A FAKE SMILE
At noon Gaia pulled the windshield’s shades down, squinting in the blinding glare from the interstate highway. Squinting was her only option: her sunglasses were in her toiletries bag, back at the Clavarak Motel, fifty miles behind her.
Or they’re in an evidence bag, she reminded herself, looking for a faster-moving lane. You know exactly what they’re doing to that room.
Gaia did indeed. That white van was probably full of equipment. They could be using a spectroscope to examine the bed linens, looking for hidden strands of hair or cotton thread, turning the room upside down to learn every conceivable scrap of information about its inhabitant. They probably had contacted the phone company and the power utility (for the voltage readings on the room’s electrical outlets) and had figured out that she’d used a computer to go online. Now the FBI could be converging on her communication with Will from two directions and were twice as likely to figure out the clever use they’d made of a singles chat room.
The countryside around the highway was wide and flat, with industrial parks and farmland and strings of exits for various towns passing by as she drove. Gaia was moving fast, pacing the light traffic, but she wasn’t really sure where she was going—her only objective had been to get as far away from the Clavarak Motel as she could.
But now, staring at the converging lines of the highway and the flawless blue dome of sky above, Gaia began to seriously wonder what her next move was. The vast American landscape around her only emphasized the truth: when you were looking for one single person, it was an awfully big world.
Gaia glanced downward at the laptop resting on the passenger seat.
Will I need to get back in contact with Will as soon as I can.
Gaia started scanning the roadside turnoffs. If she could find a place to connect to the Internet—anyplace at all—then maybe she could contact him again. She could leave a message for him in “Hacker City” and hope he picked it up fast.
Because we’re expendable, she thought grimly. She still could barely accept it. We’ve been in contact with Catherine, who’s in contact with Socorro—so we’re both gray ops waiting to happen.
Now that she was paying attention to the road signs, Gaia realized she was headed north on Interstate 95. She had left Baltimore far behind—she was headed parallel to Chesapeake Bay, approaching the Mason-Dixon line. Soon, if she kept going, she would reach the Susquehanna River as it ran inland toward Harrisburg, far beyond. The land was less flat now as she moved inland; there were rolling hills and protruding rock faces in the countryside she passed.
REST STOP AHEAD 1 MI, a reflectorized blue road sign announced—FOOD FUEL. There were signs for the different businesses available there: Mobil Gas and Hardee’s and Super-whiz, whatever that was, and below that Starbucks.
Aha.
Gaia had spent more time in Starbucks than she wanted to think about. In particular, her precollege memories of the Astor Place Starbucks would probably stay with her the rest of her life—the green decor, the rich smell of grinding espresso beans, the hiss of the steamer, and the constant babble of the FOHs from the Village School. Not to mention all the other New Yorkers, young and old, alone or in groups, with newspapers and iPods and knitting needles and paperbacks, part of the tapestry of New York life. Just the green logo gave Gaia a pang of New York homesickness. Who would have ever thought she’d be yearning for those times again? Even running from her demented uncle was less twisted and confusing than running from the FBI.
In less than a minute Gaia was in the exit off-ramp, behind a station wagon whose backseat was filled with four young kids, all grinning and waving at her. For some reason, she felt strongly compelled to force a fake smile for these children she didn’t even know—as if her true feelings were some kind of contagious disease they might catch. But she could only muster a stiff line of clenched teeth, which only seemed to scare them away. They stopped waving and turned quickly from her.
Now Gaia was driving onto a gigantic parking lot filled with parked cars. The brilliant afternoon sunlight was shining off dozens of chrome bumpers, rooftop luggage racks, and radio antennas. A wide green lawn behind the lot was dotted with picnic tables, where families were eating lunch, playing Frisbee, and walking their dogs while small groups of children ran aimlessly around. Even from here, on the approach lane, Gaia could hear their peals of laughter.
Ahead of her was the rest stop’s main building—an enormous round concrete structure the size of a supermarket, with gigantic metal signs advertising the businesses inside. The revolving Mobil sign was turning gently in the sun atop a hundred-foot steel pillar in the distance, near the gas pumps—Gaia glanced quickly down at her fuel indicator and realized she was all right for a while longer.
She stopped her car for a moment, staring at the gas pumps, where a white van was getting refueled. Is that—
No. The printing on the van said something about Pinkett Plumbing.
So what? Gaia told herself. The bureau loves to disguise their vehicles. You’re never going to see them coming if you pay attention to labels.
Gaia forced herself to stop thinking that way. If she didn’t, she’d start seeing the FBI around every corner.
Paranoia is healthy, Gaia told herself. But this didn’t feel like paranoia at all. She couldn’t get the haunting question out of her mind: What had they done to Marsh? Could they really just erase him like that? Did he have some perfectly average suburban family out there somewhere who would have to live with his “permanent disappearance” for the rest of their lives? Just as Catherine’s father was being forced to do right now? Just as Gaia had basically been forced to do with her own father for five years? She couldn’t dwell on it. She knew if she allowed herself to dwell on those thoughts, she’d begin to slow down, and the last thing she could do right now was slow down. Not while Catherine was still out there somewhere—which Gaia once again convinced herself she was.
The main thing now was to find a parking spot close to the building, which, of course, every arriving car was trying to do. She was in luck—a young, happy-looking couple in sunglasses, holding matching ice cream cones, grinned as they got into a Nissan sports car right in front of the main revolving doors, and Gaia managed to zoom forward and pull into their oil-stained parking spot right ahead of a sour-looking man in a green Jetta, who honked angrily at her while shouting something that was inaudible through two sheets of safety glass. Gaia was tempted to flash her badge just to shut the man up, but she knew that really wasn’t a good idea.
Let’s not do anything to draw attention, she told herself, standing in the warm breeze beside her car, pulling on her jacket as quickly as she could to cover the gun. Let’s just get in and get out without anyone even noticing I was here.
NO SUCH THING AS PRIVACY
The inside of the building was cold and loud—the tile floor seemed to echo every footstep and baby’s scream. After the events of the past day it was strange to be in a crowd, surrounded by a hundred or so random people moving around with their food and maps and purses and sunglasses. Gaia had her laptop tucked under her arm, and her badge and gun were quickly accessible, but she knew they were invisible to the untrained eye. Her watch told her it was getting on one in the afternoon, which made her inadvertently quicken her pace, striding forward along the brown tile floor and craning her neck, looking for the Starbucks sign.
Starbucks. Wireless Internet. A quick anonymous chance to make contact with Will …
It had been almost thirty hours since James Rossiter’s basement. In her mind, she could smell the Neutrogena conditioner again and see the indentation on the cot’s white pillow. The closest I’ve gotten to Catherine since this started—and it wasn’t that close.
At Starbucks she took one look at the crowd by the counter and turned away. Craning her neck, Gaia saw what she needed to see—the Wi-Fi emblem on the counter.
Thank God, she thought, making her way to a table near the windows. The air here wasn’t just full of the familiar coffee smell—it was invisibly flooded with Web sites and e-mail, too. Not the most secure way to communicate, she thought, but it works, and it’s fast—hopefully I can get what I need and be on the road before anyone has a chance to see me here.
She flipped her laptop open, anxiously checking to see if she could pick anything up. The computer’s Wi-Fi indicator immediately gave her five bars—a perfect connection. She immediately typed PING 0411 and watched as most of the laptop screen went black. Just as had happened the night before, there was a brief wait while the “Hacker City” backdoor encryption system began working, logging her onto the underground network—Gaia tapped her fingers on the green plastic Starbucks table, trying to be patient.
Suddenly she looked up, staring out the window, where a black sedan was cruising slowly along the blacktop in front of the building. The sedan had tinted windows—it was impossible to see inside.
How could she tell? It could be anyone—the important thing was to finish what she was doing and get moving. Looking down at the laptop, she suddenly noticed something down in the corner of the screen.
A flashing e-mail icon.
What the hell—?
Gaia hadn’t been thinking about her regular FBI e-mail account at all. Using it was out of the question since the bureau routinely kept tabs on personnel’s e-mail and phone communications. It was the open secret of the FBI: there was no such thing as privacy. Most of the time it didn’t matter—you went about your business and didn’t think about it. But that was obviously why Gaia had gone to such elaborate trouble to contact Will.
Now her laptop had just gone ahead and checked her e-mail—and there was one message. She opened it:
To: gmoore@fbiquantico.gov
From: admin@cmps.gov
Date: August 23, 2005, 11:55 EST
Subject: [no subject]
Dear Gaia, please come help me. The people I’m with are
Gaia stared at the screen. The surrounding sounds—the crying babies, the Muzak, the hundreds of loud footsteps on the half acre of tile around her, the hiss of the Starbucks milk steamer—all seemed to fade away. Gaia was alone in the world with the message, this eleven-word e-mail that was sent less than two hours ago.
Catherine.
It was her. There was absolutely no question about it. Catherine had found a way to try and contact her friend—and then suddenly had been interrupted.
She thought she could get away with it, Gaia realized. She had a moment when they weren’t watching her, and she did this.
Gaia could picture Catherine imprisoned in another dank basement, a gun to her head, being forced to do … something … on a computer. And then, when nobody was looking, frantically beginning an e-mail to Gaia.
But they caught her.
Or did they? The e-mail had been sent, after all. Nobody had stopped her. What was more likely was that Catherine realized she was being watched again and had quickly hit the send button without even getting a chance to finish her sentence.
Which means, Gaia realized, she thought she’d communicated something I could understand.
The e-mail had another message—one she’d missed.
Outside the building Gaia saw that the black sedan had pulled up in front of the revolving doors. As she watched, two men in black suits and sunglasses got out, adjusting their jackets and slamming the car doors. They didn’t seem to be in any hurry—they stood there in the sun, with the wind ruffling their close-cropped hair, gazing around impassively.
Uh-oh.
Looking back at the laptop screen, Gaia stared furiously at the message. She couldn’t get anything from it. Dear Gaia, please come help me. The people I’m with are—Well, are what? There was nothing meaningful, nothing helpful—but Catherine had sent it. How could Gaia possibly figure out where she—
The e-mail address.
Wherever Catherine was sending from, she knew the e-mail address would give it away. Gaia took another look: admin@cmps.gov.
So what am I supposed to get from that?
The two men in suits had entered the rest stop building. They weren’t the same men Gaia had seen in the motel. They stood on the tiles just inside the door, side by side, scanning their eyes back and forth, taking their time.
Time to go, Gaia thought. But she had to figure out where Catherine was.
Maybe there’s a Web site, she realized. Maybe that’s Catherine’s point.
There was a potted fern between Gaia and the door, and she hunched down in her chair, returning her attention to the laptop. Going to a Web browser, she typed in the address from the e-mail—http://www.cmps.gov—and hit return.
Come on, come on, Gaia thought frantically, watching the Web browser. Nothing was happening—the computer’s little hourglass pointer was turning over and over, waiting for data.
Glancing over, she saw that the two men were leaning to confer with each other, and as she watched, one of them suddenly pointed toward the Starbucks. They started walking toward the coffee bar.
Finally on the screen a Web site started to come in. It had to be the world’s slowest-loading site. The page turned an ugly shade of green, and then a murky image started to appear, showing an enormous, low-slung, hulking building, huge against a dark, cloudy sky. She couldn’t see any detail. Text flooded onto the page, including a large, bold headline:
Welcome to the Home Page of the COLLINGSWOOD MUNICIPAL PUMPING STATION
This meant nothing whatsoever to Gaia—but she had the page, and that was enough. Slapping the laptop closed, she immediately ducked near to the ground and began backing away from the revolving doors toward the back of Starbucks.
Gaia slid between two more potted ferns—ignoring the puzzled glances of a group of college students drinking Frappuccinos—and once she was out of the Starbucks area she began sprinting toward the glass double doors at the far end of the rest area building.
There was a big crowd of motorists in the way. Gaia’s shoes squeaked on the tiles as she jumped and weaved, darting around people as she propelled herself toward the doors that led outside. Her laptop computer was clutched in a death grip in her left hand—its metal surface was hot from all the activity the computer had been doing. She couldn’t look back—not while running—so she had no idea if the men in the suits had seen her.
Gaia actually thought she was going to make it all the way outside. She had bumped into at least four people and had knocked one man flat on his stomach—there was no way to avoid it—but so far nobody had shouted or tried to stop her. When she was ten feet from the glass doors, the shouting began.
“Stop!” a deep male voice yelled out from behind her. “FBI! Stop that woman!”
“Stop, ma’am! Federal agents!”
A woman screamed. Gaia could hear a collective gasp from the crowd as rather than stopping her, the people in her path seemed to pull back.
Skidding to a stop at the door, Gaia frantically pulled it open, diving through and out into the hot Maryland sun.
Will they shoot? Gaia wondered. She pushed between a middle-aged married couple in sunglasses, knocking a big road atlas out of the husband’s hands as she passed. They’re not going to shoot me, are they?
Gaia was sprinting across the blacktop toward the Altima, trying to fish the car keys out of her jeans pocket as she ran. Behind her she could hear the glass doors being slammed open again.
“Stop, Ms. Moore!” the deeper male voice cried out. “Don’t get yourself in any more trouble!”
Word will come down from Washington, Marsh had told her the night before, but officially nobody will hear a thing. And then one day you’ll be dead, Sanders will be dead, and to keep things nice and clean, I’ll be dead, too. With the three of us removed from the game board, the bureau’s precious tactical secrets are safe from Socorro and all the rest, and their war on terror can go on.
Gaia was twenty feet from her car. She had the keys out. Another woman screamed off to one side.
“Don’t run away, Gaia!” the other voice pleaded. Echoes bounced through the parking lot. “You’ve still got a chance to give yourself up!”
They won’t just open fire, Gaia thought. Not with all these people around. They have to warn me first.
Gaia had made it to the car—she was pulling the driver’s door open as she finally risked a look behind her. The two agents were running toward her at top speed, their guns drawn. A crowd of motorists, frozen with fear, stood on the sidewalk in front of the building, staring wide-eyed. Another woman screamed. Gaia tossed her laptop into the car and heard it thump onto the passenger seat.
The first agent got there, dropping to a shooter’s crouch and pointing the gun at her. He was so close that Gaia could see herself completely reflected in his Ray-Bans. With her left hand on the roof of the Altima and her right hand on the open door, she swung a two-legged double scissor kick that knocked the gun out of his hand and bashed her other foot against the man’s jaw while the gun was still sailing through the air. The agent jerked backward, his back arching, blood spraying from his mouth. Gaia landed on both feet and drove her right arm against his neck. The agent toppled backward to the ground, unconscious.
“Stop right there!” the second agent yelled, pointing his own gun two-handed at her face. More people were yelling, ducking, screaming back at the building. “Stop or I’ll shoot!”
There was really no choice but a straight standing attack—she had to charge the gun. Some part of her mind knew that even a federal agent given direct orders to kill her wouldn’t shoot her in the face as she attacked—his training would make him hesitate for a split second—but it wasn’t a conscious choice. Gaia launched herself into the air and dove directly onto the agent, knocking the gun down and pushing him backward onto the hot asphalt of the parking lot, landing on top of him. Getting her wind back while the agent tried to stand up, Gaia drove her interlocked fists into his head, once and then again until he was unconscious.
Stumbling backward, she rose shakily to her feet, looking around. The crowd stared back at her, not moving or speaking.
Don’t pass out, Gaia told herself. Come on—don’t pass out.
The sky was a vast blue dome overhead, and the sunlight dazzled her. Panting, Gaia leaned back on the door of the Altima, edging around the other agent, who appeared to be waking up. His gun was on the ground twenty feet away; Gaia wondered if she should do something about that and realized she didn’t have time—she could already hear sirens approaching.
She dropped into the driver’s seat, checking that her laptop—with the precious Web page that revealed Catherine’s location—was safe. Reaching to pull the door closed, Gaia furiously willed herself not to faint as she started the engine. She had to back out carefully, avoiding the two agents in black suits lying on the ground. Once she was safely past them, she sped up the exit lane, merging back into the interstate traffic and quickly accelerating as the rest stop disappeared behind her.