End of Secrets (28 page)

Kera could
n’t
quite spot a hole in his argument, but she was
n’t
sure she was convinced. “And what about Gnos.is?” she said. “Why would ONE be so interested in finding the owners of Gnos.is?”

Jones looked at her as if this should have been obvious. “So they can make them an offer.”

The brashness of it, the simplicity—she did
n’t
have to think about it for long before she saw that his theory was plausible.
Gnos.is
was a formidable presence in the online media space. Acquiring them would eliminate an unpredictable and powerful adversary. And that was
n’t
even Gnos.i
s’s
greatest potential value to ONE. From her own work on the first Gnos.is case, Kera was very aware of the sit
e’s
elegance and efficiency. The coders and designers behind Gnos.is—whoever and wherever they were—were the best in the world. They would be valuable to ONE. Perhaps even valuable enough to hire the best intelligence contractor ever assembled to find them.

The prospect that Jones was right about all of this finally hit her. But there was one problem with Jone
s’s
theory. “We were
n’t
for sale,” she said softly.

“Everyone in this business is for sale. Hawk might have originated at CIA in partnership with NSA, but it was structured as a private contractor.”

“That was supposed to be part of our cover.”

“Welcome to the intelligence business.”

His condescension infuriated her. “I swore an oath. Christ, Jones, I did
n’t
come here to be a corporate spy.”

“Your oath meant something at Langley, and I believe it still means something to you. But we did
n’t
swear anything to Hawk. We signed contracts to analyze computer intelligence. At the end of the day, ONE was willing to pay more for that service than our government.”

Kera looked up the Great Lawn. It was a warm evening. A half-dozen softball games were in progress. People lay on blankets reading. Shirtless men threw a Frisbee. She saw little of this, though. Her vision was turned inward. “You discovered this today?” she asked.

“No, weeks ago.”

“And you did
n’t
tell me?”

“I had nothing to gain by telling you.” She felt sure the chill in his voice was intentional. He was making it clear that they were in a business where the only way to survive was to watch your own back. Which raised her next question.

“Why are you telling me now?”

“Because I need your help bringing them down.”

“What are you talking about, bring them down?”

“Expose them and destroy them. They are using us, Kera. The
y’v
e stolen some of the intelligence communit
y’s
best resources, including people like you and me. And for what? To spy on other Americans for their own profit?
I’m
not comfortable letting them get away with that, and
I’m
certainly not comfortable being a part of it.
I’m
telling you now because they do
n’t
yet know what I know about them. But they will. The
y’r
e watching everything we do. We have to bring them down before they catch on to what w
e’r
e doing.”

“What makes you think I want to bring down Hawk?”

He looked her in the eye. “Because the alternative is to keep working for them.”

She turned away. On the field immediately in front of them, a pair of corporate softball teams were battling it out. A batter knocked a foul ball that bounced off the backstop. “Why did you come to Hawk?”

“W
e’r
e not talking about that now. Listen to me, Kera. We have to assume ONE is controlling Hawk now. All of it. All of us.”

“How do I know yo
u’r
e not working for ONE?” she said. “How do I know everything yo
u’v
e just told me is
n’t
a test that Gabby put you up to?”

“How do you know anything?” he said.

She stood up. “I have to go.”

“Can I ask you something?” he said. Kera turned and waited. “Where do you think they are?”

“Who?”

“The missing. The people in hiding, or whatever w
e’r
e calling them. I think yo
u’r
e right about
A
TLANTIS
, Kera. I could
n’t
say that in there today. But yo
u’r
e right. The
y’r
e alive, and the
y’r
e planning to come back. But why? What are they getting out of this?”

“I do
n’t
know,” she said. And it was the truth.

THIRTY-SEVEN

Lionel Bright was sitting at his desk, presiding over a weekly intel coordination meeting for the China division, when he noticed the postcard on top of the new mail in his in-box. His eyes kept coming back to it as the meeting droned on around him.

The purpose of these meetings was to facilitate a line of communication between the cyber guys, who were antisocial, and the case agents, who were secretive to a fault. They needed each other and would
n’t
admit it. So h
e’d
had the idea to force them to sit together in a room for an hour each week and make sure they had
n’t
withheld anything crucial from one another, out of negligence or ego. It was important work, despite its tedium. Most weeks Lionel just sat there, interjecting only occasionally and growing bored out of his mind. By the end of the hour, he was usually second-guessing why h
e’d
agreed to waste part of his day on this level of redundancy. Gazing out the window for too long sent a signal that he was
n’t
paying attention, so h
e’d
kept his eyes facing forward where he could let his mind wander more covertly.

Tha
t’s
when h
e’d
noticed the postcard. It was a picture of the New York City skyline on a glorious day, the crown of the Statue of Liberty sparkling in the sun in the foreground.

A sinking feeling tugged at his insides.

If i
t’s
blan
k
. . .
, he thought, already knowing that it would be but unable to confirm it until all of the men and women had filed out of his office. When he was finally alone, he stood looking down at Lady Liberty for a second before he lifted the card between thumb and index finger and flipped it over. There was nothing on the back but his address and the postmark. The card had been mailed from Manhattan the previous day.

Lionel left Langley around five and exited the freeway one ramp earlier than normal so that he could swing by his neighborhoo
d’s
small public library. He parked ten minutes before closing time and jogged to the entrance against a light stream of departing foot traffic, mostly parents fetching energetic children from after-school programs and slower-moving elderly patrons who still liked to check out books on tape.

Ignoring a libraria
n’s
warning about the time, he went directly to one of the public computers and logged into the Yahoo account he had established for this purpose. The in-box was empty, but there was a single message saved to the drafts folder. The subject was
W
ORK FROM HOME!
D
OUBLE YOUR INCOME!
He clicked on it and scrolled quickly through the sca
m’s
tacky, boldface promises and testimonials. At the bottom of the message, below a copyright line, was a block of generic legal disclaimers in a much smaller font. He had to squint at the words to read them, but eventually he found what he was looking for. Inserted into the legal paragraph were six sentences that did
n’t
belong there:

H
AWK COMPROMISED.
F
OREIGN TARGETS ABANDONED.
W
ARRANTLESS SURVEILLANCE OF
US
TARGETS & CORP ESPIONAGE, POSSIBLY ON BEHALF OF MAJOR
US
CORP.
A
DVISE NEXT STEPS
ASAP
.

THIRTY-EIGHT

The quant emerged from his Tribeca condo building at 10:25
AM
. She let him walk half a block before she got up from the bus stop bench. He stopped at an intersection to wait for the light. She hung back, watching. She knew there was no HawkEye coverage on his block, but she did
n’t
want to approach him too close to home. Instead, she waited until he dropped down to the subway platform at Canal. The surveillance cameras on the uptown platform had been out of order for a week, creating a temporary blind spot. It was just the place to talk to Bradley without setting off any scenario alarms that Gabby or Branagh might have programmed HawkEye to recognize.

She slipped through the turnstile, closed the gap between her and Bradley, and came up on his right side. It must have been some time since the last train; there were more people than usual on the platform.

“Not returning calls these days?” she said in a voice only he could hear.

He turned toward her, not understanding at first that she was talking to him. But then recognition flooded his eyes, succeeded quickly by fear. He stepped away from her and looked down the tunnel, desperate for a train. She approached him again.

“Take a hint, huh? I ca
n’t
talk to you,” he said, angling himself away from her. He swiveled his head around as if scanning the platform around them. Then he looked down the tunnel again.

“There have been developments with ONE. I need to talk to you.” There would be cameras on the train. She had to talk to him before it arrived.

“Yeah, there have been developments. I get threats now. People follow me. I ca
n’t
use my phone; I ca
n’t
sleep at night.” He scanned the platform again, and this time she thought his eyes caught on something. She tried to follow his gaze, but there were too many people. Then the rumble of the train rose up, echoing through the station.

“When did the threats start?”

He said something, but his voice was drowned out by the screech of brakes.

“What?” she yelled.

He looked at her when the train stopped.

“The threats started after I met with you,” he said. He glanced over her shoulder and she spun around to see what he was looking at. At first she saw nothing out of the ordinary, just people crowding toward the open train doors. But then she caught sight of him. The man was halfway down the platform. Unlike the others, he was
n’t
shuffling toward the train. He was holding a telephoto-lens camera to his face. It was pointed right at Kera and Bradley.

“These are the people following you?” Kera said, turning back. But Bradley had already retreated to the center of the car. She let him go. When she turned around, the man with the camera was gone.

She was climbing out of the subway station when her phone buzzed with an incoming call from an unsecure line. The ID display said it originated at Alegría North America. She hesitated.
It ca
n’t
be him
, she told herself, prepared to let the call go to voice mail. But after two rings another urge took over.
What if it is?

“Hello,” she said. She was up on the street now and had to cover her other ear in order to hear.

“Ms. Mersal.” It was his voice.

“How did you get this number?” she said.

“
I’m
resourceful. I did
n’t
know how else to reach you.”

“Why would you need to reach me?”

“
I’l
l be direct. Small talk feels ridiculous when we both know other people are listening.” That was probably true. It was unlikely that Hawk monitored her calls live, but she did
n’t
doubt that they were all recorded and stored in case an investigation of her behavior became necessary—which, eventually, it would. She wondered whether Jones would notice the call in Bolíva
r’s
dossier.

“Go on,” she said. There would be a record of the call either way; she might as well find out what he had to say.

“Will you see a film with me?”

“
I’m
sorry?”

“
I’d
like to take you to a movie.”

Kera nearly laughed. “Tha
t’s
why yo
u’r
e calling?”

“It is.”

Was he talking in code?
If he was, she had no way to decipher it. She said, “The other night you insulted me. And now you want me to spend an evening with you?”

“Yo
u’r
e not saying no?”

“
I’m
saying i
t’s
very unusual to receive a call like this. I do
n’t
know what to say.”

“Are
n’t
you supposed to tell me that yo
u’r
e engaged?”

“I—” Was he testing her to see which she would throw under the bus first, her fiancé or a new opportunity to crack the case? Did he really know about either, or was he bluffing?

“There will be no press,” he said. “If you are looking to get your picture with me in the tabloids, yo
u’v
e missed your chance.”

“Do I need to state for the record that this will not be a date?”

“I think you just did. I wo
n’t
give any of the details over the phone.
I’l
l have them sent to you. Keep your Thursday evening open.” And then he hung up.

She did not try very hard to think of a reason not to go to the movie with him. It was reason enough that he had something to say and that it could not be said over the phone. But that was
n’t
the main reason she would go. Her confrontation with Bolívar at the media pioneers event had been bizarre and unpleasant, but that had
n’t
stopped her from thinking, almost constantly, about when she might see him again.