* * *
Dunne was embarrassed by the luxury of the Gulfstream jet: the beige leather upholstery, the rosewood trays and inlays, the heavy crystal glass into which the flight attendant poured his sparkling water soon after he took his seat. The pilot introduced himself ceremoniously, as if it were Dunne’s plane, and he asked for the names of the three passengers who would be added to the manifest for the return trip. The captain apologized that the plane’s Wi-Fi system wasn’t working, but maybe they could repair it in San Jose. He gave Dunne the locations of the general aviation terminals where they would land and take off.
Before the plane departed, Dunne asked for time to make two phone calls. He went aft, to the rest room in the back, where nobody would listen.
The first call was easy. Dunne contacted Jason Howe on Signal, as they had planned when they parted company at the San Francisco airport less than a week ago. He was in Palo Alto, hanging out with some of his geek friends from Stanford.
“I’m coming to see you tonight,” said Dunne. “It’s showtime. We’re going to livestream La Festa, so that the Party ends before it starts.”
“Nice,” said Howe groggily. He had been up all night with his pals watching old Jean-Luc Godard movies on Netflix. “How should I get ready?”
“You need to find ways to penetrate a space in Manhattan. It’s on Avenue of the Americas. It’s the trading room of a private bank called Maison Suisse.”
“That’s Ricci’s bank,” said Howe.
“Correct. We need to get inside. We’ll talk about the details tonight. Meet us tonight at Atlantic Aviation, where the private planes come into San Jose. Bring whatever gear you need to stream the big show. Then we’ll fly back East.”
“Wow!” said Howe. “You’re really going to do it.”
The second call was to Alicia. She was living in Irvine, in a little detached house off the Santa Ana Freeway. Dunne knew right where she lived, in a tidy Orange County bungalow near the school that Luisa attended. He used to look at it sometimes on Google Earth when he first got out of prison, and then stopped because he feared he would be accused of stalking his ex-wife.
Alicia hung up when Dunne called the first time. But he waited fifteen minutes and then tried again. When she answered, he repeated the same word four times.
“Please, please, please, please.”
“What is it?” she answered. It was a voice beyond anger, hollowed out.
“I need to see you tonight. The people who hurt you before want to do it again.”
“You hurt me,” she said. “You promised you would stay away.”
“Please, please, please, please,” he repeated.
“What do you want?”
“I’m landing at John Wayne Airport at four p.m. your time this afternoon. I want you to get Luisa and go to the Hilton Hotel at the airport. At five, a driver will come bring you to the general aviation terminal at the airport. He’ll have a sign with your name on it.”
“Why are you doing this, Michael? We are healing. I have a new life.”
Dunne choked back the emotion in his voice.
“I failed before. I fucked up. I’m trying to do it right this time, before something bad happens. We’re both caught in the same thing now. The people who can create fake pictures are doing it again, on a much bigger scale.”
“You did this. Nobody else.” Her voice was bitter, but also resigned.
“I know. I’ve spent two years living with that. I wouldn’t be calling you for the first time since we split if this wasn’t real. You are in danger. I can’t let it happen again. Please believe me.”
Alicia didn’t answer at first.
“You wouldn’t lie about this,” she said quietly.
“No. I wouldn’t.”
“How many days will we be away?”
“A few. I don’t know. Pack enough for you and Luisa to get by until Monday.”
“Where will we be?”
“Safe. That’s all I can say.”
* * *
The plane rolled down the runway, gaining speed until it was aloft. Dunne closed his eyes. He had an odd feeling that he was going home, after having wandered for a very long time.
45 Irvine, California, and San Jose, California – June 2018
As the Gulfstream jet crested the Chino Hills and began a slow glide to touchdown at the Orange County airport, Michael Dunne’s phone began buzzing with messages that had stacked up while he was in flight. They were texts from Alicia, his ex-wife, sent during the five hours they had been airborne. Dunne read the messages with a building sense of rage and futility, and when he was done, he let the phone fall into his lap.
I got a call from your lawyer, Mark Walden, after we talked. He said you’re in trouble again. He warned me that someone would be coming with a subpoena asking me to appear in court. He said I might be charged as an accomplice. What have you done?
Then, thirty minutes later, another.
A man from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Diego just handed me a subpoena. What’s happening? I don’t feel safe. I’m bringing Luisa home from school. I had almost forgotten how angry I was at you, but now I remember.
And then, forty-five minutes after that, another text.
My mother is coming to get me and Luisa. I told her to call the Irvine Police Department. Don’t try to stop me.
An hour before the plane landed, she had sent a final message.
Don’t try to find me again, ever. You’re a bad man. I feel sorry for you.
Dunne tried to text her back. Go to the airport. They’re lying. I can protect you. But the phone displayed only one checkmark, which meant that the message had been sent but not received.
Dunne thought for several minutes and then sent a second message: I know I betrayed you once, but not this time. Watch television Monday morning. You’ll see what I’ve been fighting against. I hope you’ll be proud of me. If you trust me then, go to the same place we went for vacation the year after we married. Bring Luisa. Everything will be fine.
Dunne remembered one of the samba songs she had sung to him on that beach at that hideaway in California. He spoke the English words tenderly into the phone and sent them as a voice message: We’ll make such sweet music / Until the night is done… / This is the time for that song, and this is the time for that dance. The words brought tears to his eyes.
Those messages didn’t go through, either. But maybe she would turn on her phone over the weekend, or in the days after, and hear what he had said.
As the plane taxied to a stop near the sky-blue marquee of the general aviation terminal, Dunne asked to speak to the pilot. He apologized that the passenger pick-up in Orange County wouldn’t take place as planned. He asked the pilot to fly on to San Jose for the second pick-up.
“Why?” asked the pilot. “What happened?”
Dunne willed himself to speak quietly and calmly over the vortex of his emotions.
“Change of plans. The people we were going to pick up decided not to travel with us.”
“That means we don’t have to send anyone to the Hilton? I had already ordered the car. Should I cancel that?”
“Correct. Like I said, the passengers decided not come.”
“Stuff happens,” said the pilot. He went back to the cockpit.
* * *
Pilots live by schedules, and they don’t like changes. The captain called Darien to get approval for the altered arrangements. Then he filed a new flight plan with air-traffic control, which took an hour for approval. He notified the backup crew in San Jose who would be flying the Gulfstream back to Westchester through the night.
Dunne sat in his plush cabin chair, trying to stay focused, making notes about what he would organize with Jason Howe’s help. The flight attendant flirted with him. A handsome, red-haired man alone on a private jet, the guest of a multibillionaire, of course she did. Dunne said gently, and then more firmly, that he didn’t need any help.
The Gulfstream took off again. The l
ittle plane climbed west over the ocean and steered north and toward the coast and up over the Central Valley; just over Palo Alto, it banked right sharply toward the runway at San Jose at the cusp of the bay.
The pilot was happier now. He and the copilot were overnighting in the city. The flight attendant gave Dunne a last pat on the shoulder, more like a squeeze, and then the new crew came aboard.
Dunne stayed in his seat, making notes. Thirty minutes later, a steward from Atlantic Aviation escorted a gangly man toward the plane, his pants low on his hips. Blond stubble had begun to grow on his shaved head, and he was wearing Ray-Bans, making him look considerably less like a monk than he had in Taiwan. He was towing a roller bag and had a pack slung over his shoulder. Behind him, a porter was rolling a cart that contained several boxes of computer gear.
Jason Howe climbed the carpeted steps of the Gulfstream and stuck his head in the door.
“Am I in the right place? This can’t be your plane.”
“Temporarily it is. Stow your gear so we can get out of here.”
The porter put the boxes of computer gear in the rear storage, behind the toilet. Howe settled into the beige chair across the aisle from Dunne.
“La Dolce Vita,” he said.
“Not yet,” said Dunne.
* * *
They were aloft thirty minutes later. Dunne asked the attendant to leave them alone for a few minutes so they could have a private conversation. Dunne looked into Howe’s glassy eyes.
“Are you sober?”
“Yeah, man, of course. Except for being a little stoned. But it’s just weed. Purely recreational.”
“Does Rosenberg know you’re coming?”
“Absolutely. I did just what you told me. We’re going to meet up when I get to town. He’s made so much money, I think he feels guilty.”
“His motivation doesn’t matter. The only important thing is that you two make a connection this weekend, after we land. You need to be inside his network.”
“Cool,” said Howe. He was fiddling with the controls for his big armchair seat, making it go up and back.
“Pay attention,” said Dunne. “I need you to concentrate.”
“Okay. What do you want me to do in New York? I’ll take notes.”
Howe reached for his computer, but Dunne blocked his hand.
“Just remember it,” said Dunne. “No notes. No yellow Post-its. Here’s what I need. Ricci and his friends are planning a demonstration for some Wall Street investors. It’s supposed to happen Monday, at the place I told you about in Manhattan. Maison Suisse. You remember the address? 1978 Avenue of the Americas. You want to repeat that?”
“Yeah, sure. 1978 Park Avenue. Ha! Busted! 1978 Avenue of the Americas.”
“Stop playing. This is serious. We need to be inside that place and wire it up. Did you bring all your stuff?”
“Absolutely. Cameras, mikes, routers. We could produce an episode of The Big Bang Theory with all the gear I brought. Stream this freak show live, so the whole world can watch. That’s what you want, right?”
“Correct. I think I can get inside the bank with one of our old S&T tricks. But I need a backup plan. That’s Rosenberg. Does he know what you’re doing, by the way?”
“Not really. I think he wants protection, so Ricci and Goldman can’t burn him later if they want to get rid of him. He hates those guys. The more money they throw at him, the less loyal he is.”
“My kind of guy,” said Dunne. “Get some sleep. We have a long weekend. And no more weed.”
“I’m high on life,” said Howe. He pulled a blanket over his head and was soon asleep, snoring intermittently all the way back to the Westchester airport.
46 Manhattan – June 2018
A van from Halcyon Capital was waiting for Dunne and Howe when the plane landed in White Plains. It was a foggy dawn, vapor rising from the grass surrounding the runways. Frederica Schwartz, the general counsel, waited in the van as Dunne stowed the computer gear and other luggage in the rear of the vehicle. Howe chugged the remains of his second Red Bull of the morning, which he had procured from the flight attendant before the Gulfstream landed.
“I’m here as your compliance officer,” said Schwartz, when Dunne had entered the van. “Mr. Spoon told me to help you do anything that’s legal, and to stop you from doing anything illegal.”
“That’s easy, then,” said Dunne. “You can go home now.” But she didn’t.
Dunne gave the driver an address in Tribeca, an empty loft that his friend and business mentor Vijay Prakash, the ex-FBI undercover man, had agreed to lend him when Dunne made an improvised plea for help a day before. The apartment was nestled in the ragbag of lower Manhattan.
The van rumbled past Foley Square and the forbidding fenced perimeter of the Metropolitan Corrections Center.
Dunne looked at the prison and shook his head.
“No way,” he said. “Just so you know, Ms. Schwartz: Once is enough.”
The van double-parked at the entrance to the tan-brick building where Prakash had his apartment.
“What are you going to do here?” asked Schwartz.
“Get some sleep,” said Dunne. “Then we’re going to think of legal ways to make trouble for people who want to corrupt our honest, efficient capital markets.”
“Can I come up with you?” she asked.
“No. And you can’t wait down here, either. But I’ll call you when everything is ready. I promise. I don’t want you and your boss to miss it. If we do this right, the whole world will be watching.”
“What if you do it wrong?” she asked.
“That won’t happen,” said Dunne. “I only make mistakes once.”
* * *
Dunne’s advantage was that he had installed surveillance cameras in supposedly closed spaces many times before. That was what S&T officers did, and he was one of the best technicians the division had produced. He had two days, which was long enough for an adrenaline junkie, and he had the advantage that it was a weekend, when the trading floor of Maison Suisse would be deserted.
Dunne had already gathered most of the information he needed. He knew which weekend cleaning service the Swiss private bank used. It was based in Long Island City, and its servers were easy to hack; he had already downloaded credentials and schedules, and he knew the home address in Bushwick, near Bedford-Stuyvesant, of the Venezuelan man who was on duty as cleaning supervisor on Sunday morning.
Jason Howe had brought from Palo Alto six tiny cameras and microphones that could be hidden to capture every second of activity in the trading room on Monday morning. And he had the malware ready to take over Jason Rosenberg’s phone, just in case he got skittish about cooperating.
Dunne had a floor plan of the trading room, hacked from the commercial real estate agent who had rented the space to Maison Suisse a decade before. He laid it out on the big oak table in the dining room of Prakash’s empty flat, and, with Howe, he looked at every exit, stairwell, fire door, surveillance camera, and security post on the floor.
The hardest nut was the control station that operated Maison Suisse’s power, lighting, and HVAC systems, which ran off a password-protected grid. The trading system used a separate network that was wired directly into the building’s broadband fiber-optic system, with its own InfiniBand cable connectors. All Dunne cared about was the first; he wanted to be able to turn off the lights, if needed. Password crackers take a while, but they work eventually, and by midafternoon on Saturday Dunne was into the main power system.
Dunne did other housekeeping, too. He used old addresses and friends of friends to assemble the tools he’d need, including a dose of a potent anesthetic. Frederica Schwartz called him, twice, to make sure everything was all right, and Dunne gave her brief but reassuring responses.
* * *
Saturday evening, Jason Howe took the A train to Brooklyn. The station smelled of garbage and piss, the car was stuffy and sweltering, and he couldn’t sit down because someone was sleeping on
the blue plastic seat. Howe listened to music and watched two women, both dressed as Harley Quinn, comparing their cosplay costumes at the far end of the train.
Jacob Rosenberg was waiting in a bar on Atlantic Avenue that had its own indoor bocce court. He was wearing a black T-shirt that said CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD and a porkpie hat, way cooler than the last time Howe saw him.
Rosenberg gave a cool nod of his chin when he saw his old friend approaching. He tipped his glass of whiskey.
“You look the same,” said Rosenberg. “Except worse.”
“You, too. Except richer. And fatter.”
Howe sat down and ordered a bourbon, and then a beer.
“How was Taiwan, man? We missed you.”
“I was a pilgrim, Jake. What can I say? I sent you a picture of my favorite Buddha.”
“I didn’t open it. I don’t open anything unless I know who it’s from.”
“It’s from me, asshole. Check it out.”
Rosenberg scrolled through his in-box, found the message from Howe, and clicked on the attachment. The phone displayed a picture of an enormous golden Buddha, 120 feet tall, flanked by eight pagodas.
“That’s a big Buddha, man.”
“The biggest. It’s in Kaohsiung, in the south. It’s like everything else in Taiwan. It says to Beijing: Hey, we’re free Chinese! We’re Buddhists, so get over it.”
“I guess,” said Rosenberg. He put down his phone. “To fallen empires,” he said, clinking his glass against Howe’s.
* * *
It was that easy. Rosenberg’s precious iPhone was infected. It was now a slave of Dunne’s network. Dunne could see every file, every message, every video. Including the one that Rosenberg had just finished, which appeared to show the confidential declaration of a chief executive named Howard Schubert to his closest associates that he had been diagnosed with terminal bladder cancer.
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