“They’re not all going to be that high up,” Kanezaki said. “Some of them can be prosecuted.”
“That’s the plan now?” Larison said. “Make it about ‘a few bad apples,’ like those poor dopes at Abu Ghraib? Do the work of the higher-ups for them? Sorry, Kanezaki, I’m not buying your bullshit. I’m not sure even you are.”
“Livia?” Diaz said. “What do you think?”
There was a long beat. Livia said, “I want to know what men are on those videos. I want them punished.”
“Exactly,” Kanezaki said.
Livia shook her head. “But not if there’s a chance of someone else getting their hands on them. And using them. Rape videos live on the Internet forever. This one time . . . we can save these girls from that.”
She looked at Diaz and added, “We can’t win every round.”
Diaz thought, I love this woman. “I know,” she said. “But we’ll never stop fighting.”
“I don’t want those girls to get hurt,” Kanezaki said. “I don’t want anyone else to get hurt. But if we control those videos . . . do you understand how much good we could do?”
“Tom,” Maya said. “You don’t want those videos. It’s like the One Ring.”
“The what?” Kanezaki said.
Maya looked at Larison.
“The Lord of the Rings,” Larison said. “It’s an allegory about power. And how power corrupts.”
“‘When things are in danger,’” Maya said, “‘someone has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them.’”
Larison smiled. “‘The Ring must be taken deep into Mordor and cast back into the fiery chasm from whence it came.’”
Kanezaki shook his head. “Are we seriously going to make this decision based on The Lord of the Rings?” He looked at Rain. “John. Talk some sense into these people.”
Everyone looked at Rain. Diaz couldn’t have articulated why, but she thought there was something sad in his eyes.
Rain glanced around the room, then back at Kanezaki. “I told you before you remind me of Tatsu.”
“Yes,” Kanezaki said.
Rain sighed. “He would have wanted those videos, too. No doubt. No matter the risks.”
“I know,” Kanezaki said.
Rain nodded. “And he would have been making a mistake.”
Kanezaki’s lips moved as though he was trying to come up with something to say. But nothing came out.
“Tatsu was a good man,” Rain went on. “But he wasn’t perfect, Tom. You can be better. He would have wanted you to be better.”
Diaz didn’t know who Tatsu was, but she knew a strong closing argument when she heard one. And so, apparently, did Kanezaki. His shoulders slumped and he said, “Shit.”
Rain looked at Maya. “What do we need to do?”
Maya gave Grimble an appreciative nod. “Constantine stored the video files in the cloud in a unique file format. Without the transcoder, the videos are just a pile of incomprehensible bits. It’s like . . . if we were talking about DVDs, the DVDs would still exist, but there’s no DVD player. So you couldn’t watch a movie. You’d just see a bunch of ones and zeroes.”
Rain gave her a tight smile. “I appreciate your explanations. There would be no way to turn those ones and zeroes back into a movie? Grimble couldn’t make a new transcoder?”
Maya shook her head. “It doesn’t work like that. So no. If you destroy the transcoder and keys, and the backups, it’s over.”