Invasion of Privacy: A Novel Page 19

  Satisfied that he was alone—really and truly alone—and that no unseen witness was tagging along beside him, keeping a record of his every word and movement and reporting them to his master, he returned to his car and accelerated out of the lot.

  It was almost five.

  Happy hour.

  There was only one place he wanted to be.

  48

  “Do you know who Odysseus is?” Ian asked Katarina as he entered the spa. ONE 1 had landed a while ago, but he needed to stay at the airport to greet the Israelis.

  “A Greek,” said Katarina. “Was he a god or a man?”

  Ian closed the door and disrobed. “Man. A warrior. The chap who led all the others inside the Trojan Horse.”

  Katarina was wearing shorts and a tank top, her admirable biceps on display. She handed him his third batch of supplements. No magic drip today. After taking his pills, Ian lay down on the massage table. Katarina disrobed and when she was naked began to massage him, concentrating on the shoulders and neck, kneading his muscles with her strong fingers.

  “Why do you ask about Odysseus?”

  “Just curious.”

  Katarina found a knot deep down and applied pressure to it for a full minute. Ian sucked in air through clenched teeth. The pleasure was excruciating.

  “You are never curious,” she said. “Why are you thinking about the Trojan Horse?”

  “Ah, Katarina, you’re too smart by half.”

  The German moved her hands lower, working each arm, then his chest, then lower still. Ian gasped. The hands moved expertly, clinically, one professional working with another. He closed his eyes and let the pleasure engulf him. He was not thinking about a woman or a man or anything remotely physical. He was thinking about Odysseus. Not the warrior, but the software of his own creation, and it was far, far sexier.

  Odysseus was malware, a piece of software designed to take control of a computer independent of its user. He’d written it to perform three tasks—to surveil and transmit every keystroke of its host; to copy and transmit the contents of the host’s hard drive and any attached flash drive, backup drive, or auxiliary memory device; and to grant Ian complete control of the platform so that he might roam around it at will and edit, amend, copy, steal, or otherwise corrupt things as he saw fit.

  Upon landing, he’d shut himself inside his private quarters and spent much too long surfing the Net in an effort to find the most amusing video of an animal he could. He looked at Zen kittens, talking puppies, dancing fish, laughing giraffes, and a dozen other cute, cuddly, and altogether adorable creatures.

  Of course he also looked at the clip of the sloth. The sloth wasn’t the cutest by a long shot, but according to their browser log, the Grant girls must have thoroughly enjoyed it.

  Ian quickly found three additional clips of sloths that he found particularly irresistible. Irresistible was the key word in this endeavor. Finally he chose the one he thought the girls would like best.

  The trap was simple enough. E-mails would arrive in the mailboxes addressed to Grace and Jessie Grant carrying the header “Cutest Sloth Ever!” Opening the mail, the girls would be presented with a link to the video Ian had selected. The success of Ian’s ploy rested on one of the girls clicking on the link. Once they did, the video of the sloth would begin playing. Attached to it, ready to crawl into the deepest, darkest crevasses of the Grants’ computer, was Odysseus, as stealthy and cunning as the Greek warrior of ancient lore.

  Katarina’s fingers stroked him expertly, dispassionately. His back arched and she put her mouth on him. Ian allowed himself release, lips pressed together to stifle any escaping sound.

  Katarina cleaned him quickly and neatly. “Ian, may I ask you a question?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened to Odysseus?”

  “No one knows. He died, I suppose. Everyone must.”

  Katarina laughed, fixing him with her cold blue eyes. “Yes, Ian, everyone must. Even you.”

  Ian slapped her. “Don’t ever say that again.”

  49

  “He went dark,” said the Mole.

  “How’s that?”

  “Signal vanished.”

  “But you just had it.” Shanks glanced over his shoulder. The Mole sat at his console, headphones draped around his neck, eyes glaring at the monitor. Shanks returned his attention to the road. Rush hour, and traffic on I-35 was slow. “Find it?”

  “There’s no ‘it’ to find,” said the Mole. “One second he’s blasting in the clear. The next he’s dark. A ghost.”

  The Mole recommenced the search protocol by entering Tank Potter’s mobile phone number. The handset’s corresponding eleven-digit alphanumeric identification appeared on the screen. Potter was a ONE Mobile customer and theoretically easy to locate. The Mole requested that the number be pinged. A signal was broadcast to the handset in order to establish its real-time location as measured by the internal GPS chip standard in all cell phones. Two minutes earlier the phone, and presumably Tank Potter, had been inside the premises of the Austin American-Statesman at 305 South Congress Avenue. Now the pulsing red dot denoting his location had vanished.

  “He knows,” said the Mole.

  “About time. You wiped his photos an hour ago. His story just went up in smoke.”

  “Continue to his last known location. Let’s hope for a visual.” Shanks pulled into the Statesman’s parking lot five minutes later. “A rusted-out Jeep Cherokee shouldn’t be hard to spot.”

  The Mole slid into the front seat beside him and scanned the parked cars.

  “No joy,” said Shanks after he finished a circuit of the lot. “You sure he was here?”

  “GPS doesn’t lie.”

  “He’s gone now.”

  “I give him a ten-minute head start.”

  “What do you suggest?” asked Shanks. “We lick our finger, stick it into the wind, and guess where he’s headed?”

  “Pull over and be quiet.”

  Shanks slid the Airstream into a spot at the back corner of the lot. “Better be quick. Briggs wants this guy taken care of.”

  The Mole began feverishly typing commands into the console. It wasn’t a matter of guessing where Potter was headed but of analyzing his past actions to predict where, statistically, he was most likely to go, the pertinent question being, where could Tank Potter usually be found at five p.m.?

  First the Mole asked ONE Mobile’s servers to provide a history of Potter’s movements between the hours of four and six p.m., based on GPS readings transmitted from his phone. For a data range the Mole chose the past fifty-two weeks, with data points chosen randomly four times each hour. A jumble of nearly three thousand dots clogged the screen. It was immediately evident that he spent the preponderance of his time at or close to the Statesman headquarters.

  The Mole narrowed the search parameter to Thursdays while keeping the time period constant. Approximately four hundred dots remained and only confirmed that Potter rarely left a two-square-mile area surrounding his office. The problem was that many of the coordinates had been taken while Potter was driving and failed to offer an establishment where he might be found. Still, there were four smaller but statistically significant clusters of dots at defined locations other than the Statesman.

  The Mole accessed a record of all text messages sent from Potter’s phone on Thursdays between four and six p.m., winnowing the time frame to the past six months. He was not interested in the messages themselves but again in Potter’s geographic location when he sent them. A sample set of two hundred dots appeared. The four clusters were now just two, not counting the Statesman.

  The Mole activated the map’s tagging feature. The names of all nearby banks, restaurants, boutiques, and gas stations appeared. Potter had sent 107 texts from inside a single 50-square-meter perimeter.

  The Mole sampled several texts randomly, the messages appearing on an adjacent monitor.

  At P’s. You coming?

  Billy boy, get down here. The j
oint is jumping!

  Hi darlin! Hanging at P’s. When can I expect you?

  All three had originated from 16415 Barton Springs Road. Pedro’s Especiale Bar and Grill.

  The Mole brought up the website on his monitor. The screen filled with a picture of a black velvet painting of Salma Hayek in a bikini. “Throwback Thursdays. Happy Hour 4–8.”

  “Good news,” said the Mole. “We got him.”

  50

  “Well,” said Jessie. “What was that all about?”

  Mary waved as the Ford pulled out of the driveway. “I needed to talk with some of Dad’s colleagues.”

  “Why didn’t you drive?”

  “Someone else gave me a ride.”

  The front door opened. Grace stepped outside. “Where’s Tank?” Mary hesitated and Jessie pounced. “Who’s Tank?” she asked, dark eyes instantly suspicious, darting between Mary and Grace for any sign of treachery.

  Mary smiled. “Let’s go inside, Jess. It’s hot out here.”

  Jessie had been too awed at seeing her mother being chauffeured by a young, handsome FBI agent to ask any questions on the ride home from UT. She’d been in surprisingly polite form the entire way and spent the trip talking about how she’d been the only one in her class who’d solved some kind of challenging problem. “A hack,” she’d called it.

  “Rudeboy did it in five minutes,” Jessie had explained. “Okay, I’m not him. I needed thirteen minutes, but at least I did it, Mom. I did the Capture the Flag hack. I’m as good as Rudeboy, and he’s the best.”

  Mary shut the front door and walked into the kitchen, her daughters following like a lynch mob.

  “Who was driving that car, Mom?” asked Grace.

  “The FBI,” said Jessie. “Now be quiet. Mom didn’t answer my question yet. Who’s Tank?”

  “He’s a reporter,” said Grace.

  “For the Statesman,” said Mary, adding inadvertently, “kind of.”

  “Kind of? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Grace giggled. “He’s really tall and he has messy hair.”

  “Shh,” said Jess, her eyes never leaving Mary.

  “He had some questions about your father. That’s all.”

  “Was it about Dad’s voice message?”

  There it was: the reason for Jess’s worry. Mary had been foolish to think her soothing words would allay Jessie’s fears that she’d been the one responsible for erasing Joe’s voice message.

  “No,” she said, trying to sound light, breezy. “Just about his work. Nothing that concerns you two guys.” She took a bottle of orange juice from the fridge and poured two glasses. “Here you are. Why don’t you find something for all of us to watch on TV?”

  Jessie didn’t budge. “Mom, something’s wrong. We can tell. You’re not acting normal.”

  “Yeah,” said Grace. “I heard you talking to Tank before.”

  “He was here?” demanded Jessie. “In the kitchen?”

  Grace said, “What really happened to Daddy? What did he mean when he said that they were lying about what kind of gun shot him?”

  “Who was lying?” Jessie looked from Mary to her sister. “Grace, what did the reporter say?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Grace. “But he didn’t want them to take Dad to Virginia. That’s why Mom went with him downtown.”

  “Mom, you need to tell us what’s going on. We’re old enough to know.”

  Mary looked at her daughters. Chalk and cheese. She was at a loss for words. How much should she explain? Were they old enough to share her concerns? She felt cornered. She wished Joe were there to help.

  “Tell us the truth,” said Jessie. “This is about Dad. We have a right to know.”

  “What’s Semaphore?” asked Grace.

  Mary snapped, “Shut up, Gracie.”

  At once Grace’s eyes welled up.

  “Mom!” shouted Jess. “You shut up.”

  “Don’t talk to your mother that way,” Mary retorted.

  “Both of you, stop.” Grace looked between them, crying. “Don’t argue with each other. I hate it.”

  Mary wrapped her arms around Grace. “Come now, mouse. It’s all right. I didn’t mean it. Mommy’s just upset. I’m sorry.” She kissed Grace’s blond head and saw a shadow of resentment cross Jessie’s face. Mary opened her arm and motioned Jessie closer. “Come here, peanut.” Jessie shook her head, arms crossed.

  “Please,” said Mary.

  Jessie remained rooted to the spot, glaring at her mother. Mary sat down with Grace at the table and held her until she stopped crying. She noted that Grace had winced a few times since she’d come home. “What is it, mouse?” she asked. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing,” said Grace.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Don’t change the subject,” said Jessie. “She said she’s fine. Stop doting on her. She’s not some fragile piece of china.”

  “I’m fine, Mommy,” said Grace with a smile, wiping her eyes.

  “Really?”

  “Promise.”

  Jessie shrugged her shoulders and sighed dramatically. The only thing missing was a roll of the eyes. “Tell us about Dad.”

  “First of all,” began Mary, “you have nothing to worry about.”

  “Who said we were worried?”

  “That’s enough, young lady,” Mary snapped, fire in her eyes. Jessie swallowed and appeared to shrink an inch. Mary drew a breath and spoke calmly. “After your father was killed, I had some questions about exactly what happened. Mr. Potter had some questions, too, but he and I aren’t going to be talking about it anymore. This is something only I can figure out.”

  Jessie pulled out a chair and sat. “What do you think happened?” she asked, no longer the antagonist.

  “I’m not sure. Just—”

  “Did they take Dad to Virginia?”

  “Yes.” Mary related her conversation with Edward Mason, making sure to pass along his words about their father’s heroism. She had no doubt that Joe had acted heroically, no matter the exact circumstances of his death. Still, she felt disingenuous.

  “Sounds like bullshit,” said Jessie.

  “No curse words, young lady.”

  “Or what?”

  Mary leaned forward and patted her leg. “Or I’ll wash out your mouth with soap.”

  “Gross,” said Grace. “Soap tastes like poop.”

  Mary smiled. Even Jessie laughed.

  “So what are you going to do?” asked Grace.

  “Mr. Mason told me that your father was working on an important case to help keep our country safe. He said we’d find out all the details soon. Your father is going to receive a commendation from the president.”

  “Wow,” said Grace, beaming. “That’s amazing.”

  But Jessie pursed her lips as if she’d chewed on a lemon rind. “You believed him?”

  Mary looked at her older daughter, hair hanging in her face, eyes staring like lasers right through her. The problem was that Jessie was too smart. She never accepted a word as the truth until she could prove it herself. Her cynicism had come at a price. She’d heard too many doctor’s promises, seen too many medicines that didn’t work, sat by her sister’s bed too many days. Life had taught her to believe in deeds, not words.

  “Maybe,” Mary answered finally. It was as close to a declaration of her own feelings as she was willing to make in front of the kids.

  The answer satisfied Jessie. She nodded and her frown relaxed. Distrust was a safer place from which to view the world, and Mary realized that for now, anyway, she shared that same dark promontory.

  “I’ll make dinner,” she said, standing, rubbing her hands together. “I’m starving.”

  “Chicken fingers,” said Grace. “With French fries and mustard.”

  “Barf,” said Jessie. “I want a hamburger.”

  “Dog barf,” said Grace.

  Mary smiled, happy for even that small measure of relief.

  Order was restore
d.

  For now.

  51

  Shanks slowed the van as it passed Pedro’s Especiale Bar and Grill on Barton Springs Road.

  “Is he there?” The Mole poked his head from behind his work console.

  “Like clockwork.” Shanks stared at the blue Jeep Cherokee parked in front. The lot appeared full. He turned at the corner and continued down the street. To his dismay, cars occupied every inch of curb space.

  “Must be a popular place,” said the Mole. “Looks like half of Austin’s here.”

  Shanks continued to the end of the street and turned around. The alley behind the restaurant was likewise packed. He stopped behind the bar’s back entrance. “Any cameras?”

  “None outside. We’re good.”

  “Take the wheel. I’m going to go in. Make sure our man is there.”

  “Don’t make a scene.”

  “If the opportunity presents itself, I’m not going to let him get away. The matter is time-sensitive. That stiletto of yours goes in real easy. A little poke through the ribs, nick his heart. The man will be dead before he knows what got him.”

  The Mole slipped his knife from its sheath on his calf. “Make it quick.”

  Shanks slid the blade up his sleeve. “Lightning.”

  —

  Tank sat on his favorite stool and raised a hand. “Long day, Pedrito,” he called. “Una cerveza, por favor.”

  He’d made it through a day without a drink. Or almost a day—not that anyone was counting. If Mary Grant didn’t want him investigating, that was fine by him. He could take his time, dig up more evidence about what Edward Mason and Don Bennett were covering up. Good stories required patience. How long had Woodward and Bernstein needed for Watergate? A year? Two?

  Pedro set a bottle of Tecate on the bar and poured a generous shot of tequila, the amber liquid overflowing the edges. “Throwback Thursday, man. You forget to bring your jersey?”

  “Left it at home.”

  “No one’s going to know who you are without it.”

  “Thanks,” said Tank, wrapping his fingers around the beer. “Appreciate the vote of confidence.”