Intrusion (A Chris Bruen Novel Book 2)

by Reece Hirsch

  “I appreciate that.”

  “Lewin would probably tell me not to do it.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  After a moment of radio silence, Saperstein said, “Okay. I’ll make the arrangements. I hope it helps.”

  “Thanks, Paul.”

  “Don’t thank me. I think I owe you this much.”

  Chris drove through the main gate of Zapper’s corporate headquarters in Menlo Park, just as he had that painfully early morning when he had first learned of the intrusion and the theft of the company’s algorithms. This time he wouldn’t be visiting the executive offices or seeing Paul Saperstein or even Dez Teal. Chris understood that this was supposed to be an under-the-radar visit. He was expected to get what he needed and leave.

  He drove along a tree-lined drive and parked in front of a five-story redbrick building on the outskirts of the corporate campus. There were no signs on the building, just “Building Three” over the arched entrance.

  Chris gave his name at the front desk to an attractive middle-aged woman. He suspected that only Zapper’s most trusted employees worked in this building, the ones who could distinguish the true and false parts of the company’s creation myth. She squinted at his driver’s license, then said, “He’s expecting you.”

  The receptionist escorted him to an elevator, and he was taken three floors down into a subbasement. When the elevator doors opened, the place had the pristine, glass-and-chrome look of a laboratory.

  The woman swiped her badge on three separate pads as they passed checkpoints. At the last checkpoint, she also had to submit to a retinal scan. The secure doors opened with a pneumatic gasp. Chris knew of this place, but he had never been granted access before.

  Surprisingly, the room was largely empty. There were a few printers and long wooden tables, which reminded Chris of a library. There was very little clutter in the room, just a few neat stacks of printouts on the table.

  On the other side of the wooden tables a man sat with his back to Chris, hunched over eight monitor screens arranged in a nearly closed circle around him. Data scrolled across several of the screens in front of the intensely concentrating man like projections of his febrile thoughts. And maybe they were.

  As Chris approached, the man swung around in his chair. He had probably been watching Chris’s reflection in the monitors.

  “Chris Bruen. I know who you are.”

  The man was skinny, nearly emaciated, with bony wrists protruding from a white dress shirt buttoned at the collar. He was wearing jeans and radioactive orange New Balance sneakers. He had lank blond hair that fell over his forehead, skin the color of putty, long lashes, and nearly invisible blond eyebrows. Chris was reminded of some sort of creature that had adapted its coloration to a life lived out of the sun.

  “Can I call you BD?”

  “Everyone else does.”

  Chris had heard the stories about Bram Dyson ever since he began representing Zapper eight years ago. But that wasn’t what the BD really stood for. To those in Zapper’s executive suites who knew he existed, BD was short for Big Data. As the company’s senior data analyst, Bram was responsible for directing the development of Zapper’s search algorithms and finding new ways of culling the company’s vast sea of personal data.

  “I guess you know that I’ve been authorized to conduct some searches using your data.”

  “You have friends in high places,” BD said. “A lot of our top executives have never been in this room.”

  Chris nodded. If BD didn’t already know that Saperstein had authorized his access, Chris wasn’t going to tell him. “I was expecting more hardware.”

  “What do you think this is, IBM in 1985? It’s all in the cloud,” BD said. “But we have access to all the good stuff.”

  “Zapper’s search histories alone must represent a staggering amount of data.”

  BD grinned. “Yeah, and that’s only the beginning. We’re linked into NSA data, telecom data, banking data, HMO claims data. The word ‘big’ doesn’t even begin to describe our data. We’re borderline omniscient.”

  “Is that legal?”

  “Not my concern. I just work here. Would you mind if I test a couple of assumptions I’ve made about you?”

  “Assumptions?”

  “You’re a Democrat, right?”

  “How did you know that? Do you have access to voter registration records?”

  “Nothing that crude. There was an eighty-nine percent probability that you were a Democrat based upon the charities that you donate to, the friends you have on Facebook, your taste in music, and, of course, your San Francisco zip code.”

  “You could say that about just anyone in San Francisco and you’d probably be right. You’re starting to sound like one of those strip mall psychics.”

  BD nodded eagerly. “Okay, fair enough. Then how about this? There’s a ninety-two percent probability that you entered into a serious relationship within the past six weeks. Or an existing relationship became much more serious.”

  “You’ve been talking to Dez Teal or someone else who knows me.”

  BD was starting to enjoy himself. “I didn’t do that, nor would I. I have no interest in you as a person, just as a collection of data points.”

  “Okay, I’ll play. How did you know that?”

  “Mainly through a substantial uptick in your weekly grocery store purchases, along with an increase in Internet and water usage. Women do take long showers, don’t they?”

  Chris stared impassively at BD, hoping that this exercise in personal-data mining was concluded. BD was a rare and annoying creature—a know-it-all who actually did know it all.

  “You enjoy your work, don’t you?” Chris said.

  “Enormously,” BD replied. “The one frustration is that we can’t fully use what we know. It makes people a bit queasy.”

  “How so?”

  Chris had advised enough clients on Big Data analysis to know the answer to that question, but he asked it anyway to humor BD. Hopefully, allowing BD to expound on his favorite topic would buy Chris a little extra cooperation.

  “I’ll give you two examples. A big box retailer knows that if a customer purchases orange juice and throat lozenges then they probably have a cold, so they send an email offering a discount on Kleenex. No problem, right?”

  “I might be a little—discomfited—by that. But, no, not a real problem.”

  “Okay, how about when that same retailer sees that a seventeen-year-old female customer has purchased scent-free lotions, an extra large purse, some zinc and magnesium supplements, and a pink rug? What does that tell you?”

  “Zinc and magnesium supplements tell me that she’s pregnant,” Chris said. “The pink rug tells me that it’s a girl.” He considered for a moment and then added, “The big purse will double as a diaper bag.”

  “Very good,” BD said. “For you, that’s a reasonable guess. But for us, based upon those factors and other probabilities established over a vast volume of data, it’s much more than a guess. We know. And, based on the timing of the purchases, we also know what trimester she’s in and her delivery date, give or take a week or two.”

  “So then the question is what do you do with that knowledge.”

  “That’s right. If we send a targeted ad for diapers to that household, and her parents don’t know yet that she’s pregnant, that could make for a very angry call to our customer relations department. Outcome—unhappy customer.”

  “So what’s your next move?”

  “We send that household a book of coupons, and one of them happens to offer a discount on diapers, along with discounts on power tools, motor oil, and cornflakes. She thinks getting the diaper coupon is a lucky coincidence and uses it after she’s had that awkward conversation with her parents. She and her parents never realize just how much we know about her. Outcome�
�happy customer.”

  “Happy, clueless customer.”

  “That’s the way we like them.”

  “And you’ve broken no laws, have you?”

  “Well, you’re the privacy lawyer, but that’s what I hear.”

  “Privacy laws tend to be about ensuring that a company doesn’t share the personal information of its customers with third parties,” Chris said. “The laws don’t place any limits on how much you might be able to learn from that data, or what you might do with that knowledge.”

  “That’s the line that we have to walk, isn’t it?” BD said. “Going back to our example, even if the parents know their daughter is pregnant, that doesn’t mean they won’t be creeped out to learn that we know it too.”

  “The ick factor. I felt that way myself a minute ago.”

  “Yes, the ick factor. And just be glad that I didn’t tell you the rest of what I know about you.”

  “Please don’t. And so if one of your customers buys nylon rope, duct tape, a kitchen knife, and extra-large trash bags then they are—”

  “Most likely a homicidal psychopath. We’ll send them a discount coupon for ski masks,” BD said. “There will come a time when law enforcement starts taking pointers from us—once they get past some constitutional issues.”

  “So can we proceed to my query?”

  “By all means.”

  BD turned around to face his monitors. “What are your data points?”

  Chris sat down next to BD and watched his long, pale fingers move over the keyboard. “I’m looking for a man from China who entered the country about two weeks ago. Probably flew in through SFO. He’s been in the San Francisco Bay Area during most of that time. He was in Stinson Beach last Friday.”

  “Have you ever been in close proximity to him?”

  “Twice that I know of. He tried to kill me in an alley off Beale Street in San Francisco on the night of April 20.”

  “What time was it?”

  “About 6:00 p.m.”

  “Did you have your cell phone with you at that time?”

  “Yes, I always carry it.”

  “When was the next time you were close to him?”

  Chris provided the coordinates for that rainy hillside outside Stinson Beach.

  “And, again, you had your cell phone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anything else that comes to mind?”

  “Not really. I’ve gotten a couple of glimpses of him, but his physical appearance isn’t all that striking.”

  “No, I mean, was he driving a rental car?”

  “Probably, but I never saw it.”

  BD was no longer looking at Chris. He was asking the questions over his shoulder as he worked on the monitors. BD opened a bag of sunflower seeds and began to avidly dice them in his front teeth. Screens popped open, maps appeared and numbers scrolled, the outputs too fast for Chris to follow.

  “Well, that’s not helpful,” BD muttered to himself at one point.

  About ten minutes later, BD began striking the keys of his keyboard emphatically like a concert pianist performing a final coda. He reared back and struck the Enter key with a raised index finger, eliciting a definitive pop.

  “There you are,” he said. “Gotcha.”

  BD sat staring at the screen, basking in self-satisfaction.

  “Well?” Chris asked. “What did you find?”

  Only then did BD seem to remember that he wasn’t alone. He popped some sunflower seeds in his mouth, happy to make Chris wait and extend the moment.

  When he was finished chewing, BD said, “The key was triangulation of cell phone signals. By tracking when your cell phone pinged the nearest cell tower on those occasions when you were close to him, I was able to identify the burner phone that he’s using and track its location. His phone was pinging the same tower as yours. After that, it was really fairly—”

  “Where is he?” Chris said.

  “Room 819 of the Union Square Hilton. He’s under the name Paul Fang. Would you like his cell number?”

  As Chris prepared to leave, he looked back and saw BD as a pale stick figure busily moving against the black background of the monitors. BD probably felt he was at the center of the world, because every movement out there seemed to twang the cords of his web of data and probabilities. But there was a difference between being connected to the world and living in it.

  44

  Chris walked down the long, gray-carpeted hallway of the Union Square Hilton, slowing before the door to Room 819. According to BD, this was where Red Sun was staying.

  He gripped the gun in his jacket pocket tightly because he knew that he could encounter the contract killer at any moment—returning from the vending machines, leaving the room. Chris had insisted that Zoey wait for him in the lobby because they only had one gun, and he didn’t want her taking a stray bullet. For once he had been able to persuade her.

  Chris and Zoey had considered calling in the San Francisco police to open up Room 819 but decided that it was better to wait until they had confirmed Red Sun’s presence. Although Richard Berkheiser at the State Department had recommended that they file a report with the SFPD after Red Sun’s initial attempt on Chris’s life, they had not done so. They knew that they had very little for the police to go on then, and they really didn’t have much more now. It would have even been difficult to convincingly explain how they arrived at the conclusion that the killer was in this room.

  It was midafternoon, and there were a couple of cleaning carts in the hallway stacked high with rolls of toilet paper and towels. Finally, a maid opened up Room 819, and Chris heard the sound of a vacuum cleaner running inside. About five minutes later, the vacuum stopped, and the maid emerged and disappeared into another room to chat with one of her friends.

  Chris strode up the hallway and ducked past the cleaning cart and through the open door of Room 819, his hand still on his gun. His anxiety spiked, and he began to breathe through his mouth. There was no telling when the killer might return.

  As expected, Red Sun was not inside. The bed had been used and was unmade, but there were no other signs of occupancy. Chris checked the closets and the bathroom for a suitcase or toiletries, but there was nothing. As minutes passed, his efforts became more frantic. The risk increased exponentially the longer he stayed in the room, but he still hoped to find something that would help them, such as evidence of a link between Red Sun and the PLA.

  As he was leaning over to open the drawer of a nightstand, he heard a loud thump behind him. Chris spun around with his gun raised.

  He found himself pointing his Glock in the face of a young Mexican girl in a maid’s uniform.

  “Please, no!” Her face contorted, and she looked like she was trying to scream, cry, and plead at the same time.

  As Chris lowered the gun with a trembling hand, he could only imagine what his own face must look like.

  In the hotel lobby, Zoey ordered a coffee at Starbucks. Even though she was a disciple of Peet’s Major Dickason’s dark roast, it would have to do. The tables inside the coffee shop were all full, so she walked back into the lobby to find a seat and wait. As she searched for a seat, she heard a man’s voice behind her with an accent she couldn’t place.

  “Hello, Zoey.”

  She turned to see the Chinese man whom she had last seen emptying his gun into her car in the alleyway south of Market. Red Sun. Zoey instantly envisioned this man doing to her what he had done to her friend Geist. For a moment she was paralyzed by a wave of panic and adrenaline.

  Her eyes darted over his shoulder. She desperately hoped that Chris and the SFPD officers would step through the elevator doors. She saw no one who could help her.

  Red Sun pulled open his jacket to reveal the gun tucked into his pants. “Walk with me now, or people are going to die. You’ll be the first, but you won�
��t be the last.”

  Zoey threw herself down in a nearby chair. “I feel sick,” she said, clutching at her chest.

  Red Sun grimaced. “Do you see that little girl over there?” he said in a whisper. He nodded at a girl about six years old, who was reading a picture book and twisting a strand of blond hair in the seat next to them, so tiny that she nearly disappeared into the oversized chair. Her mother was standing next to her talking on her cell phone.

  Zoey nodded painfully, maintaining the act. Some people nearby were beginning to notice that something was happening, but no one had decided to intervene yet.

  “If you don’t get up right now—and I mean right now—they’re both going to die. I’m not going to wait for Bruen to come back downstairs.”

  Zoey stopped feigning a heart attack and stood up.

  “Good decision,” Red Sun said as he took her by the arm and led her out of the lobby and onto the teeming sidewalks of Union Square.

  45

  Chris looked for Zoey in the Starbucks, but she wasn’t there. He felt the sickening flash of recognition that comes when something horribly irreversible has happened. Sure, Zoey could be in the restroom, she could be buying a newspaper, but he knew that she wasn’t. Moving quickly, he made a circle of the lobby, scanning every couch and alcove.

  Zoey was gone.

  Chris asked several of the hotel guests in the lobby if they’d seen Zoey, but no one had. He tried dialing the number of Zoey’s burner phone, but it went directly to voice mail, which was unlike her. Chris and Zoey had purchased burner phones so that they could stay in touch without giving PLA hackers the ability to track their geolocation.

  Chris waited in the lobby for two more hours, trying Zoey’s cell phone repeatedly. After the initial call that had gone to voice mail, the rest of the calls returned a message that her phone was not in service. Another bad sign. Although he couldn’t prove it to anyone, Chris grew increasingly certain that Red Sun had taken Zoey. He made an inventory of everything he knew about the assassin, anything that might give him an indication of where they might be headed.