Sara takes a deep breath and shakes off her anger. “I should go too. Aaric will be waiting.”
She is due inside the federal building to hand over Stack’s courtroom suit. Then she’ll sit behind him and provide whatever moral support she can. Once they take him back to his cell, her plans are a little fuzzy.
But she does not have a moment’s doubt that she’s doing the right thing too. She believes in him. She knows he will win this, and that he will, eventually, go back to writing his software that will make us all better people.
We say good-bye, and she walks away without looking back, or even thinking about me, all the way to the doors.
27
I’ve Got My Reasons
I walk into The Standard. The desk clerk notices me at once and smiles. The model, in her glass case behind him, does not look up from her book. Her mind is filled with details about embedded cultures and Tibetan rituals. She’s got an anthropology exam coming up.
The clerk waves me over. I know what he has to say, but you have to follow the social graces, even when you don’t feel like it. There is a man waiting for me on the pool deck, he tells me. I thank him and pass him a ten, even though I know he’s already been tipped to deliver the message. Common courtesy. If there’s a moral to this story, that’s probably it.
I walk out onto the deck, with its bright blue Astroturf and pure white furniture. It is a textbook example of an L.A. day: there is just enough wind to whip the smog out of the sky, and the sunlight reflects off the pool like a chrome bumper. There is no one in the water, just an array of perfect bodies in bikinis lined up on lounge chairs.
Cantrell stands out like a boil on all that perfect flesh, sitting at one of the tables with a small bucket of iced beers in front of him. He’s wearing a Hawaiian shirt that hurts my eyes even more than the sun and a bright red make america great again cap.
All of his attention is on the copy of People in his hands. He either doesn’t notice or doesn’t mind the glares he’s getting from the crowd. That’s Cantrell. The original Ugly American.
I sit down across the table from him. Cantrell reaches into the bucket and pulls out a Pacífico. “Beer?” he asks.
“It’s ten thirty in the morning.”
He snorts at that and passes me the bottle. “You’re not working.”
Good point. I take the bottle and drink.
He cracks open a beer of his own, takes a sip, and nods. As usual, he is the most Zen bastard I’ve ever met when he’s guarding his thoughts. All I get from him at this moment is the taste of the beer on his tongue and the feel of the sun on his back. No surprise. He’s had years of practice.
Then he breaks out of his meditative state. “How’s your friend Zhang?” he asks. He knew all about Zhang, of course. He was the guy who told me about the Chinese EHF kids, after all.
“Never writes, never calls,” I say. Zhang parted ways with us when the chopper landed back at the airport in Luang Prabang. The pilot was happy to take us. Our money was as good as Godwin’s. But we didn’t have a lot of time to talk. The Chinese government could easily pressure the Laotians to close the borders to any of us as soon as they realized we’d walked away from Golden Boten City. And Zhang had a much harder road ahead of him. All Sara and I had to do was get on a plane, and within a couple of hours, we’d be in Thailand, then on our way back to the States.
Zhang was still wounded, officially cut off from every support system he’d ever had, and alone. I’d given him all the money I had on me, and everything I could scavenge from Godwin’s corpse. That, and his talent, would take him a long way.
Still, it wasn’t going to be easy. The people he’d given his life and loyalty to had just betrayed him for what they thought were the best of reasons. I’d been there. It’s not something you can just walk off.
“What are you going to do?” I asked him.
He shrugged.
“Maybe it’s time for me to join the private sector as well,” he said. He hesitated a moment, then asked, “What would you have done if you’d been wrong about that drone strike? If we’d taken you away, like we planned?”
“Does it matter?”
“I’m curious.”
“I would have killed all your men, and probably you. And then I would have made my way back to Godwin and killed him too.”
He gave me that amused look again. “You would have tried.”
“I guess we’ll never know.”
Zhang bowed slightly. “Interesting meeting you, Mr. Smith,” he said.
Then he turned away and vanished inside the terminal without looking back.
“What do you think’s going to happen to him?” Cantrell asks.
“Why, you want to offer him a job?”
Cantrell laughs. “Shit, with his talents, on the open market? That boy’s probably going to be a billionaire within a year.”
“Speaking of money . . .” I remind him.
“Right,” he says. “Well, then, let’s get it over with.”
We both fish in our pockets for a moment. I hold up a thumb drive. He holds up a phone.
“Five million for the code behind Downvote, as agreed,” he says. “Just put the phone up to your eye, it will scan your retina, and the money will go straight into your account.”
I never gave Sara her laptop back. It only took me a moment to retrieve it from the locker at the Luang Prabang Airport. She never even asked about it.
It still contained all the files we downloaded from Godwin’s Romanian server. Including the Downvote source code. It took me about half an hour to download everything into the high-capacity thumb drive.
I don’t know what the Chinese buyers are doing with their version of Godwin’s program. Maybe nothing. Maybe they’re waiting for the next round of protests before they try it out.
But Cantrell was very happy to arrange for the Agency to purchase it, especially when he heard that the Chinese had a copy.
I’m about to finalize the transaction. Then I hesitate for a moment. I look at the thumb drive in my hand.
“You don’t want to verify the package?”
Cantrell smirks. “I trust you,” he lies.
I still don’t take the phone.
“What if I want a different payment?”
“Yeah,” I say, holding the drive just an arm’s length away from him. Cantrell would not be above snatching it from my hand and trying to run. “But what’s it really worth to you?”
“If you want more money—”
“Not money. In fact, you can forget the original payment altogether. This is more concrete.”
But I know he’ll have no real problem with this. It’s even going to save him money.
“Get the feds to drop the case against Aaric Stack,” I tell him. “Completely. He walks away. Total immunity from all prosecution going forward.”
“Because the Chinese have this,” I say. “And that’s the price now.”
He grins.
“I’ve got my reasons.”
“You really must like that little bodyguard.” The accent is back. He is hugely amused by me again.
“Just make the call.”
He takes his phone back and wanders away, one more guy on his cell in LA. Only his call connects with an encrypted line somewhere back in Virginia.
After ten minutes, he comes back to his seat and cracks opens a fresh beer. He doesn’t say anything. I know the answer already.
I hand him the thumb drive. “Now, yo
u know what happens if your guys don’t come through on this?”
“I don’t think it would make a difference,” I say. “She’s a true believer. An idealist. Hard to change their minds.”
“Yeah, I seem to recall having that problem with a couple of my recruits.”
I actually feel a small surge of pride from him. He must have been drinking before I got out here.
But it doesn’t matter.
Aaric Stack will not face any liability for his part in creating the code behind Bankster, or, for that matter, Downvote. And he will get to go on writing his software that will hopefully nudge us in the direction of our better angels.
Sara will help him do it. Maybe it will even do some good.
A young woman stands up from her lounge chair, passes in front of us, and jumps into the pool. We both watch her for a moment.
“She’s young enough to be your daughter,” I say. “Granddaughter.”
“You know, I keep hearing how old I am,” Cantrell says. “Brave new world out there. Software and algorithms are the new arms race. Data that steers people around. Automated crowd control.”
“Guys like you and me, we’re supposed to be obsolete.”
He laughs, and it goes down deep and genuine. “I hear that every couple years or so. First it was satellites. Then spooky bastards like you. Then drones. And now this”—he holds up the thumb drive—“is supposed to put me out of business. And yet, somehow, I seem to keep cashing my paycheck.”
“There’s something to be said for the human factor.”
“Damn right,” he says, and clinks my bottle with his. Then he passes me the copy of People he was reading before I walked up.
There’s a picture of Kira, still in her hospital bed, but with a bridal veil on her head. She’s pale and thin, but smiling. Her fiancé holds her hand. The headline says kira couldn’t wait another day!
There’s a quote pulled from the story below that, in big, bold letters: Things like this really teach you to seize life’s moments while you can.
Armin told me about it when I called to tell him the man behind Downvote was dead. He said Kira decided to get married in the hospital, almost as soon as she was out of her coma. I wasn’t invited to this one. Probably for the best.
“Well,” Cantrell says, “at least somebody got a happy ending out of it.” He swallows the rest of his beer and then belches. “Speaking of which. I got an appointment for a massage. Always good to see you, John. Let’s do it again sometime.”
He stands up and we shake hands. He’s got his trademark shit-eating grin on his face, making me think that despite the fact that I should know everything, Cantrell has somehow gotten the best of this deal.
We both head back into the lobby. Cantrell walks out the front door.
I watch him go. I’m about to head to my room when I stop and think for a moment. Someone once said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
So I detour in the direction of the front desk.
The clerk smiles at me again. “Something else I can help you with, Mr. Smith?” he asks.
“I need my bill,” I say. That catches him off guard. He knows my deal here. So I make it even clearer.
“I’m checking out,” I tell him. “It’s time for something new.”
Acknowledgments
As usual, this was not a solo effort. First and foremost, as usual, many thanks to my brilliant agent, Alexandra Machinist, and my peerless editor, Rachel Kahan.
I also interviewed several people who were kind enough to share their expertise with me.
Kent Moyer, CEO of the World Protection Group, told me what it takes to keep celebrities and executives safe from threats. Jessica Ansley, a personal protection specialist with the Executive Protection Institute, expanded my knowledge further and answered my questions about what it’s like to be a woman working in that world. They were both extremely generous with their time and I appreciate it.
Thanks to the real Jezebel Todd, who is definitely not an assassin. (Honest.) Thanks as well to everyone at ICM and William Morrow and HarperCollins who worked hard to get this book published.
Dr. Jonathan Hayes, an outstanding author in his own right, helped me with a question about leg injuries. Brian Laing and Engin Kirda of Lastline, an Internet security firm, talked me through the shadowy corners of the Dark Web and explained it in terms I could understand. Andrew Komarov of Infoarmor was my guide through the world of high-stakes cybercrime and online theft. And thanks as well to Dan Chmielewski, who arranged my interviews with them and who continues to be my go-to guy for all questions related to high-tech security. The legendary Beau Smith remains my personal armaments consultant.
The “sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs” analogy comes from Lieutenant Colonel David Grossman’s book On Combat. The response about treating people like sheep comes from David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5,000 Years.
The use of “emotional contagion” techniques by Facebook is real, and was covered by Vindu Goel in the New York Times and by Micah L. Sifry for Mother Jones.
I also relied on the work of other authors and journalists for some of the real-world details in this book, including How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker; So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson; Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World by Michael Lewis; “All Governments Seem to Be Winging It Except for China” from Douglas Coupland’s collection Shopping in Jail: Ideas, Essays, and Stories for the Increasingly Real Twenty-First Century; No City for Slow Men by Jason Ng; The Dark Net by Jamie Bartlett; Who Owns the Future? by Jaron Lanier; How to Speak Money by John Lanchester; Pay Any Price by James Risen; Andy Greenberg’s fascinating and compelling coverage of the Dread Pirate Roberts and the Silk Road case in Wired (with reporting by Nick Bilton) as well as Sarah Jeong’s pieces on the trial for Forbes; Ron Gluckman’s story about Golden Boten City in Forbes; and dozens of stories and articles about online harassment, trolling, and Internet mobs from many sources, including Gawker, the Guardian, Bloomberg Businessweek, Buzzfeed, the Economist, Vox, the Verge, re/code, and others. My apologies to anyone I have forgotten or failed to mention.
Finally, I am once again grateful to my family, who give me everything and wait patiently while I spend my time typing words onto a screen. Any mistakes or inventions are entirely my own.
About the Author
A former journalist and screenwriter, Christopher Farnsworth is the author of the Nathaniel Cade/President’s Vampire series of novels, which was optioned for film and TV and has been published in nine languages. Born and raised in Idaho, he now lives in Los Angeles with his family.
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Also by Christopher Farnsworth
Killfile
The Eternal World
The Burning Men
Red, White, and Blood
The President’s Vampire
Blood Oath
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
flashmob. Copyright © 2017 by Christopher Farnsworth. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written
permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
first edition
Cover design by Owen Corrigan
Digital Edition June 2017 ISBN: 978-0-06-256847-2
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-256849-6
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