Overthrow

by Caleb Crain

  “No one’s taking anything away!” Jeremy laughed, looking around the room.

  “I want to keep it.”

  “I’m just suggesting we coordinate the sites. The site you’re running with the one I’m doing. It could be really useful.”

  “I don’t want to be useful,” Elspeth said. The heartache, now that they had come together again, was something that maybe later they could take turns carrying, but for the moment it was hers.

  “I get it,” Jeremy said.

  “You’re still going to let him help you clean it up, though, right?” Raleigh asked.

  “It can’t be that different from fact-checking,” Elspeth said.

  “That’s a good analogy,” said Jeremy.

  “Just tell me what to do,” she said, eyes forward, unfolding her screen.

  Jeremy squatted to plug in his power cable and then, standing beside her, issued instructions. Distrustfully, a little combatively, she obeyed: She rebooted in recovery mode. She let him connect his laptop to hers and allowed his security software to scan her hard drive for viruses. She logged on via FTP to the server that hosted the website and under his coaching began to weed out suspect files.

  It was an exorcism. The ritual was long and tedious.

  “Should we stay?” Matthew asked Leif, after an hour had passed.

  “Why not?”

  “Do you need to be here? And if everyone’s here together . . .”

  “Why is that a problem?” Leif asked. “It’s okay for me to see Raleigh. It’s okay for me to see Elspeth.”

  “I’m not saying it because I mind,” Matthew explained.

  “Then why are you saying it?”

  Matthew nodded as if he accepted this and, taking one of Philip’s celebrity lifestyle magazines, went to sit in a chair by the apartment’s front window.

  * * *

  —

  Jeremy and Elspeth were still working when Julia appeared in the apartment’s doorway. “Knock knock,” she said. “Is Raleigh here?”

  She was wearing a burnt umber beret at a jaunty angle: she was a little girl, she was an adventuress.

  “Why, it’s everyone!” she cried. “Elspeth, how are you?” She was overdoing it. That and the beret suggested to Matthew that she had lost her balance.

  “Not Chris,” said Elspeth.

  “No, I guess not Chris,” Julia agreed. “Well, I have some news,” she said, looking around. “Bresser’s having a press conference at five.”

  “Today?” asked Raleigh.

  “Something has leaked, apparently,” Julia said.

  “Did your lawyer tell you?” Elspeth asked.

  “I have a source. I’m making a study of our case.”

  “I could go to a press conference,” Jeremy volunteered.

  “Well, I’m going myself,” Julia quickly clarified.

  “Do they let just anyone in?” Raleigh asked.

  “You guys are on trial,” Matthew said.

  “Do we know what leaked?” Leif asked.

  “My source told me because she hoped I would know,” Julia said.

  “What do you mean ‘your source’?” Elspeth asked. She was the only one who hadn’t heard about Julia’s project.

  “Oh, it’s silly, really. You have to promise not to laugh. I want to write about all this someday, so I need to know about it now.”

  “I see,” Elspeth said.

  “It’s silly.”

  “No, it’s not silly.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Leif said. “Where is it?”

  “The lobby of Bresser’s office building.” The building was in a downtown neighborhood across the river that had once housed light industry and was becoming fashionable.

  “Leif, please don’t,” Matthew said.

  “Why not?” Leif asked. He shrugged on the coat Matthew had given him. Maybe he, too, wanted to know about the press conference so that one day he could write about it, in which case what Matthew was trying to prevent was a poem, from being written.

  “What if you see him and you read something again?” Matthew asked.

  “It’s not against the law.”

  “It shouldn’t be, anyway,” said Raleigh.

  “Leif, people are very upset,” Elspeth said.

  “Why do they get to be the ones who have press conferences? Why do they get to be the ones who describe what’s happening?”

  “I’m going, too, then,” said Elspeth.

  “So we’ll have a really big posse,” Julia said. “But we have to leave right now if we’re going to make it.”

  * * *

  —

  They called two cars this time, and after a skirmish on the sidewalk, Leif, Jeremy, and Julia got into the first one and Elspeth, Raleigh, and Matthew into the second.

  “You don’t have to go,” Elspeth said to Raleigh, as Matthew pulled shut the door.

  “Why shouldn’t I?” Raleigh asked.

  She was right to try to stop him. There seemed to be nothing Matthew could do to stop Leif, who had become feverish with what Matthew referred to in his dissertation as insulted kingship. His senses were stopped up, like a Shakespeare monarch who has shut his ears to any question about whether his dukes are still loyal. Like Alice after she has been turned into a Wonderland chess piece and is blinded by the crown that has queened her, which slips down over her eyes.

  Matthew had been cast in the role of loyal but ineffectual adviser. Beside him, Raleigh and Elspeth were trying to keep themselves distinct from each other, trying not to touch. Elspeth took out her phone and held it in her hands in front of her, as a focus of her attention, but didn’t unlock it.

  They rode onto a bridge, the seams in whose asphalt were so pronounced that the car thrummed like a heartbeat as the front and then the rear tires passed over them. It wasn’t clear to Matthew what Leif was still king of. It wasn’t clear what Leif was ordering his knights and ladies into battle to defend.

  “Do you still read things from people?” Matthew asked Elspeth.

  “I don’t do experiments anymore—is that what you mean?”

  “I guess I was wondering whether it’s still there to hear,” he said. “Whether anyone is still broadcasting on those frequencies.”

  Her eyes wavered on him. It will always be there, she seemed to say, in reply, in a voice without words. The awareness that he knew what she was saying was uncomfortable to him.

  * * *

  —

  It was dark when they reached Bresser’s office. The scene of people gathered in the lobby shone out through the plate glass of the building’s facade like a play being performed for passersby in the street. There was an air of expectancy and also of exclusivity. Anyone on the sidewalk could have walked in, but everyone all knew that no one who didn’t belong was going to.

  Julia was the first to push her way in through the revolving door. Matthew came last. When the rubber blades of the door unsealed and released him into the lobby, he found himself immersed in a roar that mirroring by glass and marble had made of the gathered people’s talk.

  “We’re here for the Bresser Security press conference,” he heard Julia say, above the roar, to a blond, unshaven man in a blue porter’s uniform.

  “It’s not anywhere else,” said the man.

  “This is the right place?” Julia asked.

  “He’s gonna have it here, anyways.”

  Julia drifted toward the crowd.

  “Who are you looking for?” Matthew called out to her, but she didn’t answer. “Are we meeting someone?” he asked the others, but they didn’t answer, either.

  Jeremy strode forward as if he knew where Julia was headed, but the confidence with which he followed her may have been founded on nothing more than his personal history of having almost always been welcomed wherever he we
nt.

  An ungainly woman clopped toward them on loud heels. The belt that was lashed around her skirt seemed to be a length of rope. “Are these your friends?” she asked Julia. “I’m Jan Ridgely,” she introduced herself. She said that she worked for one of the city’s tabloids.

  “Jan, thank you for this,” Julia said.

  “Who has more of a right to know about it?”

  “And that’s all we can do, or try to do, isn’t it.”

  “Have you heard anything?” Ridgely asked.

  “Not a word.”

  “Maybe he’ll say.”

  “Maybe!” Julia agreed.

  Ridgely appraised the friends. Of course Leif was hard not to look at, burning with fury as he was. “Do you regret any of it?” she asked him softly.

  “Oh, we’re off the record, Jan,” Julia said, on Leif’s behalf.

  “Anyone can ask,” Leif corrected her. “It’s a free country, for now.”

  They had been spotted; other reporters were raking them with looks. Two or three seemed about to approach when Bresser appeared from behind a row of ficuses, brushing out of his face the irritation of their varnished leaves. He was wearing a camel suit that stretched tight across his back. He paused at a crimson rope, and a pale, gawky man with an aquiline nose and floppy dark hair rushed up to unhitch it. The deputy was taller than Bresser was. He was nervously clicking a pen attached to his clipboard.

  Leif was impatient. “Is Bresser going to say anything?”

  “‘One of the accused, Leif Saunderson, wondered aloud,’” Raleigh said.

  With a glance Leif acknowledged the warning. Ridgely made a note.

  Bresser’s deputy stepped back over the crimson rope and sprinted to the building’s security desk to ask the porter something. The porter shrugged and handed over a small metal dustbin. Inside the crimson rope again, the deputy set the dustbin on the floor upside down, and stepped onto it, a hand momentarily flying out and touching Bresser’s shoulder as he tried to steady himself. Bresser reflexively brushed the hand away; the pale man teetered. Bresser silently shook his head. No.

  The deputy stepped down, righted the dustbin, and slid it behind a ficus.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming,” the deputy announced. For a few seconds the journalists continued to murmur, and then the murmuring flickered and went out. “I’d like to introduce Joseph P. Bresser of the Joseph P. Bresser Operational Security Consultancy, who will say a few words.”

  As the reporters fanned out in search of open sight lines, a clear view opened for the first time between Bresser and the members of the sometime working group, and recognition came into his eyes.

  “Good evening,” he said. With an effort he scattered his gaze across the room. “As some of you may know, Bresser Operational has been a resource in a case that is currently before a federal grand jury. It would be improper for me to comment on an ongoing investigation. But when the press takes an interest in a case, as they have with this one, their leaks and disclosures often present a very partial picture, a picture unfair in this case to the very innovative suite of products we have here. It does not do justice either to the product or to the considerable commitment that our team has made to bringing this product to market.”

  It was a solid voice. It was the voice of someone who had never doubted that he had the right and capacity to address his peers.

  “So what I want to do today is describe for you that suite of products, so that even if you do hear different, going forward, you’ll know what the product really is.”

  “Is it a honeypot, Joe?” someone asked.

  There was nervous laughter.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Bresser said. “I’m not going to answer questions from people who don’t respect the integrity of the grand jury process. You can laugh if you want, but that’s how I feel about it.”

  “Jesus,” a journalist near the friends muttered.

  Bresser scanned the room as if looking for challengers. “I don’t even understand how one of you could ask me that after I just finished saying that it would not be appropriate for me to discuss the methods used in a case that is now before a grand jury.”

  “What the fuck did he call a press conference for then?” muttered the journalist who had muttered before.

  “Is this funny to some of you?” Bresser asked. “Do you think this is funny?” He wasn’t able to tell which journalists were talking and laughing.

  “This is like fucking gym class,” said Raleigh, covering his mouth as if he had to cough, and then in fact coughing, fakely.

  “Shh,” warned Elspeth.

  “I know you guys consider yourselves pretty clever,” Bresser continued, “but keep in mind that you’re operating with more axes of freedom than are available to someone in my position. My people and I have to move within constraints you aren’t even aware of.”

  “So tell us about them,” someone hollered.

  “I’d like to, believe me. But I can’t do that. What I can do is tell you about the algorithm we have.”

  “Oh, come on,” jeered someone else.

  Bresser hesitated. “There would be some very unhappy people if I did tell you. Some very surprised and unhappy and angry people.”

  To this conspiratorial note no heckling came because it raised hopes that Bresser might say something he shouldn’t.

  “What’s he even doing?” Matthew asked.

  “Gathering them in,” Leif said.

  “What I want to communicate,” Bresser at last proceeded to say, “is that Bresser Opsec offers a suite of security solutions, not all of which, by any means, have been deployed in the case under investigation, which was, I can probably say this much, both more complex and simpler than many of you have been led to believe. The important thing I want to convey here is that if it weren’t for our participation, the district attorney probably wouldn’t even have been aware of the danger. Let alone the federal prosecutor.”

  A journalist near the front raised a hand. “Mr. Bresser, are you saying the US Attorneys’ Office is under a misconception about the case?”

  “Not at all. In fact, I concur wholeheartedly with Mr. Somerville’s assessment that there was a grave threat of wide unauthorized release of personal identifying information and that the authorities had no choice but to step in when we did.”

  A humming started up, and the journalists began to jostle one another.

  “What kind of personal information, Mr. Bresser?” one shouted.

  “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “Is this Somerville’s assessment of the Telepathy Four’s capabilities?”

  “Not at liberty to say.”

  “Is it Somerville’s understanding that the principal charge against the Telepathy Four is going to be identity theft?”

  “I didn’t say identity theft, and I didn’t say it was Mr. Somerville’s understanding. I’m not talking about his understanding. I’m talking about the understanding. The general understanding.”

  “The general understanding that there was a risk. An imminent risk.”

  “That’s correct. An imminent risk.”

  “How were you able to find out about it in time? How did you start tracking the Four?”

  “Again, I’m not at liberty to say,” Bresser replied. His deputy leaned down and said something into his ear, which Bresser brushed away like a fly. “This is my understanding that we’re talking about. I’m not speaking for Somerville.”

  “He’s a fucking idiot,” said the muttering journalist, a little louder than sotto voce. It occurred to Matthew that the journalist might be drunk.

  “Why this group, Mr. Bresser?” asked another journalist, up near the front, who had a TV voice. “Why was this group seen as a particular danger?”

  It was strange to hear the journalists falling in almos
t unconsciously with the idea that the friends had posed a threat and setting aside for the moment, if not longer, a portion of their professional skepticism in order to win Bresser’s trust.

  “Weren’t they just kids?” It was the drunk.

  “No,” Bresser said sharply, focusing on the man at last and, without leaving his precinct of crimson rope, seeming to round on him. “No. We identified RPF because it was brought to our attention that a group of people at Occupy were boasting that they had new decryption methods and new surveillance methods, which could have been destabilizing. We had no choice but to look into the claims.”

  The deputy began swallowing air spasmodically, like an unwell guppy.

  “You’re saying you became aware of the danger because you already had them under surveillance?”

  “Initially these were statements that they made out in the open.”

  “Then are you saying you believed in their telepathic powers?”

  “I didn’t fall for that, and I advise you not to.”

  The deputy extended a monitory hand toward Bresser, but before he could touch him, Bresser snapped, “No further questions at this time.”

  The humming redoubled and again became a roar.

  “Elspeth?” queried a tall woman in black whose hair was pulled tight to her head. “We spoke briefly at the courthouse.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” Elspeth replied.

  “Do your lawyers know you’re here?” the woman asked.

  “We seem to be improvising,” said Elspeth.

  “You should go,” the woman said.

  “Who is this?” Raleigh asked.

  “She’s a reporter,” Elspeth said.

  “Do you know why he called this press conference?” Jan Ridgely asked her colleague.

  “He seems concerned for his company’s reputation, doesn’t he,” the tall woman replied. “Do you still have my card?” she asked Elspeth. “If you stay here, I’ll have to report anything you say, but I hope for your sake you’ll go. Just because Bresser is making an—”

  “Oh, it’s not that bad,” interrupted Ridgely.

  “Excuse me,” said Leif, speaking generally, waving his arms semaphore-style. Still in Matthew’s coat, and warmed by the excitement, he was flushed, and there was a lick of fresh sweat across his forehead.