Run: A Novel (29 page)

I MADE IT TO
my old room undetected, and was surprised to see my suitcase sitting on the floor. I’d forgotten that’s where I’d left it. My two laptop computers were still inside so I pulled them out, set them at the foot of the bed, turned on the TV, and found the
News 12
channel. It was in the middle of a documentary about how Westchester residents had campaigned to save a local arboretum, but after ten minutes the picture changed. The show was replaced by a special news report.

An outside broadcast.

I recognized the exterior of Valhalla station, behind the reporter’s head.

I leaned in closer to the screen, scanning for every detail, but there was no one of interest to be seen. The commentary was banal, and I realized the station was reluctant to make any bold promises on the strength of my call. The guy I’d spoken to mustn’t have swallowed my
story the way I’d hoped. My heart sank. How long would the report continue? What if they lost interest, and switched back to their regular programs? Or worse, if the sight of the cameras frightened off my prey?

Had I made a fatal miscalculation here?

The reporter filled the airwaves with drivel for another five minutes, then the camera pulled in close for the wrap. And without meaning to, the director did me a huge favor. Because along with his star’s face, the view through the station entrance was also magnified. Just enough for me to make out a pair of familiar figures, lurking nonchalantly near the unmanned coffee cart and pretending to be deep in conversation.

Peever. And the other agent I’d seen at the supermarket.

Liars
.

Which just left McKenna to worry about.

I
COULDN’T BEAR THE RETURN TO REALITY, SO I SWITCHED OFF
the TV and lay down to wait.

My head was immediately filled with thoughts of Carolyn. All the things I wanted to say to her. All the ways I could try to apologize. I dreamed up and discarded dozens of possibilities, and when McKenna knocked on my door thirty minutes later I was still no closer to settling on anything even remotely adequate.

McKenna’s hair was wet, even though it wasn’t raining, and one of the buttons had fallen off his jacket since I’d last seen him. He nodded to me, then sat on the bed next to the laptops and leaned back until half his face disappeared in the shadow thrown by the room’s single, low-wattage bulb.

“Talk to me.” He picked at a loose thread from the bedspread. “Where have you been?”

“I went to find my wife. I was mad at her. I was mad at you, too, if I’m honest. But I found out some stuff that changed things. See, she was being blackmailed. Her, and Roger LeBrock. AmeriTel’s CEO. I convinced her that giving in to these guys was the wrong thing to do. And that if she cooperated with you instead, you’d protect her. She had one more copy of the stick. She’d kept it as insurance. She handed it to me to pass on to you. As a gesture of good faith.”

A blank expression came over McKenna’s face as if he were running my words through a mental lie detector.

“OK. I’ll buy that. If you can produce the stick.”

“I’ve got it right here. And you can take those computers, too. Carolyn used one—she didn’t remember which, they both look the same—to make the final copy, so it’s probably infected. But I do have one condition.”

“
Another
condition?” He pulled at the thread harder, breaking it loose. “What?”

“I promised Carolyn you’d protect her. I need you to do that.”

“Consider it done.”

“No. Really. I mean it. These guys who are blackmailing her? They’re seriously dangerous. Sick. Evil. And their organization has tentacles everywhere. So those fraud experts you mentioned? I want them on the case. I want this to be their top priority. I want you to hand it to their best guy, personally. I don’t just want an email getting sent, and then getting lost in some administrator’s in-box for months.”

“I’d want nothing less, if it was my wife.” He rolled the thread into a tiny ball and flicked it away. “Get Carolyn to write it down. Make it as specific as possible. I’ll see it doesn’t get ignored. I give you my word. And tell her not to worry. Dealing with guys like that is what we do for a living.”

“Good enough. And I have something else for you. Do you remember that guy, Agent Peever, you warned me about?”

“Of course. What about him?”

“On the way to find Carolyn, I had a little problem. You probably heard about it. You were probably behind it. Anyway, for a while I was hiding out in a supermarket. Peever was there. I overheard him saying it would be easier to put the AmeriTel case to bed if you were out of the way. Permanently. He was talking about avoiding paperwork. It sounded pretty sinister.”

“Thanks for looking out for me.” He got to his feet and scooped up the two laptops. “But don’t worry about Peever. He won’t be a problem for much longer. Now, is there anything else?”

I shook my head.

“Then if I could just have the stick, we can say our goodbyes.” He held out his hand.

I stood, too, dug the stick out of my pocket, and handed it to him. He held it up at eye level for a moment, as if the virus it contained was biological rather than electronic and the light would reveal lethal microbes swimming around inside. Then he nodded and turned toward the door. But he stopped again as soon as he touched the handle.

“Actually, I have a favor to ask.” He turned back to face me. “But please, feel free to say no. This is a genuine, bona fide, no-strings-attached request. Me to you, Marc. Your answer won’t affect how well your wife’s problem gets handled, or anything else.”

“What is it?”

“Here’s the situation. My team—not Peever’s—is within touching distance of putting the whole AmeriTel investigation to bed. There’s only one more task to complete. With good luck and a fair wind, we’ll be done with it before breakfast, tomorrow. But this thing? It’s a little specialized. And it’s something that’s right down your alley. So it occurred to me, maybe you’d help us?”

“I don’t know. What would I have to do?”

“Not much. The job’s pretty simple. We have a thing—I can’t remember the name of it—but it’s a little electronic gizmo. You’d know it if you saw it. Anyway, we need to plug it into the ARGUS node. Wait for a light to go green. And unplug it again.”

“Why?”

“We’ve confirmed the node as the insertion point of the virus. But we don’t know who the guy on the ground was. This gadget will collect the information we need to cross reference with the list of legitimate users and narrow down our pool of suspects. And because it’s a computer system and you’re a computer guy, and it’s in AmeriTel’s office and you used to work there, I’d be stupid not to ask.”

“This has to happen in the morning?”

“It doesn’t have to. But Sunday morning is generally the quietest time to be at an office. I don’t want to be tripping over people while we’re there. Why? Is there a reason not to do it then?”

“No. As long as I can be on the road by eleven. I’m meeting Carolyn. We still have a few fences to mend.”

“Eleven? No problem.” McKenna nodded to me. “I have a good feeling about this, Marc. Sleep well. I’ll pick you up at five.”

——

I GUESS THERE WAS STILL
a part of me that was prepared to help a guy do the right thing. And another part that believed in quid pro quo. McKenna had gone out on a limb for me enough times. But the biggest part was the one that was gambling on Carolyn’s reaction, when she heard how connected I’d become to the guys who’d be keeping her safe.

If
she agreed to stay.

I
’D JUST FINISHED SHAVING WHEN MCKENNA KNOCKED ON MY
door at a couple of minutes shy of five am. He was wearing a plain gray coverall, stiff, with sharp creases in the arms and legs.

“Here.” He handed me another one, still in its packet. “Slip this on. We’re being mainframe installation contractors today. Should be right down your alley.”

I took the coverall and grunted, which was all the communication I could muster at that hour of the morning.

“I doubted it would fit.” He watched me struggle to fasten the buttons. “They only come in army sizes. Too big, or too small. Still, it’s more convincing than jeans.”

MCKENNA REACHED THE PARKING LOT
first and nodded toward his white van.

“You’re riding shotgun, next to me.”

Two more agents were in the back. The woman from the Mercedes, whose nails were now violet, and a guy from one of the other cars. His hair was cropped a touch too neatly for his coveralls, and his shave was a little too smooth, reminding me of the undercover cops who used to show up at the bars near my old college campus. I smiled, and nodded a greeting as I belted myself in. Then McKenna fired up the engine and pulled away, taking the entrance lane because it was closer than the exit.

No one spoke until AmeriTel’s roof was visible in the distance, then a question popped into my head.

“How are we going to get inside? And move around? There are security doors between every work zone, and you need special swipe cards to get through. You weren’t relying on mine, were you? I don’t have it with me. I had to turn it in, when I was fired. It wasn’t authorized for the ARGUS node room. And anyway, it’ll be deactivated by now.”

McKenna pulled four plain white plastic cards from his pocket and fanned them out for us to each take one, then slid his own away again. “They don’t have fancy logos. But don’t let that fool you. They’ll get us through any door in the place. Guaranteed.”

“Where did you get them from? A sales guy tried to copy his once—so he could sneak his girlfriend in on weekends—but he was told it was impossible.”

“Marc, do we look like sales guys?” McKenna turned in through AmeriTel’s gates. “You really don’t know who you’re dealing with, do you?”

We looped around the back of the building, and I saw the exuberant pink Cadillac exiled in its usual spot.

“Look.” I pointed to it. “That’s good news. The security guard who drives it? I know him. He’ll be asleep right now. In Reception. If we go in the side, through the engineers’ entrance, he’ll never see us.”

“Good to know.” McKenna nodded. “Anything else?”

“Yes. Park over there. The space that’s straight in front of us now. It was my usual place. It’ll bring us luck.”

McKenna gave me a sideways look, but he did what I asked and then turned to the agents behind us. The woman was sipping a coffee she’d produced from somewhere, and the guy was polishing a pair of mirrored Aviators.

“Everything looks quiet, so I want you two to stay here for now. Keep your eyes and ears open. Marc and I will go in. Marc? Are you ready?”

I nodded, then we got out and hurried toward the side entrance. It made sense to me to be in the open for as little time as possible, but McKenna took my arm and slowed me down.

“Do you always walk this fast, Marc? Relax. You’re just doing your job. It’s boring. You’d rather be home, in bed, but you can’t be. So you’re at least going to milk the overtime. Get the idea? We can’t control
whether anyone sees us. But if they do, we want them to think,
Oh, look at those IT guys. They’re here again. Not, Wow, look at those really suspicious uptight guys who are obviously pretending to be IT contractors. I better call 911.
”

I listened, and I tried to do what he told me. Moving slowly was like torture, but we did reach the entrance without incident. The access card he’d given me worked fine, and it was a relief to hear the door click back into place behind me. From there it was plain sailing—across the engineers’ area, up a flight of stairs, and along a corridor all the way to an innocuous-looking, unmarked wooden door at the far end of the building.

“Is this it?” McKenna asked.

I nodded.

“OK, then.” He swiped his card. “In we go. I was expecting something a little more impressive for the money, is all.”

McKenna was already disappointed with the outside of the node room so there was little scope for his face to fall further when he saw the inside. It was really a closet rather than a room—six feet by six feet, pale green paint, scuff marks on the walls near the door frame—and there was no furniture or fittings other than a pair of standard equipment cabinets and a heavy-duty air-conditioning vent in the ceiling.

McKenna pulled the door closed and produced a black box about the size of a cigarette packet from his pocket. It had a USB plug protruding from one side, and a label with two lines of printed characters stuck to the underneath. I’d never seen anything like it before.

“I know we have to plug this in. But where? Does it even matter?”

“In there.” I pointed to the right-hand cabinet. The glass in the door was frosted, but if you looked closely you could see the space above the middle shelf was much taller than the others. A monitor and keyboard sat there, and a USB port was visible in the piece of equipment below it. “See? That’s the interface.”

“Well spotted.” McKenna pulled the handle on the cabinet door.

It didn’t move.

“What now?” He looked at me. “Can we break in?”

“Probably. But we might not have to. Give me a second.”

I reached up to the top of the cabinet, slid my fingers across to the side, and sure enough I felt them brush against something small and loose. I took it down and showed McKenna.

“A key? You’re kidding me. This place is supposed to be secure.”

“It doesn’t surprise me.” I shrugged. “You wouldn’t believe what you come across in secure buildings. I had a government contract once where I had to wait six months to get clearance for one particular site. I turned up, and walked straight in. No lock on the door at all. But when I went to the kitchen to get a coffee, the fridge was locked up tighter than Fort Knox. It’s just how people are.”

“Ridiculous.” He worked the lock and opened the cabinet.

“Go ahead.” I passed him the box.