It was almost certainly bad. He rated the chances of coincidence at about 4 percent. Meaning a 96 percent chance that this ISIS story was bullshit. He realized with a nauseous wave of terror that if they’d gotten to Hamilton before he left Istanbul, they might even have contained the information. Hamilton had wanted to transmit the files using the Intercept’s SecureDrop system, but Perkins had been so paranoid he’d prevailed on Hamilton not to do anything over the Internet. He could snail-mail a backup to himself if he had an anonymous means of doing so, Perkins had told him, but other than that the safest thing would be to just carry on his own person the encrypted thumb drive Perkins had prepared. The kid hadn’t wanted to keep the thumb drive on him—Look what the Brits did to David Miranda, he’d argued — and eventually Perkins had just told him, Fine, do what you think is best and it’s better if I don’t know anyway.
But now what? Would the kid give him up? James Risen had been prepared to go to jail rather than reveal his sources, but if they’d disappeared Hamilton, the kid was facing far worse than prison. And even if they couldn’t get Hamilton to talk, how long would it be before they started interviewing everyone he might have met in Turkey? Thank God he’d told the kid they had to do the meetings in Istanbul, not Ankara; that gave him at least a little cover, but not much. For a moment, he was ashamed that all he was thinking of was himself when the kid was facing who knew what. But Jesus, this must have been the kid’s fault. Perkins had briefed him on every goddamned possible vulnerability, but somehow the kid must have screwed up anyway.
He finally made it to the front of the line and ducked into a cab, his arms broken out in goose bumps. He had the driver take him to the nearby Gazi Park Hotel, where he’d left his car. He hadn’t wanted to park it too near the station and the hotel had seemed like a good compromise, but he realized now he hadn’t been seeing things as they would look if Hamilton were compromised. He’d been too optimistic. On the other hand, shit, if he’d allowed himself to be anything else, he never would have had the balls to do what he’d done. But now everything in his story was going to be checked, every inconsistency exposed and exploited. What the hell should he do? Probably he needed a lawyer, but contacting a lawyer now would be like sending up a giant beacon confessing his guilt. No. No, he needed to stay calm. Get back to the office, play it cool, check the cable traffic. Use the same backdoors that had allowed him to discover the program in the first place and get a better idea of what he was up against. And then decide what to do.
It took less than ten minutes to get to the hotel. Another ten for a valet to retrieve his car. And then he was off, heading to the office, fighting his fear, the heat blasting and the seat warmer a godsend against his shivering back.
He made a right on Beştepe and followed it until it became Alparslan Türkeş. The freeway would be crowded, so he went under it, following Bahriye Üçok and then going right onto Mareşal Fevzi Çakmak. He had just passed the Anittepe sports complex when he heard the door locks click. He glanced over, recognizing the sound but not sure what to make of it — had he pressed something by mistake? Maybe some electronic glitch?
And then, to his astonishment and horror, he felt the gas pedal press itself to the floor under his foot. The engine roared and his head smacked into the headrest as the car shot forward, the speedometer surging to the right.
He yelped in terror and stomped the brake. Nothing, no resistance. He overtook the car ahead of him and was about to plow into it when the steering wheel twisted left, then right, passing the car and rocketing past two others in front of it. He fought for control but couldn’t move the wheel. Terrified, he glanced at the speedometer and saw the needle surge past 150 kilometers per hour.
He stomped the brake again. Nothing. The car was still accelerating. He scrabbled at the electronic parking brake, ripping loose a nail and barely feeling it. Nothing.
Suddenly he understood. Understood everything. For one second, he felt overwhelming sadness, a tidal wave of regret. Then it vanished. He closed his eyes, took his hands off the wheel, and hugged himself. “Aerial,” he whispered. “I love you.”
Thomas Delgado used a finger to direct the car left, then watched as the screen of his iPad was consumed by the grille of a tractor trailer, the blare of its horn filling his ears through the headphones… and then, nothing. No sound. Dead screen.
He smiled, removed the headphones, and eased back in the desk chair. A good chance a head-on impact like that would have resulted in fire, but Delgado, not the kind of man to leave things to chance, had been sure to attach incendiary devices to the gas tank and alongside the camera he had mounted behind the car’s grille. The camera was the only possible evidence of any sort of foul play — the rest he had accomplished by hacking the car’s Bluetooth-accessible diagnostic system, and from there taking over whatever in the car was microprocessor controlled, otherwise known as everything. The antilock brakes and door locks were integrated with the accident-avoidance system; there was an omnidirectional microphone for hands-free cell phone use; even the steering wheel was controllable through the self-parking system. A lot of the newer models were incorporating front-facing cameras, too, and Hertz was even installing cameras in its vehicle interiors, so soon he’d be able to take full remote control of a car without having to install any of his own hardware.
He loved this kind of progress. Just a few years before, more often than not, causing an accident meant an exceptionally delicate black-bag job involving replacing the mark’s car with the identical make and model, customized for an exact match: idiosyncratic scratches and other signs of wear; gas level; odometer; swapped personal items; programmed radio stations; faked Vehicle Identification Numbers… everything. It took time; it cost money; it required a team rather than an individual. Worst of all, it left evidence, in the form of the additional mechanics that had to be installed to allow the necessary remote control, evidence that could be reliably obscured only through fires so intense they themselves could cause suspicion. But now? Christ, the carmakers were practically doing his job for him.
He cut the satellite link and shut down the application, then checked his watch. Past noon, but he’d called the front desk and arranged for a late checkout. Door double-locked, Do Not Disturb sign… everything was fine.
Jesus, that fear sound the guy had made had given him a hard-on. He didn’t usually get that from a man, or when he wasn’t working up close and personal, but yeah, that had been a really sweet sound. So… pure, or something. And what was the other thing the guy had said? “Ariel, I love you,” that was it. His wife? Didn’t matter.
Although… he could pay a visit to the grieving widow. A little risky, sure, but the thought of it was causing renewed stirrings down south. Hey, I worked with your husband. Such a good man. Wanted to express my condolences. All right if I come in? She’d be all fucked up with grief, not thinking clearly, vulnerable. Wouldn’t realize her mistake until the door was closed and locked behind him and he was pressing her up against the wall with a blade at her throat. And probably so ashamed and traumatized afterward she wouldn’t even report anything.
Fuck, that was actually pretty hot. He got up and went to the bathroom to jerk off to it.
CHAPTER
6
Manus drove steadily along Highway E90, the landscape an undifferentiated series of dry hills and cracked lake beds. It had been raining when he’d set out from Istanbul before dawn, but the sun was high overhead now, harsh, glaring, bleaching the surrounding terrain white as old bones.