‘Here, drink this.’
I placed a whisky on the table in front of Ellen, then sat opposite. We were in the back of a small, half-busy dive-bar – The Pump House – in Visalia. After leaving Springville, I’d at first driven indiscriminately westwards, simply putting distance between us and trouble. But once I’d cooled a bit, I’d decided that what Ellen needed was a drink, so I’d driven to the nearest city that was big enough for us to go unnoticed.
Ellen hadn’t spoken since we’d left Springville. And an hour on, she was still shaking.
She lifted the tumbler and drank it in one. Then she seemed to zone out: her head lolled forward, and she gazed absently at the table-top.
The drink wasn’t going to be enough. I had to say something – anything. After all, the respectful silence had done nothing.
I took a sip of my own whisky. Then:
‘I never told you how I came to leave the FBI, did I?’
I let that hang a moment. Then, although Ellen didn’t react, I continued:
‘I don’t know if you remember, but back in early 2013 there was a string of terrorist attacks on the East Coast – and it transpired a serial-killing cult was behind them. But what the news never told you was that this cult’s leader, while this was all going on, had taken an FBI agent’s son hostage. My son. In order to try and save him, I was forced to work against the Bureau, and in the process I made some powerful enemies – so much so that I’m still a wanted man to this day. But – it was all for nothing…’
I trailed off. I reckoned this was my best bet: to talk about my own pain as an oblique way of approaching hers. And it paid dividends: she looked up and said softly:
‘Did you lose him?’
I nodded. In a way this was true; because although my son wasn’t dead, I had lost him. He was to be incarcerated in the Kirby Institute for the Criminally Insane in New York for the rest of his life. Brainwashed beyond repair.
I knew she’d taken my response to mean my son was dead. But under the circumstances, I considered this deception justified. She was more likely to open up with someone she believed could relate.
Besides, I believed I really could relate.
A brief silence. Then, without warning, Ellen broke into a small, wistful smile. ‘He was truly gifted, you know…’
I smiled warmly. Her voice was full of pride, and I was pleased she was putting things into words. But then, almost defensively, she added:
‘But don’t go thinking he sold out: he always stayed true to his principles. Remember what I told you about Buckshot Yankee? Well, it wasn’t the whole story. Yes, he did make a computer for the NSA that communicated with the virus and told it to sleep. But, in fact, he secretly made two of them: two computers kitted out with the unique hardware and software he’d designed, two computers able to communicate with the virus – and he kept one for himself. He gave himself the ability to hack government systems. And though, as far as I know, he never used it, the NSA would’ve thrown his ass in jail if they’d ever found out.’
I nodded, and continued smiling. This speech was an atonement. Earlier, she’d tacitly criticized Lawrence’s complicity in NSA surveillance. But now, she was taking it back.
But this speech also had another function – to powerfully link me to her brother; to point out that he’d also been at odds with the authorities. And though I doubted she’d done it consciously, I reckoned, on some level, it was a bid to enlist my sympathies.
And yet, I still hadn’t decided what my part in all this would be…
‘I believe you, Ellen,’ I said reassuringly. ‘Siblings always know each other better than anyone else.’
A lull; then Ellen fixed her wet eyes on me.
‘It’s my fault, isn’t it? If I’d called the police, he’d still be alive.’
I shook my head forcefully. ‘This isn’t your fault. Your brother warned you against calling. In fact, for all we know, alerting the authorities might’ve made things worse.’ I reached over, clasped her hand. ‘This was the work of a bunch of thugs, okay?’
She looked down at my hand. ‘Thank you, Saul.’
This was the first time she’d used my name. I was no longer just some gatecrasher in her life: I was a living, breathing person.
I gave her hand a quick squeeze, then let go. But then, almost in the same moment, her hand became a fist.
‘So who the hell are these people?’ she said with sudden fierceness. ‘Can we actually be looking at – what? – a rogue team of hardcore Chinese nationalists?’
I regarded her carefully. Her grief and guilt had quickly turned to fire and brimstone. So quickly, in fact, it felt as though she’d already known her brother’s death wasn’t her fault, and she’d simply needed to hear it from someone else.
But what really impressed me was her strength. Not many would’ve responded to this situation with such defiance.
I could feel my respect for her growing.
‘It’s not so far-fetched,’ I replied. ‘A Puerto Rican nationalist group called FALN was the most prolific terrorist group in American history: between 1974 and 1983 it orchestrated over a hundred attacks on US soil. And it’s infinitely more likely this is a rogue group than a Chinese government sponsored team. An act like this from the Chinese would be tantamount to an act of war, and China – our largest trade partner, and one of our biggest lenders – definitely does not want war. It thrives when America thrives.
‘If anything, I imagine the Chinese government – no matter how much it dislikes the Free Tibet movement – would be deeply unhappy about this.’
Ellen chewed her lip: ‘Okay, it’s a rogue group,’ she said decisively. ‘But how did Lawrence get mixed up with them? There’s just no way he would’ve been sympathetic to a group of authoritarian, pro-China militants.’
I had to agree. China, after all, was notoriously authoritarian on the internet. Using a mechanism known informally as the Great Firewall of China, for example,it blocked citizens from accessing thousands of sites: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube – to name a few.
But perhaps the situation wasn’t so simple.
I leaned back: ‘You said Lawrence spent the past year in San Francisco with a bunch of cypherpunks. Well, what if this Chinese team was this team of cypherpunks, and managed to get your brother on board by pretending to be something they weren’t?’
Ellen made a thoughtful noise.
‘But then the question is: what did they want from him?’ I said.
Again, Ellen chewed her lip. Then she tapped the table: ‘I have a theory.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, although Lawrence didn’t tell me much about this final project, he did tell me about others. And I think the very first project he got involved in after the Snowden revelations could be crucial. GhostWallet.’
‘GhostWallet?’
‘Yeah. I remember it clearly: the morning he returned to LA in June 2013, he went straight to a hacker’s collective at the edge of the city – The Hive. By the end of the day, he’d met another gifted hacker called Arjun Manek, and they’d dreamt up the concept of GhostWallet. Within a month, it was out in the world.’
‘What does it do?’
‘Well, that’s the thing. For many years, while you could browse the internet anonymously and message secretly with TOR and Public Key, you couldn’t send money anonymously. In 2009, Bitcoin came along – a digital currency that you could send as easily as an email. But though Bitcoin was revolutionary – it single-handedly created an environment that allowed black-markets to flourish on TOR – it was also flawed. A diligent person could glean someone’s location – and even their identity – from their Bitcoin payments. So Lawrence and Arjun’s idea was to create an application that’d make Bitcoin payments truly anonymous.’
‘That way,’ I broke in, ‘if you used it alongside TOR and Public Key, you could conduct all your online activity completely in the dark.’
‘Precisely. I don’t know everything about how GhostWallet works; but, in short, payments, instead of going straight to the recipient, are funneled into a pool, and the recipient is paid out of the pool. The upshot: it’s impossible to trace where the money originated.’
I nodded. Ellen continued:
‘But at the time I remember Lawrence’ – she tensed her jaw – ‘Lawrence telling me it was theoretically possible to place some code in the application – what’s known as a “trapdoor” – that’d in fact allow any individual who was privy to this code to undermine the app and see the identities of everyone using it. So I reckon that there is a trapdoor in GhostWallet. And that’s why these guys were so interested in Lawrence – because they wanted access to this trapdoor. And that’s also how they managed to work out that I’m an online dissident – because I often used GhostWallet in conjunction with TOR.’
‘It definitely sounds plausible.’ I exhaled hard. ‘In fact, it makes more sense than you know. I haven’t told you this, but I didn’t just take guns from those guys in LA: I confiscated a short-wave walkie-talkie. Now, it’s not necessarily surprising that a sophisticated criminal operation might want to avoid cells these days: the NSA logs every phone call, and cells themselves can be used to track your location. But it’s interesting they didn’t opt to use the Dark Net instead. I suppose if you know there’s a flaw in something like GhostWallet, it might erode your trust in anonymous internet tools.’
‘Right,’ said Ellen fiercely – as though my comment put things beyond doubt. ‘So we’ve got to find Arjun Manek and ask him if there’s a trapdoor. Because if there is, he’d know about it.’ She hit the table, and a few curious barflies glanced over. ‘Don’t think I’m just going to run and hide from these motherfuckers. And Arjun – well, he’s our lead, right? He might even be mixed up in this.’
I groaned. I’d know this moment was coming; known she was going to ask for help. Yet though she’d already won my respect, I knew that sticking my neck out for her was practically a death-wish.
It’d mean not only disturbing the same beehive as Ellen had done, but also putting myself back on the authorities’ radar.
But then I remembered those bodies in the gazebo: Lawrence and that battered, bruised young girl. And next instant, I was hot with anger.
And what’s more, I could hardly deny there was a side of me – a dark, reckless, self-immolating side – that was hungering for action. It was the part of me that’d insisted on listening to hours of police radio, and bothered chasing up a goddamn speeding complaint.
But still…
I was jogged from my thoughts by Ellen.
‘I’m not gonna beg you, Saul. But I reckon it’s still risky getting the police involved. So, if you can’t help, that’s fine, but I’m going to go it alone.’ She paused. ‘You could always join me for this one last thing, then bow out – no hard feelings.’
I looked at her hard. Then I made a decision.
‘I’ll help you find Arjun. But no promises beyond that, okay?’
‘Okay,’ she said firmly.
I took a moment to process what I’d just said, then:
‘If we want to find him, I imagine the best place is the internet. Hold on, I’ve got an iPad in my car – we can use the bar’s Wi-Fi.’
Before Ellen could respond, I’d left the table. Four minutes later, I’d returned with another round of whiskies and the iPad, and sat next to Ellen.
‘A very close friend of mine – another ex-FBI agent – sent me this iPad soon after I went on the run. It’s a model without GPS technology, and the camera and microphone have been removed. So, if I only use public Wi-Fi, and never sign into anything that’d reveal my identity, there’s practically no way the NSA can track me.’
Ellen nodded.
‘So let’s throw Arjun Manek into Google.’
I joined the bar’s Wi-Fi. A half-second later, we had a load of results – social media profiles, newspaper write-ups, interviews.
I clicked onto his Twitter profile. On the left-hand side was a photograph of the guy – handsome, unsmiling face; thick black hair; goatee – and on the right-hand side, his feed.
In Arjun’s last tweet, posted three hours ago, I found what we were looking for:
Tomorrow will be running 3D printing workshop at The Hive, LA – great to be back!
‘So he definitely not laying low,’ I said. ‘Let’s get a flavor of what sort of guy he is.’
I returned to the search results, then clicked on an article on CNN – Islamic State and GhostWallet – from September 2014. There was a short summary of what GhostWallet did, as well as a bit of background about its creators: Arjun Manek was a New Yorker – born in Queens to an American mother and Indian father. Then the article detailed how GhostWallet had been adopted by Islamic State, and how Manek had publicly stated he was unfazed: privacy on the internet was a fundamental right, he’d asserted, and terrorists abusing the application was a small price to pay.
‘So he’s a hard-line ideologue,’ I said, after I was sure Ellen had also skimmed the article. ‘Definitely not someone you’d expect to comply with pro-China nationalists.’
Ellen hummed agreement. ‘I remember Lawrence being in awe of Arjun’s convictions. In fact, it was a source of tension: Arjun thought Lawrence wasn’t libertarian enough – was wary of his NSA past.’
‘Right, I’ve seen enough. I vote we confront this guy.’ At that, I quickly Googled The Hive and memorized its address.
‘Hold on,’ said Ellen. ‘Can I just check one website? There’s this blog I routinely visit for news on the Free Tibet movement – and because it’s such a well-known news source, it’s a safe site to visit without anonymizing tools. No more revealing than, say, visiting a few articles on Tibet on the Washington Post. I want to check if there’s any news that’ll help us understand these attacks.’
‘Go ahead,’ I said, handing over the iPad.
Ellen typed TheFreeTibetGuy.com into the URL bar and a page appeared with an impressive-looking photo of Hopi House – a historic structure on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon – across the top, overlaid with the words “The Free Tibet Guy.”
‘Sid, the guy who runs the website, is a California-based photographer,’ Ellen explained as the page continued to load. ‘He updates the header photo every now and again.’
A half-second later, the page had loaded. It was setout like your average blog: a number of news articles, with the most recent at the top.
The last article had been posted two days ago, and had nothing to do with our situation: a European politician had been snubbed by the Chinese for fraternizing with the Dalai Lama.
‘No new articles,’ said Ellen.
I reached over, scrolled down the page, and skimmed the titles of the articles: Pro-Tibet Rights Lawyer Detained; Swedish Activist Arrested in Beijing; New Findings on the Aftermath of 2008 Uprising.
‘Okay, I think I need to be brought up to speed on the human rights situation in Tibet. I know that Tibet has been occupied by China since 1950. That during a big Tibetan uprising in 1959 the Dalai Lama – the Tibetans’ leader – was forced to flee to Dharamsala, India, and has been living there under armed guard ever since. And that, since 1950, there’ve been harsh restrictions on Tibetans’ religious freedoms, and at least half a million have died at the hands of the Chinese. But I don’t have much knowledge on the current state of affairs.’
Ellen looked at me thoughtfully. ‘Well, the problem is – and has been ever since the 1950s – that it’s hard to measure what goes on in Tibet because of restrictive Chinese rule. But, in short, terrible abuses continue to go on: torture of the worse kind, arbitrary detentions, murder. After the uprisings in March 2008, for example, it’s speculated that over 200 Tibetans were killed, over 1,000 injured, and nearly 1,000 simply disappeared. And Tibet’s swamped with spies: it’s like living under the Gestapo.
‘And the situation in China at large is no picnic. Free Tibet activists aren’t solely targeted. Journalists who criticize the regime disappear. Students who mention Tiananmen Square are detained. Practitioners of Falun Gong – a pacifist ideology – end up in camps; and, though figures are hotly contested, it’s speculated as many as 65,000 have been killed for organ harvesting since 2000. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.’
Ellen shook her head:
‘The way I see it is, this rogue group are treating dissidents the way the Chinese government would like to. Yes, they’re extreme, but only in their disregard for international relations. Aside from that, they’re no more extreme than the Chinese government, which crusades to violently crush resistance to its Sino-centric worldview. However, what remains to be seen is whether this group is targeting just pro-Tibet agitators…’
‘Well, it’s up to us to find out,’ I said decisively. ‘Let’s go.’
And on that, I led the way out the bar.
I opened the Saab’s trunk, and swapped the iPad for my burner phone – an old Nokia. Then I got in the driver’s seat next to Ellen.
‘I need to make a quick phone-call. Need to let some backup know what I’m getting into – just in case.’
‘Backup?’ Ellen repeated cautiously.
‘Don’t worry, you can trust this guy. He’s the one who sent me the iPad – Vannevar Yeung. I met him while on the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team. It’s an elite team dedicated to saving lives, and, during our time there, we saved one another’s skin countless times. And the reason he’s now ex-FBI, the reason he lost his job, was because he helped me try to save my son when I was forced to work against the Bureau back in 2013. In fact, he only narrowly escaped charges… The point being: I can count on him.’
‘Okay,’ said Ellen. ‘And that’s a burner phone, right?’
‘Right. I’ve never used this phone or SIM before, and Vann also has a burner he’s never used. So we should go under the radar.’
Ellen nodded her satisfaction, and I dialed Vann’s number. After twenty-two long rings, he answered.
‘Ah, my customary 3:32 a.m. wake-up call – what would I do without you?’
Vann said this with his characteristic air of anarchic humor. He was a man who, even in the most desperate situations, insisted on deploying a subversive, ironic wit.
It’d been over a year since we’d last spoken, but some things never change.
‘All in a day’s work,’ I replied.
Vann chuckled. ‘It’s good to hear your voice, Saul – though I’m assuming the fact that I am means there’s bad news.’
‘Afraid so. Don’t know if you’ve been following events in California – I’m assuming you’re in DC – but there’s been a few sniper killings here—’
‘I’ve read about them.’
‘Right, so I was lucky enough to run into the would-be next victim before she went the same way as the others. Long story short: this isn’t the work of a serial killer: it’s the work of hardcore Chinese nationalists. And I’m about to help this would-be victim sniff down a lead in LA – a hacker called Arjun Manek – and I wanted to put you in the loop.’
Silence. In my mind’s eye, I could see the absent look Vann gets when he’s thinking.
‘Saul, you’re on the run,’ he said carefully, at last. ‘I know you’ve already decided to stick your nose into this business, otherwise you wouldn’t be calling. But just bear in mind that if things do go to shit, your ass is grass, so think long and hard before you get in too deep.’ Vann paused. ‘But of course if the situation escalates, and you’re still at the center of things, call me, and I’ll be on the first flight over. Keep me posted.’
‘Thanks, Vann. I appreciate it.’
‘Least I can do for the guy who delivers my wake-up calls.’