End of Secrets (35 page)

FIFTY-ONE

One Week Later

That week was the worst of her life. Not just the frequency with which her mind replayed images of Parke
r’s
body slumped in the bathtub, but also of the funeral, two hours north of the city in Connecticut, and the wild, accusatory looks from his parents, when they looked at her at all. What was the appropriate role for an ex-fiancée in that situation? That week Kera felt, more than at any other point in her life, that she had no friends. Her parents were consoling from afar, but they were also a chore, with their own worrying and their demands that she either fly home or they would fly out to meet her.

Gabby, impossibly, infuriatingly, had attended the funeral. She stood in the third row of pews with a blank expression, looking once or twice at Kera and staying only long enough afterward to tell her that she could
n’t
imagine what Kera was going through and that she should take whatever time off she needed.

Hawk had paid to put her up in a more comfortable Midtown hotel so that she would
n’t
have to go to the apartment until she was ready. Besides at the funeral, she spoke to virtually no one for a full week. She instructed the hote
l’s
front desk to give no one her room number and to forward no calls. Occasionally, she collected messages from them or checked for messages on her phone. Her parents called and e-mailed daily. Jones had come by once. Even Lionel had called, breaking protocol to leave a message, which said he was sorry about what had happened and to let him know if she needed anything.

On the eighth day, she got dressed and ventured as far as the hote
l’s
café for coffee and oatmeal. The continuity of the cit
y’s
awful human machinery, the way it just went on, was ludicrous. She could see it outside from her window table. And from the television on the nearby wall, which broadcast one of the cable news networks. It just went on and on. To what end?

She had played a key role in Parke
r’s
death. That is what she had dedicated the week to reminding herself. Her role in his death was not the one his or her parents thought sh
e’d
played—breaking up with a man more troubled than anyone could have known. She knew her real role. As did Gabby and the people at ONE who had been asking Parker questions about her. Kera was not innocent. If only sh
e’d
convinced him not to accept the job at ONE, or if only sh
e’d
left him earlier. It was Parke
r’s
ties to her that had got him killed.

Kera looked up when the news anchor on the television announced that Natalie Smith, the filmmaker, had vanished. That this, of all things, should be the event that compelled Kera to action after a week of seclusion was not something she dwelt on. There was
n’t
time for that. She felt suddenly that she had to get to Jones before he gave up on her, if he had
n’t
already.

Yes, it had been Parke
r’s
ties to Kera that had gotten him killed. But she had
n’t
killed him.

FIFTY-TWO

Gabby greeted Kera with uncharacteristic interest in her well-being, protesting Ker
a’s
return to work as premature. “I saw there was another missing person,” Kera told her. “I need to be back.
I’m
not doing anyone any good alone in that hotel room.”

Gabby finally conceded with a cautious smile that made Kera wonder how long either of them would be able to keep up this charade.

Jones, of course, was at his workstation when she arrived. He gave her a hug and did not ask her any questions. “Le
t’s
finish this,” Kera said, nodding at the
A
TLANTIS
files open on his screen, but meaning everything else they had discussed before Parke
r’s
death. All else that needed to be communicated between them was done with their eyes.

One of the strangest things about her week away, Kera realized, was how isolated, almost helpless sh
e’d
felt without access to HawkEye. She spent the rest of the morning and afternoon reorienting herself in the case. Bolívar, oddly, was at home. H
e’d
been there for almost two full days. It was the first time since Kera had begun tracking him that h
e’d
not gone into the office. Next she reviewed Natalie Smit
h’s
final forty-eight hours and found nothing surprising. The filmmaker had left behind a video of herself stepping off the roof of her eighteen-story apartment building. On the pavement below was the chalk outline of a body that was
n’t
there. The words were scratched out in chalk by the ghost corps
e’s
feet:
Have you figured it out yet?

Late in the afternoon, after the novelty of having her back had begun to wear off for her colleagues and they seemed to be paying her less attention, Kera discreetly used HawkEye to look at something else. Without opening an official dossier, she checked the archived footage from the camera that she knew to be closest to her old apartment. Working forward from the approximate time Parker had last called her, she reviewed the footage until she spotted him. She only needed to play the clip once. There he was, walking down the sidewalk, in no apparent danger. The leather courier bag was slung over his shoulder.

Kera quickly closed out of the camer
a’s
viewer window and brought up her
A
TLANTIS
notes. The first thing that caught her attention was Bolíva
r’s
meeting with the CEO of ONE, more than a week earlier. It bothered her now, as it had when sh
e’d
first learned of it. The man sh
e’d
studied for weeks was a man of habit and routine. But ever since that meeting with ONE, his behavior seemed to have changed. She squinted at the HawkEye screen. The dot representing Bolíva
r’s
most recent activity hovered over his apartment. It was the middle of a weekday, and he was still at home.

Moving through her notes, Kera was reminded that the last thing sh
e’d
done was meet with Bolíva
r’s
college professor. Picking up where sh
e’d
left off, she started to sift through both Bolíva
r’s
and Charlie Canyo
n’s
NYU records to see if there was any mention of a third roommate or friend, as the professor had suggested existed. For the first time in a week, she became lost in thoughts that did
n’t
end with Parke
r’s
head ripped open in a bathtub. She worked nonstop until a few seconds after six
PM
, when a murmur rising from the analysts in the pit pulled her out of her work.

Kera looked immediately to Jones, who was at his workstation. When she saw the bewilderment on his face, she stood up and walked around their desks to look at his screen.

“Wha
t’s
happening?” she said.

“I do
n’t
know. It looks like
Gnos.is is down.”

He refreshed the sit
e’s
home page and got the same screen. He tried retyping the URL. Again, he was directed to the same bizarre page. In the place of the familiar Gnos.is home page were six black digits separated by two colons at the center of the screen. It took Kera a few seconds to understand that it was a digital timer counting backward.

In a moment of confusion, a technician in the pit keyed a combination of commands that pushed the Gnos.is home page onto every screen on the Control Roo
m’s
main tactical display. The sight of all those ticking digits plunged the room into an eerie silence.
Gnos.is—one
of the most popular sites on the Internet—was gone. The page that replaced it contained no hyperlinks. Just the clock, counting backward from twenty-four hours. There was no explanation for the countdown, nor what would follow when the digits reached 00:00:00.

The
V
INYL
team, Jones included, huddled over the bank of consoles in the pit for a half hour until the
y’d
determined that there was nothing else unusual about the site. All of its content had simply been replaced with this clock. Eventually, Director Branagh made an appearance, spent a minute glaring at the digits as they ticked toward the unknown, and then told the
V
INYL
case officer to keep an eye on it.

FIFTY-THREE

The man in the black leather jacket waited at the very end of the platform for the train. When it came, tearing past him with a piercing screech, he stood back and watched people crowd the ledge as if it were worth risking an accidental shove onto the tracks for a shot at being the first to squeeze through the doorway. After the train accelerated out of the station, there was a short period during which the platform was empty. It would begin to fill again in moments, but for a few seconds, it was deserted. The man did not look directly at the security camera at the end of the platform, but he could feel it watching him as he jumped down to the tracks. He walked into the downtown tunnel and wondered, though it seemed beside the point, whether he was breaking any law.

He squinted, straining for the first glimpse of light thrown toward him from the headlamp of the next train. His eyes played small tricks on him, but the tunnel remained dark. The number 6 trains could always be counted upon to be few and far between.

Deeper in the tunnel were rats. He heard them first and then felt them at his ankles and shins. The ball clattered in the spray can as he shook it. Then the paint hissed against the wall. He formed each letter carefully and doubled back over each line until the letters were thick and bold. The rats began to retreat, and he glanced down the tracks. The tunnel became illuminated around the near bend, growing brighter with a low rumble. He pushed harder against the head of the spray can. He had to finish. The rail he stood on vibrated through his soles. Air began to flow uptown, lifting his hair, blowing cool particles of paint across his bare knuckles. At first it was only a draft, carrying a lifting sensation that made him feel like a dolphin riding the bow wave of a boat. But then the currents grew stiff and wild, the stale air desperate to escape the path of the train. When he looked again, the headlight curved into sight. He had one letter yet to finish.

He no longer felt the rats scratching at his ankles. They had all taken cover.

Cowards,
he thought.

FIFTY-FOUR

Kera might never have received the envelope had the receptionist not called out to her as she crossed through the lobby.

“A delivery?”

“Came by courier just after I got in. I
t’s
on your desk.”

She was already late getting into the office, but what were a few more minutes? Instead of clearing directly through to the secure zone within Hawk, Kera went to her desk in the
TGR
newsroom—the desk she never sat at, the desk that looked like it belonged to a rising young journalist who found time to balance her work and family lives. What first caught her attention were the pictures of her and Parker displayed around the cubicle. She had steered clear of the apartment for the past week and had thus avoided moments like this, which exposed the stark cleavage between the innocent before and the horrific after. Thinking it was safe now to look at photos of him, she picked one up—a shot sh
e’d
taken of him in Battery Park, smiling, a ferry pulling away in the background—but all she could see was his body in the bathtub. She set the photograph down, fighting the feeling she so often had had in the days since h
e’d
been killed, of wanting just to lie in bed, unable to face even the most ordinary tasks.

The sight of the envelope on top of her in-box rescued her from this spiral. It was thick. There was no return information, just an ink stamp from the courier service. Mail addressed to her came regularly, but it was mostly paranoid letters professing news tips from people too suspicious or too old to use e-mail. No one she could think of would mail her anything important, not here, not addressed to the
Global Report
. She assumed, then, that the envelope likely contained a rant from a more aggressive breed of conspiracy theorist, one with cash to spend on a courier that delivers before nine
AM
.

She ripped away the seal. Inside were sheets of paper, perhaps twenty or thirty pages, clamped together with a binder clip. It was
n’t
until she pulled them out and had a look at the cover page that she began to understand where the package had come from. She looked around. No one seemed to have noticed her lingering in the newsroom. She put down her bag and sat in the unfamiliar chair. The top page was a printout of a
TGR
article that sh
e’d
become very familiar with:
R
ISING
I
-
B
ANKERS
D
ECAMP FOR
ONE
. Her byline beneath the title was what had originally caused Travis Bradley, the ex-Wall Street quant, to contact her. And that had led to the meeting with Bradley that Gabby had sent her to.

The pages beneath the article were less revealing. She flipped through them quickly, passing over grids of dense data. At first glance page after page looked the same—columns of dates and rows of numbers. And then a folded pamphlet fell out from between the final pages. It was a tourist map of Central Park, the kind purchased at sidewalk kiosks. Because a map was more interesting than pages of endless numbers, and because she did
n’t
think the map had gotten in there on accident, she unfolded it. She noticed immediately that there was a mark beside a path near the par
k’s
southwest corner, a small X inked in red pen. The ex-Wall Street quant, it seemed, was trying his hand at tradecraft. But what was he trying to tell her?

She returned her attention to the packet of papers and flipped back to the first page of data. This time she looked more closely and discovered there was a different name, age, address, and phone number on the header of each page. The name on the first page got her attention. She flipped through only three more names before she shoved the packet back into the envelope and hurried for the Control Room.

After sh
e’d
cleared the retinal scanner and entered, she crossed through the familiar glow of digital maps, databases, and surveillance imagery. This morning she noticed that several of the screens above the pit displayed the Gnos.is clock, which ticked backward through 10:28:45 as she approached Jone
s’s
workstation. Director Branagh and Gabby hovered over the
V
INYL
case officer in the pit, each of them attached to a phone and a cup of coffee. A familiar crew of analysts cycled by. But no one seemed very busy. That clock was headed to zero and there was nothing more anyone in this room was going to learn about Gnos.is before it got there.

“Jones,” she whispered, coming up behind him. She suddenly did
n’t
know how she should proceed. What she had to say was not something they could discuss with Gabby and Branagh in the room. “I heard from our source. We have—”

“Kera—” he said, cutting her off. He stood up and glanced down at the pit to make sure Gabby and Branagh were
n’t
paying any attention to them. “Come with me.”

He guided her into the small kitchen just off the Control Room floor. There was no one else there. For the moment, they were alone and out of earshot—at least out of range of human ears. “We ca
n’t
talk about this in here,” she whispered.

“If w
e’r
e quiet, we can.” He must have read the skepticism on her face. “I
t’s
clean. No bugs.”

“How do you know?”

“I looked for them. There are ceiling devices in most offices and conference rooms. And the cameras in the Control Room also pick up audio, though I ca
n’t
imagine they pull in anything more than a steady din most of the time. But the bathrooms, kitchens, and hallways are clean.”

“I think they skipped over all that during my orientation,” she said. “I suppose sweeping rooms for electronic devices is normal behavior for you NSA guys?”

But Jones was not in the mood for dry humor. In fact, he seemed to be struggling to look her in the eye.

“Jones?”

He exhaled. “There was an alert. It came in just a few minutes ago.” A hesitation. “Bolíva
r’s
gone.”

“Gone?”

“Right now the
y’r
e saying h
e’s
dead, Kera.”

“What happened? Is there a body?”

“Kera—”

“Answer me. Did they find a body?”

Jones looked away. Finally he shook his head, as if resigned to what was coming. “I
t’s
too early to say. It happened in one of the subway tunnels. They found his jacket, his phone. NYPD is still investigating whether he could have been clipped by a train—or worse.”

“What, a hit-and-run by a train? And one where the body does the running? Jesus, listen to yourself. You ca
n’t
believe that.”

“It does
n’t
matter what I believe.”

Kera made a move to leave. She needed more information; she needed to see for herself.

“Kera.” He was blocking her. “Stay focused. I need you today.”

“Bolívar is one of them, Jones. H
e’s
part of it, whatever it is.”

“I believe you. But we have to stick to our plan.”

She tried to slide past him. “
I’v
e got to get to his apartment.”

“No. Kera, look at me. You have to stay here. If yo
u’r
e not at your workstation today, Gabby will know yo
u’r
e up to something. We ca
n’t
give her any reason to keep a closer eye on us. Not right now.”

Kera was thinking of the locked room in Rafael Bolíva
r’s
apartment. But Jones was right. Deserting her post right now would be a red flag for Gabby. The fact that sh
e’d
even considered it made her wonder if she was more shaken by Parke
r’s
death than she imagined. She could
n’t
afford a stupid mistake. Both her own life and Jone
s’s
depended on it. She nodded. “So you knew?”

“Knew what?”

“Abou
t . . .
Bolívar and me.”

He said nothing. He looked at her for a moment more and then turned to leave.

“Wait,” she said. She pulled the packet of papers from the envelope and handed it to him.

“Wha
t’s
this?” he said.

“I
t’s
data on surveillance targets. But look at the names. Senators, foreign ambassadors, even the secretary of defense. They have phone records, purchases, location data—everything. I
t’s
these peopl
e’s
lives, broken down into numbers and formulas.”

“Slow down. Where did you get this?”

“From Bradley. This is what ONE is doing.”

He looked up at her. “Why?”

“Because i
t’s
information they can sell. I
t’s
a product. You do
n’t
have to stretch your imagination to figure out what sort of consumer would be interested in this. Look at the last page.”

Jones flipped to the end of the packet. The note was scrawled in unruly handwriting:

I have more examples like these. By tomorrow I will have a list put together of everyone the
y’r
e selling to. It wo
n’t
take them long to discover the breach.
I’m
leaving the city for a while. If you want a copy of what
I’v
e managed to gather, meet me at noon tomorrow.

“Meet him where?” Jones asked.

Kera held up the map.

“Are you up for going?”

She nodded. “This is what w
e’v
e been waiting for. We have the link between Hawk and ONE. Bradley, le
t’s
hope, comes through with the rest.”

“All right,” Jones said. “Tomorrow it is.
I’l
l copy the ONE contracts and Gabb
y’s
and Branag
h’s
e-mail files before I leave tonight, and w
e’l
l have to hope it does
n’t
set off any alarms before noon tomorrow. Why do
n’t
we meet later, outside, to go over everything?” She nodded. “McKinle
y’s
scotch bar in the Village? Meet there at nine?”

“I
t’s
a date.”