“True.” He folded the paper and tucked it back into his pocket. “But it’s all about context. What kind of virus? What kind of damage could it do? Who could it hurt?”
“It’s a new virus. Your report confirms that. Which means no one knows. So why aren’t you trying to find out, instead of harassing me?”
“You’re—”
“Wait a second.” I was starting to join some dots. “It makes total sense for there to be a virus on that computer. I bet I know exactly what it does. It’s spyware.”
“And who would be getting spied on, in this scenario?”
“Me, of course. Detectives, remember why you took the computer from here? To get your lab to search for spyware! I figured that’s how whoever stole my prototype had known what I was working on.”
“That’s true,” Hayes admitted.
“Did they find anything out, before it was stolen?”
Hayes shook her head.
“I’d junked that idea when I thought my study had been bugged. But if it hadn’t been bugged, then someone must have been using spyware. And if they were using spyware on one of my computers, they’d be using it on both. Right?”
“A plausible theory, based on the facts. The ones in the open, anyway.” Peever spoke with the confidence of a guy who knew he was about to turn up a fourth ace. “But you’re missing a piece of the puzzle.”
“I’m not—”
Hayes’ cell started to ring, breaking my chain of thought. She excused herself, and withdrew to the hallway to take the call.
“You saw the lab report.” Peever’s grin had hardened. “But I talked to the guy who wrote it. There’s a difference between what he’ll commit to on paper and what his gut’s telling him. And guess what? His gut had a lot to tell.”
“You’re putting me through all this because of a guy’s gut?”
Hayes stepped back into the room before I could continue, and Wagner started for the door before her partner opened her mouth.
“That was my lieutenant.” Hayes looked paler than before. “Something’s come up. Family emergency. Can you guys take it from here?”
“Absolutely.” Peever ushered her toward the door. “Go. Do what you need to do.”
He waited until the detectives had left the room, then turned to me.
“It’s back to context, Marc. If you were a small-time nerd, and it looked like you’d picked up a nasty disease from a porn site after your mom had gone to bed one night, we wouldn’t be too worried.”
“Don’t call me a nerd, just because I work with computers. I’m an entrepreneur, and someone’s trying to steal my invention.”
“Raw nerve? Don’t be so touchy. I’m not calling you a nerd. And if we genuinely believed you were being ripped off, we’d probably help you. But when I talked to the lab guy, he painted a different picture. He believes we’re dealing with a whole different kind of malware, here. Über-sophisticated. Way more complex than something to log a few key strokes or steal a couple of passwords.”
“How complex? What does it do?”
When you’re in a hole, stop digging. I know that. But I couldn’t help myself. My professional curiosity had kicked in.
“Stop deluding yourself, Marc. Faking ignorance isn’t going to help you. Your only mileage is to talk to me. Our cyber guys are on this, twenty-four/seven. When they figure it out, it’s all over for you. Your value will be gone. The window to help yourself is very, very narrow. And it’s closing all the time.”
“This makes no sense. You don’t know what this virus does, but you’re convinced I do?”
“Yes. Because of the context. Who you are. Where you work.”
“A regular guy? Who works in a regular office? Or did until Monday, anyway. Now I don’t work anywhere. Not after I was fired, and the police department lost one of my computers, and you took the other.”
“Except you’re not a regular guy, are you, Marc? You’re a highly trained computer—not nerd, I know you don’t like that word—let’s say, expert. An expert who had unrestricted access to all of AmeriTel’s systems. And AmeriTel? That isn’t a regular office. Take away the desks and chairs and boring telecom stuff, and what have you got?”
I didn’t reply. There were lots of things I could say about AmeriTel. None of them were flattering. Especially the ones connected with Carolyn or LeBrock. But I couldn’t see how any of that would be relevant to Homeland Security.
“AmeriTel hosts a top-level ARGUS access node.” Peever looked me straight in the eye. “You had a direct line to the largest national security database the world has ever known.”
His words hit me like a tree trunk falling on my chest. Because what he said was true. Special equipment made a record of every phone call, text message, email, Web search, and online purchase AmeriTel’s customers ever made, and relayed them to a government data-storage center in Utah. The place was new. It was state of the art. And it was enormous—five times the size of the Capitol building. They’d had to extend the boundary of the town where it’s located to contain it. And it could store so much data they’d soon have to think up new names for the volumes involved. They were already working in yottabytes—1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000s of bytes. There isn’t even a word for a higher magnitude.
Why hadn’t I put two and two together on my own? I remember arguing with Carolyn over ARGUS when I first heard rumors about it, before she talked me into working at AmeriTel. There was initial resistance from a few civil-liberty groups, but all the telecom networks are hooked in now. And after Peever mentioned it, everything made much more sense. ARGUS was the cyber equivalent of a nuclear missile bunker. It was the last place the government would want a trained computer technician to be loose with an unidentified, aggressive virus. And if Homeland Security thought I was involved in an attack against it, I was in for the devil’s own job convincing them otherwise.
“I see we’re on the same page, at last.” Peever was gloating. “This is your last chance to do yourself some good. Give me a name.”
“I can’t. You don’t understand. I don’t have anything to do with ARGUS. The node’s in a secure room. I’ve never even been—”
“Marc, I’m disappointed.” He cut me off. “I thought you were smarter than that.”
Wednesday. Early evening.
I’D NEVER UNDERSTOOD IT WHEN I TURNED ON THE TV AND SAW people who claimed to have done nothing wrong being led away by the police, heads bowed, hands cuffed, bodies meekly compliant. Why didn’t they shout their innocence from the rooftops? Fight for their freedom? Force the officers to drag them into custody, kicking and screaming every inch of the way?
Now I know. You fall under a kind of spell. The immediacy of the situation is at such grotesque odds with the truth that your brain just can’t process it. Your emotions are no help—they’re overwhelmed with the stress. So you shut down. You regress to a childlike, naive, unquestioning state. And rather than rebel against authority, you cling to anything that resembles it as a last desperate defense against the chaos that’s consuming you.
I walked out of my house flanked by the agents and they waited, one on either side, as I fumbled for my keys and robotically locked the door. Being arrested by Homeland Security was by far the most extraordinary thing that had ever happened to me, but even as it played out I somehow clung to my mundane rituals—trying the handle to make sure it was properly secure, checking there were no windows open or lights left on. I almost walked to my Jaguar, still on autopilot, but Peever gripped my arm and diverted me past the UPS van he’d parked on the driveway when he’d arrived.
The agents had left their other vehicles on the street, out of sight of my house. They had a pair of nondescript sedans—a silver Ford and a dark blue Dodge—and a white panel van. The van was covered with pictures of seafood and had a logo for a company called Guttman Lobster and Crabmeat on the side. They were different models and colors, but it was basically the same configuration that McKenna’s team had used. Except there was a pair of agents sitting in the Dodge. McKenna had deployed all his people to apprehend me, but Peever had come at me with only one guy to back his play. Incongruously, given the circumstances, I felt a little insulted.