The Switch

25

Will got home a little after nine at night. He kissed Jen and immediately took Travis — squalling and bucking — from her. He didn’t need to be asked. He didn’t change out of his dress clothes first. Jen looked strung out, at the end of her tether.

“He’s been like this all night,” she said, collapsing into a kitchen chair.

“Have a glass of wine.”

“I can’t, Will — I’m breastfeeding!”

“Dr. Blum says one glass of wine is totally fine.”

“Dr. Blum? Dr. Blum says just put the baby in the bassinet and lock the door and plug your ears.” Dr. Alain Blum, their pediatrician, was French. He had told them the secret to getting your baby to sleep was to feed him, put him in his crib, pour a glass of wine, and come in to get him in the morning. If he’s going to cry, let him cry until he’s tired of it. They were horrified. But recently Will had begun to think they should give the French method a try.

Jen opened the fridge, moved aside a carton of Lactaid milk, and pulled out a bottle of Yellow Tail. “Oh, what the hell,” she said.

“Okay, now, big guy,” Will said in his best soothing voice, while bouncing him up and down rhythmically and patting his back. It didn’t calm him down at all; he just kept yowling. “Poor kid. Why are you so unhappy, little Travis? What can we do to make you happy?”

Jen poured the chardonnay into a wineglass, glugging it out until it was almost to the rim. Will quickly came over, holding the baby with his right hand, and with his left he took the wineglass from her and dumped out half into the sink. He handed it back to her, smiling, blinking. “But let’s not go overboard,” he said cheerfully.

Jen took the glass with visible annoyance, rolling her eyes. “Why do I always feel like I’m being handled?” she said. She took a long sip. “Was the fund-raiser okay?”

He nodded and didn’t elaborate. She no longer asked for details about his many fund-raisers; it was mind-numbing. He glanced at his watch. It was too late to call the Problem Solver, probably. Or was it? Maybe it wasn’t too late after all. He imagined that a guy in his line of work didn’t go to bed especially early.

“Okay if I zone out, maybe watch some TV?”

“Sure, go ahead.”

After ten minutes of bouncing and patting, Travis finally dozed off, a warm lump on Will’s left shoulder. Will could feel Travis’s damp face against his neck. As he carried him into the darkened bedroom, he wondered how much longer his son would be portable. There’d probably be a time when the boy would be too heavy to pick up. And wouldn’t want to be picked up, wouldn’t want to be hugged. Will’s father hadn’t believed in parental displays of affection. He shook hands as if Will were his stockbroker, not his son.

Will set Travis down gently in the bassinet, and the little hand grenade didn’t detonate. He padded out of the bedroom and saw that Jen was watching some reality show, probably the one about a competition between food trucks.

“You’ve got the magic touch,” she said.

He smiled. “I’m going to do a little work.”

“Sure,” she called out distractedly.

Will’s “home office” was a small guest room that they both used — Jen for paying bills and such, Will as a place to park his laptop and do e-mail. It smelled faintly of lavender, from the potpourri Jen had left in a dish on the empty dresser. The last time they’d had guests in the guest room was when Jen’s sister came to visit, more than a year ago.

He took the crumpled napkin from his pants pocket, smoothing it out carefully, as if it were a scrap of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The senator had jotted down the numbers in a hand small and dense, with pressure heavy enough to rip the napkin in a few places. It had a 339 area code, which he didn’t recognize. He decided to call from his iPhone, not the landline.

He looked at his phone for a few seconds, depressed the Home button to bring up the phone’s home screen — or was it “wallpaper”? — a photo of Travis not crying (because asleep). He thought about the step he was about to take. It was serious, yes, but this was a serious situation. Somehow they had to retrieve Susan’s MacBook from this guy, who for some reason refused to give it back, refused to even acknowledge he had it. He’d probably stashed it somewhere, maybe at his workplace. Or maybe given it to someone for safekeeping. It all depended on what this Michael Tanner wanted, what he was up to. And whether the guy had discovered the classified documents. Because if he had... the boss’s troubles were just beginning.

He was about to make a call that he knew would demarcate the beginning of one phase of his life and the end of another. He’d already hired a guy to do something illegal, but now he was about to take it to the next step. To point a gun and make a threat, maybe. Or maybe even hit him, beat him around a little.

Whatever happened, Will was about to hire a guy to get a job done, and the less he thought about what happened behind the scenes, the less he knew, the better.

He just wanted the damned computer back.

He took a deep breath, let it out, and then called the Problem Solver’s number.

After one ring, the phone was answered: “Yeah?”

Will introduced himself, and before he could say anything else, the guy said, “Where’d you get this number?”

“Your cousin from Charlestown.” That was how Senator Owen Sullivan wanted to be identified. Will had no idea whether the Problem Solver actually was the senator’s cousin. It seemed unlikely.

“Get off this line. Call me from a burner.”

There was a click.

A burner.

He stepped into the living room, which should have been called the TV room. “I’ll be back soon — I need to pick something up.”

Jen turned. “What do you need, this time of night?”

“Long story. It’s for work. Shouldn’t take me more than twenty minutes.”

She heaved a sigh. “I’m not waiting up.”

It was about a ten-minute walk to the nearest CVS, where he found a revolving rack of disposable phones and phone cards and such. A bunch of phones in colorful blister packs — TracFone, GoPhone, Boost Mobile — a confusing array. He stared at them for a good five minutes before he just grabbed one of them. After he’d paid for it, he took it out of its bag and popped it out of its plastic bubble. By the time he was halfway home, the phone was operational.

The crumpled napkin was in his back pocket. He slid it out carefully and, standing in the cone of light directly beneath a streetlamp, he dialed the Problem Solver’s number again.

He answered again on the first ring. “Yeah?”

“Will Abbott again,” he said.

“Disposable phone?”

“Yep.”

“Give me your e-mail, your personal e-mail.”

Will gave the man his address at Gmail.com.

“What’s your social?”

“My — what?”

“Social Security.”

Will gave him the nine digits, wondering why the guy needed it.

“Check your e-mail in ten minutes.” Then there was a click, and dead air. The man had hung up again.

When he got home, Jen was still watching TV. He went right into the guest room and opened his Gmail account. One new e-mail, from not a name but a long number. He opened it.

It contained a long link:

https://onetimesecret.com/secret/pnoughfhrrlhsrjpco2il5b... The link went on and on. He clicked it, and it pulled up a page with a red oblong that said View Secret and beneath it (careful: we will only show it once). He clicked again, and a message came up, written in all caps, as if the man was shouting at him.

There was a long list of instructions, starting with something about “layer 2 tunneling protocol” and “secure VPN” and “DOWNLOAD THIS SOFTWARE.”

He clicked on the hyperlink. It took him to a page where you could download something called a Tor browser. He vaguely recalled hearing or reading somewhere that people used the Tor browser when they wanted to conceal their identities, to hide from government surveillance.

He was surprised by the measures taken by the Problem Solver. He’d imagined the guy as a sort of thug, a low-life mobster out of Goodfellas or The Sopranos, a guy who wore a windbreaker and a pinky ring. Instead, he was techno-savvy. More techno-savvy than Will; that was for sure. A lot more.

He was prompted to create and enter a password (at least eight digits, including a number and a capital letter), and then a message came up, from an e-mail address at ProtonMail.com that was all numbers. The message said something about VPN and PGP and Tor-enabled VoIP. Something about “killing Java” and avoiding “leakage.” It was like a video game.

Will’s heart began to pound. This must be the thing they called the dark web. For a long stretch — almost five minutes — odd messages were popping up on his screen. Finishing handshake with first hop... bootstrapped 85 %... establishing a Tor circuit...

As he waited, he glanced at his watch. It was late, but he was so amped with adrenaline that he didn’t feel tired.

After thirty minutes, he had a newly created e-mail address. Something called “Mumble.com VoIP” had been installed on his laptop. It used his computer’s built-in microphone. It took several minutes to configure. The application checked his sound level. He clicked a link and a minute or so later he heard a voice. But not a human voice. A computer-generated voice that sounded as if it were filtered through a mouthful of potato chips.

“What’s your problem?” the voice said, like Darth Vader on Auto-Tune.

Will explained about Tanner, who he was and where he lived and worked. He explained that this Boston businessman had something that didn’t belong to him. “You need to find out where it is,” he said, “and you need to get it. And just know that he’s not going to be very cooperative.”

“When I ask people questions, they usually answer,” the voice said. The robot voice talked some more, and Will talked. There was a long delay, like five seconds, as if their voices were traveling to the moon and back. The voice told him what his services would cost. Payment would be in Bitcoin, the untraceable digital currency. Will would be sent instructions on how to purchase Bitcoin. He’d be sent the man’s “BTC wallet address,” a long string of characters.

When he obtained the laptop, the voice said, he would notify Will via e-mail at his new ProtonMail address. Will would send the payment. Then the laptop would be sent via FedEx.

The Problem Solver seemed to have everything under control. Something occurred to Will, and he said, “What are the... limits?”

The pause that ensued was longer than the usual five seconds. “What are you asking?”

“I mean...” He didn’t know how to put it, exactly. “How far do you think you’ll have to go?”

“Listen good. I don’t work on a leash, okay? I do what I do. You tell me what you need. You don’t tell me how to get it. I do whatever I deem necessary. You okay with that, Will?”

Will was silent.

“Still with me?” the voice said.

“Yeah,” Will said at last. “I’m okay with that.”

“You can still pull the plug,” the voice said. “Right now. You can do it. But after this conversation? It’s game on. So any second thoughts? Have ’em first.”

“That’s okay,” Will said. His voice shook a bit. “Let’s do this.”