Weaponized (24 page)

K
yle’s sitting on the bed, typing furiously on Lara’s laptop. The artist before his canvas, contemplating color and space.

Lara’s pacing around the room. “I’m bored,” she says. “You did
this
for a living?”

“Not this exactly.”

She plops down on a chair. “Explain it to me.”

“You remember in 2005, the domestic-eavesdropping scandal in the U.S.? Bush administration, civil liberties, all that?”

“Yeah.”

Kyle punches a few keys, thinks, raps his knuckle against his front tooth, then deletes and retypes. “They put the attorney general under the hot lights.”

“I remember.”

“Well, after that—to cover their asses, because they were never actually going to toss the eavesdropping program—Congress immunized the telecoms. Congress may have hated Bush for it, but the program worked too well to destroy. You immunize the telecoms, it means that eavesdropping can go on unabated, legally. But see, the problem wasn’t uppity telecom employees. All the leaks were coming out of NSA. NSA was the one who told the public, not Sprint and Verizon. So eavesdropping was privatized, outsourced to my boss.”

“Chandler. So Chandler took over for NSA?”

“He didn’t just take over. He’d been waiting years to try something and this gave him the cover to do it. A live tap. The British tried to implement it at one point. It’s a system that sucks up
everything
around the clock. All communication. Worldwide. Twenty-four-seven.”

“What about something like Echelon? I see it all the time in movies.”

“So twentieth-century,” Kyle says. “Echelon works only if countries are cooperating. Countries, nations—all outmoded terms now. We’re talking about corporations. Corporations taking the place of nation-states. Corporations paid to watch you, because they’re better at it than the government. Someone like Chandler, although not a figure like Cameron or Obama, is actually far more important to the daily functioning of the world. You kill the president, and the world weeps. You kill Chandler, and the world
stops.
”

Lara nods.

“The live tap picks up all e-mails, texts, calls,” Kyle continues. “But the Brits abandoned it because it was useless without a way to filter all the information. They’d be sucking up the equivalent of the Library of Congress every single day, and no one could stream through it all.”

Lara points to her laptop. “What’s it doing now?”

“Trying to learn the algorithm while breaking it.”

“How close were you and Chandler?”

“He was the most impressive person I’ve ever met.”

“Is that why you ran?”

“To keep Chandler out of trouble? Nah. No. I wish I could say that. I ran because I was scared—”

“Because you did it.”

“Right. And I’m not a good liar. If I got called before a subcommittee, I’d tell them the truth.”

“So why’d you take Robinson’s passport if you didn’t want to go home?”

“Someone found me here. Probably someone who was following Robinson and lucked onto me. Then I had no choice. I had to take Robinson’s deal.”

“Chandler found you?”

“Probably.”

“You two were friends, right? Why would he want to kill you?”

“This situation goes beyond personal feelings. The project is too big. And as much as he cares for me—and I think he does, or at least did—it’s better for him to have me dead. You can’t know as much as I do and live. Also, he doesn’t really need me anymore. He’s got my system. I’m not all that necessary to him now.”

Lara watches the screen moving. “Christ. How fast is that going?”

Kyle laughs. “This is just a fraction of what my program can do. I would need a room of Cray computers to show you what it can cut through at optimal speed. But since we’re only trying to decrypt one small file”—he gives Lara’s laptop a teasing slap—“this’ll have to do.”

“You really love this, don’t you?”

“Oh yeah. When I don’t have this—you are what you do, right?”

“I hope not,” Lara says. “So how exactly did the shit hit the fan for you?”

“Someone internal leaked my program’s coding and schematics to the press and everyone went… fucking crazy. Said we were living under a fascist dictatorship.”

“Why would someone leak your stuff?”

“Couple of reasons. To fuck Chandler. Or just general moral rage. Chandler seemed to think the latter.”

“Don’t they have a point?”

“The government’s been listening to all of us for years. Chandler’s just better at it. The administration was completely scandalized. Civil liberties were supposed to improve under Obama. It was supposed to be hope and change. And we were doing thirty, forty percent more domestic wiretaps under his administration. Why not? Telecoms were immunized.”

“Shit.”

“I got served with lawsuits by every civil-liberties organization imaginable. Every day I got a new one. But my lawyer told me not to worry about those. The only problem was Congress. The program’s a violation of constitutional law if Chandler took any tax money to develop it. I got subpoenaed. I panicked…I ran. And now, even if it’s proven that Chandler didn’t take any federal money, I’m still in contempt of Congress by my absence and have a minimum two-year sentence if I step on American soil.”

“Wow,” Lara says.

“Yeah.” Kyle punches a few keys. “I’m
fucked.
”

“How much longer do you think this will take?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m gonna watch TV for a while. See if we made the news.”

“I’ll let you know when I’ve got something.”

Kyle stares at the screen. His program is filtering so fast, he actually has to turn away from it. The speed is more than his eyes can take. He opens up the browser and runs a system report. He doesn’t want the computer to crash before it has a chance to finish processing.

“Kyle,”
Lara yells. “Kyle, get in here.”

K
yle rushes in. “What?” he asks, worried something’s happened to her. “What?”

She points to the television, and he sees his image staring back.

“Oh shit,” he says, and kneels before the television as if he’s decided to start praying to his own pixelated self. He turns up the volume, listens to the anchor:

“Mr. West, already in trouble with the law, is now wanted for questioning regarding the disappearance of Julian Robinson. There has also been a reward issued—”

Kyle mutes the television. He smiles, almost finding a holy fool’s sort of detachment within all this danger. “I’m never going to be able to get a corporate job again. They’re gonna make me teach.”

Lara smiles.

“I guess this answers your question about the CIA and the media. Apparently, they were biding their time. What do we do?”

Lara points to the bedroom. “I’d say work faster. We had maybe three hours before this place was locked down, but we don’t anymore. Can you work in the car?”

“No,” Kyle says. “The signals are too sporadic. It’d keep cutting in and out. I’ve got to do it here.”

“Okay,” Lara says. “See what you can do. Worse comes to worst, we’ll hold them off in here.”

“Great,” Kyle says, trying to work up a little enthusiasm for guaranteed joint suicide.

F
owler’s banging on Rebecca’s door with one hand while keeping his other arm tight around his assassin’s waist.

Rebecca, expecting Fowler alone, answers the door in a bra and jeans, a towel wrapped around her freshly washed hair. “Fowler. What the…”

Fowler pushes the assassin past her and into the apartment. “Sweetie,” he says, “meet the asshole who tried to kill me.”

Rebecca finds an old T-shirt on the couch and throws it on. “This guy tried to kill you?” she says while pulling it over her head.

Fowler’s absolutely thrilled he nailed this guy. Years of dormant violence awakened and satisfied. He can’t keep it out of his voice. “Yeah. Can you believe it?”

Even someone as inured to Fowler’s antics as Rebecca is stunned. “Why the fuck did you bring him here? To show me or something? Like a dog with a dead bird?”

“No. I’m going to keep him here.”

Rebecca is ready to explode. “You want me to babysit your assassin?”

Fowler tosses the gunman onto the couch, checks the flexi-cuffs around his wrists, then wraps a cord around his feet and slides the knot under the couch’s leg. “Not in those words…”

“How would you put it, then?”

“I can’t throw him in jail here. He’s not good enough to kill me, but he can break out of the locals’ cells without much fuss. I certainly can’t call DC and tell them I got him, because I’m not supposed to be working Robinson.”

“I thought we were chasing Kyle West.”

The gunman is trying to make himself comfortable on Rebecca’s couch, not paying any attention to the domestic squabble.

“Listen.” Fowler slows down, needing her to stay with him. “You were right, okay? You were right. Kyle West somehow got himself mixed up with Robinson. He’s in way over his head. He’s running around with Robinson’s passport while the real Robinson is out there doing God knows what. I’m not gonna find Robinson. But if I can get to Kyle West, I can use him to smoke out Robinson. One way or another, I need to find Robinson…because he wants me dead.”

Rebecca points to the couch. “That’s Robinson’s assassin, then?”

“Yes. He works for Robinson.”

“You’re not leaving him here.”

Fowler’s cell phone goes off. “Hold on.” He motions toward the couch. “Just watch him.” He answers the phone. “Ferris. It’s me.”

“Tommy, baby, how’s your dick?” Ferris says by way of greeting.

The crude argot has a story behind it. It’s not simply a shared dialect of arrested masculine development. Ferris is CIA in the Siem Reap area, and both he and Fowler are Vietnam vets. Back in Vietnam, the state of one’s cock was a valuable piece of information. In Laos, there were thousands of men at their sexual peaks always on the hunt for relaxation—no need to draw the inevitable sex and death connections—and there weren’t nearly enough willing women for all of them. Inevitably, they were all, to put it bluntly, dipping into the same pool. So if a man had a certain undeniable fiery sensation in his cock, he knew one of those women had to take a few weeks off, or, if he could swing it, he’d get the girl a hush-hush shot by a willing medic from his unit.

After the war, the question continued as a greeting between veterans, and, ironically, in the world Fowler and Ferris run in, the inquiry still means basically the same thing.

“Slightly chafing,” Fowler offers.

“Got some interesting news for you.”

“Go ’head.”

Fowler watches Rebecca try to decide whether to talk to the assassin.

“I’ve got a fairly significant stack of injured folks over here. We had a shootout and a chase through traffic. I’ve got downed locals and some critically injured Chinese.”

“Christ,” Fowler says.

“Yeah, and the witness reports and surveillance video ties back to you. It was your airport guy who was responsible for it. Plus, it looks like he picked up a girl along the way.”

“Lock the city down.”

“Oh, we did that an hour ago. We’re on lockdown here, and so are all cities north and south. Those two aren’t going anywhere.”

“Good. I had his photo put all over TV with a reward. Between that and the lockdown, this guy’s not getting out.”

“I saw that. Nice touch on the undisclosed amount.”

“I don’t like paying,” he says. “Thanks for the call. I’m on my way.”

“How fast can you get here?”

“Try my best. Can you hold tight?”

“Course, baby. You just keep this shit pussy-tight, though. Don’t go spreading it around.”

Another piece of Laos lingo Ferris has never been able to part with.

All wars birth their own languages. Vietnam was the first one to incorporate everything from surf-brand Sufism to ghetto slang to institutionalized blue-blood racism. It was the first postmodern war, obliterating high and low culture, guerrilla, psychotropic. The same way Gulf War part 1 would be the bridge from Vietnam’s postmodernism to a fully integrated network-information age—
post-everything.
Gulf War 1 was slotted into sweeps week, preprogrammed, hyped like a miniseries, the opening salvo of the dominance of reality television. Shit, Fowler remembers it even had trailers.

“Kyle West just rained down unholy hell in Siem Reap,” Fowler says to Rebecca.

“How do you plan on getting to Siem Reap fast?”

Fowler’s spirits sink. “I hadn’t thought about that.”

“Call Grant in Indonesia,” Rebecca says, assuming her regular role—reminder of
reality.
“See where the closest chopper to us is. It’s your best bet.”

“Thank you,” Fowler says. “Genuinely.” He searches for Grant’s number in his cell.

“And you take your fucking assassin with you to Siem Reap.”

Fowler holds up his hand, a plea for Rebecca to stop. “Larry…It’s Tom Fowler in Phnom Penh.”

K
yle walks into the room and sees Lara’s eyes fluttering open, finding light. “What’s wrong?” she says upon seeing his face, noting the last time that it looked this stressed and dour, she ended up shooting a Chinese courier.

“I cracked it,” he says.

She bolts up, fully engaged. “And?”

“It’s big…” He’s at a loss for words, spreads his hands apart to indicate
how big
the problem is. “What do you know about a guy named Li Bao?”

Lara shrugs. “Nothing.”

“See, this is the problem with our world,” Kyle says. “I’m front-page news; everyone knows me. But here’s this guy trying to change the world and—”

Lara puts her hand up. “My fucking head is killing me. No lectures. Please. Just tell me who the hell he is.”

“There’s this thing in the Chinese Communist Party called right of succession. Li Bao’s dad was one of the original council of nine in China. The guys who founded the CCP. Li had been planning to exercise his hereditary right to join the ranks of the standing committee of the politburo. He worked his way up, was given the huge post of governor of a province. But while he was there, he changed…saw what the Chinese economic miracle was all about: Worker suicide, polluted lakes, infertility. Keeping the workers totally cut off communication-wise from the rest of the world. He’s been a tacit supporter of the New Left, Maoists and Social Democrats since. He wants unions, social security, workers’ rights on paper, health care, and, most important and problematic for the CCP, he wants workers’ wages to rise. That means taking away money from the state’s coffers. The sovereign wealth plan of China is built on an inhuman savings rate imposed on the people. You allow the people to make more, you pay them more, then China looks less attractive to do business with. The moneymen move to Africa. And the CCP loses its reason to exist. They’ve got a compact with the people: The officials keep them working and pay them a basic wage, and the people keep electing and funding them. Li Bao wants to talk about that. He wants democracy, not autocratic capitalism. He’s called a spade a spade in print too many times. And more than that, he’s got some huge backers in his own country that agree with him.”

“Okay. When does this become our problem?”

“The Chinese can’t kill this guy. He’s a legacy. They’ve already got enough of an image problem.” Kyle runs his hands up and down his face. “But apparently, Robinson can kill him.”