All dead ends.
Evan still had no idea why his first mission was so important to Bennett and why it was so threatening that Evan had to be neutralized for the role he’d played in it.
What — all these years later — was he still not seeing?
If the right wall was an attempt to diagnose the past, the left wall diagrammed the future. It was a living tableau, aggregating data that would aid in the assassination of the president.
Evan immediately noticed a number of changes on the left wall since his latest excursion to D.C.
The White House’s Web site had taken the president’s public schedule offline. No information available at this time.
Evan looked down at the pinecone-shaped aloe vera plant nestled in a glass bowl filled with cobalt glass pebbles. “Okay, lady,” he told her. “It’s all up to you and me now.”
Aside from the living wall, Vera II was the only other living organism of note in the penthouse. He watered her by slipping an ice cube between her serrated spikes once a week, which was all the caretaking she required and all the caretaking he was capable of.
He returned his focus to the screens. Mentions of the president’s movements from other credible Web sites showed his agenda in sudden motion, fund-raising events sliding around, speeches put on hold, ceremonial events delayed until further notice. Bennett wasn’t holing up, but the Secret Service was smart enough to obscure his comings and goings so as to give little advance notice of his itinerary to Orphan X.
The president had no unavoidable, predetermined appearances scheduled in the upcoming months, such as an address to the UN or a G8 summit. The State of the Union, another palatable opportunity, wasn’t until January.
A media feed showed the usual screaming headlines — an arms deal with Syrian rebels gone to shit, Bennett resisting pressure to testify before Congress, gerrymandering resolutions sneaking their way onto ballots before the midterms.
Evan sank into his chair and took another sip of the Fog Point. Definitely a trace of honeysuckle.
He refocused on the task before him.
The Stingray he’d used to such fine effect last night now rested on the sheet-metal desk, downloading data and encryption keys into an out-of-the-package Boeing Black smartphone he planned to use as a mirror for the one belonging to Special Agent in Charge Naomi Templeton.
He’d already transferred the data onto his hard drive and spread it around the OLED screens facing the desk. A GPS dot showed a nice, strong signal from her apartment.
He remotely activated the microphone on her smartphone, picking up the noise in the room.
A doorbell.
A barking dog.
And then Naomi’s voice. “Hush, Fenway. Hush.”
There was some rustling, perhaps as she moved away. Then her words came again, less clearly. “Hey, thanks for stopping by. I wanted to see, you know … any chemistry.” Sounds of movement, and then she said, “He likes you.”
The next exchange was obscured. When Evan could again hear Naomi’s voice, she was saying, “—so it’s forty bucks to walk him, fifty-five to drive him over to visit my dad during the day, and a hundred for a hike and a grooming, yeah?”
A low-pitched man’s voice murmured something Evan couldn’t make out. He switched his focus to Naomi’s calendar, notes, and e-mails, also up on display. An algorithmic software program scrolled through her information, grabbing data indicative of future movements.
Lots of meetings at headquarters, interagency consultations, countless visits to her father’s facility. No social plans. No documentation of specific movements with or regarding the president.
Any information concerning Bennett was wisely kept off a phone that could be misplaced or stolen.
“Okay,” Naomi’s voice cut in again. “So he needs a walk every day? I don’t know all this stuff yet. He’s my dad’s dog, and I’m … I’m sorta still catching up to all this.” More masculine mumbling, and then Naomi said, sharply, “No, I don’t want to get rid of the dog. My dad likes seeing him. Christ, Fenway’s the only thing that makes him happy.”
On the screens Evan brought forward another window. Before he’d left for dinner, he’d deployed Hashkiller’s 131-billion-password dictionary on every last piece of encryption on Naomi’s phone, hoping to grind through a portal and bust onto the Secret Service’s private secure network.
On the activated microphone, he heard a door close, and then Naomi said, “Maybe I should give you away, you mongrel.” A scrabbling of paws answered her. “How am I supposed to take care of you in the middle of all this?” More footsteps, more scrabbling paws. “Dad would know exactly how to help me, but he’s not really Dad anymore, you know?”
Evan heard the puff of a deflating cushion — Naomi had plopped onto a couch? — and then another, louder plop as the dog presumably landed beside her.
Naomi sighed. “Looks like it’s up to you and me, Fenway.”
Evan glanced at Vera II and pictured Naomi a dozen states away conferring with her own loyal adviser, plotting to catch Evan just as he was plotting to evade her.
On the mounted screen, Hashkiller continued to make superb progress on Naomi’s applications and log-ins, but Evan watched with rising pessimism as gateway after gateway led nowhere he wanted to be. Despite all his machinations, he’d hit a hard roadblock and had to figure out how to get around it to the useful data, the data hiding safely on the Secret Service’s secured network. Those databases would hold a treasure trove of information on everything from Bennett’s contingency motorcade routes to which company supplied chemicals to the White House dry cleaner.
Unfortunately, the network — and all the computers on it — looked to be air-gapped, unhooked from the Internet and any external devices.
Evan’s middling hacker skills couldn’t get him in.
He knew only one person good enough for the job.
Perhaps it was time to pay her a visit.
He’d just started researching tickets to Milan-Malpensa Airport when his line rang. Not the RoamZone. His home line.
He’d forgotten what it sounded like.
He jogged out of the Vault and all the way to the kitchen, picking up on the fifth ring.
It was Mia.
She was screaming.
19
Bad Men
Trevon didn’t know how long he’d been walking. The whole day was like Swiss cheese with big holes in it.
He remembered Muscley One and Raw One throwing him out of the truck.
He remembered his shoulder hitting the ground hard and the sound of the truck driving away.
He remembered when he clawed the garbage bag off his head it was that bluish light of early morning and he was in a alley behind a Dumpster and his eyeglasses were bent at the arm really bad.
He remembered stumbling out of the alley holding his shoulder and thinking, Ow, ow.
He remembered there wasn’t a street but a big empty parking lot that glittered with broken glass, and the only person in sight was a hobo with a long scraggly beard who smiled a toothless smile at him and said, “Right on, man. I been there.”
He remembered thinking to find a street sign, because he knew every street in all of Los Angeles and could list them in order and that made him special.
He remembered finding a street sign, and now the arm part had snapped off his eyeglasses at the hinge and so he had to hold them in place so they didn’t get tilty when he read the sign.
He remembered realizing that he was near downtown and that if he walked long enough, he could find a bus stop.
He remembered finding a bus stop and waiting forever and finally getting on a bus and making a connection and then another to get home.