Chapter Sixty–Seven
Trace
"I presume that you have something good to tell me?"
Tanner, again, could only nod as he stood in Mr. Baker's doorway panting.
"Well let's hear it son," Baker prompted without looking up from his stack of loose papers.
"I found it. I found the signal, well… it's not really a signal, but you know… I mean…"
Baker looked up. "Settle down. We're all a little tired here. Just… come over here, sit, and tell me son."
Tanner did as bidden, even though he was sincerely afraid of falling fast asleep in front of his boss. "I found the code that he's using to hide himself sir. I haven't messed with it at all yet. Nothing. But I can see it. I'll see how it reacts to a ping… maybe there's nothing attached to it, but this is when we have to be most careful."
"Is that what you've got for me right now?"
"Yes, that's… that's it," Tanner said, blinking away the sleep.
"Get back to it. And bring in some clear heads to make sure you don't blow us up."
Tanner staggered out.
* * *
“It’s getting dark,” Seth said.
Ray examined the faint light that sifted in through the papered windows upstairs. “You know, I’ve lost track. Feels like morning to me.”
Seth nodded. "It’s the bagels. You’ll be like the first hostage in history to gain weight as a prisoner.” There were rings under his eyes, dark heavy ones that competed with his fading bruises. Meek was wrung out, but they were upstairs sitting on the floor like a couple of half–assed urban campers, which seemed almost normal.
Ray’s ankles were still bound, and he worked them around a little to keep the blood flowing. He’d found that over time it had been his hips that ached the most from having his feet tied. Why, he didn’t know, but the only thing that made it better was arching his back over and over. It made Meek smile and again he promised. "It won’t be long now.”
“I’m alright.” He added his empty can to the pyramid they’d been building. “Sorry about blowing up on you.”
“Are you sorry because I’m the one with the gun, or because you think you shouldn’t have been slightly irked at life in general? Because both are kinda fucked up aren’t they?”
“You’ve got plenty to think about without me throwing a fit,” Ray said. His can balanced perfectly. Another week and they’d have the beginning of a monument.
“That sounds a lot like you’re worried about me giving you a third eye.” Seth flipped open his laptop.
“Not really, I just told myself that I’d be an observer… nothing else. I got in the way.”
“Hell I dunno Ray,” Seth began. “How’s a guy keep his pants clean in something like this?” That Ray’s pants were covered in scribbles and more was a fact not lost on either of them.
“How’s the voting going?”
Meek seemed almost intoxicated, he was slow to reply. “You really want to know, or should it be a surprise?”
Ray shrugged. “I’ve had plenty of surprises lately.”
“Just one more then,” Meek said. “Weird isn’t it?”
“What’s that?”
“Voting. It’s like picking some kid who can sing on television. Right now the world’s getting a chance to weigh in on the oldest question of justice. The whole ‘eye for an eye’ thing. And without pretense. They can vote how they want, no pressure, no church breathing down their neck, no politicians waving a battle flag.”
“They are though you know…” Ray said. They’d been watching the television feeds. Talking heads abounded. Left wing, right wing, evangelists and hairdressers… everyone had an opinion on The Trial. And everyone was trying to rally their troops to vote one way or the other.
“Sure, but the voting isn’t done in public. This grand jury votes in private and finds out in the end what they’ve decided. Of course, it’s no better or worse than the system we have now – it’s still all fucked up right? It’s all influenced by how the tapes are played, cut up, how people interpret them, how they’re handled… by who’s shouting loudest about what a cock–up I am. Say one of those news crews decided not to go down into Widmore. Say they didn’t find that Saul kid’s mom. She didn’t get her time on TV. What if the other one’s parents were all squeaky clean praying over their lunch? Well spoken and in business suits? Would it change anything? I dunno. This way… my way, is all fucked up too, but at least everyone gets to see everything and, I guess that’s what I wanted all along maybe. I could pull the plug right now and the world would be different. In a way I've won.”
"How's it different? The world I mean."
Seth turned to Ray directly, "There's no maybe in what I'm doing."
Ray was shaking his head, "I don't understand… I'm tired."
"Everyone has to ask themselves what they would do if given the chance to right the world's shitty injustice on their own. And it's not just some abstract thing, because it takes about two minutes to vote. It's either yes or no, life or death. Do they care enough to vote? Do they hate something, a kid, a principle, an injustice in their own lives… enough to kill? Or do they love enough to stop it all? Do you bless these fucking kids or curse them? In the end, I hope… the world will be more polarized. People will believe in what they believe in… more. Does that make sense? Listen Ray, I didn't plan this all out very well, you've seen how close I've come to just ending those two. But from where I sit right now, drinking what'll probably be my last Coke, this sounds pretty good. I think that if people believe in something, they'll fucking fight. We've become too passive about the hate, the killing, rape, and suffering that's on TV every damn day. We just can't process it all. To survive we have to tune it out. But if we do… if we stick our heads in a hole and wish it away, it'll get bigger and bigger until it climbs over the back fence and kills your kids. That's what I did isn't it? I tuned it all out until it killed me. Hell Ray, we've all become too passive about everything, even love. Fear not, believe only, right? If people believe in something, I think I've made my point."
“Are you really going to let them go?” Ray asked. There was something different here, but he couldn't decide what it was–fatigue maybe–or just a man recognizing his own impending death. Maybe Seth was just excited for the end to be so near, but that didn't seem quite right either. His endgame was severely limited.
A nod. “If that’s how the jury decides it, yeah.” Meek squinted at his laptop and said, “Hello.”
Ray watched, but said nothing.
Seth wiggled fingers over the keyboard. "My former employers are looking for me.”
“What’s that mean?”
Seth smiled his jack–o–lantern smile. Ray had come to ignore the broken teeth. “See, they don’t know what’ll happen if they start putting pressure on my encryption. Everything is safe, I mean, the control towers at all of the airports aren’t going to shut down or anything. But computers are delicate creatures, so they’re testing. Trying the boundaries and seeing what they can or can’t do to defeat a system that also protects them.”
“Doesn’t someone else understand it all?”
“Sure, I’m not the only Keymaster, lots of ‘em understand it, but you see… that’s exactly it. It’s random. It’s all based off of atmospheric noise, which is as random as it gets. The encryption recycles all of the time based on what it hears from outer–space.”
“What if they take away its ears then? Isolate one thing and work on that?”
“That’s what they’re doing. Just not all at once. They’re afraid it’ll lock down. It won’t, but they don’t know that, not yet. It’ll take them at least eight hours to really isolate the last signal received and break it down into decipherable parts.”
“Eight hours?” Ray asked. “That’s not long at all.”
“This’ll be over in eight hours Ray. But it was close, yeah. They figured things out faster than I thought they would, but… oh well. I’m not ever going to get another
chance to make a better system." He looked up in the glow of the screen, "I’ll miss it.”
Ray had hesitated to ask a question since he’d arrived but it appeared that he may not get many more chances, so he risked it. "What’s after this for you?”
“Not much probably.”
“What’s that mean?”
“We’ll Ray, let’s talk options,” he said as he poked at his keyboard. “As I see it, I have some issues with the law don’t I?”
Ray waited until he saw Seth smile to add his own. "Right, but… is there an answer?”
“No, not really. At the local level, there’s enough to put me away for a long time. I don’t know what you’d call it in legal terms, but running people down with your car is not a good start in a long line of screw ups. Tack on the FBI’s kidnapping charges and a bunch of irate National Security types who figured out that I dicked around with their computers…I’m probably a terrorist by now." Meek yawned.
“So you run…” Ray said and began writing in a boxed off region just above his knee.
“No.”
The writing stopped. "No?”
“Where am I going to run to Ray? Seriously. Who hasn’t seen this face?” Still swollen and bruised and broken, Meek was unmistakable.
“So what’s that leave? Killing yourself?” Ray was incredulous.
“Ray, you’ve got some pieces of your story turned around. As much as I’d love to be the hero in this, I’m not. If ever there was a villain…well, that’s me.” Ray started to speak but Seth cut him off. “I let my family die on my knees, I've kidnapped people, I twisted the law, hijacked the NSA’s whole system, and I’m ready to execute two minors in front of the whole world. But you know what? At least I'm not dying on my knees." He looked at Ray again without really seeing him. It was as if he were realizing something on his own. "I'm not fucking passive anymore. I did something. I believed." His eyes refocused on his captive and he smiled. "I’m sure you’re a good writer and all, but look, I’m not waiting around in Federal pound me in the ass prison for your book to come out in hopes that it’ll clear my good name. Besides Ray, what do I have to live for?” Meek changed the subject with ease, almost as if he weren’t talking about his own death at all. "Wanna see how close they are?”
Seth twisted the computer around. The glow lit up Ray’s face in the darkening room and Seth took a moment to watch him. Probably, they could have been good friends in real life. Given different circumstances Ray would have fit right in with the Friday night crew at Esoteric, playing games and eating pizza. Complaining about commutes and gas prices and why the next World of Warcraft patch wasn’t out yet. It felt like another time, like his memories of elementary school – all smells and colors and holiday celebrations. But, it also felt tantalizingly close. As if he could just straighten up his tie and slide back into his cubicle as per usual. He’d get off work, play some games with his friends, go home to his wife’s best attempts at dinner, and his little girl’s half–hearted flute playing. It was all right there in his mind, but it wasn’t reality. Not any more.
A web–cam was broadcasting on the screen, refreshing every few seconds so that it came across very much like a slow motion cartoon. “This is Potomac Mills mall, the public webcam for the kid’s play area. Meek peered over the screen and then pointed. "And that… right there… is one of my cell phones, well where it will be anyway.”
Ray leaned close. The camera was positioned up above what looked like a big, indoor playground. Parents milled around the perimeter, some read books, others pointed and directed their toddlers through a maze of yellow and orange plastic blocks. One kid was standing up to his chest in an enormous vat of plastic balls, unsure of his next move. Ray had been through the mall in the past and he’d seen the play area, just never from above.
“Where? Where’s the phone?” Ray asked, quickly redirected into another one of Seth’s slights of hand.
Meek tapped the screen just over the plastic balls. “Down in the germ pit.”
Ray’s head snapped up. "How’d you get it there?”
“It's not there yet.”
Within five minutes of their watching, a man walked to the side of the play area and leaned over the foam covered railing as if watching the kids play. He lingered only a few moments, toyed with one of the plastic balls, tossed it back into the heap, then rose and disappeared into the shoppers. Elapsed time… about fifteen seconds.
“Now it’s there.”
“Someone’s helping you. Someone’s helping you?” Ray asked. “Who’s helping you?”
“Just some kid that needed fifty bucks.”
Ray’s expression made it clear that he didn’t believe a word of it.
Seth didn't care, he was thinking about endings.
* * *
“What’s so amazing about this thing?” Finn was saying. He held the big thermal scope up to his eye. “I can’t see shit.”
“Press your face into the eyepiece, that'll activate it,” Tonic said. The two FBI guys were twisted in their seats, waiting for the reaction.
“Holy fuckin’ shit,” Finn said when the black and white image materialized. He waved it around, searching the buildings in front of them. “Mary mother of God…”
Everyone laughed. It was pretty much the same reaction every time.
“This one’s pretty old,” Miller said. “The new ones knock your socks off I guess.”
“Fuck me,” Finn was still scanning. He couldn’t see through walls or anything, but the scope made it easy to pick out people in their ghostly white silhouettes farther down the street than he would have ever believed. He could tell what they were doing, how they were doing it, even partially obscured… you could kind of see through walls. “Jesus Christ,” Finn exclaimed again.
“We had a couple in our unit…” Tonic was telling Dupree. "Out in the mountains they were unbelievable…” The digital theme from Jeopardy suddenly interrupted the story.
Miller turned in his seat and grabbed at his phone. "Yeah. Yeah. Alright. Got it.”
“You do have cell phones!” Tonic said.
Miller was all business. "We’ve got to go. Get out.”
“Where to?” Finn said.
“Hurry, com’on,” Miller said, shooing them like children.
“Alright, alright,” Finn said. He jumped out of the car, Tonic just behind him.
Again the two detectives were standing on either side of the car, looking over the roof. Tonic shrugged. The engine revved, the magnetic bubble light clanked in place, and Dupree shouted another thanks for the pizza as they tore out of the lot.
The two stood a car’s width apart in the wind. “Well…” Tonic said. "Just when things were getting good.”
Finn was smiling, he held up the thermal scope. “At least we know they’ll be back.”
* * *
“What are we looking for exactly?” Ray asked.
“You’ll know when you see it I’m sure.” Meek was lying back against the stack of boards, his head resting on top of the heap. “How long?”
“It’s been about ten minutes,” Ray said.
Just a couple of minutes later several men rushed into view. Their yellow on blue block FBI letters were unmistakable. “Here…” Ray said, and Seth rolled unto his side to watch.
“Yeah, it won’t be long now,” Seth said and sat up again.
Ray kept vigil as agents flooded the picture over the next several minutes, searching about, coming in and out of the picture. Playland was unequivocally closed. Two men eventually were selected to dive into the basin of plastic balls. Ray stopped watching, it would be hours until they found the thing. “What won’t be long?”
“They had people there in fourteen minutes from the time that phone came on. That’s fast. Really, really fast, don’t you think?
Ray nodded. "Seems like it. So what’s that mean?”
“I think it means that midnight better come soon.”
“Do you want me to know who’s helping y
ou?” Ray asked.
“Not really. Nor do I want you to guess."
A couple sets of headlights washed past the windows causing Ray to stir. “Relax,” Seth said. “They wouldn’t have been on that phone so fast if they knew about this place. We’re good for a little while longer. Those are just cars going to the bar down the street.”
It made Ray feel good to be included in the we but he couldn’t quite explain why. He watched Meek rise, stretch, and then jog in place for a few seconds. “Tired?”
“Oh man,” Seth said. He was putting on his game face. Certainly there was no trace of good humor inside of him, but he was trying to convince himself that he could get through the next few hours. “I can’t remember ever being this tired.” He walked around the room and when returned to his spot to sit, his knees popped so harshly that for a moment Ray thought he’d broken one of the shelves.
“Want me to read some of the blog stuff on the site?” Ray suggested.
“Sure,” Meek sat back against the boards again.
Ray opened one of the many new "Trial" forums and scrolled down through the comments of just the last fifteen minutes and picked an entry at random.
He read, …the nigger’s getting off too easy. He done it just the same. Tried to kill a guy and he’s gettin treated like some prince. You oughta hang his ass.”
“What’s it signed?” Seth asked from his makeshift recliner.
“Would you believe X?” Ray asked.
Seth just smiled.
Ray selected another. Seth Meek is a hero…
“You see,” Meek interrupted. "They always want… they want to sign it X. Should have nametags for their pointy hats...”
Ray watched him stumble through his words. Right now, he thought, I could walk out the door. I could stop this all. But he wouldn’t. And not because he was fearless. No one knew how this would end, and honestly, Ray didn’t even know if he was on the ‘loose ends’ list or not. The truth was… he was curious. He wanted to see how it would play out. And then, with a shame he hadn’t felt for years, he realized that he had a chance to save Meek from himself. If he was really going to kill himself, this would be the time to stop it. But he wouldn’t.
Jury of Peers Page 35
