Edison sensed his mood and dropped his head in Joe’s lap. His tail wagged once.
“You can’t help me with this one, buddy,” Joe said. “I’ve got to do it.”
He connected to the darknet to hide his IP address, then logged into Pellucid’s system using the account of an intern who had left the company. With any luck, his actions would never be traced back this far, but if he was, she’d have an alibi — she was trekking in Tibet and completely off the grid.
Hours ticked by as he skipped through the code, changing tiny pieces here and there, hiding his intent in hundreds of places across thousands of lines of code. Colors flashed through his head as he calculated numbers and percentages, but the colors were muted and dark. He’d never experienced this before, but he knew they had changed their color because they were sad.
He was crippling something bright and amazing because it was too powerful, too dangerous, and always in the wrong hands. He had created this monster with the best of intentions, but as his father always said, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. He was going to have to kill his creation, not quickly, but with a thousand tiny cuts, until its colors and numbers had bled out.
Andres Peterson called in the afternoon. Andres was his dog walker — the man who made sure that Edison got the fresh air and sunshine he deserved. Celeste had recommended the Estonian artist when Joe was looking for someone, but she had warned him that Andres would be very famous someday, and he’d have to get another dog walker.
Joe’s mind was still connected to the lines of code that he had created as he took Edison up the elevator. He greeted Evaline in a daze, barely spoke to Andres, and went back down to his work.
By the time Andres’s next text reached him, Joe’s latticework of deceit was complete. But he didn’t have the heart to put in the final line of code, the one that would set it all in motion. It would destroy his creation, and it could destroy his life.
He scrolled through the surveillance reports one last time. He thought of the millions of dollars that he and his colleagues would lose when his changes reached full effect and Pellucid’s stock tanked. They’d all sold enough to be comfortable for the rest of their lives, but that didn’t mean they wanted to lose the rest.
He thought of the millions of people who had lost their privacy to his machine. He weighed their rights against the people who might be harmed if the NSA could no longer use the software. The innocents who might die because his software didn’t identify those intent on doing harm.
And he didn’t write that final line.
Instead, he went up to collect Edison. The dog panted happily next to the information booth. When Joe bent to pet him, he smelled like grass and dog. He’d been soaking up summer, just as Joe’s father would have wanted. What if Joe had tried to forgive the man, and they’d spent one last summer together? Would that have been so wrong?
Andres wore ripped jeans and a rust-tinged cotton shirt. His curly hair was disheveled from the wind, and he was sporting the beginning of a tan. Joe suspected the only time he spent outside was with Edison and otherwise spent his days in his studio crafting his giant metal sculptures. They were gloomy, but Joe liked them. Celeste adored them.
“Edison runs like a champion,” Andres said. “Even in the heat he could not be stopped. We went to Central Park so he could roll in grass. He loves grass.”
“Were you a good boy?” Joe asked Edison. Somebody ought to be.
“He is always good,” Andres said. “You are lucky to have such a fine animal.”
Joe nodded and handed Andres his money. He always paid Andres in cash. Andres was one person he interacted with for whom there was no paper trail. He even had Andres text and call him using an app that kept his location secret and deleted the texts every twenty-four (blue, green) hours. Anyone who hung around Grand Central would know of their connection, but they weren’t linked online. That anonymity had saved Edison’s life once when Joe was under electronic surveillance and the dog was wounded. It was worth preserving.
Andres crumpled the bill and pushed it into his front pants pocket. “In my country I had such a dog once, a fine, brave fellow, but the neighbor said he ate her chicken, and he had to be destroyed.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“He did not eat the chicken, of course.” Andres’s pale blue eyes flashed. “But everyone knew that this neighbor was an informer for the government, and we could do nothing. Her husband shot the dog in front of my house. I was seven years old.”
Joe dropped his hand to Edison’s shoulder, touching the scar where Edison had been shot a few months before. He imagined a seven-year-old watching his dog get shot and die in front of him.
“I’m sorry.” It seemed so inadequate.
Andres shrugged. “It is over now, and I can play with your Edison every day, even get money for that. In this country that is so free. Those are good things.”
Andres patted Edison one last time and slouched off toward the giant front doors.
Joe watched him go, out into a country that he thought was free, but wasn’t.
Chapter 24
Quantum liked his borrowed apartment. After being confronted by that woman, he didn’t feel safe going home. Who knew how long she’d been following him before he noticed her?
So he’d done what he usually did when he went to ground. He found an apartment marked as empty on Airbnb, using an algorithm he’d invented to search the database for unrented temporary apartments. Once he found one that he liked, he’d hack the owner’s email account and find out how he had tenants pick up keys. Then it was an easy matter to show up at a convenience store with fake ID and pretend to be a renter or to retrieve the key from under a mat or a coded mailbox.
This apartment was particularly nice. It had a widescreen TV and Wi-Fi, and the last tenant had left the fridge partially stocked. Quantum was settling in when his phone buzzed. Ash. It had been hours since Quantum told him that he’d lost Joe, and he knew Ash was furious. He was going to have to take his lumps and smile. If he could manage it.
ash: details
quantum: he jumped off train in tunnels
ash: u didn’t pursue?
quantum: train moving before i could
ash: device worth risk
Said by a man who was not down in the tunnels on a speeding train, knowing that if he jumped he might get his legs cut off or he might land against the third rail and get electrocuted. Not on Quantum’s list of ways to spend the day. He gritted his teeth.
quantum: sorry
ash: more risk, more reward
That sounded promising. It was the first mention of reward. He’d been doing this as a freebie, even blowing off his regular freelance IT work, just for karma points. But cash would be better.
quantum:??
ash: get what i want any means necessary i’ll make it worth ur while
That sounded pretty vague, but it was a start. Quantum rested his feet on a blocky coffee table that looked as if it came from IKEA.
quantum: any means necessary?
ash: don’t want to know just want results
That meant he didn’t care whether Joe Tesla lived or died.
Sometimes Quantum wondered if Ash was a CEO or a Mafia don. He wanted things done, and he wanted plausible deniability if they were. Would he have businessman loyalty, which was to say none at all, or would he reward loyalty like a Mafia don?
quantum: how much?
ash: bottom 6, u know how and where
Quantum did. Bottom six meant bottom six figures, or $100,000. How and where were easy too — Bitcoins from Spooky’s petty-cash account, simple and untrackable. But he didn’t trust Ash.