Truth or Die (11 page)

Now, suddenly—
open sesame
—everything was happening. Pixelated fragments of the guy’s facial features were bouncing from one photo to the next at the speed of a strobe light while charts and graphs measured the similarities. Seizure alert. The screen looked like the love child of a PowerPoint presentation and a pinball machine on tilt.

“This might take a while to get a match,” said Owen, removing the lens from his eye with a quick pinch.

“You just hacked your way into the CIA, didn’t you?” I asked.

He looked at me and flashed the quickest—and guiltiest—of smiles. “
Hacked
is such an ugly word,” he said.

OWEN WATCHED the screen and waited. I waited and watched Owen. He was doing that thing again, washing his hands under an imaginary faucet.

And me? What was I doing?

From the get-go, the very beginning, I’d been playing catchup. Who killed Claire? Who was the source she was going to see, and what did he know?

Now I knew. So what next?

It seemed pretty obvious to me. Of course, that should’ve been my first red flag.

“Owen?” I said.

“Yeah?”

His eyes remained locked on the screen. He was barely even blinking. That was fine. He didn’t need to look at me so long as he listened.

“We need to go to the police,” I said.

“Yeah, I know. That makes sense.”

“Good.”

“But we’re not going to.”

“Why not?”

“Because it doesn’t work that way,” he said. “They can’t help us.”

“They can at least protect us.”

He threw me a look. “You really think so?”

It had occurred to me. Maybe I wasn’t seeing the big picture, or at least how it looked from his point of view. “You want to go to another paper, is that what you’re saying? Maybe a news network?” I asked.

Finally, he stopped rubbing his hands and turned to me. The words were calm and measured, but the meaning was anything but.
To hell with whistle-blowing.
This was no longer about going public. This was now personal.

“A decision was made to kill my boss … then Claire … then me … then you,” he said. “And if you can make a decision like that, you’re not worried about the law. You’re above the law.”

Attorneys, especially former prosecutors, generally bristle at the idea of anyone being above the law. Then again, I’d been disbarred.

“What exactly do you have in mind?” I asked.

“The only way to smoke them out is to remain their target,” he said. “Think about it. As long as they’re coming for us …”

“It’s a path right back to them,” I said.

Owen nodded—bingo—before glancing back at the screen. “Now we just need a little background information,” he said. “Always get to know better the people who want you dead.”

Words to live by.

So there you had it. Why we were standing in the middle of an Apple store playing match-dot-com with the personnel files of the CIA. Let them come after us, Owen was saying.
Let’s be foolish.

“Can I borrow your phone for a minute?” I asked. “I seem to have lost mine.”

Owen ignored my sarcasm. “Who are you calling?”

“No one.”

He still wasn’t sure, but he handed it to me anyway. Then he watched as I made a beeline to the accessories section, pulling an i-FlashDrive off the shelf.

As I began to open the package, a female blue-shirt with a ponytail and geek-chic glasses came over in a panic. She looked as if I’d just defaced the Mona Lisa.

“Sir! You can’t just—”

“How much is it?” I asked, reaching for my wallet.

She craned her neck to check the price. “Forty-four ninety-five,” she said. “Plus tax.”

I gave her fifty. Then, before she could tell me she needed to scan the bar code, I removed the drive and handed over the packaging. “I think I’ll pass on the extended warranty,” I said, walking away.

I returned to Owen while plugging the drive into his phone. “What are the file names of the two recordings you showed me at the Oak Tavern?” I asked.

He gave me the names and I transferred them to the drive. I handed him back his phone. “Thanks,” I said.

He motioned to the drive as I put it in my pocket. “What’s that for?”

“Just tell me where I can meet you in an hour,” I said, taking a couple of steps back.

“Wait. Where are you going?”

I reached for my sunglasses, sliding them on. “Margin of error,” I said. “Just in case you get us both killed.”

I QUICKLY wrote everything down on the only blank piece of paper I could get my hands on in the back of the cab taking me across town to Eighth Avenue. It was the flip side of a log sheet the driver was using to keep track of fares. He was fine letting me have it, although when I also asked for his pen and clipboard it was clear I was pushing my luck.

“You want to drive, too?” he asked.

After he dropped me off in front of the New York Times Building, it dawned on me how long it had been since I’d last set foot in Claire’s office. One reason was that she didn’t actually have an office, just a desk out in the open in the very crowded national affairs section. Visiting Claire was like being on the wrong side of the bars at the zoo. No privacy. You were essentially on display.

The other reason was the guy sitting twenty feet from her desk who actually did have an office, a Brit by the name of Sebastian Cole. Before I first met Claire, she and Sebastian had a brief, hush-hush office romance that, according to Claire, “was the second-best-kept secret after Deep Throat.”

“You might want to go with a different analogy,” I suggested after she told me that, on one of our early dates. “At least for my benefit.”

I remembered we both cracked up over that.

Anyway, as Claire described it, she was young and he was her boss, a surefire way to jeopardize your career even before you really have one. After four months, she ended it.

In the grand tradition of the British stiff upper lip, Sebastian handled her breaking up with him with aplomb, sparing her any retaliation such as reassigning her to the obituary department. Good for him. Even better for Claire. As for me, that was a different story.

The true extent of Sebastian’s coping abilities was put to the test a couple of years later at cocktail party thrown by another editor in national affairs. The test consisted of seven simple words spoken by Claire.
Sebastian, I’d like you to meet Trevor …

So much for the British stiff upper lip. Instead, I got the stink eye along with all the bloody attitude that an Oxford-educated, bow-tie-wearing chap hailing from Stoke d’Abernon could throw my way. Sebastian hated American lawyers and hated even more the idea that Claire would be with one. At least, that was how she explained it later. I was more partial to the adage that guys will be guys, especially when it comes to girls. Jealousy rules the day, and at the end of it we’re all just a lyric in a Joe Jackson song.
Is she really going out with him?

But that was then. This was now. Claire was suddenly gone, and neither of us would ever be with her again. That was certainly the subtext as I sat down with Sebastian. Let bygones be bygones.

“I’m in shock,” he said from behind his desk, slowly twisting a paper clip in his hands. I could tell he’d been crying, as had everyone else I’d passed en route to his office.

“
Shock
is a good word,” I said.

We discussed the details of how he’d heard the news, an early-morning phone call at home from the executive editor.

“Where was she going?” Sebastian asked.

“Seeing a source,” I said.

I watched his face carefully, looking for a tell. If he knew anything about Owen and his recordings, he’d never admit it. Not verbally. While I was 99.9 percent sure Claire hadn’t said anything to him or anyone else at the paper yet, the .1 percent chance that she had would certainly grow with a slight twitch or flinch from Sebastian. But there was nothing.

Nor, I was sure, would there be anything to be found on the computer at her desk. Ever since some Chinese hackers infiltrated the Gray Lady’s computer systems back in the fall of 2012, Claire kept all her sensitive files on her personal laptop and nowhere else.

Of course, maybe those “Chinese hackers” were really just Owen showing off from an Apple store in Beijing.
Anything was possible at this point, I figured….

“I don’t mean to be rude,” Sebastian said finally after an awkward silence. We were simply staring at each other across his desk. “But I’m fairly certain you didn’t come here just to commiserate with me, Trevor.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I need to ask you to do something.”

“You mean, like a favor?”

“Sort of. Although depending how things play out, I might actually be the one doing you a favor,” I said. “Confused yet?”

“Intrigued is more like it.”

“That’s good,” I said. “Now tell me, on a scale of one to ten, how strong is your willpower?”

“
My willpower?
Is this a trick question?”

“No, I’m simply looking for the truth.”

“In that case … nine-point-five,” he answered. “How’s that?”

“I’m not sure,” I said.

“Why? What number were you looking for?”

I folded my arms. “On a scale of one to ten?
Eleven.
”

I’D PIQUED his interest. Sebastian was a newsman, after all. He was actually leaning in a bit over his desk, waiting for me to explain.

“First, can I borrow an envelope and a pen for a moment?” I asked.

“What for?”

I cocked an eyebrow.
“Really?”
The cabdriver on the way over here—a complete stranger—had given me less of a hard time.

Sebastian relented, reaching behind him to grab an envelope from his credenza before scooping up a red felt-tip pen next to his keyboard. “Here you go,” he said.

He couldn’t see what I began to write in my lap. That was on purpose. What I did want him to see, however, was the i-FlashDrive I took out of my pocket when I was finished.

After I placed it in front of me on the edge of his desk, it immediately became all he could look at. Even more so when I sealed it in the envelope along with the note I’d written in the cab on the ride over.

I handed him back the pen. Then the envelope. “It’s all yours,” I said.

Sebastian adjusted his horn-rimmed glasses as he read the front of the envelope. He looked at me, then at the envelope, and then back at me again.

“You’re kidding, right?” he asked.

“Unfortunately, no,” I said.

“What’s this all about?”

“It’s all in the note and on the flash drive.”

“No, I mean the instructions.”

He flipped the front of the envelope around to me, but of course I knew what I’d written.
Only open in the event of Trevor Mann’s death.

Admittedly, it was a bit melodramatic as far as instructions went, but I couldn’t have been more concise or direct.

“And I mean it, too,” I said. “The only way you open that envelope is if I’m dead.”

“This has to do with Claire, doesn’t it?”

“Of course.”

“Why can’t you share it me while you’re alive?”

“Good question,” I said. “But that’s a flash drive for another day.”

I watched as Sebastian looked at the envelope again, staring at it now. He knew exactly what was in his hands. A major story. Front page, far right column, above the fold.

“Why would you trust me?” he asked.

“Because you were the one who taught Claire,” I said. “ ‘Never burn a source.’ ”

In that moment, the way Sebastian nodded while choking back a tear, it was as if Claire were suddenly in the room. Although for the very first time, she was no longer standing between us.

“You’re an idiot,” he said. “You realize that, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“She loved you.”

“I know,” I said.

“I mean, she really loved you.”

“I know.”

The rest didn’t need to be said. I had loved Claire just as much as she had loved me—that wasn’t why I was an idiot.

I was an idiot because I hadn’t done anything about it.

Standing, I thanked Sebastian for his time and, yes, his trust. “Keep it in a safe place,” I half joked, referring to the envelope. He smiled, although I could tell there was something else on his mind.

He hesitated, falling silent. “Trevor, maybe you should sit down again,” he said.

Slowly, I did. “What is it?” I asked.

“I wasn’t going to tell you,” he began to explain, almost as if he were disappointed in himself. “Now I realize that would be wrong.”

THERE WASN’T a cloud in the sky when I walked out of the Times building, but I was in a complete fog. Dense. Thick. Furious.

All I could see was the next step in front of me, nothing more. I knew where I was ultimately heading, except I couldn’t remember making the decision to go there. Or, for that matter, either of the two stops beforehand. It was a bit like sleepwalking.
In the middle of my worst possible nightmare.

“Can I help you find something?” asked the sales clerk at the Innovation Luggage store at the intersection of Sixth Avenue and Fifty-Seventh Street. He was a blur standing right in front of me. His voice sounded like a distant radio station.

“I need a small duffel bag that comes with a lock,” I said.

“A lock, huh?” he repeated, tapping his chin in thought. “Combination or key?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Will you be flying with it? The TSA folks can—”

“Really,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter.”

He led me over to a wall display of cubbyholes that looked like a tic-tac-toe board. Before he could even make a suggestion, I saw what I needed.

“The one in the middle,” I said.

He took down the bag and I gave it a quick once-over. It was black, medium-sized, with a small padlock—the key for it, along with a spare, hanging from a zip tie around one of the handles.

“Yeah, I’ll take it,” I said.

“Do you want it in its box or would you like this one?” the clerk asked. By this point, it was abundantly clear that what I really wanted was to get the hell out of there.