The Mole left his seat and grabbed his work bag as he stepped out of the van. He walked to the junction box, a beige pillar standing three feet tall a few yards from the corner, and pried off the plastic cowling. Penlight in his mouth, he scanned the connections terminus, moving down the handwritten addresses posted next to each. He paused, teeth clenching metal, hands holding an ordinary laborer’s tools. Once upon a time he’d been a star student at the MIT Media Lab. Negroponte’s favorite acolyte. Now he was the Cable Guy.
The Mole stopped at “10602 / Grant” and unscrewed the fiber-optic cable that delivered telephone, television, and Internet service to the home. With his free hand he drew a Y-cable from his bag and screwed the tail onto the terminus. He attached the fiber-optic cable to one fork and his black box to the other, checked that the connections were firm, then replaced the hood.
“Keep going,” said Shanks, who acted as lookout. “No eyes on you.”
The Mole selected a sturdy oak tree nearby with a clear view to the target’s home and affixed a micro hi-def camera to the bark. The camera was no larger than a shirt button and once camouflaged with a bit of putty would be invisible.
The camera and the black box were only superficial measures. The camera wirelessly transmitted high-definition images of the home in a five-mile radius. The box captured all digital traffic to and from the target’s house and passed it on to Peter Briggs: landline, television, cable, Internet. It recorded what numbers the targets dialed, what phone conversations they had, what websites they visited, what articles they read, what shows they watched on streaming content services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime, what books they ordered-you name it.
Neither provided a granular view of the target’s activities or, more importantly, her intentions. E-mails could not be decrypted. Banking transactions likewise. Anything requiring a password was beyond their grasp.
There was a better way. The Mole’s way.
He stared at the house, imagining its occupants. One adult. Two children. He’d done his research. It was so easy to find out all about them. Mary, Jessie, and Grace were their names. He could be at the front door in three seconds, and inside ten seconds after that. There would be at least one laptop, maybe a tablet, a phone for every member of the family. Each presented an entry point, a means to burrow into their lives.
The Mole thought about the girls. One was fifteen, the other eleven. How interesting it would be to know more about them. Whether they liked boys or girls, whether they drank or took drugs, whether they looked at pornography. The older girl was dark and tall. The younger was fair and delicate. He liked to imagine her fine wrists, her vulnerable neck.
“You done?” asked Shanks. “I don’t want to have to answer questions about what movies are on special this month.”
The Mole climbed into the van without answering. A moment later he was back in his seat, those deep dark eyes locked onto his machines as if he were some kind of droid powering up.
Shanks knew what he was thinking about.
Nothing good.
20
“It wasn’t your fault.”
Jessie sat on her bed, staring out the window. She had her Beats on, the music loud enough to crowd out any ugly thoughts. Her mom’s words played like a loop over the dark electronic groove, louder than the bass, louder than the guitars, overpowering everything. Everything except Dad.
Dad understood. Dad knew about code and software and how cool tech was. He didn’t think it was weird that she liked what she liked. He totally got the part of her that liked to disappear into the Net, the part that came alive when she held a phone in her hand. When she was connected.
Now he was gone. Dead. And dead meant forever. She tried to understand forever, but she couldn’t. It was too scary.
Jessie picked up her own smartphone-a cheap Android platform-and opened the mail she’d sent herself containing the screenshot of the log from her mom’s phone. Smartphones remembered everything. Somewhere there was a record of every call, every website visited, every keystroke the user ever made. You might erase texts or e-mails or voice messages, but you could never erase the traces they left behind. Not unless you destroyed the phone, and by that she meant grinding it up into a thousand pieces. Even then, there was a record at the ISP and maybe even the wireless carrier.
She brought the screen closer in order to read the blizzard of letters and numbers and backslashes. The notation showing all traffic to the number was clear enough: calls made, calls received, calls missed, voice messages, time, duration. She spotted the incoming call from her dad at 16:03:29 and ending at 16:04:05. (Phones used the twenty-four-hour clock.) She calculated that his message had lasted twenty-five seconds, because her mom’s greeting took forever.
“Hi. This is Mary. Please leave a message and I promise to get back to you as soon as possible. Have a great day.” Jessie mouthed the words. So cheerful, so original…so boring. Hey, Mom, she thought, news flash: they know it’s you. They dialed your number.
Jessie reviewed the lines of code that followed, noting that there were no further voice messages. It was 17:31 when her mom finally listened to her dad’s message. And 18:30 when she listened to it a second time. But nowhere in the lines of code did Jessie spot any instructions to delete a message. At least her mom wasn’t lying. With adults, you never knew.
“It wasn’t my fault,” Jessie admonished her mother. “It’s yours for not listening to it earlier.”
Jessie returned to a line of code that appeared different from the others. It was nothing but a jumble of letters and symbols. Meaningless. She was pretty sure she’d seen almost every kind of computer language, but she hadn’t seen this.
She sent a text containing the mysterious code to Garrett, the only other high school student in her class at UT. He was no Rudeboy, but he was okay smart.
“G. WTF is this? Found it on my mom’s phone. Help.”
Jessie dropped the smartphone on the bed, then pulled off her headphones and stood up. She felt different, like herself again. She realized that she hadn’t thought about her dad the entire time she was looking at her phone. That was enough to trigger another wave of tears. She cried for a minute, but that was all. She was too tired to cry anymore.
She got dressed. Jeans, Zeppelin concert T (the ’74 Stairway to Heaven tour). She brushed her hair and looked in the mirror long enough to make sure she didn’t have any zits and her face wasn’t puffy and blotchy. She pulled her shirt tight across her chest. She hated how big her boobs were getting.
She left her room and crossed the hall. Grace’s door was open. She lay on the bed reading.
“Hey,” said Jessie, poking her head inside.
Grace looked up, then back at the book.
Jessie saw the cover. Another mermaid. Ugh. She sat down on the edge of the bed. “Good book?” She had no idea where the question came from. She hated mermaids and Grace knew it, but she didn’t know what else to say. She was the big sister. She was supposed to console her little sister.
Grace put the book down. “You want to read it after me?”
“Not a chance,” said Jessie, then softened her tone. “I mean, no thanks.”
“You don’t have to be nice to me.”
“Yes, I do.” Jessie forced herself not to leave. “How are you doing, mouse? Feeling better?”
“I’m okay, I guess.” Grace rolled on her side. “I think I was just carsick.”
“I should have cleaned up the mess.”
“It’s okay. Mom did it.”