamentalist news groups and web sites. It’s long odds they’ll deliver something against such a tight dock, but there’s no harm trying.’
‘Cross-refer Communion of the Saved too,’ Witherson interjected.
‘What’d you say?’
‘You think he’s a fundamentalist Christian. I think we can get more specific than that,’ she explained. ‘He’s one of Luther St John’s little devotees. He refers to me as the Whore of Babylon – that’s copyright the Rev nineteen ninety-eight. And St John’s been mouthing off about the AFFM for months, long before his Legion of Decency rally at Little Nuremberg across from the Vista. I’d say Luther wasn’t the only one planning a public event to coincide with the film market.’
‘And what is this Community of whatchamacallit?’ Brisko enquired.
‘Communion of the Saved. That’s the people who fully subscribe – and I mean that financially as well as ideologically – to the hard line of the Rev’s thinking. What you might accurately call the fully paid-up members of the St John hardcore, people whose commitment goes a bit deeper than just paying to get CFC on their cable system. Fanatics. People who find regular Christian fundamentalism a little too warm and fuzzy.’
‘Well there’s no question marks over this guy’s commitment,’ Kennedy observed, dabbing delicately at his injured arm with some tissue paper. ‘Just a shame somebody sold him a Bible with all the tolerance and forgiveness passages missing. He should sue the Gideons.’
‘You don’t know the half of it,’ Witherson said, her voice lowering ominously. ‘There’s a lot of those Bibles around. These people think everyone outside their “Communion” is a sinner, damned before God’s eyes. They think they’re the only folks with any chance of missing out on the big fire, because contrary to what that wishy-washy pinko Jesus asshole said, their God isn’t all that forgiving. If you aren’t toeing the line as closely as they are, you’re Satan’s Pop-tarts. Toast. Trouble is, there’s a fine line between imagining someone’s eternal soul is condemned and thinking their earthly life is worthless. Safe to say this guy crossed it way back.’
‘So would there be a list of these people at St John’s organisation?’ Larry asked.
‘Bound to be,’ she said. ‘St John’s mob computerise everything on a database. They got records of all cable subscribers, obviously, but I’m told they got records of how much individuals donated and when: times of year, intervals, regularity. So that they know exactly how much they can squeeze people for and when’s the best time to call, from the well-off businessman to the widow in the trailer-park.’
‘How do you know all this shit?’
‘When someone identifies you as an omen of the Apocalypse, Sergeant, you’re kind of forced to take an interest. My money says the bomber’s name is on St John’s computer. Cross-check that.’
‘We can’t,’ Brisko said flatly. ‘Whether someone belonged to this Communion thing is not a detail that would have been recorded if they were ever arrested, questioned or even just listed on our files. No more than whether they belonged to the Raiders’ fan club. It’s not like if they were a member of the Klan or some other extremist group.’
‘No, not much.’
‘It’s easy with hindsight, Miss Witherson. Until now, membership of this organisation has never been associated with any kind of crime or even any kind of threat.’
‘Yeah, but you can get a list from St John anyway,’ she argued.
‘We don’t have the power to demand that. It’s subject to data protection and confidentiality regulations.’
‘Oh yeah, like that normally stops you. Why don’t you hack it? If it was some fundamentalist Islamic set-up you’d—’
‘Why don’t you just ask St John for it?’ Kennedy suggested. It was difficult with that voice to guess whether he was being serious. Witherson, who had had longer to get used to the guy’s flippancy, nonetheless shot him a look that warned him she was still a long way from enjoying it.
‘I don’t mean phone up and say please,’ he explained. ‘Although you’d have to do that in the first instance. But I mean lean on St John. Put a spin on it. He’s been standing across the road telling everyone how movies influence people to do violent and terrible things, but you can point out – or threaten to point out – that it was listening to him and watching his shitey TV station that influenced this bampot.’
‘You’re right,’ Steel said, nodding. ‘You’re damn right. We can use the media on this one. St john
whipped up the hysteria, he pointed the finger at the AFFM and he’s been attacking Miss Witherson for months. He can argue that no one should be held responsible for the actions of a madman, but he’s gonna look extremely unChristian if he doesn’t make some kind of reparation, especially if he obstructs our investigation. St John knows what crucifixion-by-media feels like. He’s not gonna want a second spell on the cross.’
‘Okay Peter,’ Brisko said, pulling out his portable phone, ‘I’ll get McCluskey on to St John’s people. He’ll paint a picture of the anticipated coverage that Francis Bacon would puke at. You talk to the silicon section. Then we’ll play Snap.’
The two Feds commenced their respective phone calls, Brisko engaging deferential tones as he talked to someone a lot further up the chain of command with a progress report. Or, more accurately, an ideas report. Progress would be if any of these lines attracted a bite and they got some feedback.
Bannon, with a daughter about Witherson’s age, was fussing solicitously over the poor girl and probably getting on her nerves, offering yet another cup of coffee to the person in the world least in need of caffeine stimulation to stay sharp and alert. She remained polite, but Larry suspected she would accept sympathy and support from only one source: the guy sitting on the other side of her. He could only imagine what the two of them had gone through together on that roof, and whether it was that alone that had made the connection, but neither looked a good bet to survive long without the other right then, and Larry sure knew all about that.
‘Thanks for sticking around,’ he heard her tell Kennedy. She spoke as if everyone else had left the room. Guess there were times when you cared less about privacy; Madeleine Witherson was probably the most public figure in the world at that moment, so comparatively a room with just two Feds and two cops in it was splendid isolation.
‘Any time,’ Kennedy told her. ‘Besides, I’ve nowhere else to go. I was here to cover the AFFM. Now there isn’t one. This tit blew up the market and now he’s threatening to murder my writer.’
‘God bless America, huh?’
‘Oh ay. Wonder if the bomber knows what it feels like to have an apple pie shoved up his arse while it’s still in the hot oven dish. ‘Cause he will if I get my fuckin’ hands on him.’
There was a rap on the glass partition before Arguello stuck his head round the door. ‘Hey Captain, we got another message on the computer. It just popped up on every screen in the building. It’s for real, it’s got the codeword. You better check it out.’
They turned to the computer screen on the castor-wheeled workstation next to Bannon’s desk, it having been rolled against the wall to make room for the assembly. Larry noticed that the screen-saver – a little guy in LAPD uniform chasing a crook with the full striped jumper, mask and swag-bag regalia round the black square – had been cleared, presumably by the appearance of the new icon.
‘Charming,’ Witherson observed. The icon was an elaborately crafted knife, unmistakably a sacrificial dagger, or ‘sacraficial’ in the mind of the sub-literate bomber.
Bannon double-clicked on it.
CODEWORD: MATTHEW 21:12-16
PACIFIC VISTA BEACHSIDE SWIMMING POOL.
DAWN.
NO LATER, NO EARLIER.
NO RESTRICTION’S ON NEWS CAMERA ACCESS.
WHEN A QUALIFIED DOCTOR HAS PRONOUNCED THE WHORE DEAD, YOU MAY EVACUATE THE BOAT.
NB: WHEN NIGHT FALL’S, LIGHT’S ON THE DECK AND IN THE ENGINE ROOM MUST REMAIN ON. IF I AM LEFT IN THE DARK, I WILL HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO ALLUMINATE THE SITUATION.
THIS MESSAGE WILL SHORTLY BE RELEASED TO THE MEDIA, MINUS THE CODEWORD. YOU WILL CONFIRM THAT IT IS GENUINE.
‘Motherfucker,’ Bannon muttered.
‘Oh, I don’t doubt it for a minute,’ said Witherson. ‘Beggars can’t be choosers.’
‘I guess we misunderstood the original message,’ Bannon said. ‘When he said “by the dawn’s early light”, we assumed he was giving us until dawn. But he specifically wants it to happen then. Why?’
‘He wants to give us all time to talk about it,’ the girl said. ‘He wants the whole watching world to sit up all night saying “will she or won’t she?” and yabbering on about the moral issues raised by this situation. Won’t be long before they’ve all forgotten about the morality of what the bomber’s done because they’ll be busy discussing the morality of what I’ve done, and what the movie business has done to precipitate this. By midnight this asshole’s not going to be the bad guy any more, he’s going to be “a symptom of America’s spiritual decline” – just like the pornography, promiscuity and godlessness he’s striking out against. Trust me, there will be more bullshit spoken between now and dawn than on any single night in the history of this planet. You’re gonna need waders to watch TV this evening.’
‘She’s right,’ agreed Steel. ‘Guy wants a lot more than the standard fifteen minutes. Shit, he isn’t just going to be the lead item on the news, he’s going to be the whole schedule on every network.’
‘He and me,’ Witherson observed bitterly. ‘Good excuse to trawl through last year’s scandal and sensation one more time, remind everybody on the moral Right of all that I’ve done to bring this upon myself. God works in mysterious ways, those self-righteous fucks’ll be saying to themselves.’
‘Now calm down, Miss Witherson,’ Brisko implored, lowering his tones to what he probably thought was soothing. Larry winced. No matter how human G-men got, they still forgot how much easier it was from the grandstand.
‘Calm down?’ she asked, incredulously. Her voice didn’t rise, but the pH in it took a sharp dip. ‘I’d say I’m pretty calm, under the circumstances. I was blown up this morning, Agent Brisko, don’t know whether you caught that. I saw someone vaporised in front of me by the blast. I fell into a swimming-pool with one hell of a wave machine, and I’d either have drowned or been flushed straight down into Bloodworld theme park if Stephen here hadn’t intervened. I escaped from that only to be driven over here and told my own death is the sole bargaining chip against the lives of eighty-eight more people. And in response to all of this, I have remained, in my opinion, admirably composed. So please indulge me if I want to let off steam at the fact that all over America right now there are people who think I deserve all this because I fucked a few guys in front of a video camera.’
Whatever attempt Brisko might have made at reparation was lost as his mobile phone rang. His voice remained steady as he answered it but Larry could tell he was praying for good news, so that he wouldn’t have to turn around and face the scared, angry girl with the admission that he couldn’t help her.
It didn’t sound much like his prayers were being answered. Lots of ‘Ah, shit’ and ‘You gotta be kidding,’ and ‘Yeah, yeah,’ and ‘But what about—’
He finished his call and sighed, facing a silent, expectant room.
‘That was Ginsler at the Vista,’ he said resignedly. ‘They got the guy planting the bomb on videotape, but they don’t have a face. The tape came from a camera on a stairwell leading to the roof from the lift – timecode says yesterday afternoon, about two forty. Guy’s got his back to camera going upstairs, wearing a hooded sweatshirt, carrying a metal case. There’s an access panel in the wall, underneath the stairs, for regulating the pool’s water supply, chlorination, all that stuff. The panel’s barely in the edge of the shot, but Ginsler says he’s pretty sure they can make out the guy crouching down and screwing around with it. Guy comes back, hood up and head down. It’s useless. Wouldn’t even be much good as evidence that he did it, never mind for finding the guy.’
Witherson rolled her eyes and tried to concentrate on just looking pissed off, but Larry could tell she was fighting back tears. Her companion swallowed and grimaced, but he didn’t say anything – no dumb cracks, no vacuous reassurances, no useless platitudes; even his smartass remarks had so far all been relevant. He might have a pretty weird sense of humour, but Kennedy didn’t seem to talk unless he had something to contribute. Lar
ry thought he should be giving lessons.
‘And the security staff didn’t react to this at the time?’ Steel asked, nominating himself as a first pupil.
‘Ginsler says it was nothing to look twice at,’ Brisko stated evenly, a man calling on everything he had to hold it together. ‘Hotel security are mainly about monitoring what’s going on in the lobby or in the corridors, checking nobody’s trying to bust into one of the rooms. They see a guy go upstairs towards the swimming pool, that’s nothing to worry about, they’d look at the next screen. Besides, they’re mainly on the lookout for theft, not terrorism. This is a hotel on Santa Monica beach, for God’s sake, not the Israeli embassy. Nobody was ready for this.’
‘Except him,’ Larry said. ‘He was very ready. I mean, mad bombers aside, security was pretty tight for this AFFM deal. They’ve got a bead on everybody coming through the door, and you don’t get in unless you got a cute plastic laminate with your picture on it. The only people who get through the doors without are couriers, and they get escorted all the way: make their delivery, get a signature then straight back out – do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars.’
‘So what are you saying?’ Brisko asked.
‘I’m saying he had ID. He didn’t just need to get in, he needed to move freely, come and go, check the place out. He knew in advance there was a security camera close to where he wanted to plant his bomb. This guy didn’t just happen to be wearing his jogging outfit yesterday.’
‘So how do you get one of these IDs?’ Brisko asked.
Larry looked to Witherson and Kennedy.
‘You have to be accredited by AFFMA,’ Witherson said. ‘The companies pay a participation fee and supply a list of attendees. My accreditation was done through Line Arts. Stephen’s was presumably through Scope.’
He nodded. ‘That was only because they were paying. If I’d wanted to do it strictly off my own bat I could apply as a freelance and pay the fee myself. It’s not that much, because the AFFM want the coverage, but they still have to charge to deter time-wasters. But basically the guy would only need to supply a name and the money and he’s in.’
Not the End of the World Page 26