Barry Cain was off booze for now. He had a glass of red confection come out of a soda gun, claim of the barkeep: cranberry juice. In the days since the wife’s imposition of dietary austerity measures, his belt band was softening off him. Lyle Michaels took in the droopy suit, slid up by a bar stool next to him. Cain grabbed a shoulder and a hand at once, quick gentleman greeting dance and then they hunched up over the bar, leaning on forearms.
“You said you thought I could help verify some information.”
“Still do,” Lyle said. “I’m hearing a lot.”
“And yet the information seems full until it doesn’t. For a while, you have everything, a whole theory of the world. Then you are saying, what was the date and what is the model. The facts spread. You did the right thing making the call.”
Lyle looked at the chalkboard menu. “I’m going to order.”
“It’s a better place to go than chaos,” Cain said, a cramped little smile turning at him. “My wife hates that joke.”
“The animal trainer,” Lyle said, finger in the air. The bartender lifted a chin in question. “An IPA. Whatever IPA you’ve got.”
“That’s right. Got a ribbon display.”
“Confess I looked you up on the internet.”
For a while, Cain talked about the structure of competition, all the ramps and obstacles. It was different from regular show, less eugenics to it. At their house in Virginia there was the Australian shepherd–Maltese mix Sweet Tea and the two houndish ones, Jezebel and Secret. His wife had started into dog agility contests when their kid began applying to colleges.
“An empty-nest thing.”
“Maybe a little.”
“You’re visiting your kid without her this week, you said.”
“The dogs. There are seasons to these things. It’s also that she hates a goodbye. Don’t think she even realizes it’s part protective of herself.”
“But you do.”
“I infer, anyway. She knows her own way. Natural survivalist in tennis whites, you know.”
“Why do you think she does it, the competitions?”
“The bodies of animals don’t perjure, for one,” Cain said. “Two, there is making herself a sight. She wanted to be a singer, you know, and then, it’s got the verbal aspect. She likes talking to them, giving orders. I think it gives her a sense of control over the natural world.”
He needed a few more beats to bring Cain to temperature. It was a technique Cain undoubtedly knew. But Cain was far from DARPA and the National Security Council now, and it made Lyle easier too, the small talk as though they were friends, easier, anyway, than McCreight. He’d ventured rapport work. But try and there was snapback.
Barry Cain twiddled a straw.
“It’s been hard for her losing the house,” Lyle said.
“She didn’t cry when her daddy died. It was Katrina drilled grief down. She grew strong on crawfish boils. Didn’t matter we didn’t go more than twice a year. Some women go elbow-deep in relief efforts. For her it was pups.”
“Wasn’t Jezebel eaten by dogs?”
“Only her corpse,” Cain said.
Lyle untucked a notebook from the inner pocket of his blazer. He made a slow show of curling the flap back, curling over used pages. He hit the end of a pen against the bar to snap the writing point into protrusion. There was something in the gesture, he was sure, of Jack Burden, the first not the second adaptation, John Ireland. It was a story that had once entered his eyes and stayed there in the place of a question, the rhythm of a nod, structured the way he leaned into space with a stranger under the gaze. He understood the shape he took in the other person’s eyes, he, a writer.
“I wanted to ask you about something. A human resources question.”
Cain smiled. “Alrighty.”
He had a large forehead like a pink lightbulb. Lyle squinted into the light of it and cleared his throat. “Hackers.”
“That a question, Michaels?”
“There hackers on the federal payroll?”
“You know I’m not a federal employee anymore. Legislators made sure of that. I’ve got consulting, of course, but these are private companies we’re talking about.”
“Private companies under contract with the US government. Your Booz Allen Hamiltons and such get intimate, I understand.”
“Given,” Cain said. “You having another?”
His hand moved to a thatched wooden bowl gritty with some kind of man-made dust designed for onion flavor. Lyle pulled his hand away, ate a cereal piece at a time, not saying anything. The bartender sat a beer, sailboat etched onto the pint glass, on top of a foamy branded coaster.
“What kind of singer?”
“Singer?”
“Your wife.”
“She liked the jazz standards all right, but her daddy said he didn’t want his own onstage performing Jew-boy librettos. She has long blood if you know what I’m saying.”
“Hence the pups.”
“Hence the pups.”
“But you wouldn’t know anything about hackers. You have contacts but wouldn’t know about hackers.”
Cain folded his hands, resting his elbows wing-like on the back of the stool and the bar, torso facing Lyle. “What’s the difference between a self-taught programmer with a bad sense of humor and a hacker, Michaels?”
“I don’t know. What?”
“Sincere question.”
“Because I’m hearing things.”
“Are you.”
A finger circling the rim of his glass. The place was a slow establishment tended by a thick-jawed man who polished rocks glasses and played Irish folk songs out of the jukebox. Now he was sliding quarters in the slot. The slap of song lists could be heard as he arrowed through the browse.
“I’m hearing about malware that can bury itself in systems. Software, whatever you call it, that can make automated mechanisms fail. Traffic lights. Train signals.”
“You’re talking about the rumors the CIA planted software that commanded pumps and valves in the Trans-Siberian gas pipeline to operate so fast, build so much pressure, there was an explosion.”
“No, Barry, I’m not. I’m talking about cyberweapons being built. Not just by com-sci guys ready to get out of the university and rake real coin for once either. Domestics and foreign nationals. Some of them living abroad, possibly even the same exact hackers caught infiltrating US systems. Possibly even groomed by the agencies in the first place.”
Cain pulled a paper cap off the end of a straw. “The Cold War is over, Michaels. I doubt many resources can be gathered to turn green lights red in Siberia. The speed of telecom means radicalization runs from teenagers in their basements to jihadists in their basements. A defense strategy would need to go online quietly if that’s what you’re asking. Foreign governments do not announce themselves as the directors of hackers. That would involve potential punitive action. Diplomatic disaster. But you know I wouldn’t know anyway. I’m private sector now, just like they wanted.”
“What about a virus to disable uranium centrifuges? Because that’s what I’m hearing.”
“Hear where?” Cain asked.
“Your old apostle Sean McCreight. Can you corroborate?”
“And where is McCreight these days?”
“It’s an interesting prospect. It points to other possibilities.”
“Another cranberry,” Cain said.
The window was streaky, small, and barred, but Cain looked out at the feet cutting over pavement anyway. His hand lay on a paperback’s embossed letters. Lyle thought of the words the title could be. Pencil. Penal. Penicillin.
“Glen Close has been directed within the country. I’m hearing about drone strikes. Is it possible we see the same sort of mechanical hacking done in Iran here too in action against citizens?”
“I’m not exactly on the email list, Michaels,” Cain said out of the corner of his mouth, sucking down juice.
“Because the appropriations committee.”
“I’m sorry I can’t help you,” Cain said.
“The Def. Sec.”
“Under the bus.”
“You became the rogue,” Lyle said.
Cain smiled. “Maybe I already a little was.”
“Bastards.” Lyle sat back and rubbed his palms on his face. He had thought he was lucky. The visit. “Can I buy you another drink? Just go over a few of McCreight’s statements?”
“If you mean a juice, sure.” Cain patted the paperback. “Anything I can do, sure.”
Lyle turned back through his notes. He liked the gestures of reference, checking his own memory in space.