The Switch

22

At a few minutes after ten, Tanner was about to pour himself a scotch and watch some TV or read a good thriller. And go to bed.

Instead, he glanced at the cardboard where the missing windowpane had been, took out his iPhone, and hit Lanny Roth’s cell number.

After a couple of rings he picked up.

“Hey.” Lanny sounded urgent, breathless.

“Am I calling you too late?”

“So you got my message?”

“Message?”

“No? Jesus, okay — talk to me.”

“Can I buy you a drink?”

“I’m on my way to Manchester.”

“Mass.?”

“New Hampshire. Just for overnight. On some damned election story. What’s going on?”

“I had a break-in at my house.”

“Oh Jesus. I told you they were coming for that computer.”

“No, nothing taken, as far as I can tell.”

Lanny took a breath. “How’d they get in?”

“Looks like they cut out a pane of glass and reached in to unlock the door. I didn’t set the burglar alarm, and somehow they knew it was off.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“And get this: I have this old surveillance camera on the first floor of my house that’s always recording, and somehow they got to it and turned it off without being captured on film.”

“Yeah, they’ve got resources. Did they...?”

He was surely talking about the laptop. “It wasn’t there. It was—”

“Don’t tell me. Um... listen, about that...?”

“Yeah?”

“I talked to a guy, an old intel source of mine from when I worked in the DC bureau.”

“Okay...?”

“What you — we — have is something big. I mean really big. Scary big. It’s up there with the Snowden stuff.”

“Seriously?”

“Dead serious. I’m talking — I’m gonna get a Pulitzer; I can smell it. That’s how big this story is, Tanner. It’ll take me some time, maybe a week or two, maybe longer. But I’m gonna get it.”

“What are we talking about?”

But Lanny didn’t seem to have heard him. “My worry is — remember when that New York Times reporter got this huge scoop on the NSA wiretapping American citizens without a warrant?”

“I remember the story. Like ten, twelve years ago.”

“Right. The reporter, this guy named Risen — who, by the way, won a Pulitzer for it — had this amazing scoop, but when the head of the NSA heard he’d gotten it, he called Risen’s editors — I think he went all the way to the top of The New York Times — and persuaded them not to publish it. He told them it would damage national security. So the Times sat on it for over a year. I can’t let that happen. If I get that kind of heat from the Globe, I’m just gonna quit and give it to, like, The Guardian, in the UK. The way it happened with Snowden. That way the story gets out and gets back into the US, too.”

“But what is it?”

“It’s this terrifying program code-named CHRYSALIS that — oh shit, Tanner, you know what? I’m already saying too much. We need to take this offline. I mean, they monitor our phone calls. That’s an established fact.”

“Monitor whose phone calls?”

“Everyone’s, man, you know that.”

“Nobody cares about my phone calls. Yours, maybe.”

“I think they’re always searching for certain keywords or phrases. Listen, I’ve got to file something for tomorrow on this damned election thing, but I’ll be back in town tomorrow. By then I should have more on this. Do me a favor and don’t talk about this over the phone anymore, okay?”

“Okay,” Tanner said. “I won’t.”

“I mean it. Don’t say a thing.”

Tanner fell silent. “You know what?” he said, suddenly resolved. “I can’t have this in my life.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m giving it back. I’m going to call the senator’s office and send the laptop back. I have to do the safe thing.”

“No, man, you don’t get it. You give it back, that’s the opposite of safe.”

“Huh?”

“That laptop is the only reason you’re still alive.”

“Oh Jesus.” Tanner laughed. “Come on, man.”

“I’m deadly serious. These people just broke into your house. They’ll stop at nothing to get that laptop. But as long as it’s out there somewhere, they need you alive so they can find it.”

“Are you for real?”

“Once you give it back, you’re this guy who’s seen a stash of top secret files about a secret program no one’s supposed to know about. You’re the man who knew too much. And do you know what happens to people who find out deep-cover intelligence secrets in this country? They commit suicide. Or they get into convenient car accidents.”

“Oh, come on.” Lanny had a paranoid streak. He believed all sorts of nutty conspiracy theories — Princess Diana was murdered, Bush knew 9/11 was going to happen, there were alien spacecraft hidden in Area 51. He believed there was this secret government inside the government — all sorts of kooky ideas. But Tanner never took him seriously. He’d heard that reporters, especially investigative ones, often had this type of personality bent.

Once, when Lanny was reporting a story about the chemical conglomerate W. R. Grace, he had a tire blowout driving along the Mass. Pike, went into a skid, and was lucky to have come out okay. Tanner pointed out that Lanny’s tires were bald; he hadn’t replaced them in ten years. He’d warned Lanny repeatedly that his heap was an accident waiting to happen. That was all it was. Nothing conspiratorial.

Roth had shrugged. “Maybe that’s all it was,” he said at the time. “And maybe there was more to it.”

Now he went on: “There was this investigative reporter for The San Jose Mercury News who was writing about the CIA’s involvement in running drugs — the cocaine business. So what happens to him? He’s found dead, with not one but two gunshot wounds to the head. Allegedly a suicide. Ever hear of anyone shooting himself in the head twice?”

“Lanny—”

“Then there’s this guy who wrote for Rolling Stone, a reporter, started investigating the CIA director, and he dies in a suspicious car accident. True story, Tanner. The government has people who specialize in this kind of thing. They can make it look like you had a heart attack. They can remotely hack into your car and sabotage it.”

“Okay, okay. So tell me something: Why would you risk publishing this big story? I don’t get it.”

“Once it’s published, once it’s out there, I’m safe and so are you. There’ll be too much public scrutiny. It’s like, they can blow out a candle but not a fire. It’s before the story gets out that you’re at risk. Unless you have leverage. Unless you have that laptop. That’s your life insurance policy. Listen to me, Tanner. Do not let anyone else have that laptop, and make sure it’s well hidden. Okay?”

After a long pause, he said, swallowing hard, “Okay.”