by Abbott, Jeff
‘I only sweat in front of the computer these days.’ He went over and Henry stood and gave him an awkward embrace.
‘Well, go get showered and I’ll take you out for a decent dinner. You’ve got nothing edible in that fridge.’ He leaned back, studied his stepson. ‘You’re pale, thin and you need a shave. I’ve been working you too hard.’
‘I wanted the research project to go well. But I worry I’m not delivering what you need.’
Henry sat down, put his glasses back on his face. His nose was slightly crooked - he’d always kidded Luke that it had been broken in a bar fight, but Luke knew Henry had never set foot in a bar. ‘The data you’ve sent me has been extremely … compelling.’
‘I’m afraid it’s nothing more than the crazy internet ravings of vicious losers.’
‘But you never know when the crazy raving is the seed of something bigger. Something dangerous.’
‘Collecting crazy ravings isn’t necessarily going to help identify and stop extremists before they turn violent.’
‘That’s for me to decide.’
Luke finished his water. ‘I would like to know who your client is. I want to know who wants to find potential extremists on the internet.’
Henry folded the paper he’d been writing on, tucked it in his pocket and shut the book. The title of the book was The Psychology of Extremists. Henry’s own masterpiece; he’d written it some years before in the aftermath of the McVeigh bombing, to little acclaim, until 9/11 changed everything and his theories about the mental makeup of terrorists bore fruit. After holding a series of professorships around the world - sort of a traveling scholar, much like Luke’s own father had been - last year he had set up a small but successful think tank in Washington called The Shawcross Group. They studied and wrote about psychology and the role it played in governance, in terrorism and extremism, in international crime and in a host of other topics. His clients were the movers and shakers in Washington, London, Paris and around the world: key government decision-makers and multinational companies who wanted to protect their operations from terrorist and extremist threats.
‘I can’t tell you. Not now. I’m sorry.’
‘I just think … we should give this information to the police. Or your client should.’
‘Have you found evidence of actual criminal activity?’ Henry took off his wire-rim glasses.
‘Um, no.’
‘But you’ve found the potential for criminal activity?’
‘Come see the latest from the Night Road for yourself.’
Luke sat down at his computer.
He had a list of more than a hundred websites, discussion groups and online forums to survey, where he would try to draw in and talk with people who had extreme and even violent responses to the world’s problems. A window opened to report on the responses to his many varied comments from before he’d gone on his run. He kept his user names and passwords in a text file on his Mac because he could not remember them all. He logged onto the first online discussion group, where topics ranged from immigration reform to privatization of Social Security. This one tended to be far right wing and multiple retorts to his mild comments had sprouted up since yesterday. Luke scanned them; mostly, the contributors agreed with each other, but they fueled each other’s anger. He signed on as MrEagle, his pen name, and posted a far more moderate view of the immigration issue. It would not take long for venomous arguments against his position to flow in for him to collect and measure. He would also post under other names, agreeing with those who attacked his initial postings, seeing if they were interested in violence as a solution.
Sometimes they ignored his prods; other times, they agreed that violence was the answer.
Luke jumped to another forum, found another pot to stir on a farleft discussion group. His middle-of-the-road comments, left last night on the issue of military contractors, had produced everything from abrasive disagreement to incoherent fury that practically blazed fire through the computer screen.
‘The Night Road?’ Henry asked. ‘Oh, yes. Your nickname for these people.’
Luke had been using the nickname for weeks, but typical of absentminded Henry to forget. Henry had been traveling a lot in the past few days and apparently the jet lag weighed hard. ‘I used to call them the Angry Bitters but that sounded like a punk band. I dreamed one night that an angry mob of extremists of every stripe were chasing me down a long road into an endless night. So I call them the Night Road.’
‘The Night Road. Right. Rather dark of you.’ Henry had an odd look on his face, as though a light had suddenly shut off behind his eyes. Then he smiled.
‘So far this evening my masculinity, my patriotism and my intelligence have all been called into serious question.’ Luke shrugged, let a smile play across his face. ‘Then the ones I pretend to agree with, I have to get them talking to see if they really are interested in violence.’
‘The troublemaker, as always.’ Henry flicked a smile. ‘So you’re continuing to get a lot of responses.’
‘Fifty per cent more than when I started back in November. I think it’s the anonymity of the net; people express themselves a lot more strongly. And these people, they’re looking for others to reinforce their views. So the anger, the perceived injustice, ratchets up, higher and higher.’
‘How much data do you have so far?’
Luke glanced at a screen. The most interesting and extremist ravings on the websites and forums were scanned, copied and uploaded into a database. ‘Close to ten thousand comments now, from roughly six thousand individuals, over the past four months.’
‘Wow.’
‘It’s weird. I feel like a cop who pretends to be a thirteen-year-old girl luring the old perverts. But instead I’m trying to draw out the next Timothy McVeigh, or the next Madrid bomber, the next al-Qaeda wannabe here in America.’
‘You really think some of them are that dangerous?’
‘Look at today’s batch.’ He pulled up a comment from the day’s database. ‘Not surprising a lot of them are anti-government.’
Let’s start fresh. End their lifetime appointments; kill all the judges.
‘Now, maybe this guy’s just venting, maybe he’s harmless. It’s the first time he posted, I have to wait and see if he amps it up. If he does, then he’s a possibility to follow.’
Henry rubbed at his lip. ‘Prod him harder. See what else he says.’
‘Here’s one from one of my more consistent correspondents,’ Luke said. ‘ChicagoChris. He’s on a number of discussion boards for anarchists …’
‘Organized anarchists. I love the concept,’ Henry said.
‘… and he loves to talk about eco-terrorism.’ Luke hit a button and a long series of comments made by ChicagoChris over the past few days rolled up the screen:
Burn every McMansion to the ground, that’s the start. A serious attack on a gated community would send a message. Don’t kill people, warn them first, but level the houses. Sabotage the construction equipment. Get busy to save the Earth.
People who destroy the earth deserve whatever bad stuff happens to them.
Killing our environment is akin to the greatest murder ever committed. I blame the oil and construction companies. I know those guys, what they’re like when the attention isn’t on them, and they’re scum. Kill them, kill all of them, and there would be change. A change is in the wind, I know it. It’s coming, fast. I want to be a part of the storm of change.
‘He’s a charmer,’ Henry said.
‘And he believes every word he says. He emails me a lot, through the boards. I’m his new best online friend. And he’s not just crazy, Henry, he’s focused. That’s what’s scary.’
‘You said in last month’s report you think he’s one of the most likely to go violent.’
‘Yeah, he’s promising.’ Luke made a face. ‘But crazy.’
‘I’m not interested in the crazy ones. I’m interested in the committed ones. There’s a big difference.’
&nb
sp; ‘I can’t really diagnose these people, I can only catalog their comments. I hope this is enough data for your research.’ Looking at all the hate made him tired. ‘For your client.’
Henry heard the stubborn question in Luke’s voice. ‘I told you, I have to keep my client confidential.’
‘Let me guess. It’s the government. They want to watch these people, make sure they’re only hot air and not actually acquiring weapons or putting bombs on buses or targeting politicians.’
‘I can’t say. But I know my client will be extremely pleased with your work.’
Luke said, ‘I’m surprised you don’t trust me. You always have.’
‘And I always will. But the client set very specific parameters for me. If you worked for me full-time, were officially on the payroll, then maybe …’ Henry gave a shrug, a half-smile.
‘I’m not a think-tank kind of guy.’
‘Please. We’re academics, just in nicer suits,’ Henry said. ‘Let me guess. You would like to get a paper out of this data yourself. Maybe the foundation of a doctoral dissertation.’
Luke nodded. ‘Yes. I would. But I respect that you hired me to do the research. It’s your data, not mine.’
‘Luke. I understand why you’re driven to dissect the minds of those who think violence is a solution to every problem.’ The silence between them felt suddenly awkward. ‘But understanding why violence happens, that’s the puzzle that can never be solved. And it won’t bring your father back.’ Henry cleared his throat, looked at the picture of Luke and his father. His lips narrowed and he bowed his head slightly, as if under a weight.
Henry was a giver of speeches, and his phrases worked at podiums, not at dinner tables. He’d spent so much time with his books and found his family so late in life that Luke had gotten used to his stepfather’s well-meant but flat-footed phrases. ‘I know. But I would hope this research would find the next asshole who wants to kill innocent people for a cause.’ Luke didn’t look at Henry. He didn’t look at the photo of his father, the one decoration on the fireplace mantel. A photo of Warren Dantry and Luke, age seven, holding a freshly caught bass, dripping from a Virginia lake. He could remember the smell of the clean fish, the scent of the pines, the warm sun against his skin, his father’s quiet laughter. A happy memory of a rare time with his dad, long before evil in the form of a cold-blooded airplane mechanic named Ace Beere stole his father away from him. Evil that Luke felt compelled to understand.
Reading Ace Beere’s rambling, incoherent suicide note - left at the airport hangar after he had killed Luke’s father and several others - had fueled Luke’s desire to understand the psychology of the violent mind. I did it because God said I must, the only way to get my pride back, to strike back at my employer and I had to pick a flight to kill and since they were professors, they were useless to society, no one will miss them. Rambling garbage, but inside the long letter there must have been the seed of an answer, a cogent reason why. Luke had never found it.
‘Tell me this,’ Luke said. ‘Your client. Whoever it is, they want to find nascent terrorists before they move from ideology to violence. This isn’t just a fancy profiling project.’
‘Luke. Identifying terrorists is far bigger than simply drawing out the disaffected on internet forums.’
‘But we already know that plenty of extremists connect through the internet. If we could narrow in on them, discourage them before they take those final steps, make the choice of violence unappealing or impossible …’ Luke got up from the computer, went to the window. ‘Any of these people might be harmless or be a time bomb. Ten thousand comments, hundreds of people, but I can’t prove any of them will turn terrorist. Really, the next stage of the project should be to follow them, to see if there are ways to convince them that violence isn’t an option.’
‘You’ve done a fantastic job, and my client will sift through all the data. You never know, maybe you did find the next McVeigh or the next person who’d mail anthrax to Congress or decide to take up the mantle of al-Qaeda. But you’ve spent so much time on it; I’m starting to think this is an unhealthy obsession.’
‘No. I want to finish the project. But.’
‘But what?’
‘The mail accounts I had to set up - the emails make clear that these people all think that I’m ready to join their battle … I’m worried they might find me. Even though I post from different addresses, use a bunch of fake names. I could be traced if someone tried hard enough.’
‘But they’re on the other side of the glass, in Wonderland.’ Henry tapped the computer monitor. ‘You don’t exactly live in a dangerous world, Luke.’
‘I suppose not.’ Not any more. He never spoke with Henry about the time after his father died, when he ran away and lived on the streets for two months. There was no point; that was a darkness in his life where he’d long ago shut the door.
‘I wonder if you might take me to the airport tomorrow. My flight’s in the afternoon. I have meetings at the university all morning.’ As though his stepfather hadn’t heard his concerns. Henry, he thought, had just moved on to his next idea.
‘Sure.’ A response to one of Luke’s fake comments popped up on the screen: Your right, A race war is in-evitible in this country. What’s got to be done is get all the un-desirables to leave this country. Killin em will encurage em to go faster. Maybe you and me can get together and talk about it. I could see if your serius or not.
Henry read the message. ‘You bait your hooks well, Luke. Very well. I want you to listen to me.’ And Luke thought, with affection, Here comes Henry trying to be a dad. Here comes the hand on the shoulder … yep. And now here comes the fumbling advice. ‘Luke. You know I loathe sentiment. But …’
‘I’m the only family you’ve got.’ Luke paused. ‘And this greeting card moment is brought to you by The Shawcross Group.’
‘Now, Luke.’ But Henry offered a rare smile. ‘I promised your mom when I married her that I’d take care of you if anything happened to her. To me that was a solemn vow.’
His mother. He put up the photos of her when he knew Henry was coming for a visit; it was too raw, too painful for Henry. The car crash had been only a year ago.
‘Henry, don’t treat me like a child. You don’t have to watch out for me.’
‘Habits are hard to break.’ He cleared his throat, as though preparing to deliver another speech or presentation. He seemed to have trouble looking at Luke. ‘Aside from you, the think-tank is my life. Come work for me. I would love to pass the think-tank on to you one day.’ The final words came in a rush.
‘Henry, wow. I don’t know what to say.’ He felt touched. Honored. Henry was a bit of an oddball - all into his researches, his pondering about the political trends of the world, his books and papers, but he was the only family Luke had. A world without family was a lonely place, and Luke thought it had been an unbearably lonely place for Henry before Henry married Luke’s mom. It had not always been an easy road for him and his stepfather but Luke never doubted that Henry, in his own way, loved him.
On the screen a comment appeared: you’re right, what we need in America is a nice dirty bomb set off in the beltway, clean up the whole act, make the Potomac a toilet for all the human waste in DC, start fresh. Another loon chirping to be heard. A nice dirty bomb, as opposed to an awful dirty bomb. These people made his blood run cold.
‘My God,’ Henry said, blinking at the comment. ‘This is the other reason I want you working with me. You get results. Say yes. Please, Luke. Please.’
Begging was most un-Henry-like and Luke felt a swelling of gratitude. ‘I will sleep on it. After I wander a bit down the Night Road this evening.’
‘Fair enough. I need to make a couple of a phone calls and then we’ll go out to dinner. Go get cleaned up.’ His stepfather patted his shoulder and went off to the condo’s guest room.
Luke turned back to the computer, eight more bits of poison on his screen, and had to smile at the viciousness of the responses. He d
idn’t want to admit it, but this taunting of people with such strong opinions was addictive. He wondered, despite all his worries about those he angered, if he could give this work up so easily. Behind the mask of the internet he was a badass, a troublemaker, a take-no-prisoners tough guy. Nothing like the mild academic who typed on the keyboard and thought hard about what precise words would evoke what terrifying responses.
Luke went to his bathroom and showered. Rubbing the shampoo into his hair, he wondered about the thousands of people he touched - angry, bitter, so convinced in their hate that they were blind to nuance or circumstance or even to a basic morality. The web connected them all, electronic threads spanning the country, and he had the uneasy feeling that the people he called the Night Road could reach out and touch him, know him for the fraud that he was, in an instant.
Luke hated airports. He had last seen his father alive at Dulles ten years earlier. Every time he stepped into the wide, cool expanse of a terminal he thought of his father; a dark-suited arm raised in farewell, Luke’s clothes still wrinkled from the force of his father’s parting hug.
‘Have a good trip, Dad,’ he’d said.
His father had stood close to him. He was a handsome man, with a trim beard, a full head of hair going gray early and bold blue eyes. ‘I’ll be back soon. Mind your mother.’
‘I will.’
‘You want me to bring you back some fish? In my pocket?’ An old joke between them, from when Luke had caught a perch when he was five and promptly stuck it in his pocket and left it there for a few hours. They’d burned his shorts.
‘No. Mom will get mad.’
‘Mom will be buying you new clothes,’ Mom had said, with a smile, touching his father’s arm.
Then his father had rumpled Luke’s hair, gently. ‘I’ll miss you every moment.’
