He watches the first of the wind-driven rain slant in from the north, skeins of glistening beads that unravel past the bluff-side house without wetting the glass, which is protected by the roof of the exterior deck. He sips the cabernet and simultaneously peruses the data archives of the local post office’s address scanner, in which he discovers that nine pieces of mail, bearing this street number, were sorted during the night and are now aboard the delivery truck that serves the neighborhood. At the same time, he’s able to admire a squadron of pelicans gliding south in formation, on their way to shelter from the storm.
Having immediate and unrestricted access to every corner of the digital universe, without need of a desktop computer or laptop, with neither a tablet nor a smartphone nor other device, Michael feels a little like he felt as a boy in early adolescence, when sometimes he experienced exhilarating dreams in which he could fly effortlessly, like the gliding pelicans.
CHASING A GHOST
Sudden torrents beat on the triple-pane, hermetically sealed windows of the late Simon Bistoury’s office. Wind-driven rain that falls without thunder or pyrotechnics, in a particular quality of sullen daylight, in an intense volume, can summon a precious memory and fill Durand Calaphas with yearning. This is not a sentimental feeling, not in the least maudlin or melancholy. It’s a sharper variety of nostalgia, a keen longing to relive a moment of triumph, combined with a fervent hope that he’ll one day experience something as profoundly satisfying as that best moment of his past. He swivels the office chair to watch the silver rain that slices through the gray morning. Although his current task requires urgent attention, he allows himself two or three minutes to imagine that he is four years in the past, on an assignment that led him to an unexpected enemy of the state. The handsome Nantucket-style shingled house on the harbor. The French windows full of soft light, a promise of warmth in the cold rain. The wife glimpsed in the kitchen, busy with baking. The puddled patio furnished with teak chairs and tables. The dock, the gangway, the slip, the fifty-six-foot coastal cruiser snugged in the single berth. Light in the below-deck portals. The drumming rain masks what small noises he makes while boarding the boat and descending the spiral companionway. Gifford is at work in the galley, preparing to use a metal cleaner on the stainless-steel sink. He looks up, surprised, and says, “Felicia didn’t say you were coming.” A short conversation ensues. However, Durand has not paid this visit to hear Gifford’s excuses or his confession. He zippers open his raincoat as if to take it off, draws a somnifacient-dart gun, and scores a direct hit in Gifford’s neck. The man collapses, unconscious. Calaphas drags him into the vessel’s only stateroom, which is furnished with built-in cabinets, a bed, and one armchair. He hoists Gifford into the chair. A gun safe is fixed to a rail of the bed frame; the number code to open it is Gifford’s birthday. Calaphas retrieves the pistol, puts the barrel in Gifford’s mouth, and blows out the back of his skull. He positions the gun on the man’s lap. The ISA will make sure that the coming investigation will be cursory. In that moment, Calaphas knows he is a giant among men. He has the courage and the fortitude to do anything required of him, absolutely anything; he’s destined for greatness. In this age when most people have such soft spines that it’s a wonder they are able to stand erect, it is a rare individual who can, at the call of duty and without remorse, kill his brother.
The memory is not sweet. He is not the kind of man who could delight in such a memory. He isn’t a sociopath. He is merely dutiful and realistic about the future that lies inevitable before him. This will soon no longer be a world where family, friends, and faith are foremost. That world is fading fast. The fate of humanity depends on severely limiting our loyalty only to the system that sustains us and to the determined visionaries who sustain the system. Calaphas can’t delight in such a memory, but he can take deep satisfaction from the fact that killing Gifford proves that his commitment to the New Truth is complete and that he won’t become a reactionary who seeks even a moment’s solace in the old, imperfect past.
He swivels his chair away from the window and returns his attention to the computer.
Every employee record at Beautification Research includes a photograph—except one. The first screen page of the file for the director of security, Michael Mace—no middle name—features white space where the photo should be. No problem. The DMV has a photo.
Among the information contained in the file is Mace’s driver’s license number. Durand Calaphas, being a senior ISA agent, has full and easy access to every government computer system on the federal, state, and local level without the need to seek a court order or so much as file a freedom-of-information request. When defending the nation from internal threats, he will never be impeded by the Bill of Rights. He is aware that some say the ISA itself is the greatest internal threat to the United States; of course, those who say such things are the suspects the agency is most intensely surveilling. Now, using Simon Bistoury’s office computer to invade the California Department of Motor Vehicles’ computer via a back door, he inputs the license number from the employee file—and is disturbed when the words INCORRECT NUMBER PLEASE REENTER appear on the screen. Calaphas consults Mace’s file and repeats the entry, with the same result.
When he enters the name Michael Mace, he scores twice. Each man has a middle name. Michael David Mace is eighty-four years old. Michael Morley Mace, thirty-two, is a little person, four feet two inches tall. Calaphas is looking for a forty-four-year-old man who is six feet tall.
To be hired for this project, Mace had to receive the highest level of security clearance from the Department of Defense. No one at the DOD is aware that the ISA has planted a rootkit in their system, allowing senior agents to prowl through the records of all the services without being detected, but of course the military and Congress are among the institutions that must be most closely watched for evidence of seditious intentions. The file on Michael Mace no longer exists in the DOD’s system.
When the Defense Intelligence Agency had conducted a deep investigation of Michael Mace for his security clearance, the ISA, FBI, CIA, NSA, and Homeland Security would all have become aware of that and would have undertaken their own exhaustive inquiries into his past. They should all have photographs of him.
Calaphas needs another seventy-five minutes to discover that none of those organizations any longer maintains a file on Mace. Evidently, someone has zapped them all.
OUT OF THE STORM
Such a deluge could ensure that this isn’t a drought year in California. The storm is a good thing, received with gratitude, but Nina Dozier always worries her way through the lightest drizzle, frequently checking the ceiling, room by room, for the first sign of wet plasterboard. The roof is old, and when it begins to fail, a few patches won’t fix it. Even on a little house like hers, a new roof can be expensive. On this occasion, however, she isn’t fretting about leaks and water damage. Being in possession of four hundred thousand dollars with which to start a new life, she can regard the storm the same way people in Beverly Hills see it—as just a change in the weather.
Because she and John visited Disneyland for three days to celebrate his tenth birthday, he has had a suitcase for three years. Not all of his things are going to fit in the one bag, so she has assembled two of the banker boxes that she uses to store business records. After she gets him started packing, she steps out of his bedroom and follows the short hallway into the living room, on her way to the kitchen.