“That’s an enormous part of what we do at Area 51. Without geographical correlates, the data is useless. We have access to virtually every digital and analog database in the world, birth records, phone records, bank records, marital records, employment records, utilities, land deeds, taxes, insurance, you name it. There are 6.6 billion people in the world. We have some form of address identifiers, if only the country or province, on ninety-four percent of them. Very nearly a hundred percent in North America and Europe.” He looked up. “I’ve got this encrypted. Just so you know, it needs a password, which I’m not going to give you. I need insurance you’ll protect me.”
“From whom?”
“The same people who’re after you. We call them the watchers. Area 51 security. Okay, I’m on. Take the keyboard.”
“Go into the bedroom,” Will ordered. “I don’t want you seeing the dates.”
“You don’t trust me.”
“You’re right, I don’t.”
Will spent several minutes calling out names of the recently deceased in Panama City. He mixed in names from the archives with people who died the day before. To his astonishment, Mark was shouting back the correct date of death every time. Finally, Will called him back in and complained, “Come on! This is like a Vegas lounge act and you’re like one of those mentalists. How are you doing this?”
“I told you the truth. If you think I’m pulling a fast one, you’ll have to wait till tomorrow. I’ll give you ten people in L.A. who’re going to die today. You check the obits tomorrow.”
Mark then proceeded to dictate ten names, dates, and addresses. Will took them down on a hotel notepad and moodily stuffed the sheet in his pocket. But he immediately pulled it out and said defiantly, “I’m not waiting until tomorrow!” He dug his phone out of his pants and saw it was dead-the battery had gotten dislodged when it fell onto the sidewalk. He reseated it and the phone came alive again. Mark watched with amusement as Will called information to get the phone numbers.
Will swore out loud each time he got voice mail or a no pickup. Someone answered the seventh number on the list. “Hello, this is Larry Jackson returning Ora LeCeille Dunn’s call,” Will said. He was listening and pacing. “Yes, she called me last week. We have a mutual acquaintance.” He was listening again but now he was slumping onto the sofa. “I’m sorry, when was that? This morning? It was unexpected? I’m very sorry to hear the news. My condolences.”
Mark opened his arms expansively. “Do you believe me now?”
Frazier’s headset got noisy again. “Malcolm, Piper’s phone is back on the grid. He’s somewhere in the 9600 block of Sunset.”
Frazier started sprinting back toward the Ops Center on an upward climb of his personal roller coaster.
Will got up and surveyed the bar. There was a fifth of Johnnie Walker Black. He opened it and poured a measure into a whiskey glass. “Want one?”
“It’s too early.”
“Is it?” He pounded back a shot and let it work through his system. “How many people know about this?”
“I don’t know exactly. Between Nevada and Washington, I’d guess a thousand.”
“Who runs it? Who’s in charge?”
“It’s a navy operation. I’m pretty sure the President and some cabinet members are in the know, some Pentagon and Homeland Security people, but the highest-ranking person I’m positive about is the Secretary of the Navy because I’ve seen him copied on memos.”
“Why the navy?” Will asked, bemused.
“I don’t know. It was set up like that from the beginning.”
“This has been under wraps for sixty years? The government’s not that good.”
“They kill leakers,” Mark said bitterly.
“What’s the point? What do they do with it?”
“Research. Planning. Resource allocation. The CIA and military have used it as a tool since the early fifties. They feel they can’t not use it, since it’s there. We can predict events, even if we can’t alter outcomes, at least fatal outcomes. If you can predict large events you can plan around them, budget for them, set policy, maybe soften their blow. Area 51 predicted the Korean War, the Chinese purges under Mao, the Vietnam War, Pol Pot in Cambodia, the Gulf wars, famines in Africa. We can usually spot big plane crashes, natural disasters like floods and tsunamis. We had 9/11 nailed.”
Will was dazed. “But we couldn’t do anything about it?”
“Like I said, these outcomes can’t be changed. We didn’t know how the attacks were going to happen or who was going to be responsible, though rightly or wrongly, we had ideas. I think that’s why we were so quick to go into attack mode against Iraq. It was all gamed out in advance.”
“Jesus.”
“We’ve got supercomputers grinding data around the clock, looking for worldwide patterns.” He leaned in and lowered his voice. “I can tell you with certainty that 200,000 people will die in China on February 9, 2013, but I can’t tell you why. People are working on that right now. In 2025-March twenty-fifth, to be precise-over a million people will die in India and Pakistan. That’s a paradigm changer but it’s too far away for anyone to focus on it.”
“Why Nevada?”
“The Library was taken there after the Air Force flew it from England to Washington. A nuclear-proof vault was built under the desert. It took twenty years to transcribe all the post-1947 material and get it digital. Before they were computerized, the books were precious. Now, they’re pretty much ceremonial. It’s amazing to see it, but the actual Library doesn’t have much of a purpose anymore. As to why Nevada, it was remote and protectable. Truman laid down a smoke screen in 1947 by concocting the Roswell UFO story and letting the public believe that Area 51 was built for UFO research. They couldn’t hide the existence of the lab because of all the people who work there, but they hid its purpose. A lot of dumb-asses still believe the UFO crap.”
Will was about to take another hit of scotch but realized it was affecting him more than he wanted. Getting sloshed wasn’t a good option right now. “What do you do there?” he asked.
“Database security. We have the most secure servers in the world. We’re hack proof and leak-proof, from the inside and out, or at least we were.”
“You breached your own systems.”
“I’m the only one who could have done it,” he boasted.
“How?”
“It was pure simplicity. Memory stick up my butt. I beat the watchers, those fuckers. They can’t have the public knowing about the Library. Can you imagine what the world would be like? Everyone would be paralyzed if they knew the day they were going to die-or their wife, or parents, or children or friends. Our analysts think that society, as we know it, would be altered permanently. Whole segments of the population might just fuck off and say, ‘What’s the point?’ Criminals might commit more crimes if they knew they weren’t going to be killed. You can envision some pretty nasty scenarios. The funny thing is, it’s just births and deaths. There’s nothing in the data about how people live their lives, nothing about quality. All that’s extrapolation.”
Will raised his voice. “Then why did you do it? Why the postcards?”
Mark knew the question was coming. Will could see it. His lower lip quivered like a child about to be disciplined. “I wanted to-” He broke down, sobbing and choking.
“You wanted to what?”
“I wanted to make my life better. I wanted to be someone-different.” He dissolved in tears again.
The man was pathetic, but Will controlled his ire. “Go on, I’m listening.”
Mark got a tissue and blew his nose. “I didn’t want to be a drone stuck in a lab my whole life. I see rich people at the casinos and I ask myself, why them? I’m a million times smarter. Why not me? But I never catch a break. None of the companies I went to work for after MIT exploded. No Microsofts, no Googles. I made a few bucks on stock options but the whole dot-com thing passed me by. Then I screwed up by going to work for the government. Once the sexiness of Area 51 wears off, it’s just a low-paying computer job in an underground bunker. I tried to sell my screenplays-I told you I’m a writer-and they were rejected. So, I decided I could change my life by leaking only a little data.”