by Draker, Paul
I thought of Cassie’s sweet, earnest face, so overcome by emotion as she stared up at her future computer-literacy schoolhouse, and I wanted to cry. Their sickening, cynical lies had turned the accomplishment of her generations-long dream into a corrupt and hypocritical travesty. I couldn’t tell her about this—I knew that already—but she was bound to find out eventually. And it would break her heart.
I wasn’t about to let that happen to her.
CHAPTER 49
Human Rights First was originally founded by a bunch of lawyers—something I found pretty hard to imagine. The nonprofit organization’s sole purpose was to promote laws and policies that defended universal human freedoms and rights. Supposedly, they received no government funding whatever, to protect their independence from compromise.
But in the cesspit of hypocrisy that was our nation’s capitol, I knew that they had been compromised nonetheless. A single glance at the agenda of Human Rights First’s 2014 Global Summit was enough to tell me that today’s keynote speech would be a cynical mockery of everything the organization purported to stand for.
The scheduled keynote speaker was Senator Grayson Linebaugh.
Which was why, sixteen hours after I had crouched inside an empty crate watching a heavily guarded midnight train pull into the warehouse at Pyramid Lake, I now found myself in Washington, D.C., standing on the open-sky terrace of the Newseum’s crowded eighth-floor Knight Conference Center.
Half a mile away, the Capitol Building dominated the southeast-facing view as I mingled with the crowd, wearing my borrowed white caterer’s outfit. A black baseball cap, inscribed with Wolfgang Puck Catering’s logo, was pulled low on my forehead. From beneath its brim, I watched Linebaugh, standing fifty feet away.
The Summit was the perfect venue to make a scene and expose the senator’s hypocrisy to the group most likely to take issue with it, but I wasn’t here to do that.
The time for that kind of subtlety was long past.
I had tried being subtle with Linebaugh before, only to find out that he had already turned the tables on me before we sat down to play. I no longer had any illusions about the kind of person I was dealing with or what he was capable of.
This time, I had a more direct approach in mind.
Linebaugh stood at the terrace rail, chatting easily with a group of visiting foreign students as cameras flashed, with the Capitol dome a photo-op background behind him. The murmur of the surrounding crowd and the traffic noise from Pennsylvania Avenue seven stories below drowned out his voice.
The railing behind Linebaugh was only waist high. It was a long way down.
Working my way closer so I could get a better angle, I paused behind a group of lobbyists.
I watched Linebaugh pause in mid anecdote to lift the single remaining chocolate-covered strawberry from the tray that Melissa held out to him. He took a bite, and I turned away with a grin.
Frankenstein had helped me locate Melissa, recently fired from Puck’s restaurant a floor below us, by hacking into the D.C. Department of Unemployment Compensation’s records. When she met my flight at Dulles Airport, she turned out to be an attractive young woman, and one who clearly enjoyed the party life a bit too much for stable employment.
Both those qualities were things that her employment history—short stints as a cocktail waitress, video game convention booth worker, Hooters hostess, and exotic dancer—had led me to expect. After I offered her three thousand dollars for two hours’ work the next day, then politely declined her own offer of a wild night on the town to celebrate, she turned out to be a pretty competent partner.
The keys she had failed to return to her former employer had gotten us into Puck’s Newseum restaurant kitchen, where we had dressed appropriately in borrowed clothing before heading up the single flight of rear service stairs.
Now Melissa’s work was done. She brushed past me on her way out. I slipped the second half of her cash payment into the pocket of her caterer’s outfit, receiving in return a friendly thigh-pat that felt more like a grope. Ignoring her whispered invitation to celebrate together at her place tonight, I left the terrace and headed the opposite direction.
Ten minutes later, I could see neither Linebaugh nor the Capitol dome. In fact, I couldn’t see much at all from where I lay, stretched uncomfortably across three joists in the ceiling crawl space above the men’s restroom.
I quickly exchanged encrypted texts with Frankenstein, who assured me that every single petaflop of his expanded processing power was focused on analyzing psychiatric videos right now. No ghosts in the machine, no interference. His last test run of a thousand cases had yielded a diagnostic accuracy of 92 percent.
Satisfied that we were in good shape for Monday’s session with my daughter, I returned my attention to the task at hand: solving the problem that Linebaugh represented. What I had planned would settle things decisively and finally.
My phone’s screen gave me a clear wide-angle view of the bathroom below, seen through the two-millimeter borescope camera I had poked through the acoustic ceiling tile. What I had inadvertently learned so far, about the lack of hand-washing hygiene among our nation’s political elite, was troubling.
Fifteen minutes later, the activity on the screen brought me out of my jet-lagged bleariness to full alert. A big, fit-looking guy in a dark suit strode into the bathroom, brushing past an exiting foreign dignitary in a turban. The thick white coiled wire between his ear and his collar told me he was part of Linebaugh’s security detail. Giving the sink area a quick scan, he checked both stalls and withdrew.
A moment later, Grayson Linebaugh entered the empty bathroom. His heels clicked against the floor tiles as he rounded the sink counter with some urgency, crossed to one of the stalls, and closed the door. The clack of the latch echoed through the bathroom below me.
Leaving behind the discarded caterer’s outfit, which I had used to pad the joists, I lifted the acoustic ceiling tile aside. I silently lowered myself through the opening to balance on the sink counter. Timing my movement with the rustling from Linebaugh’s stall, I hopped lightly to the floor.
Two quick paces took me to the outer door. I slid my black coat sleeve over my hand to cover my fingertips and slowly rotated the deadbolt above the knob, locking the two of us inside the bathroom.
Linebaugh’s glossy black Oxfords were visible through the foot-high gap beneath his stall door. Approaching on silent feet, I reached into the pocket of my tuxedo jacket and grasped the twelve-inch length of metal whose hard edge had been pressed against my ribs as I lay across the ceiling joists.
Pulling out the school-style steel ruler, I dropped it to the floor, and slid it with my foot through the gap under the stall door.
“Just checking the width of your stance,” I said. “I don’t want you getting in trouble like your colleague Larry Craig did a while back—although, I must admit, it’s nice to see you can actually maintain an honest stance on something.”
“Hello, Trevor.” The calm lack of surprise in his tone reminded me just how dangerous Linebaugh was. “I assume I have you to thank for my current digestive discomfort?”
“I’ve heard a guilty conscience can do that to you,” I said. “I wouldn’t know.”
“What brings you to our nation’s capital?” he asked.
“The cherry blossoms are nice this time of year, especially in Arlington National Cemetery. I thought I might take you to see them.”
“Subtle.” I heard paper rattle on the roll. “By the way, I called the Wynn in Vegas to approve your friends’ little weekend stay.”
Cassie must have phoned him about it, I realized. Had she asked him to approve the expenses? Or had Linebaugh done it on his own?
I felt a momentary chill. Even now I might be underestimating the person I was dealing with here. But then I thought of what they planned to make Cassie do against her will, and my jaw hardened.
“Decent of you to let my friends enjoy exercising their right to participate in the
democratic process,” I said. “Another universal human right is having unrestricted access to our elected representatives. It’s good to see that I can exercise that particular right anytime I want to.”
The toilet flushed, and the latch between us clicked. Linebaugh stepped out, raising an eyebrow at my tuxedo.
“Your cummerbund is upside down,” he said. “Let’s cut the bullshit, shall we?”
“Let’s.”
Linebaugh was silent while he washed and dried his hands. Then he leaned back against the sink counter and regarded me with an even gaze.
“I told you that you have a lot to learn yet,” he said. “It’s time for you to start wising up real fast now, son. I’m being patient with you because someone very dear to me has a soft spot for mangy strays, even though she shows appalling taste in the men she chooses to let into her life. But I won’t see her hurt.”
“She’s the only reason we’re talking right now,” I said.
Linebaugh was smart enough to catch the double meaning. But my message had already been delivered, without any need for words at all, by my choice of venue, by the Ex-Lax-coated strawberry he had eaten suspecting nothing, and by the fact that we were having this conversation in total privacy, at a time and place of my choosing.
I was going all in right now.
“When were you planning to let her know what her new job truly entails?” I asked. “After she opened her school?”
“I’m prepared to have a hypothetical discussion with you,” he said. “No specifics. And then you’re going to promise me something.”
“McNulty was going to blow the whistle, wasn’t he? Pretty efficient to eliminate two problems at the same time.”
Linebaugh frowned. “You’re smarter than that. Think it through.”
I did for a bit. And much as I had liked the idea of Linebaugh arranging McNulty’s murder and framing me for it, the scenario didn’t really make sense.
The Nevada desert was full of unmarked graves. If Linebaugh had wanted McNulty and me out of the way, it would have been far easier and cleaner to make us both disappear. McNulty’s murder was bound to draw media attention sooner or later, and calling media attention to Pyramid Lake right now was the last thing Linebaugh wanted.
“Who killed him, then?” I asked.
“I’d feel a lot better if I knew that,” he said. “I’m truly afraid, Trevor. For Cassandra, whose safety I can do little to ensure, because she won’t listen to me. I’ve asked her to stay in California a couple of weeks—wrap up her work at LLNL, finish packing up her house, and go relax at the beach—but she refuses. I suppose I could force the issue, but I want to respect her wishes, too.”
“If you’re so concerned about her feelings,” I said, “then how can you make her an accessory to shitting all over her family’s legacy? All over her own people?”
“I can see you genuinely care for her, and frankly, I’m relieved. It makes what I’m going to ask you to promise easier. But don’t presume you know what’s best for Cassandra, either. She hates that, Trevor.”
I leaned up against the counter alongside him. “She’s going to hate what you’re turning her great-great-great-grandmother’s homeland into even more.”
“Don’t be so sure. She’s young and idealistic like you, but she’s practical, too. She wanted a way to help her people, and so did I. Now she has two. She’s getting her school, but schools don’t feed hungry children or build roads and houses. She’ll come around on the second thing, too, eventually. After all, she’s uniquely qualified to supervise its operation and guarantee its absolute integrity.”
“Integrity?” I said. “You hypocritical motherfucker, you don’t even know the meaning of the word. But I’ve got an alternate proposal for you. How about we leave Cassie out of that part altogether and let her concentrate on getting her school going? If you need one of us to do your dirty work, let it be me, instead.”
The surprise on Linebaugh’s face appeared genuine.
“You’re a quick learner, I’ll grant you that,” he said. “But do you really think your qualifications will ever be a match for Cassandra’s? After all, she’s spent many years developing her expertise.”
“Using her talent to justify this is low even for you,” I said. “I’ll do whatever I have to, just to spare her the pain. She never has to know.”
“I’ll think about it,” he said. “But now you promise me this: until they catch McNulty’s murderer, you stay close to Cassandra. You keep her safe. I know about what happened Thursday night—how you protected her from those thugs—and I’m truly grateful to you. She’s like a daughter to me, Trevor. Don’t let anything happen to her.”
“How can you be so sure you’re not talking to McNulty’s killer right now?”
“Because knowing what a person is all about has been my business for the last forty years, son. I know you better than you know yourself. I even like you, believe it or not, although”—he rubbed his stomach, and a shade of discomfort crossed his face—”at this precise moment, I’m having a little trouble remembering why.”
“Please don’t do this to Cassie,” I said. “She’ll never forgive herself for it. Use me, instead. You can trust me—I know how to keep my mouth shut. After all, I never told anyone what Frankenstein saw on your face when I asked you about that money in Iraq.”
Linebaugh laughed and squeezed my shoulder. “I know I can trust you, son. But your little charade wasn’t the reason I approved Cassandra’s twelve million. Time you learned the way the world really works. What do you think would have happened, even if you could have actually proved what you thought you knew, and gotten it broadcast on every news site and channel in America? Let me tell you. A few watchdog groups would have whined about it, but your friends and neighbors certainly wouldn’t. You said it yourself: I saved the American taxpayer a few bucks. You’d have sent my voter approval rating through the roof.”
He gave my shoulder another squeeze and pushed off from the counter.
“I think you’ll find that’s the case with what we just finished discussing, too. We’re solving an ugly problem, one that’s a danger to our children and grandchildren. I think we owe that to them, Trevor. Don’t you?”
I didn’t have an answer. Linebaugh stepped back into the stall and closed the door behind him. Our conversation hadn’t gone at all the way I planned.
Standing next to the sink, I realized something else, too. Whether I liked it or not, I now worked for Grayson Linebaugh. My eyes narrowed.
“The discomfort you’ll be feeling during your speech?” I said to the closed stall door. “Think of it as a learning experience. It’s what a normal, decent human being feels when standing in front of a large crowd and lying through their teeth. But I suppose someone like you wouldn’t understand that, so let me make this real simple for you. If I ever find out that you’ve lied to me about anything at all…”
Turning to walk out, I hit the handle on the nearby urinal and let the flushing sound finish my parting sentence.
CHAPTER 50
Jen called me Monday morning, while Amy was in school. Over the weekend, a rash of e-mails in the online parents’ group for Amy’s class had given Jen something new to worry about.
“I think she’s borrowing their phones,” she said. “The teacher caught two of Amy’s classmates posting pics on Facebook during class and tweeting on Twitter. Their parents are freaking out, but the kids won’t say who showed them how to do it.”
“Why not teach them all Internet safety instead?” I dropped onto the beanbag and adjusted my earbud headphones. “This is the world those kids live in now, even if the dinosaurs that run their school don’t get it yet. By the way, did you tell Amy she’d be speaking with someone this afternoon?”
“First, I need to have a initial conversation with Dr. Frank myself. To set my mind at ease.”
I stiffened. “Jen, even fitting Amy into his calendar was tough. I doubt he can schedule a separate appointment to talk to yo
u on such short notice—”
“Trevor. Amy will not be speaking to him at all unless I say it’s okay.”
A text from Frankenstein popped up on my screen: Interviewing the child’s parents or guardians is a standard part of the psychiatric evaluation process.
“I’ll call you back,” I said to Jen, and hung up.
Hopping down from the dais, I turned to face Frankenstein’s brand-new array of screens, which now paneled all sides of the sanctum, from floor to rack top, interlocking to form a wraparound video wall.
We had installed the new screens during the upgrade—dozens of them in the sanctum alone. But that was just the tip of the iceberg.
Almost five hundred high-definition flat-panel screens now fronted the ground-floor rows of server racks, rising in stacked rows from floor to eight-foot rim. Another 320 monitors paneled the server cabinets on the rows of raised metal catwalks overhead.
Roger had joked that the multicolored strip lighting I installed before looked Las Vegas tacky. Now, in retrospect, I could see that it had. Without realizing it, I had pimped my supercomputer like an Oildale ’08-er street racer’s blinged-out import car—cheesy neon and chrome. I had made my creation look tasteless, gaudy, and cheap.
But no longer.
Slick black walls of floor-to-rack-top HD panels now ran for hundreds of feet along Frankenstein’s curving rows of servers, displaying a continuously shifting pattern of giant green molecules. They drifted from screen to screen, leaving bluish contrails, seeming to float about the room as they rotated and swirled and combined or split in chemical reactions all around me.
The display of organic molecules was purely for aesthetic reasons. The simulation that drove them took less than a millionth of Frankenstein’s processing power. Now the giant, multipanel displays could be changed to show anything: boring status graphs, a giant 3-D aquarium, a continuous star field of spiral galaxies and nebulae, the icy blue glaciers and drifting bergs of Antarctica, or simply abstract patterns of color and light corresponding to Frankenstein’s internal patterns of processor activity.