by Matt Richtel
I read on, through hundreds and hundreds of entries, then see:
I pause to let myself put a fine point on what I’m seeing. It’s a list of Internet searches. “IP address”—Internet protocol, if memory serves—refers to a specific Internet connection associated with the search. In more lay terms, it is the address of a computer, a number that, in effect, signifies a specific computer. In this case, evidently, the computer belonging to a Republican candidate for the senate, or a computer in his or her household.
The search term must refer to a specific Internet search on a specific date, something that someone sought on Google or Yahoo or, what’s the name of Microsoft’s version, Bing?
That’s explosive stuff, and private. Fred’s somehow tapped into these private searches. I pass over that mind-boggling concept and consider the specific search terms.
The would-be Republican senator has looked for how long marijuana stays in the system, and how to get it out of the body, how to dupe a urine test. Previously—I glance up the search list—the candidate has searched on how to tell if a child is gay, and has made sporadic searches about ordering OxyContin without a prescription from an overseas pharmacy. Hypocrisy potential: high.
I close the document and I click on the file for Steve Fisher, the Democrat in the South Dakota race. I skim through the mostly innocuous entries. Then I find a bunch of dates with entries like:
I look up from the file. I glance outside, seeing emptiness and quiet on the residential street but feeling self-conscious nonetheless. I feel like I’m holding something smoldering. It’s starting to make sense, particularly in light of the things I’d overheard Fred say about politics. He hated hypocrisy and insincerity. He said that the reason that politicians can’t solve real problems is that they can’t move beyond platitude. He wanted to use technology to bring truth to politics.
I think, sitting here squeezed into this car looking at this incredible document, that maybe he’s figured out a way to do so in the most extraordinary, and maybe most insidious, way in history.
What I’m looking at are the Internet search terms of all the people running for higher office in the United States. Somehow, Fred has managed to tap into their computers, and record hundreds, maybe thousands, of their individual searches, looking for behaviors and habits that might make them unelectable. No, that’s not right, I realize; it wasn’t that he was finding search terms that prove what makes them unelectable, but rather what makes them human.
Fred was going to expose the widespread commonality of people who cloak themselves as icons of moral purity.
Maybe.
There are some reasons to doubt the veracity and power of this document, both what it represents and whether it’s accurate. After all, even if he managed to pull up this level of surveillance, how could he prove that these aspirants of higher office were the people sitting at their computers doing the Internet searches? Could it have been their spouses, family friends, business associates? And, even if it was them sitting at the computer, couldn’t they claim otherwise?
But there is one major-league bit of evidence suggesting that this document is the real deal: someone is willing to kill for it. More than one someone.
I return to the map and do quick searches across the country, at house and senate races in California, Montana, Colorado, Georgia and Texas. Even a cursory glance shows me that, with rare exception, the documents have search terms that either are incendiary on their face or, in the hands of the right opponent or sensational media outlet, could bring shame.
I look at the clock. It’s 10:45. I’ve got to get the laptop back to Nat. I make a copy of the file and I save it to his laptop. I’m not super tech-savvy but I manage to bury the document in some file library where Nat’s unlikely to look, unless he was expressly searching there. And, without knowing what he was looking at, he’d be hard-pressed to understand it.
I’m about to close down the machine, when I realize there’s something I cannot resist. I return to the map. I run the cursor over Washington, D.C. Up pops a dialogue box with the two presidential candidates.
I click on the incumbent. As the search-term list materializes, I realize that I can’t believe that Fred would have been able to record the president’s searches. First of all, the president probably doesn’t do his own searches. And, secondly, even if the president does search the Internet, there’s got to be a massive firewall in the White House that would prevent such snooping.
The file opens. I nearly chuckle. Fred’s a genius. The search terms listed are from four years earlier, from before he was elected president. And there are a couple of striking ones, not eye-popping, but eye-catching. Searches about marital discord, mild pornographic searches, a few medical conditions I’m certain he wouldn’t want the world to know he was concerned about and that would make the year of a late-night talk-show comedian. Male yeast infection? Erectile dysfunction related to stress?
I turn to the challenger. I make it past the first page when I come to a scattering of entries that almost make me blush. One refers to a sex act that some might perceive as unorthodox or even perverse. And there are a bunch of searches about how to avoid paying taxes by parking assets overseas. I can’t believe this guy. What a hypocrite.
And I’m not sure I even want to know this about him, or for that matter, about anyone else. It’s like this document is letting me look into his soul, his digital soul.
I’m about to close the challenger’s file and shut the machine when something catches my eye. Atop the challenger’s file is an icon that looks like his face. Beneath it is a file name with the extension “.mov”. Now that I think about it, I realize I’ve seen similar links inside the files of the other candidates, but with their own faces as icons.
.mov—isn’t that a movie file?
I click on it, feeling a sense of dread. Am I going to see images from the sex sites the candidate thought he was surreptitiously surfing?
The file opens. The grainy movie starts to play. It’s an image of the candidate himself, from mid-breast up. His hair looks tousled, the slick look distinctly absent; he’s got stubble, wears a white V-necked shirt. He’s facing the camera but seemingly not aware of it. He’s looking a few inches below at something that has him rapt. He doesn’t blink. He swallows hard.
On the right of the movie screen, there’s an information box. It shows a time stamp, indicating this home movie was shot about five months ago, just before 2 A.M. And there’s a web site: Barebackbabes.
No, I realize, not a home movie. The candidate didn’t realize he was being observed.
“No way,” I mutter.
I scroll back through a couple of other candidates from across the country. Most have similar movie attachments, 95 percent at least. “No fucking way, Fred,” I repeat. “How?”
I look at the laptop, near the top, the innocuous little opening that houses a camera, standard in most computers these days, used for Skype or video conferencing or whatever. “Jesus, Fred.”
But better to confirm what I’m looking at than do a wild conclusion leap.
Less than two minutes later, I’m back at the alley behind Pastime. I poke my head in and ask one of the regulars playing pool in the back if she might tell Nat I’ve got his laptop. Not long after, Nat appears. I give him his laptop.
“Pickwick is back,” he says.
“Hearty?”
“Who?”
“The big guy from before.”
He nods. I think over why he might be at the bar, even though we’re not supposed to meet for another twenty hours.
“Is this guy a source?” Nat asks.
“Not yet.”
“Is he following you?”
I don’t answer but shrug in a way that suggests affirmation.
“You have a cell phone, Z?”
“I nod.” Not mine. Fred’s.
“You might want to turn it off,” Nat says. “It’s an easy way for someone to track you. They triangulate the signal, et cetera, et
cetera.”
“I miss being subject to a good old-fashioned physical stakeout.”
He laughs. “Cell-phone surveillance is standard operating procedure for the 21st-century bad guy or cop. They can track you to a general area, within about three hundred feet, but not to a precise location . . .” He pauses. “This sounds serious.”
I think about it. Maybe Hearty figured I’d be back here at some point and he wants to keep the pressure up. Or maybe this tough guy and his henchman tracked Fred’s phone. So they know I’m in the area. I feel Fred’s phone in my pocket. It’s got a sticky smudge along the bottom. Blood.
“Tell Pickwick you just saw me out back and I’m reachable on Fred’s phone.”
“Fred?”
I look away and exhale, lightly shaking my head. Not talking about it.
“You want me to call the cops?”
“I got this.”
He cocks his head, takes it in. “You want someone to ride shotgun?”
“You’ve got a pregnant gal. How’s she holding up?”
“Pauline. Polly. She’s showing. She’s tired as hell but I can’t wipe the grin off my face.”
“You looking forward to having a kid?”
“You’ve got no idea, Z.”
I love the look in his eye. I wonder if I’d have ever felt like that if I knew I was going to be a dad.
“You need a head start—before I give a heads-up to that thug?”
I shake my head.
Nat says: “I’m not sure what his medical condition is, but he’s got one. It’s going to cost him agility, leave him short of breath. Aim for the kidneys.”
It seems like he’s mostly joking. But I’m taking the counsel to heart. I head back to my car. I feel the sordid thumb drive in my pocket. I’m a tinderbox.
6
No sooner have I climbed into the smart car and revved the engine than the sedan with the dented hood—the one I pounced on hours earlier—comes around the corner. Hearty and his muscle. Just like I’d hoped.
They follow a half block behind me, keeping a respectful distance. I can imagine what they’re thinking: I’m not likely to do something too rash as long as there’s a possibility that they might kill some kid named Ezekiel who may belong to my bloodline.
I wonder if they know about Fred. Dead Fred.
I lead them down the peaks of Potrero Hill into the Mission flatlands. I’m waiting for something, an idea, a strategy. And then a wrinkle appears, wrapped in an industrial-strength pickup truck. I see it on the corner of Van Ness as I pass through on Sixteenth. I can’t believe my eyes. It’s being driven by the guy who killed Fred.
I recognize the long features, a mullet, upturned jacket collar and absence of any worldly conscience. In the streetlight glow, I see him catch my gaze, and then his dull black eyes widen. He’s noticed the sedan behind me, and its driver and passenger. He clearly didn’t expect to see them in the picture.
Interesting.
So maybe these guys aren’t pals after all. If not, what’s their relationship?
The pickup tries to turn behind me, but the sedan speeds ahead and cuts it off. No, definitely not pals. So it’s me, Hearty and his muscle, and then the pickup.
I pass a taqueria and a late-night Mexican bakery and hear my stomach growl. I glance in the rearview mirror. I see the passenger in the sedan craning his neck back to eye the killer in the pickup. He turns back to the driver, looking wary. This slow-speed chase is looking more and more like a three-way standoff, not two against one.
But how did the guy in the pickup know to find me, or us, if the group isn’t in cahoots? Could he also be tracking Fred’s phone?
I look at the clock. It’s 11:25. I glance again in the rearview mirror. I see the thug in the passenger seat glance behind him, then put something on the dashboard. A gun.
Near the freeway underpass, I slow down at a red light. Wondering just how much trouble I’ve gotten myself in by working under the assumption that I simply must be smarter than these meatheads. But these meatheads have guns and some killer motivation. Fred’s phone rings.
I look down. Private caller. The light turns green. I open the phone to answer the call and hit the button to put it on the speaker setting.
“Clock’s ticking.” It’s Hearty.
“Nifty plan,” I say.
“What’s that?”
“Call me while I’m driving so that I get distracted and crash into a truck.”
“Don’t worry. I won’t allow you to die until I get the thumb drive. It’s nonnegotiable. The information on it is irrelevant to you but is important to very important, and powerful, people. The technology can’t fall into the wrong hands.”
Technology. Interesting word choice.
“Whose hands would that be?” I ask.
In the second I wait for him to respond, the phone beeps. Another incoming call. Private number.
“Hold on.”
“What?”
On the phone, I click to take the other call.
“You took Mr. Sandoval’s phone.” It takes me a second to recognize the voice of Fred’s killer. But I’m not surprised to hear from him.
“Do you always refer to the people you kill with such formality?”
He grunts.
“I could use it to dial the cops right now,” I say.
“But you haven’t. You should. I’m sure they’d like to know the whereabouts of the guy who took that poor dead guy’s phone, same guy whose fingerprints are all over his office.”
I want to kill him.
Behind me, someone honks. Then another honk. I look up. I’m cruising too slowly as I pass the Opera House. But I’m lost in a thought, an idea, the outlines of one, fueled by my intensifying hatred for all these guys, and what I saw on that thumb drive.
I say: “Fred’s phone isn’t the only thing I found in his office.”
“Meaning what?”
I punch the accelerator, the car pushing forward like my thoughts. The guys following me don’t seem much like they like each other. Maybe they’re competing for this thumb drive. Willing to do anything to get it. I need to up the stakes.
I take a flyer, vaguely remembering something I read on the thumb drive, a couple of the searches.
“Colorado Springs.”
“What about it?”
“A guy in a tight house race. He seems to have a thing for watching the rough stuff. The kind of videos where women really do not seem to be enjoying themselves. At least, that’s what I infer he’s into from his Internet searches.”
“You’re bullshitting.” It’s not clear if this terrifies or thrills him.
“Maybe he doesn’t hurt anyone himself. Just watches the videos. No biggie, right? Everyone’s got their deal. The thing is, it’s not just him.”
“What?”
“Another guy out of Denver. Similar tastes. Probably just a coincidence. Though they do come from the same party.”
No response. Heavy breathing. I’ve got him, even if I’m not sure how.
“It could throw the whole election,” the horse-faced killer finally blurts.
Now I’ve got it, or I’m pretending to. “Craters the party in Colorado.” Which party, I don’t know. I’m riffing. “At least with the female voters. And it’s just the beginning. It could cost an entire party the house, the senate, who knows? Everything.”
“Who knows about this?”
“Fred, me . . .” I pause, just for an instant. “That guy in the sedan behind me.”
“You gave it to him?!”
“You killed Fred.”
“He was threatening me, this country. It was self-defense. This is bigger than you, bigger than me. It’s about the country.”
“Save it for Oprah when you get out of prison. Hold on.”
“What?”
I click back to Hearty, my brain racing.
He says: “You have the drive. What are you proposing?”
“Slow down. Two words for you: Colorado
Springs.”
On my right, I’m passing the Tenderloin, my apartment a few blocks to the right, then a mattress store that has been offering the same grand-opening prices for a decade.
“What about Colorado?”
I give Hearty the same spiel I gave the other guy, but with a twist. I tell Hearty the other guy already knows the story, all the info. I lay it on thick. “And Colorado is just the beginning,” I explain. “One state after the next, one race after the next. Could change everything.”
“You’re bullshitting,” he says. I nearly laugh. These guys sound like parrots. Parrots who are frothing at the mouth, carrying heat. Hearty protests: “How could you give it to that guy? He’s a killer.”
“Not of kids. Gotta run. Battery’s low.”
I hang up, just as I reach Bay Street, a fork in the road. To the right, downtown. To the left, the marina, the Golden Gate Bridge. I see the light in front of me start to turn yellow. I slow down to let it turn red. I squirm around in the tiny cockpit so I can open my window and pull the thumb drive from my pocket.
I hold the drive out the window, extending it high with my long ostrich wing. Showing it to my trackers. Look, guys, the most dangerous secrets in America. Come and get it.
I peel through the red light and turn left.
My dutiful trackers follow: continuing our cartoonish caravan; the putt-putt smart car valiantly peaking at 45 miles an hour, the dented sedan, the ominous pickup. I am trying to leave the impression that I’m trying to get away. But I’m not really. I’m just getting the last of the choreography together in my head. Pick the right location. Somewhere dark, shrouded, free of innocent bystanders.
I take a right toward the water, heading to the marina, reminding me of Santa Cruz, those idyllic days by the water with Meredith. I put her out of my mind with a glance in the rearview mirror, see the attentive thugs.
Looming above me, the Golden Gate Bridge. Its bottom half gleams in the moonlight, the upper spans splotched with fog. I’ve seen a million pictures taken of moments just like these, aiming to capture the swirling beauty of man’s attempt to triumph over nature, a gorgeous engineering feat, but with nature, in the way of the fog, getting the last word.
