by Eden Sharp
[Friday 5th May 01:45] C0d3130n3: Gh057H3x ;)
[Friday 5th May 01:45] slipknot: anything I can do to help?
I wasn’t going to risk talking to anyone outside the core so exited the client and logged off. There’s an old sign-off joke among chat room users who have talked about something illegal, Feds at door, BRB. I almost expected a call at any minute from my concierge to tell me they were downstairs and my time was up. I hoped that all of this was something I would be able to come back from.
13
From the time I’d left Charlie I’d had eight missed calls from Knox. For what I needed to say it was better to do it face to face, so even though it was late and I was dreading it, I headed over to his apartment.
He took a while to open the door and when he did he was in his boxers and a T-shirt. It was likely I’d woken him up. He held the door open wide and stood back to allow me in. I stopped a fifth of the way in to the room and let him pass, so I had a quick escape route if necessary. We stood facing each other.
‘I called you maybe six or seven times,’ he said. ‘And you would have seen those missed calls.’
‘It was difficult,’ I said.
‘You go off alone then disappear for over twelve hours and you don’t let me know what’s going on?’
‘It wasn’t like I was in trouble or anything Knox. I know him.’
‘Were you with him this whole time?’
I was slightly taken aback by that. Did Knox know who Charlie was to me, what he looked like?
‘No.’
‘Are you back together?’
So, there it was.
‘No.’
‘It’s the middle of the night,’ he said. ‘Let’s talk about this in bed.’
I shook my head.
‘I can’t do this,’ I said.
‘Can’t do what?’
‘Us. This. Whatever it is. I can’t do it right now. It’s too difficult.’
He stood straighter then, his chin jutting forward. He nodded, eyes hard, mouth a stiff straight line.
‘I’m working this one alone,’ I said.
He turned away from me nodding his head slightly like he was agreeing with himself about something he had already decided upon.
When he turned back around his eyes flashed with anger. He took two quick steps until he was towering over me and we were practically bumping chests.
‘You think it’s okay to bring me in, offer me a job and then just bail on the whole deal? Well I guess I’m stupider than I look because I thought you were better than that.’
Maybe I wasn’t.
‘At least, give me a reason. Tell me what the hell’s going on,’ he said.
This was the part where it had to fall down. He did deserve better but there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
‘I can’t,’ I said.
He twisted his body lightning fast and threw a shoulder pumping punch at the wall then recoiled back from the jab. The sharp thud I’d heard against the plasterwork meant it had hurt like hell. He stood there shaking his hand. I glanced at the wall. There was a perceptible dent.
I wanted to say the right words but there weren’t any. Nothing that could do any justice to the whole sorry mess. I’d offered to help him get his investigator’s license, to train him, and now I was leaving him out in the cold.
I left him standing there and walked to the door. There was no explaining anything around the edges that was going to make anything any better.
In the hall, my legs were leaden. I’d been under constant stress for the past thirty-six hours and cortisol was fueling my body in place of food, sleep and peace. Apart from the round trip, I’d spent around six hours in gray offices, waiting, form filling, reading documents and signing what felt like my life away. I’d been interrogated to alternately push my buttons and crush me with boredom. I couldn’t settle on one emotion long enough to decide how I felt. Except I knew I didn’t feel good about myself.
I stood against the wall opposite Knox’s apartment and bumped my forehead against it until the dull ache gave me something to feel about the whole shitty business. This was a bad way to leave but I couldn’t see any good alternative. It seemed I was destined to always bring about bad endings.
The door opened behind me.
‘You either tell me what’s going on or we’re through for good and you don’t come back here,’ Knox said.
I’d been forced into a corner by someone I’d trusted and it stung. Not only that, but now the ripples were spreading out to every part of my life. I needed to take the reins back into my own hands. I turned to face him, shaking my head.
‘You don’t want to do this,’ I said.
‘Yes I do,’ Knox said.
I shook my head.
‘You’ll get yourself caught up in something that smells really bad and it will all be because of me and the truth is I’m not worth it.’
I hoped he could read the sincerity in my eyes.
‘Please just let me work this alone John and things will be okay. You carry on with the skip traces, and then we’ll see where that takes us after I’m done with this.’
‘No deal,’ Knox said. ‘I’m done with the subterfuge and you hiding things from me. I’m either totally in all the way or I’m all the way out.’
I knew how much he needed this, but it still felt like I’d be handing him poison.
‘The government’s involved,’ I said. ‘That’s why I can’t tell you anything and that’s why you really don’t want to know, so let’s just drop it.’
Knox studied me for a moment. I couldn’t look him in the face.
‘Try me,’ he said.
With every cell in my brain telling me I’d be doing him a favor by walking away I headed back inside his living room and slumped down on the couch. Whichever way I played it there weren’t going to be any winners. I took out my special new cell and called Paul Harding’s private line.
I expected him to be asleep, but he answered pretty much immediately. I always believed there was a middle way but knew for a fact it was wishful thinking.
‘I have a partner,’ I said. ‘Either we work together on this or I don’t do it at all. Do what you like to me.’
There was a pause and then he said, ‘You won’t be able to discuss this with him in advance. You’ll have to bring him here.’
I let it sink in for a moment.
‘I know,’ I said.
‘Give me a name.’
I wondered if he already knew. I held the phone to my chest and looked up at Knox. He didn’t say anything.
‘John Knox,’ I said down the phone. It felt like defeat.
‘Let me speak to him,’ Paul said.
I handed over the phone and went over to the window and stared at the night sky and listened to John giving details about the Marine Corps company he had served with, all the while putting himself squarely in the frame of exactly the same vice as the one squeezing me.
14
John Knox
On the way to the airport McGlynn put on her favorite music which, for some reason Knox was yet to fathom, seemed to be French hip hop.
‘Oh great, we’re not listening to this again?’ he said.
He preferred classic rock tunes like most normal people not some street hood music performed in a foreign language. Musically, and maybe in other ways, they couldn’t have been more different.
‘Sorry I don’t have any Garth Brooks.’
What made her think that? He was almost offended.
‘I don’t listen to Garth Brooks. I don’t know why you’d think I’d like Garth Brooks. What would even make you think I’d be a Garth Brooks fan?’
‘The lady doth protest muchly,’ McGlynn said. ‘Bon Jovi?’
Well there was nothing wrong with that.
‘Maybe. On occasion.’
‘I knew it. And I don’t have any.’
Even if she had pulled out their best-selling third album which did contain most people’s favorites, including
his, he would still have been shocked.
‘How can you listen to this when you don’t know what they’re saying?’
‘I told you once before, the words aren’t important, it’s the rhythm. The fluid phrasing of the language lends itself to the style of the music.’
‘What thug life?’
‘This isn’t gangster Knox. It’s jazz rap with philosophical undertones.’
‘Whatever. I can’t see how anyone would want this. Dead or alive.’
No reaction.
‘You give love a bad-’
‘Stop.’
They checked in at San Francisco International and McGlynn slept most of the way there including the time making their connection at Charlotte. He would have liked the company, but she had already explained there was nothing she could say to him. Should he still have been pissed? She had poor impulse control and after last time, though she’d promised things would be legit, here they were. Still he couldn’t deny that being around her always made for a wild ride.
A car was waiting at Baltimore Washington International. It had government written all over it despite it being unmarked. The driver dropped McGlynn off at a hotel on Elkridge Landing Road and told her she was instructed to wait for his return. The cool efficiency felt familiar. Here are your orders. Do not ask any questions. Wait for further instructions. He couldn’t help feeling excited at being placed in a starring role and especially one which involved mixing with brass.
Knox was used to waiting and security checks and form filling and he took an interest in the whole process. The mechanics of bureaucracy were nothing new after serving in the military. What was new was being shown into the office of the Chief of the NSA’s Tailored Access Operations and coming face to face with a man who he had never dreamed he would meet in person.
Before today he had only ever seen Paul Harding via a television monitor. On that occasion they’d had two hours until they’d departed the ship by hovercraft to the beach on the Pakistan coast. From there, trucks had been waiting to drive them to an airfield to board a C-130 to fly them into Afghanistan. General Harding had been giving a press briefing at the White House about upcoming operations.
He was offered a seat.
‘Thank you, sir,’ Knox said.
‘You’ve filled out the preliminary paperwork and a background check has been expedited so we can have this discussion,’ Harding said. ‘But I’m afraid from here you’re going to have to go through several more hours of procedures in order that we follow protocol.’
‘I understand sir,’ Knox said.
‘Before we continue, I would like to personally thank you for your service to your country. You have an exemplary record, Marine.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Angela McGlynn is temporarily working for the Department of Defense as you will be. signing a secrecy contract is a prerequisite of employment. Once signed, it commits you to complete secrecy, beginning with the first day on the job and continuing until death.’
‘Yes sir.’
‘What do you know about Charles Lau?’
Knox pictured the photograph of Lau and McGlynn together he’d found in an old album of hers. They had looked really happy together. It had given him a strong dislike for Lau which probably said more about himself than it did regarding a man he knew nothing about.
‘Nothing except that he was Angela’s first boyfriend and he works for a tech firm in San Francisco.’
Harding nodded, pausing for a moment before continuing.
‘Lau is a world-class hacker with the username AV1. Government agencies have been after him for a very long time. He’s also the leader of a group of hackers known as the Infinite 9. The other parties involved are being tracked. Angela will explain how you’ll both be involved in an investigation being run by the FBI.’
Harding shifted forward in his seat.
‘Your main role will be to ensure Angela doesn’t get herself caught up in any ensuing trouble.’
Angela McGlynn
After the driver dropped me off at the hotel and took Knox to the inquisition, I found out from the desk that we had been booked a room each which simplified things.
The layout and fixtures were standard for a three-star chain and I wondered how I was going to kill the next few hours now I was all caught up on sleep and had no access to a safe computer. I lay on the bed, flicked through a room service card, then settled on trying to figure out my next few moves.
My mind kept wandering back to Jo and what she would have made of this. I took the silver medallion she’d given me out of my pocket and rubbed my finger over the raised image of the Virgin Mary. Even though she had been dying of cancer and had probably needed to cling on to whatever could give her comfort, she had given it to me.
At first, she had been a friendly face, a fellow American and an older woman who thought it her job to look out for the eighteen-year-old who had turned up to help out at a Thai orphanage. Later she had become more than that, almost a maternal figure, which had made it all the harder when I had found out the truth.
She'd suffered alone through treatments and had been made painfully aware of how sick she was, so she’d given up on ingesting poison preferring instead to die on her own terms.
I guess I came here, as the Buddhists would say, to make merit. I want to know I've truly lived a good life, not just fancy fund-raising dinners, but something concrete here on the ground.
We'd sat and cried together. Then she’d told me she was married and that her husband wasn't aware of her condition.
He's got enough on his plate, I think this would be the only thing that could kill him. You may think I'm selfish, but I want what's left of my life to be normal, for as long as it can be anyway. When it's time, I'll go home and it'll all be over quickly. I don't want any lingering sadness between us. We've been married a long time, very happily so, I'm grateful for that. I want it to remain a largely happy memory for him. I don't want it marred in his mind by a long period of misery.
On the day of her collapse Jo had been more concerned about me.
I never wanted to put you in a difficult position.
I’d had to inform a man I'd never met that his wife was dying. He’d made arrangements for the flight home and had asked me to accompany her back to the States. He’d told me he’d heard lots of good things about me and wished we could have met under easier circumstances.
When we got back I’d been asked to stay on and spent the next few days keeping her company and learning about how they’d adopted a boy and raised him to adulthood, but he hadn't been able to get over a troubled earlier childhood and had died of a drug overdose when he was just twenty-two.
For her too, the end came quickly. Jo had been a devout Catholic and when she had given me the medallion she’d closed my palm over it and held onto my hand a little longer than was probably usual. We had both known it would be for the last time.
When I'm no longer here, I'm going to use this to send you my love whenever you need courage. Keep you safe.
I couldn’t imagine that she would have wanted her husband to put me in such a difficult position either.
John Knox
After hours of testing Knox checked into his room at the hotel. He texted McGlynn to see if she was awake and got a reply back straight away. When she let him into her room she looked as drained as he felt.
‘There might be something left in the mini-bar,’ she said.
Knox emptied a couple of miniature bottles of whiskey into a tumbler and added a baby can of Coke which probably had been priced the same as a pitcher in a high-end bar.
McGlynn was standing at the window looking at the night sky. Whatever conversation they had about Lau he figured was going to be awkward. He decided to ease in gently.
'You think there's any other life out there? I mean it's infinite right?' Knox said.
She nodded. 'Probably. Seeing as how it would take a hundred and fifty thousand years traveling in the space shuttle j
ust to reach the next solar system to ours. And that's still within our galaxy. It would take six billion years to get out past the Milky Way.'
He sank half his drink.
'You're actually a geek McGlynn huh?'
She gave a half smile.
'Totally.’
Her face went back to looking tired and pained.
‘If it wasn’t for all the light pollution we’d be able to see Orion,’ she said. ‘No other constellation is supposed to more accurately represent the figure of a man. In the legend he’s the tallest and most handsome of men. A great hunter and great lover. The story says that the virgin Artemis loved him so much she was considering giving up her vows of chastity to marry him. As the greatest female and male hunters, they would have made a formidable couple. But Apollo, her brother, was against it so one day when Orion was out swimming, Apollo challenged Artemis to demonstrate her skill at archery by hitting a small object out in the waves. She hit it with her first shot but found out she’d been aiming at Orion and had killed him. In her grief she placed him in the heavens.'
‘Tell me you’re not involved in anything Lau’s doing Angie.’
She continued staring out at the sky.
‘I’m not involved in anything he’s doing,’ she said.
‘So, how’s it going to work?’ Knox asked.
‘We land around 11am. I’m going to go home, take a shower, then go pick up Charlie. We meet at the Hilton hotel at 1pm for the first interview. The FBI have booked a conference room. Like we’re a bunch of business people having a meeting. I’ll meet you there.’
She didn’t turn around.
Knox finished his drink and put his glass down next to the TV.
‘I’ll get an alarm call. Try and get a good night’s sleep,’ he said.
15
Saturday May 6th
Angela McGlynn
I had the cab wait outside the Paramount in SoMa where Charlie had an apartment, ironically not too far from where I lived. The concierge rang ahead and I took the elevator up to a publicly available floor which didn’t require a pass code like mine.
