The Revisionists

by Thomas Mullen

  She spread the research out over the next week. Worked late every night (not that that was unusual) so she could access the GTK files when no one was around. One of the reporter’s questions, which asked her to identify herself or at least explain her relationship to GTK, she chose to leave unanswered.

  * * *

  The next time Tasha saw T.J. (at a meeting to plan the candlelight vigil in front of the White House), she told him to ask his hacker friend to kill the account and delete the e-mails.

  “You gonna tell me what it was all about?” he asked.

  She realized that the hacker friend could just read them himself. Who was this hacker friend? Would he read the e-mails and tell T.J., or someone else? She’d taken such care to cover her steps; maybe there truly was no way to move without a trace. She’d make a lousy criminal.

  “No,” she told T.J. “Maybe one day. You’d approve, trust me.”

  The reporter worked fast; the article appeared three days after their last e-mail exchange. Tasha had opened her paper one morning and there it was, on page A-3. Not a front-page story? She seethed for a moment, then read it through. He’d done a good job, even finding a former GTK employee (unnamed) who said, “I’m not surprised to hear about shenanigans like this,” and posited that this could be “the tip of the iceberg.” But Tasha’s documents provided the bulk of the story, and she felt a surge of pride that what she’d done did indeed matter to someone—hopefully, to many hundreds of thousands of someones. Including the important someones, the someones who had the power to stop such awful machinations, the someones who would now be roused by popular outrage into action.

  People at her firm saw the Times story, of course, and an internal audit was launched; junior associates were questioned by the most court-savvy of the partners. But Tasha was cool and had rehearsed her answers many times; at the conclusion of her own thirty-minute inquisition, she felt she’d eluded the firm’s suspicions. On coffee break with her pal Jill one morning, Jill asked Tasha point-blank if she was the leak, and Tasha confessed that the news story had made her happy, even thrilled, but she swore that it wasn’t her; she still remembered Ethics 101, thank you very much.

  The Times story instantly went viral. It hit on all the major liberal news-segmentation sites and countless like-minded blogs, which used it as evidence of the war’s inherent illegality. Conservative and military bloggers touted the story as well, as proof of a bureaucratically mismanaged defense policy and an industry that cared less for patriotism than profit. By the third day, the Times’ competing publications, like the Washington Post, were augmenting the tale with their own investigations. Cable anchors were disgusted, op-ed columns employed angry adjectives from the back pages, and a couple of congressmen vowed a close audit of GTK’s business dealings.

  And then, just when Tasha was feeling most proud of herself for making a difference, the GTK story receded into the media netherworld. She Googled it daily and sometimes found a heartfelt open letter on the blog of another bereaved military relative or saw an angry new screed from some critic of global capitalism, but that was all. The cable anchors had moved on to other stories of injustice, the op-ed pages were incensed by something else, and the two congressmen turned to other tasks more compelling than launching some boring audit of a very connected company. GTK Industries weathered the storm. Barely a week after the Times story appeared, a subcommittee chairman lightly admonished GTK from the Senate floor moments before voting in favor of giving the company a vast new defense contract.

  It dawned on Tasha slowly, the irrelevance of what she had done.

  A few nights later was the vigil at the White House. Suddenly she was going to so many meetings and events, leaving the office “early” at seven to make them, running the risk that her billable hours would be too low, that someone in HR (or one of the partners) would put a black mark by her name, file her under Lacks Commitment. She’d almost skipped the vigil, wary of that black mark and figuring the event would be just useless symbolism. Which it was.

  But she’d gone, and it hadn’t been a total disaster, as that’s where she’d met Troy Jones. Maybe she was confusing her mourning with her loneliness, her heart with her libido. She’d spotted him right away—how could she not have?—and had angled to talk to him. Brothers like this did not drop from the sky. His hair was cut short and was very dark against his skin, and his light eyes—were they green? or gray? possibly the lightest sapphire blue?—seemed somehow double-lensed, like he was observing things from a certain remove. She wondered if his mother was white, or perhaps a grandfather, and there seemed to be some Asian in there too, possibly Vietnamese—perhaps Troy’s very existence owed itself to America’s past military adventures.

  He reminded Tasha of her brother. He seemed to carry himself like a soldier, a certain bearing and gravity, so unlike the typical guys who figured using slyness and humor was the quickest way into her pants. After the vigil, she’d returned home and studied Marshall’s military portrait, which her parents had given her and which she’d hung on her wall. Years ago they’d given her his first such portrait, and Marshall in all that regalia had been almost unrecognizable to her. She’d since grown used to it, and he’d grown into it. This picture, taken just before his last deployment, was the Marshall he had always been fated to become.

  The day after the vigil, she used a much-deserved sick day after working three consecutive seven-day weeks and spent much of the day sifting through Marshall’s old journals and trying to contact his war buddies.

  Then she’d received the phone call. A mystery man, telling her to meet him at the Topaz Bar the next day. Calling from a blocked number. Someone who knew her name, her home phone number, that she worked at the firm, and that GTK was one of its clients. Someone who implied that he knew even more.

  She barely slept that night. Had distinct memories of rolling over and staring at her clock to see that the time was 12:01, 1:57, 2:30. Telling herself not to panic. Maybe it was only the original Times reporter, or someone who worked with him? Maybe the guy hadn’t really been threatening her?

  In her head, the law school professors were clearing their throats.

  * * *

  The Topaz was one of those so-called boutique hotels that had appeared in D.C. over the past few years like infiltrators from a trendier city. Tasha had gotten drunk here with law school friends once, had vague memories of the rotating red and blue lights that bathed the bar in alternating warmth and coolness. At two in the afternoon, the bar was bright and nearly empty but for a few lone men wearing business suits and jet lag, tapping messages in their PDAs or chatting on their phones in foreign languages between sips of coffee. None of them looked up at her.

  Even the location of this meeting was disturbing, suggesting that the mystery caller knew it was close enough to the firm’s office for Tasha to walk here on break, yet far enough from it that it was unlikely they would meet or be overheard by any of her colleagues.

  She’d been sitting at a small table by the window for five minutes, nervously telling the server she was waiting on a friend, when a familiar man walked in. He came right up, said, “Hi, Tasha,” and sat down opposite her as if he’d been expected.

  Who was he? Wait, now she remembered; she’d seen him at one of the antiwar meetings she’d attended. Couldn’t remember his name. Tall, built like a track runner, short light hair, and glasses. What was he doing here? He was years younger than the voice on the phone had been.

  “Oh, hi,” she said. “I’m sorry, but I’m waiting for someone.”

  “Yes: me.” He sat there with an implacable face, waiting for it to sink in.

  “You aren’t—”

  “I’m not who called you, no. He sent me here in his stead.” She noticed that he was carrying a black man-purse, which he flung open now. He removed two manila file folders and placed them on the table between them right as the waiter appeared. He ordered a vodka tonic, and it took her a few seconds to realize the waiter was looking at he
r. She managed to utter a barely audible “Iced tea.”

  Things were slowly falling into place.

  She tried to remember what they’d talked about during their five-minute chat a couple of weeks ago. He’d said he was a graduate student, something about Asian history. He’d recently returned from years teaching English abroad and he was incensed at the direction their country was headed in.

  “I’m afraid I forgot your name,” she said, trying to keep calm as everything shifted around her.

  “Leo Hastings.”

  “And you want to talk to me about one of my firm’s clients?”

  “Yes, GTK. That was quite a story that broke in the Times. The reporter had access to all kinds of confidential information about a company that’s represented by your law firm.”

  “That story very much angered our client.”

  “You’re the lawyer here—I’m sure you could skew things any way you want. But all I have to do is pick up the phone and call one of your firm’s partners and tell him that I represent the government and I happen to know that one of his associates leaked those GTK files. One of his associates decided that her political opinions were more important than legal ethics, more important than the firm’s reputation for defending its clients. And then I’d say your name.”

  The glasses arrived and Leo informed the waiter they wouldn’t be ordering any food.

  “I’m not sure how any of this is your business, Leo, but here are the facts. The partners already interviewed everyone at the firm, including myself, about the leak. GTK performed its own internal review as well. We still don’t know who did it, and I have no idea why you would think it was me.”

  He smiled. “I get it. You think I’m taping this, and you need to be circumspect. Which is smart. But here are some more facts: The e-mail account you used to contact the Times reporter was created by a hacker we’ve been following, a hacker who travels in the same circles that you’ve unfortunately started traveling in of late. Your buddy T.J. And when those e-mails were sent, the account was accessed from the downtown D.C. public library, which is a five-minute walk from your office.”

  She needed a few seconds. T.J. and not a friend of T.J. was the hacker? Which probably meant that T.J. had read those e-mails she’d sent and never said anything about it.

  “The library’s a five-minute walk from thousands of people’s offices,” she said, “and most of them are much more politically connected than me and must have had access to something about GTK.”

  His smile hadn’t changed. “You need to scan in and out of your building at the security kiosk. Terrorism-prevention measures—aren’t they a bitch? We can match the times you scanned in and out with the times those e-mails were sent. Three times, all perfect matches.” He tapped one of the manila folders, then slid it closer to her. “This has the evidence that the e-mails were sent from MLK Library, and also the security scan times at your office building.”

  She opened the file and was confronted by pages of techie-speak—acronyms and long streams of programming code, like android haiku. “I’m supposed to understand this?”

  “You don’t have to, but your firm will, and GTK will. And the D.C. Bar will.”

  She skimmed more of it and found the entire e-mail exchange between her unnamed self and the reporter. She felt dizzy and hot, and took a long sip from her glass.

  “This is all circumstantial.”

  He laughed. “That’s the argument someone would have to make if she was fighting this in court. You really want to do that?”

  She waited, trying to consider her options. “What do you want?”

  “That’s the good news—I’m not asking you for much. I need someone to keep tabs on different organizations, someone who can get in deeper than I can. Someone who’s an old buddy of one of the ringleaders. Someone with a gold-plated biography, a grade-A reason to be so involved with the groups.”

  He opened the second manila folder and she saw a number of photographs of a familiar man. He was yelling in most of them.

  “Thomas Jefferson Trenton, also known as T.J. Your old college boyfriend, now a radical activist with a long record of arrests for trespassing, destruction of property, computer hacking, and other acts of civil disobedience.”

  “You know that we went to college together?”

  “Public records, Tasha. It’s not that hard. Don’t worry, it’s not like we dug up dirty e-mails you’d sent to each other from your Oberlin accounts, though we could. But I respect privacy.”

  Sure he did. College attendance records wouldn’t have told him that she’d slept with T.J.—Leo must have spoken to some mutual acquaintance at one of the meetings. She felt violated; her whole body was hot.

  “I still don’t know what you’re asking of me.”

  “I have strong reason to believe that T.J. is one of the brains behind a certain Web site called knoweverything.org. They like to post confidential, classified information just for the illicit thrill it gives them—I guess he outgrew the Internet porn he was into a few years ago. I need you to help us find out if this is true. All I want you to do is keep going to those antiwar meetings, maybe spend some extra time with T.J. and his pals, talk to them about what great work they’re doing, and what they should do next. And maybe, due to your insider position at a powerful D.C. firm with all sorts of clients in the Establishment, you’ll be able to offer them other juicy bits of leaked information if they’re interested.”

  “This… You can’t do this.” She stood up.

  “If you think things will turn out better for you by walking away and leaving this information with me, that is a mistake.” He tapped the table again and slightly softened his voice. “I’m sorry, I rushed things. You just got hit with a lot—sit down a minute. Please.”

  She obeyed and he leaned closer. “You’ve gone to a few of those antiwar meetings, but only a few, and even when you’re there, you keep quiet. I’m willing to bet I know why: It’s because you’re smart and sane, whereas most of the people in those groups are crazies nursing grudges. You don’t agree with them, Tasha—they just want to exploit the pain of people like you and use it for their own political agenda. So why is it a problem to let me know what they’re doing?”

  The pain. He knew about Marshall. That’s what he meant by her “gold-plated biography.” If Tasha did try to insinuate herself more deeply into T.J.’s life and whatever he was doing, no one would ever suspect she was a mole. It would fit perfectly into T.J.’s worldview that the sister of a dead soldier would want to join his crusade.

  “Maybe I don’t like some of them,” she told Leo. “But they have a right to protest.”

  “I believe in the First Amendment too, thanks. I’m not here to run anyone in for saying they don’t like this president or that war.” He tapped the first folder. “Look, you sent those files in because the crooked bastards at GTK put their stock price and earnings reports above the lives of the soldiers those vests and ammo might have protected. Good for you; sincerely. I applaud that. The thing is, there are people on the opposite side, people like T.J., who find classified information about intelligence strategies or ongoing investigations, about diplomatic policy, and they publicize it, putting the lives of dedicated people at risk just so they can score some political points. Now, how is that any different from delaying a shipment of vests?”

  She shook her head. “I see how this works. You’ll hold the GTK thing over me forever. One day you’ll tell me my little project’s done, but then, a year later, maybe five, I’ll get another call, Hey Tasha, I need this favor.”

  He took a sip of his two o’clock vodka and leaned back in his chair. “I promise you, if there’s any chance I’ll still be working on assignments like this five years from now, I’ll shoot myself.”

  Jesus, she was having a hard time figuring him out. “This is what you do, Leo? Blackmail, extortion? This is legal for you?”

  He chuckled. “Feel free to sue me. I’m a government contractor, so I’m pre
tty insulated. Honestly, they’re still writing the rules about what applies and what doesn’t. But yeah, if you’d rather challenge this in open court, lay bare all of your secrets, go for it.”

  “Contractor? Wait, who do you work for?”

  For the first time, he moved around uncomfortably in his seat. “It’s complicated. But I am authorized by the United States government to be doing this, and I have its full protection.”

  She tried to think. There were great, gaping holes in what he was saying. “I want something, in writing, that spells out what you want me to do, so that if I agree, then when I do finish it—”

  “In writing? Sure. One copy for you and one for me, only I’ll need to make some extra copies for my boss and his boss, and then it’ll get entered into the system, which really means thousands of people can access it, and it’s in there forever. I wanted to make this as painless for you as possible, anonymous and off the books, but if you really want it to be part of the permanent record that Tasha Coretta Wilson assisted in the—”

  “All right, all right.” What she really wanted was to slap him. The lawyer in her had already prepared half a dozen retorts beginning with “You have no right to—,” but she knew he’d deflect, counter, or ignore them all.

  “I’m not angry at you for GTK,” he repeated. “You exposed wrongdoing. If you want to stand up and publicly take credit for that, then do it. Meaning: disbarment, and prosecution for legal malpractice, and never being able to repay your law school loans. A life of poverty for following your ideals. That’s your choice. But if you think you’re worth more than that, if you think you shouldn’t have to suffer for the rest of your life over one little ethical lapse, then help me expose a little more wrongdoing.”

  “By war protesters?”

  “If peaceful opposition is all you come across, then this will be the world’s most boring assignment. A lot of what I do is boring, Tasha. I can’t even tell you how boring. It would be par for the course if this leads nowhere. I’m not asking you to wear a wire or get in the middle of anything dangerous. Just keep your eyes open, listen, and tell me everything. That last part is important. If I ever find out you knew about something and kept quiet, if I so much as get a sense that you’re holding out on me, then you’ve broken our deal”—he rapped his knuckles on the first folder—“and you live with the consequences.”