Hack (4 page)

I stared at Philips. He seemed surprised by my attitude, but not concerned.

“North thinks you’re an addict. And he feels cheated by the way you talked your way out of a serious custodial sentence. He’s going to settle his own score. Do this for me, and I’ll make sure the next time he bothers you, at least you’ll have a get-out-of-jail card.”

So, North hadn’t moved on. I never understood North’s stance; to him, it was personal. He really was out to get me. Even after I had bartered my way out of trouble, North had managed to keep me
pending release
for over six months. I blew a long breath out through my nose, trying to make it as dramatic as the routine that Philips and Garman were giving me.

“How long will it take?” I asked.

“That depends how quickly you can draw Malik out. Given his increased activity, I think we can do it in a few weeks.”

“If I do this, I want something more than goodwill in return. I want that ‘start again’ you just mentioned.”

Philips nodded. He seemed to have expected a negotiation.

“I want a new ID, like with the Witness Protection Program. Karl Ripley won’t be able to get a job—not with computers anyway—but John Doe will. And I want to go to college and get a degree. I want a normal life.”

There was a pause while Philips looked thoughtful and Garman looked annoyed. But I knew they would be expecting me to negotiate. My recent court appearances no doubt left them with that impression. North had presented thousands of pages of evidence, and had petitioned for what amounted to the court making an 8

example of me. But what it came down to in the end was the plea. I had talked my way out of it, like I had talked dozens of people out of their passwords.

Phillips’ eyes moved across the ceiling, as if he was making a mental calculation.

“Just the tuition fees alone would exceed fifty thousand dollars,” he said.

“I can do it in a year. I know every single item on the syllabus, and I can graduate early. That’s less than twenty thousand.”

“Even if that were true, that’s still a lot of money.”

I shrugged and said, as meekly as I could, “If the FBI can’t afford it, maybe Malik can.”

Philips stared at me and scratched his forehead. Then he smiled, as if allowing himself to be amused. Good-natured Mr. Philips grinning while he threw the football back over the fence to young Karl.

“All right,” he said at last, with a nod. Then he added, “On the condition that we get Malik. If we get nothing, then you get nothing.”

“Sure.”

I allowed myself a little smile, too. Philips said something about picking me up in the morning. But I wasn’t listening. Already my thoughts were whirling around, trying to slot this development into the plan that I had been working on for the last six months: a little something for Knight. North was going to be watching me; I had guessed that. But now I was a white-hat hacker working for the FBI, and that changed things.

I came out of my reverie when the door clanked, and the guard came back in.

“Good-bye, Karl,” Philips said. “We’ll be here tomorrow at ten a.m.”

I said good-bye. The guard led me through the door, and back into the corridor. Though it was autumn, the sun coming through the barred windows was bright, and the corridor was warm. Looking through the mesh-covered security windows, I could see the guards at the gate, just the wrong side of the real world. The stroll back to my cell seemed like a practice run for the next day’s walk to freedom.

The guard next to me said nothing until we reached my cell. Then he spoke.

“Your last day, today.”

His earlier coldness was gone.

“Yup.”

“How did you know the feds would be coming?”

“Just a guess.”

“Take some advice, Ripley. Get a job, and get a girlfriend. Stay out of here.”

“Sure.”

The guard shut the door behind him, and I was alone in my cell again. I lay on my cot, and stared at the ceiling. There I was, at the dawn of the new electronic frontier, in which, against all probability, I had somehow become a gun for hire.

I had plenty of thinking to do, and only one day to do it in.

9

At 10:05 a.m., after getting dressed in my civilian clothes and counting the money I had had on me when I was arrested ($13.87), I was escorted to the gate of Cedar Creek. Philips and Garman, true to their word, were already waiting for me.

Neither of them bothered with pleasantries.

“First things first,” Philips said, as I got into a black Ford sedan. “We’ll stop by your mother’s apartment.”

“She doesn’t want to see me.”

“I don’t want her to get a rush of maternal guilt and start making waves. Tell her you’re going to be working away for a month.”

Philips turned the car onto the road, and sped up. It was strange after six months in a tiny cell to be free to move around once again, even if it was in an FBI car.

I didn’t look over my shoulder to see the prison receding into the distance, but I felt its gravity decrease. I had already said my
convict’s prayer
last night: “I’m never going back inside again.” But I added another line: “That’s where you’re going, Knight. That’s where I’ll put you.”

We passed through various districts, until we came to the rundown neighborhood in central Seattle where I had lived with my mom before getting arrested. Philips eased the car to a stop on the side of the street, which was strewn with gravel, shards of broken glass, and a graffiti gallery. He and I got out, leaving Garman in the car, perhaps to make sure that nobody stole the wheels, which sometimes happened in that neighborhood. Philips pushed the doorbell, but no one answered.

“It’s too early,” I said. “My mom works late.”

“I phoned yesterday and told her we were coming,” Philips said.

He stood for a moment, looking expectantly at the window. His trust seemed like a sliver of decency showing through the tough surface. He pulled his mobile phone from his pocket, and dialed. No answer.

“The way the FBI told it, I was public enemy number one, right?”

I turned and walked back down to the car.

He ignored my comment. After we both got back into the car, he said somewhat defensively, “It doesn’t matter. We already have all the clothes and equipment you’ll need.”

We set off again, with Philips and Garman saying nothing. In a short time, the car was on the freeway, and we were passing a sign telling us that we were heading out of town, and thanking us for having driven so safely.

“Where exactly are we going?” I asked.

“You’ll find out everything you need to know shortly.”

The rest of the journey was silent, with the early morning talk radio making up for the total lack of any conversation, with a learned discussion on the war against terrorism. I tuned it out, and spent my time thinking through the coming weeks, like a chess player figuring out moves that he might never make.

We had been on the road for two hours when the car wheels hit the sandstone gravel in front of a roadside diner. I came out of my reverie, and looked around. The aging, anonymous place seemed perfect for an undercover rendezvous. It was decorated with all the taste that aluminum and neon allow. Inside, it was quiet, with just a few early morning travelers clogging their arteries with cigarettes and fries.

10

Garman escorted me to the restroom and back, while Philips sat down and browsed the menu.

An unsmiling waitress came over and took our order. Three coffees, Philips said, without asking me what I wanted.

“Decaf, please,” I added.

My caffeine habit had been a help during those midnight hacking runs that lasted until dawn. But in jail, I had been weaned off it, and there wasn’t any point in re-engaging it. I had gotten used to sleeping at night, instead of in history class.

Curiously, my body and brain now woke up several minutes before the jail lights came on, at 6:00 a.m.—something that never ceased to amaze me.

I noticed a newspaper on the counter, and walked over to get it. There were no headlines in it about any Pentagon hacker getting released from prison, either on the front page, the back page, or anywhere in between. Philips had been right: nobody was interested in my existence at all—not the press, not any of my old teachers and counselors, and not even my family. Only the police were interested in me now.

The glum waitress brought three cups, and still no one said anything. Some time ago, I had begun to think the main asset in the FBI agent’s fight against crime is his unwavering persistence in the face of grinding boredom. More than anything else, they simply quietly outwait criminals. I was going to ask what we were hanging around for, when Garman spoke.

“Aster is injured again,” he said, dismayed. I wondered what he was talking about, and then noticed a picture in the newspaper of an oversized football player being carried off the field in obvious agony.

“Yeah, he’s making a career of it,” replied Philips, mildly. I got the idea that he was more interested in keeping the conversation going than in discussing sports heroes.

I had no real interest in organized sports, either. I had always preferred single sports, like cycling, or running, where you compete against yourself. But I knew something about football. At one point, when I was about thirteen—in my pre-hacking days—I became interested in gambling, and had spent some time puzzling over the game schedules, wondering how to predict the winners and make some money. During every boring bus ride, or every time I was waiting in line in the school cafeteria, or every time my mother started complaining, I’d just tune out, and start thinking about my gambling system.

Though I had never made a single bet (being underage), the system had given me something to do. In jail, keeping up with sports was one way of having something to talk to the guards about. I remembered talking about Aster and his knees.

“Isn’t that his third injury this season?” I asked Garman. For a second, both men looked a bit surprised. Garman didn’t say anything, but Philips said, “I think so.

He’s got a weak Achilles.”

“It’s his knee,” corrected Garman. “The same thing happened to me. I had surgery, but it never goes back to normal.”

I hadn’t seen Garman limping, but I could believe that he had played football.

He looked like he had spent his formative years tackling beer trucks or something.

The two men continued talking about football, and I half listened. A few minutes later, the waitress came back, and smiling weakly now that table number six was so chatty, she asked if we had enjoyed our coffee.

“Yes, thank you,” replied the polite undercover agents. Would we like to order any food? No, thanks. Did we want our coffee topped up? Yes, please.

11

I saw the waitress give a quick sideways glance at me, curious perhaps as to why the quiet young man was currently sitting with the two well-dressed adults. Then she went back to the counter.

“Either way,” concluded Garman, still talking about Aster, “he’s not worth the money they paid—”

He fell silent suddenly, and stared out of the window, his easy expression gone, replaced by his usual tense grimness.

“They’re here,” he said.

12

A man and a woman in their late thirties got out of a black Mercedes SUV, and walked into the diner. These were my new parents, but I hadn’t expected them to look so much like a true married couple. If Garman hadn’t said anything, I might have thought they were Mr. and Mrs. Smith, stopping for coffee while driving to visit their elderly parents.

The man was stocky, with the beginnings of a beer gut, and what looked like a constant five o’clock shadow on his chin. The woman was fair-haired, slim, and would have been attractive, if she hadn’t been dressed in a momsy way, which made her look plain. They were both around the same age as my other fed handlers—or so I guessed, but I’m not much good at these things.

Immediately, Philips and Garman started talking with them as if they were old buddies. Garman’s sullen intensity vanished, and he became chatty, acknowledging the woman and talking to the man. Introductions were made. The man was Richard, and the woman was Hannah. They were, Philips said, the Johnsons. I noticed that Philips was keeping his voice low. We were seated away from the other people, but he kept looking around, as if to make sure that nobody was paying undue attention to us.

“This is your son, David,” Philips said.

“Hi, Dad, Mom,” I said somewhat pointedly.

Philips gave a little shrug, as if to say ‘get used to that.’ Richard nodded a silent acknowledgement, but Hannah smiled cheerfully.

“Are you ready to go?” Philips said.

“Yeah,” Richard said. “But let me get some coffee first.”

He looked at Hannah, who nodded her agreement, and then walked over to the counter. “Can I get two regular coffees to go?” he asked loudly to the waitress, who was at the other end of the counter. Philips paid for our coffees, and he and Garman left a tip for the waitress. I left her the eighty-seven cents in coins that had been sitting unused in an envelope with my other possessions for over half a year. When the coffees arrived, we went outside, and got into the two cars and drove away.

Within five minutes, we had arrived at a nondescript motel. We went into a cabin, Garman carrying a case. There were only two chairs in the room, so Richard and Hannah stood, and I sat on the bed. Garman opened his case, and took out various cards and passes, and gave them to Philips.

“Down to business,” Philips said. “This is your new identity.” He handed me the cards.

“You’re David Johnson, a fifteen-year-old student at Elmwood High. Your father, Richard, works as a security consultant. Your mother Hannah is a homemaker, who works part-time in real estate.” I nodded, looking at the ID cards. I had put together a few ID cards in my time, just out of interest, but these were perfect fakes.

“You’re transferring in from your old school in Seattle. No need to lie about that. We have already prepped the relevant staff. They won’t ask any stupid questions.” I noticed then that Hannah had also brought in a case, a heavy travel bag.