End of Secrets (37 page)

A clock does not innocently measure minutes and hours; it imposes on us the bias of time. A clock can give us free time, for example, just as surely as it can imprison us from nine to five. But in a world with clocks, one cannot opt out of time.

There are other examples of such man-made “mediums” that, once created, fundamentally alter human existence. Take, for instance, the written word, demonstrated here, which does not innocently record what would otherwise be said aloud, but instead insists upon structured, logical thought—a higher level of thought than is otherwise possible.

The most powerful of these mediums, though, is currency. Currency does not innocently transfer value; it imposes on us the bias of profit, and in doing so insists that profit is itself the highest value. The result, not surprisingly, are markets—and humans—that exist solely to maximize profit, often at the expense of living (though such “expense” is never accounted for on the balance sheets).

We cannot unwind our attachment to profit any more than we can cut ourselves free of time or logical thought. But there is room for more. There is room for a new medium, a medium that is as self-interested as currency, but that insists not upon an accumulation of profit, but a deepening of our understanding of the
meaning
in our lives. If your first thought was to try to understand this in the context of market-like incentives or to ask yourself, “Will it be profitable?” then you can begin to understand that our largest barrier to advancing human understanding is mostly a problem of human imagination.

We have the capacity for so much more. We need only to realize that “more” contains whole worlds that have no relationship to “profit.”

The clock is ticking.

“Bolívar wrote this?” Jones said, still staring at the tablet screen. Kera nodded. She saw him read aloud the title of the thesis, which was displayed in the margin at the top of the screen. The words came out as just barely a whisper. “
Fact and Truth: The Link between Knowledge and Meaning
.” He looked at her. “Gnos.is is Bolíva
r’s
.”

“Yes,” she said. “Gnos.is is not just a website. I
t’s
his attempt at this new medium he talks about.”

Jones checked the door again with a glance. “So this is what ONE is after?”

“If they were
n’t
before, they will be now. A few missing artists is a nuisance for a media company like ONE. But the new Gnos.is is real competition.”

Jones nodded. “Where did you get this?”

“Bolíva
r’s
college professor.”

“Who else knows about it?”

Kera shrugged. “Who knows? Although I doubt anyone other than me has asked the professor about it in over a decade.”

“The
y’l
l be asking now. Does Gabby know you have it? Does anyone else in there know?”

Kera shook her head. “No. But it will get out, Jones. And as soon as it does, Gabby will come directly to me. The professor e-mailed it to my
TGR
account.”

Jones thought about this. “All right. If it comes up in the next twenty-four hours, play dumb. We just need to buy a little more time. See you tonight?”

She nodded and turned back toward the Control Room.

“Kera. Be—”

“I know,” she said.
Be careful
. She did
n’t
need to be reminded of that.

FIFTY-SIX

She did not go immediately to the hotel. First, she took a cab to Columbus Circle and got out on Fifty-Ninth Street, across from the entrance to Raf
a’s
complex. Three cruisers and an FBI truck were parked at the curb in front of the glass towers. The lobby doormen inside, well aware that the
y’d
lost a famous resident, were taking their duties as seriously as ever. She gave them the line about being sent from the mayo
r’s
office and said Detective Hopper was expecting her. He was not, and he was not pleased to see her when she stepped off the elevator on the forty-eighth floor. But it was the end of a long day for Hopper, and his fatigue and indifference earned her a quick, self-guided tour of Bolíva
r’s
apartment.

“You have five minutes, Ms. Mersal.”

“I only need three.”

The kitchen and living room were neat and tidy, just as she remembered them. Her eyes lingered for a second on the chair and ottoman where she and Rafa had fallen, intertwined. She could
n’t
decide which was more surreal, her memory of that evening or the idea that he was gone and that his apartment now crawled with cops taking photos and dusting surfaces.

The painting was missing. She noticed it as soon as she turned for the bedrooms. For a moment she stood there with her head cocked slightly, looking at the place where it had hung. She swept the room with her eyes. There were no other gaps that would have suggested another missing canvas. There must have been hundreds of thousands of dollars hanging on these walls. And the only one missing was the small oil-on-canvas that had been painted by one of Bolíva
r’s
college classmates, or so h
e’d
claimed. She walked toward the recessed area where the painting had hung and ran her fingers over the thin black screw protruding from the wall.

From that vantage she got her first look into the room she had come here to see—the mysterious second bedroom with the heavy, locked door. The door was open now, and there were signs that the task of unlocking it had been an indelicate one. The frame was bent and twisted, and dark scorch marks flared around the keypad.

She stepped through the threshold. The room had been gutted of everything but harsh, overhead fluorescent lights. The smell of electrical sparks and plaster particles hung in the air. A row of outlets, many of their covers dangling from braids of multicolored wires, lined the walls at one-foot intervals. There must have been fifty outlets. She noted the marks on the floor where furniture—shelves or desks, maybe—had been positioned, anchored over small bolt holes in the concrete. But there was not a single object in the room. It was bare enough for her footsteps to echo.

However, the first thing she had noticed upon entering were the words sprayed in red paint across one wall. She faced them now. At a few points, the paint bled in streaks where the spray can must have lingered too long. The writing said:
Have you figured it out yet?

“You guys stripped this whole room today?” she asked one of the nearby cops. They were taking photographs of the furniture marks on the floor.

“No, m
a’a
m. Once we blasted through the door, this is the way we found it.”

FIFTY-SEVEN

Jones did not like the look of the figure loitering on the sidewalk a half block from the entrance to his condo building. It was dusk now, an hour and a half before he was to meet Kera, and h
e’d
left the Hawk offices in time to go home and change. He had not picked up a shadow on the street or in the subway, but if anyone was
watching—including
via HawkEye—he intended to make this trip home appear as if he would be in for the night. He was paranoid; that was all. Things had been going too smoothly, and that was making him overly cautious. Still, even though he could
n’t
be sure, he thought h
e’d
seen this same man outside the Hawk building when h
e’d
left work.

The man was not looking in Jone
s’s
direction. He was dressed plainly in dark jeans and a dark shirt with a baseball cap low on his forehead, so he might have been anyone. There were at least even odds, Jones reasoned, that a man standing nearby on a Brooklyn sidewalk represented absolutely no danger.

He waved to the doorman, who was out on the curb looking to hail a cab for another of the buildin
g’s
residents, and went inside. The man on the sidewalk had
n’t
taken any interest in him, after all.

Inside the buildin
g’s
lobby, Jones checked the mail. He tossed the coupon pamphlets and takeout menus and sorted through the credit card offers, a bill, and a
Rolling Stone
as he waited for the elevator. He was alone when he stepped into the car and lit up the button for the fourth floor, reading the teaser headlines on the magazine cover. He looked up, just before the closing panels met, in time to see a man fill the narrow opening and extend his hand to trip the sensor. The doors jerked back obediently, and from underneath the low bill of his baseball cap, the man looked Jones directly in the eye.

FIFTY-EIGHT

Kera left the hotel from an exit sh
e’d
never used before and switched cabs twice on her way downtown. None of these maneuvers exposed any shadows. When the first cab hit a mysterious snarl of traffic, she waited it out for a few minutes before asking the driver to take an alternate route. It was
n’t
until she was riding in the second cab that she learned the cause of the traffic jam. A newscast coming over the small flat screen attached to the back of the drive
r’s
seat reported that there was a new piece by It. In the last hour, a billboard in Midtown had been commandeered by the artist and was delighting fans as much as it was inconveniencing motorists.

She was ten minutes late when she approached the double glass doors of McKinle
y’s
. Just inside, she scanned the crowd. Jones was seated at the bar, his jacket draped over the empty stool to his left. Most of the other seats were taken. He wore a white button-down shirt, which for him was unprecedented. Kera had only ever seen him in black T-shirts and jeans. He was touching a glass in front of him lightly with one hand, his eyes pointed down into it.
People do this in bars,
she thought.
They look into their drinks as they sit alone.
She was just about to approach when she saw his head turn to the right and his lips move.

He was talking to the man next to him.

Before she could skirt around the high-top tables to get a better view, the man got up and started to cross the room. Her first thought was that he was headed to the me
n’s
room. But then she noticed the twenty-dollar bill on the bar next to the empty glass h
e’d
left behind. She swung her gaze back just in time to see him push through one of the rear exits by the kitchen.

She started after him, picking her way through the crowd calmly so that she would
n’t
draw attention. H
e’d
gotten a head start, but when she opened the back door and found herself in an alley, he was still in view, walking quickly away.

“Charlie!”

Even from a distance she could see the small hiccup in his step, the slight shift in the position of his shoulders at the sound of her voice. But he did not stop or glance back to acknowledge her. Then, in the next instant, he reached the end of the alley and the start of the city, and he was gone.

She went back inside, where Jones did not seem to be aware that she had
n’t
come in from the main entrance. In fact, he did
n’t
seem to be aware of anything going on around him.

“Jones,” she said softly. He looked almost surprised to see her, as if h
e’d
forgotten that the
y’d
planned to meet. “That was Canyon, was
n’t
it? Just now, leaving through the alley.”

Jones did not respond. After a hesitation he moved his jacket so that Kera could sit down.

“Wha
t’s
going on? He was talking to you, was
n’t
he?” Kera said. “What did he tell you?”

Jones gestured for her to sit, but she ignored that.

“What did he say to you, Jones?”

He made a point to look her in the eye, as though to reassure her. Finally he said, “He offered me a job.”

Kera stared at him. “With Gnos.is?” She took a step back. “How long have you been talking to them?”

“I have
n’t
been,” Jones said quickly. “
I’d
never spoken to Canyon in my life until just now.”

“How did he find you?”

Jones shrugged. “Bolívar, I guess. He said that Bolívar had become curious about the
Global Report
after it launched. He was interested in news sites that aggregated data from the web to create original news content, like Gnos.is. He figured out pretty quickly that
TGR
was
n’t
a real news site.”

Kera nodded. Bolívar himself had told her that on the night h
e’d
hosted the screening of the
America
film. But this reminded Kera of something that had never made sense to her. “So Bolívar knew about Hawk for one—maybe two—years? Why not expose us? He knew we were tracking him. And he runs a media conglomerate. He could have ruined Hawk in less than a news cycle.”

“Canyon said w
e’l
l know that tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Yes. Something to do with ON
E’s
acquisition of Alegría. He said that deal was very important to Bolívar, and he did
n’t
want to jeopardize it by rocking the boat with Hawk.”

“That sale never made sense to me either. Why get so friendly with ONE all of a sudden? Bolívar built Alegría North America on his own. It was taking off. You heard all the talk lately, analysts saying that Alegría was the only company with a chance to rival ONE. He certainly did
n’t
need the money.”

“No, he did
n’t
. And, according to Canyon, he despises ONE.”

Kera looked at him, confused.

“Come on, sit down.
I’l
l tell you everything.” He glanced up at the bar. “Besides, I got a new job. W
e’r
e celebrating. What would you like?”

She looked up at the shelves of amber-colored liquor and, overwhelmed, just ordered whatever he was having. They were silent while the bartender poured each of them a finger of eighteen-year Macallan.

“So tha
t’s
it. Yo
u’r
e going to join them,” Kera said. “Wha
t’s
the job?”

Jones nodded proudly. “
I’l
l head cybersecurity for Gnos.is.”

“Well, tha
t’s
at least a full-time job. Congratulations.” Their glasses met. Kera felt the liquo
r’s
initial bite soften as it descended down her throat. “So I was right. Bolívar and Canyon are working together.”

“They are now, yes. But not all along, according to Canyon. Back in college Bolívar had discussed the early concepts of Gnos.is with him. It was
n’t
called Gnos.is back then; I do
n’t
know what they were calling it. But Bolívar was obsessed with the project and sought out Canyo
n’s
help. There were two problems, though. The first was that Bolívar could
n’t
figure out how to complete the actual design.”

Kera nodded. She recalled Professor Tierne
y’s
words when h
e’d
explained to her Bolíva
r’s
failure to deliver a functional prototype to correspond with his thesis. Bolívar had been ambitious to a fault, the professor had said. The thing Bolívar was striving for was impossible.

“The second problem was more of a philosophical disagreement,” Jones continued. “Bolívar envisioned Gnos.is as a new way to understand things that are—or ought to be—important to us, but that cannot be quantified in financial terms. He thought that people, if given the opportunity, would recognize the value in that. You know that part. It was in his thesis.”

“Right.”

“Canyon, though, was more pessimistic about how Bolíva
r’s
idea might be received. He thought it would, at best, remain completely obscure. At worst, it would just become another participant in the race-to-the-bottom entertainment culture. Anyway, it was a chicken-or-egg argument, and they disagreed stubbornly on which came first. Then Bolívar left NYU, and the two of them drifted apart.”

“But Bolívar eventually completed his design for Gnos.is,” Kera said.

“Yes. The first version was launched. And it turned out that Canyon had been right: Gnos.is did not fail to become popular, of course. In fact, it became wildly popular. And that was the problem. The more popular it became, the more the site was reduced to an exchange of superficial content. It was quickly overrun by the cultural fixation of the minute rather than becoming the platform for deeper understanding that Bolívar believed it could be.”

She nodded to let him know she was following.

“Canyon and Bolívar had fallen out of touch, but as soon as it launched, Canyon recognized where Gnos.is had come from. He remembered it all from their discussions back in college. He could see that Bolívar had finally solved the design problems that had prevented him from launching the site earlier. And he could also see that the remaining problem was exactly the one h
e’d
predicted.”

“That the content Bolívar most wanted to receive attention would be crowded out by more trivial entertainment?”

“Exactly. That was the paradox Bolívar faced with Gnos.is from the start: how to make a worthy idea popular without compromising it in order to appeal to a lower and lower common denominator. Canyon understood that the problem with Gnos.is was
n’t
in the coding or with any other technology issue. It was a human problem. Bolívar might be a genius at designing the code, but he could
n’t
control how artists and their audiences and people seeking out news would decide to use Gnos.is. Canyon, though—his passion is manipulating human behavior.”

“The stunts,” Kera said, beginning to see where this was headed.

“The what?”

“Stunts. Tha
t’s
what Bolívar called them. Marybelle Picket
t’s
stolen paintings, for example.” She paused to allow a few more pieces to fall into place. “And the artists disappearing. The whole thing is an advertising gimmick.”

“Sort of,” Jones said. “On the surface, anyway. Canyon began to develop his plan without even telling Bolívar what he was doing. He figured the
y’d
argued about it plenty in college and got nowhere. He was
n’t
going to do that again. Instead, he was just going to make it happen. So first, Canyon approached Caroline Mullen, a young lawyer h
e’d
met through a friend, looking for advice about how one might minimize the legal fallout of faking a suicide or simply disappearing. Mullen, it turned out, was much more receptive to Canyo
n’s
plan than h
e’d
expected. She wanted in, and she wanted to go first, to see if it could be done.”

“Wait. What about It? I
t’s
art had already begun appearing
anonymously
before Caroline Mullen disappeared.”

Jones shrugged. “I know. I asked him that. Canyon would
n’t
talk about It.”

“What do you mean?”

“He just would
n’t
. All he said was that It would remain anonymous, even after the other artists rejoin society.”

“When will that be?”

“I imagine the
y’l
l each decide on their own when the time feels right. Ther
e’s
no big hurry, I guess. These artists have had more attention paid to their work today than they might have hoped to have in their entire lifetimes. And they do
n’t
have ONE execs butting in with the latest data-driven edits that might help them reach a bigger, dumber audience.”

Kera shook her head. “But what if tha
t’s
only temporary? They do
n’t
know who the
y’r
e dealing with. Canyon, these artists, even Bolívar—the
y’r
e no match for ONE. Especially now that ONE knows the
y’r
e alive and well and profiting off their art without ONE getting its cut. This is
n’t
a game for ONE. Look what they did to Parker.”

Jones nodded. He seemed aware that this was the first time she had spoken of Parker since her return to work.

“OK,” she said, changing the subject quickly, “so the artists start disappearing. When did Bolívar get on board with this plan? He told me himself he was
n’t
a fan of Canyo
n’s
previous stunts, like the stolen paintings.”

Jones smiled. “Canyon said you might ask that. He said you were there on the night he approached Bolívar.”

“No, that is
n’t
possible,” Kera said. But then she thought about it and saw that it was.

“The man on the balcony,” she said. After the
America
screening. Could that have been Canyon? Kera thought of the evening, weeks before, when Bolívar had rejoined her looking like h
e’d
seen a ghost after talking to the man on that balcony. For a few moments, Kera permitted herself to think of the evening sh
e’d
spent in Bolíva
r’s
apartment. His strange behavior made more sense now. All but the deal for ONE to acquire Alegría. “Canyon told you all this? Just now?”

“Yes. He approached me at my condo. We would have talked longer, but I told him I had to meet you. Do you want another?”

Kera looked down at her glass. It was empty, as was his, though she hardly remembered drinking.

They were silent while the bartender worked. When he put drinks in front of them and retreated out of earshot, she spoke again.

“Did you get them?”

Jone
s’s
eyes widened at her mention of the Hawk files.

“What is it? Was there a problem?”

In their previous discussions, Jones had explained that h
e’d
already located the most sensitive files that existed on Haw
k’s
servers. Given his firing from the NSA, Hawk had been smart enough not to include Jones in the design of Haw
k’s
cybersecurity systems. But whoever had been charged with protecting Haw
k’s
data was no match for Jones, who had found it relatively easy to access Gabb
y’s
and Branag
h’s
e-mail accounts and the contracts between Hawk and ONE. The real risk was making copies of all these sensitive files without sending up any red flags. Which is why h
e’d
waited until the last possible moment.

“No. The files were on the servers just where I expected them. And the copies I made are now in a bank box near the office. I
t’s
just—ther
e’s
more than what
I’d
been aware of before.” He lowered his voice. “It goes back to the CIA, Kera.”