The Doubt Factory

by Paolo Bacigalupi

  Don’t end up in a coffin.

  He remembered each of his parents in their coffins, each of their smooth faces beyond pain, even though when they’d died he’d seen the terror in their eyes.

  He remembered those funerals. First Dad, with Mom to stand beside him. Then Mom, and only Uncle Ty to take care of him. He remembered standing there, not knowing how to cry and not knowing how to let go, with his stiff-faced uncle holding his hand. Don’t worry, boy. I got you. Your uncle Ty’s got you.

  The elevator opened, revealing an antechamber with locked glass doors. Beyond the doors, BANKS STRATEGY PARTNERS gleamed on a wall over the reception area.

  “Welcome to the Doubt Factory,” Alix said.

  Moses found he couldn’t move.

  “You okay?” Alix asked.

  Alix tugged him, and he let himself be pulled off the elevator. Moses swallowed. “I’ve spent the last three years wanting to get into here. Cruising by outside, looking for some way…” He trailed off. This was where all his pain had come from.

  His father lying on the bathroom floor, gasping. Trying to get up and failing. And then his mother, a year later, collapsing under the stress of loss. Tumbling to the floor of the grocery store, cans rolling, bottles shattering, lettuce spilling out onto the linoleum tiles while everyone turned and stared. And him standing there, stupid with shock. Seeing the thing he’d feared the most, happening right in front of him. He remembered trying to make his body move, to run to her, and instead finding himself frozen and unable to do anything at all.

  It had all started here.

  All those years living with his uncle, the man not knowing how to do anything except teach a young boy about the con…

  And now, at last, Moses had come full circle. A business office, just like all the other polished business offices. It was infuriating that the place looked so normal.

  “It feels like…” He hesitated. “It should be bigger. I don’t know. More…”

  “Like Mordor?”

  He nodded. “Maybe. Yeah. This is the place that did it to us. Me. Adam. Cynthia. Kook. Tank. All of us. Someone inside here came up with a plan and made sure that we all ended up where we did.”

  “Are you going to be okay?”

  It should have been filled with bats, Moses thought. Bats and the sulfurous stink of evil. Instead, it was sterile AC air and a tenth-floor view of other buildings that were just the same size. Modern evil. It didn’t look like anything except another office building.

  If you wanted to look at evil, it was just a bunch of suits and ties, a bunch of cubicles and computers, the quiet whirring of commerce. Evil wasn’t anything. It was just business as usual.

  “Moses?” Alix asked. Her tone was worried. “Are you okay?”

  He turned to her. The girl who had risked everything to join him on this Don Quixote quest, standing there in her custodial uniform, looking concerned.

  You’re not alone, anymore, he realized. She’s with you. She cares about you.

  The Doubt Factory had stolen so much from him, and yet it had also given him Alix. The thing that had destroyed his past had given him the girl who made him want a future. He wanted a future with her.

  So let’s put the Doubt Factory in the past.

  Suddenly Moses felt a weight lifting off him.

  It was all going to work. He’d finally made it here. And thanks to Alix, he was going to make it through to the other side.

  “I’m good,” he said, and couldn’t help smiling. “Let’s go dig up some secrets.”

  Alix booted up her father’s computer. Her face lit blue as the screen glowed alive with its security challenges.

  “Okay,” she said. “This is where we see if Kook’s programs are as good as she thought.”

  “Oh, they’re good all right.”

  Moses plugged his slate into the computer’s USB drive and held his breath. A second later the retrieval program kicked back the answer they were looking for. The password was as long and as bad as a software-license code.

  “Damn. Your dad’s serious about security.” He started reading off numbers and letters, letting Alix type, with her confirming each letter and number out loud as he worked through the sequence.

  Alix hit Enter.

  Authenticating…

  They held their breaths.

  The computer continued with its boot sequence and opened to a familiar desktop layout.

  “I’ll be damned,” Alix whispered.

  Moses couldn’t help grinning. “I told you Kook was good!”

  “Yeah, she’s a genius. What do you want to get?”

  “Let’s see if we can look at some client files.”

  It took a little bit of rooting around in the server’s file structure, but eventually Alix found what she was looking for and popped open a database search window. One of the fields said Company.

  Alix typed * in the window and hit Enter.

  Corporate names started spooling:

  Dow Chemical

  Monsanto

  ConocoPhillips

  Philip Morris

  Kimball-Geier Pharmaceuticals

  Lukoil

  Merck & Co

  Pfizer Inc

  Marcea Pharmaceuticals

  Apple Inc

  Hewlett-Packard

  American Petroleum Institute

  Google

  Intel

  National Rifle Association

  Amgen Inc

  Household Product Association

  Eli Lilly & Co

  American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers

  Oxbow Corp

  Microsoft Corp

  Hill + Knowlton

  Oracle Corp

  Novartis AG

  Bayer AG

  AstraZeneca PLC

  ExxonMobil

  Koch Industries

  Facebook Inc

  Amazon.com

  National Association of Manufacturers

  3M

  Royal Dutch Shell

  Chevron Corp

  BP

  Edelman

  Procter & Gamble

  Association of Equipment Manufacturers

  Unilever

  Personal Care Products Council

  Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America

  Archer Daniels Midland

  CropLife America

  Syngenta AG

  The list just kept going.

  And going and going…

  “This can’t be right,” Moses said. “It’s like every major company in the world. BSP can’t have done doubt work for all of them. I mean, BSP is good, but they’re not this big.”

  Alix frowned and started opening files, checking the contents under individual company names.

  “Some of this looks like standard PR,” she said. “Totally legit work. Crisis communications, that kind of thing. Some of it looks like it’s more like ad campaign stuff… just general image polishing.”

  Fighting a feeling of disappointment, Alix went back to the main search screen and started checking pull-down menus. “The database is broken down by industry type, but it’s obviously not organized by ‘unethical business work’ or anything like that.”

  “Okay, that makes sense. So what do we have?”

  “I don’t know. There’s a ton of stuff in here. Some of this looks like they’re consulting with other PR firms. Some of it’s just letters and stuff. Just really basic correspondence.” She popped open a file. “This one’s just a pitch letter. I don’t think Google hired BSP, but I guess Dad thought they had an image problem that he could help with.”

  Alix popped open another file, trying to get a feel for what she was seeing. She laughed out loud. “This is interesting. Some of the company names are connected to potential campaigns that Dad’s got ready to roll, just in case.… Like BSP expects something bad to happen and wants to be able to pitch as soon as it does. They’ve got a whole section here for environmental disasters: chemical-plant explosions, toxic l
eaks, pipeline breaks, drilling platforms exploding…”

  Moses leaned close. “Did they do the BP oil spill?”

  “I don’t think so,” Alix said. “My dad was making jokes about them when the Gulf thing happened. I think he was pissed that they hired someone else instead of him.”

  She looked up at Moses. “This is too big. It’s like the tobacco files. There’s millions and millions of documents, but a lot of them look totally legit. It’ll take time for us to comb through it all. Is there someplace you want to start? Some way you want me to sort all of this? Start alphabetically? Go after Big Oil? Big Pharma? Big Ag?”

  “Let’s start with Kimball-Geier. What’s up with Azicort?”

  “Well?” Lisa said, leaning back from her laptop and turning to Mr. Banks. “I told you they’d try something like this.”

  They were in Williams & Crowe’s Data Integrity Monitoring Center, watching red flags pop up as the kids started accessing files.

  “Well?”

  Mr. Banks’s jaw was clenched, holding back an ocean of roiling emotions as he watched the pair poking around in the BSP central file servers.

  Lisa waited patiently for the man to come to the conclusion that was inevitable.

  Frustratingly, he seemed unable to make the call. A minute ticked by.

  Lisa pressed gently. “We’re going to need to shut them down. You have clients who are at risk. Williams and Crowe has clients at risk.…”

  “I want him gone,” Banks said through clenched teeth. “I want him away from my daughter.”

  Lisa nodded, pleased. “Once we have them, we can arrange for him to disappear.”

  “I don’t care how you handle it. I just don’t want him near my daughter ever again. Make it happen.”

  Lisa hesitated, then pressed again. “We’ll need to address your daughter at some point as well.”

  “I’ll deal with her.”

  “We have clients who will need assurance.…”

  He gave her a cold stare. “I’ll take care of Alix.”

  You’re in denial, Lisa thought, but all she said was, “Of course.”

  Lisa pulled out her encrypted phone and dialed through to the response team. “Timmons? We’re on. Targets are in the building. Tenth floor. Mr. Banks’s private office. No. You don’t need to be that careful. We just want the girl. It doesn’t matter what happens to the other one, but nothing can happen to the girl. The other one… we don’t want to hear from him again. And we don’t want news. Just silence, understood?”

  She waited, listening for the response. She turned back to Banks, who was still staring, transfixed, watching as his daughter and the boy who had turned her against him rummaged through his files one by one.

  “We’re up and running,” Lisa said.

  “How long?”

  “Not long. Our people are very good. We’ll secure the building, then lock down the tenth floor. Then we’ll move in.”

  Banks nodded sharply. “And it will be quiet?”

  “By the time they’re done, there won’t be a trace of him. It will be like he never existed. None of this will have happened at all.”

  “Don’t do anything to the boy in front of Alix.”

  “The team understands.” She stood up. “We have a car waiting. You can be near the offices in fifteen minutes. You’ll want to be there when they bring out Alix.”

  41

  MOSES WHISTLED. “I NEED ANOTHER hard drive,” he said.

  Alix handed him another terabyte drive. Moses swapped out the one that he’d just filled, and Alix dumped it into the duffel bag. It was more than she’d expected. Huge amounts of information, and they were still going.

  “I think we ought to be going soon,” she said. “We’ve already been here for half an hour.”

  Moses shook his head. “We’ve still got a lot here. You wouldn’t believe the stuff they have just on Azicort. Kimball-Geier has reams of studies that say Azicort causes comas if body-weight dosage goes off by much. And sometimes it happens anyway, and they still can’t figure out why. They’ve even got transcripts of emergency room interviews that they had investigators do. They know that this is happening. This is how Tank ended up in the hospital! They’ve known there were problems for years. They’ve been putting out studies blaming other drugs and patient diets—”

  Alix interrupted. “We don’t have time for this, Moses. Just get all the info.”

  “This isn’t just the smoking gun,” Moses protested. “It’s the whole smoking arsenal! Just the Azicort information is worth millions—maybe even billions—in class action lawsuits. I mean, you should see the nondisclosure agreements on this stuff. It’s amazing. Tank’s alive, but his sister died because they were hiding this.…”

  Moses went on, scanning documents. “It’s worse than I thought,” he kept murmuring. “They’re insane. When we broke into the safety-testing labs and stole Kimball-Geier’s rats, the thing we should have stolen was their test data. Azicort’s just a straight-up coma drug. That is, if it doesn’t just stop your heart completely…”

  “That’s great, Moses, but let’s get this done and get out.”

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “I don’t know.” Alix rubbed her arms. “I just don’t like being here. I thought we were going to get in and get out. Fifteen minutes, a half hour, tops. Time’s up.”

  She went to the window and looked down, hoping that no one could see what was going on. That no one would think the glow of a computer screen was suspicious at 3 AM.

  You’re being paranoid, she told herself. Lots of people work late in DC.

  “Just hurry up,” she said to Moses.

  “Okay, okay, but there’s terabytes here. BSP went full digital. All their old files are scanned. Everything. It’s a paper trail that goes back to tobacco.” He popped open a file. “Check this out. It’s like a treasure trove. I’ve got CEOs signing off on things that they’ve denied for years. It’s Eldorado. People could go to prison. There’s a ton of stuff on Marcea in here. With this, I might be able to file a civil suit. Wrongful death or something, and go after a CEO. I might be able to go after the actual people!”

  “Not if we get busted trying to get it out,” Alix said. “So hurry it up, will you?”

  Moses looked back at the computer. “This just takes time. I’d hook up more drives, but they’ve got only two USB ports on this computer. If I had Kook, maybe we could rig something faster.…”

  Alix wasn’t really listening as Moses rambled on about what Kook and the rest of the crew would have been able to do. She stared down at the street.

  Were those shadows moving?

  She squinted, trying to tell if she was seeing human forms down in the darkness, moving along the edges of the building. They didn’t look like regular pedestrians. She blinked and stared more closely. Maybe she was imagining them.

  Or maybe not?

  “Seriously,” she said, turning back to Moses. “We need to get the hell out of here.”

  “Why are you so jittery all of a sudden?”

  “I’ve got a bad feeling.”

  Moses popped another hard drive in. “We’re good.”

  Alix peered out the windows again, trying to see. The hair on her arms was standing up.

  “I don’t like this,” she murmured. “I don’t like this at all.” She made a snap decision. “Okay, we’re wrapping up. It’s time. We’re going.”

  “But I’ve only got half of it!”

  “Better than none,” Alix said grimly. She yanked the hard drive out of the computer.

  “Alix!”

  “We’re going.”

  She tossed the hard drive into the duffel. Moses looked like he was still going to protest, so she yanked the power plug out of the wall, too.

  The computer’s screen went black.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Making sure we get out in one piece.” She zipped up the duffel and grabbed Moses’s arm. “Come on!”

  �
��Why are you so paranoid all of a sudden?”

  “Like I said, I’ve got a bad feeling,” she said as she dragged him out of her dad’s office.

  “You’ve got a bad feeling? You know how long it’s taken me to get here, and now you want to leave just because you’ve got a bad feeling?” His voice was rising, even as he followed her down the hall to the reception area.

  Alix didn’t answer. All she could think was that something was terribly wrong. They’d done it wrong. They’d set it up wrong. Something…

  By the time she shoved out through BSP’s main doors, she was practically running. She hit the Down button on the elevator. “Come on,” she whispered. “Come on, come on.”

  Nothing happened.

  Frowning, she hit the Down button again, then stared up at the glowing floor numbers.

  L stayed stubbornly lit.

  Alix pushed the button again.

  Nothing changed.

  Moses stood beside her, staring up at the unchanging floor number. “What was that you were saying about a bad feeling?”

  From Alix’s perch by the windows, she could see shadows converging. Moses joined her, watching as more stealthy forms filtered toward the building. The elevators weren’t working anymore, and to their dismay, they’d found that the building’s fire stairwells were also locked down. They’d hammered on the doors, at first thinking they were stuck, and dashed around the entire floor of the building, hoping there might be some other escape, but now the reality of the situation was sinking in, and Alix found herself filled with an almost unnatural calm.

  “Williams and Crowe, for sure,” Moses said.

  “Yeah.” Alix wondered if Lisa was down there somewhere. Death Barbie incarnate. Coming for them.

  “I must say I hate those guys,” Moses said with a sigh. “Well, we might as well make it a big event.” He picked up the office phone and dialed.

  “What are you doing?”

  “You remember how Williams and Crowe came in for me the last time? The only thing that keeps us safe right now is if this turns into something public.” He turned his attention back to the phone.