The security cameras at Philadelphia’s Filbert Street bus station recorded a young Air Force officer going into the ladies’ room. The cameras, naturally, didn’t work inside. If anyone had checked the tapes, they might have noticed that she never came out again.
The bus journey from Philadelphia to the Port Authority terminal in New York City takes roughly two hours. They sat in the back row together. Aoife – now just another nice-looking kid, a recent postgraduate, maybe, dressed in jeans and a hoodie, too deep in student debt to afford a better ride to her New York adventure – slept the whole way. Sleep seemed to be another one of her powers.
Michael watched Towse work on his computer. He held it with the screen turned so that Michael couldn’t see it. Michael pointed to the phone plugged into the laptop, connecting it to the world.
What I don’t get, he said, is, if we’re so worried about being untraceable, how you think it’s safe to use that?
A submarine needs a periscope, Towse said. As long as you don’t put it up for too long, or too often, you can spy on your enemy but they can’t see you.
What do you see now?
They don’t know where we are or what we’re doing.
Do you?
Towse frowned at the screen. They were almost at Trenton. The bus drove on to a bridge and there was the Delaware, wide and blue on either side. Michael shrank back in his seat.
Well, said Towse, it’s time to clear the baffles.
Clear the baffles?
It’s submarine jargon. I love that shit. It’s the sneakiest form of conventional warfare . . .
Towse unplugged the burner phone from the laptop. Half-standing, he opened the slider at the top of the window and tossed the phone from the bus. It spun over the parapet and into the Delaware.
He sat down again.
That’s the last burner I’ve got, for now. I’ll get some fresh phones tonight. The man who we’re meeting has a connection.
Michael had never been this far east before. The only cities he had known were Calgary, Vancouver, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Saskatoon. He had lived for a month on the edge of San Francisco, but had only seen it once, from across the Golden Gate. Now, he saw castles of glass in the distance, over the strip malls and roofs of New Jersey. Manhattan’s windows shone in the sun. Then the Lincoln Tunnel swallowed the bus, which came back to life in the canyons of Midtown, shafts of perspective supporting the sky. Towse saw the shock of recognition in Michael’s face as he took in the dirt and noise and smell of the city where modern cities were invented, capital of the greatest and worst civilisation the world will ever see.
Enjoy it, Towse told him. We’re just passing through.
The city of Bayonne is a low-rise clump of commerce and housing on the western shore of New York Bay, just south of Jersey City. On the seaward side of Bayonne, you can watch cruise ships dock at the Cape Liberty terminal, or look north to the Manhattan skyline, like the prow of a much vaster ship. Across the harbour are the Brooklyn dockyards, the Bush Terminal, Sunset Park. To the south, tank farms and warehouses, and, on Bergen Point, the Bayonne Bridge, a steel arch across the Kill Van Kull, joining Staten Island to the continent.
For now, though, the bus is dropping our subjects on the west side of Bayonne, facing Newark Bay, in one of those low clapboard districts where unassuming people live mostly quiet lives, backs turned to the glitz of Manhattan.
It was evening, and a few of the cars that went past had their lights on already. Towse led Aoife and Michael two blocks west from the bus stop, to a quiet street of two- and three-storey homes. He stopped outside a little corner bar faced with yellow crazy paving. It had bunker-like windows and an American flag.
This is the place.
The bar was dark inside, an old-guy place, with two old guys drinking in opposite corners. There was baseball on the television, spring training from Florida. A big middle-aged barman, white haired and frowning, looked up from a paperback. He wore a red T-shirt with the name of the bar on the front in peeling white letters. Maybe, Aoife thought, his regulars needed to be reminded where they were. She didn’t think that this bar would sell many T-shirts.
The barman put down the book and glared at the strangers.
We don’t do food. Or fancy coffee. Or goddamn board games.
Towse rested his hands on the bar.
I’m looking for Tom.
The barkeep stared back at him, unblinking.
Tom never comes here. He thinks it’s a dive.
Towse smiled.
In that case, I’ll just have a beer.
What kind?
Coors Light.
The bartender stared at Towse, then nodded.
That’s the right answer. That’s all we got.
He reached under the counter and took out a key that was chained to a large block of wood, the kind they hand out for gas-station washrooms.
Down this street. It’s the last trailer on the left. It took some damage from Hurricane Sandy, but the view of Newark Bay kind of makes up for it – if you like cranes, and container ships. Make sure and leave it like you found it.
We will.
The barman took a shopping bag from under the counter.
Here are those burner phones you asked for. They’re all clean.
Towse handed him an envelope, led the others outside. Michael turned to him.
That guy in there – he works for you?
He does today.
Who is he?
Aoife took Michael by the elbow, steered him west, down the street.
I’m curious about that myself, Michael. But right now I need the bathroom. And there’s no way in hell that I’m going in that bar.
This end of the street consisted of closely packed houses, with steps leading up from pavement to porch. Halfway along, the houses gave out, and they found themselves walking through a quiet little trailer park. Stovepipes smoked. Screen light flickered in windows. Vestigial front yards – window boxes, and little patches of timber-framed dirt – waited for February to give way to spring. An old lady, sitting muffled on a swing set, waved a friendly cigarette at them as they passed.
The last trailer on the left had a dark line on the side that showed where a surge tide had flooded it, though it was jacked up and decked three feet off the ground. Beyond a thin strip of dirt and weeds lay the sheet of Newark Bay. Cranes glided and dipped over giant container ships. A setting sun turned the toxic air red.
The trailer door burped a wet-dog smell. There were three tiny bedrooms, with sheets and blankets and pillowslips folded, military style, into crisp blocks at the foot of each bed. A flush toilet smelled reassuringly of chemicals. The galley was clean, the dishes stowed neatly. A note on the fridge, pinned with a Snoopy magnet, said, Beer: Help Yourself.
They took chairs from inside and sat on the deck, all facing the same way, west, drinking the beer and watching the ships. There were aircraft too, transiting Newark International, beyond the pylons and lights of the New Jersey Turnpike. Somewhere close by, maybe in the next trailer, a radio was tuned to country and western, providing human scale – or irony, or counterpoint – to this pastoral of tidewater, concrete and steel. The breeze had died down, and the February evening felt almost mild.
Michael spoke first.
So who is that guy in the bar, and why is he helping us?
Towse lit a cigarette, passed one to Aoife.
The best way to answer that, he said, is to tell you some more about me.
Aoife and Michael looked at each other, sat forward.
Be our guest, Aoife said.
Towse blew out a perfect ring of white smoke.
I don’t want to go into too many specifics, but you already know I work in intelligence.
The National Security Agency, prompted Michael.
Yeah. Sure. Them too. But that’s on
ly a sideline. What I really do best, what I’m most in demand for, as a sort of consultant, is my work as a gamer.
A gamer?
A war-gamer . . . I model the wars of the future. I detect new threats and think up defences. Predict outcomes. That sort of thing.
Real wars or cyberwars?
It’s the same thing, now. Viruses and cyberattacks and hacking and all of the rest of it – psy-ops, election theft, fake news, mass surveillance, truth suppression, asymmetric conflict, gas-lighting. Nowadays, bullets and bombs are only an afterthought.
He jabbed his cigarette at the cranes that lined the docks across the bay.
For instance, that over there is the busiest container port on the east coast of North America. There are tens of thousands of shipping containers stacked in that dockyard at any one time, identified only by digital RFID tags. A cyberattack that erased all those tags would shut down the US economy for weeks. Maybe permanently. And it wouldn’t be hard to do. Trillions of dollars worth of tanks and aircraft carriers and missiles and soldiers could be bypassed in an instant. Overrun without a shot being fired. Like the Maginot Line in the Second World War. And it’s already happening. They just haven’t noticed.
Aoife stared at him, suspicious.
You’re not just talking about national security anymore, are you, Towse? When you say we, you don’t mean the US government? And who is the enemy?
Towse finished his cigarette, tossed it on to the weeds, lit another.
And to make things worse, he continued, ignoring Aoife’s questions, the real war is only just starting. The Chinese are using facial recognition to control hundreds of millions of people, in real time. Western governments are starting to do the same. And what the governments don’t realise is that the people who build the machines are already more powerful than they are. Inscape is weaponising quantum computing. And the machines will soon be more powerful than the people who built them. And none of these players is on our side.
You sound like Alice.
Thank you, Michael. I admired Alice very much.
Towse got up and walked over to the rail that intervened between the deck and the harbour. He leaned against it, looking away across the water.
But it isn’t over yet. You can still run and hide, if you know how. And I do. That’s one of the things I built into my war games. Personal cheat codes. Covered lines of retreat. Ways to keep operating while we’re being overrun.
You mean, things like Yoyodime?
I’m afraid not, Michael. That died with Alice.
Aoife didn’t try to hide her disbelief.
So now you’re trying to tell us that the guy in that bar is some kind of resistance fighter? He’s in the army of shadows?
Sure. Though he probably doesn’t know that himself, yet. And so are you, now that you’re with me. And Michael too.
I’m not in anyone’s army, said Aoife. I tried that sort of thing already.
Michael spoke.
How does that barman fit in, then?
He operates on a number of subterranean levels. For a start, he volunteers as a call screener on an underground radio show. Plus, he’s one of a group of people who meet one night a week in a convenience store parking lot to swap second-hand books and bootleg disks, and various types of samizdat. Even better, he’s a Deadhead. These are all functioning peer-to-peer off-grid networks. I’m plugged into all of them, and others like them in other places, and I know how to find more when I need them. I can hook into these networks and use them for communications, logistics, even travel, offline and untraceable. No credit cards, no plane tickets, no passports, no computers and no phones.
Aoife had heard enough.
Then what about pizza, Towse? I’m starving. Do you have a way of getting pizza delivered without a credit card or phone?
Sure . . . Go back to the bar and talk to the barman. He’ll know a place. Use the bar phone to call them, and have them deliver to you at the bar. Pay cash. Bring it back here. Simple as that.
I’ll go, said Michael.
Aoife pushed back her chair.
I’m going too.
The TV in the bar was now showing basketball. Other than this, nothing had changed. The two old guys were still in their lonely corners. The barman glanced up when Michael and Aoife came in, then went back to his book, At Swim-Two-Birds. Aoife had read it;
it was a favourite. Maybe, she thought, Towse hadn’t been lying about the barman. Maybe there was more to him than showed at first sight.
Still, they had to stand right in front of him before he looked up.
Yeah?
We were wondering, said Michael, if you had a phone we can use.
You have to buy a drink first.
Two beers, then.
There’s a phone in the basement. Local calls only. It’s in the pool room.
There’s a pool table down there?
After Hurricane Sandy, there was a pool.
I’ll make the call, said Aoife.
She looked at the barman, turned on her smile.
Can you recommend a pizza place?
I order from Rizzo’s.
That’s the best?
It’s the cheapest.
We want the best.
People say Joe’s is good.
Then have you got a number for Joe’s?
Their card is pinned up by the phone. Joe with an E. Jo without an E is a hooker.
Michael took their beers to a table by the window. He waited, watching cars pass in the street, until she came back from the basement. Aoife stopped by the bar and bought them each a double shot of whiskey.
The pizza will be here in twenty minutes, she said. Drink that. Then it’s your turn to get in a round.
Michael had never been much of a drinker, but he did as he was told. Their last meal, hoagie sandwiches, had been hours before, in the Philadelphia bus station. When he came back from his trip to the bar, Aoife emptied her second shot right away, and wasted little more time on her beer.
I’ll just get us one more round for the road, she said. Another beer and a chaser. We’ll take these last ones nice and slow.
You like to drink.
This isn’t drinking, Michael. This is bingeing.
She went to the bar, came back, smiled, clicked his glass.
I don’t know who you are, Michael.
I’m sorry?
You. Who are you? We’re working together, and I don’t even know who you are. Towse didn’t tell me.
Michael took a hit on his whiskey. He might have thought this would give him time to think up an answer. It did. But it also gave him more whiskey. He was feeling warm when he spoke.
Didn’t you ask Towse who I was?
Professionals don’t ask each other questions like that.
But you’re asking me.
I don’t think you’re a professional.
Right . . . Then, did Towse say you weren’t supposed to know who I am?
No. The matter never came up. So the way I look at it, it’s up to you if you want to tell me about yourself. What I really want to know is this: who is this Alice that you and Towse keep talking about? And what happened to her?
She waited, glass poised, smiling encouragingly.
We were living together . . .
He stopped for a long time, and Aoife, reading the silence, began to regret that she’d asked.
We’d been fighting a lot . . . There was stress about money, and other stuff, about her work for Fess . . . I didn’t realise how much trouble she was in, because I didn’t talk to her about stuff like that. The stuff she really cared about . . . She jumped off a bridge.
Aoife put down her whiskey, moved her beer beside it so the glasses were kissing. Then she placed her hands, palms down, on the table either side of the drinks, as if completing
a rite.
I’m sorry, she said.
She didn’t think that she was acting.
Thanks, he said, and leaned back in his chair, looking down at his whiskey.
I’ll get us another, she said. A drink for the door.
When she came back both his glasses were empty. He seemed bolder, now.
What about you, Ann? Are you also in the NSA?
Me? No . . . I’m just working with Towse, on this project.
He’s paying you?
No. I’m like you. He’s helping me out of a mess.
What mess is that?
I really can’t tell you.
She thought, I ought to give him something. She felt that she owed him that, after what she’d just done, digging up his dead girlfriend.
Look, my name isn’t Ann, OK? It’s Aoife.
Is that like E–E–F–A? How do you write that?
You don’t. Ever.
Then where do you come from?
If I told you that, I’d have to kill you.
You’re an assassin?
She rocked back in her chair.
No! Why would you say that? It’s an old saying, a joke. Jesus . . . Do I look like a killer?
I wouldn’t know what a killer looks like. But you seem like you would.
Jesus . . . I’ve made some bad choices, Michael, and I’ve seen some bad things, but I’ve never hurt anyone . . . Not directly . . .
She grew quiet. A car pulled up outside the bar. She could see the insulated box on its back seat. She finished her drink.
The pizza guy is here already. I’ll handle him. There’s a convenience store across the street. Go buy us more whiskey. And get me some cigarettes. Couple of packs.
Aoife had abandoned her career in foreign intelligence after two intense years in unhappy places. Her first and last freelance job, after she quit and came back to London, was run out of a cheap hotel room near Marble Arch. The boss, a stranger to Aoife who called herself Irene, was a sharp-faced woman in late middle age, with giant, owl-like glasses and short, dyed blond hair. She wore a fitted tweed suit and spoke with what she seemed to think was received pronunciation. Upwardly mobile, thought Aoife. Another ex-copper, like me.
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