“Timing,” I said, though I gave it a moment’s serious thought. “The texts were all sent in ways that connect them to the chronology of this—whatever the hell this is. After Sean called, then on the way to the airport, then when Fojtik and Broz were about to go all Cujo on us.”
Rudy gave me a thin, knowing smile.
“What—?” I asked.
Instead of answering, he put a finger to his lips in almost exactly the same way I’d done earlier today when I suspected that Sean’s person was bugged. I stared at him for a moment, not following. So did Sam. Then we all looked at my phone. I heard Sam say, “Jesus Christ,” under his breath. Rudy got up and walked over to the door, opened it, and gestured for us to follow. We did. Only after he closed the door did he speak.
“I’ll grant that I don’t know much about technology,” he said, “but from what you told me, Joe, those texts began only after you spoke with Sean. We know that his phone was bugged. Could a cell phone send some kind of—I don’t know if I’m saying this right—signal that could somehow hack your phone?”
Sam said, “Shit!”
“Shit is right,” I said. “Jesus on a pogo stick. Rudy, cellular phones are computers. Which means that they used Sean’s phone call to send a virus to my phone and take over the operating system.”
Sam said, “Shit!” again.
“And that’s possible?” asked Rudy. “With DMS technology?”
“Five minutes ago I would have said no,” Sam told him. “Life’s full of surprises.”
“Since I’m asking ugly questions,” said Rudy, “let me ask one more. Our current generation of communications equipment is, as I understand it, adapted from what we took from Hugo Vox and Mother Night. If someone else had access to that same technology, could they have developed something that could do this?”
Sam and I stared at each other, and I could feel lightbulbs flickering above our heads.
“We need to call this in,” said Sam, pulling his cell out of his pocket, but I stopped him and motioned for him to give me the phone. I took Rudy’s, too, and went into the office to place them next to mine.
“If we can’t trust mine, we can’t trust anyone I’ve called,” I said once I was back out in the hall. Sam nodded and led us into the conference room, where he made a video call to Bug. Our video didn’t go through the same channels as our phones. Bug’s brown, nerdy, familiar face appeared on the screen, and then the screen split as a second window opened to show Yoda’s pale face, absurd green horn-rimmed glasses, and uncombed brown hair. We told them what Rudy said and about my fears of all the phones I’d contacted being suspect.
“Can this really be what’s happening?” asked Sam. “Can someone hack the DMS phones like this?”
There was a long silence, and then both of them answered at once.
“No,” said Yoda.
“Yes,” said Bug.
After a moment, Yoda said, “Mmmm, maybe.”
“Yes,” Bug insisted.
“Shit!” said Sam.
“Who all did you call today after you spoke with Sean?” asked Bug. “Cell calls, not via the earbuds?”
I had to think about it for a moment. “I spoke with Sean, Rudy, Junie, Sam, Church, Lydia Rose, you.” I rattled off a few other names.
Bug sighed. “That’s not good. If this is a virus and it’s spread via a phone call, then we can assume the network is compromised. That’s bad, because everyone uses their phones all the time. This will have spread exponentially.”
“Which means we can’t use our phones?” asked Rudy.
“I wouldn’t. Not unless you want to share information with whoever wrote that virus.”
“I’m a little confused,” Sam admitted. “If the virus came from Sean’s phone and bypassed the scrambler on Joe’s phone, then it’s advanced. I get that much. But the texts Joe’s been getting so far don’t indicate anything but a rather vague attempt to warn us about something. It’s all nonspecific stuff, except for the one message warning Joe to run when Fojtik went crazy. There hasn’t been any obvious misinformation or disinformation. We’ve seen how vicious our bad guys are here, but that’s not the tone or flavor of those texts.”
“Then we’re missing something,” I said, and Bug nodded agreement.
“You know,” said Rudy thoughtfully, “this method of tentative contact reminds me of when Helmut first reached out to us. He was very reluctant to give specific information, because he didn’t yet trust the security of his method of reaching out.”
On one of my early missions with the DMS, when we went up against the Jakoby family, we began receiving a series of messages from a young boy who claimed to be a captive of Cyrus Jakoby. The boy was known as SAM, but that was a code name and not his real name. SAM was an acronym for “Same as Me,” a cruel joke and a clinical description of a whole family of clones grown from the DNA of Cyrus Jakoby. The cloning was enough of a shock, but the real kicker was the true horror of discovering that Cyrus was really Josef Mengele, the Nazi Angel of Death. SAM, despite his genetic lineage, was nothing like his “father.” He had a heart and he had nerve, and he helped us find and take down the entire Jakoby empire. In doing so, he kept his madman creator from releasing genetically engineered ethnic-specific diseases that would have resulted in the death of anyone who didn’t fit the Nazi master-race ideal.
Afterward, during hundreds of hours of therapy with Rudy, SAM came to understand the three elements of personal destiny: nature, nurture, and—the most important yet underappreciated of all—choice. SAM shed his old identity and chose a new one and a new name. He became Helmut Deacon, and was formally adopted by Mr. Church. Since then, Helmut has been traveling the world, often with Junie and the FreeTech staff, seeing the beauty of diversity firsthand. Church has kept him away from the violence and ugliness of what the DMS does and instead provides the best teachers and guides so that Helmut will be able to make his own life choices.
The manner of vague contact was similar, though, and I knew why Rudy had mentioned it. Before meeting us, Helmut had never learned trust and didn’t expect adults to be either compassionate or fair. He reached out to us only because it had become clear to him that his father despised and feared us, and because he knew the enormity of Cyrus Jakoby’s plan. The kid risked his own life to save the lives of billions of people he had been told from birth to despise. Helmut had been bred to hate, but he made the choice where to direct that hatred, and that put Jakoby in the crosshairs. Was this the same kind of thing?
“When you think about it, texts are every bit as anonymous as emails,” observed Rudy. “You know who you sent it to, but you can’t be positive about the identity of who reads it. That’s why Helmut was so cagey, and a similar degree of caution may be at play here. It might explain the vagueness of the messages.”
“You might have something, Rude,” I said. “If our bad guy is the texter’s sister, and if that sister wants the texter to help her kill people, then maybe this really is another example of conscience trumping family ties. Which makes the texter what?”
“The enemy of my enemy isn’t always a friend,” said Rudy, “but they may be an ally.”
“Trust is a bitch, though,” I said. “Maybe the person texting me wants to be my new BFF. If he—or she—truly wants to help us, I’m willing to text or sext or whatever it takes. We can’t initiate contact, though. What do we do in the meantime? Put all our phones in a Faraday bag? Take out the SIM card? Hit them with a hammer?”
“Yes,” said Bug.
“No,” said Yoda.
“Look, guys—” I began, but Yoda explained.
“If they’ve, mmmm, managed to hack your phone, Joe, they know, mmmm, who you are and they can access the GPS to know where you are. Whoever this, mmmm, person is, he’s sending warnings, right?”
“If we can believe them,” I said.
“Okay, sure, whatever. But maybe we can use that to, mmmm—”
“To manipulate what he knows,” I said, cutti
ng him off. “Got it. Let me play with that thought for a minute. Can we use our earbuds?”
“Yes,” said Bug. “Different system and unique software. Any virus code written from cell phones—even DMS cells—won’t affect the earbuds.”
“What about MindReader?” asked Sam. “I keep my cell plugged into my laptop while I’m at my desk.”
“And I charged mine that way on the plane,” said Rudy.
Bug chewed his lip for a moment. “The surveillance bugs you found had a virus in them that tried to invade MindReader. I’ve been able to isolate them and we’re running cleanup programs, but I can’t guarantee that the whole system is clean. Especially if phones have been plugged in. They have Wi-Fi, which means they could have been downloading larger files, including Trojan horses, and as our system automatically responds to attacks they can analyze the type of program we’re using to fight back and send adjustment update files via the phones. In a sense, they could be doing to us what MindReader does to other systems.”
“How would they know how to do that?” asked Rudy. “Wouldn’t they have to know about MindReader?”
“Mmmm, yes,” said Yoda, and he looked depressed about it. “Too many people know about, mmmm, MindReader. The Jakobys, the Kings…”
“Feed me a shit sandwich,” I said.
“Could a virus like this infect the new system?” asked Sam.
“No,” said Yoda.
“No,” said Bug.
“Good, then we have a way of getting ahead of this. Pull the trigger on the damn QC drive,” I said.
“Joe,” said Bug, “we’re at least a week away from a safe switchover. We’re still running diagnostics.”
“I don’t care if you’re giving it a mani-pedi,” I snapped. “Figure it out. What’s your advice about my cell?”
“I’d keep it with you, Joe,” said Bug. “Maybe you can get your new friend to fork over something useful. A name. A location. Anything. We’ll keep working on identifying and cracking whatever software they’re using. Maybe we can counterhack the hackers.”
“If it’s in my pocket, can it pick up ordinary conversation?”
“Maybe,” said Yoda and Bug together.
“Fuckballs. Look, the next time I call the genius bar I want some actual answers.”
They stared at me in gloomy silence for a long three-count.
“Yes,” said Bug.
“Mmmm, yes,” said Yoda. And they were gone.
The three of us stood in a row looking through the glass of Sam’s office door at the phones sitting on his desk. Maybe whoever was texting was trying to help. Maybe. But it felt an awful lot like looking through the bars at one of the big predator cats at the zoo.
INTERLUDE THIRTEEN
THE BAIN ESTATE
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON
WHEN ZEPHYR WAS NINETEEN
“You’re going to have to do something about him, you know,” said John.
“I know,” said Zephyr.
They sat in leather chairs on opposite sides of the fireplace, the logs having burned down to red coals. The house around them was quiet, the noise and confusion calmed after a long day and a longer night. The lawyers had left. The cleanup crew sent by the Concierge had left, taking the girl’s body with them and leaving behind assurances that it would never be found and no eye would have a reason to look in the direction of the Bain estate. The two staff members who might have been a problem were gone, too—deported to Mexico or headed for the same landfill where the girl would be buried. All the necessary details were being handled, and now the house was silent as a tomb. Zephyr’s father was sleeping in the arms of Morpheus and would be kept drugged until decisions could be made.
“The problem is,” Zephyr said, “I don’t know what to do. He set my trust up so that I don’t get controlling interest in the family holdings until I’m twenty-five, even if he dies.”
“Inconvenient,” said John, nodding. “However, these things can always be worked out.”
“How?”
He sipped his wine and, instead of answering, said, “His hungers are predictable. Cyclical. It’s textbook to the point of being pedestrian. In the weeks leading up to his loss of control, he becomes increasingly erratic, missing meetings, saying inappropriate things, making extravagant and very expensive purchases—”
“Like buying that cookie factory,” she snorted.
John nodded. “And the paintings and the investments in bad movies. Proof of an acquisitive drive and a need for control. The donations to worthy causes are a defense mechanism, and a clumsy one. They say, ‘Look at me, I’m a pillar of the community.’ But if anyone knew how to look they would see a correlation with those acts of philanthropy and the deaths of so many girls.”
She looked at him, alarmed. “Could they see that pattern?”
He shook his head. “Not unless his name was connected with the case, and so far it isn’t. The Concierge is very thorough, and he has friends in all the right places.”
“He’s great,” she agreed. “Thanks for introducing him to me.”
John smiled. “I would argue that he is one of the few who will deserve to make the cut when the change happens. Even in a better world, there will still be a need for someone with his kind of attention to detail, bless his heart. In his turn, he is very pleased with the Calpurnia system you had installed in his villa. It makes life much easier for him, and that makes him happier and more efficient.”
They raised their glasses in a toast to the little Frenchman, but after they finished and refilled their glasses Zephyr found herself drifting into a funk. She sighed and stared moodily at the dying fire.
“I always knew Dad was damaged goods,” she said, “but it’s weird to know that he’s an actual mass murderer.”
“Technically, he’s a serial murderer,” said John. “He kills them one at a time. Mass murderers make a crowd event of it.”
“Works out to the same, though. He’s bugfuck nuts, and I share his genes. I got cancer from Mom’s side of the family.”
“Had cancer,” he corrected.
“Had, sure. But, let’s face it, I don’t have the greatest respect for human life, either. Not all of it, anyway. Not even most. What does that say about me?”
John took a thoughtful sip. “How many generals know the names of foot soldiers who die in any given battle? How many know—or care to know—the names of soldiers and officers killed on the other side of a war?”
“That’s war,” she said.
“So is this,” said John.
“How?”
“Understand, my girl, we’re not talking about what your father did. His proclivities are not yours. If you’re concerned about which of his genes are tangled up in your DNA, then look at your similarities. The mechanical genius, the sophistication for design, the business sense, the grasp of technological evolution. Those were your father’s most important aspects, and you not only got those but got those abilities to a much greater degree. Orders of magnitude greater.”
“Okay, so I’m a tech genius. That’s great. But I’m also clearly indifferent to murder. I’m not even upset that Dad cut some chick into fifty pieces and jerked off on them. I don’t feel shit for that girl, and I’m not even grossed out by the thought of my dear old dad rubbing one out. It means nothing to me, and that’s what makes me feel weird.”
The logs shifted as the bottom one crumbled and the others caved downward, sending sparks twisting upward in soft spirals. John got up, took a few logs from the brass carrier beside the hearth, and placed them over the coals. The wood was mostly dry, and the heat began steaming the last drops of sap out of the chunks of pine. He stood there, head bowed to watch the slow process of the wood blackening and finally catching. As the first tiny fingers of fire began curling around the logs, he said, “You know the world is falling apart.”
“So?”
“The world is a broken, bloated, polluted, doomed experiment. Whether human life on this rock was created by God, s
eeded by aliens, or was merely some freak of chemistry in the primordial soup, the whole process has become a danger to its own survival. The world can’t endure what humanity has done to it and continues to do to it. Anyone who thinks otherwise is either an idiot or so incredibly selfish that they can only care about immediate needs and short-term gratification; they don’t care what happens to the next generation. Or if there is a next generation. These are people who hate their own children enough to steal from them. They steal their future, their potential, their right to survive.”
“What does that have to do with what I said?” asked Zephyr.
“Everything,” said John. “Hear me out. Humanity, as a species, has never properly evolved in order to become appropriate curators for this world. Humans are no longer hunter-gatherers, and they’re not wise shepherds and farmers. They act like barbarian children, intent on grabbing what they can take by force, unheeding of the truth that if they keep taking there will be nothing left for anyone.” He looked over his shoulder at her. “And because some of them know better but refuse to change, they have lost any right to own this world. This is true of the many. It is not true of the few. You know this. You’ve been making lists for years. Yes and no, live or die. But tell me, my sweet, have you ever considered how you could enact those changes?”
“No … it’s just a dream. It makes me feel good to think about it.”
“You should do more than think, my girl.”
“Like what?”
John turned and stood silhouetted against the growing flames. “There is a group, a class, a select few who deserve to survive. Absolutely deserve it. They are not Republican or Libertarian or Democratic or anything as meaningless as that, nor are they necessarily American. This is a global community. Small in comparison to the total size of the human herd. They are not specifically the wealthy or specifically the poor. They are the intellectual élite. The dynamic ones, the builders of useful things, the innovators and changers. They are the ones who understand that nothing useful comes of complacency or compromise, that it is chaos—raw and wonderful—that is the heart and soul of all creative progressive change. The rest? Bah … they’re nothing. The greater herd are the ones whose daily actions absolutely define them as unfit. They are the ones who aren’t looking with any real optimism toward the future, nor are they truly invested in the process of their own survival, let alone the survival of the human race or the planet itself. They are of the here and now. They are not citizens of tomorrow and, as such, have no right to be here tomorrow. Just as nature selects certain species for extinction, so, too, do the actions of certain people—singly and in groups—argue with great passion for their own extinction. That’s what we’re seeing, and never in history have the open-eyed been able to more clearly see the brink to which we are all hurtling.”