I have no idea why I paid. Just stupid, I guess.
Chapter Twelve
THE AMERICAN AIRLINES flight arrived in new york early in the morning – towers of dark clouds hiding the city, rain and wild winds buffeting us all the way down. Two hours outward bound from Paris, the FASTEN SEATBELT sign had come on and, after that, conditions had deteriorated so rapidly that all in-flight service had been suspended. No food, no booze, no sleep. Things could only get better, I reasoned.
I was travelling on a perfect copy of a Canadian diplomatic book which not only explained my seat in First Class but allowed me to avoid any questions from US Immigration. They processed me without delay, I retrieved my luggage and stepped out into the pouring rain. I was home, but I found less comfort in it than I had anticipated. I’d been away so long, it was a country I barely knew.
Eighteen hours had passed since I had left the Bradleys at the Plaza Athénée. Once I realized my cover had been blown I knew what I had to do: the training was unambiguous – run, take shelter wherever you can, try to regroup and then write your will. Maybe not the last part, but that was the tone in which a blown cover was always discussed.
I figured America was my best chance. Not only would it be harder for an enemy to find me among millions of my own, but I knew if I was ever going to be safe I had to erase the fingerprints I had left behind, making it impossible for others to follow the path Ben and Marcie had pioneered.
I had covered the distance between the Plaza Athénée and my apartment in six minutes and, as soon as I walked in, I started to call the airlines. By luck, there was one seat left in First Class on the earliest flight out.
It is strange how the unconscious mind works, though. In the ensuing chaos of grabbing clothes, settling bills and packing my bags, the two letters from Bill and Grace Murdoch’s lawyer suddenly floated into my thoughts for no apparent reason. I rummaged through a file of old correspondence, threw them into my carry-on and turned to the only issue which remained: the contents of the safe.
It was impossible to take the three handguns, a hundred thousand dollars in different currencies and eight passports with me, not even in my checked luggage. If the metal detectors or X-rays picked it up – even as an alleged diplomat – I would come under intense scrutiny. Once they discovered it was a fake book, as they surely would, I would have weeks of explaining to do – first about my real identity and then about the other items. All guns, false passports and contact books were supposed to have been surrendered when I left The Division.
Instead I slit open a seam of my mattress, removed some of the filling and taped the tools of my trade inside. Once I was in America, I would call François, the snivelling concierge, and have him arrange for a moving company to transport all my furniture back home. With everything secure, I glued the seam closed, refitted the mattress cover and called a cab to take me to Charles de Gaulle.
Ten hours later I was standing in the rain at Kennedy, telling another cab to head for midtown. On the way I called the Four Seasons, one of those hotels where sheer size guarantees anonymity, and booked a room.
After three days of traipsing between realtors I rented a small loft in NoHo. It wasn’t much but it caught the morning light and, on my first day living there, I found the letters from the lawyer and called to make an appointment.
We sat in his expansive office in the late afternoon, looking all the way up Central Park, and what he had described as a small matter concerning Bill’s estate managed to change my life for ever.
For several days afterwards I walked the city late into the night, turning the matter over and over in my head, trying – as a psychologist would say – to internalize it. I let my feet carry me wherever they chose, passing crowded bars and restaurants, skirting the long lines outside the hippest clubs and latest movies. Finally, footsore and painfully aware of how little experience I had of what people call a normal life, I began to accept what the lawyer had told me. Only then did I turn to the problem of fingerprints.
My first call was to an FBI supervisor – the woman to whom I had handed over The Division’s European files when the agency was closed down. She contacted one of her deputy directors, whispered that I had once been the Rider of the Blue, and I sat down with him a day later in a shabby conference room in a bland downtown tower.
After I had asked to speak to him alone and his two aides had closed the door behind them, I explained that Scott Murdoch’s social security number had been eliminated and the danger that presented to me. It took him a moment to master his incredulity but, once he had finished cursing whoever was responsible, he made a phone call and set about having the number restored.
‘I’ll flag it – I’ll make sure if anybody ever inquires about the number, you’ll be warned,’ he said. ‘What else?’
‘Someone to go in and alter computer databases. There’s a lot of information about me – or the aliases I have used – which has to be lost.’
‘Government or private computers?’ he asked.
‘Both,’ I said. ‘Everything from the records of an alumni association at a school called Caulfield Academy through to scores of announcements in the Federal Register.’
‘No hope,’ the deputy director said. ‘Databases are stripper rules – the Supreme Court says we can look but we can’t touch. It’d be illegal for me even to point you towards somebody who could help.’
I pressured him, telling him about the years I’d served my country, explaining why I needed him to break the rules.
He nodded thoughtfully, then something seemed to tip him over the edge and he started ranting. ‘Break the rules? You’re asking me to get involved in computer hacking – any idea how much that costs the community? This isn’t geeks, that was years ago – cyberspace is ram-raiders now. Smash into a site, ignore the damage, steal anything of value—’
I was stunned – I didn’t care about the Supreme Court or modern developments in cybercrime, I just wanted to clean up my past. I figured I must have touched a nerve, but that wasn’t going to help me get to safety.
He was on a roll, though, and he wasn’t stopping. ‘There’s a level even higher than the rammers,’ he continued. ‘Call ’em cat burglars – they get in, copy everything and nobody knows they’ve been there. They’re the brilliant ones. Had one guy, stole fifteen million mortgage files. Fifteen million! Each one included someone’s creditcard details, social security number, bank account, home address. Know what he was gonna do with ’em?’
‘Identity theft?’ I said, no idea why we were still talking about this.
‘Of course. But he wasn’t going to use it himself – oh no, that was too much like hard work. He was going to sell ’em to the Russian mafia. A buck each for the first million, he told us, just to get ’em in. Then he was gonna ride the up-elevator until he got ten bucks a file. Figured he’d make a hundred million. For sitting in front of a screen.
‘You know how much the average bank robber gets?’ he asked, leaning over the table. ‘Nine thousand bucks and maybe a bullet. Who do you think found the right business plan?’
I shrugged. I really didn’t care.
‘The guy is twenty-three, probably the best in the world.’
‘How long did he go down for?’ I asked, trying to show some interest.
‘Not decided. Maybe zip; depends if he keeps cooperating and helps nail the samurai crackers that are doing equally bad stuff. Battleboi was his online handle, so that’s what we call him.’
‘Battleboy?’ I said, not certain I’d heard right.
‘Yeah, with an “i”. Hispanic fucker. Grew up in Miami but lives nearby now, just off Canal Street, above Walgreens.’
He looked at me and our eyes met. The scales fell away and I realized why he had been telling the story.
‘Anyway, enough about my problems – I have to stop before I say something illegal,’ he said. ‘Anything else I can do?’
‘Nothing – you’ve done more than enough. Thank you,’ I said warm
ly.
He got up and started to lead the way out. Pausing at the door, he turned to face me: ‘I’m glad I could help with the social security problem. I know your reputation – a lot of us do – and it’s been an honour, a real honour, to meet the Rider of the Blue.’
He said it with such admiration, his handshake strong enough to turn coal to diamonds, it took me aback. He and his aides watched in silence, with respect I suppose you could call it, as I walked towards the elevator. Flattered as I was, I couldn’t help thinking of how a man gets burnt out long before his reputation.
Once outside, I got a cab and rode across town, looking out at the passing faces. With the shadows lengthening into night, I once again had a strange feeling of detachment, of being a stranger in my own land. I knew if a person kept travelling down that road they ended up dying to the world – you see them sitting on park benches, in reading rooms at public libraries, alone at railroad stations. Some future, I thought. But there was nothing I could do: the caravan rolls on, the dogs keep barking and it was imperative that I buried my past.
The cab stopped in front of Walgreens; I walked the length of the building and found a doorway tucked into the wall. There was only one intercom and the few words next to it were in Japanese. Great.
Wondering if somehow I had misunderstood the FBI guy, I pressed it anyway.
Chapter Thirteen
A MAN’S GRUFF voice answered in English. I told him a mutual friend who worked on the twenty-third floor of a nearby building had suggested I call around. He buzzed me in and I climbed a flight of stairs, noting that someone had worked hard to conceal four closed-circuit cameras monitoring the stairway. Worried about the Russian mafia, I guessed.
I turned into a corridor, and it was only after my eyes had adjusted to the gloom that I saw him: Battleboi was standing straight ahead, just inside the type of steel door which would have made a crack house proud. The most surprising thing about him wasn’t his size – though he weighed in at around four hundred pounds – the shocking thing was that he was dressed like a medieval Japanese daimyo. A samurai cracker of the first order, I realized.
He was wearing a shockingly expensive silk kimono and traditional Japanese white socks notched for the big toe, his black hair oiled and swept back tight into a topknot. If anybody ever needs a Hispanic sumo wrestler, I know just the guy. He bowed slightly, the minimum of good manners – I guessed he didn’t like our friend from the twenty-third floor very much – and stood aside to let me enter.
Admittedly, his feudal lands only extended to four rooms on a side street, but beautiful tatami mats covered the floors, shoji screens separated the spaces and on one wall was an antique painted screen of Mount Fuji which I bet would have cost at least twenty thousand of his most expensive files.
Once across the threshold, I only just avoided a social disaster – at the last moment I realized I was supposed to swap my shoes for a pair of guest sandals. While I undid my barbarian boots I asked what I should call him.
He looked blank. ‘What do you mean – they didn’t tell you?’
‘Well, yeah, they told me,’ I replied. ‘It just doesn’t seem right calling somebody Battleboi to their face.’
He shrugged. ‘Doesn’t worry me, dickhead,’ he said, and led the way to a pair of cushions on the floor.
‘The deputy director says you’re cooperating with him,’ I said, as if I were there with The Man’s complete authority.
He looked at me with disgust but didn’t deny it. ‘What do you want?’
As we sat cross-legged I explained about deleting every reference to Scott Murdoch from the databases held by the alumni associations of my former schools. I figured that was as good a place as any to start.
He asked who Murdoch was and I told him I didn’t know. ‘It’s been decided to deep-six his past – that’s all we’ve got to worry about.’
He asked for Murdoch’s date of birth, details of the alumni associations and a host of other questions to make sure that he got the right person. After I answered, he adjusted his kimono and said we’d start in a few minutes.
‘Cha, neh?’ he said casually, but I got the subtext: I was supposed to look blank and feel inferior but, honestly, I wasn’t in the mood.
I reached into memory, to a summer long ago. I was on a blood-soaked beach, surrounded by a rash of beheadings and scores of samurai committing ritual suicide. In other words, I had spent my vacation reading Shōgun. Out of all those epic pages I remembered a few key phrases – cha was tea.
‘Hai, domo,’ I said, hoping my memory hadn’t failed me and I was saying ‘Yes, thank you’ and not ‘Go fuck yourself.’
I must have got it right. ‘You speak Japanese?’ he said, with a mixture of astonishment and respect.
‘Oh, just a little,’ I said modestly.
He clapped his hands, and one of the screens slid open. A slim Hispanic chick dressed in a red silk kimono entered and bowed, prompting in me a question which has occupied the minds of great philosophers since time immemorial. How come unattractive guys nearly always get the hot women?
She was a couple of years younger than him, with large eyes and a sensuous mouth. On closer inspection, it was clear she had freely adapted the traditional kimono – it was much tighter across her hips and boobs than you would ever see in Tokyo. To facilitate movement, she had slashed it at the back from the hem up to her thigh and as she moved across the room it was obvious from the way the silk rippled and clung to her she didn’t have to worry about panty-lines and bra-straps. She wasn’t wearing either. The overall effect was both alluring and crazy.
‘Tea?’ she asked.
I nodded, and Battleboi turned to me. ‘This is Rachel-san.’ She glanced my way and gave the thinnest of smiles.
Battleboi? Rachel-san? Old Japan above Walgreens? No matter what the FBI said about his abilities, I didn’t hold out much hope. It looked to me like I was dealing with a pair of care-in-the-community cases.
Three hours later, I was forced to revise my opinion drastically. Not only had Lorenzo – at least that’s what Rachel had called him once – deleted all references to me from the alumni-association records, he said he could do the same to the far more complex files held by Caulfield Academy and Harvard themselves.
‘You can get rid of an entire academic and attendance record?’ I asked. ‘Make it look like Scott Murdoch never even went to Caulfield or Harvard?’
‘Why not?’ He laughed. ‘There are so many people on the fucking planet now, that’s all we are – lines of code on a hard drive. Take the lines away and we don’t exist; add to it and we’re really somebody. Want a full professorship – tell me the faculty. Need a hundred million large? Wait while I manipulate some binary code. By the way, you can call me God if you like.’
‘Thanks, but I’ve kinda come to like Battleboi.’ I smiled.
Late that night, I watched as he consigned the last of Dr Murdoch’s academic achievements to the electronic void. ‘It’s a shame – all that study, and now it’s gone,’ he said.
There was little I could say, too awash with memories, especially of Bill – he’d driven up in his old Ferrari to Boston, the only person who had come to see me graduate.
Once Lorenzo was satisfied that he hadn’t left behind any sign that he had accessed the data, I told him about the next item on my list: the information that had to be excised from government computers and job announcements.
‘How many entries?’ he asked.
‘A couple of hundred, probably more.’
From the look on his face you would think I had invited him to commit seppuku.
‘Let me guess – this is urgent, neh?’ But he didn’t wait for a reply; he knew the answer. ‘You got copies of these announcements, or do we have to dig ’em out ourselves?’
I hesitated. Ben Bradley and his wife had all the information, but they were the last people I wanted to ask. ‘I’d have to think about that,’ I replied.
‘If we’ve gotta start
from scratch, it could take months. Let me know what you decide,’ he said, and started closing down his racks of hard drives.
As he walked me to the door, he’d become relaxed enough for a little small talk. ‘I’ve been studying Japanese for three years – bitch of a language, huh? Where’d you learn it?’
‘Shōgun,’ I said simply and, after he had overcome his shock, I have to say he took it with enormous good grace. The mountain of flesh shook as he laughed at his gullibility and, with his eyes dancing and that great generosity of spirit, I glimpsed what Rachel must have first seen in him.
‘Shit,’ he said, wiping the tears from his eyes, ‘and I’ve spent the last six hours feeling inadequate – just like being in high school again.’
As I put my boots back on, emboldened by our laughter, he asked: ‘What exactly do you do at the FBI?’
‘I don’t … It’s complicated. I suppose you could say I used to be a fellow traveller with them, that’s all.’
‘Are you Scott Murdoch?’
I laughed again. ‘You think if I had those qualifications I’d be sitting on my ass talking to you?’ I hit just the right tone of bitterness and humour – I’m a helluva good liar when I need to be.
‘Whoever you are, you must be tight with the twenty-third floor.’
‘Not really. Why?’
‘I was hoping you could put a word in with the deputy director, ask him to go easy on the charges.’
‘My understanding is, if you keep cooperating, there may not be any charges.’
‘Sure,’ he laughed bitterly. ‘That’s why they’ve set up a special division for cybercrime. It’s their brave new world – I figure they’ll bleed me for everything I’ve got then double-cross me. You know, just to make an example.’
I shook my head, telling him he was paranoid, they didn’t operate like that. But of course he was right. Some months later they hit him with every charge they could find, then offered him a plea deal that was no deal at all. In the end, unable to afford any more lawyers – he had even sold his treasured Mount Fuji screen – he was forced to sign it. Fifteen years in Leavenworth was what he got.