The Switch

19

Tanner met Lanny Roth at a restaurant in the South End, not far from where Lanny lived. It was loud, louder than Tanner remembered from the last time he’d been there. They could barely hear each other. The waitress came and recited the specials without stumbling. She was in her early twenties, skinny and small busted, pretty. Black hair, gray eyes, Goth-style eye makeup, heavily applied liquid eyeliner giving her upturned cat eyes.

“Can you repeat the appetizer special?” Lanny asked her.

“Oysters en brochette,” she said.

He leaned forward, resting his chin in his hand, judging. “I just wanted to hear you say that again.”

She smiled uncomfortably.

“You took French, didn’t you? You have an excellent accent.”

She nodded, now smiling faux graciously. “I’ll be back in a while.” She couldn’t leave fast enough.

“You just wanted to hear her say that again?” Tanner said.

“I’d do her,” Lanny said.

“Sure, but would she do you is the real question.”

“There’s that.”

“You’re old enough to be her father.”

“Beauty knows no age limits.”

“I think you might have creeped her out.”

He shrugged. “Maybe she’s a journalism major at Emerson looking for an in at the Globe.”

“She’s going to spit in your gazpacho.”

“Then I won’t order gazpacho.”

Tanner pushed aside his charger plate and silverware, took the laptop from his computer bag, opened it on a corner of the table. He entered the password — by now he had it memorized — and then handed it to Lanny. During the handover, a water glass clinked against a corner of the laptop and wobbled and nearly toppled.

“This the senator’s?”

Tanner nodded. He’d already told him about the bizarre call from “Sam Robbins.”

Lanny gave a wolfish smile and shook his head. “Amazing.”

“The folder all the way on the right, at the top. Marked ‘SSCI docs.’”

He clicked and swiped and double-clicked and squinted at the laptop screen. He pulled out a pair of cheap reading glasses from his jacket pocket. “Huh.”

“You see it? All those PDFs and PowerPoint slides?”

“Huh.”

Tanner waited, took his napkin from the table and folded it in his lap. A lanky dark-haired young guy placed a basket of bread covered with a red napkin on their table. He put down a white plate and poured greenish olive oil into it.

Lanny waited for the waiter to leave, and then he said, “You know what the hell you have here?” His widening eyes hadn’t left the screen.

“What?”

“Top secret documents. I mean, this is serious shit. Top secret government intelligence. This is amazing! From what I can tell, they’re all about something code-named ‘CHRYSALIS.’ That’s a secret project or program or something.”

“Okay...”

“They’re NSA documents — you got that much, right?”

Tanner nodded.

“These are classified, like, up the wazoo. Top Secret / SCI. I forget what that means, like ‘security classified information’ or something. It’s like a subset of Top Secret.”

Tanner’s stomach went tight. He’d suddenly lost his appetite. Lanny wasn’t telling him anything he hadn’t already noticed, but somehow it was now confirmed, validated. Made more real.

“What am I supposed to do with it?”

“Let me make a copy.”

“For what?”

“I’ll do some digging. See what this is all about.”

The cat-eyed waitress approached the table. “Have you made some decisions?” she said.

“Hey,” Lanny said.

“Give us a couple of minutes, okay?” Tanner said. He hadn’t made any decisions. It felt like decisions were slowly being made for him.

“I’ve got a... doohickey,” Lanny said. He produced a thumb drive from his pants pocket, held it up, waggled it around.

“Okay,” Tanner said. “Just — keep this between us.”

“I’ll see if I hear anything out there,” Lanny said. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll keep it on the DL.”