by Reece Hirsch
Roland helped her sit up and moved her down the couch, away from the vomit on the floor.
“Focus up, Zoey, and look me in the eyes,” Roland said.
Zoey complied.
“Okay. Are you working with law enforcement?”
“No.”
“Do you have any reason to be here other than the fact that you’re on the run?”
“No. And who made Roland here the human lie detector?”
“Why are you here?” Roland asked.
“Because guys in suits from some secret agency tried to kill everyone in my office. They’re looking for me, and if I had stayed in the US, they would have found me and I’d be dead. The only reason that I’m alive now is because I went out for coffee that morning.”
“Did someone tell you to leave the office then?”
“No, I just like coffee.”
Roland placed the point of the spoon handle on the soft skin underneath her left eye, pressing at the lower orbit of the socket. “Since you got your plane tickets, have you spoken with anyone that you know? Anyone?”
“Only Chris. No one else.” The spoon’s pressure ached beneath her eye. “If you’re trying to disappear, you don’t spread it around . . . you know? The only way you stay alive is to leave your old life behind. Completely.”
“And that includes Chris Bruen?”
“Yes. If I connect with him again, it’s going to have to be a long time from now. When I know I’m safe.”
Roland stared into her eyes, searching for something. Zoey remained perfectly still and stared back at him.
He increased the pressure, and she felt the metal pinching her skin, the pressure reaching her eye. She didn’t know how much force it took to pop an eye out of its socket, but she thought Roland might be approaching that threshold. Zoey had a mental image of her left eye dangling on her cheek by its optic nerve like a bloody Christmas ornament, and she wanted to scream, say anything to make him stop—
Roland withdrew the spoon, the pressure gone. “I think she’s telling the truth,” he said to the others.
Everyone seemed to relax a little, except for Maria, who just looked disappointed.
Zoey slumped back on the couch. “I have to admit you had me worried there for a moment. Where’s the trust, guys?”
Roland stood up and let Damian take the seat before Zoey. As they passed, Damian said, “What did I tell you?”
“We’ll see,” Roland muttered.
Damian leaned over Zoey. “When you see what we have in mind, you’ll understand the precautions. You’re part of our crew now. Welcome.”
“I just wanted a place to hide out,” Zoey said.
“Well, if you’re going to stay here, you’re going to have to work with us. It’s that simple. We’re not running a B and B here.”
“And what if I say thanks but no thanks, just go on my way?”
Damian ran a hand over his buzz-cut dyed-blond hair. “Well, we can’t allow that to happen. You understand.”
Zoey was still groggy, but the panic from being interrogated by Roland had cleared her head a bit. She was either going to help Damian and his crew with their job, and become one of them, or she was going to die. “So what’s this job that you want me for?”
Damian grinned. “Well, it’s big. Very lucrative. Very, very.”
The adrenaline was wearing off, and the Ecuadorean truth serum was starting to reassert itself. Zoey made an effort to concentrate. “Who’s the target?”
“The Sinaloa drug cartel.”
Zoey wanted to object, but the drug pulled her under again. She felt like a surgical patient with inadequate anesthesia as she sank back into a troubled sleep.
17
Sam presented his badge to the security guard at the entrance to the Working Group complex, watching for some telltale sign in the guard’s demeanor reflecting a change in his status. A raised eyebrow, an uncomfortable clearing of the throat, or the press of a button might mean that once inside the building he would be charged with treason and taken away for extended interrogation.
When Sam dialed that room number at the Guthrie Hotel, he had known that it was the right thing to do. Bruen and Ayres didn’t deserve to die. But as he handed over his security badge to the guard, the potential consequences of what he’d done swept over him. It was like one of those near-death experiences when your life was said to flash before your eyes—except in reverse. In that moment he saw how his future life and career could be torn apart. But if your life crumbles when you choose to do the right thing, he reasoned, then maybe the way you are living needs to be reexamined.
He tried to control his breathing and act the same way he did every morning at the security station. But the more he thought about breathing normally, the more he lost the rhythm and found himself gasping. He was certain that the guard would notice, but he merely glanced up from his clipboard and handed back the security badge.
It was only natural to suspect that he might have tipped Bruen and Ayres to the agents that were on their way to kill them. After all, he might have been the only person other than Corbin who knew that the agents had been dispatched. Sam took some comfort from the fact that he was an unlikely betrayer. Everyone at the NSA knew that he was an agency lifer who staunchly defended the moral prerogative of the surveillance state.
Nonetheless, it didn’t take long after Sam reached his office for Sigrid to appear in his doorway, looking grim.
“I thought we had them,” she said.
“Corbin’s team didn’t pick them up?”
“No, they left their hotel room minutes before we arrived.”
“Tough luck.”
“Is it? I can’t help but wonder if it might be something more.”
“Like what?” Sam was not going to help her by jumping to any conclusions.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Sigrid said. “You’re probably right. Maybe they just happened to be leaving as our team was moving in. Bruen knew he couldn’t remain in one place for long, and they bolted.”
“I haven’t seen any signs of them on the streets yet. We’re closely monitoring all CCTV cameras within a five-mile radius.”
“And facial recognition is activated?”
“Of course.”
“How are they doing it? We should have them by now.”
“Maybe they got lucky, found a place where they could go to ground without exposing themselves to the cameras.”
“That’s the second time you’ve used that word.”
“Which word is that?”
“‘Lucky.’ When that word keeps coming up, I tend to start thinking that it’s not luck at all. Something else is going on.”
“Do you have a theory?”
“I have a few suspicions,” she said. “You should keep a close watch on that crew of yours. They’re just immature enough to want to be the next Snowden.”
“I’ll keep an eye on them.”
Sam was afraid that Sigrid might point the finger at him, but she didn’t seem prepared to go that far—yet. She left the office scowling.
Her remark resonated with him because he had begun to seriously consider the possibility of “going Snowden.” If he really had stopped believing the Working Group’s ends justified its means, then what was he to do with that conviction?
Sam knew that to most people he appeared to be some sort of gray bureaucrat scuttling in the netherworld of the national security apparatus. But that was not how he viewed himself. No, he had always been a person who put his beliefs into action.
In the end Sam viewed that as the ultimate measure of a life. Did you do what you thought was right, even if it was inconvenient?
What if it was costly?
What if it was ruinous?
If you believe that a war is wrong, then speak out against it, march in the streets. If you believe that a war is right, then be a soldier. And Sam had believed in the war on terror, and he had been a soldier in that conflict for more than twenty years. But now he had come t
o believe something different. He had come to believe that, even in the war on terror, the ends did not justify all means. And if beliefs without actions were meaningless, then what was the consequence of this new belief?
In that moment Sam’s misgivings and concerns finally crystallized into something that his colleagues liked to refer to as “actionable.” Sam resolved to do what he could to bring the Working Group’s surveillance practices to light, as well as the murders committed by agents like Corbin. The only way that he could stop them was by exposing them.
Sam was going to obtain documentation proving the existence and mission of the Working Group and the Skeleton Key program. Then he was going to remove those materials from the premises and leak them to the press.
He didn’t take the task lightly. It’s not like the NSA had been a sieve before Snowden, but now it was locked down tight, its employees and contractors subjected to intensive monitoring and security. “Invasive” didn’t begin to describe it. He couldn’t just go to his computer, print out a sheaf of classified documents, and walk out the front door with them. He was going to need a clear strategy for extracting the materials, and he was going to have to be prepared to run when discovered.
At least he could easily clear the first obstacle to his scheme—gaining access. He had near-administrator-level system rights when it came to documents relating to domestic surveillance, which would include the Skeleton Key program. But that didn’t mean that audit trails weren’t maintained for every keystroke he made and that his access wasn’t monitored occasionally as part of routine system security measures.
The greatest danger that he faced was that Sigrid really suspected him of turning against the agency. She hadn’t fully tipped her hand in their conversation, but then again she wouldn’t.
Sam went to the doorway of his office and looked out over the expanse of cubicles until he saw Sigrid in a glass-walled conference room. Standing still in the middle of that glass box, she looked like a mantis specimen trapped inside a paperweight.
And she was staring back at him.
18
As Chris and Ian continued their forced march through the San Francisco sewers, Chris recognized that, much like the city above, the sewer system had neighborhoods with distinctive personalities. Judging by the look of the bricks, they were in one of the older districts now, forced to hunch forward slightly under the low, arched, fungal ceiling.
“Who was this place built for?” Ian asked. “I haven’t been able to stand up straight for the past half hour.”
“People weren’t as tall then,” Chris said.
“How far do you think we’ve gone?” Ian asked.
“I have no idea,” Chris said. “It’s so hard to judge distances down here.”
They slogged on through the ankle-high water and sludge, both bent at the waist like a couple of Groucho Marx imitators. At first they’d tried to place their feet carefully in the water, each footfall like that of a scuba diver trying not to stumble over his fins, but they’d given up on that technique long ago, and their pants were now drenched to midthigh. After the clang of the manhole cover behind them, they had paused regularly to listen for splashing steps. At first Chris thought he heard movement, but after several quiet, sharp turns through the tunnels all was silence.
“If the ceiling gets much lower, I’m not sure if we can keep this up,” Ian said.
Chris paused for a moment and squatted down to make enough room so that he could position his back up straight. Ian followed suit.
“Let’s try going a little further. I think I see some light up ahead.”
They advanced a bit. Chris was forced to stare into the murky water at his feet, and he noticed a reflected glimmer subtly growing.
At first Chris didn’t even realize that he had emerged from the tunnel into an open space—what looked to be a large water treatment reservoir. He lifted his head up and surveyed his surroundings. Even in the half-light his dark-adjusted eyes needed to squint.
Judging by the design and the look of the bricks, this was a new addition, not part of the antiquated prequake sewer system. Sunlight seeped in through storm drains high above them. Two iron ladders climbed the sides of the brick enclosure, rising forty or fifty feet to street level.
There were no tunnels leading out of this reservoir except those that they had emerged from.
“Looks like this is the end of the line,” Ian said. “I can’t say I’m sorry.”
“I’ll take this ladder, and why don’t you take the other one?”
“Why don’t we both take the same one?”
“Because if someone slips or a rung gives way, we don’t want one of us to fall and take the other one down.”
“See, I like to think that if one person slips, the other could catch them. That’s called positive thinking. You might try it sometime.”
Chris stared at Ian until he went over to the iron ladder on the opposite wall and tested the lower rungs; then they both began climbing. The iron rungs of the ladder felt cold and slick in Chris’s hands as he pulled himself up. As they approached street level, the light from the storm drains grew brighter, and Chris could hear the occasional car pass overhead on a city street. He reached the manhole at the top of the ladder first and waited for Ian to reach the top of his ladder.
When Ian was parallel with him, Chris nodded to him and pointed upward with his thumb. They both pushed off the manhole covers overhead with one hand while retaining a grip on the top rung.
The iron lids clanged loudly, and they peeked out to see where they were. It was no place that Chris immediately recognized. It was a cool evening, and the fresh air felt good in his lungs after inhaling the stench of the sewer for so long.
They emerged on a city street bordered by sidewalks, but it didn’t feel like the city proper. There was too much space between the buildings. And a gas station. Gas stations were not that common within the city limits due to the value of the real estate. Fortunately, there was no one nearby to watch Chris and Ian as they wriggled onto the pavement like a couple of evolutionary throwbacks, leaving slime trails in their wakes.
As they reached the sidewalk, a light stream of cars passed at a nearby intersection. The first thing that Chris looked for was CCTV cameras. He didn’t immediately see any, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.
Two young men wearing Giants caps approached on the sidewalk half a block away. Chris moved toward them.
“What are you doing?” Ian asked.
“We need something to hide our faces from the cameras. They may not be looking for us here, but we still have to assume they’re using facial-recognition software.”
“That technology’s still pretty glitchy,” Ian said.
“Do you think the NSA is using the same stuff that’s available to the general public?”
Ian shrugged, conceding the point.
The two Giants fans looked a little boozy, like they had just emerged from a sports bar. But they were not so drunk that they didn’t immediately recognize that there was something odd about the approaching pair. If their disheveled appearance wasn’t enough, the reek of the sewer must have preceded them.
“Hey there,” Chris said. “My buddy and I would like to buy your Giants caps from you. See, our boss is a huge Giants fan.”
“Huge,” Ian added.
Chris shot him a glance but continued. “He just invited us over to his place to watch a game, and we could really use a couple of caps. You know, make a good impression.”
“The game just ended,” said the first young man. “Giants won.”
“It’s on his DVR,” Chris said. He pulled out his wallet. “C’mon. How about twenty bucks for each?”
“Not interested,” said the second guy. “I’ve had this cap for all three World Series wins. It’s got sentimental value.”
“Forty bucks for each,” Chris said.
The first guy waved a hand in front of his nose and said, “I don’t know if you should be seeing you
r boss right now, anyway. I mean, you dudes are rank.”
The second guy rolled his eyes at his companion’s gullibility. “Sixty bucks each and you’ve got a deal.”
His buddy shrugged in agreement.
Chris peeled off six twenties and handed them to the second man.
“I don’t know who you expect to fool by wearing a baseball cap,” he said as he took the money. “Not much of a disguise.”
“Thanks for the advice,” Chris said, already turning away.
Ian followed, and they headed down the sidewalk beside the busy thoroughfare, keeping their heads low to avoid giving any CCTV camera a good angle on their faces.
They could see an exit sign off the freeway in the distance, which told them that they were in Daly City, to the immediate south of San Francisco proper.
“I can’t believe we made it this far through the sewers,” Ian said. “They’re not going to be looking for us out here. Maybe we should find another hotel to hole up in.”
“Because the last time we did that it worked out so well,” Chris said. “Even if we pay cash and lay low, they’re going to find us, and it probably won’t take that long.”
“So what’s your point? That we should just turn ourselves in?”
“No. We need to go to a place that’s outside of the agency’s immediate jurisdiction. I’m thinking Mexico.”
“Okay, but how? We can’t cross a border without getting picked up.”
“One thing at a time. First, we need to figure out how to get to the border. We can’t take a bus, train, or plane—too many cameras. We can’t rent a car, and I’d rather not steal one.”
“So where does that leave us?”
“We need to catch a ride south.” Chris set off, walking away from the gas station and into a nearby industrial district consisting of several large plants and warehouses bounded by barbed wire fences. After about fifteen minutes of walking along a quiet access road, they saw an eighteen-wheeler bearing the name “Baker’s Choice Bread” emerge from a lot and pull onto the freeway. On the other side of the fence, Chris saw dozens of similar trucks parked in rows.