The Switch

43

Tanner returned to Carl’s house. Carl was watching a football game, the Patriots. Tanner asked to borrow Carl’s home computer for a little while. Carl kept it in the kitchen, in a little nook. Tanner pulled up a chair and went online, found a list of phone numbers for departments at The Boston Globe. After poking around some more he discovered that the newspaper had a secure drop box for whistle-blowers called Safebox. He read the instructions. He found where you could upload a file, which was like dropping it into a strongbox.

He had decided he was going to send the top secret documents to The Boston Globe. But he wanted to do it right. He didn’t want to send the file by regular e-mail, because that was insecure. The Russians might well have access to the Globe’s server. Hell, they were everywhere in cyberspace these days. It was a huge step, what he was doing. He was revealing a whole bunch of highly classified documents. He wanted to do it responsibly every step of the way. Not just some random dump of secrets from an anonymous source. Plus he didn’t want to get Carl in trouble, just because he was kind enough to let him use his computer.

So he went through the elaborate process, step by step, and uploaded the file from Apple’s iCloud, where he’d left a copy. The Globe’s Safebox allowed you to upload anonymously. It didn’t record your IP address or anything like that. It was safe. It was also so ridiculously complex that he wondered who would go through the process. You’d have to be desperate.

When he’d finished uploading the file — it was a large file and took several minutes — he sat back, heart pounding as he realized what he’d just done, and realized his palms were sweaty.

In the late morning, Tanner took a cab to the South Boston headquarters of The Boston Globe. At the security desk at the entrance, he picked up a phone and asked for Hank Brennan in the Metro department.

“Brennan.”

“My name’s Michael Tanner. I’m a friend of Lanny Roth’s. You were his editor, right?”

“Who’s this, again?”

“Michael Tanner. I’m down at Reception.”

“What can I do for you, Mr. Tanner?”

“I have some documents for you. Documents I gave to Lanny. He might have mentioned.”

“Ask them to send you up to the newsroom.”

Hank Brennan’s cubicle was stacked high with old newspapers and books and piles and piles of paper. He apologized for the mess and indicated a folding chair next to his desk where Tanner could sit. Brennan was a black man of around forty wearing a crisp white button-down shirt and heavy-framed black glasses. He smelled of a vaguely familiar men’s cologne.

“Hey, so you’re a friend of Lanny’s,” Brennan said gently. “What a loss. What a goddamned loss. It’s tragic.”

“I know.”

“I mean, I know he was troubled. But, man — suicide? How heartbreaking.”

“If it was suicide.”

“Excuse me?”

“I have reason to believe it wasn’t.”

Brennan paused. “I see. Okay, then. So, those documents. Lanny never said anything about any documents, but he usually didn’t clue me in until he was fairly sure he had something. Let’s take a look, see what we got.” He put out his hands, pantomimed grabbing something.

“I uploaded them to the Globe’s Safebox.”

“Okay. Got it. Great. So, that damned Safebox thing — I mean, it’s such a pain to download, a million steps you gotta go through. Let me ask—” He sighed, frustrated. Shook his head. “We’ve just been through another round of layoffs. Man, this business — I mean, it was one thing when our chief competition was the Herald, but when your competition is Twitter and Facebook and Snapchat? I mean, seriously, Snapchat? Jeez Louise. Anyway, I’ll ask one of the interns to do it.” He typed something quickly, clicked a key with a finger. “The last time someone sent me something in the Safebox, it turned out to be Hillary Clinton’s secret chocolate-chip-cookie recipe. She puts in oats. My wife tried it. Wasn’t half-bad.”

“These are top secret documents,” Tanner said, “from the National Security Agency. About a secret program. And I should tell you, the FBI didn’t want to hear about it. Which I thought was interesting.”

“Gotcha.” He nodded slowly. “And how did you come across these documents? Do you... work for them?”

“No.”

“Are you a government contractor?”

“No.”

“What do you do, Mr. Tanner?”

“I’m in the coffee business. I own a company, Tanner Roast.”

“I’ve heard of it, sure. Okay. So... did someone give them to you?”

“I picked up the wrong laptop at an airport.”

He bounced a pencil on his desk. “Okay. And did Lanny actually get a chance to review these documents?”

Tanner nodded. He could hear the guy’s skepticism and found it annoying. “He thought they were a really big deal.”

Brennan blinked a few times, then nodded.

“It’s apparently some top secret program called CHRYSALIS. It’s, like — the government now has the ability to look at us through our webcams. Without us knowing. If I’m understanding this right, we’re talking about the little camera on your cell phone and on your laptop and — I mean, it’s totally terrifying. Lanny said it was the biggest story of his career.”

“Lanny—” Brennan gave a quick smile. “He was terrific, and not only a great guy but a great investigative reporter. And one thing I’ve learned about the job is that, well, the best investigative reporters are a little crazy. You gotta be, I think. Lanny always had his pet conspiracy theory. George H. W. Bush’s alleged mistress. Webb Hubbell was Chelsea Clinton’s father. And why did Clinton’s commerce secretary’s plane really crash? I remember for a long time he was convinced that Osama bin Laden was never killed, that there was no ‘burial at sea,’ and that’s why no one’s seen the body, right?”

“Right, but—”

“So my job as editor is filtering. Because Lanny went down a lot of rabbit holes. I just had to stop him before he dug too far into Crazy Land. Did he discover a gold mine or was it a rabbit hole? At first glance they look the same, right? They’re both just holes in the ground. Lanny would dig when there was a bone, and he would dig when there wasn’t. So my question is, which one are you? Rabbit hole or gold mine? I’m just being really frank with you.”

“I understand,” Tanner said. “You can review the documents and tell me what you think. If they’re all just a rabbit hole. But I think he was killed because of them.”

“Oh yeah?”

“In fact, someone tried to kill me.” Tanner could hear himself speak, his panicked-sounding staccato. He sounded like a crazy man. And he could hear Brennan’s tone slide from warmth to wariness.

Brennan nodded slowly. “I imagine the coffee business can get pretty damned competitive.”

Exasperated, Tanner sighed. “You’re making light of this, but it’s no joke, I can assure you. I can prove it to you.”

“No offense,” Brennan said, “but I get people calling me all the time. And sending me e-mails about 9/11 was an inside job and is there an Islamic terrorist training compound in rural Texas?”

“What I’m trying to tell you—”

“And these people — they’re hurting. I always treat everyone with respect. I have this one guy from Malden who calls me once in a while. He always starts off pretty normal, and then he just goes off the rails. Everybody’s in on this conspiracy against him, the governor and the attorney general, and they all came to his house, and—”

His computer chimed. Brennan said, “There it is already. Didn’t take long at all.”

“You have the file there?”

“I do,” Brennan said. “Okay.” He looked at the screen, his eyebrows rising in surprise and then lowering in puzzlement. After a minute or so, he looked at Tanner and said softly, “Okay, I see. So, well, Mr. Tanner, is there a reason you sent this to me? It just seems very personal.”

“Personal?”

Brennan turned his monitor so Tanner could see what was on the screen. “I’m not sure I should be reading this.”

On the monitor was a document headed: “McLean Hospital — Harvard Medical School.” Centered at the top of the page it said, “Psychiatric Evaluation of Michael E. Tanner.” It was signed “Dr. Raymond Osment, MD, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry.” Shocked, Tanner skimmed the document, his glance snagging on phrases like “florid paranoid psychosis” and “delusional thinking” and “psychotic break” and “schizoid personality disorder.” He read things like “convinced his phone was being tapped” and “same people day after day” and “his computer being remotely controlled by unknown persons” and “DSM IV 295.30.”

“This is bullshit!” Tanner whispered. He looked at Brennan, who averted his eyes. “I don’t know where the hell this came from, but it’s a fraud. It’s a plant. This is just an attempt to discredit me — to make me seem crazy.”

“I know,” Brennan said gently. He stood up. “I also know how stressful the death of a close friend can be. Can I — let me walk you to the elevator.”

“I can show myself out,” Tanner snapped and stood as well.

“No, I’ll walk you there,” Brennan said.

But Tanner had already turned to leave. Now the editor had reason to believe he was out of his mind, and trying to convince him otherwise was a waste of time.

“I’ll accompany you, Mr. Tanner,” Brennan said, following him close behind. “Please don’t make me call Security.”