The Switch

81

Tanner stared in shock. Men in black tactical gear were swarming the warehouse floor, in helmets and bulletproof vests and shin guards. Two of them were rolling a gurney carrying Will Abbott’s body. Another couple of guys were strapping Sal Persico onto a stretcher. He was struggling, but at least he was alive. He appeared to have been shot in the shoulder or chest and to be in a great deal of pain.

Will Abbott, he realized, was dead.

A man approached, and Tanner recognized Earle Laffoon, also in SWAT attire.

“He lowered his gun,” Tanner said.

Earle’s reply came slowly, softly. “You were in danger; that’s what I saw.”

“You guys — you killed him.” Tanner panted, crackling with adrenaline.

“It was a judgment call,” Earle said crisply, “and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

“Jesus,” Tanner said. He caught his breath and thought for a moment. “And what’s the world going to know about why Abbott died? Doesn’t he have a wife and a newborn?”

“There’s any number of ways we can go. I like keeping it simple. A congressional staffer is killed in a plain-vanilla mugging in Boston.”

“That way you own the senator, don’t you?” The real story of what William Abbott had done, copying classified information onto his boss’s laptop, would never come out. But for years the NSA would have their hooks in a powerful US senator.

“Let’s just say, how I report this is going to be a matter of some discussion among the interested parties.” His eyes drifted toward Sal’s cubicle; then he took a few steps in that direction. He picked up the squat black cylinder. “It’s all here? Audio and video both?”

“It’s a whole new world, Earle.”

“More than you know.”

“My only worry is whether, with all that gunfire, the recording devices got hit.”

Earle grinned, creasing his face. “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that, Michael. I’m sure I can turn up a recording somewhere. We’re the NSA, after all.”

For a long while, Tanner was silent. His mind raced. He was flooded with relief, a sudden sense of calm. “So we have a deal?”

“Works for me. An understanding. We go our separate ways. End of the story. We’re good, you and me. You know, in another world, we could have been friends, Michael. Texas Hold’em and some Pappy Van Winkle, or a good IPA. But it wasn’t to be. These are the hands we’ve been dealt.”

Tanner nodded. He didn’t want to say it, but he’d actually come to like Earle. The guy kidnapped me off a Boston street and stuck a tracker in my lower back, and yet somehow it feels like I owe him something.

“I will say, I’ve tracked quite a number of people in my day, but you’re better than most of ’em.”

“How so?”

“You’re not a true believer. You’re not a fanatic, not a nut job.”

Tanner shrugged.

“You got yourself off the radar screen. You went low-tech on us. Then you found the implant. Well done. And you fooled us with that little game you played with it. You lost us for a while. And then you go and get Mr. Abbott on tape, admitting to everything.”

“Huh.”

“You’re just a smart guy who made a couple of bad decisions.”

“Maybe. So tell me something — tell me if I’m wrong. If I’d given you that laptop when you first asked for it, would you have... disappeared me?”

Earle gave him a long look. “My colleagues misunderstood you.”

“Is that what would have happened to me?”

Earle shrugged. “No comment. You get your whole goddamned life back. Isn’t that enough?”

Tanner just smiled.

“So tell me. What’d you really do with it?”

“With what, the laptop?”

Earle nodded.

“It got stolen. Like I said.”

“That defies belief. Yet I’m inclined to believe you.”

“Do you? And how do you know I don’t have a copy of the documents, somewhere in the cloud, that I’m planning to send on to The Washington Post?”

Earle smiled, his face creasing. “Two reasons.”

“Yeah?”

“One, I know you’re a smart guy, and you’ve got this all figured out. You have a good life and you want to go back to it. We patrol the cloud pretty thoroughly. We see a leak, we’ll immediately know it’s you, and your life is over.”

“And what’s the second reason?”

“In this era of fake news, you don’t have that laptop, no one’s gonna believe you. You say you have classified documents, huh? Well, I have photos showing the moon landing was faked. I have Obama’s Kenyan birth certificate. You’d just be laughed out of town. You don’t have that laptop, you don’t have shit.”

“Maybe.”

“Sure, there’s always going to be some people who believe you. Maybe there’ll be some conspiracy theories. A whole website about it. But we live in a post-truth era. The only thing people believe is “you can’t believe what you hear.” We’ve all gotten jaundiced and cynical. The truth these days has been devalued like Weimar currency.”

“Huh.”

“No, I don’t think you’ll say anything. Anyway, CHRYSALIS looks like it’s getting shelved.”

“Shelved?”

“Canceled. The Senate intel committee was on the verge of signing off on it before all this happened. Now, cooler heads have prevailed. Into the deep freeze it goes. Lot of midnight of the soul. My higher-ups realized how hard it would have been to defend to the public. It couldn’t stand the scrutiny. You helped us see that.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I think we owe you something for that.”

“Just leave me alone,” Tanner said. “That’s all I want.”

Earle stuck out his hand. After a few seconds, Tanner took his hand and shook. “Hope we never see each other again.”

“I think we’re done here,” Earle said.

“Okay, good,” said Tanner. “Because I’ve got a business to save.”