At just after eight Hannah swung her Porsche off the Julia Tuttle Causeway onto Star Island. The sky was polished a milky blue, with a strong breeze off the water, traffic inexplicably light.
Almost a century earlier Star Island and several other perfectly oval dollops of land had been scooped from the bay bottom and distributed along the edge of the causeway to Miami Beach so that the moderately rich might have a waterfront way station to enjoy until they amassed sufficient wealth and could afford to move an hour north to the true luxury of Palm Beach.
It took her only a few minutes to locate the correct gold numerals on the stucco column. Behind the heavy brass bars of the front gate, the house was a three-story sprawling Mediterranean mansion that confronted a blue expanse of Biscayne Bay like a fortress of culture and good taste. It was protected from drive-by gawkers by a high pink stucco rampart backed by a fifteen-foot sculptured hedge.
At the head of the driveway Hannah spoke her name into the speaker box, prepared to give a long explanation about the E-mail relationship between her son and the boy who lived behind those walls, but only a second after she’d uttered her name, the heavy gate rolled open.
A slim Japanese woman in a white dress and white leather shoes greeted her at the front door and admitted her into a cool, shadowy foyer. To the right a small waterfall rustled inside a screened atrium. Two garish parrots squawked and fluttered their wings. On the whitewashed wall to the left hung a small dark painting signed by Marc Chagall.
The slim woman waited serenely for Hannah to take in the surroundings.
When Hannah turned back, the woman’s slender hand fluttered up toward the stairway.
“Stevie is expecting you, Ms. Keller. He’s in the studio.”
“Are you Stevie’s mother?”
“No. Mr. and Mrs. Brockman are in Provence for the week, buying wine. I am Yoshia, Stevie’s nurse.”
“The boy’s ill?”
The woman smiled graciously.
“I’ll let you be the judge of that.”
Hannah followed Yoshia up a wide spiral stairway flanked by narrow slotted windows that looked out on the rose garden and pool and clay tennis court and a pool house that was a small replica of the main house.
Stevie Brockman’s bedroom was as spacious as the lobby of a fine hotel. From what Hannah could see, the room occupied most of the third floor. A single bed was stashed in one corner of the room, but the rest of the space was taken up by long benches heaped with electronic paraphernalia. Several units with small screens filled by pulsing green lines like a dozen heart monitors lined up side by side. Meters and motherboards and soldering irons and pliers and screwdrivers were scattered across the workbenches. Two TVs sat in the far corner, both on, both tuned to the same channel. One was in black-and-white, the other color. Hovering in the background was an insistent hum that sounded like the drone of an overturned hive.
The boy sat in a black leather swivel chair in front of a sleek computer terminal. He was wearing khaki shorts and a blue polo shirt, like a prep-school uniform. He had curly black hair and round cheeks and chubby arms and his shoes didn’t reach the floor. He glanced over his shoulder, nodded a quick hello, then went back to his screen.
Yoshia moved up beside him and stood with reverential stillness as if the boy were performing the last difficult passages of a piano sonata.
Hannah stepped closer and leaned in to see the screen.
Stevie Brockman was using his mouse to scroll through columns of computer language. Line after line of hieroglyphs rolled past so quickly Hannah couldn’t catch a single letter. She watched him click the mouse, apparently inserting lines of code into the streaming list.
“Hannah’s a writer. She writes mystery novels,” Stevie explained to Yoshia. “They’re good. A little gory in places, but I like all the whackos. My favorite was Third Time Out. Very lyrical nature descriptions. And I liked the baseball stuff. That Erin Barkley is one tough lady.”
“You seem a little young for my books.”
“I’m twelve, almost thirteen,” he said. And continued to speed through the column of runic symbols, adding here, subtracting there. “I’m allowed to read anything I want. Last week I read Ulysses. Do you know Ulysses?”
“I know it,” she said.
“I liked that woman. Molly Bloom. I liked how it ended, that long sentence, it went on for twenty pages or something. The sex was good, too. I like sex in a book.”
“Stevie’s quite a reader,” Yoshia said.
“I’m very interested in sex,” he said. “Of course I’m too young for it in real life, but what the heck, I can read about it, can’t I?”
Yoshia gave Hannah an indulgent smile.
“I’m trying to learn to write,” Stevie said. “But it’s tough. Getting it all down, making sense. Something can be clear in my mind, but as I start to put it into words, it just seems to go away.”
“I know the feeling,” Hannah said. “It’s like telling a dream. No matter how vivid it is when you wake up in the morning, as soon as you begin to tell it, the images seem to decay.”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s good,” Stevie said. “Have you read Robert Frost?”
Hannah smiled. Grilled by a twelve-year-old.
The kid was clicking the mouse, using the pointer, cutting and pasting large sections of computer code, doing it all with effortless speed and certainty.
“Yes,” she said. “I know a little Frost.”
“What I like is how he can change tone so quickly, go from humorous banter to passionate expressions of tragic feelings.”
“You have a good English teacher.”
“I don’t take English,” he said. “I just like to read. Books are old-fashioned, but they make me think about stuff I wouldn’t otherwise. Like just recently I was thinking how there’s a big difference between writing code and writing a book. If you write code all day, and you get it right, you can change how something works. Make it run smoother or quicker. But when you write a book, it’s like you change yourself. Rewire your brain. It’s weird. Like just by telling your story in a certain way, using these words instead of those words, you change how you feel. You understand things in a new way. You can change.”
“Unless you’re one of those who tell the same story over and over,” Hannah said.
“Why should anyone do that?”
“Maybe it’s the only story they know. And until they tell it right, they can’t let go of it.”
Stevie processed that for a moment. Flicking his mouse, flicking, flicking.
“Stevie’s trying to write a book about his run-in with the law,” Yoshia said. “The law and the FAA, Federal Aviation Administration.”
“You hacked into their computers?”
Stevie stopped. He lifted his hand from the mouse and sat for a moment staring at the screen.
“I don’t hack,” he said finally. “Hacking is for morons. Time wasters.”
He turned his head and looked back at her with a disappointed frown.
“A year ago,” Yoshia said, “when Stevie and the Brockmans flew into LaGuardia, they wound up having to circle the airport for half an hour. A backup on the ground. That’s what got him started. Isn’t that right, Stevie?”
The boy went back to work. Once again the script flew past.
“It’s a stupid waste of time, all those people just waiting to land, flying in circles. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“So when Stevie got back home, he went into their computers and fixed things.”
“Their timetables were completely wrong,” Stevie said. “Paths of descent too moderate. Their tolerances were ten degrees off all the systems they were running. I just streamlined a few things. Cut out the waste, the garbage. Their programmers were like high school dropouts or something. They had absolutely like zero security.”
“No one even knew he’d been there,” Yoshia said. “Things ran smoothly for a day or two, planes coming in early, getting out right on time, no stack-ups, nothing. Until LaGuardia started to throw things off downstream. Other airports were using the same old systems, a certain percentage of planes leaving late, so eventually LaGuardia started causing synchronization problems all down the line. At one point Denver almost had to shut down.”
“The unintended effect,” Stevie said. “It’s hard to debug a system so totally botched up.”
“I’m sure it is.”
“So they undid everything,” said Stevie. “Put it all back the way it was. Instead of looking at what I did, seeing how they might apply it to other airports.”
“People in Washington wanted to talk to him.”
“I would think so,” said Hannah.
“Oh, I’m used to it,” Stevie said. “You think you’re doing somebody a favor, the Secret Service gets all bent out of shape because I didn’t use the right protocol. Didn’t say please and thank you. Supposedly I violated Section 1030 of Title 18. An act of computer intrusion.”
“So Stevie,” said Hannah. “Did you get a chance to look at that thing I told you about?”
“Deathwatch dot com,” he said. “Yeah, I looked at it.”
“Can you tell me anything?”
“Tell me what you want to know, I’ll tell you if I know it.”
Hannah said, “I need to know where the broadcast is originating from.”
“The thing about the Internet,” Stevie said, still pruning the moving lines of code, “it’s just all these billions of connections. It doesn’t really exist as one single unit. Not like the plumbing in your house or something. When somebody ships something over the Internet, it isn’t like water coming through a pipe. You turn on your tap, the water finds the one and only way to fill the vacuum. Point A to Point B.
“But the Net has a billion ways the water can get from the source to tap. It could’ve come through Asia or Guam or zigzag from one side of America to the other and back again. You send something across the street, it might travel five thousand miles to get there. Whatever works. Whatever’s fastest. The Pentagon designed it that way because they wanted the Net to survive a nuclear war, for people in the military to still be able to communicate even when large parts of the system were down. But it’s a lot more than that now.”
“So what’re you saying, Stevie, it’s not possible to locate the source?”
“Sure it’s possible. Every data packet that goes across the Net has a history. An IP return address. Hackers disguise their IPs, or they’ll route them through Australia or China, some country that has no reciprocal agreements with the FBI. So if someone’s backtracking the trail, it’ll stop right there. That foreign country won’t help them.
“And even if you’re able to finally nail down the service provider, most of the time it’s still a big step to figure out where the personal computer is that’s sending the message in the first place. Someone really paranoid will use cell phones to bounce their signals around, before it gets to the service provider, or multiple modems set up at different locations, or they’ll Telnet to another host, log in there, and then access the Internet from that other host location. That’s a trick called looping and weaving. It can completely confuse anyone trying to get a hard-line trace back to the point of origin.”
“So you tried and couldn’t do it?”
“Oh, no, I did it. Took me an hour. I had to get into a couple of phone-company systems, some billing files, check their switching stations, their routing records, but I didn’t leave any trace I was there, so I don’t think Jesse’s going to come looking for me.”
“Jesse’s his parole officer,” Yoshia said.
“He’s not the smartest guy,” said Stevie. “But we have a good time.”
“So where is it, Stevie? Where’s it coming from?”
“Washington, D.C. Our nation’s capital.”
“Fielding is in D.C.?”
“Well, it’s more complicated than that.”
Hannah could take it no longer, talking to the back of a twelve-year-old’s head.
“Would you mind,” she said, “taking a little break from the computer, turn around, talk to me face-to-face?”
“Oh,” Stevie said. “Sorry. Was I being impolite again?”
“Only slightly,” Yoshia said, and patted the boy on the shoulder.
He let go of his mouse, swiveled around, and looked at Hannah.
She drew a hard breath.
The boy’s bare legs were covered with sores. The flesh reddened and peeling off in damp welts. Dark blisters the size of pennies covered his thighs like ticks fattening on his blood.
“It’s a viral thing,” Stevie said. “I got it when I was a baby, they had to do a blood transfusion and it was tainted. But don’t worry, it’s not contagious.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”
“Oh, it’s okay, Ms. Keller, don’t worry. It doesn’t hurt that much. You’d think something fatal would hurt like hell. But this doesn’t. I stopped taking the drugs, the painkillers, ’cause they make me dopey, so sometimes it flares up at night, but otherwise, basically I’m fine.”
“No medicine, no cure?”
“Oh, they’re working on it,” Stevie said. “Some experimental drugs in the pipeline. Going to do some trials pretty soon. But you know, it looks like it’ll be a little too late for me.”
“God, I’m sorry.”
“At least my brain works fine. The virus just makes me push a little harder, you know, before I have to check out.”
Hannah looked out the wide window, a view of the lawn, the sprinklers shooting high, glistening arcs. Beyond the high wall she could see the wrinkled crawl of the bay. Out on the street a stream of cars drove slowly past, people at their windows, trying to peer into the perfect kingdoms beyond the shrubs.
“So is Fielding in Washington or not?”
“The signal is originating in D.C. But the whole thing looks hokey to me.”
“Hokey?”
“You ever heard of dithering?” Stevie said. “I have an example over here, all set up so you can see.”
Stevie got down from his chair and walked over to one of the far benches. His stride was bowlegged and labored as if even the touch of moving air across his legs was torment.
“What I did, I looked at Fielding’s site like you asked, and something didn’t seem right. Oh, it’s a pretty sophisticated attempt, but there was just something a little off, so I grabbed a single frame of the broadcast and checked it out on another system. You freeze on a frame, like on your VCR, you zoom it out, then you have to eyeball it to be sure. Kind of old-fashioned, really.”
Stevie touched a finger to the monitor screen that was perched on a long work table. The image was scrambled and to Hannah it was as unreadable as a photo enlarged a dozen times too many.
“See what I’m talking about?”
Hannah said no, she didn’t see anything but a row of specks.
“Yeah, that’s right. A row. But what’s wrong with the row?”
“I don’t see anything wrong.”
“Those are pixels,” Stevie said. “Those are the building blocks of the image. This is a shot of a magazine cover on the nightstand next to Fielding’s bed.”
“People magazine,” Hannah said. “Yes, I noticed it.”
“Yeah, well, this is the edge of the cover as it merges with the wall. See that, right there.”
He touched his finger to a slight zag in the row of pixels.
“That’s dithering. The horizontal rows don’t mesh, and the tints of gray don’t match either. Which means the pixels didn’t transition correctly across the screen. Which means this magazine was inserted into the frame. Like they do with movies, virtual-reality stuff. Pretty sophisticated programming, you don’t see it much outside of Hollywood. So what they did, they wrote the magazine cover into the packet of information they sent over the Internet.”
Hannah stared at the screen.
“You realize, don’t you, that it’s not a continuous feed? The video image you’re seeing on the computer monitor, it’s not like television. With computers you have to send packets of data. Two minutes of video time. It plays, then the next packet comes and it plays. They’re working on a better video network. It’s operational already, much better quality video, but the people broadcasting this Fielding thing decided to use the data-packet method. It’s a little antiquated, but it works.”
“You follow all that?” Yoshia said.
“Vaguely.”
Stevie said, “I thought Fielding’s voice was kind of weird too. They distorted the timing, took the words and the movements of his lips out of synch to disguise what they did, but when I dial it back to a correct timing, those words you hear aren’t always the same words coming out of his lips.”
“Really?”
“For example, when he says your name, Hannah Keller. His lips aren’t saying that. That’s been inserted.”
“Oh, Christ.”
“So,” Stevie said. “Apparently someone wants to make people believe this image is current. That’s why they put in a recent issue of People.”
Hannah looked around at the workshop, the quiet buzz of current humming in her ears like a low-grade fever. She waited a moment for everything to suddenly make sense, but it didn’t happen. Nothing but the hum.
“Do you have a rough location in Washington, an address or something?”
“Better than that,” Stevie said. “I can give you the exact building and the room number within that building. I can even give you the name and beeper number of the contact person who’s in charge of this whole operation.”
“Operation? What operation?”
“Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Stevie said. “I got in through their main site. Twenty minutes and I was in, no sweat. Government agencies are the leakiest places on the Web. Their budgets don’t allow them much security.”
“You’re saying J. J. Fielding’s broadcast, Deathwatch dot com is part of an FBI operation?”
“Code name Operation Joanie,” Stevie said. “The contact person is a special agent out of the Washington, D.C., field office. Helen D. Shane. I got her Social Security number if you want it.”
Hannah shut her eyes and drew a long breath.
When she opened them Stevie was smiling at her.
“You know, what you said about dreams, that was interesting. Decay. That’s such a nice word for a very difficult thing to express.”
Stevie pulled himself up on a stool. There was yellow ooze leaking from one of the sores on his knee.
“A lot of hackers make fun of the FBI. Dumping on them, calling them dull and bureaucratic. But what’s that? All it means is, they have rules they have to follow. Like that’s bad. Like that makes them dumb. Unlike a hacker who has no rules, he thinks he’s so hot because once he figures out the rules someone else plays by, he can beat them at their game. That gives him an edge, because he doesn’t have rules. He doesn’t believe in anything or care about anything. Sure he can foul up somebody’s system, shut them down. But that’s stupid. It doesn’t prove anything. Rules are what makes things work. If there weren’t any rules, nothing would make sense. Nothing would work.”
Hannah rested a hand on the boy’s shoulder. He turned his head and peered at her fingers. Then he reached up and patted her hand, gave her a consoling look.
“Is there anything else I can help you with?”
The boy was feasting on Hannah’s eyes. Soul mate in training.
“I can’t think of anything,” she said.
“Well, you could always tamper with that broadcast, if you wanted. The same way they inserted the magazine cover and your name, you could insert something into that video. Break into their site, make alterations, make it look like it belonged there. An image, a voice, whatever. And that altered image would be broadcast over the Net.”
“You could do that?”
“It might take a while, but, yeah, I could do that. It’s all just code, plus and minus, yes and no. I know most of the browser loopholes, defects in their programs. I just go in, exploit the flaw, write a file so big it causes buffer overload. Once you get inside the site, you open the door wide, it’s no problem, you can tamper all you want.”
Behind them Yoshia cleared her throat.
“I’m sorry to intrude,” she said. “But it is time for Stevie’s injections.”
Stevie’s smile dimmed briefly, then revived.
“So you want me to do that, Hannah? Alter the site?”
“I can’t think of anything I’d want to insert.”
“You’re the writer. I’m sure you’ll think of something. I’ll try to break into the site, get it ready in case you come up with something.”
He eased down from his stool and reached out a hand to Hannah. She smiled and took it in hers. Stevie Brockman’s grip was light and knowing, more alert than any hand she could remember.
“There is one other thing you could do for me, Stevie.”
“Yes?”
She took the floppy disk out of her purse and handed it to him. Stevie looked at it for a moment then turned and popped it into the slot on his computer. When the directory came up, he clicked on one of Randall’s E-mail files. A message from Barbie-girl. The password protection box came up.
Stevie swiveled around slowly, and shook his head.
“No, I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t do that kind of thing.”
“It could be important, Stevie. It could be very important.”
“These are Randall’s files?”
“That’s right.”
He kept shaking his head.
“You mean you’ll break into the FBI’s site, or the FAA, but you won’t decode the password on my son’s E-mail filer?”
“I have my values.”
“Well, can you at least give me a clue, something I could try?”
He shook his head some more.
“He’s your son,” Stevie said. “You’re the expert on him. Most people use passwords that mean something to them. A special word of some kind.”
Hannah turned back to the video screen on the workbench. She ran her fingertip along the dithering line of pixels.
“So, tell me, Stevie, what was Fielding really saying when they substituted my name?”
The boy settled into his chair again and used his mouse to switch his screen to J. J. Fielding’s hospital room. The old man was sitting upright in his bed. It was the same scene that she and Frank Sheffield had watched together in the Bayshore house, Tuesday morning. Fielding calling out to Hannah.
Stevie double-clicked his mouse and Fielding spoke.
“I need to see you, to talk to you in person. Please, Hannah, I have something terrible to confess. It’s about your parents. The terrible things I’ve done. Please come, Hannah. Right away. There isn’t much time left. Look at the message I’ve left for you and do what it says. Please, Hannah. Please, I beg you.”
Stevie wiggled the mouse, tapped it, then tapped a couple of keys, and the voice sounded again.
“There isn’t much time left. Look at the message I’ve left for you and do what it says. Please, Maude. Please, I beg you.”
Stevie turned in his chair.
“You know a Maude?”
“His wife,” said Hannah. “Maude Fielding.”
“Maybe you should talk to her. She might know something.”
“I don’t know how to locate her. I’ve tried. At least I know she’s not in the phone book. I could call my friends at Miami PD, see what they could come up with, but that might take days.”
He looked at her for several moments.
“You think Maude drives a car?”
“A car?”
Then a slow smile dawned on Hannah’s lips.
“You mean you could break into the Department of Motor Vehicles?”
“I could try.”