by PJ Manney
“I have to be.”
“I don’t think you can. These guys are big marks. The biggest. You need big guns to even play. You can’t offer your expertise. They’ll recognize your mind in a second. That means big money and a very seductive, misleading package to get them interested.”
“Well, I’ve got no money and no tech to offer. Good start.”
“Know anything about hacking foreign bank accounts?”
“In my misspent youth, I stole cars. Not currencies. And I always returned them.”
“Just proves that ethics and a Stanford education are useless in the real world.” She smiled wanly. “That’s okay. I do. Or I have friends who do. But you need a new identity first, one that can receive the money.” She walked back to the kitchen. “But that’s way ahead of ourselves. After the earful I got, you’re not leaving this apartment, or even the sofa bed, for a long time. Not until Dr. Carbone gives the okay.”
“You mean Steve, your lover. Or ex-lover.”
Talia’s thoughtful smile fell, and her face went blank. She tossed the towel on the counter and without a word, stormed straight to her bedroom and slammed the door.
“Shit . . .” Peter sighed.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
When Talia went out the next day to interview a twenty-four-year-old start-up king for Forbes, Peter seized the opportunity to do a quick search of the apartment. Disregarding his pain, he rifled Talia’s nearly empty desk and tried to hack into her HOME, but it was password and bio-ID protected and nothing he tried worked. She had taken her work tablet with her. He looked in and behind furniture, cabinets, under carpets, checked garbage, but couldn’t find anything, not even her blond wig or bobby pins. Her apartment was as clean and anonymous as a hotel room. It looked like this was a setup. But for what? Exhausted, he collapsed on his bed.
When he awoke the next day, the Cortex 2.0 processor lay on his pillow. He pried open the back with his fingernails. Evaporated seawater left mineral and organic deposits, corroding metal. It was useless until he could replace some parts and build a new reader program. And he didn’t have the parts or equipment. There was only one world-class lab that could do this kind of work. And sneaking into Prometheus Industries was too big a risk.
He would have to build his own lab, but it would take time. And money. Then he would know what information Josiah and the club believed was so important that people had died for it. Talia didn’t know it had been attached to Dulles’s head. And Peter had no intention of telling her. Or she might take it again.
One week went by. Then two. Then six. While she nursed him, she kept her emotional and physical distance, only touching him when necessary, not even accidentally, in the little space they shared. As much as he asked, she revealed nothing about herself after that first dinner. He had no idea where her money and contacts came from. He talked to Steve every few days, keeping him apprised of his recovery, and did the physical therapy exercises as best he could without a therapist.
Talia had told the truth about being a freelance journalist with access to club recruits. She was often out on the job or running errands for them both. Peter was alone in the apartment most waking hours.
She gave him access to the HOME, but only for entertainment and general information gathering. Looking up hot-button words was forbidden, like the names of his enemies, friends, or words connected to him, like “Prometheus” or “phoenix.” She promised, with permission from Dr. Steve and a good disguise, she’d take him to a public server with her encrypta-key and help him find out anything he wanted to know. Otherwise, he had to follow the rules. But Peter couldn’t wait, so he made generalized searches, following hypertext and links, often for dozens of jumps, to get to the websites he wanted. All his searching turned up little he didn’t already know. There wasn’t much information out there.
It was time for physical recreation. Talia bought protein and nutritional supplements as well as pastured meats, wild fish, and organic produce; free weights, exercise bands, a bench, and a treadmill. The living room was transformed into a tiny gym, with only room for the convertible sofa. With no tissue to lose, he had everything to gain. He kept the fat off and muscle grew steadily. Mesomorphic German genes paid off, but when muscles hit their natural peak, he went for the heavy artillery: Follistatin, a drug that inhibited myostatin uptake in muscles, creating a twenty-five to fifty percent increase in muscle mass. It was developed for patients with wasting diseases like muscular dystrophy or cancer and didn’t have anabolic steroids’ side effects. Pro athletes loved it.
Self-transformation covered every aspect of mind and body. When doubts plagued him, he thought about Amanda and Pop, and no matter how much he hurt, how tired or how overwhelmed he felt, he forged ahead with another set of bench presses, another mile on the treadmill. He’d kill those fuckers for Amanda and Pop . . . Amanda and Pop . . . Amanda and Pop . . .
On the second anniversary of 10/26, 60 Minutes aired a special report commemorating the attacks. Compelled to watch, Peter was mentioned several times by name as a co-conspirator with Chang and ATEAMO, even though they had no solid evidence, except his working relationship with Chang and his alleged suicide attack on the yacht that the government pinned on ATEAMO without explaining why. Carter was interviewed by Katie Couric for a few minutes. He handled her like a master. Serious, heartfelt, never wanting to condemn his friends, he left the audience feeling that Carter, and the nation, had been betrayed by two wicked men who had been as close to him as brothers, but he was too much of a good guy to want to believe it. Amanda was never mentioned, as though she didn’t exist. The performance was enough to convict Peter in the court of public opinion forever. Within hours, the blogosphere had placed Peter Bernhardt in the pantheon of evil along with Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and Bin Laden.
Good thing he was dead.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
San Anselmo, California, was the perfect West Coast town, for perfect people with perfect families and perfect bank accounts. Talia drove Peter in yet another car acquired ‘from friends’ through the picturesque Marin County village filled with chic shops, restaurants, and locals on their thousand-dollar bicycles, to an old ranch-house development from the late ’50s, whose once middle-class starter homes now sold in the millions of dollars to middle-aged DINKS.
Peter wore a dark blue fisherman’s cap, large sunglasses, khaki trench coat, white button-down shirt and red cardigan, navy slacks, and old-man comfort shoes. With the white hair, he looked like a retiree visiting from San Diego.
They parked in front of a ranch house. White, one story, with a well-designed and maintained front garden, complete with koi pond and tiny Japanese bridge. He expected Pat Morita to open the door. Instead, a short, overweight black woman in her seventies, balanced between two canes and moving with difficulty, stood in the doorway.
“Hey, Talia, honey. How you doin’?”
Talia grinned. “Better, now we’re here.”
The old woman squinted at Peter with suspicion. She asked Talia, “You sure ’bout this one?”
“Oh, yeah.” she replied.
“Then come on in, honey.” She waddled away, turning a moment to shake a cane at Peter. “And don’t you fuck with me.”
The interior of the house continued the Asian theme, with calligraphic drawings on parchment rolls and nineteenth-century Japanese triptych prints hanging on the walls. It was extremely tasteful. Simple, classic furniture with modern lines. Muted colors. They walked through a dining room and into the kitchen. The house was as immaculate inside as out, although he could tell none of it was new. He caught the bright pixels of a HOME unit paused mid–video game through a door to a small den. On the screen, a car was running over an old lady. Grand Theft Auto IX. There didn’t seem to be anyone else home who could be playing it.
He leaned over to Talia and whispered, “Is she Dr. Who?”
The old woman heard him. “You call me that?” she asked Talia. “You’re funny, girl.”
“Yeah, I made it up,” admitted Talia. “This is the kind of business where using names is meaningless.”
“I like that so much, I may print business cards,” said Dr. Who.
The dining room opened with sliding doors to a teak deck. Peter peeked out. The backyard was extraordinary. Water features burbled musically over perfectly placed stones and around a variety of Asian plants in meditative compositions. A tiny teahouse was hidden in one corner, with another pagoda pavilion in the other, both reached by exquisite, meandering pathways.
“Wow . . .” For a moment, he forgot why he was there. It was restful just to look at it.
“My husband and I created everything you see, and I’ve spent at least two hours almost every day for more than fifty years on that garden. It kicks your scrawny white ass wow.” She smiled at Talia. “Want some iced tea, honey?”
“Yes, thanks,” replied Talia.
Dr. Who pulled a glass pitcher covered in painted sunflowers from the fridge and poured the tea into three tall glasses with matching sunflowers.
“Fifty years?” said Peter.
“I moved into this house when it was new, with my new husband. He’d just come back, stationed in Korea and Japan, and we married, and he went to work as a teacher for the local school system. He ended up a high school principal. Wilber died, bless his heart, about twenty years ago. I worked for the Social Security Administration in San Francisco. And I raised three God-fearin’ children here, may I add! I was the only black woman in the neighborhood then. And you know what? I’m still the only black woman in the neighborhood!”
“Was that hard?” he asked.
“Whaddya think, they sent over the welcome wagon? When Wilber was alive, we managed fine. After he died . . .” She sighed. “It got real nasty. Some neighbors tried to ‘encourage me’ to move on, complete with all that Frisco PC BS and promises of a real estate payday. But I bought this land, and it’s mine until I die. They can kiss my black ass—you know what I’m sayin’?”
Talia took two glasses, Peter took one, and they followed Dr. Who back into the hallway toward the bedrooms. There were four bedrooms. A small one had a freshly made twin bed and appeared lived in by the good doctor. One was ready for guests, with two twin beds with trundles beneath them. It could sleep four, but it would be very cozy.
“Got grandkids every weekend. Those rug rats are a handful . . .”
The two rear bedrooms were completely blacked out. She had converted one into a server room, and the master bedroom became her office. It consisted of a large glass desk and midcentury credenza, an ergonomic chair, and a couple of upholstered chairs for guests. A very impressive HOME setup, linked to her server room. And the most advanced security system he’d ever seen in a private house. He didn’t know anyone who had a system like this outside paranoid billionaires and corporate or government institutions. A separate monitor covered cameras—both regular and infrared—air movement, and a pressure graph of floors, walls, and ceilings, as well as her fences and pathways outside. If a cat burglar or SWAT team tried to get in here, she’d know the moment their body weight hit her property or their rotor blades fanned her bonsai. But how fast could she move on those canes, for all her prior warning? Dr. Who gestured to the chairs and sat with an audible “Oof!” in her own.
She looked him over once again. “So my girl here tells me you need an extreme makeover.”
“Forgive me if this isn’t considered . . . proper . . . but I don’t know you from Adam, and I do know how hard what Talia’s proposing is. Can you really do this?”
Dr. Who’s vast bosom giggled with laughter. “Honey, you have no idea! You remember what I did for a living?”
“Social Security.”
“The San Francisco office runs California, Arizona, Nevada, Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, and Saipan. I was there for forty-two years. Worked my way up from a secretary to a GS-15 in information resource and technology management. Even the regional commissioner wasn’t my boss. Mine were back in DC. I ran the information flows for the entire region and their connections to the national database. Of course, I was involved with information security, too. Can’t have one without the other. But like all bureaucracies, they talk a good game about protectin’ your assets and your ass, but they don’t deliver, ’cause it costs money they’d rather spend on pork barrel. I made a stink for a long time about that. Not right the government’s givin’ away folk’s financial security to any old ID thief with the right hand, and collectin’ their taxes on stolen money with the left! And what it get me? DC made me retire. And that made me mad. I expected to die with my boots on! What the hell else was I gonna do? Just garden?”
“She’s also a famous Metaverse avatar,” Talia said to Peter. “Ever hear of Foxy Funkadelia?”
Peter’s lower jaw went slack. Foxy was a notorious ass-kicking omnisexual dominatrix and pole dancer–cum–web philosopher who had developed a global following. He’d seen her web exploits first hand. “No fucking way,” he whispered, blushing from the memory and the disconnect between the brilliant, sizzling hot, X-rated avatar and this righteous grandma giggling in her office chair.
“You think the juices dry up just ’cause you got no one to share ’em with? You gotta lot t’learn, boy . . .” Her bosom jiggled with laughter again. “But you can’t be doin’ that all day, every day. Fries the brain. Need gainful employment for mental health. So here we are. I got all the connections—both meat and digital—from my previous job in every aspect of governmental identity. That’s the easy part. And I got a way with creatin’ characters and scenarios. The hard part’s makin’ you seem like you always been there, everywhere. It’s a giant puzzle that needs every piece in the right place. So let’s start with the easy part. Talia told me you wanna be the age you look now. Pick one.”
She handed him four pieces of paper with a list of approximately 150 male names, their Social Security numbers, and dates of birth. They were all in their late forties to early fifties. A name jumped out on the list.
“Thomas Paine.” He handed the pages back.
Talia chuckled grimly under her breath.
“Whatchoo gonna do with a loaded name like that?” asked Dr. Who.
“I’m a one-man revolution.”
“Not a one-man nut job?”
“ ‘These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.’ Thomas Paine’s ‘The Crisis.’ It’s the quote that began the American—and French—Revolutions. And I’m going to deliver a revolution.”
The old woman looked at Talia with concern. “This boy serious or is he still on the oxy?”
“Serious . . .” sighed Talia.
“You really think you’re givin’ it to ‘the man’?” asked Dr. Who.
“Any way I can,” he vowed.
“You got delusions of grandeur, but I shouldn’t care, long as you got the cash for this.”
“It’s ironic, really,” said Talia. “The quote could be used by those who stand for—and against—the club. Everyone thinks they’re on God and history’s side.”
Dr. Who shook her head. “I think we’re livin’ in an age of misplaced religious feelin’. And that’s very dangerous. Instead of bein’ humbled by the unknowable God Almighty, there are a frightenin’ number ’a people who think they’re the Lord’s gun-totin’ sidekick. They claim they know what he wants done and how it wants doin’. What’s good for God is good for me and vice versa . . . as long as it’s still good for me in the long run, which must make it good for God. Imbeciles who don’t have two brain cells to rub together comin’ up with circular reasonin’ for crusades and inquisitions . . . get us all killed . . .” She typed on her keyboard, accessing Social Security’s databases. “Please tell me you’re not one of them ‘Jesus is my ass-kickin’-warrior’ types. Or I’ll whip your ass with this,” brandishing a cane, “as I k
ick it out my door.”
“I’m not. How do you make the hard copy look legit?”
“If you didn’t need a lot of background or were only goin’ to use it for a short time, I could do it quick and cheap, with a forged birth certificate and a stolen Social Security number. The companies that provide the actual holograms and RFIDs to the DMV and the State Department sell ’em to less authentic companies, like myself, and make a killing. Black-market identification is big business. I can get them through real government departments if you want, but it wouldn’t matter. Costs more for the same thing. All that would get you by if you were an illegal looking for work or wrongly accused and on the run—by the way, I also don’t work for real criminals, so don’t you get any more crazy ideas—because with those two documents, you can get a driver’s license, a passport, and start a line of credit. But in the age of Google, you need some serious hacking to create a realistic deep background of someone who never existed. Bank accounts and credit history, IRS and Social Security history, family history, travel and immigration history, education, work history, mentions in the media, family photos on file-sharing sites, and there’s so much more. And it’s all possible for a price, honey.”
“If you’re angry the government isn’t protecting national security, why are you doing this?”
“I never said it was about national security. I said they were lettin’ bad guys steal John Smith’s money. And makin’ him pay taxes on it first! Problem is, everyone’s turnin’ out to be a bad guy. Did you know the worst offender distributing your precious identity information to the criminal element is the United States Federal Government? Either through incompetence or on purpose, because we’re all for sale, honey. National security is make-believe. They don’t follow everythin’ you do because they think it’s makin’ the country safe from terrorists. Yes, they want you to think they are so you reelect ’em. But they aren’t. All a body needs to do is look at the budget appropriation expenditures and then compare that to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University so you see where the money and people really go. All that taxpayer dough, buildin’ bombers and comin’ up with the next harebrained high-tech gizmo that’ll supposedly stop a terrorist in their tracks. Only they don’t. They pay out to the contractors, who pay in with campaign contributions. Money just goin’ round and round. And they ignore basic security, ’cause it ain’t sexy, and their donors only make money when bad stuff happens. Not when we’re safe . . .”
