Night Talk (27 page)

Aaron was big, a couple inches over six feet, with a large head and broad features; thin, rimless glasses straddled a wide nose. He carried a lot of body weight, most of it soft, probably from too many years spent hunched in front of a computer. His food choices didn't appear to help, either—he had a sausage dog overflowing with mustard and beans in one hand and a giant soda in the other.

As the trolley got started Greg said, “VIP, nice touch. I hope you didn't have to go out of pocket for the tickets.”

“Not a problem. We have their computers trained to ask how high when we tell them to jump. Unfortunately, the only thing we will be using the trolley for is a quick ride. It would take too much time to hit the attractions.” He grinned. “Besides, I think you have your own house of horrors to deal with.”

Greg took an instant dislike to the guy. He reminded him of another Murad, a smirker who thought he was superior. He was superior, of course, when it came to understanding computer programs but that was the limit of it. From the looks of him, Greg decided a more fundamental problem for the arrogant jerk was to know when to come in out of the rain.

“You asked for this meeting,” Greg said. “What do you want?”

The trolley veered off the path and went behind a building, where it stopped in a dark area off the tour path.

“What did Inez Kaufman tell you about us?” Aaron asked.

“Not much,” Greg said.

“We're techs who track down and expose the outright spying and invasions of privacy that the computer age has permitted governments and corporations to engage in against the common person. You know what's happened to the country, to the whole world. People used to worry that J. Edgar Hoover had them under surveillance or their social security number was like 666, the number of the Beast that would arise to control their lives.

“Today's surveillance is all-seeing. What's crazy is that Snowden sat in Hawaii with his computer and showed how easy it is to access all that information, and there are thousands of Snowdens out there who have access to our information. Every phone call we make, e-mail we send, everything we buy from carrots to beer, our financial deals, all are tracked electronically. Government surveillance by electronics has to be curtailed and the only way it's going to happen is if people like us Aarons who have the tech knowledge fight back.”

“Sounds like a full-time job for an army of computer experts.”

“It is, but there aren't that many of us because most people are too scared of the consequences of being caught. We operate undercover and keep our identities secret as much as possible, even from each other, so that if one of us is busted, he or she won't be able to name all the others.”

Not knowing the names of other conspirators was a standard tactic of secret cells of dissenters dating back to the days when interrogation automatically started with a torturer and a bone-breaking rack.

Greg said, “What you do can't be that illegal. Unless you're hacking into secret sites to check them out. Are you?”

Aaron shrugged with a little grin that boasted that he was indeed hacking. He took a bite of his sausage dog, then talked while chewing with his mouth open, letting some bean juice dribble down the corner of his mouth.

“We need anonymity to keep down reprisals. Some of us work for the very business or governmental entities we expose. We're all called Aarons, but we have a second handle so we can tell each other apart. I am Aaron one-one-one-oh-one.”

Ones and zeroes were computer-speak. It made the guy sound like an android. A little over the top to someone like Greg, whose heart didn't beat to the same rhythm of positive and negative binary bits, but maybe 11101 and the other geeks really were flesh-covered motherboards. It was an era of game playing in which individuals and vast military complexes jockeyed to decide the fate of nations. From the sound of it, the Aarons were into game playing, too.

Greg didn't like the way the guy ate, talked and failed to hide his contempt for mere mortals who didn't care what 11101 spelled. The mission the man described was admirable—the government needed oversight by citizens to keep it in line with its security needs and the Constitution. Saving the world from invasions of privacy, however, was more likely an ego trip than an idealistic venture for this Aaron. Even his sausage dog and giant soda annoyed Greg. Worse than the man's food intake, Greg had decided that the guy was not going to be any real help. But he needed to learn as much as he could about Ethan before everything went to hell with 11101.

“Was Ethan Shaw an Aaron?” Greg asked.

“Shaw contacted a programmer who worked at the NSA, asking for information. The person is one of us.”

“What did Ethan want?”

“Access to a quantum computer system the NSA had developed to break computer encryptions. He wanted to crack an NRO program that was locked tighter than anything he'd seen before. And he needed to do it on a zero-day basis.”

“Which is?”

“He had to crack it on the first try by finding a vulnerability no one else had ever attempted because he would only have one chance. Once they became aware of an attempt to enter by an intruder, the file would be moved and buried somewhere else.”

It was all going too easy. He was asking questions and the man was answering. There had to be a catch.

“What was he looking for at the NRO?” Greg asked.

“He had a theory that the visitors you discussed with Inez Kaufman can hide from radar because of their stealth designs, because even we unwashed earthlings can do that. And when conditions are right for people to get an actual glimpse of them, the sightings can be explained away by the weather phenomena or be ridiculed. But there's one thing that can't be explained.”

“Pictures,” Greg said, “hard evidence. A picture would be worth a thousand eyewitnesses.”

“Exactly.”

“‘Vigilance from above,' ‘nothing is beyond our reach,'” Ali said. “Not even flying saucers would be invisible to cameras pointing down from satellites.”

Aaron 11101 said, “A ring of satellites whipping around the world, filming twenty-four/seven, has to be the worst scenario for the visitors. We expected Ethan to find those pictures in the program he cracked.”

“And he didn't,” Greg said. The conclusion was evident from Aaron's tone and Greg immediately saw a flaw in the reasoning behind the picture theory. “The images would have been erased as soon as they were recorded.”

“Yes, that's what we ultimately decided. They are too smart to leave the evidence stored in a file that could be hacked into.”

“The greatest danger to the visitors is the NRO,” Greg said. “There's more chance of exposures from satellites than any other sources. That makes controlling the NRO a necessity.”

The NRO had in constant motion reconnaissance satellites ringing the entire planet, snapping thousands of pictures every day. The cameras wouldn't be directed toward UFOs but it was inevitable that pictures would be taken of them. The visitors would also have to deal with any other satellites capable of detecting them, but the NRO would be the main risk of exposure.

Greg asked, “What did Ethan actually find?”

Aaron gave him a look over a sip of soda. “That's what we need to know from you.”

Here we go again.

“What if I told you Ethan never gave me anything?”

“I would say you're a liar. Ethan told us he had gotten the information for you to expose on your show. And he showed us proof because we wanted to know what he planned to do with the information he found.”

“What proof?”

“Receipt for a money transfer from you to him. He said you had given him the money so that he could get out of the country and go into hiding when you released the information over the air. He was going to share the information with us at the same time, but he didn't. He got so cranked up on meth that we couldn't get anything from him except gibberish. Another Aaron told me he thought Ethan had taken a dose that fried his brains.”

Perhaps provided by someone who wanted Ethan's brains to be scrambled, Greg thought.

“I can't explain why money got transferred out of my account to Ethan's, but I guarantee you it got there without me knowing anything about it.”

“Is that what you told the police?

“They didn't believe it.”

“Neither do I.”

“It should be obvious that if I had the information you believe Ethan got from cracking an NRO program, I wouldn't be running around trying to find it. Like Ethan told you, I'd be on the air with it, not on the run from the police, hiding out in a trolley at an amusement park.”

“We don't believe you. And we're willing to make a deal. Give us the file Ethan downloaded and we'll help you disappear.”

“Disappear? I don't want to disappear. I want to clear my name.”

“You don't have another choice. Unless you turn over the file to us, you'll be met by the police before you can exit the tour. One of our people is hanging out by the police substation in CityWalk. If I give a signal, you'll be grabbed before you make it back to your car. We know where you parked, of course.” He smirked again. “We have access to the cameras.”

The smirk really pissed Greg off. It gave him tight jaws. “That's a good, public-spirited attitude,” he said. “Blackmail me rather than help me out.” As he spoke he slipped his hand into Ali's handbag. “I don't think I like you, one-one-whatever your number is. I think you're an arrogant asshole.”

Greg brought his hand out of the handbag with Ali's phone and leaped forward and grabbed 11101 around the neck, jerking him close with the side of his face against the Aaron's. He snapped a selfie of himself and the jerk.

The Aaron pulled free. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Get us back to CityWalk, you prick, before I send your ugly mug to my Web site and it goes viral. When that happens you can explain why you helped me steal secrets—if you can talk between gulps of toilet water they'll waterboard you with.”

*   *   *

Walking to the car, Ali said, “That was quick thinking on your part. I can't even imagine how you thought of it or how you pulled it off.”

“An act of desperation and frustration arising from being an innocent man caught up in a web of intrigue. I'm not only tired of everyone knowing more than me, but of everyone thinking I know more than I do. And being called a liar.”

 

51

Leon followed the silver Honda Civic carrying Greg and Ali from the CityWalk parking lot down the hill to a right on Lankershim, up to Cahuenga and then the Ventura Freeway heading toward Pasadena. At Pasadena the Honda merged onto the 210 East, with the white van behind it.

Leon already knew the destination of the people he was following. It was the Azusa safe house that Franklin had arranged for them.

He proudly repeated every turn he made, speaking aloud to continuously update the Voice on his progress, all of which was unnecessary since the van was being tracked by his controllers. He tried to keep the Honda in sight but it wasn't necessary since it was also being tracked.

The Honda got off at the Azusa exit and pulled into the drive-through of a fast food place.

Leon pulled over to the curb and stopped at a spot that kept the Honda in sight.

“Is it time to punish these people?” he asked the Voice.

There will be a time to punish the man, but the time is not right. But it will be soon.

The Honda pulled over to a parking space in the fast food lot after receiving the food.

“They're gonna eat it there,” Leon said.

He hated the waiting. He worked best and was most manageable if he had simple goals with quick results. Anything that required patience, planning or introspection was pushing the envelope with him.

He had thoughts, but they didn't stay around and build into anything. Thoughts about childhood, of his nonexistent brutal father and absentee mother, dark days at schools and the orphanage where he beat on children he could hurt and took beatings from ones who could hurt him, flashed like cars speeding by on a dark road, but little of it stuck to be mulled over.

Everything that went through his mind was real to him despite the fact some of it never happened and much of it came down far different than he remembered.

He had no abiding interest in people. He was an emotional desert with occasional volcanic eruptions of rage, a person who had no need for friendship or companionship, and had never been in love with or even infatuated with a woman or even had an intimate, down-and-dirty, personal, let-it-all-hang-out conversation with anyone.

The lengthiest conversations he had were with psychiatrists, during which he lied about anything important and said what he thought the doctors wanted to hear. He fooled no one, but he believed he was being clever and manipulative and it gave him a satisfying sense of power.

He never had much schooling and knew little about the world other than the range of things that affected him. He didn't possess the commonsense skills needed to survive daily life at the most basic level—working for a wage, paying rent and utilities and buying food.

Early on he found it easier to commit crimes to get the necessities of life because he couldn't hold down a job. Getting locked up in a prison or mental hospital was a relief—it meant he was in a controlled environment in which he didn't have to survive on his own. Confinement worked well only temporarily because he was unable to control his impulse to do violence. He would soon become fixated on how he could murder someone in the facility.

Being captive to the Voice was comfortable, almost like being back at the hospital, because it didn't require that he keep a job and pay bills. It was even better than prison or a psych ward because it gave him an outlet for his rage.

He had been chosen for murder assignments because he had few needs beyond eating, excreting and sleeping. What he enjoyed most beyond eating and sleeping was playing violent video games and watching action films.