[Alex Vane 03.0] The Mockingbird Drive

by AC Fuller

  It was one of those things people say when they're mad. Like when someone leaves their clothes on the floor over and over and you let it build inside you until it explodes outward and you tell them they're the messiest person on earth. The kind of thing you regret immediately. I'd said stuff like that to Greta before, but she rarely got that mad. Later, she apologized and pleaded temporary insanity, but I'd found it kind of funny. Of course, I'd assumed she'd never actually do it, and the thought of Greta on the phone with a buzz-cutted guy at the Pentagon made me smile. It probably wasn't her, but at this point it didn't matter.

  I walked to an off-brand coffee shop at the other end of the airport and opened my laptop. Then I did what I always did when I was confused. A Google search.

  Another thing Greta likes to say is, "As bad as you are at feelings, you're that good at Google searches." Of course, that was her passive-aggressive way to get me to do research for her, but it flattered me, and I have to say that it worked. Any time she wondered something out loud, I'd slide up next to her while tapping away at my phone. Seconds later I'd present her a double-sourced answer, like a cat leaving a mouse on its owner's porch.

  After a double espresso and a few minutes of Googling, I'd confirmed what the man told me about the letter I'd get from DHS TRIP. I'd learned some other things about the No Fly List, too. Before 9/11, there were a dozen names on the list. After the Bush administration passed the Patriot Act, it grew rapidly for six years before ballooning to over 50,000 names under President Obama. Turns out, people get added to the list for all sorts of reasons. Many are legitimate terrorist threats, sure. Others are journalists traveling home from foreign countries, protesters who rubbed someone the wrong way, or family members of suspected terrorists who refused to cooperate with law enforcement. There are even reports of simple name mix-ups. Senator Ted Kennedy was once refused a boarding pass by mistake because there's a T. Kennedy on the list. Of course, Kennedy was able to board his flight when his secret service detail cleared things up with the TSA agent.

  But I'm not a senator.

  According to the ACLU's website, getting a name removed from the list takes a month or more, and that's with a good lawyer. The Barker retains a great lawyer back in Seattle, so I Skyped her. But she didn't know much more than me about the No Fly List and, after a few minutes, she advised me just to get home, promising to look into it immediately. I slammed my laptop closed, drained my remaining espresso, and scanned the cafe. I'm not the paranoid type, but I couldn't shake the interaction with Holly and Kenny. They certainly weren't following me now, but something in them had changed when they saw the drive. Or maybe I was imagining it. Maybe it was just Innerva's fear rubbing off on me. Either way, I needed to figure out what it was, so I pulled the drive out of the new backpack and onto my lap.

  Despite running a website and living in one of techiest tech hubs on earth, I know next to nothing about computers and I'd never seen a hard drive. To me, data storage is the platinum-plated, 100 gig zip drive on my keychain. I knew the drive was old, and that communities existed online to discuss and trade old computers and parts.

  So I searched again, quickly finding photos of similar drives on a couple blogs and on the website of a computer museum in the Netherlands. Within a couple minutes, I knew what I had. It was an IBM 2314, built between 1967 and 1969. Originally, it would have lived in a drawer with a bunch of matching drives, all accessed by a central control unit. It held eleven double-sided magnetic disks separated by spacers, totaling 29 megabytes of storage. How much is 29 megs? Not much. Ten years ago your first iPhone had 140 times that. The drive was a relic, and my guess was that the tech guys back at the office would geek out when they saw it, if I ever made it home.

  I rotated the drive within the bag, checking for any defining marks that would help me pinpoint the year. That's when I noticed the small white sticker on the bottom. It was peeling off and one of the corners was ripped, but the black ink was still legible.

  Destroy Per Directive 6/35.

  I ran a few searches for the phrase, including all sorts of variations, inclusions, and exclusions, but couldn't figure out what it meant. But I knew someone who might know, and I couldn't think of anything else to do, so I checked the index card Innerva had given me. I figured I could meet the computer expert, then catch a bus or a train back to Seattle and be home by midnight. According to my phone, her house was located in Biltmore Estates, a neighborhood I'd never heard of just south of the Fremont Street Experience in Downtown Las Vegas.

  The Overclocker was a twenty-minute Uber ride away.

  Chapter 6

  As I stood in the street, I began to wonder whether Innerva had been messing with me.

  I'd always imagined computer experts living in sleek lofts with floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over Puget Sound. They'd sit in minimalist chairs, surrounded by silver laptops and neatly-bundled cables, sipping cold-brew coffee as clean racks of servers blinked reassuring patterns of blue and green light into the darkness. In my mind, their homes were as modern and efficient as the technologies they'd mastered.

  The Overclocker's house was a dumpster fire.

  It was a tiny bungalow covered in light brown stucco that had been washed out and cracked by decades of Vegas sunshine. The right side of the roof was held together with duct tape and plastic garbage bags. On the left side of the house, a ragged blue tarp fluttered in the hot wind, partially covering a patch of exposed metal lattice.

  I checked the address on the index card again, just to be sure, then walked over a patch of dead grass to the front door. Before I could knock, I heard a series of muffled sounds. A quiet clang, metal on metal. A dull thud, like something hitting the floor. Then a floor creaking. Footsteps.

  I tapped on the door, but no one answered.

  I noticed a flash of movement through the half-open blinds in the window to the right of the door. I peered in but saw no one.

  "Helloooooo," I called.

  Nothing.

  "I'm looking for The Overclocker."

  Still nothing.

  I knocked again, harder this time, then angled my head between the rusty window bars and looked through the crack in the blinds. The house was still. All I could make out was a patch of blonde wood flooring, dotted with stains.

  Innerva told me once that only ten people knew her real name, so I figured that if Innerva was comfortable enough with The Overclocker to send me to her, that meant they were either close friends or trusted professional allies. A name-drop would be my best shot at a response. I leaned in toward the window, mouth between the bars, and yelled the name this time. "Do you know Innerva Shah?"

  More noises, more footsteps, but no answer. The Overclocker was in there but she clearly didn't want to come out and chat, so I scanned the neighborhood, trying to figure out what to do.

  The house was surrounded by similar bungalows, all painted a shade of brown or gray and all baking in the sun. A few old cars and motorhomes were parked along the street, but the only signs of life were the malnourished palm trees that rose from the sidewalk every forty feet or so. Then I noticed something. A few blocks to the south, the red and white sign of Binion's Casino peeked out above an overpass, which reminded me that I was just a couple blocks north of downtown Las Vegas, old school Las Vegas. Binion's was one of the casinos that put Vegas on the map. It was the first to add carpets, the first to offer comps to all gamblers, and the first to offer high-limit tables. The World Series of Poker had even started there. Tourists loved it because you could take your picture with the million in cash they kept stacked in the lobby. I could hop in a taxi there and be on a bus to Seattle within the hour.

  As I stepped toward the curb, I heard a sound behind me. A quick, piercing screech like a subway train grinding to a halt. The door opening. Before I could react, a hand gripped my arm, twisting the flesh and jerking me into the house. A moment later I was in the living room.

  The dead bolt clicked and a woman stepped to within two fe
et of my face. "Who the hell are you?"

  The first thing I noticed was her smell. Sweet at first, then a hit of citrus and burnt metal. Like gummy bears mixed with soldering fumes. She wore jeans splotched with black and brown stains, a white V-neck tee, and a black vest covered in pockets and zippers. The kind photographers and fishermen wear. Her frizzy black hair was tied back in a messy ponytail and her forehead, nose, and upper cheeks were dotted with reddish-tan freckles. Her body reminded me of Greta's—lean, athletic, and not super curvy. But she was a half-foot taller than Greta. Probably almost six feet, so I barely had to tilt my head to meet her shifty eyes.

  "I'm Alex Vane."

  "How'd you know Innerva's name? Where is she?"

  I was about to answer when the smell of the room hit me all at once. It was a sour, chemical stench that reminded me of old magic markers. Halfway between sickening and alluring. I inhaled deeply and my knees buckled slightly. "What's that smell?"

  "Solvent. Adhesives. Where's Innerva?"

  "I…I don't know. She told me to come talk to you."

  She took a step back and I looked around the room. To my right, a threadbare recliner sat next to a wooden chair with three legs. In front of me, a few milk crates full of books blocked an arched doorway that appeared to lead to a kitchen. To my left, a giant table was buried under computer monitors and external drives, and littered with soda bottles, food cartons, wires, small cans and bottles with labels I couldn't read, and various tools I didn't recognize.

  "I know you from somewhere," she said.

  "I run The Barker. The website. Maybe you've seen me—"

  "Innerva hates that piece-of-shit site." She paused a beat. "Who told you about her?"

  I'd known Innerva for years, longer than almost anyone. Longer than this woman for sure. I knew I wasn't at the top of her "journalists-I-respect" list, but it stung to find out that she'd been badmouthing my site to a woman I didn't know. I was trying to figure out what to say when she grabbed my arm like she'd decided not to wait for an answer. Her grip was strong and I felt my bicep bruising as she yanked me toward the door. I probably could have stood my ground if I'd tried—I had at least fifty pounds on her—but between the chemicals and her tone, I was pretty dazed.

  I figured she was going to throw me out, but instead she put both hands around my ribcage and slammed me up against the door. She got right in my face. "Who told you about Innerva?"

  "I've known her for years. Our friend James was killed yesterday." I was trying to sound tough but there was no way I was going to fight her, if it came to that. The last time I got in a fight, I was twenty. And I lost.

  "James who?"

  "Stacy."

  "He was your friend?"

  "Yes. And so is Innerva." I switched to my reasonable, calm-the-bear voice. "James was shot yesterday at The Las Vegas Gazette. Innerva gave me a hard drive. Said you might be able to help me."

  She loosened her grip a little. "Hard drive? That thing got blasted yesterday. It no longer exists."

  Now I was confused. I said, "The drive is literally in my bag right now."

  She stepped back. Said, "You have the drive? Let me see it."

  I rubbed my arm where she'd been holding it, glared at her, then unzipped the backpack. She lunged forward when she saw what was in it.

  "No," I said, turning my shoulder to block her. I held up the bag to let her look inside. "Innerva said you might be able to get the data off this thing."

  She grunted in a way I couldn't understand. "She tell you where she got that drive?"

  "No."

  "Do you have any idea what it would take to get the data off that? It's fifty years old, you yuppie dipshit."

  "Why'd you say the drive was destroyed yesterday?" I asked.

  Another grunt.

  "Why?"

  She ignored me and walked a little square around the living room. One pace in each direction with slow, 90-degree turns after each. Then she did it again. It was as though she'd forgotten I was in the room.

  "They must've had two," she said to herself at last. "A decoy. Damn, Innerva is smart." She paused a beat, then met my eyes. "Maybe they turned you?"

  "They who? I'm a friend of Innerva."

  "Turned you, Mr. Innocent. The Company In Action. Conspiracies In America. Covert Infiltration and Assassination. Charlie fucking Indigo fucking Alpha, you Jack Ryan motherfucker."

  It was possible that this woman was a computer expert. Too early to tell. But the words she spoke out loud seemed to be squeaking out at random from an ongoing internal conversation. She was clearly paranoid, and possibly something worse. I looked at the floor, trying to decide whether to make a run for it or continue what was quickly becoming the strangest conversation of my life.

  Then it hit me. Jack Ryan. "Are you talking about the CIA?"

  "I'm talking about the owners of that drive you brought into my house."

  "You think the CIA turned me? Are you crazy?"

  "I'm a little bit crazy, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong."

  I smiled because it was a good line, one I assumed she'd used before. And I had to admit that she was right. I know there's no such thing as normal, but when I said I'm good at reading people, I meant people whose chemistry and personal history have landed them somewhere near consensus reality. The Overclocker didn't qualify. Her demeanor had become a little less aggressive than before, but she still wouldn't meet my eyes. I had no idea what she was thinking, what she was feeling, or what she'd do next. All I knew for sure was that the drive had gotten her attention. She wanted it. Or maybe needed it.

  And I wanted to find out what she knew—or thought she knew—about the drive, and about James. Much of journalism is simple manipulation. Sometimes it's just a matter of saying the thing that gets a source to tell you what you already know they know. And part of that is pretending you don't need them. That you have ten or eleven other sources who'd be happy to tell you what you want to know. I knew she wanted the drive, and it didn't seem likely that she was going to kill me for it, so I decided to try the oldest trick in the book.

  I said, "Look, I have no idea what you're talking about. I have not been turned by the CIA. I came to Las Vegas, Innerva gave me this hard drive, and told me to come see you. Said she had to disappear. I'm sorry to bother you. I'll just head out."

  I closed the backpack, turned abruptly, and reached for the doorknob.

  "Wait." Her tone had softened and I knew I had her.

  I turned back. "What?"

  "When did you say you met Innerva?"

  "About thirteen years ago."

  "When did she and James meet?"

  She was quizzing me, but I decided to play along. "At the same time."

  "You were working with James then?"

  "Yes, we co-founded News Scoop."

  "That was a good site, until you ruined it."

  "Thanks."

  "What did Innerva love best about James?"

  "She talked to you about that?"

  "She did, and if you really knew them, you'd know as well."

  This was an easy one. Computer hackers could be white hats, gray hats, or black hats, depending on how they used their skills. The media tends to focus on the black hats, the ones who use their powers for illegal or destructive hacks. But there are plenty of white hats out there, hackers who test systems, recover data legally, and so on. I said, "Innerva loved James's moral certitude. She sometimes described herself as amoral, and James kept her hat from getting too gray."

  She nodded and walked another little square around the living room, then said, "If you're not CIA—which I will choose to believe for now—I need to tell you something. I'm leaving this house. Soon and forever. And that drive is coming with me, with or without you attached to it."

  She spun around, stepped over the crates of books, and walked into the kitchen. A minute later she was back, carrying a gray canvas duffle bag that was probably white twenty years ago, a can of steak and potato soup, and a sparkler.
The kind kids get at the Fourth of July.

  "Why are you leaving?" I asked. "And what were you saying about the drive being the real target? And by the way, what's an overclocker and what's your actual name?"

  She ignored me and walked to the large table. She was mumbling something, but I couldn't tell what. Batter? Or maybe Axes?

  She set the duffle bag on the floor and slowly peeled a piece of tinfoil off the soup can. She peered inside, then replaced the tinfoil and set the can on the stack of servers in the center of the table. She jammed the handle of the sparkler through the tinfoil so it stood straight up in the can, then rummaged through the mess on the table. Cables, trash, and bits of metal fell to the floor. She dropped to one knee and began rifling through the debris. She was still mumbling, and I was beginning to understand what she was saying. It was just one word, repeated over and over.

  Baxter.

  The name of the shooter.

  "Are you saying 'Baxter'?" I asked.

  She didn't respond.

  "Are you hearing any of my questions?"

  Still on the floor, she pulled a red lighter out of a balled-up napkin that had been stuffed in a coffee mug. "Ha!" She held it up like a trophy.

  She stood and lit the sparkler, which was still sticking straight up out of the soup can, then turned to face me as the blue and gold sparks erupted behind her. She didn't smile, but her face looked relaxed, like the paranoia was gone. "An overclocker is a particular kind of hardware specialist. I make computers run faster than they're designed to run, do things they're not supposed to do. I'm leaving because James was murdered yesterday, but not by Baxter Callahan. Someone else killed them both, and killed four others to cover up the crime. For now, I'm choosing to believe it wasn't you, but whoever it was will be coming for me next. And because you're holding that hard drive, they'll be coming for you, too."