Trust Your Eyes

FOURTEEN

“We’d like to come in and speak with you,” FBI Agent Parker said. She wasn’t asking.

“What’s this about?”

“We’ll discuss it with you inside.”

I asked to see their IDs, which they both flashed at me, then motioned for the two of them to enter the house. I gestured toward the living room couch and chairs, but they chose to stand. I did the same.

“We need to see some identification,” Driscoll said.

“Do I need a lawyer or something?”

“We’d just like to establish exactly who we’re talking with,” Parker said.

Not knowing whether I should cooperate or not, but fearing the consequences of being disagreeable, I reached around for my wallet and dug out my driver’s license. Parker took it in her hand.

“You’re Mr. Kilbride,” she said.

“That’s right.”

“ Ray Kilbride.”

“Yes.”

“You ever go by any other names?” she asked. There was an accusing tone in her voice, as though she suspected me of having a raft of aliases.

“No. Of course not.”

“What do you do, Mr. Kilbride?”

“I’m an artist. An illustrator.”

“And just what kind of things do you illustrate?” Agent Parker asked. Her tone suggested she was probably thinking porno comics.

“My work’s appeared in newspapers, magazines, Web sites. I had something in the Times Book Review the other week.”

“So, if you do work for a Web site, I guess you do a lot of your work on the computer.”

“Sure,” I said.

“And you live out here and do that?”

“I don’t live here. I live in Burlington.”

Agent Driscoll stepped in. “Then whose house is this?”

“It’s my father’s.” I cleared my throat. “It was my father’s.”

“What’s that mean?” Agent Parker snapped.

“It means he’s dead,” I snapped back, looking her right in the eye. I’d thought that might put her in her place, however briefly, but it didn’t faze her.

“What happened to your father?”

“He died in an accident out back of the house a few days ago. A lawn tractor rolled on him and killed him. His name was Adam Kilbride.”

Agent Driscoll said, “Did your father have a computer?”

I shook my head, still wondering what the hell this was about. It should have bit me by now. “What? Yes, he did. A laptop.”

Agent Parker had her notebook out. “What day did your father die?”

“Friday, May fourth.”

She nudged her partner with her elbow, showed her notebook to him. “Messages that day, and since.”

Now I was getting it.

“You’re Ray, and your father was Adam,” Agent Parker said. “Is there a Thomas Kilbride who resides here?”

“Yes.”

“And what would his relationship be to you?”

“He’s my brother.”

“Is he here now?” Driscoll asked.

“Yes,” I said again. “He’s upstairs.” I was already ill at ease, but my discomfort had now multiplied exponentially. What the hell had Thomas done to bring the FBI down on us? And how was he going to react when he learned that they were here to see him? “My brother stays in his room most of the day. I don’t know what you want with him, but he’s absolutely harmless.”

“What’s he doing in his room?” Parker asked.

“He’s on his computer.”

“He’s on it a lot, is he?” she asked.

“Look, my brother has certain psychiatric issues. He prefers to spend a lot of time on his own.”

“What sort of psychiatric issues?” Driscoll asked.

“Nothing that anyone else needs to worry about,” I said. “He’s got his problems, but he never bothers anyone. He’s very…docile, basically.”

“But he likes to send e-mails,” Parker said.

This wasn’t getting any better. “What kind of e-mails?”

“Do you monitor your brother’s communications?” Driscoll asked.

“What? No. I don’t. I’m not even aware of his communications. I told you he keeps to himself.”

“Are you aware that Thomas Kilbride has been e-mailing the Central Intelligence Agency on a regular basis?”

“Oh, Jesus,” I said.

“And that many of these messages have been addressed to former president Bill Clinton?”

I felt my insides liquefying. “Please tell me these were not threatening messages. That you’re not here to arrest him or anything.”

The two glanced at each other, exchanging some unspoken decision, and Parker said, “No, not threatening. But…concerning. You want to call him down or shall we go upstairs and get him?”

I hung my head and shook it. “Wait here.”

I went upstairs, opened Thomas’s door without knocking.

“It’s too soon for me to start dinner,” he said. “Leave me alone.”

“I need you to come downstairs, Thomas,” I said.

“What is it?”

“You have visitors.”

I expected him to ask who, but instead he just said, “Oh.” He stood from the chair, and as he was heading for the hall I grabbed him gently by the arm.

“They’re government people,” I warned him.

That stopped him. It took a second to register, and then he nodded quickly a couple of times, as though he’d been expecting this to happen sooner or later. “Oh,” he said. “That’s great.”

“Thomas, it’s not great. What the hell kind of messages have you been sending to the CIA?”

“Progress reports,” he said, and slipped past me for the stairs. Once he hit the living room, he went straight for them, the woman agent first, then Driscoll, shaking hands.

“I’m Thomas Kilbride,” he said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. The president never said anything about you dropping by for a visit.”

“The president,” Agent Parker said.

“Well, former president,” Thomas said. “But Mr. Clinton said you can still call him that. But I hardly need to tell you this if he’s the one who sent you.”

“Why would he have sent us?” Driscoll asked, stone faced.

For the first time, Thomas looked concerned. “Aren’t you from the CIA?”

“No,” Parker said. “Agent Driscoll and I are from the FBI.”

Thomas was unable to hide his disappointment. “FBI?” he said. “I thought you’d be from the CIA.” He reminded me of a kid who opens up a Christmas present he thinks is a video game, and it turns out to be socks. “They’re the ones I’ve been in touch with.”

“Actually,” Parker said, “they contacted us. We’re helping them out today.”

“Is this about where I’ll do my work? Because I’d like to be able to work from home. I don’t want to go to Washington. Tell them, Ray. I like it here.”

“Mr. Kilbride,” Driscoll said, “why don’t we all have a seat.” The agents took the two chairs, and Thomas and I sat on the couch on the other side of the coffee table from them.

“Don’t get the wrong idea,” Thomas said. “I didn’t mean to offend you. The FBI does a good job, too. But I was expecting the CIA.”

“Well, we all work together,” Driscoll said. “All on the same side, right?”

I was detecting the slightest change in tone from him. Less edge. Now that they had met Thomas, they could see-I hoped-that he did not present a threat.

“You’ve been writing to the CIA about a computer virus that’s coming,” Parker said. Maybe Driscoll had lost his tone, but not Parker.

“Well,” Thomas began, “I’ve already explained this in my messages to the CIA, and President Clinton and I have talked about it.”

Just recently, I thought.

Thomas continued, “But I don’t mind going over it again. I don’t actually have any inside information on the virus. It’s speculation on my part. I don’t even know if it will be a virus. It might be a solar flare, or a kind of nuclear explosion. It could even be caused by a meteor hitting the earth. That kind of thing can be very cataclysmic.”

“Uh-huh,” Parker said. “So, whatever it is, what is it you think it’s going to do?”

“Wipe out all the GPS systems and maps that are stored on computers. All gone, just like that.” He snapped his fingers, but he was never very good at that, and the action hardly made a sound. Thomas then explained his role in helping the country through this catastrophe; how he was memorizing the streets of all the major cities in the world. “And, as you know, I’m at the ready, should any agents of the U.S. government be on the run in a metropolitan area anywhere in the world, to offer guidance. Street locations, alleys, that kind of thing.”

“Uh-huh,” Parker said. “Thomas, you wouldn’t be trying to write some kind of virus yourself that would cripple the computer systems of the U. S. government, would you?”

“No,” he said, not the slightest bit offended. “I’m not really that good with computers. I mean, I’m on mine a lot.” He looked my way, perhaps expecting me to weigh in with a critical comment. “I know how to turn them on and do e-mail and how to use Whirl360 to get around, but that’s about it. I don’t know how to take them apart. When my computer needs to be fixed my dad takes it to a shop in town.” He paused. “But not anymore. My dad died.”

“We heard about that,” Driscoll said. “Sorry.”

“I found him,” Thomas said. “The tractor killed him.” He said this almost formally, as though he wanted our guests to be very clear about what had happened.

“So your brother said,” Driscoll said.

“And what is it you want from the CIA, Thomas?” Parker asked.

Thomas sat up a little straighter. “I don’t want anything from them. It’s what I have to give. I’m offering my services. You should already know this if you’ve seen the e-mails. When all the computer maps crash, I’ll be able to assist the government.”

“And just how will you be able to do that?” she asked.

Thomas looked at me, as if to say, Are these people thick or what?

He sighed. “Because I have them in my head. All the maps. All the streets. What everything looks like.” He made a tsk noise with his tongue to signal his irritation. “When all the computers fail I’ll be able to draw the maps, or be a guide, if needed. Although, to be honest, I would prefer to work from home. I like it here. I could give directions to someone, anywhere in the world, over the phone, even if I was still here.”

“Of course,” Parker said. “So you’re telling me you can remember what all the streets are like in lots of different cities just by looking at them online?”

Thomas nodded.

Parker’s tongue pushed her cheek out. “Okay. You ever been to Georgetown, Thomas?”

“Georgetown, Texas? Or Georgetown, Kentucky? Or Georgetown, Ontario? Or Georgetown, Delaware? Or-”

“Georgetown, in Washington, D.C.”

Thomas nodded, like he should have guessed that in the first place, given that these were FBI people. “No, but actually, I’ve never been to any of them, anyway.”

“So let’s say I’m in Georgetown, and I’d like to buy a book, and-”

Thomas squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, and opened them. “There’s a Barnes amp; Noble bookstore, on M Street, NW, at Thomas Jefferson Street. And if you’re hungry, there’s a Vietnamese restaurant right across the street, although I don’t know if it’s any good or not. I’ve never even eaten Vietnamese food. Is it like Chinese food? I like Chinese food.”

Agent Parker, for the first time, looked as though she’d been thrown off her game a second. She glanced at her partner, her eyes saying, What the fuck?

“I know the government is trying to save money these days, so it’s important you know that I’m not looking for any big salary,” my brother said. “Just enough to cover any of my expenses. I don’t have an extravagant lifestyle. I’m offering my services because I think it’s a good thing to do, as a citizen.”

“Thomas, Agent Driscoll and I would like to see where you work.”

“Sure,” he said.

I felt a few more of my internal organs turn to water as I followed everyone else up the stairs. When they got to the second floor, the agents stopped and took in the wall of maps. It didn’t even occur to Thomas to point them out as he opened the door to his bedroom.

“This is my workstation,” he said. “And I sleep here, too.”

“Christ on a cracker,” Driscoll muttered under his breath, taking in the room.

“What’s this?” Parker asked, pointing to the three monitors. One of them showed an office building with the letters CIBC running across the windows. It looked like a financial institution. The second and third were the same street, one looking up, the other down.

“Yonge Street, Toronto,” Thomas said. “It runs north and south, starting at Lake Ontario, at Queen’s Quay Boulevard. I started at the southern end and I’ve gotten up to Bloor. It’s a very long street, so instead of going all the way up, I’ll start wandering the east-west streets.”

“So how much time do you spend doing this?” Parker asked.

“I sleep from around one at night to nine in the morning, and I take meal breaks, and I have a shower every morning, but all the other times I’m working. I had to see my psychiatrist yesterday so I lost some time there, but tell them at the CIA not to worry. I’ll make it up. And I’m losing some time now, but this is work-related so I guess it’s okay.”

I saw the agents exchange looks when Thomas said “psychiatrist.” Parker said, “Show us what you do.”

“Okay.” Thomas sat in his chair and put his right hand on the mouse, then moved the cursor around the street on the center monitor. “I keep clicking and I move up the street, and then I hold the button down and I can move around three hundred and sixty degrees like this and see all the stores and the businesses but you usually can’t see the people clearly and the license plates on the cars and trucks are blurred but everything else is really clear.”

“Can you open up your e-mail program, Thomas?” Parker asked.

“Okay.”

He clicked on the postage stamp at the bottom of the screen and up came his e-mails. His in-box-and I couldn’t recall seeing an in-box like this before-was empty.

“You delete all your mail right away?” Driscoll asked.

“I don’t get any,” Thomas said. “I don’t have any regular friends that write to me. Sometimes, I get junk. Like to”-he craned his neck around and looked at Agent Parker and blushed- “you know, make your, you know, thing bigger or something. I delete those immediately.”

I was thinking maybe I should raise an objection, that if they wanted to snoop around in my brother’s e-mails, they should have a warrant. But then I worried that would raise a red flag for them. It was my hope that once they saw what Thomas was up to, how innocent his pursuit was, whatever it was that worried them about him would evaporate.

“Show us what’s in your deleted file,” Driscoll said. Evidently he needed convincing.

“I always forget to empty this,” Thomas said. “There.”

The folder was, as Thomas had said, filled with junk e-mails of the penis enlargement variety.

“And now the folder with sent messages,” Parker said.

Thomas did a click with the mouse and there it was. The sent file. The messages filled the screen from top to bottom. Hundreds and hundreds of messages. Written by Thomas Kilbride.

All of them-every last one-directed to the same address.

The e-mail address of the Central Intelligence Agency.

“Oh my God,” I said.

“I like to keep everyone apprised of what I’m doing,” Thomas said.