End of Secrets Read online

  FORTY-ONE

  Parker had never been busier with work, and he’d never wanted so badly to keep taking on more. Everything he touched at ONE fascinated him. The data he had access to when formulating target demographics for the Apocalypse release was breathtaking. His team was knowledgeable and responsive. Only a week into the new job and he’d already taken over a pet project of Steven Lawson’s: a smartphone app called LifeCoach that mapped out everything users did throughout the day and, after a month of intense scrutiny, began offering daily pointers on how to increase their efficiency, whittle away at bad habits, and even connect them to other users who might make suitable workout partners, dates, or fellow hobbyists.

  Parker was reviewing film from a focus group on LifeCoach when his phone display lit up with a call from Information Security. When he answered, the voice on the other end was Lawson’s.

  “Can you come down here, Parker?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Parker said. He’d wanted to catch Lawson for a few minutes anyway, to give him an update on LifeCoach. It wasn’t until he was in the elevator, sinking underground, that he fully registered the grave concern in Lawson’s voice.

  Down on B7, a uniformed IS woman escorted Parker from the room where he’d first been issued his Level Four badge and down a hallway into a small conference room. Lawson rose from the circular table and motioned to the chair across from him. Also present was one of the two IS men whom Parker had met on his first day. Parker looked around nervously, though there wasn’t much to look at. The white, cinder-block walls were bare but for mounted screens, all of which were dark.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked.

  “We sure hope not,” Lawson said. The female IS employee closed the door behind her on her way out.

  The IS man opened a file folder and removed a photograph, which he slid in front of Parker. “Do you recognize this man?”

  In the photo was a man around Parker’s age, dressed in jeans and a sweater, descending the front steps of a residential building. Parker shook his head.

  “That man is one of the original engineers of the software that runs the bunker. Unfortunately, he is the only Level Five employee to have resigned from his position at ONE. We’re not sure whether he presents a risk, but we’ve taken precautions, just in case.” The IS man looked to Lawson, who nodded for him to continue. “Two days ago one of our men on the street captured this.”

  Parker glanced down at the new photograph as it was put in front of him. At first he registered only the setting—a subway platform. The man at the center of the picture was the same as the man in the first photo. He appeared to be about to board a train and he was talking to—

  Parker recognized her in a flood of confusion.

  “What’s going on?” he said, first looking up, then down again at the photo. There was no doubt it was Kera.

  “We were hoping you might be able to help us with that.”

  The men looked at him. Parker stared back blankly. His mind was racing, and he couldn’t think of a thing to say.

  “Any idea why your fiancée has taken an interest in this man?” Lawson asked.

  “I—” What the hell were they implying? “It must be related to a story.”

  “A story?”

  “She’s a journalist. She’s never mentioned this man, but she can’t discuss her stories with me before they’ve been published—”

  The men exchanged glances in a way that made Parker stop himself.

  “A journalist?” the IS man said. “Is that normal, for journalists to be so cagey about their work?”

  Parker had never had warm feelings for the IS department, but now he suddenly hated them.

  “Parker.” Lawson leaned forward. “We’re just trying to protect ONE. You understand how sensitive what we do here is, don’t you?”

  “Yes, of course. Look, I’m sure it’s nothing. I should talk to her. There’s probably a very simple explanation.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Lawson said. “Have you spoken to her about work? Does she know what you do here? I don’t mean your normal job, but on the Information side.”

  “No, no. Of course not.”

  “And you don’t know what she does either?” the IS man asked, incredulous.

  Lawson held up a hand as if to let the man know his tone wasn’t helping, and then he looked at Parker. “Is there any way she could have accessed any of your work files?”

  “No. This is crazy. She wouldn’t do that. And she wouldn’t look to me as a source, in any event. It would be a conflict of interest.”

  The men again shared a look of confusion.

  “Parker, I don’t know how to put this. Has it occurred to you that your fiancée might not be who she says she is?” Lawson asked.

  The IS man produced several more photos. There were additional photos of Kera talking to the ex-ONE employee in the subway station, as well as a photo of her, taken from a distance, as she was led by an unidentified man into the lobby of a glass tower. Then there were photos of her exiting that building hours later, well after midnight, according to the printed time stamps in the corners. “These are all in just the last few days. Is this the behavior of a reporter?”

  “Are you suggesting Kera isn’t a journalist?”

  “I’m sorry, Parker. I thought you knew. We never would have brought it up like this, except for her association with this man,” Lawson said.

  “Now we have to assume the worst,” the IS man said.

  “The worst? You people don’t live in reality, do you? You’ve taken this too far. Everything’s not a conspiracy, OK? Kera is an investigative reporter. Have you heard of the Global Report? You might have searched for her byline before following her around the city with a camera.” He stood. “Now you’ve checked into it, and everything’s fine. Pat yourselves on the back. And please, stay out of my personal life.”

  Parker surprised himself with this uncharacteristic show of—what was it? Courage? Loyalty to Kera? For a few brief moments, pride and adrenaline coursed through his body. And then he saw Lawson’s meaty face, glaring up at him with that arrogant scowl for the first time since he’d been officially brought aboard. Brought inside.

  “It’s too late to worry about your privacy, Parker. I thought showing you this would remind you that you have your own career to worry about. Be careful who you let get in the way of that.”

  FORTY-TWO

  The evening after she’d seen Bolívar, Kera, exhausted from a short night and a long day, made her way from the subway to her apartment. As was her habit, she took a route she hadn’t used in four or five days, winding two blocks farther north than she needed to before crossing west and then south to approach her street. Just as routinely, she took inventory of the activity on her block. There was a man in an oversized hoodie seated by himself on the steps of a brownstone across the street, his face turned down toward the sidewalk and obscured by the hood. There was a woman walking her terrier at the far end of the sidewalk. And, midblock, a ConEd truck was backed up to an open manhole. Two men loitered at the back of the truck, occasionally peering down at their subterranean colleague. Kera absorbed these details without altering her stride or her train of thought, which all day had veered recklessly to the situation with Rafael Bolívar. Actually, the situation now encompassed more than just Bolívar; it had expanded to intrude upon her entire life as she knew it.

  She was halfway across the street, heading for the entrance of her building, when the man seated on the steps said her name.

  “Kera.” His voice was low and gravelly but sharp.

  She stopped. Her fastest escape was around the end of the block in the direction she’d just come from. Then she could either sprint down the short blocks to busy Houston Street or dash into one of the alleys. But before she could take flight, the man lifted his face, and under the hood she saw glasses straddling a sharp nose. Then she saw his eyes. Her calves and fists relaxed.

  “Lionel,” she said. As he rose
, glancing up and down the block, she studied him. It occurred to her that she’d never seen him in anything other than slacks and a button-down shirt. It was easy to forget that Lionel Bright had spent most of his career as a chameleon in the field.

  “Can we go somewhere and talk?” He grabbed her elbow to lead her back toward Houston and Lafayette.

  “Not that way. Too many cameras.”

  Kera took him to a diner on Bowery, and they slid into a rear booth away from the windows facing the street. Lionel tugged off his hood. She decided that he looked ridiculous in a sweatshirt.

  A waitress brought them coffee, which Kera stirred but had no intention of drinking. She needed to sleep tonight.

  “What the fuck’s going on?” she said when the waitress left them.

  “I got your postcard.”

  Kera had been checking the Yahoo account for his response. She had not expected him to appear in person. “Did you know Hawk was compromised?”

  “Tell me what you think is happening.” His eyes were steady, revealing nothing.

  “Gabby sold us out to the private sector. And she’s betting she’ll get away with it because the agency protects its secrets above all else,” Kera said.

  “Slow down. What makes you think that?”

  Kera lowered her voice. “At first we thought Hawk had simply picked up a few side projects with corporate clients. You know, the highest bidder here and there, a way to turn Hawk’s technology and computing power into some extra cash. Maybe not quite on the level, but nothing dangerous. Now, though, it’s gotten way bigger than that. In a matter of six months, all of Hawk’s cyberintel work on foreign targets has stopped. You must have noticed it dry up on your end.” She paused, inviting him to acknowledge this. He nodded very slightly. “I’m spending all my time now on domestic projects that violate surveillance laws and have nothing to do with national security.”

  “Projects for who?”

  Kera couldn’t tell from his eyes how much he already knew and how much he was learning from her now. “We think it’s probable that all of Hawk’s active contracts originated with a single, corporate client: ONE. ONE has effectively bought Hawk.”

  “Who’s ‘we’? Where are you getting all this?”

  “I have a colleague helping me.”

  “Helping you? Jesus.” Lionel shook his head, but it was his eyes that troubled her most. She saw real fear in them. “Kera, listen to me. I need you and your colleague to stand down. Just go back to doing the work that’s assigned to you.”

  “Why?”

  “Please. Give me a chance to handle it.”

  “How high up does this go, Lionel?”

  “How high does what go?”

  “You showed up on my street dressed as a homeless person. Don’t pretend you’re clueless. What’s really going on?”

  “I’m sorry, Kera. It’s all classified.”

  “Bullshit, it’s classified. There’s not even a record that Hawk exists. I deserve to know what’s going on. Am I right about Gabby? You can just nod if I am,” she said, staring at him as he brought the coffee mug to his lips. After he set it down, he nodded.

  Her anger took the form of more questions. “Does it go higher than Gabby and Branagh? Was this the plan for Hawk all along, or did they outsmart the agency, and you’re too embarrassed to admit it?” She tried to pull back her last comment, but it was too late. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.” Lionel said nothing. “I trust you, Lionel, but I’m starting to think I’ve been cut out. Let me help you bring in Gabby and Branagh. I’m closer to them than you—”

  Lionel jumped in. “Bringing in Gabby and Branagh is too risky.”

  “I don’t understand. You can’t be suggesting they’ll get away with this.”

  “It’s not about them. If we make it about them, things could get messy. The damage that would do to the agency is unacceptable.”

  “That’s really what you’re worried about?” she said.

  “You’re too caught up in it, Kera. I have the bigger picture to think of.”

  “Have you tipped off the Feds yet? They should be in on this.”

  “No, they shouldn’t. It’s more complex than that. Everything has consequences. Some aren’t worth bearing.”

  Kera smiled bitterly. “Is that what you came to tell me, that I’m supposed to keep my mouth shut so that Gabby can’t embarrass the agency? That’s exactly what she’s counting on, you know?”

  “I came here to warn you that you’re in danger if you pursue this.”

  She glared at him, but it didn’t hold. Lionel wasn’t the person she should be mad at. He was, perhaps even more than Jones, the ally she needed most desperately.

  “This isn’t what I signed up for,” Kera whispered, almost to herself.

  “I know. But please sit tight. Will you do that, Kera? Give me a chance to handle this.”

  She thought of Jones. No way he was going to sit tight while a bureaucrat in Langley tried to cover his own ass. But Jones didn’t know Lionel like she did.

  She nodded.

  Lionel pulled his hood back up and laid a twenty on the table as he stood.

  “I’ll send you word when I know more,” he said. “In the meantime we can’t communicate. If we talk by phone, they can hear us. If we use the e-mail account too much, they’ll eventually intercept it. You’ve seen what that Control Room is capable of. Kera?” She looked up at him. “I’m sorry.”

  She sat still until she heard the diner’s front door swing open and shut. Then she got up and walked home alone.

  FORTY-THREE

  Kera entered the apartment with her mind still back in the diner, replaying everything Lionel had said—and what he’d failed to say. She stopped and looked up before she could pull the key from the lock. Parker was standing in the center of the living room, looking as though he’d been waiting for her for some time.

  “Can we talk?” he said.

  “What’s wrong?” She shut the door and walked toward him until she could see that he was shaking. And then she knew: he’d found out about Bolívar.

  Without warning he wrapped his arms around her.

  “Babe,” she said, “is everything OK?”

  “Yes, I think so. But . . . you’re a journalist, aren’t you? Not . . . something else.”

  “Of course.” She was not proud of how naturally this lie came out of her, faster than she’d even been able to think.

  “If not, I need to know the truth. I won’t ask anything more about it. I just need to know.”

  “What’s this about? Why are you even saying these things?” She guided him to the couch.

  “Today at work I was questioned by our Information Security department.”

  “Your what?”

  “Never mind that. They’re like—they’re just security guys. But well funded, apparently. It was creepy, babe. They had pictures of you, like you’re some kind of criminal. Talking to some man in the subway, coming out of a building late at night.”

  When he looked up at her, she felt certain that now he was going to ask her who she’d been with so late at night. It was about Bolívar, after all. At this realization she felt a calm pass through her. She would tell him the truth, at least about that. She could only take so much of the empty feeling that came with lying to him. But he didn’t ask.

  “They said you aren’t who you say you are, that you’re not really a journalist.”

  “Why? How come they were following me?”

  “The man you were talking to—the one in the subway—he used to work at ONE. They’re worried about things he knows, I guess. Company secrets. God, listen to me. It sounds crazy to even say that.”

  “If it helps, I can just tell you. The man I was talking to is a source,” Kera said. The way he looked at her compelled her to go on. “It’s for a story I’m working on about quants. You know, the Wall Street guys. I did a short piece a while back about how some of them had been hired by ONE. This is sort of a follow-up. Not
just to understand why a company like ONE would want these math geniuses, but also to see how other industries, besides finance, are finding these guys useful. I contacted that guy from ONE because I thought he’d be willing to talk to me now that he’s no longer involved with the company.”

  “Was he?”

  “Not really, no.”

  Parker looked hopeful. “So he didn’t tell you anything about ONE?”

  “No. In fact, he seemed terrified to talk. Parker, what’s going on? What does he know that’s so dangerous?”

  “Honestly,” Parker said. “I don’t know.”

  He fell silent, and she didn’t like the troubled look on his face. “Parker,” she said, “did they threaten you?”

  He hesitated.

  “Babe?”

  “No,” he said quickly. “It wasn’t really like that. The whole thing just shook me, that’s all. It’s probably me who’s overreacting.”

  FORTY-FOUR

  Kera waited for Jones to come off the elevator. From the Starbucks in the ground floor of the building, she watched him cross the lobby and turn left on the sidewalk. She checked her watch. It was ten after seven. She tailed Jones down Seventh Avenue toward the Forty-Second Street subway station, just as she’d done on four of the five nights since their conversation in the park. For the first two nights, she’d noticed ONE’s man drifting a block behind her with the telephoto-lens camera. She could tell from his movements that he didn’t much care whether she knew he was there. They were sending her a message.

  Then he’d stopped showing up. She figured Bradley was their priority, and the clumsy resources they’d dedicated to her were seeing diminishing returns.

  Tonight she stuck on Jones after determining that the ONE goon wasn’t in tow. Jones’s routine was to take the train to his neighborhood in Brooklyn. There, he would usually get takeout from a local eatery and disappear into his apartment building for the rest of the night. Once he ate dinner by himself in a restaurant before turning in. She didn’t know if he lived alone, but she couldn’t imagine otherwise.