by Matt Richtel
That’s it. Just what I’m looking for. Not the bridge, the view. It’s given me an idea of a place where I can get a tactical advantage, if there is even one to be had.
I’m pushing the accelerator as I putt-putt my tin can up and through the Presidio. I’m trying to get some distance between me and the thugs, but manage just fifty yards or so. Within a few minutes, I’ve powered through the ritzy Sea Cliff neighborhood and found myself in the quiet, tree-shrouded edge of the public golf course that hovers along the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
Without warning, I pull my car over in a spot along the seventeenth hole. I unfurl myself, climb out, and start ostrich-loping.
7
I don’t turn around until I’ve nestled myself behind a tree along the cliff. It’s desolate, a low wind sweeping across the short, three-par hole, and it’s beautiful. Behind me, I can see the bridge reflecting moonlight.
I’m being followed by the parade of killers and would-be killers, the puffy guy from the bar and his pal in the lead, the horse-faced guy bringing up the rear, all huffing, just like me. But there’s a difference: all three have their guns drawn. This is going to be tricky.
They’ve stopped, and spread out a bit, Hearty to the far right, his henchman just to his left, Fred’s killer farther over still. They’re all crouched. Battle positions.
I yell: “Promise you won’t kill Zeke.”
The three pause. They can’t tell my precise location. I’m north of them, behind the tree, bushes surrounding, a good place to lose a golf ball, an impossible place for me to get shot, at least at this angle.
“You have my word.” It’s the puffy guy from the bar.
I hear a dark purring of low-level laughter. It belongs to Fred’s killer. “Your word?!” he exclaims. A terse wind gusts across the fairway. “You’ll say anything to get what you want. Don’t listen to him. Give me the computer drive and I’ll make things right.”
Now it’s Hearty’s turn to guffaw. “I’ll say anything?! Look in the mirror. You’re in this for yourself, period. You want one thing: power. You’ll do and say anything to get it.”
“Oh, shut the fuck up!” That voice belongs to the third guy, the one closer to the middle, the guy who whacked me in the leg. “You two are ridiculous. Birds of a fucking feather.”
The birds begin to squabble. I see guns pointed. I’ve got them plenty heated up. This just might work.
“I’ll give it up, the thumb drive,” I shout. “First I want answers.”
They’re paused. They look in my direction. I hear a foghorn in the distance. I work up some energy to spout out my theory. I say: “Fred figured out how to tap into the computers of all the candidates for higher office. He’s got their Internet searches. He can expose their digital secrets, their secret desires and queries.”
I pause.
“It’s private,” one of the thugs says. “It’s stolen. Besides, it doesn’t necessarily say anything about their core values.”
I ignore him. “He stored it all on some Google server somewhere, in one of those massive data warehouses. Someplace you couldn’t possibly find. And he made a copy for himself, the one in my pocket. You guys pieced it together. How? Did he start threatening to go public?”
Another silence. Then: “You hear about the Republican in Macon who pulled out of the twelfth-district race?” It’s the third guy, Hearty’s henchman.
“Enlighten me.”
“The local paper got tipped off to the fact she’d been shopping around to find a discreet place to get her daughter an abortion. She was ardently pro-life.”
“Fred gave it to them.”
“It was his test case. We figured it out. Realized he’d put together a dossier.”
“We?”
They start squabbling.
“And the movies,” I shout over them.
I prompt a silence, the low wind coursing through it.
“He managed to get video of the candidates, in real time, as they did their searches.” I’m musing, guessing. I’m picturing the image of the presidential challenger, hair tousled, sitting at his desk doing some lurid search. Most of the search logs on the computer drive had attendant movie files. This part I can’t quite figure.
“He used the cameras built into their own laptops, in a few cases, on their phones.” It’s Hearty’s pal again, the muscle, sensing my uncertainty, filling in blanks. “Everyone has a camera these days, for videoconferencing or whatever. He just programmed the devices to record every time there was an Internet search. It’s basic stuff. Think of all the Internet searches you’ve done. You really think those are private. You think Google or Yahoo doesn’t know. It’s their business to know. Fred figured out a wrinkle, pairing the searches with video; I’m sure lots of bad dudes have been working on developing the same technology, or have it. More than these two turkeys want the disk, they want Fred’s IP.”
“Not true,” Hearty protests.
“I’d absolutely deny it,” exclaims Fred’s killer.
“You really think your data is that secure. Jesus, the Pentagon can’t keep people out of its servers.” The third guy inserts himself over them. “What makes you think you can keep people out of your MacBook Air?”
“I’ve got a desktop.”
No response. Maybe we’ve hit an impasse, or this Luddite revelation is truly a conversation-deadening admission. In the void, I have a realization.
“Which one of you guys is the Republican?”
No answer.
“One of you guys is a Republican, and one is a Democrat. You’re party honchos. You were working together to try to track down Fred and his computer drive. But then you turned on each other.”
“Guy’s a hypocrite,” shouts one. “Oh that’s rich,” shouts the other. “You’re destroying this country with your lies.”
“Hey! Enough!” My voice cuts through the squabbling. I look up and see the rogue’s moon; full, shadowed by high clouds, just the way the old-time pirates liked it so they could sneak up on the galleons.
“Come and get it.”
I toss the thumb drive out into the middle of the fairway, almost equidistant from the killers. I can see it bounce in a patch of moonlight and settle somewhere in the darkness.
There’s a moment of silence.
A gunshot rings out.
I peer into the darkness. A muzzle flash, then another. A blaze of gunfire. I see the puffy guy fall, then Fred’s killer. I tuck myself against the tree. The flurry of firing slows. I peer out again. The henchman still stands, wobbly but walking. The guys on the ground are moaning, bullet-riddled, moribund.
The guy walks over to the area of the thumb drive.
“Help,” he mutters.
“Who are you?” I shout.
“This is not my problem. These guys are crazed hypocrites. I’m independent.”
“Who?”
“Swing vote.” He reaches down to pick up the thumb drive.
Two shots ring out, from the fallen, writhing killers. The guy in the middle goes down in a heap.
I hear sirens, distant, approaching. I crouch, listening. The thugs’ moaning has stopped, the writhing ceased. I scramble back across the fairway. I pause to look at the bodies. The puffy guy, the one who threatened me, totally dead, looks to have dented the grass with his heavy body. I’ll have to ask Nat, but I wonder if he could be suffering elephantiasis.
I turn to the other guy, the one who killed Fred. Equally deceased. With his mane of a mullet and long face. I make a note to figure out what medical condition makes you look like a dead donkey. I thoroughly wipe down Fred’s phone and slip it, fingerprint free, into the dead guy’s shirt pocket. The cops can make the connection.
I pick up the thumb drive.
I hustle to my car and jam myself inside. I drive back out through the Presidio. When I reach an overlook, I stop. I yank myself out of the car. I throw the drive into the ocean.
8
Back at my house, the next morning,
I sign up for Facebook. I glance at Meredith’s thumbnail picture. She’s smiling with her eyes, not her mouth, and it makes me ache with nostalgia. I consider “friending” her. Too backdoor. Too snoopy.
Using my landline, I call information in Santa Cruz. There’s a listing for Meredith Canter. I know it’s her because the street address where she lives is in the neighborhood she always dreamed about. I don’t think about it too much. I dial.
After two rings, the phone is picked up. “Hello.” I lose my breath at the sound of her beautiful voice. Before I can answer, she says: “Hold on a second, please.”
Then I hear scuffling in the background. I hear her say: “Hold on, Zekey, my love. Mamma’s got to take a call.”
I feel my heart break. If Zeke is my offspring, Meredith has a reason for keeping the secret. Maybe she suspects I’d be a rotten father, like my dad and the whole stinking bloodline. Or maybe it’s not mine and she doesn’t want to hurt me.
I hang up.
I notice the video camera perched on the computer. It came with the damn thing, supposed to be for Skype. I stare into its black eye.
I think about all the searches I’ve done, looking for a job, passing late nights, buzzed on cheap gin, grazing on the Internet, indulging whatever whim, following links. Believing my behavior to be between me and my browser. Under the gaze of this electronic eye, unblinking.
Big Brother isn’t looking over my shoulder, as the cliché goes. He’s staring me right in the face.
I look at Meredith’s thumbnail image on Facebook. I want to call her back, just to tell her: toss the gadgets, raise Zeke on paper and pencil.
I close the browser.
Some secrets were meant to remain buried.
Acknowledgments
There is no “i” in Cloud. This was another team effort. Thanks to:
The Creative Fellows League: Josh Friedman, David Liss and Bob Tedeschi.
Carl Lennertz, great editor and friend. And the rest of the Harper team: Liate Stehlik, a publisher who gets people; publicity juggernauts Pamela Spengler-Jaffee, Andy Dodds, Jesse Edwards, Shawn Nicholls, and Jay Corson. Tessa Woodward, patient sherpa on the publishing journey.
Agent and sister-of-another-mother Laurie Liss.
To bookstores. Big and, especially, small.
Meredith, for patience, spark, encouragement and perspective. I love you. And for your fecundity. Books are nice. Milo and Mirabel are transcendent.
About the Author
MATT RICHTEL is a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times technology journalist and novelist. He is the author of two previous critically acclaimed novels, Hooked and Devil’s Plaything, and his fiction, like his journalism, focuses on the impact of technology on how people live, behave, and love in the 21st century. He won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting for his series on distracted driving. He lives in San Francisco with his family. Please visit him at www.mattrichtel.com.
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By Matt Richtel
THE CLOUD
DEVIL’S PLAYTHING
HOOKED
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
Floodgate copyright © 2012 by Matt Richtel.
THE CLOUD. Copyright © 2013 by Matt Richtel. 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 hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition FEBRUARY 2013 ISBN: 9780062198051
Print Edition ISBN: 9780061999703
First Edition
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Table of Contents
Dedication
Epigraph
Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Excerpt from Floodgate
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Acknowledgments
About the Author
By Matt Richtel
Copyright
About the Publisher
