Paradime (21 page)

He makes a huffing sound. ‘What do you
think
I mean? This Pivot thing. You’re trying to
buy
it? And Leonard Perl, the surveillance? What’s that all about? We had an agreement.’ He leans across the table and locks eyes with me. ‘No contact with your old life, no crossover.’

Lessing is wearing a suit, but there’s something shabby about it, and about him too. Who
is
he?

That’s another question I want to ask him, but I’m afraid of what the answer will be. While we’re at it, here’s another. Does he know why I want to buy Pivot? And if he doesn’t, do I tell him?

He’s waiting for me to speak when a waitress comes over.

‘Two coffees,’ Lessing says without looking at her.

When she leaves, I say, ‘Karl, I don’t have to explain myself to
you
.’

He adjusts his glasses, then takes them off, fiddles with them, and puts them back on again. For the few seconds he doesn’t have them on, he looks strange, like an outsized fish. ‘No, you don’t,’ he says, ‘about most things, that’s true. It’s the way we want it, and it’s working out great. Look at ExpoCon.’ He throws his head back. ‘Fabulous. And before that, asteroid mining? Running for public office? It’s all
very
exciting.’ He lowers his voice. ‘But
this
? I don’t get it. Basically, we make one request of you, we have
one
simple condition. And that’s only because it makes sense. I mean, how is this thing going to work if you get entangled with your past again?’ He shakes his head. ‘If you get entangled with
her
?’

Okay, at least that answers my question. It’s clear to me now that he doesn’t know. He thinks I’ve lost it. But I haven’t. And I’m certainly not trying to get entangled with Kate again. I’m trying to save her.

From
me
.

But I don’t see how I’m going to be able to do it alone, not any more.

Our coffees arrive. I don’t touch mine. Lessing doesn’t touch his.

‘Well?’ he says, drumming his fingers on the tabletop.

So I explain it to him: the laptop, the search history, Kettner, everything. I explain my motivation in hiring Leonard Perl and in trying to acquire Pivot. I tell him I need help in bypassing people like Dick Stein. I tell him we just need to get
on
with it. ‘Look,’ I say, ‘when we control Pivot, we’ll be in a position to control, you know . . . the narrative.’

Lessing stares across the table at me. He’s taken in all I’ve said, he’s processed it, but behind his eyes now – I can sense it – various cortices have flared up and are going into hyperdrive. And suddenly I’m scared. Suddenly I’m thinking I should have kept my mouth shut.

He mumbles something.

I lean forward a bit. ‘
What?
’ This comes out a little louder than I intended.

Lessing shakes his head. ‘Nothing. I just . . . I need to give this a little thought.’

Before I know it, he’s peeling a ten off a roll of bills and making to get up out of his chair. He puts his phone into his pocket.

‘That’s it?’ I say, looking up at him now.

‘I have a thing.’ He adjusts his glasses. ‘But let me get back to you on this, okay?’

There are so many questions I want to put to Dr Karl Lessing. Who are you? Where is Doug Shaw? Who hacked Teddy Trager’s car? Do I really know Bill Clinton? Are Kate and Pete Kettner now on some kind of . . .
list
?

‘Sure,’ I say, ‘yeah.’

I pick up the cup of coffee in front of me to indicate that I’m staying.

‘Okay, Danny.’

When he moves off, I put the cup down again and stare at it for a moment.

Right now, if I had only one question, I guess it would be this: if you’re so fucking happy with what a good Teddy Trager I make, what was wrong with the original?

I stand up from the table and turn around. Lessing has already gone. I make my way out of the coffee shop and onto the sidewalk. I look left and right. Nothing. Then I spot him across the street, on the far corner – and again, in a glimmer, he’s gone. I cross over, move along the block and make the same left turn he did.

It takes me a moment to focus, to filter out what’s not relevant in my line of vision – the two old ladies chatting by the news-stand, the delivery guy hauling a large crate across the sidewalk, the approaching group of tourists – but I see him. He’s directly ahead, about half a block away. We’re on 52nd Street, going east. I keep walking and could easily go faster. I could catch up with him no problem. I could tap him on the shoulder, pin him against a storefront window,
make
him answer my questions.

But I hold back, and follow him.

This reminds me of how things were before, at the beginning, with Trager, when I was following
him
around, and somehow it feels wrong, like a misstep. I’m about to ramp things up a bit when Lessing takes out his phone. He holds it at arm’s length for a second, either to check who’s calling, I guess, or to make a call himself. Then he brings the phone up to his ear. Whoever he’s talking to, the conversation carries him all the way over to Third Avenue. He turns right and keeps going. At the corner of 49th, he comes to a stop. He’s in a huddle of people waiting to cross, and I back up behind him – almost right up against him. He’s still on the phone.

‘Okay,’ he’s saying – and with the sound of traffic and other people talking I can just barely make this out – ‘I’ll see you there, outside, five minutes.’

The light changes.

As Lessing is stepping off the sidewalk, he puts the phone back into his pocket. I wait to let him get ahead a bit and then step forward myself. We move in unison, half a block apart. There’s almost a rhythm to it.

But after a while, certain angles and contours of Third Avenue – of this stretch of it, anyway – start to shift in front of me, sliding and subtly realigning. A specific formation I recognise then clicks into place, and that trillion-particle dust storm blows up right inside my skull. Because over to my left, on the other side of Third, is the Wolper & Stone Building, where Gideon Logistics has its headquarters. And just up ahead here, on my right, is that cocktail lounge with the great olives – what was it, the Bradbury?

I slow down.

Holy
fuck.

There’s a news-stand on the corner, just to my left, and I stop at it. I use it for cover but also for something to lean against, because, right now, I can’t breathe.

I tilt my head at a slight angle and watch as Karl Lessing moves along the busy sidewalk. He veers towards the entrance to the Bradbury. And approaching from the opposite direction, veering towards the same point, is Phil Coover.

When
I
met Coover, and we were crossing Third to go to this very bar, I remember thinking I could short-circuit my rising sense of panic by just taking off at a run and making for the nearest subway stop.

It’s what I do now, but I no longer have the expectation that it’s going to cause my fear index to drop by even a single point. All movement there, I can tell, will be in the other direction.

Because Phil Coover . . .

Who is he?
What
is he?

A train rushes into the station now that matches the speed and roar of my thoughts.

Is he a consultant, as he said when we met? Is he a private-security contractor? Is he an executive at Gideon? Is he US military? Is he NSA? Is he CIA? What’s his interest in me, and how far back does it go? Did
he
have Trager’s car hacked? And the prep cook at Barcadero, the one I replaced, Yannis . . . holy fucking
shit
, was that Coover too?

Somehow?

And what about Sharista?

I get on the train, shaking, maybe muttering to myself, only a step or two removed from being
that
guy – the central-casting crazy person, the one who makes you wish you’d gotten on the next car.

Hey, you!

Hey, buddy!

Hey, gorgeous!

I stand, leaning back against the door, and try to remain calm. Then I look up suddenly, and around, scoping out the other passengers. Am I being followed?
Watched?
That’s what Coover said, at the beginning. But did he mean watched all the time, or is it more like what Trager said when I mentioned surveillance to him?
Not twenty-four-seven, Jesus, don’t flatter yourself . . .

I don’t know what to think.

Except that I’ve presumably just put Kate into a very dangerous position. It was obvious from his reaction that Lessing was freaked out by what I told him, and he reported it back to Coover almost immediately. So what’s Coover’s reaction going to be? And how long before they realise I’ve cut loose? If they don’t already know?

I look around again.

I have no idea where I am or where I’m going. I just ended up on this train . . . which is . . . an uptown 6. It’ll soon be pulling into 59th Street. What good is that to me?

None.

When it stops, I get off. At street level, I wander for a block or two and then head into Central Park. Not wanting to go too far, I walk down by the pond and find an empty bench to sit on. Huddled now in this oasis of calm (though watched over by the steel and granite monoliths behind me and to my left), I close my eyes for a while and think.

Maybe cutting loose is the wrong move. Maybe I shouldn’t be panicking at all. Maybe I should just go back to the office and act like nothing happened.

Or back to the apartment.

Because where else would I go? How else would I function? At this point, who else would I
be
?

In any case, Kate and Pete Kettner aren’t a real threat. They don’t have any incriminating evidence. There’s nothing they can actually do.

I open my eyes.

The reason I told Lessing about them was to explain
my
behaviour, to demonstrate how cautious
I
was being. This is a rationalisation, I know, and just as I’m about to tie a nice little bow on it, my cellphone rings. I take it out and check the screen. It’s a private number. I think about not answering it, but I don’t want to set off any alarm bells.

‘Hello?’

‘Teddy. It’s Karl.’

I focus on the dark pool of water in front of me, people gliding by, insubstantial, like shadows.

‘Hi, Karl.’

‘I’ve been thinking, Teddy, and, you know what? Your instincts were right. Easy to see how it could happen, with the laptop. And she was bound to get curious, which is probably all this is . . . but better to be safe too, better to be inside the tent and all of that. For now, at least. So . . . yeah, we’re going to put some money into Pivot. In fact, we’re going to try and buy it, like you suggested.’

We?

A little dart of pain shoots up the back of my neck.

‘What does Doug have to say about all of this?’

‘I wouldn’t worry about what Doug thinks.’

‘No?’

‘No.’ He pauses. ‘Look, Doug is having some issues right now, health issues. He’s not really in a position to weigh in on stuff like this.’

I remain silent as I try to process what I’ve just heard.

‘Teddy? You there?’

‘Yeah.’ I crouch forward. ‘I’m here. So . . .’

‘So, yeah, that Pivot thing will be taken care of. Better that you keep a little distance from the whole thing anyway, right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And by the way, listen, I should tell you . . . you’re doing a great job, and, uh . . . keep it up.’ It sounds like he’s reading this from a card or off a screen or something.

I say a mumbled thanks, and then he hangs up.

As I walk out of the park, I’m tempted to let myself think that I’ve dodged a bullet here, that I could easily rewind a bit and pick up from where I left off . . . but where would that be,
exactly? At the office, before I went to lunch at Jean-Georges? Before I hired Leonard Perl? Before that conversation with
Nina
?

I cross at the light and walk south on Fifth.

What does it matter, though? There
is
no rewind option, so if I’m going to pick it up, it has to be from here. It’s just that . . . everything has changed, and this is no longer just about me. If Phil Coover is the one buying or putting funds into Pivot, he will have a window into Kate’s life and will be in a position to exert a degree of control over her. It’s bad enough that that’s what
I
was proposing to do, but this is a lot worse.

I keep walking, and a few minutes later I’m at the Tyler Building. But on my way in I have this overwhelming sense of dread. For the first time, I feel like an actual fraud. I certainly don’t feel like someone who’s doing ‘a great job’, or even someone who knows what their job is. I’m also unsure of what to expect when I step out of the elevator and into reception. Everything seems normal, though, and as I approach my office, Nicole appears, tablet in hand, as usual. I shake my head.

‘But—’

‘Later,’ I say without looking at her.

I go inside, close the door behind me and head over to my desk. I need to find out who Phil Coover is, and I spend the next couple of hours searching for information about him, a reference, an image, anything. There are plenty of people called Phil Coover, but none of them quite fits the bill. I trawl through all things Gideon, I go to DoD and CIA websites. I look up work by investigative journalists who operate on the fringes and have written previously about PMCs and the intel community.

I come up with nothing.

Then I remember what Nina said when she was talking about Teddy’s car being hacked and where she’d come across information on the crash forensics.

I get on the phone and call Jerry Ellis again. Now, clearly this shithead can’t be trusted, because if
he
didn’t tell Karl Lessing about my dealings with Leonard Perl, then I don’t know who did. But I reckon he can still be useful. Without going into specifics, I say I have an IT issue and ask him to send me over someone who knows their way around computers.

An hour later, an intense young guy called Billie Zheng shows up, looking eager but also slightly apprehensive. I tell him to sit, and I chat with him for a few minutes. Then I square up to it. ‘Okay, Billie,’ I say, ‘I need to get onto the deep web . . . or, uh, the dark web, or the deep
net
, whatever the fuck it’s called.’ I pause. ‘Can you get me down there?’

Billie Zheng looks simultaneously relieved and puzzled – relieved, I’m guessing, because this won’t be a challenge as far as he’s concerned, and puzzled, I’m pretty sure, for the same reason – because if it’s no challenge for
him
, how can it possibly be something that tech visionary Teddy Trager needs help with?

He hesitates, as if there might be a punchline coming that he should wait for.

I lean forward. ‘Well?’

‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘sure, of course.’

So we get into it. He explains stuff to me about encryption and randomised peer-to-peer relay channels. I ask him questions and take notes. My obvious lack of basic knowledge here continues to puzzle him, but I don’t care. I’m focused on what he’s telling me. Within an hour we have downloaded TOR, the deep-web browser, and he’s giving me tips about how to maintain anonymity: turn off cookies and JavaScript, for example, and put some duct tape on the webcam. He then shows me the basics of how to navigate my way around and how to locate specific sites. He mentions Hidden Wiki, a reliable deep-web link directory for newbies and a couple of real-time chat rooms where experienced denizens of this shadow realm can steer me in the right direction.

When I have what I need, I send Billie on his way. If he ends up getting quizzed by Lessing or anyone else, there isn’t much he can tell them about my intentions, because I didn’t tell
him
. And I’m not even sure I know what they are myself. In fact, it takes me a few days to really get my bearings here, to swim around all the drugs, guns, porn and human organs for sale and find what I’m looking for, which is the kind of site that Nina mentioned, a place where investigative journalism and public-interest accountability can operate without fear of restriction or censorship.

There’s no doubt that some of the material I manage to see is insane, hardcore conspiracy stuff, but not all of it. There are plenty of sites on the surface web that track corporate corruption and malfeasance, but nothing like a thing down here called Soul Trader Inc. This is where I find the details of every single whistle-blower allegation that has ever been levelled at Gideon Logistics – and not just the nine cases that Kate did her best to tell me about, the ones that went to trial, but
all
of them . . . including what may be a reference to the incident
I
witnessed at Sharista.

Through a Nepalese lawyer, the family of a Sajit Pradhan has apparently been trying to establish the whereabouts of their son, a so-called TCN, who went to work for the company in Afghanistan months ago and now appears to be missing. This is one of several similar cases, some of them going back years, but in all of them the families have met with resistance and obstruction leading to prohibitive legal costs and, in many instances, financial ruin.

Extremely uncomfortable with this, I move on to another site and read about Gideon’s legal battle with the Pentagon. The level of detail here is staggering and would be unimaginable on any normal news outlet. But what’s really shocking is the revelation that Gideon Logistics, one of the world’s largest private military and defence contractors, was started in the mid-1990s with seed money from a CIA-fronted VC firm called Silo, which was itself a forerunner of the agency’s official VC arm, In-Q-Tel. Apparently, the connections and links between these companies are labyrinthine and ongoing, which makes the multi-billion-dollar fraudulent-billing case something of a joke.

But there’s a trail here, and I follow it all the way to what emerges slowly – to me at least – as some kind of logical conclusion. Because it transpires that what I discovered about Gideon Logistics is also pretty much true of Paradime Capital. The exact details are way too knotty to unravel, let alone retain – I can just about understand this stuff as I’m reading it – but the basic point is the same. The seed money for these companies, the funding, the patronage – it all came from the CIA.

If this were a Venn diagram, it occurs to me, I’d be at the intersection, and so would Phil Coover.

It takes another couple of days before
that
name elicits a response. I throw it out there on a corporate-watch forum, and someone with the user ID
fg63br7iyzg
chimes back with: ‘Oh shit, is that Project Mandrake Phil Coover? Haven’t heard HIS name in years.’

I ask a follow-up question, and wait. There’s no reply.

The next day, I try to go onto the forum again, but it appears to have been taken down.

I’ve seen all I want to see anyway. I may not fully comprehend everything that’s happened to me, or why it’s happened, but I have enough of a sense of it to understand one essential thing: this is no longer a dream, no longer a weird, extended, solipsistic trance. Whatever spell I was under has broken, whatever edifice of delusion I was occupying has crumbled. As Nina suggested, I am, in fact, and have been all along, a puppet. And is there anything more pathetic than that? A puppet who believes he is a free agent?

A marionette with a soul?

Outwardly, over the next few days, I carry on as normal. But really, I’m just floating along in another trance, a different kind of trance – this one fuelled by guilt and dread, by images of the past and visions of the future, by the now-spectral face of Sajit Pradhan and the yet-to-be-seen face of Nina Schlossmeier’s child. And as for the great job I’m supposedly doing, by the end of another week it really couldn’t be said – unless staring out the window counts – that I am doing any job at all now.

So how long can
this
last? How long before I feel a gentle tug on my pull strings? Not long at all, as it turns out. The next morning, I’m in the back of the limo, we’re on the way to the office, Ricardo driving, when I feel it. Instead of going his normal way, Ricardo heads for the Lincoln Tunnel. As soon as I notice the change of route, I reach over to the intercom to say something, but . . . I don’t know what it is, I hesitate. I hold my finger over the button and let it hover there for maybe fifteen seconds. Then, just at the entrance to the tunnel, I sigh loudly, flop back in my seat and proceed to gaze vacantly out at the oncoming rush of flickering lights and vitreous white tiles . . .

After a while, I look at the back of Ricardo’s head through the thick glass of the divider. I’m not going to give him a hard time. What would be the point? He hasn’t lost his mind. He hasn’t gone rogue. He’s just doing his job.

By the time we get onto the New Jersey Turnpike I have a fairly clear idea of where we might be headed: the Gideon training facility where I did my orientation sessions before shipping out to Afghanistan. It’s in Pennsylvania, not too far from a place called Doylestown.