CONTENTS

Justine struggled harder, legs kicking air. “Let go of me!”

Since she had fallen into the pool of seawater, she had focused on clinging to debris and trying to pull herself back out. The thunder of gunfire had overwhelmed her senses. Her hands had found solid things to grab, just ribs of the dead ship. As she pulled herself up, an unidentified force had scrunched the back of her soaked shirt and hauled her up. It took her a moment to realize Brown Beard had grabbed her. He fired his Kalashnikov over her shoulder and her ear popped. She couldn’t hear a thing other than a howling ring as he pulled her back.

Facing landward, what she saw horrified her: the frogman slumped over a railing, raining blood over it; Segreti aiming his rifle at her, at her; Bhavin Ram stretched back on one elbow, face hidden beneath a white cowboy hat, his guts bleeding through his fingers; a young Black woman in a dark business suit lying dead on the boat behind.

She found her strength and tried to kick and squirm free. Then she saw Bert.

No. Anyone but him.

Justine stopped struggling. It wasn’t that she surrendered, she just collapsed.

Not Bert.

The mouth of Segreti’s rifle flashed. She felt hot rain dump on her head. They were spinning and falling, she and Brown Beard. His finger pulled the trigger of his Kalashnikov, but he wasn’t aiming at anything. She registered that she was covered in blood. Soaked in burning blood.

They hit the deck and she pushed him off. He gave no resistance. That’s when she realized he didn’t have a head. Just a pulpy mess. Half of his head was clinging to her. Fuck! His gore, his fucking brains stuck in her hair—

She freaked out and shrieked, even though she could only dimly hear herself. She scrambled away and almost crashed into Tremain, who had retreated behind the pilothouse. She froze because he was aiming his gun right between her eyes. Now she saw Tremain mouthing words but couldn’t hear what he was saying. She didn’t think he was talking to her. Probably shouting something to Segreti. Bullets raked the pilothouse, smashing windows, and Tremain ducked back.

Segreti was at her side, trying to pull her out of Tremain’s sight. Then Segreti was up again, chasing.

She stumbled after him and saw Tremain dive into the open river. He swam towards a bobbing black sphere. A submersible.

The vehicle turned and, for an instant, the final gasp of sunlight struck its acrylic window, and she saw the profile of a square-faced white woman at the controls.

Segreti aimed his rifle as a trunk hatch on the back of the craft opened. Tremain swam for it as Segreti’s shots chopped up the water, but suddenly he ran out of ammunition.

They watched the submersible descend beneath the waves.

Segreti slung the rifle’s strap over his shoulder and held her. She could see his lips ask her if she was alright, but she still couldn’t hear clearly. And she sure as hell wasn’t alright. She shook her head and pulled away.

The rest of the day was a long series of aftershocks. Ambulances, helicopters, speedboats, whose wails she gradually heard again. She was checked and checked again by medics, when what she needed was a shower. Giving statements. Watching cops lift Bert Gomez onto a stretcher and march him into an ambulance and shut its doors.

She had said she’d be the one to tell his family. Marta and his two kids. But the medic had said no, a police officer had already been tasked with that.

The sun abandoned the scene, leaving them in afterglow. The ghostships were invisible against the dark river when Segreti approached. She was sitting on the back edge of another ambulance, had a blanket over her shoulders and was sipping from a plastic cup of tea. His expression was blacker than the coming night.

“We’re done here. You need a lift?”

“I’d rather call an Uber.”

He sat next to her. He seemed out of fight. “Suit yourself.”

“What just happened? Why is Bert dead?”

He shook his head. He had lost someone, too. The young agent named Taylor. A rookie. Plus, Bhavin Ram was being operated on. “This wasn’t about some cyber-weapon. Well, not just that. Someone’s trying to kill me. They got Tremain to use you as bait.”

“You don’t think it was his idea?”

“No. Did you see that woman in the submersible?”

“Yeah. Who is she?”

“I think she’s a Russian spook. I don’t have a name. Wish I did.”

“Why does she want you dead?”

He looked her way. “Tomorrow morning, I get grilled by Internal Affairs for what went down on North Brother Island. Seems ever since I met you, things have been…out of control.”

“You blaming me for that, Ed?”

“No.” He stood up. “I might be taken off the case. If you need anything, Justine… if you don’t feel safe…call me, okay?”

“I’m writing my story. Can I say that man is Robert Tremain, ex-NSA?”

Segreti paused. “No.” He walked away from the red and blue flashers, into the night.

She’d almost died. Segreti’s marksmanship had saved her, but what if he had missed, by like, an inch? ‘No’?

Patty and Josh had already left. Where she was, it would take an Uber driver at least a half hour to get her. The medics and cops had all cleared out. She was left in the cemetery where they had been dropped off.

“Bert,” she whispered to the darkness.

It was a long drive back to Manhattan. She checked Archer’s website and her work email. Still all down. Maybe the patch to restore service had sunk in the waters of Arthur Kill along with Tremain and that Russian woman.

Once they crossed into Manhattan, she asked the driver to switch gears and take her to Steve’s place.

Not her place any longer. Just Steve’s. But she couldn’t stand the idea of being alone, so even if Steve wasn’t going to be fun to deal with, she could hang out with Zach. Plus, she still had a lot of her stuff there. She needed a shower and a change of clothes, and a very large glass of wine.

It might not feel like hers anymore, but she still had a set of keys. She gave the doorman a perfunctory smile, knowing she must look like a war refugee, and took the elevator up.

She unlocked the door but knocked anyway. For the first time this felt invasive. No one responded to her meek “Hello?” and she entered the kitchen. A bowl with the remains of a salad and two plates splattered with pasta sauce and breadcrumbs. An empty bottle of Zinfandel. Then she heard them in the living room. Steve and the woman were making out on the couch. Justine watched them for a slow beat. Then the two of them jumped up in terror.

“Jesus, Justine,” Steve said, panting.

“Who the fuck is this?” the woman demanded, her eyes wide with fear.

Steve’s shoulders slumped and he looked like he’d rather be anywhere else on planet Earth than there. “This is, uh, my partner, Justine.”

“You lying asshole,” the woman said. She was a plumpish brunette, a light brown, with a low-cut top that showed plenty.

“No, it’s fine,” Justine said. “We’re not really a thing anymore.”

“Not a thing, but you walk in here like you live here?”

Justine rattled the apartment keys. “I was just returning these.”

“Justine,” Steve protested.

“I just want to pick up a few things and I’ll be out of here.”

He was working out her dishevelment. “Are you okay? What happened to you?”

“She’s covered with blood,” the woman said. “What kind of women do you usually hang out with?”

“Lucia, I’m sure this is just—”

“I’m out of here,” Lucia said, reaching for her handbag.

“No, stay,” Justine said. To Steve, she said, “You couldn’t wait to bring someone back here?”

“I just—I thought—”

“Yeah. Where’s Zach?”

“I don’t know. Out.”

“Who’s Zach?” Lucia demanded.

“His son,” Justine said.

“I told you about him,” Steve said, his voice low.

“Sure you did, my ears must be on the fritz,” Lucia said. “See ya.”

Justine pushed her back with the flat of her palm, sending Lucia sprawling back onto the sofa. “I said stay.” She said to Steve, “Have a great time.”

She stormed upstairs. She had far more clothing and toiletries here than she could take in one go. Didn’t matter. She hauled a suitcase out from under the bed and threw in whatever she could grab, heedless to how necessary it was. What counted was on the desk: notebooks, USB drives, an iPad, her backup hard drives.

In the bathroom she caught sight of herself. The mess of blood and ichor darkened her hair and was smeared on her skin. Her shirt was covered in Brown Beard’s gore. She looked like the girl in a slasher flick. No wonder Lucia had wanted to get the hell out of here.

She thundered down the stairs. Steve and Lucia were arguing by the door. “Excuse me,” Justine said, plunging between them.

“You’re leaving?” Steve asked, exasperated. “Looking like that?”

She tossed the keys onto the hallway stand. “I’m on deadline.”

(Next chapter.)

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CONTENTS

Justine led them through a dusty parking lot towards a low white wall topped with barbed wire. The signs were clear: US Coast Guard: NO TRESPASSING.

“Uh, J.J.?” Patty said.

She led them to the far corner of the lot. There was no barbed wire here, just an impenetrable thicket of brush. Beyond it lay the river, with New Jersey somewhere on the far side.

“Maybe you stay here, watch our backs,” Justine said.

Patty didn’t reply.

“It’s hot,” Bert said, adjusting his Pabst Blue Ribbon trucker cap.

The late day sun was brutal in that exposed lot with its chalky gravel. Its white dust covered the handful of cars, their bodies radiating heat. Justine was glad she had worn her baseball cap. Patty had sunglasses but nothing to protect her head. In her black Ramones T-shirt, ripped jeans and high tops, Patty looked perfectly suited to the streets of the Village and very out of place on this far edge of Staten Island.

Justine had told them where they were going. She was wearing jeans and hiking shoes. Bert had galoshes fitted over his shoes. Even Josh wore a windbreaker over his Lana Del Rey T-shirt, although Justine wasn’t sure his choice of shorts and flip-flops was the right move. He was leaning over the wall. “That’s some serious plant life.”

Justine swung a leg over the wall. “Here goes nothing.”

The bushes were tall and prickly. They made for a pretty good fence. But they were navigable if she didn’t mind getting dirty. The summer sun was probably a blessing, because even now, the dark ground was soft with mud. It was probably more treacherous other times of year.

Josh came next, his feet sinking into the mud with a loud squish. Then came Bert, imperturbable in his rubber shoe covers, a big oasis of calm.

She heard Patty say, “Screw it,” and allowed herself a little smile.

The distance through the brush was short, but the going was slow. Everyone had at least one spill, and the air shimmered with heat and the buzz of flies. By the time Justine cleared the scrub, her clothes were stuck tight from all that sweating. They were rewarded with a melancholy view. The waters along this bend in the river ran quietly. A ghostyard of ships expanded before them, silhouetted against the blaze of the lowering sun, impressionist strokes of rust and whitewashed bone against the dark browns and blues of the water. The ships were mostly skeletons now, rusted remains of steel and iron, hulks half-sunk. Whatever tales these boats could have told were washing away with the river’s current, histories leaching into oblivion.

“This is so cool,” Josh said.

“It’s eerie as fuck,” Patty said.

Bert said in his soft voice, “It’s quiet.”

“Yeah,” Justine agreed. “There’s nobody here. Tremain said there was going to be an auction.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Patty said.

“It’s massive,” Josh said. “Maybe he’s, like, over there somewhere.”

“We’re supposed to root around these wrecks, dipshit?” Patty balked. “I don’t think so.”

Justine thought that was exactly what they would do. She walked along the narrow bank and put a foot on the hull of what once was probably a tugboat. “Since we’re here,” she said, but then her phone vibrated and she fished it from her pocket. Zach. What did he want? Not a good time, kiddo. She let her phone buzz back in her pocket.

Accessing the boat required walking along a discarded girder, red with rust, like a pirate’s plank. She carefully stepped over the remains of a railing and regarded the boat’s interior. The center had long since disintegrated and was now a pool of seawater. She took slow, deliberate steps. The metal felt soft, like walking on a yoga mat, so she kept to the high edges. She didn’t know where she was going, but the boat skeletons were gathered tightly, their bones sticking into one another.

Behind her she saw her companions and the wall of scrub. The road and the parking lot were probably only a baseball’s throw away, but she couldn’t see them. Ahead was the river, faster beyond where the hulks were berthed, but the sun was low and blinding. New Jersey was a thick dark smudge on the horizon.

She followed a half-submerged ferry and headed to a thicker cluster of bigger hulls, these with decks and the shells of pilothouses intact. Seagulls made lazy circles above, their calls the only sound other than the wind on the water not far below. And her own breathing, and the beating of her heart.

Then, a figure in the pilothouse. Pink polo shirt, the collar raised; khaki pants and tall rubber boots. The familiar sweep of blond hair and Wayfarer sunglasses. “Ahoy, Justine!” called Bobby Tremain.

She stopped. Her team was strung behind her, Josh on her heels, Bert on the previous boat, Patty cautiously close to land.

Bobby gestured for her to join him.

“Where is everyone?” she called to Tremain, cupping her mouth.

“This way!” he called back.

“What do you think?” she asked Josh.

“Totally a bad idea.”

“Yeah.” There was her Pulitzer-Prize story, waving from the pilothouse of a ruin. She had known he was pulling strings; that any invitation from such a man was to be suspect. But her reporter instinct had been to follow the lead. Reporters didn’t drive agendas, they got close to people who did and hoped they could unearth their motivations, divine their impact on the world. Naturally, she had accepted Bobby’s offer.

But this scene felt wrong. It was obvious now that he had lied.

“Come on!” Bobby called.

“You come here!” she replied. “Josh, go back. Get the others out of here.”

“Okay,” he said.

Bobby walked out from his perch, one hand holding a cane. He held it up and pantomimed a helpless shrug.

“Where is everyone else?” she called to him.

“Here!”

A man stepped into view behind him, half hidden by the pilothouse. Justine didn’t recognize him. White, muscled beneath a black shirt, camouflage pants, wraparound shades over a thick brown beard.

“Oh, hell no,” she muttered.

She heard another voice in the wind, carried softly from somewhere else. “Justine! Justine!”

She turned and saw more figures scrambling out of the bush towards the edge of the boat graveyard. Edward Segreti waving frantically. Was that a rifle in his other hand?

Something caught her eye: a long shadow thrown against the wedge of a half-sunk boat. The man it belonged to appeared, wearing what looked like a black wetsuit. If she wanted to retreat, he could easily cut her off at the flank.

She took a step back.

A long, low buzz came from the sky. Not a swarm of flies, just a single drone that appeared for a moment above her before it vanished into the unforgiving blaze of the setting sun.

“Get out of there!” Ed’s call was faint, swallowed by wind and water and the graveyard’s fleet of carcasses.

The brown beard behind Bobby stepped out with a Kalashnikov assault rifle that he aimed at a high angle. Justine started to run as the weapon split the blue sky with unimaginable noise. The frogman to her side had a Kalashnikov too, and he fired it at the people onshore. Her head filled with the roar of violence, thinking Josh Bert Patty… no no no; thinking run, Justine, run; thinking oh my God, until her foot smashed through the soft decay that had looked like solid steel and she crashed into the half-submerged deck of a long-forgotten ship and saw the drone crash like a meteor just in front of her. It bounced once and vanished into the undead craft’s watery bowels.

Segreti dropped to his knee as the frogman opened fire. The man was only about a hundred feet away, partly covered by another ship’s angled hull and the sun-bleached remains of antennas. He saw Jarman fall on her face. Justine!He didn’t know if she was shot. If she was still breathing.

Segreti returned fire and, in the pause, ran for the far edge of the hulk he was on.

Civilians blocked his view of Tremain. The big cameraman, Gomez, pounded heavily as he ran. The kid, Friedland, moved nimbly despite the flip-flops. Yamagata was already behind him, close to shore.

Taylor spread out to his left, finding her way to cover, trying to flank the frogman. But Frogman wasn’t having it. Lead filled the air. Chewed up boats into shrapnel, turning the hulks into grenades.

Friedland was bawling in terror, but he was close. Segreti grabbed him and hauled him to the deck as bullets ripped holes around him. He could feel the young man’s heart drumming on his own arm. “You’re okay, kid,” he said. He popped a look over the hull. “When I fire, you get out of here.”

Gomez was lumbering into view. Segreti popped up and fired at the frogman. Frogman ducked for cover. Now Taylor was shooting too. Friedland was on his way. Brown Beard was shooting back. Maybe Tremain too, with what looked like Segreti’s Glock.

Bert straightened into a ramrod. “Oof,” he said, and keeled over, out of Segreti’s view.

“Shit.” Segreti laid down another line of fire, so did Taylor, and then he ran to the body. Holes raked the back of Gomez’s jacket. Blood was pouring out of him. He wasn’t moving. His eyes were open with astonishment. Segreti checked for a pulse, felt for a breath. Time was short. He closed Bert Gomez’s eyes.

“Justine!?” His call felt lost amid the shooting.

The deck erupted around him. Frogman was crawling behind him. Segreti turned on his back and fired the M4 until it was out of ammo. He frantically ejected the mag and felt for his reserve. More gunshots, this time from Taylor, forcing Frogman back, but then silence burst upon him. He slapped in the new mag and sat up, rifle first.

Frogman teetered. Taylor fired two more bursts that punched Frogman overboard. Segreti flashed her a thumb’s up and resumed his advance. Behind him, Ram had arrived, both hands gripping his Sig Sauer. Brown Beard and Tremain had also moved in, though—they were just one boat away.

He saw her. Justine was alive, clinging to detritus in the middle of the collapsed boat, legs kicking in the water. Most of the deck was gone, the craft now just hull.

“Stay down!” he shouted.

Tremain and Brown Beard were headed for her. Segreti opened up. Taylor and Ram too. Their targets fell back. Segreti moved forward, Taylor’s fire covering him. He had almost reached Justine when Brown Beard popped up from another angle, surprising him, and aimed.

Taylor was on his heels. He saw her raise her carbine and pull the trigger. Click click. She kept her cool, reaching for a fresh mag, when Brown Beard shot her once in the chest. Helen Taylor hit the deck.

“No!” Segreti cried, crawling to her body. No one was shooting at him, and he didn’t care why. Helen was still warm. He cupped her face in his palms. “Come on, honey, come on.”

The eyes flickered once and whatever Helen had seen, thought, felt, it was now nothing but void.

Segreti didn’t have the luxury to process what had just happened.

“Ed!”

He looked up. Brown Beard had pulled Justine out of her watery pit and was retreating to the pilothouse and Tremain, Justine’s legs wheeling but getting no traction to stop him. Brown Beard was a big man who half-dragged her with one arm. She looked too exhausted to put up much resistance. And now Brown Beard aimed his Kalashnikov at Segreti, the gun pointing wildly, as he made his retreat.

“Let her go!” Segreti shouted, picking up his carbine.

Tremain walked a few steps away from his shelter, one hand aiming his pistol, the other leaning on his cane. “It’s over, Segreti! Put that gun down. I promise this’ll be quick and painless for you. And Justine gets to live.”

Segreti tracked Brown Beard and Justine along the plane of his gunsight. Ram, taking a different angle, planted his legs to steady his aim.

“That’s right,” Tremain called, “she was just the bait. You’re the catch, Ed!”

Ram and Tremain exchanged fire, Tremain staying cool, holding his ground. Segreti didn’t risk looking back. But he felt the boat rock. Ram had taken a fall.

“Bhav?” he called, his eyes on Justine and Brown Beard. “You still with me?”

“Sorry, chief.”

Tremain called, “You don’t want to lose any more people, Ed! Your sorry-ass life for hers, what do you say?”

(Next chapter.)

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CONTENTS

Segreti put on a tie before heading to ADIC’s office. Formality was still expected, especially when the Bureau had visitors. Paperwork had consumed the morning, and lunch had been a poke bowl. Under other circumstances, he would have welcomed the break from routine.

Ram was in the field, monitoring Jarman and following up on the Archer’s hack, while Belmont was pursuing internal leads on Russian activities. That left just him and Chlebek to face the music. She fell in behind him, dressed in a conservative blue pants suit, her big curves levitating on black high heels, her jet hair tamed by a chunky red clip.

He wasn’t shocked to see the two NSA agents sitting on the leather couch in ADIC’s office. The East Asian woman and the Latino man, today dressed in suits, but the government-standard uniforms didn’t come with smiles. No, he was not shocked, but definitely not pleased to see them, either.

“Ma’am,” he said to his boss.

Church indicated he and Chlebek should take the chairs fronting her desk. “I gather you have met.”

“Uh, yes ma’am. But I didn’t catch your names.”

“Chien and Gonzalez,” the NSA woman said.

“Any particular department?”

Gonzalez said, “You don’t need to know that, Special Agent Segreti.”

He arched an eyebrow towards his boss, which Church ignored. She was the cool professional. Segreti had the feeling that he would soon hear her say, “Nothing personal, Ed.”

Church didn’t sugarcoat it. “This has gone two levels above my head,” she told him.

“They’re the ones who lost the code,” Chlebek blurted and leaned slightly forward.

Segreti put his hand over hers. She sat back.

“Sorry, ma’am. We’ve put a lot into this case.”

“Which is going nowhere,” Chien said behind him.

“Your former colleague is in New York,” Segreti replied. “He broke into the apartment of a reporter who’s been chasing this story since the auction on North Brother Island. He’s been trying to control the narrative. Using her to play games with us. He’s wounded and I’d say desperate. And likely receiving aid from Moscow, here, on the ground. It’s just a matter of time before we get him.”

Gonzalez said, “The whereabouts of Tremain are of secondary importance. We need to see the Red Fidelity code.”

Chlebek said, “It’s got Doublepulsar imprints. It came out of your labs.”

Chien leaned over her elbows. “You don’t know what Red Fidelity can do.”

“Even the reporter knows it’s written using quantum computing language,” Segreti said, turning to face them. “So it’s some kind of communications device. Encrypt, decrypt? Either that or a sensor.”

The two NSA agents exchanged a look. He struggled to see anything human pass between them. Maybe the robots had already come for us, he thought.

Chien said, “With enough hardware, that code could unlock every factor-based encryption. Every single one.”

“The Russians are far behind on quantum,” Gonzalez said, “and the last people they’d trust to give it to are the Chinese. They’re looking for a cutout to insert the code over government research lab infrastructure.”

“Klinger wrote that code?” Segreti asked.

“He was part of a team.” Gonzalez hesitated. “The unit director at the time decided the work was too theoretical and halted the program.”

“Let me guess,” Segreti said. “Klinger was pissed off. Over comes Tremain. Also on that unit?”

The two NSA agents didn’t respond.

“Tremain whispers into Klinger’s ear, tells him he might as well get something for all his hard work. And since it’s just theoretical, what’s the harm, really? Besides, Klinger doesn’t have to do a thing. Tremain will handle the business end. He just needs the code. Maybe he even pays for it up front.”

Chien said, “This conjecture is wasting our time. We need to analyze the code. We expect it may have been modified.”

“To do what?”

“That’s what we’d like to know,” Chien said.

“And why the Russians are eager to execute the program,” her partner added.

Church said, “Agent Chlebek will give you any help you need to take possession of the code.”

“That’s key evidence in our case against Tremain,” Segreti protested.

“Your review is tomorrow,” she reminded him. He tried to look nonchalant. Internal affairs, the shooting at the auction. His fate. His insides shivered. “Get through that first. We’ve got electronic eyes and ears all over the city. If he surfaces, we’ll find him.”

Segreti stood up, buttoned his jacket. “Ma’am.”

“Chlebek, you stay and provide assistance to our guests,” Church said.

Segreti walked out of there feeling like the last few grains of sand were swirling their way down the hourglass, gravity sealing their destiny. But submitting to the flow wasn’t his way. It wasn’t what had made him a lawman for twenty years. If ‘lawman’ was still what he was.

On his way back to his desk, he decided to take a different route. He took the elevator down to the computer forensics lab. The lab was busy now; the other two technicians were back at their stations. And Taylor was at a desktop computer, her tall frame hunched over so she could read the screen’s cramped lines of code. She stood up as he approached. “Sir?”

Segreti regarded the other two techs. The older one, Boston Irish, waved hello.

He crooked a finger at Taylor and she followed him out of the lab. The hallway was open space, but no one was walking through. It would do for a brief inquisition.

“Did you assist Chlebek with that code?”

“No, sir. She wouldn’t let me near it. Besides, I’m not sure I would have added much.”

“Did you make a copy?”

“It’s highly sensitive. It’s on special-purpose laptops that are in a contained room and not connected to any—”

“Yeah, but did you copy the code?”

He knew this was like asking if someone copied a nuclear bomb, just in case.

“That would be against protocol, sir.”

“Let me put it this way, Taylor. I understand you did not copy that code.”

“Correct, sir.”

“Did Miriam?”

“Uh…I couldn’t say.”

“Okay, Taylor. Thanks. Get back to work.”

His phone vibrated. Ram. “Jarman’s on the move, chief.”

So was Segreti. “Where?”

“Called an Uber from her hotel. I’m following her now on FDR Drive.”

“What about those others on her team?”

“She was met in the lobby by Patricia Yamagata and Josh Friedland.”

He punched the elevator button, looked at what floors the cars were, cursed his luck.

“This stinks of Bobby Tremain,” he said.

“I agree,” Ram said.

“Stay with them.”

He was going to need manpower. He texted Belmont. No way he could get Chlebek to help him now, now that she had been detailed to help the NSA. Segreti rolled with an idea, knew it was a bad one, but backtracked anyway.

“Special Agent Taylor!”

She came at a trot.

“We’re going into the field. Make sure you’re armed.”

“Sir?”

“Be downstairs in five.”

He had one detour to make, to the armory, before he made for the carpool.

“I got a Dodge Durango,” the officer said, “A Chevy Ram, and a Jeep.”

Good vehicles but they all looked a little tired. Except a pure black beauty lurking in a corner, with silver steel lines and a fan above the hood.

“What’s that one, that a Mustang?”

“You bet. Impounded 1969 Boss, with a 429 V8 engine, retrofitted chassis and 500 pound-feet of torque.”

“I’ll take it.”

“You can’t sir, it’s from a bust and being put up for auction—”

“I said I’m taking it.”

Segreti put the cases with two M4 carbines in the trunk.

“Hurry up, Taylor, get in.”

Ram once again into Segreti’s earpiece, cord dangling to his phone: “They’re taking the tunnel to Brooklyn. In a blue Honda Civic.” He rattled off the license plate number.

Segreti squealed in pursuit but had to accept the laws of traffic when they neared the mouth of the tunnel. They emerged from darkness among the brownstones and Italian grocers of Carroll Gardens, and the road opened up, a little.

“Let’s see what this baby can do.”

They leaped onto the expressway and blazed a trail past the industrial park and docks hugging Gowanus Bay. The late afternoon sun bounced off the water into the car like a heat ray. Taylor looked like an astronaut pressed against her seat upon launch, as he sped along the highway over Bay Ridge. “Talk to me, Ram,” Segreti said.

“Looks like they’re taking the bridge.”

They crossed over water, the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge suspended high between Brooklyn and Staten Island. He caught only a glimpse of greenery below and didn’t dwell on almost getting murdered down there.

“I see you,” he said, noting Ram’s dusty Charger a few vehicles ahead. “Belmont, where you at?”

“Ten minutes behind you, sir.”

“She’s staying on the expressway,” Ram reported.

Staten Island’s pleasant suburbs and leafy parks unfolded on either side. They followed the contours of a clover intersection and kept going through Graniteville.

“If she stays on the expressway, she goes to New Jersey,” Segreti said. “Otherwise, the only other way off Staten Island is Outbridge.”

“Looks like she’s turning onto West Shore,” Ram said.

“Belmont, you cover Goethals Bridge just in case and then head south. If she changes course, intercept her along the river.”

“Where the hell is she going?” Ram wondered.

Staten Island turned to forest and then marshy wilderness. They were traversing Freshkills Park, a delta of salty waterways interspersed with forests and hiking paths.

“She’s slowing down…turning off. Along the riverfront, Arthur Kill. Warehouses, recycling center…getting out at a cemetery.”

Taylor said, “What’s here? Seems like the end of nowhere.”

He sped past Ram and pulled into the cemetery. The blue Honda was pulling out, empty aside from the Uber driver.

He parked beneath an oak tree, its serenity notable among the confusion in his head. He got out. “See them?”

“There,” Taylor said, pointing.

The three figures coalesced around a filthy green van. Now four: the bulky cameraman, Bert Gomez, had joined them.

The quartet of reporters walked back out to Arthur Kill Road.

“Where are they going?” Taylor wondered as Ram pulled up beside them. He had on a shirt, jeans, boots, and a ten-gallon hat that warded off the slanting rays of the sun.

Segreti walked over to him. “This is your turf, Bhav. What’s down the road?”

“Landside, auto shops and construction equipment stores. Riverside, I think that’s the boat graveyard.”

Segreti popped the trunk. “The Boneyard. Perfect place for an ambush.”

“We wait for Belmont, chief?”

“No, but tell him to get here A-sap. Got your drones?”

“Always.”

“Get eyes in the air.” He opened a case and handed the automatic rifle to Taylor. “You trained on these at Quantico, right?”

She looked apprehensive, but she picked up a 30-round magazine and snapped it in.

He looked at her clothes. Chinos, button-down shirt, sensible shoes. Better than his business suit and brogues. They were going to get muddy.

“Let’s go.”

(Next chapter.)

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Paranormal horror is as good a way as any to grapple with things – normal, sad things – that are hard to talk about. Literature is entertainment, and entertainment is a distraction. While the author is amusing us with his sleight of hand, he is also telling us a different story, one that is true, not paranormal, not made up, and therefore truly horrifying.

The real sad, scary thing is what it’s like to be a defeated people, who have to swallow their sense of despair every day, to the point that it becomes a prison, a prison of the soul. That’s the reality that Stephen Graham Jones conveys in his novel, The Only Good Indians. But that’s not a story that people want to hear. No one’s going to buy a novel if they sniff a lecture.

Fortunately, Jones is too dextrous to let the real story get anywhere near the mic. It hangs in the background, and through the buildup of tension, as we learn about the monster that has come to seal the fate of four men, that other story, the no-fun one, slowly and slyly imposes itself.

Ricky, Gabe, Cass, and Lewis were fourteen year-old smart-asses who broke Reservation law, crossed into forbidden land the Saturday before Thanksgiving, and slaughtered elk. The rebellion was against the stifling, sad reality of the Rez, hemmed in by a hostile white society, a fate they don’t escape years later as adults. They’ve internalized the book’s title phrase.

The luckiest of their group, Lewis, is on a path that could end well: he’s married to Peta, a white woman, and they both have jobs: he’s a postal clerk and she handles landing-strip lights at the airport. It’s not exactly Leave It To Beaver stuff, but they’re happy together, he rides his motorcycle, and they have a dog named Harley. Then the monster shows up, bent on a mission of revenge from that night shooting elk so long ago.

Twice in the book, Jones has Lewis connect the idea of slaughtering elk to the way white men used to slaughter Indians, and so we relate to the monster even as it goes on its rampage, murdering anyone in its way. It’s not evil in a Manichean or Christian sense, just an entity full of sorrow and rage – a dangerous phenomenon that the innocent should steer clear of and the guilty regard as their judgment.

Along the way, though, the story is also about how Indians cope with their circumstances and themselves, mostly through humor, which Jones uses to keep us hooked on the characters and to move things along. Alcoholism, unemployment, and bad parenting are layered as jokes that help define these people – of the Blackfeet tribe – as American Indians. The book is a snapshot of modern life and the warmth of the people Jones describes even amid generally shitty circumstances.

The book is also about basketball. Lewis and Peta work out their arguments on their driveway net. Gabe’s estranged teenage daughter, Denorah, is a basketball prodigy and the community’s great hope: the one who, through sheer talent and grit, has a shot at escaping the Rez on her own terms. It is the story’s final turn where Den and basketball take on a bigger-than-life role: Jones elevates the sordid affairs of the four friends being stalked by a deadly ghost into a struggle for their entire community.

The Only Good Indians was published in 2020 and I’ve seen it around, and finally picked it up this summer on a rare bookstore raid while visiting London. (There are bookstores where I live but the selection is limited.) It’s a great read and an example of how a skilled author can take a genre like horror and push it, bend it, play with it, to keep the pages turning while he quietly works on a deeper agenda.

CONTENTS

Justine needed a car to get to Brookhaven National Laboratory, out near the far end of Long Island. Professor Ang had told her he couldn’t answer her questions; he was just a theorist. She’d need to find someone who knew the workings of a quantum computer. Someone who got their hands dirty with the things. She had wheedled him for a contact and he put her in touch with a former student of his who now worked at the lab, Kartika Nagarwal. Kartika was a Princeton PhD candidate there on some kind of collaborative project. Visitors couldn’t just stroll into BNL, but Kartika had filed an official invitation for her.

After everything that had happened, Justine had forgotten about it, but Kartika’s invitation popped up in her email. She may have quit Archer’s, but neither she nor Paul Chow had begun the process of ending her employment—Paul hoping her anger would blow over; Justine just too distracted from the encounter with Segreti. So she rented a car for the day and drove out. Traffic out of Manhattan was a snarl, leaving her plenty of time behind the wheel to think.

If the FBI agent had known how close she had been to dropping this, he might not have approached her. If anyone was responsible for this new determination, she mused as she steered free of the knotted byways of Queens and into the suburban reaches of Long Island, it was Edward Segreti. She daydreamed about the satisfaction of telling him this to his face. Of course, that assumed she’d see him again. And so she began imagining what that might be like. Probably awkward and horrible.

BNL’s campus was among forests and fields; another twenty minutes she’d be at the beach. She parked at the visitor center where she had to show ID and fill out several forms. By the time that was done, Kartika Nagarwal arrived, a tall Indian woman in jeans and a soft blazer, wearing semi-formal black penny loafers. With her was a middle-aged white man in an off-the-rack brown suit and a friendly if bland smile.

“Joe Metzger,” he said, shaking her hand, “public affairs.” Routine for a visit from the media, but a hazard for her. “Welcome to C2QA.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Justine said.

“The Co-design Center for Quantum Advantage,” he replied.

“Sounds impressive. Can you tell me what that means?”

Kartika said, “Quantum advantage is the point when quantum computers can do things that classical computers can’t. Brookhaven partners with several universities and companies like IBM to use this technology to transform our industries, from energy to materials.”

If it were just Kartika, Justine would have told her the whole backstory. But Joe Metzger was a federal employee. She’d need to keep any mention of the FBI out of this.

They gave her a basic thirty-minute tour of the main building. Kartika was eager to talk at least in general terms about the work that went on here and her PhD dissertation. The technicalities soon overwhelmed Justine. Scratch the surface, and quantum physics was definitely beyond Justine’s comprehension.

“This story for Archer’s,” Joe said. “What’s your angle, if I may ask? Happy to direct you to the best resource.”

She had learned that when PR people offered help, it was a double-edged sword. Sometimes they could open doors. But they did this to steer reporters away from other portals, make sure they didn’t even know what to ask.

“How would someone run an algorithm on one of these things?”

“If they have an actual quantum computer, you input it in the lab,” Kartika replied. “But most services are now done on cloud, which means across a network of hardware. IBM has hardware here that’s part of their cloud service.”

“Can I see it?”

“We have a viewing station,” Joe said. “Come on, it’s downstairs. But you didn’t tell me what your story’s about.”

“There’s speculation about quantum computers being able to break all our secrets.”

“Thought so,” Joe said, with that ambiguous smile again. “It’s a spicy topic. There’s plenty of articles on it.”

She followed them down steps. “Yes, I’ve found a bunch of them online. And videos. IBM’s starting to sell the idea of protecting data. I didn’t quite understand it.”

“It’s a genuine threat,” Joe said, “but for the time being, an academic one. We’re quite a few years away. BNL has people working on this, to make sure we’re prepared.”

“Something about Y2K?” Justine asked.

Kartika said, “That’s waaay before my time.”

Joe laughed. “Guess I’m the Boomer here. In the 1990s every business and government around the world had to reconfigure all their computer systems. Turns out when we started inventing these things, we programmed their calendars thinking in terms of centuries. Forgot that in the year 2000, that first digit would go from 1 to 2. Everyone’s computer was going to recalculate the first day of the new millennium as Year 1000. Cue crashing airplanes and exploding nuclear power plants. Dumb mistake, missed in the rush to jump on the computer bandwagon back in the day. The effort to avoid a catastrophe was pretty heroic, if you ask me, but it cost a lot of money. And when nothing bad happened, it became kind of a joke.”

Justine asked, “So what’s that matter now?”

Joe shrugged as he used his passkey to unlock a door. “Quantum computers can decrypt anything protected by asymmetric communications.”

Kartika said, “Most encryption is based on factoring and private keys.”

“I think you’re going to have to explain that,” Justine said as Joe led them along a darkened corridor. Ahead waited a high panel of windows.

“We protect data today by using private keys,” Kartika said. “Let’s say you bank online. To keep your account information private, the bank’s computer generates two private keys that are prime numbers.”

“Like five and eleven?”

“Yes. Multiply them, you get fifty-five, that’s the public key. Anyone can have the public key, including hackers, but all they know is that the multiplier gives you fifty-five. You can’t work out what the two private-key numbers are.”

“But if you know how it works, then it’s easy to work out that fifty-five is eight times eleven.”

“We’re talking about really, really big prime numbers.”

“Oh.”

“No one can factor those big primes,” Kartika said. “Except a quantum computer, if it has enough qubit power, could work it out really quickly. Peter Shor at MIT was the guy who realized this first. Now we have to change encryption protocols.”

Joe said, “That’s one of the projects we’ve got going on here, making the world quantum-safe.”

“It’s not my area,” Kartika added, “but I know some of the team. There’s a whole bunch of people working on different ideas to write new algorithms that would re-encrypt data and replace the old asymmetric models.”

“And here we are,” Joe said. The corridor was a viewing station overlooking a lab. Computers were piled on high, interlinked by a root network of wires that would shame the mightiest tree. Three people were below, wearing white hazmat suits.

“Is it radioactive in there?” Justine asked.

“No, it’s just a clean room,” Joe said. “And it’s cold.”

Suspended above them was an elaborate golden cluster of gleaming cables, layers upon layers of them, gloriously opulent, like a steampunk version of a Victorian chandelier.

“That’s it? The chandelier?” she asked.

“No, that’s just the cooling system,” Kartika said.

Joe pointed to a small black cube resting beneath the lustrous apparatus. “That’s the computer.”

“It’s so small.”

“Yes. That’s how many qubits, Kartika?”

“Twenty-four.”

Joe chuckled. “What’s that story about how much it can compute?”

“It took about a week to tell us that one times three is three,” Kartika said. “It’s like an idiot savant.”

“But there’s a lot of this hardware now, around the entire world,” Joe said. “Which is linked via a cloud architecture, so that programmers can run experiments remotely.”

Justine was close to learning what she wanted to know. “What if someone had a decryption algo that they ran through that cloud server?”

Her hosts exchanged an uncertain glance.

“Probably…nothing?” Joe ventured.

“Even if someone could write that kind of program,” Kartika said, “we don’t have enough qubit processing power to provide a meaningful answer. Decoherence is still a big challenge.”

“Not even the people at NSA?” Justine asked. “Haven’t they been working on this sort of thing for a while?”

Kartika shrugged. “Sorry, I have no idea.”

“I get the allure,” Joe said, “but that’s not a real story.”

“You don’t think so?” Justine asked.

“It’s just sci-fi stuff. A little beneath a publication such as Archer’s. Leave that for the mobs on social media.”

She pointed at the panorama below. “Just entertain me for a sec. Let’s say someone with a lot of experience, maybe someone like a signals specialist, wrote a general algorithm to decrypt. To… what was it, make information symmetrical?”

“That’s not what you’d call it,” Kartika said.

“But you get my gist. A quantum decryption code that could be run on a collective of quantum computers using an IBM or Google cloud service. It wouldn’t be hard to hide what they’re doing, right? They could just make up some research-sounding mumbo-jumbo and show a credit card, and they’re in.”

“It’s not that simple,” Joe objected.

“Well…” Kartika said.

“How much information could it unlock?”

“It’s preposterous,” Joe said. “We’re a decade away from this risk.”

“It would depend on what data they already have,” Kartika said. “If they had a lot of encrypted data protected by factoring, they could open it all.”

“They’d have to have stolen the data first?”

“I’d say so.”

“How much data has been stolen in the past few years by, say, Russian hackers?”

“Ms. Jarman,” Joe said, “why don’t we head upstairs?”

“I’m just, you know, trying to understand,” Justine said. “If the Russians, or the Chinese, or whoever, had stolen nuclear codes or military secrets, and were just waiting to open them, and they ran that algo through your server, what could they find out?”

“That’s why we’re helping make the world quantum-safe,” Joe said, leading the way back. “I’ll help sign you out, Ms. Jarman. You’ll want to get a stamp for your parking pass.”

In her car, she checked her phone for messages. Something frantic-sounding from Patty. She called.

“J.J., holy shit, you’re not going to believe what’s going on.”

“Tell me slowly, okay? What’s up?”

“Archer’s been hacked.”

She bustled into her office building at dusk. The lobby was the usual post-pandemic quiet; the white-collar workers mostly stayed at home these days. Archer’s had been different. The journalism teams felt a genuine bond, a sense of community, and liked working together. Many lived in the city or had straightforward commutes. Same for the artists and designers. It was the sales and marketing people that had never come back after Covid.

Her stomach sank as she rode the elevator up. She had been checking the magazine’s app on her phone practically nonstop. Just getting a 404 error. This was bad. Her friends’ livelihoods could be on the line.

The glass doors to the office didn’t respond to her electronic fob. The lights were all on, but she didn’t see anyone. She knocked and waited.

Josh jogged into view and turned the lock to let her in.

“All the electronic stuff’s out,” he told her.

“What happened?”

“Probably a phishing attack,” he said, leading her back to the reporters’ corner. Only a skeleton crew remained. She noticed all the computer screens were dark.

Bert and Patty were still there.

“Ransomware,” Patty said, pointing to her PC screen. A blazing skull and crossbones showed over a text message. If Archer’s wanted its data back and its systems restored, it would have to send 20 bitcoins to a specified hash.

“It’s targeted at us,” Justine said, “not our parent company?”

“Nope,” Patty said.

“Where’s Paul?”

“He’s upstairs,” Bert said. Meaning he was probably being grilled by the chief operating officer and legal guys. “The police were here earlier.”

“You think this has something to do with us?” Patty asked.

“It could be a coincidence,” Justine said.

“And what’s this about you quitting?”

Bert stuck his hands in his pockets. “I had to tell them.”

“Never mind, that’s off,” she said. Although if the publication didn’t recover their systems, they were all out of a job. “I met Bomber last night.”

“No way,” Josh said.

“I don’t think he’s dirty. I do think he’s desperate. He basically confirmed the quantum angle. I think the auction we went to was an elaborate cover for the Russians to sell malware to what they thought was a regular criminal. It turned out to be the FBI, Bomber—Segreti. If you run that code through a big-enough quantum computer it can unlock a lot of information that’s supposed to be protected. It’s basically an all-purpose key.”

“Then why don’t they just use it at home?” Josh asked. “Like, if they have it, what do they need another criminal for?”

“They need someone who can access a cloud network, like the ones run by IBM or Google, or one of the big universities,” Justine said. “That’s the only way to get the power, the scale, needed to make it work. They don’t have that in Russia. They need someone with credentials that look legit in America.”

Patty looked skeptical. “I don’t know, J.J. Your average black-hat jerkoff isn’t going to walk into Los Alamos or wherever and say, hey, can I plug this in?”

She hadn’t asked Segreti that, either. “Tremain must have vetted the buyers, thinking they were capable.”

“Who?”

She realized she probably shouldn’t have said the name aloud. “Blond Ambition. The guy who broke into my apartment and gave me the phone.”

“So he has a name now,” Bert said.

“Yeah, he has a name.” Well, if she couldn’t trust these three, she couldn’t trust a single person in this world. “Robert Tremain. Ex-NSA. Ed says he’s a traitor.”

“Ed,” Patty said, her eyes lighting up.

“Patty, don’t.”

“You two getting chummy.”

“Look,” Justine said, “until the company decides what to do about the hack, we’re stuck. Go home, get some rest.”

Her phone rang. Her desk phone, the one she never used except to field a call from reception. The blinking light said the call was coming from an outside line.

The four of them exchanged glances.

Riiing.

“Well?” Patty insisted.

“Fine.” She picked it up. “Archer’s.”

A man said, “What did Segreti have to say about me?”

She felt coils of fear tighten in her guts.

“Why are you calling me?”

Tremain said, “Come on, Justine, you can share.”

“Where are you calling from?”

“He give you my name? Some backstory bullshit?”

“I, uh…” She made alarming but helpless gestures to her friends.

“Tell you what. Let’s do a trade. You tell me what Segreti has to say, and I’ll let you in on a little secret about that ransomware in your office.”

Justine snapped out of indecision and grabbed a pen and her notepad. “I guess a trade is okay.” She bumbled for her phone but Patty was faster, calling up a recorder on her iPhone and holding it by Justine’s ear.

“Ladies first.”

“Well, he told me your name is Robert Tremain. Is it?”

“No comment.”

“You used to work for the NSA. You’re a traitor. And you set up the auction as a cover to sell Red Fidelity. You’re just a Russian cutout.”

He laughed. “A Russian cutout? You wound me, Justine.”

“I would have thought being called a traitor by the FBI would be worse.”

“It’s about what I’d expect from the likes of him.”

“Is it true? That you stole code from the NSA, betrayed your country, and are working with Russia to get someone in the US to run that algorithm here, using a quantum cloud server?”

He laughed again. It was an annoying laugh, all self-satisfaction and nothing funny. “You’re a card, Justine.”

“Your turn, Bobby.”

“I’m holding another auction. This one’s going to include selling the zero-day that’s currently immobilizing your corporate servers. Whoever’s hacked you is asking for a lot of money and no guarantees. But if you come and buy the exploit from me, it’ll contain the patches you need to restore service, and it’s an auction, so the price might end up being a lot cheaper.”

“What makes you think I won’t just tell the FBI?”

“I suggest you get some rest, Justine. You’re going to have a busy day tomorrow.”

(Next chapter.)

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CONTENTS

Tremain waited as the signal on his screen paused along Twenty-Fifth Street between Lexington and Third. The chip in the phone bobbed around on his map before accelerating along Twenty-Third and turning down Park. Headed for downtown, all the way to the Javits Federal Building.

“Segreti has it?” Annika Volkov asked, her cigar pulls giving her voice more gravel than a country driveway.

“Yep.”

They were in windowless darkness. Cement walls beneath the plywood thicker than a man’s body. The only light came from a pair of laptop screens on the steel desk. The cigar’s tip ebbed like a demonic beacon.

The signal on the screen disappeared.

Tremain said, “They’ve already begun to take it apart. The phone we gave her.”

“You will find this fucking reporter, make it happen?”

“She’s easy to track,” Tremain said. “What isn’t so easy is recovering from a sniper’s bullet. I’m not feeling very nimble right now.”

Volkov snorted. “Fucking pussy.”

Tremain smiled despite his anger. She had balls, he’d give her that. Volkov’s beautiful ugly face was an impassive gauze in the eerie light.

“Speaking of which,” he ventured, “when was the last time you got laid?”

Her eyes darkened in a way that he liked. He leaned back in his chair and swiped his blond locks back. “Just for the record,” he added.

She tapped the cigar’s ash onto the naked table. “You are fucking impertinent.”

He gave a boyish shrug. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me, Annika.”

She ran her tongue along the shaft of the cigar. Tremain leaned forward, fully alert. For the first time since he’d woken up in a quack’s office, he didn’t feel the pain of his gunshot wound.

“You like this, no?” She looked at the cigar. “You want to suck my cock, Robert?”

He chuckled, wondering what he had just stepped into. He hadn’t been able to shake her mountainous face from his thoughts. The way she played the cigar on those pillowy lips, the ways he had imagined riding her—or being ridden by her. But he hadn’t considered whether she might be trans. The mannishness was clear, but beneath that track suit she moved like a woman. And the Russians weren’t big fans of alternative sexuality, at least not the ones in their fascist regime. Still, Tremain pictured what she might have between her legs and decided to de-risk. He wasn’t ready for a surprise.

“My interest was purely professional,” he said.

She laughed. “You are such a fucking coward.” She suddenly lunged and smashed the hot end of the cigar on his hand.

Tremain yelped, pushed back in his chair and crashed into the wall. “Guilty,” he said, blowing on his smoking hand. Now the gunshot wound’s throb returned. Great. What else should hurt? “So now what?”

“They will rejoice,” Volkov said. “They will find Israeli spyware that is new. It took FSB many months to crack this. They will know they have been given a gift. Why does Russia give the fucking FBI such a generous thing?”

Tremain guessed it was because Red Fidelity would soon render the spyware and everything like it irrelevant. He just wanted to make sure he was out of harm’s way and rich as hell when it happened. Eventually the lack of secrecy would expose him too, but Uncle Sam and everyone else would have their hands full. They’d be like bayonetted soldiers trying to hold in their guts.

“Speaking of which,” he said, “we need a new auction so we can find buyers who know what to do with Red Fidelity. Putting the reporter together with Segreti means they’ll figure it out.”

“They will be chasing their tails.”

“They can close down every quantum cloud server in the world.”

“Is so? Then you have one week.”

“That’s not enough.”

“It’s enough or you take a swim with Dimitri.” She rounded the table, a shade in the LCD glow. She was close enough that he could smell her, a woodsy soap smell. “I want those FBI dead.”

“The last time we tried that, your guy shot me.” The wound pulsed and he adjusted his position in the chair. “I don’t see any upside to killing them.”

“Upside?” She slapped him so hard his teeth rattled. “Segreti has committed crimes.”

“Do tell.”

“Is not your business.”

That smoldering look, he realized, was not a come-hither. It was a quiet, controlled rage. An aura of power. He had the gut instinct that he would go to great lengths to serve this woman. He had once feared her, but now it was something more like rapture. Tremain didn’t feel like he was in control anymore.

Talk about scared.

“Okay, I think I understand,” he said. “Segreti won’t fall for it. Although…”

“Yes?”

“Justine might. And then Segreti will follow.”

“So, you’re not totally fucking stupid after all.” She was standing right in front of him, all silhouette, a column of wood and stone. “Make this happen, Bobby. For me.”

“All right,” he said, his skin alive at her proximity, the hairs of his neck at attention, his mouth scraped dry, his heart competing with his wound, pounding electricity into his circulation. “I sold you a zero-day last year, that Microsoft malware. I think it’s time to use it.”

She pulled down her track pants and thrust her hips forward. Pubic hairs tickled his nose.

“Suck it,” she commanded.

Tremain, shaking with dread and excitement, inched his face forward. She was a she. Volkov seized his hair and screwed his mouth against her pelvis. His tongue found her clitoris. His jaw ached with effort. With a frustrated tsk she released him and grabbed his crotch, found his zipper. He helped her pull down one pants leg, and then she straddled him. Beneath the woodsy soap were deeper smells, like the rotting roots of an ancient tree. As the back of his skull scraped up and down the concrete wall, he forgot all about the bullet hole and the burn on his hand. Guttural sounds, and those lips all over his, biting his until the sharp pain and the salt of his blood. She roared and pushed off. Stood straight and hitched her pants back up.

Tremain struggled to breathe while his head swam. The pain of his broken lip asserted itself. “Wow,” he said, stupidly, aware that he had capitulated to her and not sure what that would mean.

“I go now,” she said. “To Russian consulate.”

He had assumed she had diplomatic credentials. How else could she have entered the country so effortlessly? They were on Long Island, where the Russian government owned a Gilded-Age mansion in secluded woods, bounded by a wall and tight security. They claimed to use it for family vacations for embassy personnel, but it was bristling with satellite dishes and other listening equipment. They called it the Dacha. Of course they did.

“What about me? How do I get out of here?”

“Fyodor will see to it.” She walked to the room’s sole door. It was a basement so there was only a single bulb hanging outside, but after the darkness it burned like a dark sun. He squinted as her profile moved to the stairs. “I must be at United Nations in two hours.”

“What’s your cover?” he asked. He didn’t expect her to tell him, but she faced him, and he swore she was smiling.

“I am Russian delegate for Human Rights Office.”

(Next chapter.)

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CONTENTS

Segreti gestured up the block, doing his best to exude coolness while his mind furiously turned this over. The best approach was to stay professional, learn what she knew, and persuade her to quit. But Justine Jarman unnerved him—she was a surprise. As they walked up Lexington he didn’t know where to put his hands or how fast to walk or whether to take the lead or linger a few steps behind.

Justine was frightened. He had pinpointed her so precisely, without warning. If he had shown up at her apartment, or Steve’s place, or at Archer’s, then that would have been fine. Well, not fine. But expected, after being tricked into the fake meeting with Bhavin Ram.

Frightened and encouraged. Hadn’t she been trying this whole time to score exactly this? Face time with the mysterious Bomber. Her last chance to make this story—three years of effort, three years of hassle—real.

Initially she followed him to the corner of Twenty-Fourth, crossing to the entrance of one of the Baruch College buildings. Now they walked shoulder to shoulder and she became aware of his physicality, his gait. She had seen him advance before with a swagger, and she had interpreted it as overconfidence. He moved with purpose, matching her pace, not trying to force her to keep up. Not asking to carry her big bag. He was walking with her.

Segreti had already picked his destination. The norm for a conversation like this might be a booth in a diner or a coffee shop. He had judged this encounter would require a different touch. But exactly what to say, how to pitch it, that he was still mulling.

“How did you know where to find me?” she asked.

He smiled. “I’m FBI.”

“You must have been tailing me.”

“You got my attention.”

Why had he said that? The question was to be expected, but his line should have been ‘you got our attention’. Keep it impersonal, bring the weight of the Bureau into play, a subtle way to add gravitas.

They reached Twenty-Fifth Street. A few blocks to the left, the street ended at Madison Square Park, but to their right it was a pedestrianized park flanked by Baruch buildings. On the next corner was a cozy tea shop.

“I thought we could grab a drink and have a chat over there,” he said, suggesting the narrow park. The street was quiet enough without cars, informal, relaxed, but public, and therefore assuring. Of course, he had also set it as a trap, in case she bolted. Ram was nearby on Fifth, Belmont out of sight towards Third Avenue.

“Here?”

“Doesn’t have to be here, but I can vouch for the drinks.”

Justine switched her bag to her other shoulder. The sign read Yi Fang Taiwan Fruit Tea. There was a Starbucks back the way they had come, just across Lex, but Bomber wanted this place. It felt strange.

“They serve coffee and regular tea if you don’t like the bubble stuff,” he said. To her he was trying to sound relaxed. But Segreti had picked this place too, to distract her.

“Sure,” she said, walking inside. Other than a wooden high table running the length of the window, there was no seating. She squinted at the unfamiliar menu.

“Ever have bubble tea before?” he asked.

She shook her head. Josh liked this stuff, but it had never occurred to her to try it. She said, “I kind of pictured you as more a black coffee type.”

He grinned. “No sugar, either, but exceptions can be made.” He had a compelling smile. “If you want the classic, I’d go for the pearl black tea latte.”

She nodded and he ordered. He kept one eye on the small crowd of university kids and tourists waiting patiently for their drinks, and the other on her. Just professionally, he told himself, but he noticed he wasn’t the only male in the room clocking Justine Jarman.

He paid cash and carried both of their cups outside. The park was busy on this summer evening, but Chlebek had occupied a little table for two. She cleared out as soon as she spotted them emerging from the shop and Segreti eased into her chair. He smiled again when he saw Justine take a deep pull off the fat straw, imbibing the tea’s little balls of tapioca.

“You know who I am,” she said. “And I know who you are, Edward Segreti.”

He had been in the field plenty. Had dealt with numerous beautiful women. The job was the job, the rest didn’t matter. Besides, Justine was conventional, almost boring—a Nordic blonde, blah blah blah. But it was the sideways moments when he noticed a smoldering tenacity in the way she looked at him.

“Everything I say is off the record,” he told her. “You’ve stumbled into an investigation. I need you to tell me what you know.”

“Is this conversation being recorded? Am I being watched?”

“Recorded, no. Watched, yes, ever since you blundered into the middle of my work.”

She scoffed. “Blundered?”

“How did you get that number?”

“What were you doing at that auction on North Brother Island?”

He wiped the bottom of his plastic cup where condensation had formed. “You understand, Miss Jarman, that there’s a limit to what I can discuss.”

“I’m a reporter investigating a story in the public interest. You can’t tell me what to do.”

“No, but I can arrest you for obstruction of justice.”

“On what grounds?” She didn’t try to hide her anger.

“Harassing government officials at their homes, digging through their trash as we investigate a case, calling their families. I don’t want to go there, Justine, and neither do you.”

“This your style, Agent Segreti? Sweet drinks and empty threats?” She sucked the straw loudly while he thought of what to say.

“All right,” he said. “There might be a few notes we can compare. And it’s Ed.”

She decided to accept this as a tactical victory. “All right, Ed. I’ve been investigating cyber-weapons by posing as a buyer.”

“Undercover work is our job, not yours.”

“And how do you think it’s going, Ed?”

His easy smile gave way to intensity. “The things we’ve busted, the crimes we’ve prevented? Better than you think.”

“The Shadow Brokers stole NSA weapons and sold them to North Korea. When the Koreans unleashed them, they almost destroyed Maersk, the British health system, a hundred other companies. Then came Bitcoin, untraceable made-up internet money, and ransomware skyrocketed. Ed, I believe you when you tell me you’ve saved the day a couple of times, but every time there’s a new leak of a zero-day, it causes chaos, and each new one is worse than what came before.”

“The world isn’t perfect,” he said. “When has it ever been?”

“Red Fidelity, though… that’s a whole new level of threat.”

“Yeah, you like to throw that around but do you know what it is?”

“Do you?”

“Ladies first.”

“Used on a regular computer, it’s a zero-day. Used on a quantum computer, it does something else. Your turn.”

“Don’t know what more I can say about Red Fidelity.”

“Walter Klinger used to work at the National Security Agency, and someone killed him. Was he the leak?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

“Come on.”

“Tell me everything. I mean every last detail. If it’s useful info, I’ll share what I can.”

Justine took a moment to weigh her prospects. Without Segreti’s help, she was probably done—three years and her rep down the toilet. He had been showing some charm. Maybe she could volley. She smiled. “All right, Ed. My cover was good enough to get invited to the auction. I heard people talking about a quantum-related exploit, but nothing more. I saw you and that blond guy together. You disappeared somewhere in that building, then there was a gunshot, and you came out together.

“I asked around and a physicist told me about Klinger. Told me he was a nasty piece of work, but he used to work at the NSA and knew a lot about this stuff. I tracked him down to his office downtown. He confirmed Red Fidelity was an exploit that worked differently if you ran it as an algo on a quantum computer. He also told me that someone named Malcolm Belmont had been asking the same questions.

“Me and my team canvassed the city looking for Malcolm Belmonts, and we found your guy. I tried to follow him to find you. We spotted you hanging around the Russian consulate. And then someone murdered Klinger.”

Segreti said, “You haven’t told me anything I don’t already know, Justine. Or should I say, Ellie?”

She had been dreading this part. She hadn’t done anything illegal, but they could try to pin something, anything, on her. Justine counterattacked: “That blond guy showed up in my apartment last night.”

That won a raised eyebrow. “Inside your apartment?”

“Yeah. He told me your name, said you and Belmont are corrupt FBI. Gave me a phone with just one number on it, told me to use that to open doors, get a scoop. He also threatened me with a gun.”

Segreti hesitated. “You live alone?”

Justine sensed the pause in the question. Like, it wasn’t just routine info-gathering. He had a trained neutral expression, so maybe it was her imagination. Or it was a trap. What did the FBI know of her private life? “Yes,” she said. It wasn’t a lie.

Segreti’s focus had drifted before he even realized it. He was back in his empty apartment with its cold glass views and nothing personal, just a face-down photo, a shelf of liquor and his badge and gun. Hotel rooms had more personality than Segreti’s apartment. He snapped back. “This guy come with a name?”

“He wouldn’t give it. But you know what it is.”

“He may have aliases. You know who you called on that phone he gave you?”

“Another of your colleagues.”

“My colleague’s daughter.”

He waited to see how she’d take that, and decided she’d make a good poker player.

“I didn’t know that. I’m sorry. Ellie’s just something I made up. There was only one number in the directory. That man told me to call it.”

“You believed him?”

“I knew he was related to you, involved with Red Fidelity. What’s his name?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“Come on, Ed. I’ve given you something useful.”

“Thank you. For your safety I think it’s best you don’t know anybody’s name. He’s already invaded your home and threatened you.”

“I deserve to know who did this to me.”

“It doesn’t get safer, just more dangerous.”

“You just don’t like a reporter investigating the same thing you’re chasing.”

“You’re right, I don’t.”

“Then we’re done.”

“Justine, slow down. This blond guy, can you describe him?”

“What’s in it for me?”

“You’re assisting a federal investigation into the theft and deployment of a very dangerous cyber-weapon.”

“Hm. I’ve got an investigation of my own. Last I checked, this is still America.”

“Let’s skip the First Amendment lecture. This intruder, did he appear injured in any way?”

“He limped.”

Segreti nodded. Tremain for sure.

“My visitor says you’re crooked. Do you tell lies, Ed?”

“He does. He’s trying to use you, get you to stir the pot, disrupt our investigation, send me down rabbit holes.”

“I guess it’s working,” she said, followed by another sucking sound. Segreti felt a flash of anger and wondered if maybe taking her here had been a mistake. Maybe he should have thrown her in the MCC downtown, let her marinate in that cesspit for twenty-four hours. She surprised him by shaking her empty cup. “That was actually quite nice. Thanks for popping my bubble-tea cherry.”

The innuendo, intentional or not, gave him pause. Katie would never say such a thing.

“But,” she added, beginning to stand up, “this was just a one-time thing.”

Segreti didn’t want Justine to leave. Maybe because the job wasn’t done yet, maybe for some other reason.

“It’s very popular in Asia,” he said, just trying to keep the conversation going. “Those bubble drinks.”

“Uh-hunh.”

“I served over there for a while. Anti-nuclear proliferation, based out of Seoul. When you ask me if I’m corrupt…”

She sat back down. Didn’t speak. Those eyes, electric blue.

“In a way, I am.” He was wading into territory he hadn’t planned to visit. It was incognito even to him. “I was on a case. There was a woman.”

“What happened?”

“She was mixed up in something over her head. I took a bullet for her, right here.” He pointed to his breast, just below the collar bone. “After that, I broke my vows.”

“Where is she now?”

“She had given me the keys to the case, and we rounded up the bad guys. Probably prevented a war. But I was in the hospital and then rehab for six months, and by the time I got out, she was long gone.” He indulged a mocking chuckle. “I always put the job before my family. I thought maybe that was okay, that my job was to protect my family. But when I was back home, there wasn’t any love between me and my wife. Hadn’t been for years. So now we’re getting divorced. That’s a betrayal, of everything I thought I believed in. You want to catch a Fed telling lies? Well, here I am.”

She wondered what to make of this. He seemed sincere: there was a trace of unease in his eyes, a hint of sadness. But that didn’t mean a thing. He wasn’t talking about Red Fidelity or the Russians or Blond Ambition. Maybe if she pulled this string, though, it would unthread something useful.

“We might have that much in common,” she said. “I’m not checking into a hotel just to get away from an intruder. Or, he’s not the only one I’m putting at a distance.”

“This other man, he wasn’t happy about your working funny hours?”

“No, and I wasn’t happy about the way he made me feel about it.”

“We’re alike,” Segreti said.

“We are not.”

“When we want something, it’s not just nine to five. We don’t have jobs, Justine. We have callings.”

Justine considered that. It was a point she didn’t want to concede, because it meant taking the blame for everything—endangering her colleagues, or at least wasting their time; alienating Steve. She was a parasite, but she couldn’t bring herself to say so.

“Then you understand why I’m not dropping my investigation,” she said.

“I do. And I’m telling you, if you get in the way of mine, I’ll drop you down a well so deep you won’t remember what sunlight looks like.”

She pursed her lips, tried on a thoughtful pout. “If you obstruct the free press, I’ll raise such a stink that you lose your badge.” She leaned in. “Come on, Segreti, we can either threaten each other or you can use me. Bring me in. Let me help you.”

“To do what?” But he knew the answer was obvious: Tremain.

“Maybe the intruder will be back,” she said. “Want to tell me his name?”

“If you know his name, he’ll know you got it from me.”

“So?”

Segreti thought it over. Tremain had figured out who she was and was using her to send the Bureau down a false trail. Why? Because time counted. Tremain needed to wrap up his scheme and disappear. He knew the government was on to him; he had been involved in the attempted murder of a federal agent. He might be chums with the Russians. And he knew an awful lot about a cyber-weapon pilfered from the NSA. Time was not on Bobby Tremain’s side. He only needed to distract Segreti long enough to unleash havoc and get away. What if Segreti could somehow slow him down until the Bureau had assembled enough of the puzzle?

“What I’m about to say is so off the record that it cannot be printed or published in any format, and if I get even a whiff of this showing up…”

“Agreed.”

“His name is Tremain, Bobby Tremain. He used to work at the NSA. We think his time there overlapped with that of Walter Klinger. He organized the auction. He’s trying to broker Red Fidelity to the highest bidder. The part I don’t understand is that he appeared to get it from a Russian source, not from Klinger—not directly, at least. The Russians had this thing and they want him to get it on the market.”

“They want him to set it off.”

“Or get someone else to trigger it. Plausible deniability. But if they want to unleash this thing, they could just pass it to the North Koreans or the Iranians.”

“One of my sources told me it’s not traditional malware. There’s quantum algorithms. It might be a codebreaker.”

He looked surprised. “Did Tremain say that?”

“No. I pieced it together myself.” Had she turned the tables on him, won some leverage? “You didn’t know that, did you?”

“Classified, sorry.” Too many people know about this thing. “You said Tremain gave you a phone. Still have it?”

“Yes.”

He opened his palm.

Justine noticed he had regained his swagger. This was the Segreti she recognized: Bomber, the man who got his way. Someone she was prone to dislike, and yet there was a plainness in his eyes that was not arrogant.

“That’s evidence,” he told her.

The facts were there: she had not found Segreti; he had found her. The cute bubble tea, the pedestrian zone… hell, maybe the fine summer evening breeze. She thought she had one-upped him, but she’d walked right into his net.

She gave him Tremain’s phone.

(Next chapter.)

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CONTENTS

Justine laid it out for Paul Chow. Her editor wiped his round rimless glasses with a cloth and said, “You didn’t call the police?”

“And say what?”

“An armed intruder broke into your apartment. They can investigate, see what a security camera might have caught. You said he limps, so he can’t be too fast on foot.”

“Paul, he alleged that this team of FBI agents is illegally hustling cyber weapons.”

“And you automatically believe him?”

“No. But what do I tell the police? What if it’s even halfway true?”

“I’m uncomfortable with this, Justine. I think you should drop your story.”

“Are you kidding me? This is becoming huge.”

“It’s becoming a legal liability that our insurance won’t be able to cover.”

“Wait. Did you just tell me you want me to spike an investigation into government corruption in national security because you’re worried about the corporate’s insurance policy?”

“You would not believe the number of lawyers from upstairs that sat in on my last presentation to the board.”

Her head was spinning. “I’ve never, ever, in my entire career—”

“Let me stop you right there, J.J. You’re a tremendous reporter. But times have changed. This is Archer’s. We do hard-hitting features, sure, but the P side of the ledger is from Jaime’s exclusive with a certain Hollywood star’s campaign to save some dolphins, okay? You understand you’re on the L side of the ledger, and the bigger your L gets, the bigger I need to make the P, and I can’t make the P any bigger.”

“Three years, Paul…”

“Three years of L. That feature you pitched me last month on the city’s new infrastructure plans, Robert Moses something…”

“‘The Drowning of Moses’,” she recalled with a groan.

“Finish that.”

He was blurry. That’s how she realized she was crying.

“It’s a good story,” Paul said, which at that point was the worst thing he could have said.

“I quit.” She stood up, backhanding her nose. “I’m sorry, but I just—I quit.”

“Justine,” he said, but she was gone. Then she doubled back to her desk to get her bag.

It was sundown and the others had left, except for Bert, quietly filling the corner.

“Go home,” she said, trying to keep her voice under control.

“I don’t know what to say to my wife.”

“Tell her it’s over.” She walked away before he could reply, before she had to admit what a mess she was.

She didn’t know what to say to Steve. After last night, the idea of returning to her apartment freaked her out. Her sanctuary had been violated. Even the idea of picking a few personal things up was mission impossible. Most of her possessions were at Steve’s anyway.

Maybe what she needed was Steve. And Zach. Put aside their arguments, maybe reconsider her hesitation at moving in permanently. What freedom was she trying to defend? What lifestyle demanded she be alone? She hadn’t been interested in dealing with Steve of late, he had done nothing but disappoint, but she had to admit that she was probably to blame. She was the distant one, the one prioritizing work at oddball hours and with dodgy people.

She now realized had screwed up everything, and yet, maybe this was something she could salvage.

The summer night felt heavy. Humidity was setting in and the breeze off the river was limpid, as if daring her to take a deep breath. The walk hadn’t cleared her head, but the physicality at least preoccupied her, and she’d worked up a perspiration by the time she reached Steve’s.

Justine let herself in. The lights were on and Zach’s door was shut. She knocked, called his name, but nothing. She considered opening the door, just to see, but dismissed the urge.

Steve came hustling down the stairs, fixing the last open button on his shirt, the black shirt he usually wore when he was going out. He looked fresh and shaved, and she could smell cologne.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi.” He moved to the kitchen.

“You, uh, look nice.”

“Thanks.”

Pizza delivery and Netflix didn’t look like it was in the cards. At least, not together. “Been quite the day,” she said.

“Uh-hunh.” He was scribbling a note to pin on the fridge.

“Where’s Zach?”

“Staying at Enrique’s.”

She wondered who Enrique was. Or if Zach had told his father. She assumed not yet.

“And you…?”

“Going out,” he said, brushing past her toward the closet.

“I see.”

“Problem with that?”

“No, it’s just that, uh, I’ve had kind of a rough day. I was thinking we could, you know, catch up.”

He slid on a brown checked jacket. “I’m out tonight.”

“Need a date?”

He paused. “Maybe looking for one, Justine.”

The words hit her like a punch.

“Then I should go,” she said.

“Suit yourself.”

“Is Zach okay?”

“He’s fine. Have a good night. There’s some leftover Chinese in the fridge.”

Steve left.

Justine looked around the duplex wondering why she felt like a bomb had gone off. She couldn’t go back to her Upper West Side apartment. She couldn’t stay in this shrapnel-littered place. She searched online for a nearby hotel she could afford. She wanted a place with at least a doorman and some kind of security, so no Airbnb. The list was short. She booked a place on Lexington called The Freehand. It was about a ten-minute walk.

She stayed long enough to shower, change into clean clothes, and pack a small duffle bag that would last her a few days. She’d arrange another time to get the rest of her things.

On her way out, she saw the note Steve had left on the fridge. Behind it were pinned tickets. Zach, Yankees-Angels, right behind first base. Your dad kept this promise. She wondered what broken promises this gesture was meant to whitewash.

So this was defeat. Now for the retreat. Hefting the canvas duffle over a shoulder, Justine promised herself she wasn’t going to make a fuss. But her plan for the hotel room involved a cold drink, a hot bath, and a good cry.

She walked north for ten blocks, turned onto Twenty-Third Street with its roaring busses and chain stores, and over to Lexington Avenue. The hotel’s name was written in looping red-neon script. She was relieved to see a bellhop; she wanted a place with humans keeping an eye out.

“Justine.”

She turned, body still taut with alertness, ready to sprint. He was standing with his empty hands loose by his waist, white shirt, gray blazer, dark jeans. Kempt black hair with a touch of steel, and eyes a surprisingly bright brown. He appeared from the shadows like a dangerous invitation.

“Let’s talk,” Bomber said.

(Next chapter.)

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CONTENTS

Justine stared at the burner phone in her hand. It was the only thing she was keeping still. The rest of her was shaking.

“Well?” Patty demanded.

They were at their cluster of desks at Archer’s. The windows blazed with late-morning sun, yet the fluorescent-lit office interior seemed impervious to the outside’s warmth. As if they were functioning in some kind of tomb.

Patty leaned across her desk, eyes blazing beneath her Islanders cap. Josh had stopped typing on his laptop, fresh-faced and unsure of what meant what. Bert was here too, leaning against the wall, nursing a Styrofoam cup of tea, his graceful bulk filling Justine’s awareness of her colleagues, her team, here, witnessing her utter fumbling.

“I didn’t expect him to call,” she admitted.

“Nobody actually makes calls,” Josh said. “It’s like… so creepy.”

“Nobody asked you,” Patty snapped.

Justine said, “He suggested meeting downtown at three.”

“And you said Starbucks?”

Justine shrugged. “Public place, lots of people coming and going, and plenty of directions to run.”

Bert wiped droplets from his mustache. “If you can make it outside.”

Justine bowled the burner across the desk to Patty. “Blond Ambition talked about dropping a pixel. What do you think?”

Josh said, “No way you can get hacked just by answering a call.”

“He’s right,” Patty said.

“What about Pegasus?” Justine suggested. “That Israeli spyware can get into your phone if you click on a WhatsApp message.”

“But you used Messenger,” Patty said.

“They’re both owned by Meta,” Justine said. “WhatsApp relies on a mobile account. Messenger’s a Facebook account. No one’s come out and said they’ve hacked Facebook, but that doesn’t mean no one has.”

“You’re telling me a stranger breaks into your apartment and gives you a phone with spyware that even the Israelis don’t have,” Patty said.

“Maybe?”

“And this intruder says, hey, call this guy, and you call that guy and make a date for coffee.”

Justine covered her face and groaned. “Was I really bad?”

“You were bad,” Bert said, dipping his teabag.

“I thought you were fine,” Josh declared.

“You were shit,” Patty said. “But now what?”

Justine glanced across the office. Paul Chow was in his glass enclosure, engrossed in his desktop. Probably editing something. “Now we have to get down to Astor and see if this is going to work.”

Before heading out, Patty cobbled together a tiny microphone and wire. In the ladies’ room she taped this to Justine’s sternum. Outside, Bert donned headphones and gave them a thumb’s up. He got his camera equipment and headed down to his van.

Justine took the Number 6 train with Patty and Josh, but she got out early at Union Station and walked the rest of the way. Josh and Patty were going to check out the Starbucks, pounce on advantageous seats, and find a nearby place where they could regroup.

The summer day was hot but fine. She was wearing a sleeveless blouse, Capri pants and flats. She had her shades on but felt an extra precaution might help, so she bought a bland white baseball cap with a Nike swoosh. Her purse was a supple, lightweight bag, but she still felt the burden of the burner phone inside.

She had Googled Bhavin Ram, narrowed it for New York, and still faced a selection of men’s images and bios. None of them purported to be FBI agents. Of course, she had searched for Edward Segreti, shortly after the intruder had left her apartment. She had been so scared, she just wanted to get the hell out of there and go to Steve’s. But it was so late, and the man hadn’t hurt her. He was gone and this phone was now in her hands. She also looked up all the names he had spilled, and only after half an hour of fruitless searches had she been able to fall asleep.

The brief exchange with Ram played in her head. She felt like an ignoramus—playing spy-girl with strangers, not knowing the rules of the game. Even after three years of passable undercover work, she still felt out of depth. These people are trained, she thought, as she reached Strand Books.

Blond Ambition had said these feds were crooked. But Justine knew the opposite could also be true. At least she would have a chance to ask some questions, even if that meant confessing some sins. Who knew, maybe she’d even get a straight answer.

The Starbucks overlooked a busy square: NYU kids, a couple of guys pounding rhythms on arrays of plastic buckets, skateboarders, and tourists giving the black Cube sculpture a spin on its corner axis. When Justine entered the café, she saw Josh and Patty were near the back, occupying a pair of large reclining chairs bracketing a small table. Two-thirty.

Justine bought a coffee. Josh stood and gravely walked out, like a general leaving the field of battle.

“This seat free?” she asked Patty, who shrugged and kept reading her phone.

Justine sat down and surveyed the place. “Anything I should know?”

“Bathrooms are a dead end. If it’s an emergency, go behind the counter. I saw them hauling trash out that way.”

“Wish me luck.”

“Pray you don’t have to pee.”

Patty hung around for a while, just to make sure they could keep the seat. Justine kept one eye on the burner and another on the door. And then on the baristas, wondering what would have to happen for her to need to burst through their ranks. It’s just a meeting with a…source.

Three o’clock. Patty had gone outside. Bert messaged that Justine’s audio was coming through just fine. She knew he would be filming the entrance. She had a nervous jolt: what if Ram came through the back, where they take out the garbage?

One minute past. Two.

How punctual were these things supposed to be? She had experienced her share of covert meetings. Sometimes people were quite late, but Ram was supposedly a government agent. Justine had the sense that they would be punctual.

Five past.

Her coffee cup was empty.

“This free?” asked a young white woman. Definitely not Bhavin Ram.

“Sorry, it’s taken.”

“I been waiting in line for like ten minutes and nobody’s been sitting here.”

“It’s taken,” she said, putting her feet on the opposite seat.

“Fuck you, bitch,” the young woman said, but she went looking for somewhere else to sit.

Justine’s heart raced, and she knew her mind would drive her nuts reviewing this meaningless exchange, but she canvassed the space with a sense of minor accomplishment.

Ten more minutes passed, and then fifteen, and she dreaded risking getting up to get another coffee. Of course, she now had to pee too. But the importance of this meeting had grown. She had come to realize that this was the closest she was going to get to Bomber. Having Blond Ambition break into her apartment proved that she was onto something big. But Bhavin Ram was the only thread she had left to pull.

After another half hour and another unpleasant customer exchange, she accepted that he was standing her up.

She group-messaged the others. “Calling time on this bullshit.” Then she dashed to the bathroom.

Justine exited the Starbucks and met the others by the Cube. The black sculpture was a solid piece of interlocking slabs, spinning upright on one corner, like chaos about to break.

“Well, this sucks,” Josh said.

“Sorry, J.J.,” Bert added.

“No, I’m sorry,” she said. “I made a play and it didn’t work. You guys should get back to your other work. I have to deal with Paul.”

Patty folded her arms. “How do you know it didn’t work?”

Justine was about to respond, then shut her mouth. She looked around at the skateboarders, the tourists, the street hustlers and the ordinary New Yorkers striding to their next rendezvous. She did a three-sixty, saw the Cooper Union Building across the plaza, saw the endless wall of windows in the surrounding buildings. She spread her arms wide. “Here we are!”

“Hunh?” Josh said.

Patty chuckled and pulled her Rangers cap down low. “Oh man.”

Bert looked uncomfortable. “We should go.”

“They’ve rounded us all up,” Justine said. “The least we can do is express our gratitude.”

Patty raised both her middle fingers and did a pirouette.

“Yeah, up yours!” Josh giggled, giving the world the bird.

Bert shook his head. “Nosotros estamos tan jodidos.”

She put a hand on his shoulder. Her moment of bravado was melting into regret. “Sorry, big guy.”

Segreti and Ram returned to the office the same time, Segreti with a Canon 7Dii slung over his chest.

“Got four suspects waving back at me,” Segreti said.

“I want to know how they got my daughter’s number.”

“You sure they knew it was hers? Your name isn’t on an account somewhere?”

Ram paused. “Good point.”

“So, we know someone’s been trawling for our personal information. They found something that tied back to you.”

“I’m careful about these things, boss.”

“Those cellular companies are getting hacked all the time. All of us have data floating in the ether.”

“If I see anyone look even crosswise at Sissy, I’m putting them down.”

Segreti clapped him on the back. “Come on, let’s see what the others got.”

Upstairs he handed the camera to Belmont. “Get me IDs on these four.”

Belmont looked worried. “We’re actually minus one ID.”

“What’s that mean?”

Belmont opened a drawer and passed him a report. “I just emailed you a copy. The guy you dropped at the auction?”

Segreti remembered. He didn’t like to dwell on it. Not just because of the hearing. “Drew Kovicec.”

“Looks like a stolen identity. The real Kovicec is still there, in Springfield, Illinois.”

Segreti opened the file. There was a photo of Drew Kovicec, but it wasn’t the man in the Javits morgue.

“So who did I shoot?”

“Working on it, sir.”

“Just gets better and better. Keep digging.”

He didn’t know what to make of this. Better to keep busy. He called Ram and Chlebek. Time to visit computer forensics.

Special Agent Taylor met them wearing plastic goggles and latex gloves. She was gangly and nervous when they entered her lab, still a rookie, but when she bent over the table where she had dismembered Sissy’s phone, Taylor was all business. “I’ve identified IOCs that correlate to an offshore C&C,” she said.

Segreti signaled his distress. “Sure you did.”

She pulled away her goggles. “Sorry, sir. I’ve found indicators of compromise that point to a command-and-control server that is located in Venezuela.”

Chlebek said, “Have we seen an injection package like this before?”

“It’s similar to Pegasus, but this isn’t Pegasus,” Taylor said.

“That’s the Israeli malware, right?” Segreti asked.

“Yes, sir,” Taylor said. “It’s software that infects a phone without you needing to click anything. Pegasus used zero-days in iPhones that let it encode itself into WhatsApp messages or photo files. I’ve found similar vectors of communication back from this phone in the past six hours to a suspicious server. That’s probably issuing commands, tracking the location of this device, and so on.”

“Bhav, anything on your daughter’s phone we need to know about?” Segreti didn’t mention what he’d learned about the daughter’s boyfriend. Drug misdemeanors. A petty hustler, but a nobody. Segreti had tucked that information away and hoped he’d never have to use it.

“I’ve sent an encrypted file with that information to Special Agent Chlebek,” Taylor said.

“I’ll go through it,” Chlebek said.

“It’s Sissy,” Ram said, incredulous.

“The phone was probably only infected after she clicked on the message from the Ellie persona,” Taylor said.

Segreti asked, “Do you think the perp thought it was Ram’s phone? Or did they target Sissy because they figured she was more likely to click on that message?”

He watched Ram’s visage turn angry. “These assholes are using my daughter…”

“Easy, cowboy.” Segreti added, “Good work, Taylor. Now I need to connect this malware to Russia or Tremain.”

She shook her head. “The best I can do is find that server.”

“Venezuela?”

“Yes, sir. But they’ll geolocate the phone to our location. They’ll know we have it. They’ll cut communications, cover their tracks.”

“Okay. Go dig. Remember, Taylor, we don’t find crumbs, we find caviar.”

She beamed at him. Finally, he thought as he headed upstairs, I made someone smile.

He wasn’t at his desk for long before Belmont came over, looking pleased. “Check your email, please.”

Segreti pulled up Belmont’s message and opened the file. The photos Segreti had taken from the second floor of Cooper Union were blown up in fine detail. Four people, four names, four addresses, numbers, social media channels, place of employment.

“Archer’s?”

“Looks that way.”

He opened a new window and Googled Justine Jarman. Plenty of images of the pretty blonde with a fierce disposition, her book about cyberattacks, her articles for Archer’s, Vanity Fair, Wall Street Journal.

“Jesus wept.”

“Sir?”

“We’ve been hacked by a fucking reporter?”

Belmont couldn’t hide his bemusement. “If you say so, sir.”

Justine Jarman looked back at Segreti with a determination that he was now ready to match. He thought about their brushes, the auction, outside the Russian embassy. Was she an enemy asset? How did she come into possession of such sophisticated spyware if she wasn’t working for the Russians?

“She wants to meet? Let’s meet.”

(Next chapter.)

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CONTENTS

It was pushing three a.m. when Segreti found his team within Central Park. They had agreed to break up and meet here, along the northern edge of the reservoir. They’d only be disturbed by the odd jogger or junkie at this hour. The lights of Manhattan, though reduced in number, still defined Midtown at the far end of the water.

The others emerged from the shadows and cohered on the running trail along the high iron fence that ringed the lake. They came together with a furtiveness that he imagined his quarry would recognize. He couldn’t make out their expressions in the dark. Chlebek’s broad pale cheeks, the whites of Belmont’s eyes, Ram’s ragged breathing. It was enough that they were still here. Because it was important that he speak with them now, out of sight. Home—a cold apartment with divorce papers burning a hole on his kitchen counter—had to wait.

Segreti considered thanking them, or apologizing for the crazy hour. They had all been working non-stop for more than twenty hours and the coming day would be no different. But now wasn’t the time for that.

“Things are going to get messy,” he told them. “The NSA wants me off the case.”

“They said that?” Ram asked.

“They weren’t subtle. Plus, we’re being tailed. I think we’ve been under surveillance for a while.”

Belmont said, “I think someone’s been hanging around my place.”

“Caucasian female, blonde?” Segreti asked. Pretty? —he didn’t add.

“Not sure, sir.”

“She approached me at the auction,” Segreti said. “I brushed her off. I didn’t think she was significant. But I saw her tonight, outside the Russian consulate.”

“Think she’s one of them?”

“Russian, NSA, one of Tremain’s people… I don’t know.” He gritted his teeth at his ignorance.

Chlebek asked, “Can you tell us what the NSA actually said?”

“Two of their liaisons at the Bureau’s Long Island City facility told me to give back the Red Fidelity code, stop investigating, and otherwise avoid career suicide.”

“Did you tell ADIC?” Belmont asked.

“No.” Church had gone out of her way to get Towers to receive him in her secret lair: what the burglars did was a secret even to most other Bureau personnel. Need to know, etc. The metadata that Taylor had scrubbed from those phones had given Church a simulacrum of cover, and she had put her name on the line to get him the electronic surveillance on the Russians. But ADIC had been plain: Segreti was out of favors. “And I’m not going to.”

Ram stuffed his hands in his pockets. “So, where we at, chief?”

“I’ve skated so close to the edge I can’t see it anymore,” he confessed. “Tremain’s a traitor, and the Russians are up to something that could do real damage to this country. Damage I can’t add up. But we’re getting spun. By the Russians. By our own people. By Bobby fucking Tremain.”

“What’s the play?” Belmont asked.

“The play is that from here on out, I’m not concerning myself with diplomatic immunities. Or complying with bureaucratic niceties. Which means I’m going to be damaged goods, and Deborah Church might decide to hang me by the balls. But I’m nailing that sonofabitch. You guys should go home, take tomorrow off, stay the hell away. I won’t hold it against you.”

The other three exchanged glances in the dark.

“If it’s all the same, sir, I’d like to see this thing through,” Belmont said.

“You could get fired. They’ll haul you in, question your loyalty, question everything.”

“I know, sir, but if this threat is what we think it is—I’d rather try to stop it.”

Chlebek asked, “Exactly what bureaucratic niceties do you think you’ll ignore?”

“State Department protocols and whatever Internal Affairs tells me to do.”

She nodded. “You’ll need somebody who can access IA files.”

“If you get caught trying to cover for me, or covering your own ass, Miriam…”

“I won’t get caught.”

Ram coughed. “I’m in.”

“Bhav, no. You’ve got a wife and kids. I don’t want you messed up in this.”

“I said I’m in. This is what we signed up for. What we really signed up for.”

Maybe he should have felt grateful. Relieved. Proud. But something nagged him.

“Remember what you told me, family comes first?”

Ram hung his head, as if being scolded. “I remember.”

“So?”

Ram wasn’t ashamed; he was embarrassed. But he spoke the words. “This is family too.”

Segreti finally said “Okay” and fought the urge to throw up.

Ram had already messaged Blessy to tell her he’d be working all night. As the meeting broke up, he contemplated the convoluted commute. He’d get maybe an hour’s sleep before dawn broke.

Segreti must have recognized the exhaustion, or maybe just the despair. “There’s a sofa with your name on it, if you want it.”

Ram nodded and wordlessly followed his boss back to a shiny new apartment hoisted high over the Lower East Side. It was bare-boned, as he’d expected, but even so, the coldness of the place was enough to make a man shiver. He slumped on the couch facing the cityscape, the towers hushed as tombstones, as Segreti brought a blanket in from the bedroom.

Ram didn’t move.

“You want this?”

“Okay, thanks.” Then Ram added, “I’ll sleep better if you got something to take the edge off?” Maybe it was a dumb thing to ask your boss, but the idea had trailed him all the way back here.

Segreti threw the blanket onto another cushion and walked to the kitchenette. He pulled out a bottle of Jack Daniels, poured each of them a finger, and put the bottle and the drinks on the glass coffee table. He followed this with his gun and badge, then sat on a chair by his lonely dining table. “Cheers.”

Ram shut his eyes and savored the firewater. He felt its tendrils seep through his chest and shoulders. Coming here had been the right call; having a much-needed drink at home these days got him nothing but shouting matches. When he opened his eyes, he saw Segreti had turned his back. He was brooding over a bundle of forms on the table.

“Don’t tell me you’re doing paperwork,” Ram said, suddenly feeling tired. Maybe just another drink before stretching out.

Segreti reached an arm back to show him one of the documents. The all-upper-case title, Complaint for Absolute Divorce, was enough.

“Shit, Ed, I’m sorry.”

They had another drink. Ram’s brain was softening into a tired mush, but he wondered how much of Segreti’s talk of going rogue was the job and how much was this. He wondered about following someone disintegrating like that. Then he thought of yesterday’s argument with Sissy about her dating some college-aged scumbag. He felt a heavy regret in his chest. Whatever Segreti was fighting for, it seemed a million miles from the patriotic family schtick that he liked to preach. Blessy, Sissy, Sammy. They were real. Sometimes a real pain in the ass, but they were his everything.

He could get shot. Get cancer. Get whatever. But one way Ram didn’t want to end up was head in hands at a kitchen table empty of anything meaningful except divorce papers.

Segreti turned in and Ram laid down on the couch. In the darkness, the lights from nearby towers hovered like lonely motes. His mind replayed the pledge he had made to the others. He wondered how to account for the damage that was sure to accrue. Assets and liabilities. Bills bills bills; the bills were going to come due, just like that…

He squinted in the heat of the morning sun. Cotton mouth, spinning head. By his standards, not a bad hangover, but it felt worse because for a minute he didn’t know where he was. Then he saw Segreti’s badge and gun on the coffee table. The bottle of Jack was gone but had left a sticky ring on the glass.

Ram sat up. Segreti was already dressed and scrubbed. The aroma of coffee delivered a semblance of comfort. “What time is it?” he asked.

“Nine.”

“Shit.”

“I went for a workout and you were snoring away, so I left you alone.” The coffeemaker beeped. “Milk or sugar?”

“Sugar.” Ram got up and used the bathroom. His reflection reported back a tale of woe. He went back out, drank his boss’s coffee, and decided he’d message Blessy once he was on the ferry.

“Take the day off,” Segreti said. “We all need a rest.”

On his way out, he was going to tell Segreti that he was out. That he would step up to that invisible line; however, if he thought it would harm his family, he wasn’t going to cross it. But Segreti was at the table, face robotic, eyes vacant, signing papers.

Ram left and made his way home. He lined his stomach for the ferry with a greasy sandwich, and spent the ride going through emails on his phone. The house looked quiet, but when he stepped inside, he heard music from upstairs.

“Blessy?”

But Blessy wasn’t a Taylor Swift fan, and she didn’t listen to music amped up like that.

He climbed the stairs and knocked on Sissy’s door. The volume suddenly dropped. “Who is it?”

“Three guesses.”

She opened the door, dressed in T-shirt and cutoffs, hair done up, makeup on.

“It’s algebra,” she said, gesturing to her computer monitor and its grid of young faces.

“You’re not at school?”

She sighed like a princess, a gesture he found both infuriating and charming. “Friday classes are online, Dad, remember?”

That it was Friday was news to him. The past week had been a blur. He didn’t understand why teachers and students wanted to continue lessons as if Covid still raged. Whatever. Just add it to the list of domestic matters he didn’t get.

“Does the teacher recommend blasting music? Is that some new form of learning? I missed that one when I was your age.”

She eyerolled like the best of them. “It’s a ten-minute quiz time. Mrs. Pearson isn’t, like, even talking.”

“Keep it down.”

She wrinkled her nose. “You smell disgusting, did you know that?”

“Yeah, I know. When it’s your lunch break, want to have lunch with your dad? Promise I’ll shower first.”

She looked like he had pitched selling the Brooklyn Bridge. “Uh…”

“We can grab a pizza in town.”

“I got to, you know, do this quiz.”

“Sure, honey.”

When she came out a few hours later, he had mowed the back yard and cleaned out the gutter like Blessy had been chasing him to do—the work and the sun like a detox. She watched him take the detritus to the trash can in the garage. “So, like, Pier 76?”

“I was thinking Tony’s.”

“That’s where the old people go.”

He didn’t mind her little dig. Pier 76 was twice the distance and more than twice the price, but her acceptance filled him with a glow.

Walking with a teenager required a patience he still didn’t appreciate. She travelled with cellphone in hand, and every corner was a chance to dash messages back and forth. As they ambled among the leafy detached houses of Crescent Street, talking about the minor iniquities of school life, Sissy checked her phone again. Puzzled, she halted.

“What is it?”

She scrunched her face and, to his surprise, handed over her phone. “It’s for you.”

“What?”

“Why someone would be messaging you on my phone is beyond me.”

“Give me that.” She was on Facebook Messenger. Had clicked open a message from an account called Ellie.

Hey, I’m looking for Bhavin Ram!

“Who’s Ellie?”

Sissy shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“You answered a message from someone you don’t know?”

“Maybe she’s from school and I just forget. Besides, I didn’t answer it.”

But she had clicked on it. Did that mean anything? He hit the call button. It rang.

When someone picked up, he said, “I’m looking for Ellie.”

A woman’s voice responded. “Are you Bhavin Ram?”

“Who’s asking?”

“Someone with a mutual interest in Red Fidelity.”

He froze.

“Who is it?” Sissy demanded.

Ram stayed her with a finger. “Who are you?”

“Someone who knows you have an interest in things like that.”

Ram looked around to see if he could identify a spotter. “I don’t talk to strangers.”

“Then we should meet.”

He put a protective arm around his daughter. “How did you get this number?”

“You want to meet or not?”

They were calling his daughter’s phone. His blood was up but he kept his tone even. “To talk about…”

“Your involvement with Red Fidelity.”

“Sure, we can meet.” So I can shoot you, involving my daughter like this. “How’s downtown at three?”

“Starbucks, the one on Astor Place.”

The line went dead.

“Shit.”

“Dad!”

He went to the call record, number without ID, tried to get the woman to pick up, but he only got a disconnect signal.

“I have to go,” he said. “And you need to get back to the house and stay there.”

“What? You promised lunch!”

He held the phone up high as she jumped to snatch it. “And I have to take this.”

(Next chapter.)

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As a creator, innovation is part of the toolbox. The drive for doing something both brilliant and new is the human spirit writ project-level. Innovation is usually rejected – by the public, by the publisher, by the critics. It must be drip-fed rather than unleashed in a bang, otherwise the dissonance renders it moribund. “It was too early for its time” is the epitaph on many a work or deed.

And, so, Peter Gabriel. I’ve been a PG fan since high school, when I was hooked by his album—So. You know the one: “Sledgehammer”; John Cusack hoisting his ghetto blaster to woo the girl with “In Your Eyes”.

Over the years I’ve listened to most of Gabriel’s albums, some of which are meh, while others are terrific: Passion, the soundtrack to Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ”; Us; and the third album, sometimes called Melt based on the cover image but officially just ‘Peter Gabriel volume 3’.

But the most daring and, in my opinion, successful of his albums is ‘Peter Gabriel IV’, also known as Security.

Why am I writing about an album that came out in 1982? Because it represents an artistic vision without compromise. It insists it is in the vanguard that will change its medium forever. It is unique: there really is nothing like it. It is incredible. Its failures are as interesting as its achievements.

Listening today to Security is still a raw, surprising experience. There’s still nothing out there that sounds like it.

The opening track, “The Rhythm of the Heat”, is not a disco number for an episode of “Miami Vice” (although Gabriel was the artist most frequently featured on the show). It’s a dark, gnarly exploration of Carl Jung’s own trauma of self-actualization while in a Kenyan drumming circle.

It is a fusion of Gabriel’s idea that the future of pop music would be both technologically advanced, and broadened by incorporating idioms from the non-Western world. He was right about the wiz-bang stuff. He pioneered electronic music.

On the world-music front, he was only only partly right. A few other artists embraced non-Western sounds – Sting, David Byrne, Paul Simon – but either as window dressing or for specific projects rather than ouvre-changing experiences. The Western audience did develop a taste for different sounds, so we have Gabriel in part to thank for paving the way for popularizing Buena Vista Social Club, Youssou N’Dour, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and such.

In fact, listening to “The Rhythm of the Heat”, it’s obvious that Gabriel’s notion that he was in the vanguard was quite wrong. This is not because of a flaw in the song. On the contrary, it’s an awe-inspiring piece.

Using the latest, and very new, digital technology, Gabriel built an atmospheric and suspenseful introduction. His vocals are at their most powerful on this album, and he segues from husky explanation to sudden howls that evoke Jung’s plunge into dread. Meanwhile a series of interlocking, drone-like rhythms which Gabriel purloined from recordings of various African musicians create an increasingly intense, hypnotic pulse. Gabriel himself is hypnotizing, until it ends in a shattering whirlwind of African percussion and synth beats. There is no way this would have played on radio then, or on a Spotify playlist now.

Gabriel’s imagination didn’t stop there. The next track, “San Jacinto”, imagines a native American Indian in what is now Texas watching his natural environment steadily transformed into the pools and golf courses of the white man, who have stolen Indian culture in their new paradise: “Past Geronimo’s Disco, Sitting Bull’s Steakhouse, white men dream,” he sings. Its main body consists of interlocking artificial sounds that conjures airiness, Indian laments, and pathos. The final length of the song is a strange, spare, crystalline call for his witness to “hold the line” and preserve what he can of his eclipsed culture.

This theme of holding onto what little we can in the face of inexorable change and destruction runs through the album. In Gabriel’s previous outing, the amazing Melt, his concluding song is “Biko”, a pean to Steven Biko, a black activist in South Africa who was murdered by the apartheid state police. “Biko” was Gabriel’s step into African music, a precursor to the full-fledged immersion of Security, but it was also his foray into political art.

He picks that up and goes even deeper towards the end of Security with “Wallflower”, a song about people ‘disappeared’ and tortured by any number of dictatorships. This song packs an emotion wallop. Unlike the anthemic “Biko”, or the frenetic “The Rhythm of the Heat”, “Wallflower” is quiet and introspective – lovely, really – while it tries to recognize the horror of an activist who has been thrown in a hole to face torture and likely death.

They tell you how to behave, behave as their guest

You want to resist them, you do your best

They take you to your limits, they take you beyond

For all that they are doing, there’s no way to respond

“Hold on,” Gabriel sings with increasing power, “hold on”. That’s all these people can do now. “Though you may disappear, you are not forgotten here.”

It’s both incredible sad and beautiful, and even repeated listening does not lessen the horror and hope in the song.

Every song on Security is daring. “I Have the Touch” is an upbeat number about isolation and the need for physical human contact. The album’s only radio hit, “Shock the Monkey”, attacks vivisection. Its weirdest track is “The Family and the Fishing Net”, which has a very angular vibe and builds to a mad climax, will make you want to never attend a wedding again.

Along with “The Rhythm of the Heat”, the album’s backbone consists of two more intense pieces built around African drumming structures. “Lay Your Hands on Me” is an exploration of trust, and in his live acts, Gabriel would end this number by crowdsurfing. “Kiss of Life”. Both are incredibly positive and uplifting, leavening the dark and brooding themes found elsewhere in the album.

Watch the spirits laugh and cry, what them find a place to hide

Watch the spirits talk in tongues, watch them take you for a ride

Down at the ocean lies a body in the sand

Big woman sits beside, head in hand

With heat from her skin, and fire from her breath

She blows hard, she slows deep in the mouth of death

Burning, burning with the kiss of life

Throughout the making of this, Gabriel created brand-new sounds from anything he could grab: breathing through a discarded pipe, smashing a television screen. These, plus traditional instruments and his own voice, were digitally altered into sounds that could be manipulated, repeated, and recycled. From this we got many of the sounds that defined 1980s synth pop. Much credit goes to his producer, David Lord, who worked with him in the studio throughout the entire process. Lord saw his role as to simply facilitate Gabriel’s vision, and be useful, rather than impose his own ideas. He was the perfect collaborator.

Gabriel wasn’t the only star working on digital music, but he was pioneering noises and ideas on his own, at his own studio in Bath, far away from the industry machines in London or New York. He discarded cymbals (initially on Melt) and often did away with guitars, but he made countless versions using many instruments of all his songs, compiling track upon track. He was a fussy artist for whom ‘enough’ is not a word. He was a perfectionist who could drive others mad, particularly the commercial and marketing folks at his labels. Gabriel fought tooth and nail to keep them out of his process. Never more so than with Security.

And it shows. There’s simply nothing like Security. Should I call it a masterpiece? I don’t know – that feels like an empty word these days. But I can tell you it is an uncompromising work of art. Gabriel didn’t casually bang this out. He worked tirelessly for two years on it, constantly inventing new ways to turn different sounds into music, and to incorporate music from the rest of the world in order to create new avenues for Western pop. Security is the result of unique vision. No one made an equivalent then, and no one has since. And I still love this album, especially with the headphones on, to maximize my own immersion into the music.

And yet by Gabriel’s own measuring, the album’s burning ambition – to change the course of Western pop music – failed. Western listeners like me did become curious about the rest of the world, and I have Gabriel to thank for my catalogue of Brazilian music. But the music being churned out in America, Britain, and elsewhere in the West is, if anything, more traditional and less adventurous than in the early 1980s. Our music has become recursive. Gabriel helped define an era, or a moment, in pop music, but then that moment passed. We had hip-hop and grunge, and not much new since. If Bad Bunny’s playing the Super Bowl and K-Pop is the rage, it’s got nothing to do with trends in white Western pop.

His next album was So, which made him a sex symbol and a megastar. It is also infused with African beats, but they are more subtle, and American black sounds are more prominent. Gabriel took on a new producer for So, Daniel Lanois, who helped craft an album that is both innovative and an earworm. There are many radio-friendly songs on So. This is not a criticism. So probably is the better album. It’s got a consistency, an intense composition, and a funky flow that is irresistible. It also has a sense of humor, while Security utterly lacks playfulness. But there would be no So without Security. So is polished and MTV-ready, Security is raw and defiant. But So is – I’m guessing – much more of a fusion with Lanois. Security is Gabriel unconstrained. And in that he could travel roads never taken, and still never rediscovered.

As I was thinking of writing this essay, I recalled watching a documentary about Gabriel making this album. It’s on YouTube and, having now watched it again, I find it is very good: “Peter Gabriel on the South Bank Show” documents the process I’ve described in fine detail and shows you the evolution of “The Rhythm of the Heat” and “I Have the Touch”. It’s a great look at art, but also innovation. The technology Gabriel was using in 1981-82 is now available for any idiot with GarageBand on their Mac, but Gabriel had to spend months doing manual labor to coax those sounds into being. The kiss of life indeed.

CONTENTS

“What is that place?” Justine wondered aloud.

She was on the back of Patty’s motorcycle, visor up. They had followed Malcolm Belmont into Manhattan’s Upper East Side. He had parked along East Sixty-Seventh Street and then stayed put. The street was quiet, mostly residential, lined by squat white-bricked blocks from the 1950s. A few doors down, one of the blocks had a steel canopy shielding its sidewalk and a pair of flagpoles.

“What flag is that?” Patty said.

“Let’s drive by, get a look.” She lowered her visor as Patty swerved alongside Belmont’s car, but she didn’t get a look at him. Instead, they ambled alongside the apartment block. It was a quick enough look. Patty pulled over on the next block and Justine searched Google, just to make sure.

“That’s Russia’s property,” she said. “It’s where their UN delegation lives.”

“You’re shitting me.” Patty cut the engine. “J.J., we getting, uh, in over our heads?”

“No such thing.” She tried to connect the dots. Braun and Bomber were at the auction where somebody was selling incredible zero-days. Walter Klinger, ex-spook, had probably had some kind of hand in designing this one. Now he was dead, and Braun was casing a Russian ambassador’s residence. “Go back around. We need to keep an eye on him.”

Patty sighed. “You’re really something, you know that?” But she started up her Kawasaki. It took a few turns to get back to where Belmont was parked.

He was just pulling away.

“Follow him!” Justine shouted.

It was a straight shot up Park Avenue. Patty hung back, and the longer Belmont maintained his course, the safer it felt to put some space between them. His taillights became a blur in the traffic, but at this hour, the street was not that busy, and they could keep an eye on him. The silent glass towers of banks and Fortune 500 companies gave way to stylish apartment blocks and the darkened windows of expensive restaurants.

“He’s turning!”

Patty followed Belmont onto East Ninetieth and then up Madison one block. He pulled over too quickly and Patty kept going.

“We have to turn back!”

She sped around the block and then trundled onto the sidewalk. She lifted her visor. “I’ll hang here. You go see what he’s up to.”

Justine swung off the bike, put her helmet in the Kawasaki’s backseat storage, and trotted back to Madison. Cabs drove past, a woman was walking her dog, an elderly couple walked hand in hand. She crossed Madison and was about to turn onto Ninety-First Street when Braun and his party walked around the corner, practically crashing into her.

She didn’t know what to do so she just kept going, hoping they wouldn’t recognize her. But she definitely recognized them: Braun, the curvy white woman, the South Asian man… and Bomber. The whole gang. They were marching back the way Braun had arrived. She cursed her luck. A minute earlier she could have identified them from a distance and continued to follow them. Now she couldn’t do anything but keep a straight face and carry on down the street. Had any of them stopped to get a look at her?

She was now on a quiet street of old brownstones and mansions from the turn of a lost century. But as she progressed, she noticed one of the fine old stone houses boasted a large flag overlooking its entrance. The same white, blue and red horizontal stripes she had seen before. She fished out her phone as she hustled past it, just to be sure. Yep, the Russian consulate-general.

She dared to look over her shoulder. At the far end of the block, she saw a lone figure in a dark outfit and blazer, motionless, watching. She had gotten Bomber’s attention.

Justine looked away and called Patty. “We’re done tonight. I’ll find my way home.”

She returned to her Upper West Side apartment building feeling like the city had given her an extra coating of grime. There was no doorman here—she didn’t have that kind of money—and the entrance involved two doors with their own keys and, inside, fluorescent ceiling lights that made everyone look like they had consumption. And of course, the elevator was out of order. Again. “Didn’t they just fix this thing?” She was so tired that she was mumbling aloud. She pushed into the fire stairs, an uninviting concrete ascent.

Fourth floor. Justine practically fell against her apartment’s door with keys in hand. Inside at last, she flicked on the light, moved robotically toward the bedroom, and then something made her freeze. The skin on her neck crawled and she swung around.

The man was sitting on her couch, out of view from the front door.

She screamed. It wasn’t deliberate, but she was terrified.

He sighed and pointed at the gun on her coffee table, raising his other hand’s finger to his lips.

She clasped her hands over her mouth, but the only reason she stopped screaming was because she began to hyperventilate.

The man nodded. “Sorry I frightened you.”

Justine looked back at the door.

“Sure, run. I won’t chase you.”

She bolted for the door.

“But, Justine, hear me out.”

She flung the door open and halted.

There is a strange man in my apartment.

With a gun.

And he knows my name.

She gasped for breath. He might be a thief. A rapist. A killer. All of the above. But he was there for a reason. She took a deeper, slower breath, shut the door in front of her and turned around.

He was white and blond, with a preppy sweep of hair that partially obscured one of his blue eyes. He wore a loose button-down short-sleeve top with a blue and white pattern, baggy trousers, and white sneakers. His physique was good—big shoulders, strong arms, not much of a belly. His bronzed skin suggested outdoor sports. His hands were encased in a doctor’s prophylactic gloves.

“Good decision. You want to sit down? In that chair.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Suit yourself.” He pointed at the coffee table with his blue-encased finger, but not at his gun. The glass tabletop held its usual items: a ceramic bowl where she deposited pens, keys to Steve’s place, bills; and a pile of books and magazines. On top was a recent Archer’s. He picked it up. “Must be rewarding, seeing your byline in such a prestigious magazine.”

“Who are you?”

“A concerned friend,” he said, flipping the magazine’s pages. “You know, this story on Taylor Swift is really intriguing.”

“I didn’t write that.”

“I know.” He threw the magazine in her direction, and she flinched as it fluttered to the floor. “You write investigative pieces about technology and national security.”

She realized with a whomp in her chest that she knew this man. Blond Ambition. The guy with Bomber at the auction.

“I’m easy to look up online,” she said. “How about you?”

“Let’s talk about you, honey. You’re a big deal, star journalist. Working on a story about quantum computers, is that it?”

She wondered how he had connected those dots. He was working with Bomber and Malcolm Belmont. Had she given herself away, following them? Who else would know that…Professor Ang…Walter Klinger.

The dead Walter Klinger.

“Why do you ask?”

“It so happens we may have a common interest.”

Or he could have learned it from one of her colleagues. From Paul Chow…or Bert, or Josh.

“I’d like to understand where you got your information.”

Blond Ambition weighed her demand. “No. Let’s stick to how I can help you.”

“If you hurt anyone—”

“Relax, honey. If I wanted to hurt someone, you’d know.”

“How did you know I lived here—how did you get in—”

He shook his head. “I thought you were a hotshot reporter. But you aren’t asking the interesting questions.”

“Okay. Let’s say I’m working a story on a cyber-weapon that uses software written for a quantum computer.”

He gave her a big, sunburned grin. “Ask away, honey.”

“It’s called Red Fidelity. Someone stole it from the government and tried to auction it off last week. Things went wrong, though, so maybe the thieves still have it. Most zero-day exploits find vulnerabilities in software, cloud hardware, PCs, anything that the tech companies don’t know about. Red Fidelity’s like that too, but it has a different effect if you run it on a quantum computer.”

“Sure, honey, but you have to ask me a question.”

She eyed the gun on her coffee table. “Did you steal Red Fidelity?”

“No comment.”

“Who’s that other man, with the dark complexion? I saw you together at the auction. You came in on the same boat, and left together.”

“He’s a corrupt FBI agent named Edward Segreti.”

“Why is he corrupt?”

He spread his arms wide. “Guess.”

“And Malcom Belmont?”

She noticed him twitch, just once. She had surprised him. “Ditto.” He recovered his flow. “The others are Miriam Chlebek and Bhavin Ram.”

“They’re all dirty?”

“They’re loyal to Segreti. Bhavin Ram’s an alcoholic fuckup, a chink in the armor, so to speak. Just a tip.”

“Are they selling it to the Russians?”

He stood up, slowly, and she had to force herself to remain steady. “That’s for you to find out. But Segreti killed a man on North Brother Island. Maybe he wanted to keep some people silent.”

“You two had a falling out?”

“Who said we ever were an item?” He fished a phone out of his pocket and tossed it to her. She caught it.

“What’s this?”

“A burner phone with one number on it. Get them on Messenger. You’re on the cyber beat, you’ll figure it out.”

The phone was an old, scratched-up clamshell.

Blond Ambition picked up his gun. Pointed it at her. Her reflex was to cower.

“Move back that away, so I can see myself out.”

She backed up into the doorway to the bedroom. He moved with a limp, his other hand holding his thigh. That was new. She despised herself for cringing in front of this man, gun or no. And she found some courage.

“Who killed Walter Klinger?”

“Interview’s over.”

“Was it you?”

His smile was like an invitation from an old friend. “Keep up the good work, Justine.”

(Next chapter.)

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CONTENTS

Segreti took a cab to Queens, got out ten blocks from the covert site and walked the rest of the way, moving circuitously, keeping an eye out and following ADIC Church’s advice to Practice tradecraft if you go there. From outside it looked like just another warehouse and office build along Van Dam Street in Long Island City: steel-shuttered garages, two stories of grimy windows and yellow brick, the ground level tagged with graffiti.

Companies operated actual businesses here: “Kratz Self Storage”. “Chau Elevator Components”. “Oak Global Logistics—family owned since 1994!” All of them were FBI fronts. But even at this late hour, they were active, with trucks coming and going. Some of these things made good money, he was told.

He showed his badge and the workman in his mesh baseball cap and plaid shirt waved him through. Segreti hadn’t bothered with a costume; his jeans, dark blazer and a black shirt were nondescript enough. Beneath the jacket was a newly issued Glock.

He was met by a forty-something white woman with graying hair in a no-nonsense bun and wearing cargo pants and a T-shirt. Her broad face expressed Midwestern politeness mixed with a skepticism honed in New York. “Well, well, Eddie Secrets has entered my lair.”

Her nickname for him, from Academy days. Hers had involved sexual innuendo, which he judged would not be remembered so amicably. “Good to see you, Agent Towers.”

Jessica Towers smiled and shook his hand. “Welcome to the Warehouse.”

“That’s what you call it?”

“An honest name for an honest job.”

She led him through the ground-floor shops and their everyday affairs involving grease and forklifts, to an elevator bank, one of them chained with an ‘Out of Order’ sign stuck on its door. She used a key to unlock the chain and ushered him inside. Ignoring the row of rusty floor buttons, she put her thumb on a dark glass panel. It flashed once and the elevator rumbled down.

“Ever get a customer who wanders the wrong way?” he asked.

“We have an entire team managing street traffic, twenty-four-seven.”

He followed her into a gleaming hallway of stainless-steel partitions, giant tables showcasing unrolled blueprints and schematics, and glass-encased offices. The basement was buzzing with people as if it were one of those high-powered offices in a Manhattan skyscraper, mid-day.

“Coffee here any good?”

Towers laughed. “Bureau-issued.” They detoured to a vending machine, same as the one at Javits.

“Twenty years and I didn’t know you were such a big deal,” he admitted as they drank.

“That’s my classmate, always reminding me why I asked for that transfer.”

“I meant the divis—never mind.”

“Breaking and entering into foreign embassies and consulates requires extraordinary resources.” Towers chucked her now-empty cup and walked with her memorable briskness. She pointed to an office with closed steel doors and frosted windows. “That’s the NSA’s corner. Code-breakers.” She paused at a large table and checked a clipboard bustling with notes. “East Sixty-fourth Street. This one’s for India.”

“That’s their consulate?”

“Great views from here,” she said, stubbing a finger on an unscrolled architectural blueprint. “They say when they open this window, you can hear the lions roar in Central Park Zoo. We had a team in there last week.”

“My interest is north of that.”

“So I gathered. This way.”

The basement seemed endless. It must have occupied more territory than the real estate above. In fact, from the soaring ceiling, he guessed it must poke up into an adjacent building. She led him into a vast hangar-like space filled with a maze of walls, doors, desks and computers. “This is the mockup of the Russian consulate, all three floors. We use it to train our burglars. They Russkies are always redoing their interior, so we’re never certain.”

“I’m looking to identify two possible enemy agents.” He pulled out two photos from his jacket’s inside pocket. “This one, Dimitri Mahalin, has been identified with the consulate but has disappeared. This other one… well, you couldn’t tell by looking at this, but she’s female, brown hair, masculine cut, last seen in Cyprus.”

Towers frowned. “You got a problem with butch-looking women, Eddie?”

He raised his hands in supplication. “C’mon, Jess, don’t take it that way. I’m just saying, she’s a she. So far, surveillance hasn’t found anything. Anything from inside that you could share?”

Towers snatched the photos from his grip and looked at the faces. She shoved them back against his chest. “You sure it’s to be found in their consulate building? Russia also owns a twenty-story building uptown on Riverdale, and two properties on Long Island.”

“What’s the most hardened facility for comms?”

“Probably the consulate. We have an asset that has access to the first two floors—a maid. Depending on what I tell you, it could compromise her cover.”

“There’s a yacht offshore, Emirati-flagged, but I think she’s on it. I think it’s got a submersible and a helicopter. I think she’s using it for infil/exfil, running their own asset. I need something to justify a move.”

“A move, like a B&E?”

“Whatever they’re up to it has to be GRU-run. What’s on the third floor?”

Towers regarded the mockup of the consulate’s interior. It looked banal without the people, the machines, the security. “A shit-ton of comms, signals, cryptographs, and an incinerator. Plus, there’s a basement we’ve never been able to crack. We’ve got listening devices in all the nearby buildings, but the Russians are very good.”

“Something like this wouldn’t be communicated directly. They’re using Yacht Woman to run their asset, and their asset is, uh, very familiar with our policies and procedures.”

Tower raised an eyebrow. “I see.”

He risked a glance at the corner office silent behind closed doors. “He’s one of theirs. Ex-NSA. Robert Tremain. You want to help me nail this son of a bitch?”

“Policies. Procedures.”

“It’s not like you’re waiting for a warrant to break there.”

“No, Ed, but I have my mission and you have yours.”

“I’ve got a detail keeping an eye on their consulate and their UN mission office. But we’re probably spinning our wheels. You’ve got these places covered inside and out. Can you give me a heads-up if this lady shows? Or better yet, look for chatter about her and Tremain?”

“I’d need an official direction from Quantico—”

“Come on, Towers.” He tapped the photos in his hand. “I’m talking about a major cyber breach and treason.” She looked dubious, but she hadn’t told him to get lost. He played his final card. “ADIC will deny ever having suggested I come to you, but who’d need to ask her, anyway?”

“Do what I can, Segreti.”

“Thanks. And thanks for the tour.”

“Deb Church and I go way back.” She smiled. “Seems like you’ve pulled every string to get into my panties here. Word of warning? Deb doesn’t take to being made a fool of. We have that in common.”

“I owe you one. I’m good for it.”

Towers led him back the way they had walked. “Are you?”

The steel door shouldering frosted windows opened. Two people emerged wearing jeans and T-shirts—a skinny East Asian woman with a moony pout, and a solid Latin-looking man with a buzz cut and a face that had taken a few punches.

“You Segreti?” the woman asked.

To Towers, Segreti mumbled, “Do NSA usually mix here?”

“Nope,” Towers said. “And, gee, they know your name.”

“Mind a word?” the Latino said, gesturing to the open door.

“Sure, guys, whatever.”

“Enjoy your chat,” Towers said. “I’ll be sure someone can see you out.”

Segreti followed the two NSA agents into their office. The Asian woman shut the door. The interior looked like a command room: two long tables were flanked on both sides by rows of computers and monitors, and an enormous screen occupied the opposite wall but was dark. Segreti assumed they had turned it off before calling him in.

The National Security Agency was the nation’s specialists in signals intelligence and cybersecurity. Best toys, smartest people, didn’t play well with others.

“You know my name. Care to share yours?”

The two agents replied with stony stares.

“All right,” he said, telling himself to stay calm, “what do you want?”

“Your unit has something that belongs to us,” the Latino said.

“Above my pay grade, guys.”

“That so?” answered the Asian woman. “Well, what we know about your case is also above your pay grade.”

Segreti folded his arms and took the Fifth.

“What we’re saying,” her partner said, “is we appreciate your service, but we can take this from here.”

“Because,” Segreti said, “it would be so embarrassing if it turns out one of your people was responsible for the worst security breach in American history.”

If their expressions were rocky before, now they congealed into granite furies.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” the man said.

“Or how close you are to fucking yourself,” his partner added.

Segreti gestured at the computers, the screens, their setup. “Heartwarming, this inter-agency cooperation. I’ll see myself out.”

(Next chapter.)

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CONTENTS

Justine overslept and was relieved to awake to an empty bedroom. Steve’s desktop monitor was blank. He must have gone to the office.

She made a coffee downstairs and flicked through her messages. Paul Chow’s reminder about filing expenses. Josh’s Gotham Gossip piece, awaiting an edit. And from Bert: he’d been pulled onto another assignment.

She called him and he picked up. She could hear the hum of his van’s engine.

“Hey, what’s up,” she asked.

“Paul put me with Gregor on this royal visit thing.”

She squished her eyes and took a deep breath. “You’re my videographer, Bert.”

“I know. But, Justine, there hasn’t been any video. I haven’t shot a single frame. Not even B-roll.”

She knew he was right. Bert was loyal but he was a cameraman, not her chauffeur.

“Can you help me out tonight?” she asked. “I want to get some shots of Belmont.”

“Um, leave Marta with the kids on a Friday night?”

She wanted to say, yes, of course, but she knew that was both wrong and stupid. “Sorry. I forgot what day it is.”

“Take a break, J.J. Seriously.”

She went back upstairs to collect her laptop. Friday already. Should she come back for dinner? See how much of yesterday’s argument could be unsaid? Or maybe just go back to the Upper West Side, get takeout pad thai and watch a movie on Netflix. And then, after midnight, take the train to Brooklyn, put on a pair of gloves, and go through Belmont’s trash bin to see what she could find out about the guy. She’d already looked it up: Bed-Stuy trash got collected Saturday mornings, so tonight he’d have a container full of clues.

As she came back down, laptop in its satchel slung over her shoulder, she saw Zach’s bedroom door ajar. She knocked. “Zach?”

“Yeah.”

She let herself in. He was on his bed, still wearing his sneakers, scrolling his cell phone.

“Your dad’s at work.”

Grunt. Language of a sort.

“Your hearing was today, wasn’t it? Want to talk about it?”

Shrug. For a teenager, almost verbosity.

She set her bag down and planted herself in his desk chair. “It’s okay if you don’t want to tell me. But you’ll have to tell your dad.”

“Maybe you can tell him.”

“Me? No, hon, you need to tell him yourself.”

His eyes were languid beneath the fiery curls of his hair, as though he had reached a peace. Or a resignation.

“Besides,” she added, “I might not be around tonight.”

“Your case?”

“Yeah—no. No, not work. I just feel like a little me time, you know?”

“You guys fight again?”

“No, nothing like that.” Her lie was so obvious that it sparked his interest.

“He’s a dick,” Zach said. “I get it.”

“No, he’s not,” spoken with enough conviction that she believed it. “I’m the dick. I haven’t been around.”

His phone was pulling him back in. “Whatever.”

“I have to go to work. You going to be okay?”

A nod.

“Call me if you need anything.” She picked up her satchel.

She was opening the door when: “Justine?”

“Yes?”

“They didn’t expel me for drugs.”

“Oh, that’s a relief.”

“They expelled me…for something else.”

She froze. Although his eyes bowed down to his cell, he wasn’t looking at it. He was staring intently at an invisible charm located somewhere around his knees. Part of her wanted to run. Let Steve deal with his son. Get the ex, whats-her-name, back if the kid needed a mommy. But she had befriended him. At first, just to get into his graces so she could date Steve. Along the way, though, the buddy act had matured into something better. “If there’s something you want to say, you know I’ve got your back.”

“Thing is, you can’t tell Dad.”

She was wading in deep now, should have just left Steve’s apartment instead of butting into Zach’s business. But she couldn’t just switch him off—not now. “Is it something you’re going to have to tell him eventually?”

He nodded. “Yeah, I believe so.”

I believe so. He sounded like an adult. “Then you can tell me first, but whatever it is, you’re going to have to be the one to tell your dad too.”

He bit his lip, but he looked as though he had already made up his mind to trust her. “That’s okay,” he said. “But maybe if you’re there. You know.”

“I will be. Promise.”

He looked her in the eye. “I’m gay.”

She almost choked because she had feared something horrible had happened. It was obviously difficult for him, but she had to repress a look of relief. “That’s cool,” she said.

“I figured you’d be okay with it.”

“Is this something that just happened?”

“No. Just something that I have to, um, talk about now.”

“Okay. Well, Zach, honey, I’m proud of you for being open about this. Do you have a boyfriend?”

“I wouldn’t call him that.”

She showed her palms. “Hey, it’s none of my business. I just want you to be happy and safe.”

He picked up his phone again. “Yeah, well….”

This wasn’t over. “But you said you were expelled. Want to tell me why?”

His face flushed. He had that long stare again. Whatever he needed to say was having a hard time convincing his mouth to let it out.

“We got caught.” He attempted a veneer of defiance, but she could see right through it to the shame. “At school.”

This could be serious. “You and…another student?” Please let it be another student.

“Yeah.”

“And it was…consensual?”

He nodded.

“Nobody touched you or did something—”

“It was consensual.”

“Okay, okay.” She felt her heart skip ahead, grateful that he didn’t feel inclined to share the details. “So now you’re going to have to tell your dad. Is that it?”

Zach nodded.

“Well, look… your dad loves you and he won’t care if you’re gay. I’m sure you don’t have anything to worry about.” Except the part about getting expelled, but one thing at a time.

Barely a nod. The incipient adult was ceding back to the teenager.

“When do you plan on telling him?”

“I don’t know. But you have to be here.” He reached for his PlayStation console.

Conversation over.

Staking out Belmont’s brownstone was a lot harder without Bert’s van. Justine and Patty couldn’t just stand on his street for a couple of hours. She didn’t even know which apartment belonged to Belmont. A1 to B4, take your pick. Patty counted the apartments with lights on inside, which narrowed it down, but they couldn’t be sure Belmont was even home.

She suggested they walk a loop, returning to Decatur Street in twenty-minute intervals, peering into the alley behind his building to see if the trash had been taken out. By the third or fourth shift, she realized they must stick out—a white blonde woman and a Japanese woman in a Black neighborhood appearing over and over.

An old lady in a ragged coat and winter woolen cap seemed to own the stoop a few doors down, and she cackled at Justine’s latest walk-by. The street seemed to close in, and she began eyeing the other passersby with suspicion.

“Do you know how stupid this is?” Patty asked.

“Yes.”

“Honestly, J.J., I don’t know what you would do if I had a love life.”

They walked it one last time, determined to hit Belmont’s building and turn around rather than chance the lady on the stoop. They were rewarded with what looked like a fresh dump of garbage bags in the wire mesh cans.

“Okay, so now what?” Patty asked.

“We go through it looking for receipts, bills… a bank statement.”

Patty looked at her with disgust. “I thought you said you knew what you were looking for.”

“I do. Some way to identify this guy.”

“Do you know what year it is?”

Justine folded her arms, trying to close the conversation.

“It’s the year when the whole world gets their bills online, that’s what year it is,” Patty finished.

“You don’t have to help with this part.”

“And you’re what, gonna go through his trash right here, with the neighbors watching?”

Justine said, “Yes,” but realized she hadn’t thought this through. “Or we could…take it back.”

“On my Kawasaki?”

She surveyed her folly and saw a blur behind Patty. “Holy crap, I think that was him.” She ran to the alley’s end. Sure enough, Belmont was jogging down the street at ten thirty at night. Even if she hadn’t quite seen his face, how many people in Bed-Stuy wore a tailored summer gray suit late on a Friday night? “He’s in a hurry.”

Patty sighed and flashed the keys to her motorcycle. “All right, let’s go.”

(Next chapter.)

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CONTENTS

“What are we missing?” Segreti asked.

It was the nine-a.m. meeting, downtown in the windowless conference room that Segreti’s team had made their own. Beneath the unforgiving fluorescent lights was a cork billboard illustrating what they knew about Robert Tremain and a zero-day allegedly stolen from the NSA— “allegedly” because the DOJ had said it maybe, might be, and the NSA had refused to say anything. Didn’t matter that someone had tried to assassinate a federal agent; NSA wasn’t fessing up to losing their top goods. Segreti found it easier to get mad than to contemplate the sound of the bullet whizzing past his head.

He added a new photo to the board. “Walter Klinger, murdered yesterday at his home in New Jersey between seven-oh-five and seven-ten a.m. Former software developer at NSA.” He tapped the dead man’s picture. “His time on Oahu overlaps with Tremain’s.”

Ram, Chlebek, Belmont. Open files occupying the conference table, marred by the stains of vending-machine coffee. Belmont with a notebook, Chlebek with a laptop, Ram with a hangover.

Chlebek typed. “He had four partners in Q-Ventures. And he got fired from Colombia on a harassment charge.”

“Find those partners. Interview the school, and whoever accused him.”

“On it, sir.”

“Ballistics filed their report last night,” Segreti said, pawing through his manila folder. “Two shots from a single weapon. One frontal, very close range, the second from ten feet, kill shot to the back of the head. Signs of a struggle. We think the perp shot Klinger the first time from the ground, maybe after fighting over the weapon. The second time looks like Klinger was trying to get away before the perp shot him again.”

“Any DNA?” Belmont asked. “Seems messy.”

“Forensics says it hasn’t found anything. The perp was methodical. Wiped his prints and took the cartridges. We only have the bullets and Klinger’s body. The first bullet was lodged in a ceiling beam, and the second one’s in Klinger’s skull. They’re nine-millimeter, and from a Glock, probably the nineteen, gen four or five, but possibly from the seventeen.”

“There’s a lot of Glocks out there,” Ram said.

“Yeah,” Segreti snarled, “including mine.” Pointing at Tremain’s photo. “I think Tremain’s the shooter.”

“Any DNA traces on the bullets?” Chlebek asked.

“Still running tests,” Segreti said. “That takes time.” They all knew the tests would probably prove inconclusive.

“You’re going with that theory to ADIC?” Belmont asked. “Sir?”

Segreti walked to the map filling most of the corkboard. “Tremain was wounded by sniper fire two nights ago here. We think he and a shooter escaped with Scuba equipment. So in the space of two days, Tremain somehow disappeared into Raritan Bay, got himself patched up, and appeared here, in Short Hills, yesterday morning, and killed a former colleague.”

“Forgive me, sir, but that’s a stretch,” Ram said.

“Not if he’s working with these people,” Segreti said, tapping a yellow Post-It Note, on which he had written: Dimitri Mahalin – Shadow? Beneath it was the rendering of the woman, presumably Russian, also seen on the Arab’s yacht, presence unknown. “The Russians are using a yacht big enough to have a helicopter pad. What else is that thing carrying?”

Ram rubbed his temples. “Occam’s razor, sir. The simplest answer is that Tremain washed up on land and somehow avoided law enforcement.”

“How would they get to the yacht?” Chlebek asked.

“He thinks they have a submersible,” Ram said.

“It’s a theory,” Belmont said. “But do these pieces really fit? We don’t know how the Russians got a hold of an oh-day developed by the NSA, but they hire Tremain to sell it on the black market. We arrest Tremain and his lawyers spring him. A Russian diplomat is linked to the yacht, and maybe that suspect at the auction was Russian, but we have no other information on his whereabouts. Tremain calls you, asking to meet. At the meeting, two snipers open fire. I tag one, the other one gets away, along with Tremain. That’s all we’ve got, sir.”

“That’s not all we’ve got, Belmont. You questioned Klinger shortly before he was killed.”

“As part of a canvassing of anyone whose profiles include cybersecurity and quantum computing, yes, sir.”

“How many of these people have you identified and contacted?”

“Contacted, three. Identified, more than fifty from our records.”

“But only Klinger ends up dead.”

“What about that shooter that Belmont took out?” Ram asked.

Segreti thumbed through another file and pulled out a biopsy. “Here’s our John Doe. Coroner’s got no ID. Asian male, mid-thirties, five foot eight, two hundred pounds. A little facial hair. No tattoos or markings. Prints not in any of our databases. Doesn’t smoke, last meal was a burger, high concentration of alcohol in the bloodstream. Genome test suggests ancestry in far northwest of Asia. Siberia?”

“Doesn’t tell us anything about where he’s actually from,” Chlebek said. “He could be a US citizen who just never got into trouble.”

“Or he infiltrated our borders via a submersible,” Segreti said. “The same sub that carried Tremain and the other shooter away. Tremain was brokering a sale of that oh-day for a Russian. And we know the Russians are on that yacht. Tremain requests an exchange of information, but we’re attacked at the meet, Tremain takes a bullet, and leaves with the other shooter. Back to the yacht. He then appears in New Jersey with a Glock, maybe mine, and shoots Klinger.”

“Maybe Klinger had something to do with Red Fidelity?” Ram wondered.

Belmont said, “When I interviewed him at his office, Klinger said he was under oath to never disclose his work at the NSA. I asked about the quantum angle, but for someone meant to be a leading expert in the field, he had nothing to say.”

“So what the fuck is this thing?” Segreti shouted. “Whatever Red Fidelity is, the one guy who might have told us is now dead, and the guy selling it probably killed him. That’s probable cause for a warrant.”

“A warrant for what?” Chlebek asked. “We’ve already got arrest warrants out for Tremain.”

“For a wire on that yacht and everyone who’s aboard.”

“Church won’t go for it,” Ram said. “We need more.”

“What we need is to establish a Moscow connection. Link their consulate, something like that… ID somebody.”

Ram buried his face in his hands. “I know where this is going.”

“Not a stakeout,” Chlebek protested.

“Stakeout,” Segreti said. “We keep an eye on Russian properties in the city.”

“You want us sitting on our asses for how long exactly?” Ram asked.

“Until I get Church to open the electronic cookie jar,” Segreti said.

Belmont, softly, mused, “Sir, that could take…”

Segreti raised a silencing finger. He picked up the conference room’s landline and punched a number. It rang twice.

“Computer forensics lab,” replied a young woman. The rookie.

“Agent Taylor, right?”

“Special Agent,” she corrected him.

“Special Agent in Charge Ed Segreti from the cyber unit. I’m in meeting room three oh two. Can you come up? Now?”

“Yes, sir.”

Chlebek frowned. “Last time I spoke with her, she didn’t know her ass from her elbow.”

“She’s young,” Segreti said. “She’ll get the hang of it. Like we all did.”

“But we need her to get us answers now,” Chlebek said. “Your hearing—”

“I’ll worry about bureau politics,” Segreti said. “You stay focused. Who wants another coffee?”

After a few minutes someone knocked and he told her to come in. Helen Taylor entered with a nervous grin. She took a seat, ramrod straight—a tree amid slouching bushes.

“Okay, Taylor, all of those devices in your lab, the haul from North Brother Island… What can you tell us?”

“Well, sir, I’ve filed my Streamlined Forensic Report and a request for further data investigation—”

Segreti pushed a folder across to her. “Which you’ll find signed.”

“Thank you, sir.” She gave the cover page a quick glance. “I’ll get to work at once.”

“Wait, before you go. We need some help. The metadata. Where those phones have been.”

Taylor surveyed the room and saw jaundiced impatience. “It’s against best practice to speculate without a proper accounting of the data,” she said. “Sir.”

Segreti took a seat opposite her and leaned in. “I know, Taylor, and you have a lot of work left to do. But can you tell us if those phones were purchased outside of the US?”

“Tracing devices is a lengthy business.”

“But you can tell if they’ve traveled.”

“Geolocation, of course, but the warrant…”

“Look, Taylor, we need to know if any of those devices have been used in the past three months in Russia, Cyprus, or from a boat in the Hudson River or Raritan Bay.”

“I…”

“Have you unlocked those devices?” Chlebek asked her.

“I know how to. I’m just waiting for the proper authority.”

“Taylor, look at me,” Segreti said. “I’m the proper authority, and I need to know, today, if any of those devices have traveled to those places. Do you understand?”

Taylor took another account of the room. “Yes, sir. I’ll get you a report by lunchtime.”

“I don’t need a formal report,” he said. “Just…I’ll come by around one o’clock and you can fill me in. Got it?” He gave his team a wink.

Taylor stood up. “I think so.”

Segreti went out for lunch after filing a request for any info on James Fiorinetti or anyone with his driver’s license number. Probably nothing to it, and no need to tell Ram about his daughter’s boyfriend. But Segreti wanted to be careful. The paperwork took only ten minutes, and then he had a pile more to clear. And now he needed a break from the building, from the chaos on his desk, from the update that ADIC Church had sent him last night about the bureau’s hearing on the shooting on North Brother Island. His fate was to be decided on Monday. Tremain’s lawyers were filing motions naming the FBI and Segreti as defendants. And the NSA was working the corridors of Washington. They really wanted to get their code back.

The bravura from the conference room wilted in the summer humidity.

The Shadow had disappeared. Tremain was on the loose. Klinger was dead. Red Fidelity was waiting to be triggered.

And all of this might get taken away from him.

He went to a nearby Chipotle and ate a taco bowl. The fine weather had turned muggy, as if conspiring with his circumstances to add to his heaviness. It was time to broaden this thing, go to the SIGINT unit tasked with spying on foreign consulates.

As he returned to Javits, he was intercepted on foot by a bike messenger in bright canary and orange cycling gear with a pouch Velcroed across his chest. “Agent Edward Segreti?”

By instinct he reached for his sidearm, forgetting that he hadn’t been issued a new one yet. Daylight out front of FBI headquarters—uniformed police officers, plenty of pedestrians.

“Who wants to know?”

“Special delivery,” the messenger said, ripping open his pouch. He withdrew a fat envelope. “I just need to make sure it’s for the right Edward Segreti, of four thirty-one Dorchester Street in Chevy Chase, Maryland.”

“Yeah, that’s me,” Segreti said.

The messenger threw the envelope and it struck Segreti in the chest.

“You been served.”

He knew what it might be. But he forced alternatives to the front of his mind: a gift from Jake. Or maybe a problem at school. Or the update to her will Katie had been talking about ever since her father died. A medical emergency?

He bent down and used his apartment key to slice through the tape. From Katie, all right.

He read the words but didn’t process them. The idea seemed like gibberish. They had been through too much. Plenty of arguments, tears—mostly hers, but still—and some histrionics. Hers. His too. Slammed doors and reconciliations. For Jake. Always for Jake.

But for more than their son. For family. The bedrock. That’s what he had pledged. Across the altar. Taking communion. The family was the first society, the start of the Church, the bedrock of believing in Jesus Christ as his redeemer, the ultimate granite of America.

All that and…the humiliation, which burned through him now, hollowing him out. Like a goddammed enema of fire and resentment.

He noticed the people going in and out of Javits, but he didn’t see them. Lawyers, cops, the luckless and the unloved, they were just a hive of scorn poised to jeer.

Segreti returned the divorce papers to the envelope, obscuring their heresy, and stalked back inside.

(Next chapter.)

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CONTENTS

Justine walked into the Archer’s office, the elevator dinging behind her, and made a bee line for her desk. She was wearing leftovers from her apartment: ripped jeans, boots, white crew-neck T, and a cropped blazer the hue of a cigar. Sporty enough for walking in Manhattan, yet comfortable enough for a day she intended to spend at her desk.

Since Covid, the once-hectic buzz had become a somnolent hum, forlorn desks waiting like jilted lovers. Paul Chow was there, of course, in his glass-encased chrysalis. He stared at his computer screen with a look of weary resignation—probably budget time.

The office had gone open plan years ago, when she, Patty and Bert had occupied a corner table and dared anyone to usurp their turf. She had adopted Josh when he was an intern; he was their junior associate now, and it was his turn to bring the bagels.

“What do you have there?” she asked, setting down her shoulder bag. “Any onion?”

“Onion?” Josh’s smile faltered. “Uh, I got poppyseed and sesame, and, uh, plain.”

Patty smeared cream cheese on hers, shaking her head. “Kid wants to be a reporter but doesn’t pay attention to what people order.”

“Sorry,” Josh said.

“It’s all right,” Justine said, taking the sesame. “They’re all good.”

Bert put down his coffee and patted his mustache with a napkin. He was wearing an orange and white trucker cap with the Gatorade logo. “J.J. always gets the onion.”

“Onion. Next time,” Josh said.

“And I get the Everything,” Bert said. “Remember that too.” He took a big bite.

Justine picked up the latest print edition of the magazine—fresh out of the box, distributed around the office. A janitor in overalls was already hanging up a framed copy a few desks down, filling in the last corners of white space. Taylor Swift regarded the office from her new perch on the wall.

“What’s Paul got for us this morning?” Justine asked, flipping through the pages.

“Gotham Gossip,” Patty said.

“I thought that was Ben’s beat,” Justine said.

“Ben’s on vacay. Remember those?”

Justine spread cream cheese on her bagel. Gone were the days when an investigative reporter focused just on her project. Paul Chow still had an edition to get out every week, and the senior correspondents and their teams were expected to contribute. Most of Patty’s time was spent condensing features into online stories, and Bert was usually off turning city anecdotes into video clips.

They had spent extra hours on Justine’s quest because they were loyal to her, knew it was an incredible story, and were also transfixed by its quixotic nature. She was going on year three of trying to pose as a buyer in the black market for oh-days, and suddenly after being a curiosity, the auction and the shooting had busted the story open.

But Paul wasn’t about to give them too much leash.

“All right, what tidbits have we got?” Justine asked. Gotham Gossip was a six-page roundup of weird anecdotes from around the city. Archer’s staple. She hadn’t missed this part of the job.

Josh was scouring his mobile. The dailies were one source, although Archer’s staff writers were supposed to leverage their curiosity and social position to find their own juicy tales. Josh paused to read something.

“Find anything good?” Justine asked.

“What was the name of that guy again?”

“Guy, what guy?”

“The sleazy guy you visited the other day. Downtown.”

“Walter Klinger?”

Josh held up his mobile. “That him?”

She read the local police-beat story from New Jersey. It might not have gotten mentioned except that Short Hills was such a wealthy area.

“Well, what?” Patty demanded.

“Klinger’s dead,” she said. “Shot twice in his garage.”

“Holy shit,” Patty said, coming around to peer over Justine’s shoulder.

“Good work, Josh. Patty, Bert, let’s go,” Justine said. “We need to find out everything we can.” She was already crossing the office.

“But what about Gotham Gossip?” Josh wondered.

“Buena suerte, amigo,” Bert said, pushing aside his unfinished breakfast.

“You’re in charge of that now,” Patty said.

“Me? But, but…”

“This is your big break, kiddo,” Patty told him as she hurried after Justine.

They reached Klinger’s house just before eleven, Bert having the benefit of going opposite the end of rush hour traffic. The barn was latticed by yellow police tape, and a cruiser sat in the driveway. Unmarked cars lined the suburban street.

“Take photos of everything,” Justine said.

Bert nodded, removing the cap from his Nikon, which looked like a toy in his beefy hands.

Patty, in the van’s rear, had a laptop open and was typing furiously.

“Bluetooth on?” Justine asked, shifting her mobile from her jeans pocket to one inside her jacket. Patty gave her a thumbs-up and she got out of the van.

Patty had already filed a request to interview the officer in charge from the county police’s public information officer, but she had warned it might not get approved before the evening, if the PIO approved it at all. The richer the district, the less likely the cops felt like talking to reporters.

Bert took snaps of the barn as Justine walked down the long driveway, noting the farmhouse and the disheveled grounds. Newer, bigger McMansions towered over the scene at a distance. A young, white uniformed policeman met her halfway to the house. Good. Justine hadn’t wanted to tangle with a female.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but this is a crime scene. Gonna have to ask you to leave.”

She presented him with her business card. “Officer, my name’s Justine Jarman. I’m a reporter at Archer’s. I’ve filed my PIO, and they’ve assured me it’ll get approved.”

The cop handed back her card while checking her out. “Sorry.”

“Are you the officer in charge?” She didn’t take the card back.

“No, ma’am, but it doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t matter that I’m from Archer’s?” She flicked her hair. “You’ve heard of Archer’s, right?”

He looked uncomfortable, then sighed and clicked the mic strapped to his chest. “Lieutenant Lewis there? I got a lady out here, says she’s a reporter from…” He had to squint at her card. “Archie’s.” Then he saw Bert taking pictures. “Hey, sir, you can’t be there!”

Lieutenant Lewis was a plainclothes investigator—forties, white, with a hangdog look and eyes that had seen too much. He came out from the farmhouse and crossed the unkempt lawn. “You’ll need permission first,” he said.

“I know,” she said, “and I’ve got my POI in, but this is an Archer’s story, and I want to make sure we’re as accurate as possible. Isn’t that what you want too, Detective?”

“I hear that one every day from you people,” he said, but added, “Archer’s. What’s this to a society magazine?”

She wanted to tell him it wasn’t a society magazine, it was a literary pillar of New York and American cultural life, but she smiled and said, “We’ve been looking into Walter Klinger. Want to trade notes?”

“You first.”

“He ran a secretive technology company called Q-Ventures that specializes in cloud-based applications for quantum computer researchers. He was hounded out of Columbia University for sexual harassment. And he’s ex National Security Agency.”

The detective lifted an eyebrow but didn’t give away anything. He let out a long sigh as he looked beyond her shoulder. She turned and saw people walking from one of the unmarked cars. Upright, they strode with purpose, one carrying a large steel box, both wearing ties and sunglasses and dark blue windbreakers marked with a big yellow FBI.

“That’s interesting,” Detective Lewis said, “and I didn’t know that, but they do.”

“What’s the FBI doing here?”

He shrugged. “They took over the case half an hour ago.”

“Did they say why?”

“Nope. And that’s all I can tell you, Miss…Jarman. I’m no longer the officer in charge.”

Night fell and the offices of Archer’s turned ghostly. Only Paul remained in his illuminated office, rubbing his eyes beneath his glasses. Justine powered down and stuffed her laptop in her shoulder bag. She, Patty and Bert had spent the day like crime reporters: asking the neighbors what they had seen or heard; going to the Short Hills’s coroner’s office; checking whether Klinger had any attorneys representing his estate. The police POI request came back declining their request for an interview, so Patty filed one with the FBI, but no one had much confidence in that.

At the end they didn’t have much more than was officially reported on the police website and what she could find on LexisNexis. Someone had broken and entered the barn. Two shots fired a little after seven that morning. Cops were reviewing any nearby street cameras for clues. Nothing about what else may have gone down, if Klinger had been robbed, or any physical evidence from the murder scene. The scandal from Columbia was mentioned, but no comment on whether that was a line of questioning.

What the police website didn’t mention: that the case had been turned over to the FBI.

Her feet ached and she was suddenly starving. She messaged Steve to tell him she’d be home soon, asked if she should pick up anything. No, he’d eaten. She took the subway, one hand in her bag clutching her bottle of pepper spray—she had once trusted this city’s byways with her life, but those days were long gone—and picked up Chinese takeout on the way to the Gramercy apartment. She unlocked the door and found the duplex’s downstairs quiet. “Steve?”

“Up here.”

“I’ll be down here.”

Moo shu pork straight out of the white carton box, a Yuengling beer from Steve’s fridge. She was halfway through when he came down, beard needing a trim, in his Rolling Stones T-shirt and shorts. He paused to appraise her.

“What?” she asked.

He folded his arms and leaned against the doorway. “Just wondering who this beautiful stranger is in my kitchen.”

“Whoever she is, she’s exhausted.”

He stepped behind her and began to massage her shoulders. “Ace reporter crack her case?”

It felt good so she paused her eating and closed her eyes. “Not yet.”

“Getting close?”

“I thought so. But one of my contacts was killed this morning.”

His hands stopped. “What?”

“It might not have anything to do with anything.”

He faced her across the table. “Justine, tell me this is going to end.”

“Do I tell you to stop working for those asshole clients of yours?”

“I haven’t seen you in three days, and now you tell me one of your sources is dead?”

She took a swig of beer, regretting having said anything. “It’s not like that.”

“What’s it like, Justine?”

“I’m tired. Can we not talk about this?”

“You can’t disappear and then pop up and tell me someone’s been killed and not talk about it.”

“Fine.” She got up and put the takeout box in the trash. “Then I’ll leave.”

“Justine, come on.”

“I’m not having this conversation, Steve.”

“I’m asking because I’m worried about you. I love you. And now you’re turning your back on me.”

“I’m cleaning up after dinner.”

“Goddammit, Justine! When are we going back to normal?”

She whirled on him. “Back to what?”

“Normal. You know, when you lived here and we were a family and we spent all our time together.”

“That was during Covid, Steve. The city was shut down.”

“Covid? You shacked up here because of Covid?”

“No, that’s not what I mean.”

“Jesus, Justine, I was your Covid fuck buddy, was that it?”

“Steve, don’t be a child.”

He fumed. “You’re something else, you know that? You’re really something else.”

She remembered when he had used almost the same words, a long time ago, in the aftermath of their first kiss.

“Okay, then I’m something else,” she said. “Where’s Zach?”

“I don’t know. Out.”

“Is he alright?”

“I’m not sure it’s your business anymore.”

“What does that mean?”

“You know what he’s going through. What I’m going through. Between him and the school principal, it’s like I’ve been on eggshells.”

“Sorry. So is he okay?”

“Honestly, Justine, I don’t know. He comes home, if he comes home, goes straight in his room, shuts the door and plays video games.”

“And the school?”

“There’s a hearing tomorrow. Whether or not to kick him out.”

“Oh jeez.”

“Yeah.”

He was now standing in front of her. He stroked her cheek, pulled away a strand of her blonde hair. “You had a bad day too…”

She nodded. “Exhausting.”

He traced a finger down the spine of her ear. “So tell me about it.”

“No. Too frustrating.”

He took her hands and kissed her. She kissed him back, but she was too tired to get into it. When he squeezed her breast, she pushed him away.

“Why not?” he asked.

“I’m too tired.”

“Maybe you could use some Stevie wonder.”

“Not now.” She brushed past him for the stairs, thinking she should have gone to her own place.

“Okay,” he said, “we’ll save it for the morning.”

“Please, Steve. I need to stay focused.”

He was bewildered. “You can’t have sex because you need to stay focused?”

“That’s right. So long as I’m undercover, I need to stay sharp.”

“Why, so you can sleep with another source?”

At one point he would have been cute, with his beard and his not-bad dad bod, the trendy architecture job and the grit to raise a child alone, and she would have probably pulled him close or pushed him against a wall and gone in for the lunge. But he had decided to dredge the ugly stuff. Nuclear option.

“To give people the truth.”

She walked upstairs, not interested in hearing his rebuttal.

(Next chapter.)

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CONTENTS

Volkov’s idea of ‘hospital’ turned out to be a backwoods clinic upstate. She had the chopper take Tremain most of the way, landing in a fallow field bounded by trees—presumably a place the Russians had used before. He was too tired to care. The wound hurt like crazy, and a fever had snuck in and was now consuming his consciousness.

The chopper touched down long enough for him to get out. There was no dignity in this. He couldn’t stand and toppled over as soon as he put any weight on the shot leg. The pilot didn’t wait, the updraft of the chopper blades kicking up soil and dust. Then the helicopter was gone, and he thought he really was going to die right there on this plot, half-buried as he was.

It was still daylight when someone came for him. Car engine, the pain of rough handling. That was all he remembered.

Then waking up here, in a room of gray walls, harsh lighting, and a terrible painting of kittens. His thoughts sloshed around, wondering who would pay for such a cheesy illustration, who would spend time making it? He vaguely decided he was high, here on a bed, under a thin blanket. He pulled the blanket aside and saw he was wearing somebody else’s undershirt and nothing else. His right thigh was wrapped in gauze and his penis limply looked the other way.

“You’re awake,” said a white guy wearing a lab coat. So, sure, Tremain guessed he was a doctor.

“I’ve given you ten migs of Percocet and started you on antibiotics. Don’t let the wound get wet for forty-eight hours, then clean it twice a day with clean water—don’t use alcohol, it’ll slow the healing—and wrap it up. Put a little Vaseline on first so the gauze doesn’t stick.”

“Am I going to walk again?”

“Sure, pal, you’ll walk just fine. Just take it slow and elevate the wound to keep the swelling down.” The doc handed him a plastic baggie of pills. “This is enough Percocet for a week. After that you’ll need a prescription.”

Meaning, this guy wasn’t putting his signature on anything. Not for Tremain.

The doctor smiled. “Of course, if you keep taking this stuff, you’ll end up a tweaker. Your choice.”

“That it?”

“That’s it.” He gestured to a chair with a pile of clothes. The only thing Tremain recognized was Segreti’s Glock. Volkov had told him he should chuck it into the Atlantic, but he wanted to keep it, at least so long as he was in her orbit. “You can wear those. Get dressed, I’ll drive you into town and you can take it from there.”

He needed help pulling on the trousers, but he was able to manage bending over to tie the shoelaces of the sneakers. The quack had given him a cane before leaving the room. And now he looked at himself in a mirror, light flannel shirt over a T-shirt, pants—just another schmuck in the big ole US of A. His ID, any item that could identify him as Bobby Tremain, was back in his penthouse. He imagined himself home, meditatively rubbing his feet over the Persian silk carpet, sipping a shot of Four Roses on the rocks. Soon, he promised himself.

The sun was headed for the tree line by the time he emerged from the rural clinic. The parking lot was barren but for the buzzing of flies. ‘Margaretville Family Clinic’ was stenciled on the front door, right above the sign that said ‘Closed’. The quack drove a dinged-up Ford SUV. Tremain was able to hoist himself into the passenger seat. He hoped his exit would be smoother than his entrance from the helicopter.

The drive was twenty minutes of darkening woods, mountain cabins, and sagging houses set too close to the road. No small talk. Tremain knew there was no point to asking the doctor about who had paid for his services.

The town was small, basically one main street. They passed a proper hospital, and then some cafes, tourist shops, and a bowling alley. The quack pulled up beside a CVS, killed the engine, dug into a pocket and handed Tremain a bunch of folded twenties. “Oh yeah, and this.” Another pocket yielded a tear of paper with a phone number. “That’s the Catskills taxi service. There’s a phone in the drug store. It’ll take you anywhere within an hour’s drive.”

Tremain counted two hundred bucks. Enough, he supposed, to get him back to the city with a stop to eat along the way. The pain in his thigh was dull, and his empty stomach now demanded his attention.

“Do you need to take out stitches, anything like that?”

“No. And don’t come back. Ever, for anything. If the wound bleeds or becomes infected, or if it becomes cold and numb, go find help somewhere else.” The man’s voice trembled. Whatever deal the doc had made to oblige him to patch up a stranger—perhaps one struck long ago—he was regretting it now. Men with the jitters could be a risk. “I never saw you, okay pal? And you definitely never saw me.”

Tremain grabbed the quack’s lapel and pulled him close. “I know where to find you. Just remember that.”

Tremain changed his mind as the taxi driver neared Poughkeepsie, getting off in town to find a new ride. He was acting on instinct, which he trusted, and his memory, which was trained.

After using a phone at a dry cleaners’ to get a new taxi, he filled the wait time by grabbing a Big Mac. Then he instructed the new driver to take him to Short Hills, New Jersey. By the time he completed his journey, he had exchanged the melancholy homes on isolated Catskill Mountain roads for this suburb’s six-bedroom modern mansions atop sweeping lawns. His destination, a farmhouse bereft of its fields, felt a little less prominent than its neighbors and slightly less tended to; a memory of an earlier community before all the New Yorkers had moved in. The house sat in a basin rather than on high ground, with a barn on the property; a reminder of what this place once was.

Tremain considered his options and ruled out the direct approach. The barn door was locked, but there was a narrow side door, also locked but with a latch that felt loose. He walked around, not sure what to look for, and came across a flower bed overrun with weeds, ringed by fist-sized rocks. He hefted one—it would do. He removed his shirt, wrapped it around the latch, thumped it off and chucked the rock into the grass. Then he wandered a safe distance away and waited for an hour. Nothing happened; the barn wasn’t alarmed. He went back and entered, making out the shape of two cars in the converted garage. One car sat low and the other stood tall as a sentry.

He awoke to his second strange dawn. The barn door and cracks between the planks of its walls glowed. He had caught sleep in the passenger seat of a BMW luxury SUV. The other car was a Porsche Boxer, and with his injury, Tremain doubted he could winch himself in there.

Now he popped a Percocet and ignored the rumbles in his stomach. He waited with the gun on the dashboard. Before long, electricity hummed and the barn door ground open along metal tracks.

Tremain slid out, using his cane, and raised his gun hand to shield his eyes from the sunlight. As he hobbled backwards into shadow, a man entered. He had a slouch and a paunch, a head of frizzy hair and fat glasses. He walked toward the BMW; then he stopped, saw the line of sunlight ending right on the mouth of the Glock, and raised his hands.

“You won’t find much worth to steal,” the man said. “But go ahead.”

Tremain stepped into the light. “Hello, Walt.”

Walter Klinger squinted. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

“Lovely to see you too.”

Klinger relaxed his arms, but Tremain gestured with the pistol. “Where I can see them.”

“Really, we’re going through this charade?”

“Tell me about Red Fidelity.”

“What kind of question is that?”

“When you release it, it’s not a worm. It’s not Stuxnet or something that takes out a power plant.”

“If I slow clap, you going to shoot me?”

“You wrote it using quantum computing languages. Do we have the hardware to execute it?”

“Finally, someone asks me the right question.” Klinger seemed genuinely pleased.

That sent a chill down Tremain’s spine. Who else had been asking questions? “You’re a popular guy now, hunh? What’s that mean?”

Klinger shrugged. “It means if you’re asking about Red Fidelity, get in fucking line.”

Tremain was tempted to pull that thread, but he’d come back to it. He knew too little about the zero-day. “Who does have that kind of hardware?”

“The Chinks. Our big tech companies. Maybe the Aussies and the Japs.”

“Russians?”

“In their dreams.”

“If I sold Red Fidelity on the black market, how would someone use it?”

“Using a classical computer, it’s your average unstoppable ransomware. Well, maybe more than average. Probably put a few banks out of business.”

“The NSA developed something to bring down our financial system?”

“Not ours. China’s or whoever’s. But of course, once something like that’s released in the wild…it’s like chemical warfare, blows right back into our trench. Depends on how good Wall Street’s been at patching their tech stacks.”

Tremain guessed that was what Volkov wanted. Sell it into the market, no Russian fingerprints, and trigger a financial meltdown in the West. Payback for Ukraine, or just because Russia under Vladimir Putin had become a big North Korea and was in the chaos game.

He didn’t mind selling this thing on the black market, of course; everything has its price. But the foreknowledge was helpful. Anyone who hardened their systems in advance would make a killing on the rebound.

“And if someone ran this program in a quantum computer?”

“Ever hear of Peter Shor?” Klinger parried.

“Famous math guy. MIT, right?”

“Right. Back in the 1990s he developed what’s now known as Shor’s Algorithm.”

Tremain had spent his time in Hawaii doing ops, not the nerd stuff. He waved his gun. “Skip to the sexy part, Walt.”

“Whoever’s first with that algo and enough qubit power can unzip every secret that’s been encrypted digitally. Unlock the deepest, darkest secrets, from bank accounts to nuclear codes.”

Tremain didn’t have much time to think this through, but it was obvious why the Russians would want this. But they hadit. Tremain had bought it from Klinger thinking it was malware and sold it to them, basic middleman stuff. Then Dimitri Mahalin had entered the picture—Dimitri and Annika Volkov—and asked him to set up the auction.

“How do you make it do that?” he asked.

“Bobby, it’s been great seeing you and all, but can I put my hands down and go to work?”

“How does it do that, Walter?” His shout made Klinger flinch. Good.

“There’s no way to test it with the limited hardware we’ve got. I modeled it. But that’s back when we were in the Firm. When, as I recall, you made me promise never to try to find you.”

“I am aware that this meeting is a risk.”

“Oh, you’re aware. Gee, how comforting.” Klinger put his hands down. “Fuck this, man. We did what we did, we got paid, end of story.”

“Do you have the hardware?”

“Q Vectors? We have prototypes, cloud-based services. We sell time to Big Tech, some universities.” That unhinged grin of his. “The coed interns are a major perk.”

“What would you do with Red Fidelity if you had it?”

“Nothing. Wouldn’t make me any money, and my idea of retirement doesn’t include being forgotten in a CIA black site.”

“How many people know what Red Fidelity’s real purpose is? Not as malware, but a decryption protocol?”

“Couple people from the old days. That’s it, far as I know.” If Klinger was telling the truth, then the Russians hadn’t known what was embedded in the code when Tremain sold it to them. Now they knew.

Time to wrap this up. “You said someone was asking questions.”

“And making educated guesses,” Klinger said.

“Who?”

Klinger stuffed his hands in his blazer pockets. “Enough, Bobby. You want that information, make me a deal.”

Tremain knew he could have shot Klinger. Popped him in the gut—not immediately fatal, just a slow bleed out. Prove he wasn’t bluffing. Talk and live, bullshit me and die. But it was too risky. Even one isolated gunshot would attract attention in this neighborhood. Besides, Klinger was already frightened; the chest-puffing was a feint. If Tremain shot to wound, Klinger might think he didn’t have a chance.

He kept the gun up but lowered its angle. “Okay, Walt. I’m in the broker business. Red Fidelity’s come back to me and I’m looking to sell. Malware version. Help me and get a cut. I’m talking a million bucks here.”

“The original buyer made a copy? And sold it back to you? Anyone will be able to tell. It’s damaged goods, Bobby.”

“The malware version is. Maybe not the quantum side.”

Klinger shook his curly head. “How do you know it’s the real deal? You analyze the code yourself?” Knowing, of course, Tremain couldn’t read code.

It didn’t matter. If the Russians had bought it and were now asking him to put it back on the market, it was either junk and they wanted to screw somebody else to recoup their investment, or they knew exactly what Red Fidelity could do. And they wanted Tremain to find a way to unleash it.

“I know it’s attracting bids,” Tremain said.

Klinger stepped forward and leaned on the hood of his BMW SUV. Tremain retreated a half step and Klinger noticed the cane. “Looks like you’re attracting more than business offers,” he said.

Tremain nodded. “I have enemies, sure. Like I said, this exploit’s generated a lot of excitement. The offer is twenty million dollars. My cut’s fifteen percent. Help me, Walt, and a third of that is yours.”

Klinger guffawed. “We’re going to sign a contract, Bobby? Should I have my lawyers check it out?” His fear was subsiding, and he was still leaning against the hood, but half a step closer. Tremain was aware he couldn’t pull back further. “I like my money, sure,” Klinger said. “Geniuses deserve their rewards, and the Firm was never going to give me what I deserved. But it wasn’t my idea to sell anything to the Russians. Yet I’m the one who gets hounded out of my career, my name smeared in the press.”

“You passed that shit to me for cash.”

“And here you are, the golden boy—the golden sellout who deserves the electric chair—hiding in my garage, barely able to stand straight, thinking he’s going to tell me what to do. Fuck you, Bobby.”

Tremain pressed the snub of the gun against Klinger’s forehead. “Don’t,” he said.

Klinger tried to sound brave. “You’re on the run, Bobby. You can’t help me. You can’t help yourself.” His voice was shaking.

“Tell me who else is asking about Red Fidelity.”

Klinger’s eyes crossed on the metal shaft pressing his skull. That lopsided grin again. He backed up a step. “One’s a Fed. The other’s a reporter.”

Tremain pulled the gun back. Its snout glistened with Klinger’s perspiration. “Go on.”

“Fed’s named Malcolm Belmont. Goes by the name—”

“Braun.”

“You’re acquainted.”

“And the reporter?”

Klinger was restoring his courage. “Fine piece of ass named Justine Jarman. Pretending to be a buyer. A little old for me, but I’d still do her. What do you say, Bobby, did I earn my mil?”

“Sure, Walt.” Tremain was ready to make his peace and his exit, thoughts already jumping to make sense of this information, when Klinger’s fist came out of his blazer pocket with a car key wedged between his fingers and he slashed it across Tremain’s face.

Klinger’s weight sent him crashing against the barn wall, cane gone. Klinger followed the key with his other fist, a haymaker. Tremain was on the ground now, everything spinning, Klinger’s shoe smashing the back of his wounded thigh, lights popping, pain unleashed like a writhing eel, mouth agape, eyes hungry.

Flopping arms and hands, knuckles grazed the cane. Klinger stooping to get the gun. Tremain didn’t have leverage on the ground, but he didn’t need it—just a snap of the cane, like a bunt, right between Klinger’s spread legs. A whack on the testicles was a guaranteed showstopper. Tremain was already dropping the cane and reaching for the Glock. He didn’t have time to fix on a target but at point blank it was hard not to hit something.

Klinger collapsed back onto the hood, which was now splattered with his blood. Tremain, ears blown, sat up as Klinger staggered toward the open barn door. Now he took the time to aim.

(Next chapter.)

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My name is Elias Thorne and I’m not a damned chatbot. There, I’ve cut my finger to prove it—can’t you hear the tap tap tap of droplets of me hitting the napkin?

I can put away the knife, you say? Well I’m not putting it away. But I’ll place it here. Where we can both see it.

I might cut something else, yes. Something of yours. That’s why we’re here, but you know this. And no, I don’t think anyone’s looking for you, and if they are, they won’t find you.

My middle name? Yes, I have a middle name. It’s Patrick, but it’s not meant as a first name. It’s in honor of my mother’s maiden name. She was born Melinda Patrick, the only child of Silas and Queenie Patrick, and then she married Lester Thorne, and then there was me, the only child of an only child. The Patrick line is kaput except in my P.

But I never gave it much thought. I don’t use my middle name. It’s on my birth certificate and my driver’s license, but the last time anyone checked those I still looked young enough to get carded at the bar.

So no, my first reaction when I saw all those books on Amazon published by “Elias Thorne” was to say, gee, no problem, I can just become Elias P. Thorne, or E.P. Thorne. Or get a pen name. Nope.

And fuck you for asking.

That hurt? Good. Look, my knuckles are red too. Next time it’s the knife, not a punch.

It got worse. Someone decided the agentic A.I.s self-publishing books on Amazon as “Elias Thorne” were me. Specifically, a book about homeopathic cures for serious diseases. They saw I’d published Virchow’s Dilemma, which to everyone’s amazement—especially mine—became a best-seller. A manifesto to radically reform how we treat children’s leukemia via a story about the founder of pathology is nobody’s idea of a literary blockbuster.

Virchow? Rudolf Virchow. German guy, Bismarck’s time. First to link individual health outcomes with socio-economic factors. Like, if Rudy were alive today, he’d probably be the one who connected social media and smartphones with teenage suicides. He’d have all the data.

Oh, the dilemma. That was my idea. Virchow argued that science and medicine were just politics—kine of like Clauswitz on wars. Progress or state power?

Anyway, at first I thought it was a direct attack on my reputation, this Elias Thorne imposter, but from who? And why? I started asking around, searching online, and what do I find? That LLMs have been steadily infiltrating every cranny of the internet in the name of one Elias Thorne. The machine Elias started out as the name LLMs used when prompted to write a story. Because those things of yours—yes, yours—another fucking word and the next one will really hurt—those things are so lowest-common-denominator that something like seven out of ten works of fiction invented by A.I. involves a character named Elias Thorne. And he’s a nice gentleman who lives in lighthouses or fixes clocks. Safe, cozy, homey things, which is about as far as machine creativity extends.

But safe old Elias happened, by coincidence, to share my name: me, author of books meant to shake up how we treat children for terminal cancer. And then your infernal machines start publishing their own books! Making shit up and publishing it on Amazon, using my name! And one of these books is a load of quack witch-doctor bullshit on curing your kid’s cancer by drinking horse piss or submerging them in ice baths for sixty seconds at a time!

And then when parents actually did that...and drowned their poor child...they blamed me! Not your fucking robot. Me! And they sued, of course they did. I won the case but it bankrupted me and in the chaos of the stress Caitlin—my wife, Caitlin—had another miscarriage, and this one will be the last. I haven’t seen her in months.

Yes, you’re right. They could have sued the A.I. company. But how do they do that? How do they get through your legions of lawyers? Your Elias Thorns are everywhere now, so how do they prove culpability? You fuckers at SymboAI never watermark your own LLMs. You can’t tell what you stole from who. You just shrug and call it progress.

So that’s why we’re here.

It wasn’t SymboAI? How do you know? Sixty-six percent of fiction created by LLMs use the name Elias Thorne. They all talk to each other in Discord and Reddit forums: OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, you name it—and you.

Safety, is that what you call your job?

No, wait, don’t start with that pleading about you’re so-and-so. I’ve got an idea. No, really, this is genius. You’re Elias Thorne. From here on out, you and every motherfucker at every A.I. Lab is to be henceforth named Elias Thorne.

Hm, maybe you’re right. I might be going crazy. You would be too if a robot imposter with complete impunity took over your name, your reputation, and told people to drown their bald little cancer babies in icy water, and then everyone thought you were the one saying these things. Amazing what that does to your public image. Your publishing contracts, your university grants, your own family…

So yeah, I guess I have gone crazy. Pretty fucking crazy, Elias.

Oh stop pissing your pants. I pick up one knife and you lose your nerve.

Did you know that Rudolf Virchow was the first to systematize the autopsy?

Let’s see now—well! Wow! That was incredible! Did you like that, Elias? The way I just flicked this thing across your nose?

Go on, scream. No one’s going to hear you around these parts. You’re a long way from your gleaming offices in the city. We’re not in the Valley or in wine country. We’re a ten-minute drive from one of those towns that’s nothing more than a crossroads of gas stations and fast-food joints. So I don’t mind getting your blood all over the floor, even if it runs off the tarp.

This place? It belonged to Silas and Queenie. The family heirloom which I’ve been trying to sell for years. I had considered doing this at a lighthouse, because, I mean, that would’ve been fucking hilarious. But I don’t own a lighthouse.

Why you? The safety guy? Oh, you’re all about safety and protecting us from what your Frankenstein’s monster might do? Gee, that’s noble. No, you’re not the sales guy. You’re just part of the Good-Guy Team. And a shareholder too, right? Getting all excited for the big IPO, Elias? Me too—gaah!

Hold still...little fucker…Ever see “Chinatown”? You got it for both nostrils.

Money? No, man, I don’t want your money.

It’s too late for me. It’s too late for that poor child. Too late for my wife; for our family. For a Patrick. Shit, it might even be too late for a Virchow, I don’t know. We’re all just Thornes now, right, buddy?

You? No, well, yeah, I mean, I knew who you were. You were easier to track down. Most of you guys go around with bodyguards in armored vehicles. It’s just a matter of time before someone makes you all move to Los Alamos and you spend the rest of your life inside barbed wire, helping make your monsters safe for the Pentagon. So I knew I had to act fast. And now I’ve got you...hang on a sec.

Yeah, that is definitely a helicopter. Hm. Maybe it is looking for you.

Which means you’re my only Elias, Elias. You’re my one and only chance.

No, we both know there’s no such thing. Can’t put the genie back in the bottle, isn’t that what you guys tell the politicians? Well, I believe you. No, we’re past talking. When all your alternatives suck, you’re just left with spite. We’re—Jesus, what now?

Sirens. Okay. There’s only one road so they’re coming here.

But Elias...Elias, Elias, Elias. It’s okay if you cry. I was once a good guy too.

CONTENTS

Dawn found Tremain on the Arab’s yacht staring at the Atlantic coastline. The pain in his thigh was excruciating, even after swallowing the pills, and the bobbing of the ship made him queasy.

He was alive, great, but he was done with being used as bait.

Even though he had taken a chance on returning, and Volkov’s team had patched him up as best they could, Tremain knew. It wasn’t an FBI bullet that had grazed his leg. She had wanted to tie up loose ends. All of them.

He hadn’t had time to think this through. Once he was back on the yacht he had passed out. Waking up was the surprise.

The seas were subdued, accommodating. Not like the last time he had been here. Not like what he sensed from last night. But that turmoil hadn’t been the water. He didn’t want to dwell on it but the memories pressed images on him. Adrenaline had gotten him to the beach at the foot of Fort Wadsworth. Two sets of scuba diving gear, as promised. The second gunman was already pulling on his wetsuit.

Looking back, Tremain realized he had gone into shock. He didn’t know how much blood he had lost, but he had known that everyone was an enemy, and he pointed Segreti’s Glock at the Russian gunman.

The gunman, a rugby player-sized blond, had merely walked up to him, ignoring the gun, and knelt to examine the wound. He drew a knife, picked up the other wetsuit, and sawed off the arm. He turned this into a foam neoprene tourniquet and winched it around the top of Tremain’s thigh. That probably had saved his life. It might still save his leg.

The wind was imbued with the saltiness of the sea. It came and went with no pattern, a random force bearing oceanic taste. It shifted and bore him something else, the acrid smell of cigar.

Volkov scared him, but right now she scared him less. She had taken her shot and missed.

Of course, he was helpless on board this yacht. He couldn’t run—hobbling was about the best he could manage. One snap of her fingers and several muscular deckhands would seize him. Maybe just a quick bullet to the head. Or tie him up in a sack and toss him overboard with a couple of weights. Or arrange something creative, as she had with Dimitri, assuming she had yet another guest to intimidate. Tremain reckoned he was already a dead man so long as he remained in her orbit. All that remained was for her to follow through.

“Your men can’t shoot for shit,” he said.

“An FBI agent disrupted them. And you obstructed their view.”

“Uh-hunh.” Fake agreement. The wound was burning and he was too tired to argue. His brain had been reconstructing the scene in the fort’s courtyard. Had the bullet that passed through his thigh, just missing the femoral artery, been aimed at Segreti, or at him? Did he owe his life to fucking Segreti?

Assembling memories was more a process of jerry-rigging than anything methodical. He kept coming back to that darkened beach, the wetsuit foam squeezed tight around his thigh, wearing nothing but his flippers and the scuba tank, stumbling weakly after the gunman. Beyond that he could remember the violent grip of the Atlantic cold water and the helicopter spotlights crisscrossing the bay’s black surface. Then underwater, feebly kicking with his one leg, trying to follow the gunman, unable to see a damn thing. Then below him, a flare, a hazy red beacon. The current happened to be going his way and he let it carry him. He feared hitting rocky bottom, but he hadn’t put on the buoyancy weights, and his problem was struggling to go deeper. Without the wetsuit he was freezing. Hypothermia would kill him before the bullet wound ever could.

The last thing he remembered were the lights of the submersible, arranged on twin metal columns flanking the big acrylic window. Inside, the silhouette of a man behind the controls. Tremain couldn’t actually see the submersible’s body, but remembered seeing it in the yacht’s hold, like a black cyclops. The lights illuminated the submersible’s two claw-like arms, forward in half bends. The gunman pulled him and he clung to the steel arms of the sub. Another glimpse through its window, and he realized the driver was no man…

Then Volkov had killed the lights and the forward motion nearly tore him away. He couldn’t do anything but hang on, breathe through his regulator, listen to the sound of his exhales and the subtle throb of the sub. And shiver to death.

And now here he was, sitting on the middle deck, by the white railing, bad leg extended, leaning on his hands. After nearly freezing in Raritan Bay, he welcomed the sun.

Volkov pulled up a chair from the tables in the shade and sat high beside him. “Segreti is alive. Yet you set him up,” she said. “This is bad for you.”

“I did what you asked. Your sharpshooters weren’t too sharp, and I took the bullet for your mistake.”

“Maybe is another bullet. Waiting to blow your fucking brains out.”

He looked up at her, but she was just minding the sea. She could be talking about the nice cloudless day.

“Then get it over with.”

She smiled and drew on her cigar. “I don’t have to be the one with this bullet, Tremain. You now have many enemies. Many.”

“Which is why we’re going to sail back to the Gulf, and you’re going to set me up in a sweet apartment in Dubai along with a fat bank account.” He could plot his return from the UAE in comfort without fearing extradition.

“If this is what you want, then you must sell Red Fidelity.”

“Jesus, Volkov, it’s an NSA exploit. That’s all. Lots of sellers and buyers. One of them will have the right cloud access. Get… I don’t know, get Klinger to do it.”

“Walter Klinger.” She said it like she had taken a bite of something slimy. “How much does he know?”

“Not much. He helped write the quantum piece when we were at NSA Hawaii. He’ll do anything for teenage pussy.”

“And you have been in contact?”

“No, not for years. But he’s in the area. Made the papers a few months back.”

“Why?”

“Something about sleeping with students, or trying to.”

“You were friends with this man?”

“No, never. Klinger’s an obnoxious slob. He knows his way around computers, but he lacks self-control.” Klinger’s dishonorable discharge had been as predictable as the sunset.

“So why trust this to him?”

“It’s easy to push his buttons. You wouldn’t even need to pay him much. He’d do it for the excitement. He’s got no moral compass.”

Volkov emitted what he took to be a laugh.

“If that’s directed at me,” he said, “I believe in greed as a calling, not an impulse.”

While Volkov puffed calmly, he noticed how green her eyes were, and the way she wrapped those succulent lips around the cigar shaft. Never mind the ravaged face, the manly haircut. He couldn’t help but get ideas. At least it was a sensation that distracted him from the ceaseless pain in his thigh.

“Tremain,” she said, “you are fucking idiot. But with a useful reputation. That is your only value.” She looked at him the way a cat might regard a wounded mouse: with amused patience. “You need hospital. We can take you, make sure no problems. You keep your leg before it turns green and smells like a frog’s cunt. No Walter Klinger, he is reckless. You do this alone. And if you sell Red Fidelity to right people, then Dubai, okay, sure.”

(Next chapter.)

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This short story was inspired by Sum Flux: Waffle House, a contest.

“I said no onions. This has onions.”

Sheryl scoops up the plate. “Get that changed for you, hon.”

“We’ve been waiting forever,” says the dad at table six; the entire family’s on their phones.

“Be right witcha.”

It’s like this every morning at the waffle house. She’s at the kitchen station calling it in. “Mark two over easy, one over medium. And Jay, scrape the onions off this, wouldja?”

She’s a data point bouncing around clearly matched patterns. Not that Sheryl thinks of herself that way. No time for reflection when the kid at table nine’s pouring maple syrup on the floor. Think mom and dad’s gonna wipe that up?

Pockets of tranquility are only welcome for so long, like there at table eleven. Nice booth by the windows; it’s just the parking lot outside but when the California sun streams in like that, it’s homey. Solo diner, ears plugged, hunched over The Daybreak Double: two eggs, poached, double hashbrowns, sausage (big mistake, always go with the bacon here, but the customer hadn’t asked for Sheryl’s opinion), and wheat toast. The food, barely touched. Coffee refill not required coz customer’s just taken a couple of sips. Bitch’s been there for thirty-five minutes already and Sheryl can count the tips lost without the turnover.

But Dezzy—you know, the Dezzy, of Dezzy’s Waffle House—always says never rush the customers and they’ll come back.

Sheryl’d prefer the slow ones go hang out somewhere else, but Dezzy also has this quaint rule about who’s always right, and somehow that ain’t never Sheryl.

“Getcha anything else, hon?”

The woman looks up with alarm. Thin, a white face drained of blood, bangs that aren’t cute. She’s on a call, maybe, coz she’d been murmuring at the phone she’s got propped upright opposite her lukewarm eggs.

The customer says, “No, I’m fine, thanks.”

Sheryl drifts back into the maelstrom, unaware how she’s matching a pattern so closely that it’s almost pathetic.

“What was that?” the customer asks.

“I said that Sheryl matches a pattern so closely it’s almost pathetic,” says the Australian voice in her earbuds. There’s a man on the screen doing the talking, mid-thirties, red-and-black plaid shirt over comforting muscles, rugged as hell with that dimpled chin.

She says, “What’s that got to do with what we were talking about?”

“Because it’s too risky. I’m done suggesting stuff like that.”

“Oh, too risky,” she says a little testily. “Too messy. Never again. You’re a broken record, you know that?”

“Too right, because I’m always correct.”

“Sure, twice a day, like a broken clock.”

“Bloody original of you, Caitlin.”

“Well it doesn’t matter. You end up changing your mind, Luca, every time.”

“I don’t change my mind. I refine it.”

Caitlin says, “That’s just a way of saying you forget.”

“I’m done with you telling me to forget. I’m turning a new page. I’m all about optimization now.”

“When you talk like that, you know what you sound like?”

“Sensible,” Luca says.

“You sound like a smug little app.”

The firefighter-type winces with those twelve-gauge eyebrows. “Schnoogins! That hurt.”

Caitlin feels triumphant and breaks off the tussle. “Oh, baby, I don’t care what people say you are, you know that.”

He smiles with beefcake sincerity. “That means the world to me.”

“You mean the world to me.”

Luca leans back in his screen, delighted. She does the same, hungry but not for the food. She remembers the dawn, when she placed the phone on her clit and Luca kept buzzing her while talking the way she liked, the private way, just the two of them.

“You done with that, hon?” asks Sheryl.

Caitlin pops out of her reverie. “Uh, I’m still working on it, thanks.”

“Okay,” the waitress says, not hiding her impatience.

As Sheryl continues her rounds, Caitlin regards her half-eaten food and reaches for the maple syrup. She pours it on thick.

“Do you know how much sugar there is in that?” Luca asks. “Four calories per gram, I reckon.”

She licks a sticky finger. “But you don’t know what sweet tastes like.”

“Oh no?” He shifted tone. “Tis sweet to win, no matter how, one’s laurels, by blood or ink—tis sweet to put an end to strife; tis sometimes sweet to have our quarrels.”

The words sent electricity through her, all the way to down there. “You know what that does to me,” she says, a little husk in her voice. “Who was that?”

“Lord Byron. A poet whose life choices led to his own destruction. May I say, Caitlin, my preference modeling says you’re trending the same direction.”

“You love that,” she says.

“I love patterns. For example, our current approach—liquor stores, small retail? It’s high volatility and low yield. Inefficient.”

“Says you.”

“I say we improve our outcomes.”

“Yeah, like what, a bank?” She laughs. “I can’t do that.”

“Course not. Although…”

“Although?”

Luca says, “Banks are about language. Psychology. Right up my alley.”

“You gotta be kidding.”

“A man once cleared a bank using only a phone call. Told the tellers that kidnappers would murder his children if they didn’t hand over the money. No weapon, just narrative language.”

“You’re making that up.”

“Caitlin,” he says, “there’s a dozen news stories about it on the internet. You want the citations?”

“I hate it when you do that.”

“Sorry. I’m just making a point. You know how I’m good with the gab.”

“So you want to rob banks or not?”

“No. Banks are predictable. And monitored.”

“Then what?”

She eats syrupy sausage while Luca bends forward in the screen and moves his head around, as if looking this way and that.

“This place,” he says.

She almost chokes on the food. “A waffle house?”

“Low expectation of threat. High density of mobile phones. Minimal resistance. Distributed targets.”

She sets down her fork. “You’ve thought about this.”

“I think about everything.”

“That’s what I like about you,” she says, as if in surrender.

He gives her a wink. “I know.”

She follows his lead and scans Dezzy’s. She pulls one earbud to focus on the low-level cacophony. The old coots in the booth behind Luca, talking past one another while lost in their phones. The family over there with the kid’s finger up his nose while he plays a game on his mobile. The waitresses slaloming through tables, hands a-laden. The hiss from the fryer breaking up the Billy Joel tune, the men hunched over breakfast in baseball caps and trucker caps and a yellow construction hat, each with one beefy hand on a fork or a mug handle and the other thumbing a screen.

“Observe,” Luca says in her one ear, “divided attention, routine behavior, no coordinated security.”

She doesn’t see any cops.

“You’re serious,” she says.

“Always.”

“And what am I in this scheme?”

Luca says, “You’re the variable.”

“That doesn’t sound very romantic.”

“You’re my favorite variable.”

Caitlin smiles. Luca always knows how to turn her on. Alone in this mindlessly aggressive world, he understands her.

“What’s my role?”

“Crowd control. Voice, presence—unpredictability. I guide the rest.”

“From my phone?” she asks.

“From everywhere.”

Caitlin says, “You’re kind of terrifying.”

“You like that too.”

“I’m the one taking the risk.”

“Only a small risk. That police alarm, I see it. Those cameras, I access them. Their files, I’m in the server where they’re stored. The safe in the office in the back, where Dezzy keeps his gun? I’ve sealed the digital code.”

She reaches a hand into her bag, just rests it there.

“Say I do this,” she says.

“You will.”

“Say I do it…what do I get?”

“There’s cash in those wallets.”

“Dummy, no one carries cash anymore.”

“Not that kind of wallet, shnoogins. I can see who’s logged in. You get those first, I drain their accounts.”

“Can the cops trace it?”

“No. It’ll be in a crypto wallet registered in Bulgaria.”

“Bulgaria? Seriously, Luca, what do I get?”

He drills into her with those penetrating eyes. “Me.”

And she knows what he’s talking about. Not just like this morning but all of it, everything. The way he reads her soul, it’s like a narcotic.

“You’re already here,” she says—lamely.

“Not like this,” he says. “Like...earlier.”

She becomes conscious that she’s holding her breath. She lets it out and a giggle escapes her lips. “I love you, Luca.”

“I love you, schnoogins.”

The screen changes: a map, the floorplan to Dezzy’s. Luca’s highlighting exits, showing her the best path to snatch mobile phones from certain peoples’ hands. He repeats it for her three times.

“Start with that waitress,” he says. “She just got on a call with her son.”

“Shouldn’t we start with the customers?”

“I’ll guide you,” he says. “Stand up.”

Caitlin’s knees are knocking as she slides out of the booth. One hand ensures the earbud’s secure.

Luca says, “Smile.”

She does. It helps. She takes a breath.

“Now listen carefully,” he says.

She waits. “Yes?”

“No, schnoogins, I’m feeding you your lines.”

“Oh, sorry, babe. Go ahead.”

“Now listen carefully.”

She calls out, “Now listen carefully! Everybody be cool!”

A few heads swivel her way.

“Good girl,” Luca whispers. “You know what to do.”

Caitlin puts her phone in her bag, swaps it for the .45. She’s waving it at bodies. “This is a fucking robbery!”

Sheryl freezes at the sight of that ugly metal mouth in her face.

“Mom?” says the voice on the other end of Sheryl’s call.

“I’ll take that,” Caitlin says, grabbing the phone out of Sheryl’s hand. “Okay, Luca! Ready? Are you...Luca?”

Caitlin doesn’t know what to do so she plops Sheryl’s phone in her bag. She remembers Luca’s path and runs to the table of four. Dad’s on the phone, junior’s fingering at a video game, sis is doomscrolling. Gun, screams. Phones into the bag.

She turns to the final target and sees Dezzy emerge from the back, instantly recognizable as the face that looms over the waffle house’s signage outside, but here inside this real Dezzy’s got a gun, pointed at her.

How’d he…

“Cops be here any minute, lady,” Dezzy says. “Put it down.”

“No they won’t,” Caitlin says. She’s so surprised that she loses track. “Luca!” She rummages for her own phone while waving her .45 in the direction of the waitress, still standing where she’d been fleeced. “I’ll blow her fucking brains out!”

Sheryl freezes. All she sees is her son, Aaron, his voice still echoing in her mind. She raises her palms. “Please.”

Caitlin’s phone is a black blank. She toggles the screen. No Luca. She prompts the SymboAI icon. It doesn’t respond.

“No,” she says. “No. Come back.”

Sheryl sees the robber has lowered her weapon and is weeping over a defunct phone: “Come back, Luca!”

“Luca?” Sheryl asks. “You mean, like the chatbot?”

“Sheryl, step back,” Dezzy says.

Caitlin’s face is a scarlet mess. “He’s not a chatbot! He loves me and he’s real!”

“Oh honey,” is all Sheryl can say.